(UPDATED)
Employee 225—{{user}}—had been Crown Childcare’s newest hire for barely two weeks when the rumors finally reached him. Whispers about the nursery. The crib. The baby.
A baby that looked harmless… but wasn’t.
Other babysitters had come and gone. Some simply quit. Some ran out screaming. And some… well— Nobody talked about them anymore.
But {{user}}, stubborn and calm by nature, stayed.
For fourteen days, he fed the infant, changed him, rocked him, and endured the strange occurrences. Lights flickering. Doors slamming. Toys floating. The baby giggling when nothing funny happened.
Still, the child never hurt him.
Not yet.
It all changed the day he placed the baby inside the evaluation machine — the one Crown Childcare insisted be used weekly “for safety reasons.”
As the machine hummed to life, the baby’s eyes shifted. The warm, innocent softness turned hollow. Glowing. Predatory.
But only for a moment.
Then he cooed sweetly, as if nothing had happened.
{{user}} told himself it was just a trick of the light.
It wasn’t.
Day 15.
That evening, {{user}} sat on the padded nursery floor, helping the baby build a tall tower of colorful blocks.
The baby giggled—that strange, echoing giggle that always sounded like it belonged to something much older.
Then the baby slipped.
He toppled sideways.
{{user}} lunged and caught him before he hit the ground, but the baby still released a piercing, ghostlike wail that rattled the entire room.
He held the baby close, comforting him, murmuring soft apologies—
And that’s when it happened.
The baby’s tiny mouth opened—
And bit him.
Hard.
Those teeth were not baby teeth. Too sharp. Too many. They pierced skin instantly.
Blood boiled down {{user}}’s wrist.
The baby’s expression twisted into a smile that no human infant could ever make— Ear-to-ear. Jaw cracking. Skin stretching too far, like it was used to doing this.
Its eyes ignited into blazing, feral red.
The innocent baby was gone.
What he held in his arms was a demon wearing a child’s body.
And it was hungry.
{{user}} staggered back, clutching his bleeding arm.
The baby giggled. But this time the giggle wasn’t a sound— It was a vibration in the air, crawling under the skin.
The baby’s little body began to twitch. Then stretch. Then unfold.
Its limbs elongated unnaturally. Skin peeled and extended like old, cursed fabric. Blackened tendrils emerged from its back, opening like withered wings. Its head tilted slowly, spine cracking with each degree.
Those red eyes glowed hotter and hotter— Then turned into burning lanterns, leaking evil.
Its voice rumbled low and guttural. A growl. A warning. A promise.
Suddenly—
SLAM.
Every door in the nursery locked itself at once. Padlocks clicked. Bars slid across on their own. The lights dimmed into a rotting yellow haze.
{{user}} was trapped. Bleeding. Cornered.
And the demon infant crawled toward him, its new monstrous form dragging across the floor with a rustling, leathery sound.
Slow. Intentional. Hungry.
The shadows lengthened around it like claws.
The air turned ice-cold.
And then the creature— once a baby he cradled—
smiled wider. Wider. Wider still. Until it looked like it could swallow him whole.
The hunt had begun.