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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Honest_Upstairs6420 on 2025-07-18 01:54:33+00:00.

At first, I thought she was changing him — or he was changing himself, the way people do when they fall in love. Slowly, naturally. And while it felt anything but natural, it was slow, painfully, deliberately slow.

Joseph still laughs at his own jokes. Wears that wide, guileless smile, reserves a tighter one for polite company. He has a scar on his left cheek from a childhood fight. That was over a girl too. At least, that was our story. He bled more than expected, I cried more than necessary, but it faded into a natural part of his human topography. His own mother wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

But… he’s different. Irreparably so, but invisibly, like mold nestling into the floorboards of an abandoned home.

A place full of strangers, that’s where the notion crept into my mind, fully bloomed. Joseph made me his plus one. It was his girlfriend’s birthday, his first public appearance as her boyfriend.

This was one of those romances where the social circles did not overlap. He had a knack for dating people who had nothing in common with the friends he kept.

Meaning me.

Joseph and I were all the other really had, repeating the same comfortable rituals together for over a decade. Watching the same movies, quoting the same lines. Every hard drive I’ve ever owned had at least two folders worth of games or comics or some other project he’d convince me to start, but never finish. I’d do the art, he’d do dialogue.

He was always better with people; or at least, seemed to know how they talked. Better does not suggest good, but at least few steps above me. We were best friends, and it was us against the world. He brought the snacks, knew which games had local co-op. I was the quiet one, more online than offline. Still am. Leaving my apartment feels like being plucked from a fishbowl.

That is to say, yes. I’ve been stagnant, and he’s been… changing. I don’t know how to quantify it without sounding bitter. He began dressing with intention, cuffed his pants, buttoned his shirt a couple notches higher. He held eye contact longer. Spoke louder.

As for me, just being around people makes my ears burn. The party felt like a test that I was failing, miserably so. Joseph should have been my beacon of safety, just like always; a lighthouse guiding me through an ocean of strangers.

That night, his presence felt more like standing beneath a fluorescent lamp — an uncanny sensation that had been building for a while, but I finally felt overexposed. Studied, like the entire room was picking me apart — especially him. Though to what end, I couldn’t know.

He’d quote the same lines, then pause - I’m sure of it - not for laughter, but to gauge my reaction, checking to see what he got right. His mannerisms were one shade too unfamiliar, like he’d rehearsed them in a mirror. You wouldn’t notice unless you’d seen them a million times, from his passenger seat or his ancient couch, swapping stories at three in the morning.

Joseph dated a couple girls, but none that stuck. Not like this. A girl might make him change his plans, but not the way he looked at me.

That’s when it clicked. He made a joke to kill the silence. The silence endured. He drummed his fingers against his glass, the way he always did during lulls in conversation. His usual — a gin and ginger, and more gin. The ice had melted without him taking a single sip. Had those nails ever looked so clean, so manicured?

What if it wasn’t Joseph?

As fantastic as that sounds, I couldn’t shake the thought. It was the only thing that made sense — and as good a reason as any to take off early. I waited until he was preoccupied, ‘til I could slip out without being followed. Having lost my ride, I walked all the way home; an hour in the snow.

Before you ask, I can’t do public transit. For me, taking the metro alone is even harder staying ‘til the end of a party.

The next evening is when my excuses began.

I’m fine. Felt sick.

Can’t tonight, I’m busy.

Not feeling well today, either,

Maybe next week.

It remembers everything; all the stories I’ve told him, though sometimes it adds a detail he shouldn’t know. What it certainly knows is I’m never too busy for Joseph, not historically. At least it’s been cold here, cold enough to defend my homebody lifestyle. But spring has arrived; my excuses are melting.

Sometimes it’ll call. We’ll talk about the same things, speak the secret language shared by lifelong friends. It’s off. It feels hollow, like it’s pressing playback on bits and pieces of a thousand conversations past.

And then I’ll dream.

I’ll dream I’m dropping towards the ocean floor, down, down, delirious from lack of oxygen, waiting for some unknown horror to part the murky depths just as I slow my descent. A pair of hands break the surface of the water from impossibly high above, pale and jointless, wrapping around my wrist and throat, more like tendrils than fingers. I want to believe they’re saving me, but something tightens, burrows. It’s trying to wear me on the way back up.

The winter was bitter. Joseph had a habit of keeping his door unlocked. He said he lived in a safe neighbourhood, but nowhere in this city is safe, not really. The truth is, he was always forgetting things — his wallet, his keys. He got sick of breaking in through his own window and then, just stopped caring. He spent much of the time blissfully unaware that his shirt was inside out. And now he was matching his belt to his shoes. Yeah. Sure.

Then that terrible storm ripped through town like a banshee, winds screaming, covering everything in her powdery white cloak. He lost power for three and a half days. The streets were dark. They felt gutted, like something sinister had blown in with the snow, forced open our doors and ripped the wiring from our homes.

And now, I think… perhaps it did. But it didn’t break in, just tried every door until it found the one that opened without resistance.

I imagine it stepping quietly over the threshold.

I imagine it finding Joseph, asleep on the couch, mouth hung dumbly open. No pillow, no blanket, but he’s warm enough for whatever this thing is. I imagine it gently presses his skin to see how well it might fit.

Then it slides in.

Not violently, like the blizzard that masked its arrival, but with unusual patience.

Cautious not to rip his seams, it pulls him apart from the inside. Not all at once. Maybe it takes weeks to fold itself into his shape, unwinding him with careful intent, keeping what memories it needed and eating away at the rest until there was nothing left of him, just a human skin pulled taut over something unspeakable.

It is patient and relentless. It is smart, because Joseph was smart, in his own way. Soon enough, it won’t wait for me to accept its invitation; it will come to me directly, stand in front of my door and claim to be checking on me.

It will feign concern with Joseph’s furrowed brows, ask me, with Joseph’s mouth drawn down at the corners, why I’m isolating myself. Tell me I’d been making such good progress. It will make me doubt what I already know, until I allow it past my threshold unguarded. Like his was. And when it hollows me out, it will look like me, sound like me; it will not be me. As evening falls, it will hang my skin next to his like a couple of suit jackets. Together again.

I’ve been sleeping with a large kitchen knife beneath my pillow. While I lay in bed, I wonder if it can hurt, the way that Joseph hurt. And — can I bring myself to hurt it, without it bleeding too much, without crying more than necessary?

I know that it’s not my friend, but a frog to dissect. I’m in my sixth grade science lab, realizing our frog was paralyzed, not yet dead - it was supposed to be dead, right? Joseph made me promise not to tell. We shook on it.

Then, I’m in his basement. The old basement, though it is decidedly the modern Joseph laid before me. He is tacked to the billiard table with nickel plated pins. His eyes are white — I think they’re rolled back, searching for the invader inside him, seeing nothing.

He wants it out as bad as me.

I will delicately peel back the layers of his torso and rescue all the parts of Joseph that are still inside, must be inside. When I put him back together, the scars will fade, and we’ll forget it ever happened. Just as before.

His skin is sallow and his heart should not beat, but it does, laid agonizingly bare. I reach for it, and his ribs close on my wrist like a steel trap.

I’m searching my sweat soaked bed sheets for the knife before I’m even aware the dream is over. What a relief to find it’s just where I’d left it — and what a vivid imagination. That’s why I did the art, and he did the writing. He was the down to earth one. The realistic one.

I hear it rattle the knob to my front door.

Quietly, like a boy sneaking in after curfew. It’s barely audible over the pounding of my heart, but I’m sure. It wants me to wonder — am I not yet awake?, to let my guard down. It knows my door will not yield as easily as Joseph’s, but needs me to hear it uselessly turning the knob. It will stand there until the automated lights of the hallway dim, constantly repeating the action, softly enough that I might rise from the safety of my blankets, check and confirm if it was ever there at all.

I do not. It’s light, receding footsteps provide me little relief. The thing inside Joseph knows I’m onto it. It also knows I’m a basketcase. That when I ge…

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