Chapter 7: The Ghost of Obsession

Chapter 7: The Ghost of Obsession

The silence in the motel room was a physical entity. It pressed in on Shai from all sides, thick and suffocating, broken only by the low hum of the ancient air conditioner and Trixie’s soft, sleeping breaths. The chair wedged under the doorknob was a child’s defense against a nightmare, a useless totem in a world where monsters could wear the faces of your family and speak with the voice of your best friend.

Shai stared at his phone, now lying face down on the stained bedspread. Collen’s placid, dismissive voice echoed in his mind. Get some sleep. It was the gentle, reasonable advice of a world that no longer existed. In that moment, Shai understood the true meaning of isolation. It wasn't about being in a room by himself; it was about being the only person left who knew the truth. Every potential ally was a potential puppet. Every lifeline was a potential leash, held by the same unseen hand.

He was a castaway on a one-man island, surrounded by a sea of familiar faces that could, at any moment, drown him.

If he couldn’t look forward, if he couldn’t reach out, then the only direction left to go was back.

Haunted by the creature’s words—the possessive whispers of Rodney, the chilling familiarity of the thing wearing Sarah's face, the stolen intimacy of Tom’s nickname on a stranger's lips—he knew the answers weren't in the present. They were buried in the past.

With a sense of grim finality, he pulled his laptop from his bag. The low battery warning flashed in the corner of the screen, a reminder of his flight, of his finite resources. He plugged it in and booted it up, the familiar chime sounding alien and strange in the hostile quiet.

He was about to perform an autopsy on a dead relationship. He had avoided it for months, shoving the digital remnants of his life with Tom into a forgotten folder, a digital tombstone he never wanted to visit. Now, he had to open the grave and examine the bones.

He started with the photos, scrolling backwards through time. There they were, three years of his life laid out in a grid of smiling pixels. The end was a gallery of strained smiles and forced poses. Shai could see the tension in his own shoulders, the way Tom’s hand was always clamped a little too tightly on his arm, his embrace less a hug and more an act of possession. But further back… further back there were genuine smiles. Trips to the beach, goofy selfies, a picture of Tom holding a ridiculously small kitten. It hurt. It was a sharp, stabbing pain to be reminded of the man he had loved, before the rot set in.

He closed the photos, his throat tight. This was a place for feelings, not facts. He needed facts. He opened their old message history, a vast, sprawling archive of their life together.

His fingers hesitated over the keyboard. Where to even begin? He thought of the word that had shattered his reality in his own backyard. He typed it into the search bar: Shy-Shy.

The results flooded the screen, a chronological list of a love affair turning sour. At the top, the recent past, the messages were laced with it. “Where are you, Shy-Shy? You said you’d be home by ten.” “Don’t ignore my calls, Shy-Shy. You know I worry.” “You wouldn’t be looking at other people, would you, Shy-Shy? You’re mine.”

He scrolled down, deeper into the past. A year ago. Two years. The nickname was there, but the context was different. It was lighter, sweeter. “Can’t wait for dinner, Shy-Shy. <3” “Thinking of you, Shy-Shy. Have a good day at work.”

There was a clear dividing line. A point in time where the name had shifted from a term of endearment to a leash, a tool of control. He looked at the dates. It was about eight months ago. The start of their final, ugly decline.

His blood ran cold. He opened the text messages from this morning—from the creature wearing Rodney’s skin. He’d screenshotted them before blocking the number, a sliver of foresight in his panic.

[Unknown]: Don't play games, Shai. I know it’s you. [Unknown]: We’re meant to be. You belong to me now.

He navigated back to his message history with Tom. He searched for the key phrase. Belong to me.

His breath hitched. There it was, in a message from Tom dated three months before the breakup. It was from the night of their last big fight, the one that had started because Shai had stayed ten minutes late at a work happy hour.

[Tom]: I don’t think you understand, Shai. After everything, you belong to me.

It wasn't just similar. It was a blueprint. The possessiveness, the obsessive jealousy, the very language the entity used—it had all been there first, in Tom. Tom’s natural insecurity hadn't just gotten worse on its own. It had metastasized. It had been amplified into something monstrous, something inhuman.

Shai felt a wave of nausea. He wasn't just looking at the messages of a jealous ex-boyfriend. He was looking at the first draft of the monster that was now hunting him.

With trembling hands, he went back to the photos, his eyes now searching for a different kind of clue. He scrolled to the pictures from the last few months of their relationship. He found the one from their anniversary dinner. On the surface, it was a normal photo. A candlelit table, two glasses of wine, Shai forcing a smile. Tom had his arm slung around him, his own smile wide and beaming. But his eyes…

Shai zoomed in, the image pixelating slightly. The camera flash had hit Tom’s eyes directly. They weren’t the warm, dark brown he remembered. In the harsh glare of the flash, caught for a fraction of a second, was a faint but unmistakable glint of brilliant, piercing green. It was a tiny flaw in the photograph, a trick of the light he’d never noticed before. But it wasn’t a trick. It was a crack in the facade. It was the mark of the parasite, visible even then, peering out from behind his boyfriend’s eyes.

He slammed the laptop shut.

The air in the room was suddenly thick, unbreathable. The pieces clicked into place, not with a gentle snap, but with the grinding, final sound of a crypt being sealed.

It didn't start with Rodney. Rodney was just a vessel, a temporary shell picked up along the way. It didn't start with Sarah. She was the latest victim, the most strategic and cruelest choice. It started with Tom.

He hadn’t just broken up with a toxic, jealous man. He had escaped a host. The creature had been living inside Tom, feeding on his jealousy, twisting his love into an all-consuming obsession, turning him into the perfect predator. And when Shai had finally ripped himself away, he hadn't just broken a man's heart. He had torn a parasite from its food source.

The entity wasn't a stranger who had become fixated on him in a club. It was the ghost of his last relationship, a disembodied obsession now free of its original host and hunting him directly. It knew his secrets, his fears, his private nicknames, because it had learned them from the inside, through the eyes of the man he once loved.

He looked around the grimy, anonymous motel room. There was no escape. How do you run from something that knows you better than you know yourself? How do you hide from a monster that was born in your own bed?