Mom's Gone Crazy. RUN

Mom's voice pierced through the gap beneath my door.

I walked toward it when my sister Susan suddenly sent me a message.

[Get out now. Mom's lost it—she's going to kill you!]

I stared at those words. My pulse quickened.

Almost immediately, my phone vibrated again in my palm. Three identical messages popped up on the screen:

[Get out now. Mom's lost it—she's going to kill you!]

[Get out now. Mom's lost it—she's going to kill you!]

[Get out now. Mom's lost it—she's going to kill you!]

Just as I was about to ask her what the hell was going on, the screen changed.

[The other party has recalled a message.]

[The other party has recalled a message.]

[The other party has recalled a message.]

...

Two seconds later, Susan sent another text:

[Sophie, you didn't see that, did you?]

My sister Susan is twenty years old, and she's always had a thing for pranks. Last month, she used fake blood to turn our bathroom into a crime scene. Last week, she hid a screaming toy in my closet in the middle of the night.

This was probably just another one of her tasteless jokes.

I didn't reply. I shoved my phone back into my pocket.

Mom knocked again. This time, much louder. The door rattled violently in its frame, the metal hinges grinding out an ear-piercing screech.

"Sophie."

Mom called from outside. The knocking suddenly intensified. Harder and harder. The air pressure from the vibrating door seemed to seep through the cracks. The wood let out a low groan, like it was about to splinter.

Instinctively, I took a step back, watching the trembling door handle.

Just as I was debating whether to answer, whether to open the door, a sound came from downstairs.

"I'm home!"

Dad's voice carried up from the living room below. Loud, with obvious irritation and exhaustion.

The moment his voice rang out, the pounding stopped. The door went still. The hallway fell into complete silence.

I held my breath, rooted to the spot, staring at the shadow beneath the door.

"Is dinner ready or not!" Dad complained loudly from downstairs, his tone sharp. "I'm starving. Shit, I've been slammed all day!"

Mom's footsteps moved toward the staircase at the other end of the hallway. She walked about five meters, then stopped abruptly. She'd paused at the top of the stairs.

Downstairs, Dad was still making noise—kicking off his shoes, throwing his briefcase onto the couch with dull thuds.

Upstairs, the air in the hallway seemed to freeze.

"If you don't come down to eat," Mom's voice drifted from several meters away, not loud, slow, completely devoid of emotion, "you won't be Mommy's good girl anymore."

I swallowed hard.

She paused for a second, then added: "Mommy will get angry."

The moment she finished speaking, her footsteps resumed. She started down the stairs. The wooden steps creaked under her weight, heavy and rhythmic.

Soon I heard them talking downstairs. Everything seemed normal.

I suddenly let out a long breath. This was all Susan's fault. Mom always called me down for dinner. If she hadn't sent those cryptic messages out of nowhere, I wouldn't be paranoid like this. Mom has always been good to me. What was I even thinking?

I pushed Susan's string of texts out of my mind, turned the door handle, and stepped out of my room.

The hallway lighting was dim. I descended the wooden staircase. Downstairs was quiet. Dad's complaints had stopped, and there were no sounds of Mom cooking.

I reached the last few steps, my line of sight clearing the corner of the stairwell toward the living room. The living room light was on. Dad sat in a chair at the dining table, his back to me.

Mom stood behind him. She held a meat cleaver in her hand.

Without warning, Mom swung her arm. The blade came down hard, hacking into Dad's neck.

Metal sliced through flesh and bone with a sickening thud. A massive spray of blood erupted instantly, splashing across the white walls and the dining table. Dad's body convulsed violently. His head slipped off his neck and fell.

The head hit the wooden floor with a heavy thump. It rolled forward along the sloped floorboards, all the way to the foot of the stairs, stopping precisely at my feet.

Dad's eyes were wide open, his face still frozen in that impatient expression. Blood from his severed neck soaked the tips of my shoes.

I couldn't breathe. My legs went numb.

Mom slowly turned around. She looked at me. Her face was expressionless. I looked into her eyes—the whites were gone, replaced by pure, abyssal black filling the entire socket.

Those weren't human eyes.

Susan's message was real. Mom had lost it. She really would kill.

Mom gripped that blood-dripping cleaver and started walking toward me.

I lurched backward, rushed to the window, shoved it open, braced my hands on the sill, and threw myself out. My body hit the backyard lawn hard.

I scrambled to my feet, didn't look back, tore through the hedges, and ran toward the street, sprinting in the direction of Susan's apartment.

The cold night air flooded my lungs. My heart felt like it was about to explode. The street was empty. I ran past two blocks, nearly out of breath, when I realized there were no footsteps behind me anymore.

My phone suddenly buzzed in my pocket. A text notification.

I slowed down, gasping for air as I pulled out my phone.

[Sweetie, where did you go?]

Another message followed immediately: [Your dad and I are waiting at the table for you to come down for dinner.]

Below was an attached photo. In the picture, Mom and Dad sat side by side at the dining table, which was laden with food. They faced the camera, corners of their mouths turned up in stiff smiles.

Dad's head sat intact on his neck, but their eyes were both utterly lifeless.

My finger hovered over the screen. Cold sweat slid down my forehead.

Suddenly, an intense sensation of weightlessness washed over me. The surrounding street, the streetlights, the cold wind—all vanished in an instant.

I snapped my eyes open.

I was sitting on the edge of my bed, gasping for air, my chest heaving violently. I looked around. The familiar wardrobe, the unclosed curtains, the glow of streetlights outside the window.

I was still in my own bedroom.

I'd never gone downstairs. Never climbed out any window. Everything that just happened was a hallucination.

My phone was clutched tightly in my hand, the screen still lit. There was no photo from Mom—just Susan's message thread. A new message sat in the conversation. Sent one minute ago.

[Whatever Mom says, do NOT believe her.]