Page 1 of Molt

Chapter 1- Lenora

There’s something in my bed.

I know before I open my eyes.

It isn’t breathing. It isn’t moving. But it’s touching me.

Something cold and damp rests against the inside of my thigh, trapped between my skin and the sheets.

For several seconds, I don’t move.

My bedroom is quiet except for the uneven clicking of the ceiling fan above me and the pipes knocking somewhere inside the wall. The dull street lights outside push weakly through the curtains, turning everything gray.

I stare at the ceiling listening to the clicking while trying to stay deathly still.

Whatever is against my leg slides when I breathe.

My stomach tightens.

I reach beneath the blanket and my fingertips find something soft, thin and wet.

I jerk my hand away. “What the fuck?” Then kick off the blanket and something pale tumbles onto the floor causing me to scramble backwards until my shoulders hit the headboard. At first, I think it’s fabric. Maybe part of the fitted sheet ripped.

Then I see the shape.

I stop breathing.

It looks like skin. Not a piece of it. Not some little flake from dry legs or a blister that peeled during the night.

It’s large. Almost the length of my forearm. Translucent, wrinkled and wet around the edges.

I stare at it.

“No.” The word barely leaves my mouth.

I look down at my legs.

Nothing.

No blood. No wound.

I turn my thigh toward the window.

My skin is smooth. Too smooth.

I touch it and a strange sensitivity shoots through me forcing a moan to slip from my lips.

I pull my hand away. “What the fuck?”

The thing on the floor doesn’t answer.

Obviously.

I lean over the edge of the mattress and gasp when I see tiny lines running through it.

Veins.

My stomach rolls.