Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
After dinner, my mom told me to take out my lungs and wash them.
I froze.
Take out my lungs? If you pulled your lungs out, wouldn’t you die?
Mom turned to look at my younger sister.
Lily pushed herself lazily to her feet. “Okay, okay. I’ll wash them now.”
I couldn’t hold it in anymore. “What are you even talking about? Lungs are organs. They’re inside your body. You can’t just pull them out and wash them.”
The second the words left my mouth, Lily tilted her head and stared at me with a deeply strange expression.
Mom frowned too. “But that’s how we’ve always cleaned them.”
As she spoke, she opened her mouth wide and shoved her hand down her own throat.
Then she hooked her fingers inside and dragged out two bloody lungs.
My eyes flew open. The scene in front of me looked like something out of a horror movie.
My mother had just pulled out her lungs.
She… she should have been dead.
But she wasn’t.
With easy, practiced movements, she carried the lungs over to the bathroom sink.
She turned on the faucet. Water ran over the slick organ tissue in a soft, steady stream, washing away grime and revealing broad patches of healthy pink beneath.
As she cleaned them, she sighed. “I really need to smoke less.”
“See? Even if I wash them all the time, there’s still black nicotine stuck on them.”
She lifted the lungs toward me as if she were showing off a stained shirt. “Emma, don’t get lazy on me. If you don’t wash yours, they’ll turn black just like mine.”
Her voice came out muffled and unclear.
Her windpipe was still packed with whatever wet, glistening tissue connected to the lungs.
And in her hand, those lungs were still twitching. Still pulsing.
The sheer blood-soaked horror of it made me wonder if I was dreaming.
So I slapped myself hard across the face.
Pain exploded across my cheek, sharp and numb all at once.
But when I looked up again, Mom was still standing there holding her dripping lungs.
Her expression darkened. “Emma, are you seriously slapping yourself just to get out of washing your lungs?”
From the side, Lily grinned. “Come on, sis. Mom’s doing this for your own good. You should be like me and listen.”
Then, before I could say another word, she did exactly what Mom had done. She crooked her hand, shoved her whole arm down her throat, and yanked out two bloody lungs of her own.
That was when I finally understood.
My family were monsters.
Shaking all over, I blurted out the first excuse I could think of. “I—I need to go pick up a package.”
I just wanted to get out of this house. Out of this nightmare.
But Mom blocked the door.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
She pointed at the pile of deliveries stacked beside the shoe rack, suspicion flickering across her face. “Emma, did you forget? You already brought all your packages in.”
My mind raced. “Then I’m going downstairs to buy something to eat.”
Mom glanced at the dining table. Her expression grew even stranger. “Didn’t you just finish dinner?”
I went stiff.
My panic was so overwhelming that I couldn’t think of a single reasonable response.
Mom reached out to touch my forehead. “Emma, you look pale. Are you feeling sick?”
I tried to dodge away.
But her hand still landed on my forehead. She looked puzzled. “Your temperature’s normal. Why are you talking so strangely today?”
Her fingers felt no different from a normal person’s.
Around ninety-seven degrees. Perfectly ordinary.
And yet… she had just pulled her lungs out with her bare hands.
A terrible thought began to take shape in my mind.
Maybe this monster hadn’t disguised itself as my mother.
Maybe something was living inside my mother’s skin.
My mother was still holding my hand when she dragged me over to the bathroom sink.
She picked up a towel and looked at me expectantly. “Come on. Wash up and get some sleep.”
I was a living, breathing human being.
If I pulled out my lungs and washed them, I would die.
Instinctively, I tried to pull away.
But the moment I met my mother’s eyes and felt them turning colder by the second, an icy chill crawled up my spine.
If I acted differently…
What would the monster do to me?
I didn’t dare test it. I couldn’t bear the consequences if I was wrong.
So I pretended to be sick. I shut my eyes, took a few heavy breaths, and said weakly, “Mom, I really don’t feel well. Let me rest first, okay? I’ll… wash them later. My lungs, I mean. Can I do it later?”
Whatever she was, she still seemed to care about me.
She took me back to my room and asked, “What feels wrong? Should we go to the hospital and have you checked out?”
I forced a faint smile. “Mom, don’t worry about me. If I sleep for a while, I’ll be fine.”
She was oddly considerate.
She even closed the door behind her.
My room fell into complete darkness.
I took out my phone and typed into the browser: My family seems to have turned into monsters. They can pull out their lungs with their bare hands and not die.
There were no results.
It was as if… no one had ever asked a question like that before.
My heartbeat turned frantic.
Could it be that in this entire world, I was the only normal human left?
Then, by accident, I found a related post:
My wife has been acting really strange. She said her head was itchy and went to wash her hair.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
But then I saw her dunk her whole head into boiling water.
One of the replies said: Isn’t boiling water the perfect temperature for washing your hair?
That comment had a ton of likes.
I sucked in a sharp breath.
That meant most of the people in this world had already been inhabited by monsters.
I kept scrolling through the replies.
Then I saw that the user LoveMyWife had posted another comment: Are you all insane? If a person touches boiling water, they’ll blister—or even get scalded to death!
It was the newest comment in the thread.
My hands shook as I sent him a private message: The night is dark.
He replied almost instantly: And full of terrors.
A strange feeling rose in me, like I’d finally found someone on the same wavelength. I quickly messaged back: I was checking if you were real.
I just watched my mom pull out her lungs with her bare hands and stay alive.
I think my family, like your wife, has been taken over by monsters.
LoveMyWife replied: I’m getting ready to take my wife to the hospital.
I typed back at once: Don’t do anything rash. We still don’t know what these monsters are or how they work. You need to hide the fact that you’re different. Don’t expose yourself.
He answered: I love my wife. If some monster is living in her body, then she’s not my wife anymore. I’m going to make that thing pay.
I stared at the screen, helpless. He was stubborn. Reckless, too.
So I exited the private chat and went back to the original post.
Under his latest reply was a wall of new comments, all saying the same kind of thing:
A person can die from boiling water?
Why didn’t I get burned when I touched boiling water? Why did it feel good instead?
Where are you right now?
Tell us where you are?!
A jolt of panic shot through me. I immediately messaged LoveMyWife again: Delete the post right now! Don’t let them find out you’re different from them!
He didn’t reply.
Panic gnawed at me.
I kept scrolling through post after post online, searching every keyword I could think of related to monsters.
That was when I noticed something strange. Lately, a lot of people had been asking questions about their family members suddenly acting… wrong.
One post read: “I think my son is possessed or something. After my dad died, I took him to the crematorium, and when he smelled the bodies burning, he said it smelled amazing. He said it made him hungry.”