She Visits

CW: Suicide or self harm, Physical violence, gore or abuse, body horror

1. Visit

I shut the door against the non-stop squall and stood there dripping, a puddle of dark water finding the old cracks in the floor. Moldy wood and burnt coffee ruled the air. I dropped onto the couch and eyed the book I’d been “reading” for months.

Another time, my friend. Another time.

Rain hammered the windows. The silence inside pressed heavier.

That’s when the air changed.

Not a sound.

Not a breath.

Just a shift… like space moving around me instead of the other way around.

I turned.

She was sitting next to me.

On the couch.

Hannah.

The young woman from the bookstore.

The one who always drifted toward me in the fiction aisles, then followed me to the little in-store café to talk like time was hers to waste on me. She was leaving for somewhere in the Midwest—I made myself forget exactly where—and she poured every small detail of her life into me for five straight weeks until she was gone.

I was supposed to ask her out. Have at least one illicit night before she left. But I refrained. “The right thing to do,” I told some guy at a bar who couldn’t have cared less.

And now, here she was.

On my couch.

She turned. Her eyes caught mine like a blade pushed point-first into the socket. Her expression looked almost like it had back at the shop… almost. Only now it wasn’t human. Too tight. Too pained. Makeup ran black down her face as if she’d been weeping for days.

The room went dark in a way no lamp could fix.

“Why didn’t you visit me?” she said.

Her voice was warm and wet. I felt it on my neck. Felt it in my chest. Felt it in a place I didn’t think she could still reach.

Her expression trembled one time and her eyes shined like she might cry.

Then the first tear fell.

Except it wasn’t a tear.

A thick drop of dark violet slid down her cheek, slow and glossy as paint. Another followed. Then another. Then a dozen more all at once, painfully spilling from her tear ducts like someone had split them open from the inside.

The fluid hit the floor with wet, heavy taps.

Then it surged.

Her eyes overflowed, no blinking, no flinching, as violet sludge poured down her face in warm, roping streams. It ran over her lips, her chin, her throat. The air filled with the sweet, rotten smell of something that shouldn’t be alive but was.

A sudden wave of it slapped across my face.

Hot. Sticky. Smothering.

It wrapped over my mouth and nose, gripping instead of splashing, pulling instead of dripping. My breath seized beneath the wet cage of it. I clawed at it, fingers slipping, catching, tearing free strands as I stumbled over the arm of the couch; half-blind, half-drowned.

The last rope slid from my jaw and hit the floor with a wet smack.

Then the drop moved.

It twitched a moment before it crawled toward her to rejoin at the growing violet pool at her feet. It breathed a wet drowned breath, then another and stopped.

Hannah rose.

Slow. Ladylike.

Only now did I notice what she was wearing—

black lace, a skirt and blouse, her hair pinned neat with a single bobby pin. Exactly how she looked the last morning I saw her alive. Except her face was ruined. Makeup streaked in black rivers, eyes swollen and raw with days of crying.

She stepped toward me.

Silent.

Petite.

But her stride had a strength in it that wasn’t hers anymore.

The room listened.

The rain pressed harder against the glass.

The violet puddle at her feet twitched as she moved, eager, recognizing its master.

She crouched beside it, skirt brushing the damp edge. A pale hand touched the surface, and the residue shivered, rippling like muscle under skin.

“You’ll need to prepare yourself,” she said, still not looking at me. Her voice was steady now—too steady. A practiced cadence, like a priestess reciting something older than the room around us.

I swallowed, my throat raw from the thing that had tried to fill me. “Prepare for what?”

She turned her head slowly. The smeared makeup looked like warpaint, and the smile on her face wasn’t human.

“For when I return,” she whispered. “If you want… I can make it forever.”

Her hand lifted—cold, unsteady—and brushed my cheek with the barest ghost of touch. Not a caress. Not affection. Something quieter. More final. Her lips hovered close to my jaw without ever touching, a promise held out of reach.

The residue at her feet pulsed—wet and hungry, understanding every word, every breath and wanting more of it for itself.

“Hannah—”

She stood upright, smoothing her skirt, adjusting the pinned bun like she cared how she looked for the dead.

“I never wanted it to be you,” she said softly. “Well… no. I did want it to be you. Just not like this.”

Her voice thinned. “But it is you now.”

And then she was gone.

Not walking. Not dissolving. The room blinked and forgot she had ever existed.

The violet mass remained behind, undulating. Waiting.

My head dropped, suddenly too heavy to hold. I hit the floor hard enough to rattle my teeth. The room spun, walls folding in like wet cardboard.

The last thing I saw was the purple presence rising—pulling itself taller, sharper, swelling like a frozen wave about to break.

Then blackness and the faint smell of her violets clinging to him when he woke.

2. Watching

A week passed. Or so my calendar claimed. Time felt waterlogged, each day held underwater before it reached me. Stormwater streets carried me from shift to shift.

I worked.

I answered the kids’ calls when they came — short, stiff little check-ins where no one breathed too deeply. My daughter talked about a school trip. My son asked if I still had his old PlayStation.

We didn’t talk about the marriage.

We never talked about the apartment.

And I didn’t say her name.

Every night, I came home soaked from the rain. I dried off. Made tea. Pretended to read. Tried not to look at the far corner of the living room.

The violet mass was always there.

Waiting.

Sometimes it quivered when I walked past, its surface rippling in acknowledgement. We shared secrets now.

I tried to ignore it and focused on bills, dishes, errands, the clatter of normal life. Anything else. Anything human.

But whether I was brushing my teeth, folding laundry, or staring blankly at a muted TV screen, I always felt it.

Not threatening.

Present. Still. Quiet.

And somehow… that was worse.

Then, something started small.

The ceiling light flickering exactly twice whenever I said Hannah’s name in my head.

Dreams followed next.

Dark kitchens.

Footprints smeared across the tile in something thick and blue-black.

My ex-wife standing at the stove with her back turned, hair wet, dripping strings of that same stuff onto the floor.

“Why didn’t you visit me?”

She’d say it in Hannah’s voice.

I’d wake with my mouth stained a faint blue like a child’s popsicle tongue.

Eventually, I couldn’t pretend anymore.

The apartment was being watched.

By the thing she left behind.

I started to feel like it was waiting for me to get too close. I felt like it had a plan for me.

I was brushing my teeth when the bathroom mirror breathed.

Fog bloomed on the inside of the glass—inside, not out—and a handprint pressed from within, the fingers too long, the palm too small. My reflection didn’t move. The handprint slid downward, being dragged by something below the surface.

I dropped the toothbrush. The pipes hissed. The overhead bulb dimmed, steadied, dimmed again. My pulse raced ahead of the room.

“Hannah?”

The handprint vanished.

The mirror cleared instantly.

But the scent behind me didn’t—dark sugar, burnt flowers, something trying to remember the scent of a perfume.

When I stepped into the living room, the light wasn’t flickering; it was being drained from the air in a long breath held for too long. Shadows leaned in unnatural directions. The air thickened until I felt it in my teeth.

And I knew she was here.

“Ray.”

Her voice was colder this time, fogging my thoughts as I heard it spoken.

I turned.

Hannah stood in the corner, thinner than before; her outline frayed like she’d been cut from paper and held too near an open flame. Her hair was still pinned neat, perfect, always so perfect.

The mass pooled at her feet, shivering in tight pulses that matched her presence—agitated, territorial.

“I fell asleep,” I whispered. “I was dreaming of you. Am I… still dreaming?”

She tilted her head slightly, and the mass slid tethered with her movements—like it hated her attention being elsewhere.

“I’ve keep thinking about you,” I said. A confession I hadn't planned on giving. “I miss you.”

“Missing,” she whispered, “is for the living.”

Her eyes lifted to mine. Something emptied out of her gaze, she was checking how much there was left of me.

“You’ve already started leaving.”

My knees weakened. The mass responded, moving forward, slow and deliberate, tasting the floorboards as it came. It wrapped around my shoe, warm and thick, claiming me in front of her.

“Hannah…”

She didn’t walk.

She appeared closer.

Her hand rose to my chest.

Cold fingers. Sharp nails. I wanted them to scratch me.

Her palm instead pressed over my heart with a familiarity and softness that hollowed me out.

“You feel slow,” she murmured. “You feel ready.”

“For what?” I whispered.

Her smile shifted, not playful, not human, a fracture of something that remembered joy only in theory.

“It’s almost time.”

The mass surged at her words, pulling itself up my ankle, my calf, climbing like a jealous shadow trying to wear me. I grabbed the wall for balance, breath failing, vision narrowing to the curve of her jaw.

“Hannah,” I rasped. “Why me?”

She leaned in, her lips near my ear but not touching, her breath a cold imitation of warmth that still made me want to lean closer.

“I told you,” she whispered.

“I never wanted it to be you.”

Her hand pressed harder.

My heart stuttered.

“But it is.”

3. Crossing

All week, the apartment had felt like something was winding itself tighter inside the walls. The lights hummed at night even when they were off. The mass in the corner dried, cracked, then pooled again—breathing, thinking, waiting.

By the last evening, even the rain felt wrong. Too heavy. Too rhythmic. Like it was rehearsing something.

I didn’t fight the feeling anymore.

A part of me had already stepped toward her days ago; the rest of me was finally following.

I sat at the kitchen table with one of my daughter’s old notebook pages. Lined. Blue-ruled. Torn from a spiral when she was small.

My hand moved before I could think about it.

A few lines. A choice. An explanation.

I folded the page twice. Slid it beneath the salt shaker. Didn’t think to look at it again.

Then I turned off every light.

I sat on the couch.

Hands in my lap.

Listening to the rain comb itself down the window like fingers through hair.

I knew she’d come back.

I didn’t call her name.

I didn’t have to.

The room knew.

She knew.

The air changed first; that same shifting, that quiet surrender of space around me, a cold pressing outward from my ribs like something inside me wanted out.

Then she was there.

Standing in the doorway as though she’d been printed into the dark.

“Hannah,” I breathed.

She looked more human than last time.

More herself.

More alive… and that hurt more than anything.

Black lace blouse.

Hair pinned with the single bobby pin.

Makeup smudged but softer, as if the rain had tried to remake her, restore her.

“Ray,” she said.

Her voice wasn’t warm or cold.

It was deeply, impossibly tired.

I rose. My knees shook.

“What are you?” I asked. “Tell me the truth.”

Her eyes softened.

Then something cracked and couldn’t hold control of her.

“You were supposed to bring me back,” she whispered.

The words cut across my ribs like a blade pressed between them.

“Back?” My throat tightened. “Hannah, I thought you were dead. I thought you were—”

“Dead?”

She stepped closer.

“No. Not dead. Not alive.”

Her voice trembled, this was the most human sound I’d heard from her since that first night weeks ago.

“I left my body. I found something else. Something that wasn’t supposed to keep me. But it did. Because I called. And it answered. It saved me from myself that night.”

She swallowed.

“It heard me. It found me. It needed a tether.”

Her gaze locked with mine.

“You were the tether.”

My stomach dropped. I folded. Sat down heavily.

“Hannah… I missed you,” I said, hating how small the words felt.

“I miss the way you’d come drenched from the rain. The way you’d shake your hair out and drip everywhere. I wanted to wrap you in a quilt. Drink coffee. Just… be near you.”

My laugh broke sideways. “I think I fell in love with you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” she said softly. “Not with me.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should.”

She stepped closer and something else stepped with her.

The mass stirred across the floor like a waking animal. It rose, trembling, recognizing the moment.

Claiming it.

“Please,” I whispered. “If you can’t come back… take me with you.”

Pain flickered across her face; sharp, furious, regretful.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I can’t take you. I can only split. Only feed. Only give you the mate of what’s inside me.”

I stood.

“I don’t care,” I said. “Let it happen.”

The grief in her face twisted into something else.

Acceptance.

The mass slid toward me. It was thick, dark and hungry. Then it divided, splitting down the center like an opening wound.

Two shapes.

Two instincts.

Two halves of something cosmic and carnivorous.

One half slithered to Hannah, curling around her ankles like a lover.

The other surged toward me.

“Hannah,” I whispered. “I’m ready.”

She reached out, her fingertips trembling, and touched my cheek.

“You won’t like this,” she said. “It’s not gentle. It tears. It burns. It eats from the inside out.”

“I’m already halfway gone,” I murmured.

Her lips parted in a soundless cry.

The mass struck.

It hit my legs like boiling tar, climbing fast, splitting my pores open as it went.

Pain detonated along every nerve. White-hot, shredding, blistering.

My veins swelled.

My bones vibrated as something pushed into them, threading through marrow.

I screamed not from the intense pain, but from the feeling of something intelligent slipping under my flesh.

Hannah wrapped her arms around me, desperately anchoring me as my body convulsed.

“Soon. We have each other but also it… them I guess. Just surrender to this.” she gasped.

The mass surged higher, up my ribs, throat, behind my teeth.

My vision frosted at the edges.

My heart bucked like a trapped animal.

Hannah pressed her forehead to mine.

“Breathe,” she whispered. “Breathe. It needs your breath.”

I tried —

failed —

tried again.

My chest split open with heat.

Two things screamed:

Me, and the half of the mass forcing itself inside.

The lights burned white, then died.

Rain slammed the windows.

The mass inside me shuddered —

Bonded now… paired.

Hannah gasped as the one inside her reacted, a psychic shockwave sparking between us.

She clutched me tighter.

“Ray…”

Desperate.

Grateful.

Broken.

The mass filled my lungs.

My head.

The lights went out.

Rain howled.

We collapsed together.

And the two halves of that unearthly thing, reunited at last, wrapped around us like a single body.

It took us both.

4. Echo

By morning, the rain had thinned to a mist, the kind that clung to windows like breath left behind.

The hallway outside Ray’s apartment smelled of wet carpet and old paint.

His ex-wife knocked once, twice, then nudged the door open, the envelope of final divorce papers still in her hand.

The living room was empty.

Not ransacked.

Not lived-in.

Quiet with walls holding their breath now.

On the kitchen table, under the salt shaker, something white caught her eye.

A piece of lined notebook paper.

Folded twice.

She hesitated, then opened it.

Tell them I love them.

Tell them I found something that made me feel alive again, even if it lives where life shouldn’t.

That something pulled me past the edge.

I followed.

Don’t be afraid.

I’m not gone.

Not really.

And when the time comes…

I’ll come back for you all.

Her breath stuttered.

On the floor near the couch, pooled and dried to a soft sheen, was something blue-black and iridescent. Almost beautiful, if you didn’t know better.

One of the kids stepped forward, crouching beside it, fingers hovering but not touching.

“Mom,” they whispered, “do you think he’s… happy now?”

She didn’t answer.

She couldn’t.

Outside, the rain darkened again, whispering down the glass in thin, familiar lines… someone was still tracing their way home.