The Puddle Gaze

The rain was a cold, insistent slap against Finn’s face the moment he pushed through the swinging doors of the diner. Ten hours of frying grease and fake smiles, and this was his reward. The city was a slick, dark beast, its asphalt skin glistening under the jagged scars of neon light. Blues, reds, sickening greens. Everything blurred, everything bled into everything else, especially in the puddles.

He pulled his collar tighter, hunching his shoulders against the wind. His shoes, already soaked through an hour ago, squelched with every step. The distant wail of a siren, muffled by the downpour, was just another miserable sound in a miserable night. Finn focused on putting one foot in front of the other, just get home, just get to his crappy apartment and a warm beer. Maybe a cheap horror movie, something to distract from the real horror of his life.

That’s when he saw it. Not *it* immediately, but a flicker. In a puddle, reflecting the garish sign for 'Lucky Joe's Donuts,' was a face. Not Joe's doughy grin, but something else. Something gaunt, stretched, with eyes that were too big, too dark. He blinked. The face was gone, replaced by the normal, distorted swirl of neon orange and white. Must be the rain, he thought, the way the light fractured, his tired eyes playing tricks.

He kept walking, but now he was watching the puddles. Couldn't help it. They were everywhere, little fractured mirrors of the street. A bus rumbled past, its headlights cutting through the sheets of rain, and in the sudden flare, a puddle near a grimy lamppost showed him a hand. Long, spindly fingers, clawed, like a skeletal branch, reaching up from the murky depths. His breath hitched. He stopped dead. The bus was gone. The hand was gone. Just the lamppost's fuzzy yellow glow, wavering.

Finn felt a cold knot tighten in his gut. Not just from the wet. It was a creeping dread, something he hadn’t felt since he was a kid, hearing strange noises outside his window. He tried to tell himself it was exhaustion, the shitty shift, the one cheap whiskey he’d had before leaving. He rubbed his eyes, hard. The city lights swam behind his eyelids, burning an afterimage.

He started moving again, faster now, trying to avoid the bigger puddles, but they were like eyes following him. Every splash his shoe made felt like a scream in the quiet, rain-soaked night. He glanced down at another puddle, shimmering with the broken reflection of a stripper bar sign – 'The Velvet Touch.' But in the reflection, the sign was upside down, and beneath it, instead of a garish silhouette of a woman, there was a form. Hunched, shadowed, impossibly thin, watching him with a stillness that made his blood run cold. Its head was cocked to the side, just a fraction. Like it was listening.

He bolted. Just ran. The squelch of his shoes became a frantic rhythm, his lungs burning. He didn't look down. Didn't dare. The neon streaks on the wet pavement were a blur of malevolent color. The air tasted metallic, like copper and rain. He could feel his heart hammering, a desperate drum against his ribs. This wasn't some trick of the light. This was... something else. Something that lived in the fractured depths of the city's wet underbelly.

He ducked into an alley, hoping to cut a block, to lose whatever phantom had begun to dog his steps. The darkness here was absolute, broken only by a single flickering dumpster fire at the far end. He leaned against the damp brick wall, panting, trying to catch his breath. Rain dripped from the fire escape above, hitting a small, grimy puddle at his feet. He couldn't help himself. His gaze dropped, drawn by an awful, magnetic pull.

The puddle. It wasn't reflecting the dumpster fire, not really. It was reflecting an alley, yes, but not *this* alley. It was deeper, darker, the walls seemed to pulse with a faint, diseased glow, and something moved at the far end, in the place where the dumpster fire should have been. A low, guttural sound, like wet gravel grinding, seemed to rise from the reflection. And then, slowly, a figure emerged, its form indistinct but undeniably there, staring out of the puddle. It wasn't distorted by the water. It was perfectly clear, perfectly monstrous. Its eyes, two pinpricks of furious, red light, found his.

Finn scrambled backward, tripping over a discarded crate, hitting the ground hard. His hand landed in the puddle, sending icy water splashing. The image rippled, fractured for a second, then snapped back, the red eyes still fixed on him, closer now, impossibly close. He could feel a cold, slimy presence crawling over his fingers, through the water, as if the reflection itself was reaching, trying to pull him down into its own terrible, wet world. He ripped his hand away, scrambling to his feet, eyes wide and bloodshot. The figure in the puddle seemed to smirk, a slow, sickening twist of its undefined face. He couldn't get home. Not like this. He couldn't. He looked up, frantic, but all he saw was the brutal, indifferent city skyline, framed by the pouring, endless rain. The puddle at his feet just kept staring.