KOi

I always hit the lake before sunrise. Something about that hour feels sacred, like the world hasn't fully decided to exist yet.

The fog was barely a skin over the water, thin enough to see movement underneath, thick enough to make everything feel unfinished. The cold bit through my wetsuit, but I liked it. It made me feel awake.

I was cruising slow, letting the jet ski hum through the quiet. No birds. No wind. Just the engine and the faint, wet breathing of the lake.Then the water ahead of me bulged.

Not a ripple. Not a wave, but a bulge like something rising from underneath. A head broke the surface. Seemed to be a woman's head. Skin pale and swollen, hair floating around her like strands of something dead. Her eyes didn't shine. They didn't reflect. They were pits - deep, black pits that felt like they were pulling at me.

I panicked and yanked the handlebars. The jet ski snapped sideways and threw me off. The water swallowed me whole, freezing and thick, like it wanted me deeper.

When I surfaced, she was gone.No ripples. No disturbance. Just fog closing in, sealing the moment like it didn't want me to remember it.

But I did and rode straight to shore.

The dock groaned under my weight, slow creaks that sounded like something waking up angry. As I was strapping the jet ski down when I heard it: a tiny plip behind me. Too sharp. Too intentional.I turned.A fish lay on the dock.

A koi.

But black, really black, the kind of black that doesn't just absorb light, it erases it.

Under each scale, thin neon-red veins pulsed like something alive underneath, like the fish had a heartbeat you could see. It stared at me as I picked it up. Its body was warm, but not like fish warm but like flesh warm. And then I dropped it back into the water.

It launched itself out again aggressively and closer this time.

When I met its eyes, something inside me shifted a bit. Like a quiet, internal click, like a lock unlocking seemingly. I didn't know what it was, but I just knew I couldn't just leave it there.

And I decided to take it home.

I put the koi in my tank with the others fishes and it drifted calmly, almost politely. Nothing strange. Nothing wrong.

But then, in the middle of the night. A splash woke me.

I walked into the living room, half asleep. And the tank was glowing red. Not from the lights. But From the water itself. It was thick, syrupy red that clung to the glass like it was trying to crawl out.

And the koi was alone. Every other fish was gone. No bodies. No pieces. It was just like absence and the koi turned toward me, not naturally.

It rotated like its head was on a hinge. And Its eyes were locked onto mine, and the hatred in them felt physical, like there was something pressing against my ribs from the inside. I leaned closer without meaning to.

With me inches from the glass, the koi mirrored me perfectly.

My angle, breath, tension. Its pupils expanded until the eyes were almost entirely black.

I backed away, unsettled, confused, skin crawling, and tried to go to bed.

But I definitely couldnt just sleep for awhile, and as I was starting to drift off to sleep.

I woke entirely to a sound I can't forget, wasn't just a splash this time, but something wetter.

A dragging.
A smear. Like someone pulling a soaked towel across the floor, slow and heavy. Then the footsteps started. Not normal footsteps. These sounded completely wrong. Each step had weight, and a soft suction at the end, like bare feet peeling off tile. The rhythm wasn't what youd call normal.

Too slow.
Too deliberate.
Too patient.

They were coming down the hallway toward my room. I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I couldnt.

I just stared at the doorway, waiting for whatever was making that sound. The darkness in the hall shifted. Not like someone walked into it but more like the darkness itself changed shape.

Stretched. Lifted.

Formed into a silhouette. A woman's silhouette. And dripping.

Water pooled beneath her feet, spreading across the floor in thin, branching streams that crawled toward me like veins. Her head hung low, hair dangling in long ropes that swayed even though the air was still. Then she lifted her head and not smoothly, but in a series of tiny jerks, like her neck was remembering how to work.

Her eyes were the same as the koi's eyes.

Black and Bottomless.

I felt something in my chest tighten, like her stare was reaching inside me, hooking onto something I didn't know was there. My vision blurred at the edges. My ears started ringing. I couldn't tell if I was breathing.

She stepped closer.The sound of her foot peeling off the floor echoed in my skull. Water dripped from her fingers, each drop hitting the ground with a soft, wet tap that felt louder than anything I'd ever heard.

She didn't blink.

She didn't speak.

She just stared at me with that hatred.

An ancient, cold, patient hatred, like she'd been waiting for me long before I was born.

Then her body twitched. A sharp, unnatural twitch, like someone yanking invisible strings.

Then, she turned and sprinted down the hallway.

The wet slaps of her feet hitting the floor were frantic, desperate, echoing like she was running from something or toward something. The front door slammed open so hard the walls shook.

Then I followed and by the time I reached the doorway, she was gone. But the water wasn't. It formed a trail - long, winding, leading away from my house and into the darkness outside.

The trail didn't fade. It didn't soak into the ground. It stayed, glistening, almost pulsing. Like it wanted me to follow. And the worst part?
I knew I was going to follow it.