I think I first noticed it when I knew for sure I forgot to clasp the padlock together, but found it perfectly locked next morning.
I work part time at a lifestyle store. It’s a small store in the corner of a narrow street in K——— Town. It’s just a 25-minute walk from my house.
Since the beginning of February, I had started feeling detached from myself. I was zoned out most of the time and remembered nothing. I did everything based on habit of movement. It was in the second week of February that I arrived at the store to find the padlock unlocked. It was wound around the shutter clasps, but it was not locked. I realized I must have forgotten clasping it together. I opened the shutter gingerly, my eyes only a millimeter open, fearing the store might look ransacked. But it was normal. Lucky escape.
The next couple of days I was extra cautious in locking the shutter properly. But then I fell back into my detached phase, and worked absentmindedly.
On February 11, I remember reaching home and waking up, realizing with exponentially increasing dread that I didn’t clasp the lock again. I didn’t know whether to run back or wait for the following morning. I chose the latter. Mind you, I was only 60% convinced I left the door unlocked. But next morning, it was perfect. Again. I think it was then that I starting suspecting something, but I didn’t know what... until I deliberately left it unlocked on February 14.
I took the bus to work in the morning of February 15, because I knew it would be my last ride there, after which neither will I be welcomed there, nor will I be able to pay for the fare, knowing full well I’d have to suffer the monetary consequences of the robbery that will have taken place.
But the shutter was properly locked, AGAIN. This confirmed my suspicions. Before jumping to any conclusions, I carefully asked the other weekly part time workers if they were in the area, but they weren’t. They were on duty in another branch.
What was happening? I was shocked, but not scared. My mental health was already in tatters for me to focus my attention or energy on something else.
I was going to close the store again, when I realized I left my phone inside. I raised the shutter and walked in. It was dark but because of habitual memory, I walked right into the counter space and found my phone. Somebody was calling me. But before I could raise the phone from the table, something happened. And I will never, ever, forget how I felt in that moment.
It got unbelievably hot inside. My first thought was, “Darn it! The heat will ruin the hummus.” Before I could act on that, I felt cool air on my neck. The hair on my neck started pricking up slowly, all the way to my legs. My entire body was covered in goosebumps. I turned around and saw nothing, except... it was pitch black. Even though the lights were turned off, it shouldn’t have been so dark. So I did what any sane person would do. I spoke into the void. “What’s happening here?”
Something lightly touched my elbow. It felt like a claw but more bony. I think ‘it’ felt my body relax against its touch, and taking it as consent, I felt it coming closer from behind. I could tell so, because the air behind me got cooler, until the room temperature was back to its usual again.
Everything was normal, except I couldn’t see a thing, and I could feel its multiple hands around me, under my arm, over it, around my waist, around my neck, and I could feel my hair being stroked.
To be honest, I didn’t know what on Earth was going on. I even chuckled to myself, “Hey am I even on Earth still?”
Finally stepping out of my spiral of thoughts, I tried to twist and look at the perpetrator. Instead, I saw myself. The “me” I saw was looking at me, but I could tell her eyes were focused elsewhere, and that she was in her thoughts. So naturally, I looked down to see if my body was free of those tentacles or not, and saw that I was the one with the tentacles.
And then the adrenaline hit me. I shut my eyes and prayed to be put back into my body and left alone. I opened my eyes after what seemed like an eternity and knew before checking that I was back inside my own body. I had another strange thought as well. I let the thought grow in the back of my mind while walking home.
See, this was yesterday. I don’t remember locking the shutter after grabbing my phone because I now know exactly what is happening. The power of the mind, aye.
Somehow, my detachment from myself was literal. My mind was divided into two, and there was so much power in how I felt that another entity was formed. That is why I never remember locking the door, or feeling “out of my body”; it is all literal. I am forming another self.
I don’t know where it stays, how it emerges, or what it can do, but I know it is not bad, because I am weighing vegetables at the store right now, and I am also writing this story at the library.