The sun hadn't reached its peak yet, but the small town of Western Zie already felt like it was past noon. The heat felt heavier than it should, pressing against skin like an unseen force. Some people said the sun always felt too hot here. It was one of those places no one really visited unless they had no choice.
A crossroads, a blip on the map for travelers who might've taken a wrong turn, one that led them to a town where time didn't feel right. Every person who showed up there, whether they had business or not, vanished after a while. No one could explain how. No one could explain what happened to them.
Brian thought it was a joke at first. He didn't think much of towns like Western Zie, places that had no real character, no real sense of self. They didn't get much more than a few locals who passed each other every day with their heads down. That's what he thought when he got off the bus and stepped onto cracked asphalt that stretched out in front of him like a mouth ready to swallow him up.
The first thing that struck him was the smell. The air had a burnt, rotten scent. Like something had been left out for too long. A piece of meat maybe, or something worse. But no one else seemed to notice. No one else seemed to care.
As he walked deeper into town, the people he passed didn't say anything. They didn't make eye contact either. They just moved about their business like they were actors in a play, stuck on repeat. The old woman who sat outside a small store stared straight ahead, her face stiff and unnatural.
The man in the café across the street barely lifted his head when Brian walked past. Everyone here had the same hollow expression, like they were playing a part, pretending to be normal. But Brian couldn't shake the feeling that they weren't human. They didn't feel human, not like any town he'd been to before.
By mid-afternoon, after finding a place to stay in the only decent-looking building in town, Brian decided to explore. There were only a few streets that stretched out in different directions, each one narrowing as it went further out of view. The houses looked like they'd been there forever—old, dark, and sickly.
As he passed one, he noticed something strange: a man sitting on the porch, watching him. No wave, no smile. Just a stare. Brian tried to ignore it and kept walking, but the feeling didn't leave him. He couldn't shake the idea that the man was following him, though he hadn't moved. The man's eyes were like glass—no warmth, no soul behind them. Just a cold, empty look.
"Where you from, stranger?" a voice called out from behind him.
Brian spun around to see a young woman standing in the doorway of a house on the corner. She was about his age, but there was something about her posture, the way she stood, like she didn't belong in the same world as him. Her eyes were too wide, too vacant.
"Just passing through," Brian said, trying to stay casual. "Just looking around."
Her lips twitched, but it wasn't a smile. "Not many pass through here," she said. "Most don't stay."
Brian frowned. "Why not?"
She didn't answer immediately. Instead, her head turned slightly, like she was listening to something far off. "You'll find out soon enough," she said, almost too quietly.
He wanted to ask more, but something stopped him. The weird tension in the air, the uneasy look in her eyes—he felt like he didn't want to know. He had made a bad decision coming here, but it was too late to leave now. The town had already worked its way into his bones.
Later that night, Brian tried to sleep, but the sounds kept him awake. The town had its own rhythm—soft but present, like the world was breathing. The walls of the hotel creaked, the floorboards groaned as if the building itself was shifting around him. But it was the sounds from outside that bothered him most.
The scraping of footsteps on dirt. The dragging noise, almost like something large was being pulled. And those voices. Faint at first, then louder. Whispers that filled the rooms around him, voices he couldn't quite make out.
He was awake when the door to his room opened, but he hadn't heard it open. The figure in the doorway was tall, unnaturally tall. Its features were indistinct, as though they kept changing, blurring in and out, like the figure couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
It had a presence, something wrong about it, and yet, Brian couldn't bring himself to move, to speak. Something about it felt familiar, like something he'd seen before, but it was wrong.
The figure didn't speak. It just stood there, watching him. The door swung closed, and it was gone.
He bolted upright, sweat pouring down his back. The room felt smaller now, suffocating, and the air smelled of something burning, something rotten. He wanted to leave. He couldn't stay. But when he tried to open the door, he found it locked. The hallway outside was silent. There was no sign of the thing that had stood in his room.
That night, the whispers grew louder. They surrounded him, filled his head. They weren't words, not exactly, but sounds. Strange, gurgling noises, like something was choking on its own breath. He tried to block them out, but it was impossible. They were inside his skull, inside his bones. He got up and stumbled out into the hall, desperate to escape the noise, but the corridor stretched endlessly. It was endless.
By morning, he was exhausted. His skin felt tight, his muscles sore. He hadn't slept, hadn't eaten. He stumbled into the café for a cup of coffee, but the place was empty. Not a soul inside, not a sound to be heard. The chairs were neatly arranged around the tables, the glass mugs lined up on the counter, untouched. The door swung open behind him, and he turned to see the woman from earlier walk in.
She didn't say anything. Just stood there, staring at him with those empty eyes. Her lips parted, but the words didn't come. She reached out slowly, her fingers hovering in the air like she wasn't sure if they could even touch him.
The smell in the room shifted, turning sour. The whispers came back, louder now. The walls began to move, rippling like water. Brian didn't know what was happening anymore, didn't know where he was, or if he was even alive.
He tried to run, but his legs wouldn't move. It was as if the town had reached inside him, twisted him into something else. He tried to scream, but the sound died in his throat.
The woman stepped closer. Her mouth stretched too wide, her lips cracking open in a smile that wasn't a smile. The skin around her eyes peeled back as she opened her mouth wider. She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
Behind her, the walls began to dissolve. Figures, creatures—people, he thought—appeared from the darkness, but they weren't people anymore. The shape of their bodies didn't match what they should have been.
The skin on their faces stretched too thin, their eyes too large, too hollow. They moved slowly, deliberately, like they were waiting for him to accept that they were real.
Then he saw the others. Faces from the town. They weren't gone. They were still there, twisted into something new, their forms half-human, half-monster. They didn't speak to him. They didn't need to.
And when he realized it—when he finally understood—his body was no longer his own. He was part of them.
He had become one of them.