Chapter 10: An Act of Unloving

Chapter 10: An Act of Unloving

The monstrous face in the rearview mirror held her captive. Its claim echoed in the frosted, tomb-like silence of the car: You created me. You are mine. For a moment that stretched into an eternity, Samantha felt the chains of that statement wrap around her soul. The creature was right. Her guilt was the lock, and her grief was the key that had turned it. She had built her own prison and invited the warden in.

But seeing the truth—the simple, unadorned granite stone with Sophia’s name on it—had changed something fundamental within her. The foundation of her prison had been cracked.

If I built it, she thought, a spark of defiance flickering in the abyss of her terror, maybe I can tear it down.

The path seemed horrifyingly simple. If it fed on her guilt-tainted grief, she would starve it. She would stop grieving. She would excise the pain, accept the fact, and let the memory of her daughter be just that—a memory, pure and untouchable, separate from the parasite that had clung to it.

As if sensing her resolve, the creature in the backseat shifted. The burning pinpricks of its eyes narrowed. The intimidation had failed. Now came the blackmail.

"You think it's that easy?" the entity rasped, its voice scraping against the inside of her skull. "You think you can just turn it off? Like a switch? This hunger doesn't just disappear, Samantha. It simply seeks a new table."

The frosted windshield in front of her flickered. The image of the cemetery road wavered, dissolving not into a glitch, but into a new, terrifyingly vivid scene. It was the vision of Connor she had just witnessed, but this time, she was not an observer from a distance. She was standing right behind him as he knelt before Sophia’s grave.

In the vision, Connor’s shoulders shook with silent sobs. The raw, lonely grief she had seen from afar was now palpable, a heavy cloak around him. The air grew cold. From the corner of her eye, Samantha saw a shadow detach itself from the base of a nearby oak tree—a familiar, child-sized silhouette. It drifted toward her ex-husband, a predator drawn to a fresh wound.

"He misses her, too," the entity whispered, its voice now a venomous narrator in her ear. "His guilt is different from yours. Quieter. The guilt of a man who couldn't protect his family. But it's there. It's a fine vintage. More than enough to sustain me."

In the vision, the shadow reached Connor. It laid a small, translucent hand on his shoulder. He flinched, looking around, a confused frown on his grief-stricken face. The entity in Samantha's car let out a soft, satisfied sigh, a sound of hideous contentment. "Yes," it murmured. "He will do nicely. I will wear her face for him, too. I will whisper his failures into his ear every night. I will drink from his sorrow until he is just a husk, and then I will find another."

Samantha cried out, a choked, desperate sound. "No! Leave him alone!"

The vision of Connor shattered, the cemetery vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. The frosted windshield returned, a blank canvas for the creature’s next masterpiece.

"Then who?" it hissed. "There are so many doors, Samantha. A world full of them."

A new image bloomed on the glass. A bright, sunny playground. Children squealing with laughter as they pumped their legs on swings and shot down slides. It was a scene of perfect, ordinary innocence. The creature focused her attention on a young mother pushing her toddler in a bucket swing. The mother was laughing, but then she glanced at her phone, distracted for just a second. The toddler leaned too far forward, and for a heart-stopping moment, he teetered on the edge of the swing. The mother gasped, dropping her phone and catching him just in time.

Relief washed over the young mother's face, but it was immediately followed by a shadow. A flicker of self-recrimination. A tiny, insignificant kernel of guilt. I wasn't paying attention. He could have been hurt.

It was nothing. A fleeting, parental fear that would be forgotten in five minutes.

But the entity saw it.

In the vision, Samantha saw the child-shaped shadow flicker at the edge of the playground's woodchips. It had noticed the scent. A tiny crack. A potential door.

"That's all it takes," the entity whispered, its voice laced with a connoisseur's appreciation. "A moment of distraction. A forgotten promise. A flash of anger. This world is a banquet of regret, and I have an endless appetite. You see, you have a choice. It's a terrible one, but it is a choice."

The visions faded, leaving Samantha alone again in the frozen car, the thing in the backseat radiating a triumphant cold. The impossible choice settled upon her, its weight threatening to crush her.

She could continue to play the host. She could climb back into her prison of grief, embrace the guilt, and let this thing feed on her for the rest of her miserable life. In doing so, she would keep it contained, tethered to her soul. It was a monstrous perversion of the maternal instinct that had driven her for so long—protecting others by sacrificing herself. She would become a living cage for the monster she had spawned.

Or she could choose freedom. She could starve it. She could perform the final, agonizing act of acceptance, severing its food supply. But the entity's threat was clear. It wouldn't just vanish. It would be unleashed. It would find Connor. It would find that mother on the playground. It would drift through the world, a plague of sorrow, seeking out the cracks in other people's souls, and it would be her fault. Her final act would be to release this horror upon the world.

The creature watched her from the rearview mirror, its burning eyes glowing with victory. It believed it had her trapped. She was a mother, a protector. It was certain she would choose self-sacrifice. She would choose containment.

But as Samantha stared at her own terrified face reflected in the mirror, next to the monster's, a new, defiant clarity cut through the horror. The creature had made a mistake. It had shown her its true nature, and in doing so, had revealed its weakness.

It was a parasite. And parasites, for all their power over their hosts, cannot survive without them. Containing it, feeding it, wouldn't save anyone. It would only make the entity stronger. It would feast on her until she was nothing but a desiccated husk, and then, bloated and powerful, it would move on anyway, more dangerous than ever. Containing it was not a solution; it was a delay. It was a slow-motion surrender.

The only way to win wasn't to contain the monster, but to kill it.

The choice wasn't between sacrificing herself or sacrificing others. The choice was between a slow, certain defeat and a single, desperate chance at victory. To kill it, she had to starve it. And to starve it, she had to do the one thing she had fought against for two long years.

She had to separate her love for Sophia from the guilt of her death. The creature fed on the poisoned mixture, the grief tainted by regret. But pure love? A mother’s pure, unconditional love for a child she has lost? The creature had no power over that. Guilt was its food. Acceptance was its poison.

The "act of unloving" wasn't about her daughter. It was an act of un-loving the guilt. An act of un-loving the shadow that had wrapped itself around her heart. It was the final, heartbreaking, and most powerful expression of her love for the real Sophia: to let her rest, free from the monster that wore her face.

Her trembling stopped. A profound, terrifying calm settled over her. She knew what she had to do. It would be the hardest thing she had ever done. It would mean facing the full, undiluted truth of the crash, the finality of her daughter's death, with no delusions or monsters to hide behind. It would mean embracing an agony so pure it might destroy her.

But it was the only way.

She turned her head, breaking her gaze from the rearview mirror, and looked directly into the backseat for the first time. She met the monster's burning eyes, and for the first time, it was the one that seemed to flinch.

Characters

Connor Brown

Connor Brown

Samantha Brown

Samantha Brown

The Entity / 'Sophia'

The Entity / 'Sophia'