The Hollow Gift

The day I turned fourteen, the air in our apartment felt heavier than usual, like the walls were holding their breath. I’d heard my mother and father whispering about a surprise party, and I’d spent the whole week imagining balloons and cake, the kind of joy that makes your chest ache. But when the morning came, there were no colored streamers, no hidden presents. Instead, my parents announced they were leaving for an emergency trip to visit my grandmother, who had apparently fallen ill. They shoved a wad of cash into my hand, told me to order pizza, and said they’d be back in three days. I should have been hurt, but the instant the door clicked shut, a reckless thrill ran through me. The apartment was mine—all mine—and I planned to fill it with every forbidden thing I could think of.

For the first few hours, I reveled in the freedom. I blasted music through the speakers, raided the fridge, and sprawled across the living room floor with my laptop. That’s when I found the old blog—a chronicle of someone’s obsession with incubi and succubi, those demons of the night that visited you in dreams. The author described them in vivid, tantalizing detail, their whispered promises, their burning touch. My heart raced, partly from the crude descriptions that made my cheeks flush, but also from a strange, creeping pull. It was just a story, I told myself, but the words felt like they were meant for me.

On the second night, I woke to a suffocating weight on my chest. My eyes flew open, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. A shape hunched over me, darker than the darkness, its face a blur of shifting features. It leaned close, and I felt a cold breath on my ear, like a whisper from a cave. “You invited me,” it said, and I realized with horror that I had—by reading, by wishing, by filling the empty space with desire. It didn’t hurt, but it didn’t feel good either. It felt like being drained, like the warmth was being siphoned from my bones.

The next morning, I woke with deep bruises on my wrists, shaped like fingers. I tried to laugh it off as a nightmare, but the bruises were real. I spent the day in a daze, refusing to open the laptop, but the silence in the apartment buzzed with a presence. That night, I tried to stay awake, clutching a crucifix I’d found in a drawer, but exhaustion swallowed me whole. In the dark, the thing returned, stronger this time. It didn’t just whisper—it spoke in my own voice, using my own thoughts against me. “You like this,” it crooned. “You wanted this.” And a part of me, the part that had been so lonely and curious, believed it.

On the third day, I was too weak to get up. I lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows crawl like living things. My parents were due back that evening, and a desperate hope clawed at me—maybe they’d drive it away. But as the hours passed, I realized the thing had been waiting for them all along. I heard the key turn in the lock, heard my mother’s cheerful hello, and then the apartment went silent. Too silent. The shadows stretched, and I saw two more shapes move into the room, their forms indistinct, their heads turning toward me with a slow, predatory grace. My parents didn’t scream. They didn’t speak. They just stood there, their eyes empty, and I knew—the gift I’d been given was not a party, but a hollow inheritance, a darkness that now wore my mother’s face and my father’s hands. And it was hungry.