Echoes in the Deep

The Shifting Visage

Fragmented Consciousness Log

Log Entry: 2025-12-30 – Unofficial. Discard after reading.

The static began again last night. Not in my ears, but behind them, a low thrumming that vibrates through bone. I was in the old diner, the one with the cracked vinyl booths and the smell of stale coffee. Everything was too bright, too sharp, like a photograph overexposed. Then the coffee started to shimmer, a rainbow sheen on the surface, but wrong. It wasn’t oil; it was… alive. Shifting patterns, like a thousand iridescent insects struggling just beneath the skin of reality.

Then the voices started. Not words, just whispers, a chorus of forgotten languages played backwards and distorted. They were coming from the sugar dispenser, from the chipped ceramic mug, from the condensation on the window. Each sound a tiny claw, scratching at the inside of my skull.

My hands. I looked down, and they were changing. My skin, slick and iridescent, stretching, elongating. The bones underneath felt like liquid, reforming into something alien, yet strangely familiar. It wasn't painful, not exactly, but it was profoundly, terrifyingly wrong. I tried to scream, but only a gurgle escaped, thick and oily. The barista, with eyes like dull coins, just wiped down the counter, oblivious. The buzzing intensified, a promise of complete dissolution. I woke up gasping, the taste of ozone in my mouth and a phantom sheen still clinging to my skin.