The Glitch

On February 13th, the reality of Oakhaven began to tear.

Caleb sat in his cubicle, trying to type numbers into a spreadsheet, but the numbers kept changing. 4s turned into 7s. 0s turned into open mouths.

He rubbed his eyes. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with that same low frequency Vance had taught him to hum.

He looked over at Maya. She was sitting perfectly still. She hadn't typed a key in twenty minutes. She was just staring at the wall, a small line of drool escaping the corner of her mouth.

"Maya?" Caleb whispered.

She turned her head. Her movement was jerky, like a stop-motion animation with missing frames.

"Tomorrow is the day," she said. Her voice was flat. "The day of hearts."

"Yeah," Caleb said, his blood running cold. "Valentine's."

"We will be one," she said.

Caleb stood up. "I need some air."

He ran out of the office. The street outside was wrong. The sky wasn't grey anymore; it was a bruised purple. The pedestrians walking on the sidewalk didn't have faces—just smooth blurs of flesh where eyes and mouths should be.

He blinked, and they snapped back to normal. Just tired people in raincoats.

"Stress," Caleb muttered. "I'm just stressed."

He drove home, his hands gripping the wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. He needed to talk to Vance. Vance would explain it. Vance was the only one who made sense.