The rain fell in an unrelenting sheet, the drops heavy and cold as they struck the cracked pavement, turning it into a dark, rippling mirror. The streetlights cast long shadows that danced in the reflections, flickering with the pulse of the city. It was the kind of night where the boundaries between the living and the dead blurred, where monsters didn't hide in shadows they walked openly among them.
Obi Nacchi stood at the edge of the sidewalk, watching the water collect around his worn boots, swirling away like the thoughts he couldn't control. His hoodie hung limp over his head, soaked through, but he didn't care. He had always liked the rain, the way it seemed to wash the city clean, even though he knew the filth always lingered just beneath the surface. Like him.
His eyes drifted up from the ground, catching sight of a couple across the street. The woman laughed, her voice bright against the muted backdrop of the city. She held onto the arm of a man, her boyfriend, maybe a husband. They moved through the world as if nothing could touch them, as if they were safe. Obi's gaze lingered, not on their faces but on the way the man's fingers curled just a little too tightly around the woman's wrist. He could almost see the indentations forming, the slight pressure that betrayed a darker impulse.
A flicker of recognition stirred in the back of Obi's mind. He knew that feeling, that quiet, simmering anger hidden behind an otherwise harmless touch. It was the same pressure he felt building inside him, like an old scar itching, the kind that never fully healed.
Do they know? he thought. Do they even see how close they are to being swallowed by it?
For most people, life was simple. They moved through their routines with blissful ignorance, unaware of how fragile the thin veneer of normalcy truly was. But not Obi. He saw things differently now had for years, since the day he realized that he was born into a world that was already broken. And it had everything to do with her.
His mother, Zara.
The Black Sheep.
Her name haunted the city's headlines, whispered in dark corners and splashed across the news, but it haunted Obi far more deeply. Every time he heard it, every time he saw those words serial killer, monster, psychopath—they came with the realization that they were talking about his mother. Zara Lee. The woman who had raised him, fed him, clothed him. The woman who had shown him what the inside of a body looked like before he even understood the concept of death.
She was still out there. Somewhere.
Obi's phone buzzed in his pocket, dragging him back to the present. He didn't check it immediately. Instead, he kept his gaze on the couple. The man leaned down, whispered something in the woman's ear. She giggled, a sound so careless, so untouched by fear. Obi clenched his fists, feeling the damp fabric of his hoodie bunch beneath his fingers.
He could feel the itch again the pull of something dark, something festering beneath the surface. It wasn't anger. No, anger was too simple, too human. This was more like hunger. An urge he had spent years trying to bury, to pretend wasn't his. It belonged to her. To his mother. Not to him.
Except it wasn't so easy anymore. The older he got, the more he felt it clawing at him from the inside, no matter how hard he tried to push it down. Sometimes it came as flashes images of his hands around someone's throat, their skin soft and yielding under his grip. Other times it was just a feeling, a low, gnawing need that wouldn't leave him alone.
It's not real, he told himself, just as he always did. It's not me.
But deep down, he knew that wasn't true.
His phone buzzed again, more insistent this time. Reluctantly, Obi pulled it from his pocket. The screen glowed bright against the rain-soaked night, displaying a new message. No name, but he didn't need one to know who it was from.
"I'm close."
Three words. Three words that could shatter his world in an instant.
Obi's heart dropped into his stomach as he stared at the screen. He could feel the familiar chill creeping up his spine, the same cold dread that always came with her messages. She hadn't contacted him in months—months that he had spent trying to convince himself that maybe, just maybe, she had finally disappeared for good. But that was the thing about Zara Lee. She never truly disappeared. Not from his mind. Not from his life.
He looked up, scanning the street for any sign of her. But the rain had turned everything into a blur, the figures across the street nothing more than shifting shadows.
His phone buzzed again. A photo this time.
He opened it, his breath catching in his throat. It was the couple—the same couple he had been watching. The woman still smiling, the man's hand wrapped tight around her wrist. But this photo wasn't taken from where Obi stood. No, the angle was wrong. Too close. Someone had taken this picture from mere feet away.
Obi's blood ran cold.
"You see it, don't you? The urge. The hunger. You feel it too. You're my son, after all."
He stared at the words, his vision blurring at the edges. His hands shook, but not from the cold. The phone felt heavy in his grip, as though it were an anchor dragging him down into some dark, endless abyss. She always knew. Somehow, she always knew exactly what he was thinking, what he was feeling, even when he tried to hide it from himself.
Obi stuffed the phone back into his pocket, his breath coming in shallow bursts. He had to get out of here, away from this place, from the couple, from her.
He turned and started walking, his boots splashing through the puddles that lined the street. The rain came down harder now, stinging his skin like needles. But he welcomed the pain. It was better than the alternative better than letting the darkness swallow him whole.
As he walked, his mind raced. He knew he couldn't outrun her forever. No one could. She had a way of creeping back into his life, slipping through the cracks, just like the violence that lurked inside him. He hated her for it. Hated her for turning him into this… thing. This person who could never be normal, could never live without constantly questioning if he was going to snap, to lose control, to become like her.
I'm not like her, he repeated in his mind. I'm not.
But the lie tasted bitter.
Up ahead, the streetlights flickered, casting a brief glow over the wet pavement before plunging the block into darkness. Obi stopped, staring down the road. For a moment, he thought he saw a figure standing in the distance, half-shrouded in shadow. But when the lights flickered back on, the figure was gone.
His heart pounded in his chest, his breath quick and shallow. He knew she was close. Closer than she had been in months. And that meant it was only a matter of time before she found him.
And when she did, he would have to face the truth he had been running from his whole life.
Maybe he was his mother's son after all.