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The Hollow Rebirth
An unreleased short story from the book:
Disconnected: The Ageless Curse Dark Tales of Immortality’s Price
Lucas had lived a life of regret. Every passing year felt like a weight pressing down on him—his decisions, his failures, the slow march of time that had eroded his youth and vitality. He was in his late forties when the opportunity to reverse it all fell into his lap. A breakthrough in regenerative biotechnology promised to restore his body to its prime. Youth, strength, vitality—all could be his once again.
The clinic was sleek, modern, and clinical in its approach. It promised more than mere rejuvenation. It was a gateway to a second life. The procedure was experimental, but Lucas didn’t care. His desperation overshadowed any lingering doubts. He thought of his lost potential, the years wasted, and he told himself that this was his second chance. A new dawn.
He arrived at the clinic on a brisk autumn morning, his heart pounding in anticipation. He was greeted by an impeccably polished staff, their white coats gleaming like symbols of hope. Lucas was led into a sterile room, where he was asked to lie down on a table. A soft voice explained the process, how the procedure would utilize cutting-edge gene editing and stem cell regeneration to reverse the aging process, rejuvenating his cells at a molecular level. He would wake up a new man—reborn.
The sedative was administered, and within moments, Lucas was floating in a strange, dreamless void.
When he awoke, it was as though the world had shifted. His body felt lighter, more agile. He stood, feeling a rush of energy flood through him as if he were twenty again. The mirror in the corner reflected a younger version of himself—eyes clearer, skin smoother, muscles firmer. He grinned at his reflection, feeling an overwhelming sense of triumph.
But beneath the surface, something gnawed at him. It was subtle at first—something off, an odd sensation that he couldn’t place. He had expected this transformation to feel like an arrival, a homecoming of sorts, but the reality was cold and unfamiliar.
The first few days passed in a haze of excitement and euphoria. Lucas reveled in his newfound vitality, savoring the way his body responded to exercise, how he could stay up late without feeling drained. He moved like a man twenty years younger. But it wasn’t long before the cracks began to show.
One morning, Lucas awoke to a strange sensation—a cold shiver crawling up his spine as he looked in the mirror. His face appeared… different. Younger, certainly, but there was something wrong. His skin looked stretched, as if it were trying too hard to hold itself together.
When he touched his cheek, his fingers recoiled in shock. It was as if his skin wasn’t entirely his own. Beneath the surface, something shifted—like a writhing mass of flesh, crawling just beneath the surface of his skin. His muscles twitched unnervingly, spasming of their own accord. His eyes widened, and he stumbled back from the mirror, his breath quickening.
“What… what is happening?” he gasped.
The phone was already in his hand, trembling as he dialed the clinic’s emergency number. But the phone line was dead.
In the days that followed, Lucas’s physical form began to betray him in ways he couldn’t understand. His body—rejuvenated at first—began to mutate, to change in grotesque and unnatural ways. His once-perfect skin began to ripple, as though something inside was trying to tear through. Muscles and veins bulged and twisted beneath the surface, like cables caught in a desperate struggle to maintain control.
His reflection in the mirror no longer appeared normal. It warped, distorting into shapes and figures that didn’t belong. At times, he thought he saw other faces staring back at him—faces he didn’t recognize, twisted and contorted. He would blink, and they would vanish. But the feeling of being watched, of being occupied, remained.
It wasn’t just his body that was changing.
Lucas’s mind began to fracture, too. Memories slipped through his fingers like sand. Names, faces, conversations—nothing seemed to stay fixed in his mind. He would sit at his desk, staring at a document, but the words blurred and became unintelligible. Conversations with friends and family became disjointed, their voices unfamiliar, their faces strange.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had been to a family gathering or the last time he had held his wife’s hand. The faces of his loved ones seemed distant, as though they belonged to another life. But the emptiness didn’t stop there. In the quiet of the night, his thoughts turned to darker, more unsettling places.
He began to see shadows—figures standing at the edge of his vision. Faces, twisted and rotting, peered at him from the corners of his rooms. When he turned to look, they disappeared, but the fear remained, crawling beneath his skin. Was it the procedure? Had the biotechnology somehow unlocked a darker side of his mind, one that he couldn’t control?
One evening, while staring at his reflection once more, Lucas noticed something he hadn’t seen before. A dark patch beneath his skin, a place where the flesh seemed to fester, to rot from the inside out. It spread like ink across his body, slow and insidious, the flesh cracking and peeling as it engulfed his torso.
It wasn’t just his appearance that was changing—it was his very essence. His body was no longer his own. His organs felt like foreign objects, his blood running cold as it sluggishly moved through veins that no longer seemed to care. The regenerative process had begun to unravel, spiraling out of control. His cells were regenerating, but not in the way they were supposed to. The mutations were multiplying. His body was a vessel, but for what?
And that was when he understood.
In his desperation, Lucas sought out the clinic again, hoping they could fix what had gone so horribly wrong. But when he arrived, the doors were locked. The building appeared abandoned, the walls crumbling and broken as if it had been left to rot for decades. He tried calling again, but no one answered. No one cared. He was alone.
With each passing day, his body continued to mutate—no longer a vibrant shell of youthful energy, but a grotesque caricature of life. His hands grew thin, fingers elongated and gnarled. His muscles contorted, the tendons snapping as they struggled to stretch and contract in ways they weren’t designed to. He could no longer remember who he was. He could no longer remember his past life, or the man he had once been.
The procedure had worked, in a way. He had reversed his aging. But immortality—true immortality—was not a gift. It was a curse. A slow, decaying eternity, where the body twisted and the mind shattered, where every passing day felt like a descent into madness.
He had thought he was escaping death.
Now, he realized, he was just delaying it.
Only, death would never come.
He would be forced to live forever—trapped in a body that no longer recognized him, his mind slowly eroding, his soul fading into oblivion.
And the worst part?
He couldn’t escape.
His body began to collapse in on itself. The mirrors shattered as he smashed his fists against the glass, screaming in a voice that didn’t sound like his own.
But no one heard him. No one would.
For Lucas had learned the hardest lesson of all:
Immortality wasn’t freedom.
It was a cage.
If you enjoyed this short story you will probably like our latest release available now:
The Ageless Curse: Dark Tales of Immortality’s Price
$3.99
The Ageless Curse: Dark Tales of Immortality’s Price is a chilling collection of 40 dark, terrifying short stories that explore the horrific consequences of humanity’s relentless pursuit of eternal life.
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