Chapter 4: The First Itch

Chapter 4: The First Itch

The official investigation was a farce from the moment a man named Mr. Henderson arrived. He was the district manager, a man whose soul had been replaced by a corporate policy manual, clad in a suit that was ten dollars too cheap. He surveyed the Petropolis sales floor with the weary air of someone dealing with a particularly messy spill in aisle five, which, according to the story they’d concocted, was exactly what had happened.

"So, a bottle of industrial-grade tank cleaner was knocked over," he stated, not asked, his eyes flicking over the unnaturally clean patch of linoleum. The spot was still faintly discolored, a pale, scarred ghost of the melted ruin it had been hours before. The overpowering stench of bleach did little to mask the phantom smell of ozone and burnt plastic that lingered in Reagan’s memory.

"That's right," Jamie said, their arms crossed. Their tone was flat, almost daring him to question it. Beside them, Nikki just nodded, clutching a cup of water with hands that still trembled. She hadn’t said more than two words since they’d called it in.

Reagan felt a strange numbness, a detachment from the scene. The void where the creature's body had been was a gaping hole in reality that only the three of them could see. Without it, their story was just that: a story. The truth—a reanimated, acid-spitting monster brutally executed with a mallet—was so insane it felt sacrilegious to even think it in the face of Mr. Henderson’s bland, bureaucratic certainty.

"And you all inhaled some fumes," he continued, making a note on a clipboard. "Felt dizzy. Panicked. Hence the emergency closure."

"That's right," Reagan heard herself say. The lie felt slick and easy, far easier than the truth. The phantom itch on her lower back chose that moment to flare up, a sharp, insistent prickle. She fought the urge to squirm.

Mr. Henderson sighed, the sound of managed risk and potential liability. "Listen. The store is clean, the hazmat team gave the all-clear. Corporate policy in an incident like this is clear. I'm putting all three of you on paid administrative leave for the next seventy-two hours. Rest. Recover. Don't talk to each other about the incident—it just reinforces the trauma." He gave them a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "We'll see you back here on Friday, bright and early."

And that was it. The nightmare was officially filed away under "workplace accident." They were dismissed, sent out of the store into the hazy late afternoon sun, the automatic doors sliding shut behind them, sealing their shared secret within the walls of Petropolis. They didn't say goodbye in the parking lot. There were no words. They simply got into their respective cars and drove away, three islands of shared trauma drifting apart.

Reagan's apartment was exactly as she'd left it: sterile, quiet, and lonely. The silence was the most jarring part. After the endless loop of the store jingle, the hum of the filters, the frantic scraping of the creature, the profound stillness of her small living room felt unnatural, like the moment after a bomb goes off. Beige walls, a sensible grey couch, a single dying succulent on the windowsill. It was the apartment of a person waiting for their life to start, and now it felt like a tomb.

She peeled off the blue polo shirt, dropping it on the floor as if it were contaminated. The fabric brushing against her lower back made the itch there burn with renewed intensity. In the shower, she let the hot water cascade over her, trying to wash away more than just the grime of the day. She tried to wash away the memory of the thud of the mallet, the sight of the smoking green ooze, the chilling emptiness of the bin. But the memories were waterproof.

Exhaustion finally claimed her. She collapsed into bed, her ankle a dull, throbbing ache, and fell into a dreamless, heavy sleep that offered no rest at all.

She awoke with a gasp. The digital clock on her nightstand glowed a mocking 3:17 AM. The apartment was pitch black and silent, but her heart was pounding as if she'd been running. A dream, she realized. A flash of milky white eyes, the sound of a high-pitched hiss echoing in a space too small to contain it.

She sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The air was cool against her skin, but she felt feverish. A strange buzzing sensation seemed to hum just beneath her flesh. And the itch… it was back. Not just on her back, but on her face. Her upper lip felt numb, puffy, and intensely itchy, like the beginning of a monstrous cold sore.

She stumbled to the bathroom, her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror a pale, ghostly stranger in the dim light. Her eyes were sunken, ringed with dark circles. But it was her hair that made her breath catch. The few streaks of grey she’d been cultivating through stress and exhaustion had multiplied. Silver threads now ran thickly from her temples, stark against the dark brown. It wasn't the hair of a tired twenty-six-year-old. It looked like the hair of someone who had been aged a decade in a single night.

It’s the stress, she told herself, her voice a raw whisper in the silent bathroom. You saw something horrible. People’s hair can go white from shock. It happens.

But the lie was thin, unconvincing. Her hand rose to her itchy lip. She prodded it with a fingertip. It was numb, the skin strangely thick, and the sensation sent a wave of revulsion through her.

Then she remembered the other itch. The original itch. The one on her lower back, right on the spot where she thought, for a fleeting, sickening moment, the creature might have touched her during her scramble out of the stockroom.

Her blood ran cold.

Slowly, deliberately, she turned her back to the large mirror over the sink. Twisting her body, craning her neck, she tried to get a glimpse of the spot just above the waistband of her sleep shorts. The angle was awkward. She could only see a sliver of her own skin.

With a trembling hand, she grabbed her phone from the counter, switched on the camera, and selected the front-facing view. Holding the phone over her shoulder, she used its screen as a second mirror, angling it down until the patch of skin on her lower back came into focus.

The image on the screen was grainy in the low light, but it was clear enough. Her stomach dropped.

It wasn't a rash. It wasn't an insect bite.

It was a growth.

Nestled on the pale skin of her back was a small, raised mound of flesh. It was about the size of her thumbprint, a disturbingly bright shade of pink, and it glistened faintly in the phone's light, as if it were perpetually moist. It looked less like a part of her and more like something that had decided to attach itself to her—a slug, a piece of raw gristle, something alien and obscene.

A wave of vertigo washed over her. She gripped the edge of the sink, her knuckles white. This was impossible. This was a tumor, a cyst, a horrifyingly aggressive skin cancer. Her mind raced, searching for any rational explanation that didn't lead back to a reanimated mouse and its glowing green slime.

But deep down, she knew. This was no normal sickness. This was a symptom. This was a violation.

The worst part, the part that truly shattered the last vestiges of her sanity, was a thought that slithered into her mind, unbidden and grotesque. It was a flicker of morbid curiosity, a horrifying impulse born of sheer terror.

Can I feel it?

She didn't mean with her hand. She meant with her mind. Like flexing a bicep or wiggling a toe. She closed her eyes, focusing all her concentration on that small, vile patch of her own skin. She pictured it, the glistening pink mound. And then, with a surge of will that felt both entirely natural and utterly alien, she thought the command: Move.

In the reflection on her phone screen, the fleshy growth twitched.

It was a small, obscene little wiggle, a convulsion of alien muscle that was undeniably, horrifyingly, under her conscious control.

A scream, high and thin and full of utter horror, lodged in Reagan’s throat. Her body was no longer her own. The monster wasn't gone. It hadn't vanished. It had just found a new home.