Novel & Cerita Body Flicker

I collapsed back onto the floor, helpless. The basement light flickered—and kept flickering, like it was about to go out any second.

Huang rebutted sternly. After half an hour of doing the same thing again and again, my arms started to ache and sweat started trickling down my temples. Hours passed and I was finally able to make it flicker. It flickered for a bit. Okay, it might be the wind that passed through one of the opened windows in the cabin that we cracked open because it got too stuffy inside but it flickered and that’s the important thing.

But when he tilted the frame, something strange happened. The image flickered. And for a split second, he saw a different version underneath — dark, grainy, like security footage. Maya wasn’t smiling in that one. She was crying. He nearly dropped the frame. “What the hell…” he whispered. He lifted another photo — same thing. Normal at first glance. But tilt it slightly, and the background shimmered like pixels glitching. He stepped back, heart pounding. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. The bathroom door opened. Steam poured out as Maya stepped into the hall, humming softly. She was drying her hair with a towel, looking effortlessly herself.

The shift was immediately a wall slamming down, his muscles going tense under Alessio’s hands. “I told you,” he said. “It was nothing.” “You don’t black out from nothing.” “Well, maybe I do. Maybe I’m falling apart in a different, hot, mysterious way.” “Noa.” The bathroom light flickered. Both froze. This time the flicker wasn’t electrical. It was rhythmic. Pulsing. Controlled. Three slow blinks. Like someone or something trying to get their attention. “Noa,” Alessio murmured, voice barely above breath, “did the flashes ever come like that?”

Outside, a streetlamp stood on the corner, its light already off in the daylight. I uncapped the pen and let the tip hover in the air, not touching glass or paper, just… *ready.* I thought, *flicker.* Not a command shouted. It's more like a suggestion whispered at reality’s ear. For a second, nothing happened. Then, the bulb in the streetlamp blinked. Once. Twice. A soft, shy stutter of light, like a nervous tick. Then it steadied, off again in the morning sun as if nothing had occurred.

I only had to observe, why Lucien did most of the talking. But then the screen flickered. Just once, like static. I blinked and took a sip of water. The taste burned down my throat. I coughed lightly, thinking maybe it was just dryness. But the burning didn’t stop. My pulse quickened. The words around me began to blur, as though I were underwater. The voices in the room merged into a single, indistinct hum. Something was wrong. I turned away from the screen, trying to steady my breathing, but when I looked back, I saw people gasping, faces turning toward the projection with horror.

Only silence. Fade to black.

I wasn’t going to let anyone make me look insane again. I went back to the monitor and zoomed in on another camera. On the right edge, something glimmered for a second. A metallic flash. Like a blade. The same kind of reflection I’d seen in my nightmares. I replayed the clip over and over, freezing the same second again and again. But when I tried to pause the image, the system froze. The screen flickered, then went black. The beeping of the monitor startled me. The backyard camera had stopped transmitting.

A poor, disposable nobody who had found a convenient ladder and climbed it. "Yesh, that's what I seem to the world." The room held its silence around me, broken only by the sound of my own uneven breathing. Then suddenly— Buzz. The overhead light flickered. I lifted my head. The old bulb flashed once. Twice. Three times, stuttering before settling into something dim and unstable. The room swung between shadow and sickly yellow light with every pulse. My heartbeat quickened. Buzz. The light flickered again, longer this time.

The third floor her floor unchanged. And yet, every time I looked away, the image distorted for half a second. Like static. Like something breathing where there shouldn’t be air. I rewound the feed. Frame by frame. Nothing. Just her. Sitting on the bed. Eyes open. Looking directly into the camera. No movement. No sound. Just that unblinking stare as if she knew where the lens was. The feed crackled. For a heartbeat, her pupils went completely black. Then the static vanished.