Chapter 7: The Morning After

Chapter 7: The Morning After

The shrill, insistent scream of the alarm clock ripped him from a shallow, dreamless sleep. For a single, blessed second, he was just a man in a bed, annoyed by the noise. Then, the memories of the night before crashed down on him—the mummified corpse, Wallace’s chilling smile, and the pale, dead face in the sunflower container. His face.

The second felt like a lifetime ago.

He slammed his hand down on the alarm’s snooze button, and the silence that followed was somehow worse. It was heavy, filled with the ghost of a man who should have been the one to wake up here. Alex—the thing that now answered to that name—lay motionless, staring at the familiar water stains on his ceiling. They looked like a map of a foreign country.

Every sensation was an assault. The rough texture of the cheap cotton sheets against his skin. The weight of the blanket on his legs. The faint, dusty smell of his own bedroom. These were the sensory inputs he—the entity—had craved in the endless dark. Now, they felt like a betrayal. They were borrowed sensations, stolen from the man whose life he had usurped.

He forced himself to sit up. The room, his room, was a perfect replica of a life he hadn't lived. A stack of paperback sci-fi novels on the nightstand. A framed photo of a smiling couple he knew were ‘his’ parents, though the emotional resonance felt like a recording. A half-finished glass of water collecting dust. It was a stage set, meticulously constructed, and he was the understudy who had just murdered the lead actor and taken his place.

The hardest part was the bathroom. He avoided looking at his own reflection as he splashed cold water on his face, the sensation a distant shock. But he couldn't avoid it forever. He had to shave. It was part of the routine.

He finally lifted his head and met his own eyes in the mirror.

It was the face from the container, animated and breathing. The same slightly crooked nose. The same crescent-shaped scar on the chin. He ran a trembling finger over it, and a phantom memory, not his own, surfaced—the sting of pavement, the taste of blood, the sound of his mother’s worried voice. Was it his memory, or just a file he had downloaded?

The distinction was meaningless now. He picked up the razor, his hand steady despite the vertigo threatening to pull him under. He was shaving a dead man's face. The scrape of the blade against stubble, the smell of the shaving cream, it was all part of the performance. A deeply intimate act of desecration.

In the kitchen, he went through the motions of making coffee. The muscle memory was there, a ghost in his limbs. He scooped the grounds, poured the water, and hit the switch. As the bitter, dark aroma filled the small apartment, a question surfaced, sharp and terrifying: Do I like coffee?

He searched the library of Alexander Vance’s memories. He found dozens of instances: sipping coffee on a cold morning, drinking it black in a late-night diner, the comforting warmth of a mug in his hands. The memories said, yes, he liked coffee.

But the entity, the core of his being that remembered the silent void, had no preference. It had never tasted anything before this life. So was this enjoyment real, or was it just a perfect mimicry of the man he’d replaced? He poured the black liquid into a mug and took a sip. It was bitter and hot. He registered the taste, but the pleasure associated with it felt hollow, an echo of someone else’s emotion.

He was a stranger in his own head.

Dressed in clothes that felt like a costume, he opened his apartment door, steeling himself to face the world. He had to go to work. He had to maintain the illusion. It was the only way to survive.

As he stepped into the hallway, a door across from his opened. “Morning, Alex!”

He froze. It was Mrs. Gable, a kindly woman in her sixties with a small, yapping terrier on a leash. Her face was etched with friendly concern.

“Oh, morning, Carol,” he managed, the name and the polite smile surfacing automatically from the database of his stolen life.

“It’s so good to see you up and about,” she said, her smile genuine. “You were looking so down for a while there, I was worried about you. You seem… brighter.”

The irony was a physical blow. His "depression," the messy seam of his psychic grafting, had faded because he had finally accepted the monstrous truth. He wasn't depressed anymore. He was just a monster wearing a better mask.

“Just… turned a corner, I guess,” he said, the lie smooth and practiced.

“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” she chirped. “Give my best to your mother when you speak to her. I hope her hip is doing better.”

A test. A pop quiz on a life he hadn't lived. He accessed the file labeled ‘Mom.’ A recent phone call. A conversation about a fall. A doctor’s appointment.

“Thanks, I will,” he replied, forcing a warm, appreciative tone. “The physical therapy seems to be helping. She’s walking Buster again.” He even remembered the name of her golden retriever.

Mrs. Gable beamed. “Oh, that’s wonderful news! Well, you have a good day, dear.”

“You too, Carol.”

She shuffled toward the elevator with her yapping dog, leaving Alex alone in the hallway. He leaned against the wall, the back of his shirt suddenly damp with sweat. His heart was hammering against his ribs, not with fear, but with the sheer, exhausting strain of the performance.

He had passed. He had accessed the right memories, synthesized the correct emotional responses, and delivered his lines flawlessly. He had pretended to be human, and she had believed him.

But the success felt like a failure. The ease with which he had lied, the natural way the dead man’s life flowed from his tongue, was terrifying. It highlighted the deep, unbridgeable chasm that separated him from the woman down the hall, from every person in this building, from the entire human race.

He looked out the hallway window at the street below. People walked to their cars, sipped coffee from paper cups, hurried toward their ordinary lives. They lived inside their own experiences, their memories and preferences a solid, unquestioned foundation beneath their feet.

He had no such foundation. He was a phantom, a reflection in a mirror, an echo in a stolen house. He was utterly, completely alone, adrift in a world he could mimic but never truly touch. And in that profound isolation, he understood a new, frightening truth: the only family he had left were the two other monsters who had shown him the corpse in the sunflower container.