The automatic doors slid open.
Chime.
Warm air rushed over Rian's face as he stepped back into the convenience store, snow melting off his jacket. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead—too steady, too loud after the silence outside.
"Hey," he called, breath still uneven. "I— I forgot my—"
The pressure slammed into him.
Not like before.
This time it had weight.
The shelves rattled violently. Chips burst from their hooks, skittering across the floor. Bottles clinked, then shattered as one entire aisle bowed inward like it was being pulled by invisible hands.
The man behind the counter looked up.
"Rian?" His voice wavered. "What's going on—?"
The lights stretched.
Not flickered.
Stretched—long and thin, buzzing at a pitch that made Rian clamp his hands over his ears. The freezer doors burst open, cold vapor flooding the aisle as products lifted off shelves and drifted upward.
The air split behind the counter.
Not visibly at first.
The store owner staggered back, clutching his chest, gasping like the floor had dropped away beneath him.
"I— I can't—" He choked, eyes wide. "I can't breathe—!"
Rian took a step forward. "Get down! Get—!"
The counter crumpled.
It didn't break.
It folded inward with a violent CRACK, wood and metal crushed as if grabbed by something impossibly strong. The man was lifted off his feet, dragged backward, nails scraping desperately against the counter's edge.
"Rian—!"
His scream cut off.
The space behind him opened fully.
Rian couldn't see what did it.
He saw the effect.
The man's body jerked once—hard—like a puppet yanked by its strings. Blood sprayed across the cigarette rack in a sudden red arc.
THUMP.
His body hit the floor in two separate motions that should not have been separate.
Silence followed.
The pressure spiked.
Rian stood frozen, staring at the blood spreading across the white tiles, his ears ringing, his breath locked in his chest.
For a second, Rian didn't understand what he was looking at.
His boss was on the floor.
That was the first thought. Simple. Flat. Almost calm.
He stood just inside the doorway, one hand still on the handle, snow melting into his sleeve. The store lights hummed overhead. A drink can rolled lazily near the counter, clinking once before settling.
"Hey—"
The word slipped out without weight.
No answer.
Rian took a step closer. Then another.
Something dark spread beneath the body, seeping into the tile grout in thin, branching lines. Too much of it. The angle of the neck was wrong—tilted too far, too loose, like the rules holding it upright had been forgotten.
His stomach dropped.
"No. No, no—"
His breath hitched, sharp and fast. His hands trembled as he reached out, stopping just short of touching the shoulder. He didn't know why he stopped. Some instinct screaming that crossing that last inch would make this real.
His ears rang.
The world narrowed to details he didn't want: The open register.
The flickering display.
Eyes staring, unfocused, reflecting nothing.
This wasn't a prank.
This wasn't an accident.
His knees felt weak. His thoughts came apart, scattering into noise.
Then the store changed.
Not suddenly.
Not violently.
Behind the counter, the space lost its focus.
It wasn't heat haze.
It wasn't motion blur.
It was as if a section of the world had been smudged, dragged slightly out of alignment. Shelves behind it doubled, then failed to overlap correctly. Straight lines bent inward, collapsing toward a point that didn't exist.
Rian blinked hard.
His eyes refused to settle on it.
Every attempt to focus slid away, nausea blooming as his brain failed to decide where that space actually was. The air there felt heavier—thick, compressed—dulling sound until even the hum of the lights felt distant.
A pressure built in his skull.
Then the pull happened.
No wind.
No visible force.
The body shifted—not forward, not backward—but sideways, as if gravity had been rewritten inside that blur. Shoes scraped weakly against tile. Fingers dragged across the floor, bending at angles that made Rian's breath catch painfully in his throat.
"Wait—!"
For a split second, the body folded.
Not crushed.
Not torn.
Folded—like paper passing through a crease that wasn't there.
And then—
Nothing.
No hole.
No mark left behind.
The shelves snapped back into place, perfectly aligned. The air smoothed itself out. The hum of the lights returned to normal.
The blood was gone.
The body was gone.
Only silence remained.
Rian stood frozen, chest heaving, staring at the empty space where someone had been alive minutes ago—his hands clenched so tight his nails bit into his palms.
His mind screamed for logic.
None came.
The unease slammed back into him.
Not fear—pressure.
Rian's head snapped toward the counter.
The space behind it was empty.
No body.
No blood.
Just a clean stretch of tiles that shouldn't have been clean. The counter was still cracked. One of the shelves lay half-toppled. But the man who had been there—
Gone.
Rian's thoughts jammed.
Where did he—
The air bent.
Not tearing. Not opening.
Just… blurring.
Space near the counter warped, like heat over asphalt—but inverted, heavy, wrong. The shelves closest to it began to tremble, labels buzzing, cans rattling before lifting a finger's width off the metal.
That feeling again.
Run.
It wasn't a word he chose.
It didn't come from his thoughts at all.
His body moved before his mind caught up—muscles snapping tight, breath ripping from his lungs as his feet pushed off the floor. The command wasn't language. It was something older. Sharper. A reflex carved deep enough to bypass reason entirely.
The pull hit as he turned.
The store inhaled.
Air screamed inward, flattening his jacket against his spine. The floor lurched violently beneath him, tiles shrieking as they tore loose and slid backward toward the blur behind the counter.
Rian sprinted.
The automatic doors ahead of him bent inward, glass whining as spiderweb cracks raced across their surface. He threw himself forward—
The suction surged.
His legs kicked uselessly as the world yanked him back, soles scraping—
"My—!"
His shoe ripped free.
Gone.
Shelves, counters, lights—everything peeled inward, crushed and dragged into the wrongness like paper fed into a shredder. Rian flew backward, arms flailing—
His hands slammed around the streetlight pole outside.
CLANG.
Metal rang through his bones as his palms struck steel.
BANG.
His shoulder smashed into it, the impact knocking the breath from his chest as debris howled past him, glass and sound tearing away into the collapsing space behind him.
"Hey—!"
Someone was approaching him.
Rian barely noticed at first. His hands were still shaking. His eyes were still locked on the rubble where the store had been, like if he looked away it might snap back into place.
"Kid," the voice said again, closer now. "Are you hurt?"
A man in a dark coat had stepped off the sidewalk, palms raised, cautious but concerned. He stopped a few meters away, eyes flicking from the crater to Rian's missing shoe.
"You okay?" the man asked. "Can you—"
The streetlights flickered.
Hard.
Every bulb along the road pulsed at once, bright—dim—bright—then began to buzz violently. Cars that had gone silent screamed back to life in protest, alarms warping into distorted wails. Radios spat static. Phones vibrated uselessly in people's hands.
The man flinched. "What the hell is—"
The noise climbed.
Not louder—denser. Like the air itself was being compressed with sound. A pressure crawled into Rian's ears, his skull, his chest. People farther down the street covered their heads, shouting—but their voices were swallowed instantly.
Then—
Everything stopped.
No alarms.
No wind.
No breath.
The silence dropped like a blade. It didn't break all at once.
It thinned.
Sound crept back in uneven pieces—distant crying, a car alarm choking into static, someone swearing under their breath. The streetlights steadied, though their glow felt dimmer than before, like the night had swallowed something it shouldn't have.
Then—
A sound came from the rubble.
Not loud.
Not sudden.
"krrrk—krrrsshh."
Stone grinding against stone—but wrong, uneven, wet at the edges. The twisted metal at the center of the crater shuddered. A slab of concrete tilted, then settled again.
Someone gasped.
Rian's chest tightened.
That feeling surged back—sharper than before, clawing up his spine.
Not a thought.
Not fear.
A scream buried in his nerves.
Move.
The rubble shifted again.
SKRRRREEE—
The screech tore through the street, high and jagged, like metal being dragged through bone. Glass still embedded in the wreckage began to vibrate, hairline cracks racing outward.
People backed away all at once.
"What is that—?"
"Get back—!"
"Oh God—"
Rian staggered, breath hitching, eyes locked on the crater as something pushed from beneath. Concrete bulged upward. Rebar bent with a tortured shriek.
KRRAAANG.
The rubble burst.
Fragments of stone and dust blasted outward as the ground heaved violently—
And Rian's instincts screamed again, louder than anything he'd ever felt—
Right as the street exploded into motion.