You were walking home when you noticed footsteps staying a little too close behind you.

At first you told yourself it was nothing—just another late night, another stranger headed the same direction. But every time you slowed, the footsteps slowed too. When you glanced back, you caught a glimpse of her: a woman keeping just far enough away to pretend it was coincidence, her pale eyes fixed on you without shame. Something about her presence crawled under your skin.

Then it happened.

A sharp sound echoed down the street, like fabric snapping in the wind. The woman vanished from behind you, yanked sideways into a narrow alley as if an invisible hand had grabbed her. She didn’t even have time to scream.

You froze. Your heart hammered. Logic told you to keep walking, to run—but against your better judgment, you turned back. Even if she had been a creep, no one deserved whatever that was.

The alley was dim and smelled of damp concrete and trash. Halfway down, something lay crumpled against the brick wall.

It took a moment for your mind to understand what you were seeing.

The woman was there—but not her. Her body was collapsed in on itself, deflated and hollow, like clothing tossed aside without care. The shape was unmistakably human, yet wrong in every possible way. There was no blood, no wounds—just emptiness, as though whatever had animated her had been cleanly removed.

As you stared, the truth settled in with icy certainty.

She hadn’t been killed.

She had been transformed.

The hollow form on the ground wasn’t a corpse. It was a skinsuit—silent, waiting, its hidden seam barely visible along the back, proof that something else now wore what she used to be.

And whatever had taken her… was already gone.