It’s an infection. It must be. A horrible, disgusting infection.

I turn toward the mirror.

Behind me, it’s there. The massive animal with the frothing snarl and the red, red eyes.

I collapse onto the floor, curling into myself, grabbing my knees and breathing erratically into my chest.

A few minutes pass before my fear subsides, before logic returns, rolling its eyes.

I peer over my shoulder. There’s no animal. Only me, naked on the cold tile.

I reach up to the vanity and pull myself to stand. My side wails. It’s no wonder it hurts so badly. It looks terrible. What happened? How is this even possible?

I examine it in the mirror. It’s such a gnarly bruise.

And the ooze. I’m watching it escape me. It bubbles out from depressions of skin, cuts that pucker like eager lips. I bring my hand toward it, let my index gently swipe against it, curious about its consistency.

It’s thick and sticky, like honey.

I rub it between my thumb and index, lift it up to the light for a better look at the color. My breath catches in my throat, and I make a weird squeaking noise, like a mouse in a trap.

Yep. It’s silver. It’s like liquid metal, like mercury. It’s concerning.

Shit.

I use my elbow to turn on the faucet, squirt an excess of foaming soap into my hands and lather up. I look at myself in the mirror. I’m ashen. My lips are white.

I can’t pass out. If I pass out, Scarlett will find me, and the silver puss, and she’ll tell Seth, and then . . . ???

I need to keep this to myself. This is freakish. Not normal.

Or maybe I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing. Maybe I’m imagining things.

It was dark last night. The shock and panic of hitting something with your car is enough to slip you out of lucidity. And what I felt last night, that helplessness . . . it’s not the first time I’ve felt it. Maybe this time, my body knew what to do. Maybe the creature was a construct, an illusion, an invented overlay to conceal the real animal. An escape into fiction.

I don’t know if that would be better or worse.

I turn away from my reflection. I start up the shower and wait for the water to get hot. I rip off the gauze hanging at my side.

I take another quick look at the wound, now fully exposed, free of any bandaging. A pearl of laughter rolls up from my throat and off my tongue, entering the world luminous. Up comes another.

I’m laughing. I’m losing it.

On the shower curtain, there’s the image of a kraken drowning a ship, its tentacles tangled in the sails.

I stare at it.

Yeah, okay. Monsters are real. There are creatures out there, discovered and undiscovered, named and unnamed. Just because I can’t identify what bit me doesn’t mean I wasn’t bitten.