Wake (2025)

Light Mode

A corpse stirs as dusk settles into the sky, gaunt skin and dry bones twitching with the barest hint of movement. Old blood flows once more into its veins, stirring the once-dead body into motion.

Desiccated eyes open to a dark, lonely room, decorated with heavy drapery and heavily tinted windows to bar the twilit sun access to its chambers. The sole illumination is instead provided by a lone television set up in the far corner of the room, filling it with the idle chatter of a local broadcaster providing the night’s daily news and gossip.

The corpse takes a minute, staring up at the bare ceiling as it gathers its bearings. It soon sits up, ignoring the sound of its bones and ligaments creaking and cracking as it resists its movement, too dry and too dead to function like a normal body would.

It soon slinks away to the nearby bathroom, flicking the lights on to bathe the small room with a cold and blinding light. It takes the opportunity to look at itself in the cracked mirror, a tired face staring back at itself as it watches once-hollow cheeks slowly plump up to normal.

It — he — sighs, chest heaving with movement as he takes his first breath since waking up. Thirty-something years after his first death and the morbid sight of his posthumous face was something that he never quite had gotten used to, a cursed reminder of what was taken from him all those years ago.

He looks at himself again. He looks normal now, albeit still somewhat sullen. Sickly, even, but still normal. Thank God, he thinks. It doesn’t take too long until the rest of his body catches up, dried-out muscle and fat filling in to reveal the form that it once had before its’ owner’s untimely death. As if he had never died in the first place.

So, he continues with the rest of his nightly routine. He washes his face, brushes his teeth. Not that he necessarily needs to, of course. The mundanity of it was a nice distraction from the reality of his apparent unlife, something to ground him against the accursed urge that lurked at the back of his mind.

He’s halfway through brushing his teeth when he feels his mouth aching, fangs threatening to protract out of his gum line as the telltale signs of hunger make themselves manifest. He runs his tongue over them, soft flesh over sharp enamel. He furrows his brows, trying to recall the last time he had fed. It had definitely been at least a few nights ago – he’s not sure when, but the longer he stands there the more he becomes aware of his apparent appetite.

A few minutes or so later and he’s out of his apartment, huddling up in his parka as the cold night air blows through the streets. The thought of feeding lingers in his mind, far too much for his liking.