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It started small- just a thread.
Killer noticed it while pulling on his gloves that morning: a single, thin strand hanging from his wrist, red as drying blood. He thought nothing of it at first, just yanked it free and tossed it aside. But when he blinked, it was back- dangling loose, swaying faintly even though there was no wind.
He tugged again. It didn’t come free this time.
Instead, it moved.
The thread writhed under his touch, slipping between his phalanges like it was alive. A shiver ran through his bones, an itch under his ribs he couldn’t scratch. He shook his hand hard , the thread just followed, anchored somewhere deeper. Somewhere inside.
“Okay, that’s… new,” he muttered, forcing a laugh that didn’t sound right.
By noon, the thread had wound up his arm like a scarlet vine. It pulsed faintly, glowing when his LV spiked, like it could taste the violence in him. The others didn’t notice, or maybe they just didn’t care; Nightmare was busy, Dust was quiet, Horror was gone scavenging again.
Killer tried cutting it. The blade passed through harmlessly, but his vision flickered, like he’d sliced through a nerve instead of fabric. When he looked again, there were two threads, both writhing under his sleeve, both moving in opposite directions, burrowing deeper into his ribs.
He couldn’t tell where they started anymore.
When he tried to sleep, the itch turned to a pull- gentle, constant, almost affectionate. The thread tugged him upward, toward the ceiling, toward something he couldn’t see. He woke with red fibers stretched across the room, webbing the walls and his own body.
And then he heard it.
A voice. Soft, muffled, but close.
“Don’t pull, love. You’ll come undone.”
His sockets snapped open. He wasn’t alone- someone was behind him, or inside him, whispering through the thread. Each breath he took made the strands vibrate like a plucked string.
“You were always a loose end.”
He tried to scream, but the sound tangled in his throat. The thread coiled upward, looping across his skull, stitching the corners of his grin wider, pulling tighter until it hurt to move.
By the time Nightmare found him the next morning, the room was empty- except for a mannequin-shaped figure made of red thread, smiling with a too-familiar grin. The air reeked faintly of iron and dust.
And hanging from the doorknob, swaying gently, was one last piece of string,
still warm.