Chapter 3: The Unraveling

Chapter 3: The Unraveling

“Your play, Alex.”

The words hung in the suffocating silence, not as a challenge in a game of cards, but as a final, damning judgment. Wallace’s calm, curious gaze felt like a physical weight, pressing the air from Alex’s lungs. There was no escape. The path to the door was blocked by a man who kept a mummified body under his sink, a man who was watching Alex unravel with the detached interest of an entomologist studying a dying insect.

The low hum of the refrigerator was a roaring in his ears. The cheese knife, lying on the paper plate beside the pizza box, was his only thought. It was a pathetic weapon, a flimsy piece of hope, but it was all he had.

Just then, a sound from the hallway—the click of the bathroom lock. Dan was coming back.

Now or never.

The thought was a lightning strike through the paralysis. Before he could second-guess it, before the terror could cement his feet to the floor, Alex moved. It wasn't a smooth, heroic lunge, but a clumsy, desperate scramble. His chair screeched against the floorboards as he threw himself forward, his hand knocking a stack of chips to the ground. They scattered with a sound like chattering teeth.

His fingers closed around the greasy, wooden handle of the cheese knife. The serrated edge was a cold, sharp promise against his skin. He brandished it, his hand shaking so violently he was afraid he would drop it. He pointed it at Wallace, whose expression didn't change. No surprise, no fear. Just that same placid, unnerving watchfulness.

The bathroom door swung open, and Dan ambled back into the room, scratching his stomach. He stopped short, his easy-going expression faltering for a fraction of a second as he took in the scene: Alex, pale and trembling, holding a tiny knife; Wallace, leaning forward, looking completely unfazed.

This was it. The moment of truth. Dan would see. He would understand. He would help.

But Dan’s reaction was not what Alex prayed for. There was no gasp of horror, no panicked shout of “What the hell is going on?” Instead, his face settled into an expression of mild, weary annoyance.

“Whoa, dude,” Dan said, his voice laced with a bizarrely casual tone. “What’s with the cutlery? Did Wallace finally admit he cheats at cards?”

The joke fell into the tense silence like a stone. The world tilted beneath Alex’s feet. Dan saw the knife, saw Alex’s terror, and his first instinct was to make a joke? The last, desperate hope that Dan was an innocent party evaporated, leaving a cold, hard certainty in its place. He was alone. Utterly and completely alone, trapped in a room with two monsters wearing the faces of his friends.

“The bathroom,” Alex choked out, the words tearing at his throat. He waved the knife vaguely in the direction of the hall. “Under the sink. I saw it, Wallace. I saw the body.”

He braced himself. For the denial. For the sudden, brutal attack. For the lunge that would end with this pathetic little knife being turned against him.

Wallace didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. He simply held Alex’s gaze, and the faint, chilling smile returned to his lips. He let the accusation hang in the air for a long, torturous moment before he responded. His voice was soft, devoid of any emotion, a simple statement of fact.

“So?”

The word was a psychic blow. It hit Alex with more force than any physical attack, shattering his reality into a million pieces. So? Not “What are you talking about?” Not “You’re crazy.” Not a denial, not an excuse, not a threat. Just… So? A question of utter, dismissive indifference. It was the response of a being for whom the discovery of a corpse was a minor inconvenience, like finding a spill on the carpet.

Alex’s mind went blank. The cheese knife suddenly felt ridiculous, a child’s toy in the face of a cosmic, incomprehensible horror. He could only stare, his mouth agape, as the entire framework of his world dissolved. Murder was wrong. Hiding bodies was monstrous. These were fundamental truths, the bedrock of society, of sanity. And Wallace had just brushed them aside with a single syllable.

“Jesus, Alex, put the knife down,” Dan sighed, walking around the table and slumping back into his chair as if nothing was wrong. He picked up a slice of cold pizza. “You’re making a scene.”

“A scene?” Alex’s voice cracked, rising to a hysterical shriek. “A SCENE? There is a dead man in your bathroom, and you’re telling me I’m making a scene?”

“See, that’s the thing,” Wallace said, leaning back in his chair now, the picture of relaxation. He steepled his fingers, looking at Alex over them. “You’re making a lot of assumptions. For one, you’re assuming he was a man.”

The statement was so strange, so nonsensical, that it momentarily silenced Alex’s panic. “What… what are you talking about? Of course he was a man! I saw his face!”

“You saw a face,” Wallace corrected gently. “A shape. A vessel that had been emptied.”

“Wallace, just… just cut the cryptic crap,” Dan mumbled around a mouthful of pizza, his tone impatient. He gestured towards Alex with the crust. “Look, man, you need to calm down. You’re freaking out over nothing. It’s just… housekeeping.”

Housekeeping. The word echoed in the silent ruin of Alex’s mind. They talked about a mummified corpse the way one might talk about taking out the trash. The poker game, the friendship, his entire life with these two people—it had all been a lie, a performance designed to hide something far more bizarre and terrifying than simple, bloody murder. This wasn't a conspiracy of killers. It was something else entirely. Something alien.

Alex’s grip on the knife slackened. His arm dropped to his side. The fight had drained out of him, replaced by a vast, cold emptiness. He wasn’t a victim in a thriller. He was an ant that had just stumbled into a conversation between gods, and he couldn't even begin to comprehend the language they were speaking.

“I… I don’t understand,” he whispered.

Wallace’s expression softened, but it wasn't with empathy. It was with a kind of detached pity, the look one might give a frightened, confused animal.

“We know you don’t,” he said, his voice a low, hypnotic murmur. “But you will. In fact, you already do. You’ve just forgotten.” He shared a look with Dan, a silent communication that spoke of shared histories and secrets Alex could only guess at.

“We’re not going to hurt you, Alex,” Wallace continued, his gaze locking onto Alex’s again. “Why would we hurt family?”