Her eyes fluttered open in discomfort. The weight on her chest pressed into her bones, making it hard to breathe. She struggled to fully wake, only to meet a pair of reflective hazel eyes staring back at her.

She gasped. “You scared me!! Are you trying to kill me?! Get off me,” she snapped. “How did you even get in? The door was closed— wasn’t it?”

The door was slightly open.

She hurried over and yanked it wider, calling out, “Ben, come get this cat out of the house. How many times do I have to say it? Keep the windows and outside door closed, and tell Mrs. Wood to keep her cat indoors.”

With no response, she had to do it herself. She opened a drawer, took out a bag of cat treats, and tossed a piece outside the door. She repeated the action, step by step, until they reached the entrance. Then she shut the door loudly. The black  cat stood there, unmoving, stubbornly refusing to budge.

“Can’t you let me have a good sleep once in a while?” she muttered.

She was already turning back toward the room when her gaze flicked to the clock on the wall. Her eyebrows knitted together. Ten hours? I slept for ten hours?

She doesn’t sleep this much usually. The game had drained her, yes, but it should not have taken this long to recover. It was not even the worst thing she had lived through.

Her stomach growled, prompting her to abandon the idea of rest and make her way to the kitchen for food.

Her mother was in the kitchen, carefully decorating a cake. Ava leaned closer, eyeing it. “What’s the occasion? You don’t make something this time consuming every day.”

Dropping spoonfuls of jam onto the frosted cake, her mother swirled them with a knife, creating a marbled pattern. “It’s your brother’s birthday. Did you forget? I forgot the candles, so he went out with John to get them.”

Ava’s eyes widened. “I didn’t even get him a gift! I should probably do that later today.”

She reached for the jam jar. “What kind of jam is this? A new one? You made sure it’s not blueberries, right?”

Her mother shot her a mock glare. “Of course it’s not blueberries. What do you take me for? I am a responsible mother.”

Ava grinned, dipping a finger into the jam. “Hmm… well, it does taste pretty—”

Her eyes fell on the label: Bilberry Jam. She choked on the jam. “Wait… bilberry or blueberry? Which one is he allergic to again?” She ran it through her mind, trying to remember. The first thing that comes to her mind always was blueberry because of the color, but he was allergic to the other one.

“OMG, Mom! He’s allergic to bilberries, not blueberries! Now he can’t eat his birthday cake. Do I go buy a new one? How did you forget? You’re usually the one reminding me.”

Her mother froze. “It must be the work… I’ve been so busy these days, hardly any rest. I’ll call them now to pick it up on the way.”

Before she could reach the phone, the sharp jingle of keys in the lock cut through the quiet.

“You’re back… sorry, baby, I—”

Ava couldn’t hear the words. Her ears rang, each beat of her heart thudding like a drum in her skull. Her eyes darted around, afraid to blink, afraid of what she might miss.

When they stepped through the doorway, for some reason, her gaze locked on John, her stepfather’s face. Something was off—something she couldn’t name—but the longer she stared, the heavier the wrongness pressed down on her before it smoothed over into what was called normal.

A chill ran down her spine as a thought flared unbidden: maybe it wasn’t just the cake.

She blurted out, “You guys should stay here to finish decorating. I’ll go since I forgot to buy a gift.”

She ran to her room, changed quickly, and stormed out. Once she was far enough from home, her heart began to calm, its beats gradually slowing. She wandered into a nearby bakery, picked a random cake, and then made her way to the park, sitting down to try and grasp what just happened.

She neither liked nor hated John. Once, she had detested him, but that feeling had faded. Still, she wasn’t willing to interact with him, barely allowing her gaze to linger on his face for more than three seconds. She didn’t really know what he looked like—she could vaguely recall the outline, but the details escaped her. She didn’t even know the color of his eyes.

This time, however, she looked at him longer, on a whim, perhaps triggered by the dream she had seen. At first, his face seemed normal, familiar in its ordinary proportions. But as she studied it, subtle distortions crept in. His jawline shifted imperceptibly, softening, then sharpening. His nose seemed too long for a moment, then too small, and the curve of his lips wavered like ink in water. The color of his eyes flickered between shades she couldn’t name, then dulled to gray.

Each detail she thought she recognized slipped away as she blinked, and when she forced herself to stare, the features blurred, merging into something unsteady and alien. Finally, the shifting stopped. A face remained—his face, yet not quite. The outline was right, but the details didn’t add up. His eyes seemed slightly too far apart, his smile too forced, his expression caught between familiarity and something uncanny, leaving her unsettled and unsure of what she had truly seen.

She sighed and leaned forward, covering her face with her hands. “Have I finally lost my mind? After all these years—”, lost in thought she mumbled,  “But on top of that, Mom will never forget Ben’s allergies. She triple-checks everything before she even buys it.”

Her phone rang. It was her mother. “Where are you? Come back quickly. Night is about to fall, and it’s dangerous outside. These past couple of days, I heard there’s been a thief who stabs people if he isn’t satisfied with what he finds.”

Ava looked around instinctively, scanning for any possible threats. But what she noticed was far worse.

Passersby seemed to steal glances at her—from the kids racing to the top of the slide to slide down, to the parents pushing their children on the swings, even the man walking his dogs. All wore expressionless faces that shifted mechanically into some expression the moment she looked their way. They all seemed intensely interested in her. She pretended not to notice anything unusual as she stood up, her fingers clutching the cake box handle. “I’m on my way,” she answered. “I just sat down to catch my breath—I felt dizzy since I haven’t eaten anything today.”

Back at home, she celebrated the birthday with a forced smile, she swallowed the cake against a rising knot in her chest, disbelief and nausea mixing with each bite. She excused herself, saying she still felt a bit unwell. Later, her mother brought her a bowl of soup to soothe her stomach. Ava stirred it with a spoon to let it cool. After thinking all evening, she decided to give one final chance to the doubt to make sure she wasn’t the one with the problem.

She called out just as her mom was about to close the door. “Mom, I think…”

“What, sweetie? Are you feeling worse? Should I take you to the hospital?”

“No… I wanted to ask—when do you have free time? I want to…” The words got stuck in her throat for a a full minute. “…I want to visit Dad. Do you think you can take me?”

Her mother smiled. “Sure, honey. But I’m busy all week. Maybe next Sunday.”

With the door closed, Ava curled up in her bed, buried deep beneath the sheets. She breathed heavily, her eyes bloodshot. I don’t know what’s worse, me being the problem or all of them being the problem.

Mom… no. That woman could never be her.Ava had never brought up her father for years, let alone suggested visiting him. If she had really said that to her mother, that wasn’t how she would have reacted.