24 Jul The Creation Cycle

The Carters had finally found their dream home. Nathan and Julia had searched for months, touring cramped houses, fixer-uppers, and overpriced properties, before stumbling on this gem. It was perfect: vaulted ceilings in the master bedroom, spacious walk-in closets, and a backyard big enough for Ethan, Logan, and Samantha to play until the sun went down. Even Luna, their excitable golden retriever, seemed to approve, wagging her tail nonstop during their first visit.

The family had moved in during the peak of summer. The air conditioning hummed through the house, a soothing reprieve from the heat, while the smell of freshly painted walls mingled with the scent of new furniture. The kids adjusted quickly—Ethan, 14, often retreated to his room to sketch; Logan, 10, darted between the yard and the living room, spilling juice boxes along the way; and Samantha, 6, buzzed with the excitement only a child could sustain.

Nathan had spent the first few weeks meticulously organizing every corner of the house. He’d cleaned out closets, scrubbed baseboards, and even climbed up to the tops of the kitchen cabinets to dust away the cobwebs left by the previous owners. He prided himself on order, everything in its place.

But six months later, he was still discovering things he’d missed.

It was a Thursday morning, and the house was finally quiet. Ethan and Logan had left for school, their bickering replaced by the rumble of the bus down the street. Samantha had skipped to the car, hand in hand with Julia, before they drove off toward her elementary school. Nathan waved them goodbye from the porch, the chill of February’s air nipping at his skin.

Inside, the house felt different in the mornings. Still and empty. Nathan didn’t mind; he liked the quiet moments. He’d made his coffee and set it down on the double vanity in the master bathroom, a ritual he had perfected since the move. Shaving cream covered his face as he focused on the mirror, the quiet hum of the electric razor filling the room.

That was when he noticed it. A flash of sunlight caught something above the bathroom cabinets, drawing his attention to a faint sliver of plastic peeking over the edge. The cabinets, which didn’t quite reach the ceiling, left a narrow gap, just enough space for dust to collect or someone to stash a forgotten object.

Nathan frowned. He remembered climbing up there months ago to clean, sweeping away a layer of grime and a few scattered nails the previous owners had left behind. He hadn’t missed anything—or so he thought.

The plastic bag gleamed faintly in the sunlight.

Nathan paused, razor halfway to his cheek. He turned toward the cabinets, squinting. “What the hell is that?” he muttered to himself.

It wasn’t like him to leave things undone. Julia teased him constantly about his perfectionism—his need to organize the kitchen drawers, adjust the angles of picture frames, and ensure Luna’s leash was always on the same hook. For him to miss something, especially in a room he used daily, was unusual.

Setting the razor down, he grabbed a small stepstool from the hallway closet and returned to the bathroom. Climbing onto the counter, he carefully reached toward the cabinet. The bag was dusty, its surface opaque with grime.

He plucked it from the gap and climbed down, holding it in his hands. It felt oddly light, as if it were empty. Yet the weight of its mystery seemed to press on him.

Nathan set the bag on the counter and turned on the faucet. Water cascaded over the plastic, washing away streaks of dust. He rubbed at it with his thumb, his curiosity growing with each second. What could the previous owners have left behind? He half-expected it to be old receipts or forgotten hardware.

As the grime cleared, he froze.

Inside the bag was something… impossible.

It was a swirling, churning mass of black, folding and twisting in on itself. It wasn’t solid, nor was it liquid. The way it moved defied explanation, as if it were caught in an endless loop of destruction and recreation. Nathan leaned closer, his breath fogging the mirror.

“What is this?” he whispered.

The mass appeared contained within the plastic bag, but it didn’t behave like any material he had ever seen. It bent light, casting faint shadows in impossible directions. When he tilted the bag, it didn’t shift like water would but remained suspended, endlessly swirling.

The water from the faucet trickled into the bag, and he watched in disbelief as it disappeared. There was no splash or pooling. The water simply ceased to exist the moment it came into contact with the black mass.

Nathan reached out, his fingers brushing the edge of the bag. A faint hum, low and deep, seemed to emanate from it, vibrating in his chest. He jerked his hand back, his heart pounding.

For what felt like an eternity, Nathan stared at the bag, unable to look away. The mass was hypnotic, its endless movement drawing him in. It wasn’t just strange—it was wrong, in a way that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Finally, he forced himself to step back. He grabbed a paper towel, wrapping the bag tightly before setting it on the counter. His hands trembled as he leaned against the vanity, staring at his reflection.

His mind raced with questions. What was it? How long had it been there? And why hadn’t he noticed it before?

Nathan tried to shake the thoughts away. “It’s just… some kind of trick,” he muttered. “Some weird chemical reaction or…”

He trailed off, knowing deep down that wasn’t true.

He glanced back at the bag, the hum still faintly vibrating in his chest. Whatever it was, it wasn’t natural. And yet, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He needed to know more.

* * * * * *

Nathan couldn’t stop thinking about the bag.

After discovering the swirling black void inside, he had tried to go about his day, cleaning the kitchen and answering work emails. But his mind kept circling back to the strange anomaly sitting on the bathroom counter, tucked beneath a folded paper towel.

At first, he told himself it wasn’t worth the trouble. Whatever it was, it was probably harmless, a trick of physics or some bizarre leftover from the previous owners. But the thought gnawed at him. That thing had consumed water without so much as a ripple. It didn’t behave like anything he’d ever seen.

By mid-morning, he had made up his mind. He wasn’t going to be satisfied until he understood what it was.

Nathan stood at the sink, staring down at the bag. The black mass inside continued its endless swirl, folding in on itself like a restless storm. He felt a strange, almost magnetic pull toward it, as though the void was inviting him to interact with it.

He grabbed an old razor cartridge from the cabinet, its blades dull and rusted. Taking a deep breath, he pinched the corner of the plastic bag and opened it slightly. Nothing happened. The black void remained inside, its edges brushing against the interior of the bag without spilling out.

Nathan hovered the razor over the opening. His heart hammered as he hesitated, unsure if this was a terrible idea. Finally, he dropped the cartridge in.

It disappeared instantly.

There was no sound, no flash of light. One moment it was there, and the next it was gone, swallowed by the void. Nathan leaned closer, his eyes narrowing as he watched the swirling mass. The razor didn’t emerge on the other side.

“What the hell…” he whispered.

The void’s surface remained unchanged, swirling and folding without pause. Nathan waited for something to happen, but the room remained silent. He closed the bag quickly, setting it down on the counter with trembling hands.

The implications of what he’d just witnessed began to settle in. This wasn’t normal. It wasn’t possible.

* * * * * *

By lunchtime, Nathan’s curiosity had overtaken his fear.

He retrieved the bag again, carefully opening it and holding it up to the light. The black void inside seemed infinite, like a window into another dimension.

He decided to test it further. This time, he dropped in smaller items: a cotton swab, a stray button, and a few toenail clippings from the trash bin. Each object vanished without resistance, consumed by the void in silence.

Nathan’s heart raced. The anomaly didn’t discriminate, absorbing everything he placed into it. He sat down on the bathroom floor, his back against the cool tile, and stared at the bag for what felt like an eternity.

He didn’t notice the second bag until the faint sound broke the silence.

Tink.

The noise was soft but distinct, like something small striking plastic. Nathan turned his head, his gaze snapping to the upper cabinets. There, in the same gap where he’d found the first bag, sat another one.

Frowning, he climbed back onto the counter and pulled it down. This bag was also dusty, its surface cloudy with grime. He cleaned it off as he had the first, running it under the faucet until the plastic was clear.

Inside was another anomaly.

But this one wasn’t black—it was white.

Nathan placed the second bag next to the first and stared at them side by side. The white void was the opposite of its twin: a swirling, bright mass that seemed to radiate a faint, soft glow. It was mesmerizing in its own way, though it didn’t fill him with the same sense of dread as the black hole.

Curiosity burned in his chest as he opened the second bag. Unlike the black hole, the white void seemed to push against the plastic as if trying to escape. But it stayed contained, its glow shifting faintly with the motion of his hands.

Then he saw it. The razor cartridge he’d fed into the black hole earlier was inside the white bag—but it wasn’t the same. Its metal was fused with other materials, warped and twisted into a new shape. Nathan stared in disbelief as he realized what he was looking at.

The voids were connected.

Nathan couldn’t stop himself now. He opened both bags and placed them on the counter. Using a pair of tweezers, he carefully fed the white bag’s contents into the black hole. Each time, the black void consumed the objects, and moments later, the white void expelled them, changed.

He began experimenting with combinations.

Nathan grabbed items at random from the bathroom: a lock of Julia’s hair from her brush, a used cotton swab, and bits of trash. He watched in awe as the white bag produced new, grotesque creations—amalgamations of organic and inorganic material fused in impossible ways.

But then he fed in another combination: his own toenail clippings, a cotton swab, and a piece of loose thread from his shirt.

What the white void produced wasn’t junk. It was alive.

The thing that emerged was small and pink, like a misshapen fetus. It twitched and convulsed as Nathan watched in horror.

At first, it didn’t move in a way that seemed alive. Its surface was smooth and unbroken, resembling a wax model rather than flesh. But as Nathan leaned closer, the skin rippled, then bulged outward. Something pressed against the interior of the mass—a head, or something like it—struggling to take form.

The surface split open, revealing a glistening interior. Veins began to spread across the flesh like cracks in glass, pulsing faintly as if searching for a rhythm.

Nathan watched, frozen, as two hollow cavities formed at the center of the mass. A faint, sickening sound, like wet tissue tearing, accompanied the appearance of a tiny heart. It was malformed, its chambers uneven, but as it sat there, it began to contract. At first, it was irregular, a slow, sluggish pulse. Then, as if finding its purpose, it began beating steadily.

The hollow cavities deepened, forming lungs. They filled, collapsed, and filled again, pulling air into the tiny creature. The motion was jerky at first, but it smoothed out, taking on the rhythmic rise and fall of breathing. Nathan’s stomach twisted as he realized he was no longer looking at an inanimate mass. This thing—this abomination—was alive.

Its limbs began to stretch outward, thin and spindly like the branches of a dying tree. A head formed, its features grotesquely simple—a smooth, featureless oval with dark indentations where eyes should be.

The creature’s chest expanded with each shallow breath. Its tiny heart pumped blood through its translucent body, sending faint pulses of light through its veins.

Then it opened its eyes.

They were enormous, black and glistening like marbles, and they moved in slow, deliberate arcs as they scanned the room. Finally, they locked onto Nathan.

A low, guttural whimper escaped its lipless mouth.

Nathan staggered backward, bile rising in his throat. He grabbed the nearest object—a hairbrush—and slammed it down onto the creature. It let out a sickening squelch as it burst beneath the impact, its fluids spreading across the counter.

For a long time, Nathan stood frozen, staring at the mess he’d made, gasping for air. He looked at the black and white bags, then back at the gore on his hands.

What had he done?

* * * * * *

Nathan didn’t touch the bags again for days.

He wrapped them in an old towel, shoved them into a shoebox, and wedged it onto the highest shelf in the bedroom closet. Out of sight, out of mind. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop replaying the scene in his head: the glistening fetus, its malformed heart beating, its lungs gasping for air, and its black eyes locking onto his.

At night, he would wake in a cold sweat, the phantom sound of the creature’s whimpering echoing in his ears. Julia noticed his restlessness, but he avoided her questions, muttering something about work stress.

By the time Friday rolled around, he had almost convinced himself to forget the whole thing. Whatever those anomalies were, they weren’t his problem. He would never open the bags again.

But that was before everything changed.

The following Monday was cold and gray. Nathan and Julia were rushing through the morning routine, getting the kids ready for school. Ethan sat at the kitchen table, hunched over a graphic novel, while Logan pestered Samantha to share the last waffle.

“Stop it, Logan,” Samantha whined, clutching her plate protectively.

“Come on, you’re not even gonna eat the whole thing!”

“Enough, you two!” Julia called from the sink, her voice sharp but distracted. “Logan, get your backpack! Samantha, finish your breakfast!”

Nathan leaned against the counter, sipping his coffee and taking in the chaos. As exhausting as mornings like these could be, he had grown to appreciate them. They were reminders of the life he and Julia had built together.

When it was time to leave, Julia gathered the kids by the front door, ushering them outside with their coats half-zipped. Nathan knelt to give Samantha a hug.

“Have a good day, sweetheart,” he said, ruffling her hair.

She beamed up at him, her gap-toothed smile warming him even in the cold morning air.

“I will, Daddy,” she said, skipping off to the car.

Nathan stood on the porch, waving as Julia pulled out of the driveway. Samantha turned in her seat to wave back, her little hand pressed to the window.

It was the last time he would see her alive.

* * * * * *

Nathan got the call just after 10 a.m.

The voice on the other end was clipped, professional, and unfamiliar. That of a police officer, delivering the kind of news no parent should ever hear. Samantha had been struck by an SUV in the parking lot of her school.

“A parent running late,” the officer said, his tone apologetic. “She didn’t see Samantha crossing.”

The words blurred in Nathan’s mind, drowned out by the roaring in his ears. He managed to mutter something resembling acknowledgment before hanging up. His phone slipped from his hand, clattering onto the kitchen counter.

Julia’s wailing when she arrived at the hospital would haunt him forever.

* * * * * *

The days that followed were a blur of grief and disbelief. The house, once filled with laughter and petty squabbles, felt impossibly empty. Samantha’s absence was a gaping void, one that none of them could fill.

Julia withdrew into herself, spending hours in their bedroom with the door closed. Ethan stopped sketching, his notebook gathering dust on his desk. Logan, too young to fully grasp the weight of their loss, clung to Nathan with wide, tear-filled eyes.

And Nathan… Nathan couldn’t stop thinking about the anomalies.

He knew it was insane. What he had seen—what he had created—was monstrous, an affront to everything natural. But the thought burrowed into his mind like a parasite: What if I could bring her back?

He tried to push it down, to ignore the temptation. But every time he passed Samantha’s room, every time he saw one of her drawings taped to the refrigerator, the thought resurfaced.

* * * * * *

It became unbearable at her wake.

The church was quiet, save for the hushed murmurs of friends and family offering their condolences. Samantha’s tiny coffin sat at the front of the room, surrounded by flowers and photos. Nathan stood by Julia’s side, shaking hands and nodding numbly at every kind word. But his gaze kept drifting to the coffin.

During a lull in the line of mourners, Nathan excused himself. He approached the casket, his heart pounding in his chest. Samantha looked peaceful, her hands folded over her favorite stuffed rabbit. The mortician had done an excellent job, but there was no mistaking the unnatural stillness of her waxy skin.

Nathan’s hands trembled as he reached into his pocket, pulling out a pair of nail clippers. He glanced over his shoulder, ensuring no one was watching, then carefully snipped a tiny piece of her fingertip. Just a flap of skin—enough to go unnoticed. He tucked it into a tissue, then reached for her hair, cutting a small lock and slipping it into his pocket.

He felt sick, disgusted with himself. But he couldn’t stop.

* * * * * *

That evening, while Julia cried herself to sleep, Nathan locked himself in the bathroom. He retrieved the shoebox from the closet, his hands shaking as he pulled out the black and white bags.

He stared at them for a long time, debating whether he could actually go through with it. The memory of the malformed fetus filled his mind, its black eyes staring at him, its whimper echoing in his ears. But this wasn’t just a random experiment. This was Samantha.

Nathan took a deep breath and opened the black bag.

He dropped the lock of hair and the piece of skin inside. The black void absorbed them instantly, swirling with a faint hum that sent shivers down his spine. Moments later, he opened the white bag.

The first thing he noticed was the smell—a faint chemical tang, like embalming fluid.

Inside, a new form was already taking shape.

It began as a lump of tissue, its surface smooth and translucent. Veins spread across its exterior like creeping vines, their faint blue lines pulsing with the beginnings of life. The lump quivered, expanding and contracting as if struggling to breathe.

Nathan’s breath hitched as the form grew, stretching and contorting. Tiny organs appeared within its translucent body, glistening wetly under the bathroom light. He watched in horrified fascination as a heart began to form, its chambers uneven but unmistakable.

The heart gave a weak, sluggish beat, then another. Slowly, the rhythm steadied, pumping blood through the tiny form. Lungs followed, forming from faintly shimmering tissue. They expanded and deflated, pulling in air. The creature twitched as its nervous system began firing signals, its limbs spasming in jerky, unnatural movements.

Nathan fell to his knees, his hands pressed to his mouth, as he fought back tears.

It was working. It was actually working.

* * * * * *

The clone’s eyelids fluttered open.

Nathan sat on the floor, his back against the vanity, too stunned to move. The thing—no, she—lay curled atop a folded towel, her limbs twitching weakly as her lungs expanded in rhythmic breaths. He had moved her there as gently as he could when the creature stopped convulsing and began to breathe with regularity. There was no longer any doubt.

It was Samantha.

Or rather, it looked almost like her. The hair was dark, like hers had been, but unnaturally uniform in texture, too straight, as if the strands had been pressed from a mold. Her skin was pale and smooth, with a waxy texture that reminded Nathan uncomfortably of the funeral home. The eyes, when they opened, were the right shade of brown, but glassy and unfocused, as though still searching for context.

He reached out with one trembling hand and lightly touched her tiny fingers. Her hand flinched in response, and her mouth opened. A sound emerged, raw and wet and unsure. Then, faintly, she murmured:

“D…daddy?”

Nathan recoiled. His heart knocked against his ribs.

She repeated it, louder this time.

“Daddy.”

There was no warmth in it. No emotion. It was mimicry—accurate, but wrong.

* * * * * *

He didn’t tell Julia. Not that day.

He tucked the creature away in the corner of their walk-in closet, swaddled her in a blanket, and whispered frantic promises that he’d come back soon. He sat by her for hours, watching her chest rise and fall, waiting for something—anything—to tell him what he was doing was either a miracle or a nightmare.

By the time Julia returned from the grocery store, Nathan had scrubbed the bathroom clean and shoved the two bags back onto the cabinet shelf where he’d first found them.

That night, while Julia watched TV and Logan and Ethan played video games in the den, Nathan crept back to the closet and found her sitting up.

Samantha was now the size of a toddler.

He stared in stunned silence as she tracked his movement across the room with her eyes. Her joints popped unnaturally when she shifted, her neck turning too slowly, like she was figuring out how to move.

Her lips parted. “Daddy.”

Nathan reached out and touched her cheek. It was cold and dry. There was no blush, no warmth beneath the skin.

“Are you… hungry?” he whispered.

She tilted her head. Then nodded.

* * * * * *

The next day, he stayed home from work. He called in with a made-up excuse and spent the day in the bedroom while Julia ran errands and the boys were at school.

By noon, Samantha was the size of a kindergartener again.

Nathan dressed her in one of her old shirts—something from the donation bin Julia hadn’t gotten around to taking to Goodwill. It fit, sort of. The creature accepted the clothing without protest. She sat on the edge of the bed, mimicking posture, movement, and language.

But something was always off. When he offered her a glass of water, she sniffed it first, then licked the rim. When she walked, her legs moved stiffly, as if the joints had been assembled incorrectly and were learning how to align. When she smiled, it never reached her eyes.

By the time Julia returned that afternoon, Samantha looked like an eight-year-old.

Nathan didn’t hear the front door open. He didn’t hear Julia set down the groceries or Luna’s toenails tapping on the tile. He was in the master bedroom, sitting in a daze, watching the clone sort through old coloring books.

Then Julia screamed.

It came from the bedroom doorway.

“What—what the hell is this?!”

Nathan stood, putting himself between them. “Wait—just wait—I can explain.”

But Julia pushed past him, her gaze locked on the girl sitting quietly on the bed.

The clone turned toward her.

“Mommy.”

Julia staggered backward. “That’s not—” Her voice broke. “That’s not Samantha.”

Nathan grabbed her shoulders. “It’s her. It is her. It’s not perfect, but it’s her. I brought her back.”

Julia looked at him like he was a stranger.

* * * * * *

The fight lasted an hour.

Nathan explained everything—about the bags, about the black and white holes, about the experiments, about the first creature he’d destroyed. Julia kept shaking her head, kept saying no, kept saying this isn’t right. But she couldn’t stop looking at the girl. And the longer she looked, the more the fear in her eyes gave way to grief, and then to something like longing.

That evening, they sent Ethan and Logan to Julia’s sister’s house under the pretense of a spontaneous overnight visit.

The clone grew again.

By sunset, she appeared to be a teenager. Her voice had changed. It was deeper now, and more controlled, and she could form complete sentences. Soon thereafter, she began asking questions:

“Why am I here?” “Who was the other Samantha?” “What am I made of?”

Nathan answered everything as honestly as he could. Julia mostly sat in silence, her hands clasped together in her lap.

They showed the girl photos. They told her stories. She listened, attentive and polite.

But as the hours passed, her skin began to sag.

* * * * * *

By 10 p.m., her hair had begun to thin. Wrinkles had formed around her mouth, and her hands trembled. She clutched her abdomen as though in pain.

“I’m dying,” she said. “I can feel it.”

Nathan knelt beside her. “I don’t know how to stop it.”

She looked at him with eyes that now seemed sunken and tired. “Then why did you bring me here?”

He had no answer.

The girl—Samantha—rose unsteadily and made her way to the bathroom, where the two bags now sat side by side on the counter. Julia tried to block her path, but the girl pushed her aside with surprising strength.

“I can fix this,” she muttered. “I can fix me.”

The scuffle was brief and frantic.

Julia grabbed her from behind. Nathan lunged to grab the black bag. Samantha shrieked, thrashing wildly, knocking over everything in reach. In the chaos, her brittle skin split open at the shoulder, revealing yellowed muscle and waxen tissue underneath.

Nathan reached the black hole first. He tried to seal the bag—but Samantha lunged, her mouth open in a twisted wail.

He sidestepped her just in time. Her momentum carried her forward.

She hit the counter. Her body slumped—and slid into the bag.

It didn’t happen all at once. Her arm vanished first, then her shoulder. Her bones cracked under the pull of the gravity field. Her hips shattered audibly as she was compressed. Skin tore. Her final cry was cut off as her face disappeared into the void.

And then she was gone.

Blood and pale embalming fluid sprayed across the vanity, dripping down onto the tile.

Julia collapsed against the wall, sobbing. Meanwhile, Nathan stood over the sink, staring into the black bag, breathing heavily.

But before either of them could speak, they heard the sound again.

The sound was unmistakable.

Tink.

Nathan’s head jerked toward the counter. The white bag twitched slightly, its sides bulging with motion. Julia hadn’t moved from the floor, where she remained in a fetal position. Her face was blotchy and streaked with tears.

Nathan stepped forward, cautiously, drawn by the bag as though on strings. The white hole inside churned softly, its light pulsing faintly against the bathroom tiles.

Inside, something was forming again.

* * * * * *

The new Samantha emerged just before midnight.

This time, Nathan didn’t intervene.

He and Julia sat on the edge of the tub, silent and broken. The girl rose slowly from the bag’s interior, her form sleek and shining, her limbs fully formed even before her head began to swell and shape.

Her skin was paler than it had been the last time, almost translucent. Her veins looked painted on. As she unfolded from the confines of the bag, she blinked and focused immediately on Julia.

“Mommy,” she said. Her voice was soft and perfectly clear.

Julia didn’t run or scream. Instead, she reached out as if under a spell and touched the child’s arm. This time, it was smooth and cool to the touch, like wax just shy of melting, but not dry.

“Please,” Nathan whispered, “don’t let this happen again.”

But Julia only knelt in front of the clone and pulled it into her arms.

* * * * * *

The next morning, they didn’t send the boys to school.

Instead, Julia called her sister and made up a story about needing more time to process. They arranged for Ethan and Logan to spend another night away from home. Nathan didn’t protest. Neither of them could look away from the new Samantha.

She grew faster than the last. By noon, she looked like a six-year-old. By 3 p.m., she was back to eight. Her face was smoother than before and less uncanny, but the skin was still wrong—too shiny, too uniform. Her expressions were more practiced now.

Nathan realized what had changed: the white hole was using the remains of the previous clone as part of this new one. A compound copy. An iteration.

Each cycle was more refined.

Julia was different now, too. Where she had once been hysterical, now she was… devoted. She brushed the clone’s hair. She dressed her in Samantha’s old clothes. She showed her pictures and played music. She even sang to her.

All the while, Nathan watched from the hall, too exhausted to fight.

That night, they tried feeding her dinner. Macaroni and cheese—Samantha’s favorite.

The clone took a bite, chewed slowly, then spat it out.

“It tastes… wrong,” she said.

Julia’s smile faltered, just for a second. “That’s okay, sweetheart. You’ll get used to it.”

* * * * * *

By 9 p.m., the clone looked to be in her late teens. She paced the living room, examining photos on the mantel, and stopped at one of the real Samantha beaming, holding a ribbon from a second-grade science fair.

“She looks like me,” the clone said.

“That’s because you are her,” Julia said quietly.

The clone turned. “No, I’m not.”

Julia’s face twisted. “You are.”

Nathan cleared his throat. “You were made from her. From a part of her.”

The clone’s eyes narrowed. “Then what happened to the rest of me?”

She was angrier than the others, and more aware.

As midnight approached, her back bent with age, and her joints began to swell. She cried out, grabbing the sides of her head.

“It hurts,” she said. “My skin is too tight. My bones don’t fit right.”

Julia knelt beside her, sobbing. “We’ll fix it. We’ll fix you.”

The clone glared at her. “You made me this way. You let me die.”

Then she turned to Nathan.

“Do you still have it? The bag?”

He didn’t answer, and didn’t need to. Her eyes locked on the bathroom door.

She moved faster this time, staggering but determined. Nathan and Julia gave chase, shouting her name—Samantha, please!—but the clone wasn’t listening.

The bags were already on the floor, side by side.

As the clone reached for them, her legs buckled. Her skin began to gray and collapse. Her breath rattled. Her mouth opened in a scream that came out as a low, wet gurgle.

She crawled forward, pulling herself across the tiles toward the black hole.

Nathan stepped in front of her. “No. Please. You don’t understand what it does.”

She looked up, her mouth torn at the corners, her eyes leaking something darker than tears. “I have to. I can’t— I don’t want to disappear again.”

Then she lunged.

Her body hit the bag with a sickening thud.

But unlike the last, she didn’t fall in completely. The black hole caught her halfway, first engulfing her arms and torso. Her lower body remained outside, flailing, her legs kicking wildly.

The room filled with the sounds of tearing flesh and cracking bone. Julia screamed and tried to pull her out. Her hands closed around the clone’s ankles, but the strength was gone. The legs slipped from her grasp as the clone was sucked inward, inch by inch.

The last thing either of them saw was her hand reaching out, fingers outstretched and trembling, before it folded into the bag and vanished.

Then there was silence.

Julia collapsed, vomiting onto the floor. Nathan pulled her away, holding her even as she hit his chest with weak fists.

“You let her die!” she sobbed. “Again! You did it!”

“I had to!” he said hoarsely. “She wasn’t going to stop!”

“But we could’ve saved her!”

He didn’t answer.

He was already staring at the white bag. It was churning again.

This time, he didn’t hesitate. He ran into the kitchen, grabbing the broom from behind the pantry door.

When he returned, the white bag had begun to bulge. Its edges flexed as the beginnings of another form took shape inside.

Nathan extended the broom handle. Julia screamed when she realized what he was doing.

“No! Don’t—Nathan, don’t!”

He ignored her. With one hard push, he shoved the white bag toward the black one. The moment the edge of the white bag crossed into the field of the black hole, it was pulled forward, the plastic stretching like taffy.

Then the reaction began.

The light changed first. The overhead bulb dimmed, then brightened, then blew out entirely. Shadows warped along the floor. The air bent, thickened, and twisted. The bags pulsed violently.

The black hole began to consume the white, but the white resisted. The two masses collided—creation and destruction, matter and anti-matter, impossibility against impossibility. The tiles cracked beneath them. The sink exploded upward. The mirror shattered without being touched.

Nathan turned and grabbed Julia, pulling her toward the door, but the hallway was gone.

The world around them folded inward. The walls melted like wax in an oven. The floor pitched and rolled as if the house were caught in an unseen current. They fell together, screaming, their voices swallowed by the growing noise.

Then the house collapsed inward, everything folding into the hole.

And it was gone.

* * * * * *

The Carter house vanished completely.

In its place was a crater thirty feet wide and twelve feet deep, packed hard with scorched soil and pulverized concrete.

There was no sign of a foundation. No exposed plumbing or collapsed drywall. No bodies. No remnants of furniture. Not a single photograph or torn scrap of clothing. Not so much as a splinter remained. Just a depression in the earth, ringed by cracked sidewalk and mutilated blades of grass.

The neighbors were the ones who called it in.

Around 2:30 a.m., they heard a deep, vibrating hum below ground, like a turbine buried beneath the neighborhood. Windows rattled and dogs howled. Then came a blinding flash, and a sound like the sky itself had torn open. By the time anyone stepped outside, the Carter house had disappeared.

What remained didn’t make sense.

The first responders arrived in less than ten minutes, expecting a gas explosion. What they found instead was silence. The air smelled burnt, but there was no heat or smoke, and no visible fire damage to the surrounding homes.

One firefighter climbed down into the crater, poking through the chalky dust with a thermal camera. The temperature was ten degrees cooler at the bottom. The Geiger counter they brought in buzzed faintly, then stopped. Its batteries were dead.

By sunrise, the neighborhood had been evacuated and quarantined. Yellow tape went up. A mobile command trailer arrived, then unmarked trucks. Men in dark uniforms fanned out around the site, taking samples and muttering in clipped tones over radios.

They found only one thing.

Two plastic bags.

They were discovered near the center of the crater, nestled side by side in a small, undisturbed hollow of ash.

One contained a swirling black mass, the other a white one.

Both bags appeared undamaged, the plastic unstressed despite the violent implosion that had wiped an entire structure—and a family—off the face of the earth. The bags were collected carefully, with tongs, and sealed in metal canisters.

The team assigned to catalog the crater couldn’t agree on what had happened. Some speculated a sinkhole, though no one could explain the absence of debris. Others blamed a ruptured underground pipe, a transformer, or a rogue methane pocket.

None of those explained the lack of remains or why every digital photograph of the Carter home from neighbors’ phones appeared corrupted.

Officially, the incident was ruled as structural collapse due to subsurface erosion. A minor geological anomaly, exaggerated by weather. The government paid for relocation and repairs. The neighborhood reopened within a month, but the lot remained fenced, monitored, and untouched. The paperwork to rebuild was always “in process.”

Time passed, and people stopped asking questions. The Carters were grieved, then forgotten. A plaque appeared one morning on a nearby utility pole:

In Memory of Samantha Carter, 2016–2023.

Within days, it was removed.

Only one man in the town—the old groundskeeper at the elementary school—kept watching. He told his wife he’d seen the girl—not Samantha, no, another one—walking past the fence line near the crater one morning, her waxy face peering through the gaps in the chain-link.

His wife said it was just a dream, but he knew better.

* * * * * *

In a windowless lab three states away, the bags were studied.

Tests showed no measurable mass inside, yet dropping objects in caused a reaction, one the researchers couldn’t replicate or explain. They fed sensors into the black one, and nothing returned. The probes vanished.

They observed the white one generating heat spikes every few days, as though something inside was stirring. Once, it produced a thin gray filament that pulsed faintly before breaking down into dust.

No one could tell whether the bags and their contents were machines, organisms, or neither.

After several failed attempts to destroy them—acid, incineration, pressure—the bags were sealed in deep containment and locked beneath classified designation.

But the logs revealed something curious: A janitor, working the night shift, quit abruptly after opening the containment door and seeing one of the bags twitch.

When asked what he saw, he replied, “It knew I was there.”

* * * * * *

Somewhere in the dark beneath concrete and steel, sealed behind a dozen blast-proof doors, the two bags rest, still, silent, and waiting.

Waiting… for the cycle to begin again.