It had been following their little car for five weeks now. They found that if they ever stopped for too long they'd find it waiting inside, patting the empty passenger seat beside it like an old friend inviting you to join them for one last drink. Wherever they drove it was usually not too far behind, no matter the distance or waters and mountains they put between them and it.
At one point they sold their car, hoping that was what it was attracted to only to see it sitting in their new car at the dealership. Having to explain why they couldn't take the new car was the hardest part of their troubles and in the end they found enough minor issues to be given another car on the spot. They drove away safely knowing they'd bought themselves a little more time.
Eventually it seemed to grow tired of waiting for them to sit beside it and it took to following them at a much shorter distance. They began to notice a thousand little things about it that they never wanted to know and couldn't seem to forget. Like how cracked its grey-blue mouth were and how rigid its tongue was whenever it licked its lips...which it did uncomfortably often.
Everything about it seemed both far too dead and alive to make sense - even its clothing looked like it had been taken straight out of a guide to Victorian mourning. For all they knew it might have lived in that time but something about its listless gaze suggested that this was the latest in a long line of appearances it had taken on.
Perhaps if they kept this up, it would be wearing their face next and staring at another terrified stranger through their own listless eyes, licking their cracked gray-blue mouth and hoping that this new human would sit beside them. Perhaps they'd wake up one day with its face instead of their own - perhaps that was their real face and the one they thought was theirs belongs to someone else.
The more they spiralled and became lost in a haze of panicked thoughts, the closer it got.
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