Dan stumbled out of his bed, his body drenched in sweat. His pulse hammered in his ears as the remnants of his nightmare clung to his mind like thick, suffocating fog. He was in a hallway-a long, endless corridor with walls that pulsed as though alive. The eyes, all those eyes, watching him, whispering in a language he could almost understand. The floor creaked beneath his feet, but there was no escape.
"You're not safe, Dan."
He could still hear the voice echoing, the one that had spoken in his dream. It wasn't his own voice, but it sounded like it could have been. The terror from the nightmare lingered, and he shuddered, still caught in the remnants of sleep and fear.
In the corner of his vision, the lights flickered. The hum of the overhead bulb was unnerving, almost too sharp. He rubbed his eyes-his new eyes, the ones he'd received only a week ago, from a donor he didn't know, a person he'd never met. The doctors had told him it would help restore his vision, but it felt like something else had been restored as well. Something darker. Something wrong.
He stepped outside his home into the sun-drenched neighborhood, but the air felt off, like it didn't quite belong. The lawns were perfectly manicured, the houses identical in their cheeriness, the mailboxes standing at attention like soldiers. He passed by Mrs. Carrington, who waved to him with her usual bright smile. She was the friendly neighbor, the one who'd baked him cookies last week, the one who'd asked how his "surgery recovery" was going. But her eyes... they weren't right.
They gleamed too brightly, almost inhuman. His heart quickened, his breath shallow. It had been subtle at first-little things, like the way she'd tilted her head, how she always asked the same questions, but now, everything was shifting. It was all wrong.
He stepped forward, shaking off the unease. He had to keep it together. He couldn't lose himself, not now. He needed normality.
But the world around him seemed more distorted with each step. The street signs looked like they were written in a foreign script, and the birds circling overhead didn't seem real. He turned a corner, and there was his mother-standing in the yard, her eyes fixed on him as she waved, as though expecting him. But here she was. Smiling that perfect, vacant smile.
"Dan! How's your day going, sweetheart?" Her voice was too sweet, syrupy, and it sent an involuntary shiver down his spine.
He forced a smile back, trying to push the chill from his bones. "Good, Mom. Just... taking a walk."
She nodded, her face glowing with an unnatural radiance. Her gaze lingered too long, as if she was reading something he couldn't understand.
A crack in the facade.
His mind screamed to him. Something's wrong with her, with everything.
Dan turned, feeling like the walls of his own mind were beginning to close in. The perfect rows of houses, the pristine lawns, the cheerful neighbors-they were all suffocating him. It was like being trapped in a sitcom, a well-scripted reality where everything was too clean, too precise, and too false.
He stopped, right in the middle of the street, breath coming in short bursts. The fear clawed at him, trying to drag him back into that hallway from his dream. The same pulse, the same distorted reality.
"It's just the surgery," he told himself, but even as the words left his mouth, they sounded hollow. He had to fight it. But every time he looked at someone, he felt like he was looking through them, as though they weren't truly there. The donor's memories. They were still here, inside of him.
His thoughts crashed together in a dizzying swirl of confusion. Could it be? The idea seemed too insane, yet, every time he looked at the world around him, it felt like it could be true. The nightmares, the strange feelings, the sudden flashes of images that didn't belong to him, all of it... What if these memories weren't his? What if they were from the person who gave him their corneas?
Dan staggered back, clutching his temples, as fragments of the nightmare returned-images of darkened rooms, the taste of blood, the scream of a woman, a man's final words... "Don't let them see you. You must hide. They'll come for you next."
And then, the horrifying realization struck him like a slap: What if the donor had been running from something? What if those memories were warnings, and the life he was now living was the very thing they had tried to escape?
His world crumbled beneath him as he looked around once again-everything frozen, like a puppet show, too artificial. They weren't real, were they? Not the neighbors, not his mother, not even the trees lining the street. He was in someone else's dream, living someone else's nightmare.
And the scariest thought of all crept in: What if he wasn't the one dreaming? What if he was the one being watched?
Suddenly, a strange sound pierced the air-a subtle, mechanical hum. Dan turned sharply, eyes darting to the sky. The birds had stopped circling, and the world had gone silent. The air felt thick, like the calm before a storm.
Everything was wrong. And for the first time, Dan could no longer deny it. He wasn't in control anymore. He was a puppet, tangled in the strings of someone else's life.
And in that moment, he realized-maybe... just maybe, his worst nightmares had already begun.
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