Chapter 6: The Un-People

Chapter 6: The Un-People

The drive to his parents’ house was the longest ten minutes of Alex’s life. He sat in the passenger seat of his grandfather’s beige sedan, the familiar scent of pipe tobacco now cloying and alien. Every detail was a cruel mockery of the world he’d lost. The faint rattle from the glove compartment, the smooth wear on the steering wheel, the crack in the dashboard—it was all correct, and therefore all profoundly wrong.

“You’re still quiet as a mouse over there,” Arthur said, his voice a warm, concerned rumble that scraped against Alex's raw nerves. “Sure you’re feeling alright? That was quite a scene you made back at the station.”

Alex forced his muscles to form a smile. It felt like pulling concrete. “Yeah, sorry. Just… tired. Haven’t been sleeping well. Stressed about midterms, I guess.”

The lie was flimsy, pathetic, but it was the best his shattered mind could conjure. He had to be normal. The memory of the Shadow Figure, its form a tear in the fabric of the night, was a blazing warning. It hadn't been an attack; it had been a quarantine. One he had foolishly, joyfully, breached. Now he was here, an infection in a clean room, and his only hope for survival was to mimic the healthy cells around him.

“Midterms, eh? The great bane of the young,” his grandfather chuckled, completely accepting the lie. “Well, your mother’s pot roast should put some lead back in your pencil.”

The pot roast. The dinner he had clung to as a lifeline just an hour ago was now his executioner's meal. He had to sit at a table with a man who looked like his father and a woman who looked like his mother, and pretend they were his. He had to fake his way through a life that wasn't his, built on memories he didn't have.

The house was exactly as he remembered, right down to the scuff mark on the entryway floor where he’d dropped a bookshelf five years ago. His "mother" hugged him, her embrace warm and loving. She smelled of cinnamon and her familiar perfume. Her eyes, a warm, reassuring brown, were free of the horrifying blackness. His "father" clapped him on the shoulder, asking about his classes. They were perfect copies. Flawless imitations.

Dinner was an exercise in pure, sustained terror. Alex felt like a spy deep in enemy territory, every word a potential misstep. He answered their questions with vague, non-committal replies, pushing mashed potatoes around his plate to create the illusion of eating.

“Did you tell them, Dad?” his mother asked, her face bright with a smile that didn’t reach her replica eyes.

“Tell us what?” Alex asked, his fork freezing halfway to his mouth. A new memory? A new piece of this false history he had to learn on the fly?

“Max and Chloe sent us a postcard from Prague!” his father announced, pulling a glossy photograph from the top of the fridge. “Looks like they’re having the time of their lives.”

He passed the card to Alex. On the front was a picture of a grand, ancient-looking castle. Alex flipped it over. The handwriting was Chloe’s, a familiar, bubbly script that made his stomach clench. Max had added a crude drawing of himself riding a giant beer stein. It was perfect. It was impossible. He remembered the blank, soulless voids in their reflected faces in the elevator. How could those things have written this?

“That’s… great,” Alex choked out, placing the postcard on the table as if it were radioactive. “I’m happy for them.”

He needed air. He felt the walls of this cozy, domestic scene closing in. “I’m just going to… get some water.”

He escaped to the kitchen, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his sternum. He leaned against the counter, gripping the edge until his knuckles turned white. He stared unseeingly at the small television perched on the counter, which was playing the local evening news. A reporter was covering a minor traffic accident downtown. The camera panned across the scene, showing a tow truck and a small crowd of onlookers.

And there, standing in the crowd, was the cashier from the gas station.

She was just a face in the background, out of focus. But for a split second, as the camera moved, her head turned toward the lens. Alex saw it. The same solid blackness. The complete absence of sclera or iris. A pair of polished obsidian orbs set in a human face.

He recoiled from the counter, a gasp escaping his lips. It wasn't a vision. It wasn’t a memory of the bus. They were here. In this world. In his city.

A horrifying new hypothesis began to form in his mind, seeded by the memory of the bus and the elevator. What if they weren't just a random horror? What if they were a fundamental part of this reality?

He walked back into the living room, his movements stiff and robotic. He felt a compulsive, terrifying need to confirm it. To look. To really see the world he had stumbled into. He walked to the large bay window that looked out onto their quiet suburban street. His "family" continued their cheerful dinner conversation behind him, the sound utterly disconnected from his reality.

Outside, the streetlights cast long, yellow rectangles onto the manicured lawns. Everything was still. A woman was walking a small terrier on the opposite side of the road. A perfectly normal, evening scene.

Alex focused on her face, his breath catching in his throat. Even from this distance, he could tell. The light caught her eyes, and there was no glint of white, no hint of color. Just two small, dark pits. She stopped, as if sensing his gaze, and turned her head. Her face, blank and passive, angled directly toward his window. Her eyes were black voids. Then he looked down. The terrier, its head cocked, had the same solid black, bead-like eyes.

They weren't just people.

This was their world.

The realization settled over him not with a bang, but with a quiet, insidious certainty that was far more terrifying. The black-eyed people weren’t monsters invading a normal world. They were the world. They were the placeholders, the NPCs, the background characters running on a script. They were the true inhabitants of this glitched reality.

He was the intruder.

He stumbled back from the window, a wave of nausea and vertigo threatening to send him to his knees. His family. His parents and grandfather sitting at the table, laughing at some shared joke. Were they real? Or were they just the high-fidelity models, the ones designed to interact with him, to keep the anomaly contained and docile? The Shadow Figure hadn't been a jailer; it had been a zookeeper, trying to keep the strange, exotic animal from wandering into the wrong enclosure.

“Alex, you look pale. Sit down, son,” his father said, his voice dripping with counterfeit concern.

“I… I just remembered I have an early class,” Alex stammered, backing toward the door. “I should go. Thanks for dinner.”

He fled. He didn't wait for their replies, for their worried goodbyes. He burst out of the front door and ran to his car, fumbling with the keys. As he peeled away from the curb, he glanced back at the house. His "father" and "grandfather" were standing in the doorway, watching him go. Their faces were etched with worry. But behind them, through the bay window, he saw his "mother" standing, perfectly still, her face blank. And even from the street, he could see the two dark, empty circles where her eyes should have been.

He drove aimlessly, his mind a maelstrom of terror. He finally pulled over in a deserted parking lot, the engine ticking as it cooled. He was utterly, completely alone. Trapped not just in a different reality, but in an artificial one. He was a bug in the code, a ghost haunting a world of puppets.

He looked out his window. Now that he knew what to look for, he saw them everywhere. A man jogging on the sidewalk, his rhythmic stride perfectly even, his eyes black pits. A couple sitting on a park bench under a streetlight, holding hands, both staring forward with the same vacant, soulless gaze. A face in an apartment window across the street, motionless, observing.

They weren't hunting him. They weren't chasing him. They were just… there. Existing. Watching. Their silent, collective presence was a constant, low-grade hum of paranoia that was infinitely worse than any monster. It was the horror of absolute isolation. He was the only real person in a world of Un-people, and they all knew he didn't belong.