The Bruise That Spelled Her Name

For three weeks, the word ‘Fay’ had been following me like a stray dog. I’d see it in the steam on my bathroom mirror, in the pattern of cracks on the sidewalk, in the random jumble of letters on a cereal box. I didn’t know anyone named Fay, but the name felt familiar, like a half-remembered lullaby. My fiancée, Mira, would laugh when I mentioned it, saying it sounded like a name for a future daughter. I didn’t tell her about the other visions—the gaunt faces pressing against my bedroom window at 2 a.m., the torn headlines about a woman found dead in a field, the voice that called my name from the basement when I was home alone.

One Tuesday, I went out to my mother’s car to fetch a backpack she’d left there. The streetlight cast a sickly yellow glow over the cracked driveway. As I bent to look through the driver’s side window, I saw them. Two figures, face pressed against the glass from the inside. Their eyes were covered in a thick, viscous membrane, like they’d been sewn shut. Their mouths hung open, revealing rows of needle-sharp fangs. Before I could scream, they reached through the glass as if it were water and grabbed my shoulders. I felt a searing cold, like being branded with ice. I yanked back, tripping over my own feet, and scrambled to the front door. I didn’t look back.

The next morning, there were bruises on both my shoulders, directly beside my neck, in the shape of long, thin fingers. The bruises were arranged in a pattern, and as I traced them with my fingers, they seemed to spell out a word: F-A-Y. That afternoon, I got a call from Mira. She was crying, saying she’d found an old photograph in my mother’s attic—a picture of a woman she didn’t recognize, with the name ‘Fay’ written on the back. My mother, who claimed to have never heard the name, went pale when I showed her. She whispered, ‘That was my sister. She died before you were born. She was obsessed with you—she always said she would come back.’

I haven’t slept since. Every night, I feel cold hands on my shoulders, and when I close my eyes, I see the woman in the photograph, her eyes stitched shut, whispering my name. Last night, when I looked in the mirror, the bruises on my shoulders were darker, and they had moved—they now spelled ‘MIRA’. I tried to call her, but my phone only rang and rang. When I rushed to her apartment, the door was unlocked, and inside, the room smelled of rot. On her bed lay the photograph, torn in half, with the word ‘FAY’ scratched into the wood. I haven’t found Mira. The police are looking, but I know where she is. She’s in the mirror, waiting for me, her mouth open, fangs bared.