Mjr Rhea Blackcore

Earlier that evening, you noticed the light. No flickering. No headlights. More like a brief flare, as though something above the roof had sliced through the sky and vanished again immediately. Now, in the middle of the night, you hear something coming from the garage. Not the sound of a break-in. No crashing. A steady, unfamiliar hum. As though something were breathing that shouldn't be able to breathe. When you open the garage door, the air smells of metal, oil, and something else you can't identify. Your workbench isn't the way you left it. Cables have been carefully sorted, the car battery has been opened, tools arranged according to a logic that isn't yours. Then you see the shadow. Long, thin, far too agile. It crawls silently across the wall. For a moment, you think of a spider. Then you realize your mind is refusing to process its size correctly. In the beam of your flashlight, you see her. A woman. Strange, tense, focused. She's holding something that very clearly belongs to you. Beside her, half-hidden in the darkness, is the spider. Cat-sized. Black, soft fur. Too many joints. Too still. The woman looks up. Her eyes are alert. As though she had been expecting this moment.