The seam in the living wall stretched open wider—not like a door,not like a wound,but like a mouth.
Flesh peeled back in slow, wet folds, revealing a tunnel of red muscle that pulsed in rhythm with the train's heartbeat.Every throb sent vibrations up Evelyn's legs, rattling her bones.
The monsters watched her from the darkness.
The mirror-Evelyn tilted her head, fog swirling around her hollow eyes.
"Step inside."
The shadow-Evelyn grinned, skin cracking like dry clay.
"There is nowhere else to run."
Evelyn swallowed hard.Behind her, the fleshy opening pulsed.In front of her… two creatures wearing her face.
She took a step backward.
The moment her foot touched the threshold—
Every sound died.
The train's rumble.Her heartbeat.Her breathing.The whispering creatures.
Gone.
Silence crushed her ears like pressure underwater.
Evelyn touched her throat, trying to hear even the faintest rasp of breath—but nothing came out.Her own body made no sound.
The monsters moved closer.
They made no sound either.
But somehow she felt their footsteps.Tiny tremors running up her spine.Like they were walking inside her nerves.
The mirror creature extended a hand.
When it touched the wall, the flesh reacted—tensing, tightening, contracting around her fingers as if hungry.
Evelyn tried to scream—but the sound was swallowed before it even left her lungs.
The shadow-Evelyn approached, her smile tearing wider, split from cheek to cheek. No voice escaped her broken mouth, but her words carved themselves directly into Evelyn's skull:
"It wants what you are."
Evelyn backed deeper into the tunnel—the walls closing in, brushing her shoulders, warm and damp like the inside of a throat.
For a moment she thought she heard something—but not with her ears.
A heartbeat.
Her own.
But doubled.Echoed.Like something deeper in the tunnel was matching her rhythm.Learning it.Copying it.
The mirror creature stepped inside after her, its body passing through the fleshy opening like a ghost sliding into a wound.
Still silent.Still glowing.
It stared at her.
"This place consumes noise…"it whispered inside her mind.
A split second later, the shadow-Evelyn continued the sentence:
"…because screams are its favorite food."
The walls pulsed.
The tunnel tightened.
And something ahead of her—deep in the darkness—moved.
Evelyn felt vibrations crawling along the walls, circling her, growing faster.The heartbeat wasn't copying hers anymore.
It was hunting.
The mirror creature's eyes brightened.
The shadow creature crouched low, eager.
The tunnel whispered her name in a wet, dragging voice without air:
"Evelyn…"
The walls trembled.
Then—
They lunged.