scary nights

The bass reaches you before anything else does.

It settles into your chest like a second heartbeat—slow, heavy, relentless—until it stops feeling like sound and starts feeling like pressure. Every inhale tastes like heat and alcohol and something metallic you can’t quite place, thick enough that it clings to the back of your throat. The club isn’t just loud; it’s overwhelming in a way that blurs the edges of things, light and movement smearing together until it becomes difficult to tell where one person ends and another begins.

Neon bleeds across every surface. Cyan and red streak through the dark, catching on glass, on polished floors, on the mirrored wall behind the bar where everything is reflected and then reflected again. People move in loops—arms raised, bodies swaying, laughter too sharp, too loud, conversations slipping over each other like they aren’t quite in sync. There’s a delay to everything. Not enough to notice immediately. Just enough to feel… off.

You’re not drunk.

Not high.

Just aware in a place that seems designed to dull that awareness down.

Someone brushes past you, shoulder clipping yours harder than necessary. You turn slightly, more out of instinct than irritation, but they’re already gone—swallowed by the crowd, their laughter trailing behind them like something detached from a body. You exhale slowly, grounding yourself in the small, ordinary motion of breathing, and let your gaze drift in search of something still.

That’s when you notice him.

At first, it’s only because he isn’t moving.

In a space where everything pulses and shifts and presses forward, stillness stands out more than anything else. He’s positioned near the far end of the bar, just close enough to the mirrored wall that the light fractures around him, outlining him in shifting color that never quite settles. People move around him, into him, past him—but he doesn’t react the way they do. He doesn’t sway. He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t even pretend to belong.

He just stands there.

And stares.

Not at the crowd.

Not at the bar.

At the mirror.

His posture is slightly hunched, shoulders drawn in like he’s bracing against something you can’t see. One hand rests against the edge of the counter, fingers curled too tightly, tendons faintly visible beneath pale skin. His hair catches your attention next—split down the middle in stark black and white, but disrupted by streaks of color that don’t sit right. Teal. Yellow. Something faintly red. Under the shifting lights, it almost looks like those colors move independently, like they’re bleeding into the rest instead of belonging there.

You shouldn’t stare.

There’s no reason to.

And yet—

He flinches.

It’s sharp enough to cut through everything.

Not the subtle reaction of someone startled by noise or light, but something immediate, instinctive—his shoulders tensing, his head turning just slightly, like he’s reacting to something that moved too fast to catch.

Your gaze follows without thinking.

To the mirror.

For a moment, you see exactly what you expect.

Your reflection, slightly distorted by the angle and the light. The bar behind you. The shifting mass of people, blurred and overlapping in ways that make it hard to focus on any single face.

Nothing else.

No movement out of place.

No figure where there shouldn’t be one.

Nothing.

“Did you see that?”

The voice comes from closer than it should.

You didn’t see him move.

And yet he’s there now, turned toward you, standing just within your space in a way that feels unintentional and entirely deliberate at the same time. The noise of the club doesn’t fade, exactly—but it shifts, like your awareness has narrowed, like everything else has been pushed just slightly out of focus to make room for him.

Up close, the wrongness is clearer.

His eyes are a muted violet-blue, heavy with exhaustion, but too sharp beneath it—too focused in the way they flick between your face, your shoulders, the space just behind you, then back again. Not random. Not distracted. Searching.

Comparing.

There’s something dark along his fingers, smeared across the skin in a way that catches the light wrong. It could be paint. It could be something else. It looks too fresh to ignore and too unimportant to question.

“Did you see that?” he repeats, quieter now, like the question matters more than it should.

You hesitate, only for a second.

“No… what?”

It’s a simple answer. Automatic. The kind you’d give anyone without thinking.

But the moment the words leave your mouth, something shifts.

Not in the room.

In him.

His gaze stills—not widening, not softening—just locking into place with a precision that feels almost clinical. He watches you for a moment too long, eyes tracing your expression like he’s memorizing it, like he’s comparing it to something you can’t see.

Then, softly—

“…You said it the same way.”

The words don’t make sense immediately.

“Just now.” His voice is low, nearly lost beneath the music, but steady in a way that doesn’t match the tension in his posture. “You didn’t change it.”

A pause.

His eyes flick past you again—toward the mirror—then back.

“People usually do.”

There’s something about the way he says it that makes it feel less like an observation and more like a rule. Like something he’s learned the hard way.

You open your mouth, maybe to ask what he means, maybe to dismiss it entirely—but before you can, someone stumbles between you, laughing too loudly, the sound breaking awkwardly in the middle as they push past. Their shoulder knocks into yours, harder than before, and you shift instinctively, turning slightly to regain your balance.

Your gaze drifts back to the mirror.

Just for a second.

And—

There’s something there.

Not clear. Not defined.

Just—

Wrong.

A shape behind you that doesn’t belong to any body you can see. Too tall. Too still. Too separate from the movement around it.

The lights flicker.

The shape disappears.

Everything snaps back into place so quickly it almost feels like it never happened.

You freeze anyway.

Only for a second. Less than that, maybe.

But it’s enough.

“You saw it.”

His voice doesn’t rise. Doesn’t question. It lands with quiet certainty, like he’s been waiting for that exact moment.

You turn back to him.

He’s closer again.

You don’t remember him stepping forward.

His eyes are fixed on yours, not searching anymore, not uncertain—just certain, in a way that sends something cold down your spine. There’s something else there too, something faint and sharp and almost… relieved.

“It didn’t used to…” he murmurs, the words slipping out like they’re not meant for you at all. “It didn’t used to—”

He cuts himself off abruptly, jaw tightening as his gaze flicks again—your face, your shoulder, the empty space behind you—then back to the mirror.

He goes completely still.

For a moment, the only thing that exists is the bass, heavy and constant, filling the silence between breaths.

Then his hand moves.

Slow. Deliberate.

He reaches out and takes your wrist.

The touch isn’t rough, not at first. Just firm enough to stop you from pulling away, just enough to ground himself in something real. His fingers are warm—too warm—and the contrast against your skin feels sharper than it should, like your body is suddenly aware of every point of contact.

His grip tightens slightly.

Not enough to hurt.

Enough to confirm.

His thumb presses faintly against your pulse, like he’s counting, like he’s measuring something you can’t see.

“You shouldn’t look too long,” he says quietly.

The words are steady, but there’s something underneath them now—something thinner, strained at the edges.

“Mirrors…”

He hesitates.

For the first time, something like fear flickers through his expression—not loud, not obvious, but there, tucked into the tightness of his jaw, the slight flattening of his posture.

“…they notice.”

The lights flash again.

White. Harsh. Blinding.

And for the briefest moment—

Just long enough to make doubt settle into something heavier—

You swear his reflection doesn’t match him.

The angle is wrong.

The posture slightly off.

The expression just a fraction delayed.

Then the light shifts.

And everything looks normal again.

Except—

Your wrist is still in his grip.

And for some reason—

You don’t feel entirely certain that it was.