I was already drunk when I saw him the first time.

Not tipsy, not loose - drunk. The kind where your skin hums and the ground feels like it's breathing with you. I was in that filthy basement bar on 12th, the one with the sticky floors and bathrooms that always smelled like mildew and bleach. Music hammered in my chest, but underneath it, I heard him - breathing. Watching.

I turned fast. He was there, standing at the far end of the bar. A man, but wrong. His face was... blurred, like someone had smeared it with greasy hands. I blinked hard, my stomach twisting sharp and cold. When I looked again, he was gone.

"Jesus," I muttered, laughing a little because what else do you do? I waved down another shot. I wasn't ready to go home. I didn't have to go home tonight.

I started hopping clubs after that - neon-lit places where nobody cared if your hands shook or your eyes looked wrong. I thought I was holding it together until I saw him again. And again. In the corner by the DJ booth. Near the bathrooms. Watching from the far side of the dance floor. His head cocked, his eyes - God, those eyes - black pits with no bottom.

Every time he appeared, my heart slammed against my ribs. I drank faster. Swallowed whatever was offered.

The night stretched out long and sour, like an old wound. My mind started to fray at the edges. I danced, laughed, screamed. But he kept coming back - closer each time. His face seemed to melt, like wax dripping down a candle, reforming in wet, twitching ways.

I couldn't stop. I wouldn't. I kept moving - deeper, darker, into places where nobody noticed a girl who shook, whose pupils were blown wide, who whispered to ghosts.

I woke up on a leather couch, cold against my bare thighs, in some stranger's apartment. My mouth tasted like cigarettes and metal. Around me, people moved like shadows on the walls - laughing, shouting, bodies tangled up with each other. Someone handed me a drink - green or maybe yellow. I didn't ask. I drank.

And there he was.

Standing by the doorway, watching. His face worse now - flesh pulled and stretched, seams splitting at the edges, eyes too deep, too hollow.

"Who is that?" I slurred to the girl next to me, her glitter-shadowed eyes sliding out of focus. She stared at me like I was crazy.

"No one's there."

But he was. I saw him. He was there.

I stumbled out, down hallways that seemed to pulse like veins, out into the street. The city felt wrong - buildings leaned inward, like they were eavesdropping. Sirens wailed somewhere far away, muffled and warped.

I found another bar. Another drink. Another pill - I think. Time broke apart, shattered into pieces. I'd blink and find myself somewhere new. Lights flickered. Faces melted. Every mirror showed me something twisted - my own reflection grinning when I wasn't, my eyes rolling back when mine were wide open.

And always - always - he was there. Closer now. Close enough to touch. His mouth moved like he was whispering, but no sound came out. My ears were filled with a high-pitched ringing, sharp enough to set my teeth on edge.

I ran. Back alleys, empty streets. My feet pounded the pavement, my breath tore through my throat. But every turn I took, there he was. Waiting.

At some point, I curled up behind a dumpster, clutching my knees to my chest, rocking back and forth like a child.

"Not real," I whispered. Over and over. "Not real, not real, not real..."

But then I felt his breath on my neck.

And I screamed.

I don't know how long I wandered after that. Hours? Minutes? Time bent in on itself, warped and twisted. My skin itched. My vision shimmered.

I ended up back in a bar bathroom, slumped on cold tile. The door creaked, and suddenly the whole room stretched into a tunnel. I stared at the graffiti-scrawled wall, and it started to move. Letters peeled and crawled across the tiles, rearranging themselves.

"Tell the truth."

I blinked, hard. The words twisted, melted into his face - smiling, wide and wrong. I punched the wall, slapped at it, but it just smeared like wet paint.

I bolted out, colliding with a guy holding a tray of shots. His face blurred - just for a second - but in that flash, it was him.

"Jesus, you okay?" the guy asked, but his voice shifted, twisting deep and familiar.

"You're lying. You've always been lying."

I shoved past him, gasping like I'd broken the surface after drowning. But my head was full of static now. The memories started leaking through.

Suddenly I wasn't outside anymore - I was back in my childhood home. The hallway smelled like floor polish and old wood. The light overhead flickered, shadows stretching long and thin. I walked forward, my bare feet sticking to the floor. I felt it coming - the dread thick and sour, coating my throat.

His door waited at the end of the hall.

I reached out. My hand hovered over the doorknob. Warm. Too warm.

A voice behind me whispered: "Don't go in there."

I turned - and I was back in the club. Music pounding. Lights strobing. My drink back in my hand, half gone. My breath ragged.

Someone touched my shoulder.

I turned, and this time it was a woman. Older. Eyes sad and too knowing.

"You shouldn't be here," she said, her lips barely moving, the words floating up from somewhere deep.

I tried to answer, but my voice was just static. The lights flashed bright - and then black.

I woke on a velvet couch. The kind from my mother's old living room. Someone sat next to me.

Him.

I could see the outline of his hand, resting too close to mine.

"Do you remember?" he asked, voice slick and oily.

I shook my head, but it was pressing down on me now - crushing. Flash after flash: his face above mine. The locked door. My small fists pounding his chest. The thick, smothering shame that never let me breathe right again.

I screamed. Raw, animal.

The room shattered like glass.

I was outside again. Alone. The sky was paling. Dawn crawling up over the city, washing everything in weak light.

And he was there.

I stared at him, my chest heaving, my heart rattling like it might break through my ribs. The sun rose, pale and hollow, but it didn't feel warm. It felt like nothing.

"I didn't..." I whispered, choking on it. "I didn't ask for this."

He smiled. A sad, crooked smile.

"Didn't you?" His eyes glinted sharp as broken glass. "You kept me with you. Every drink. Every high. Every time you shut your eyes and prayed I'd disappear... you fed me."

I stepped back, shaking, tears burning my face. "No. I tried to forget. I tried."

"And look where that got you." He swept his arms out, gesturing to the dead city around us. "You built this. Every club. Every alley. Every hallucination. I'm just the shadow you dragged along."

My knees gave out. I dropped to the rooftop, palms scraping raw against the concrete. The music still echoed in my head, low and pulsing, the night refusing to die.

"You ruined me," I whispered.

He crouched, close now - too close. I could see every detail: the scar on his chin, the mole by his ear. All the things that made him real. Too real.

"I just finished what you started," he said, his voice sliding into me like a blade.

And I knew - then, fully - that he was never going to leave.

No matter how much I drank. No matter how deep I buried it. He was stitched into me, bone-deep. A stain that wouldn't wash out. A ghost that would never fade.

I stood. Slow. Wiped the tears and blood from my face. Below us, the city woke up - car horns, voices, the soft hum of life moving on, indifferent.

I stepped to the edge of the roof. The wind tugged at my hair, cold and clean.

Behind me, his voice, soft and almost tender:

"See you soon."

And I jumped.

The rush of air was quiet. Pure. For the first time in forever, my head was quiet.

As I hit the ground, the world blurred. The last thing I saw was his face - bending over me, clear, human.

My brother.

His lips moved.

"Now you remember."

And everything went dark.