The Missing pieces

Title: The Missing Pieces

The package arrived on a gloomy Tuesday. It was small enough to fit in her mailbox.

Rain streaked the windowpane as Clara turned the cardboard box over in her hands. There was no return address, just her name in a tidy, cursive script that felt unnervingly familiar. Inside, hidden in white tissue paper, a lock of daek brown hair, with ashy blonde hughlights was tied with a red ribbon.

She froze, her breath caught somewhere between disbelief and dread. The color, the texture. it was unmistakably hers. She ran her fingers through her hair and paused. A strand near the nape of her neck felt jagged, like someone had sliced it right off.

She laughed, though it sounded hollow. It couldn’t be hers. Could it?

There was no note, no explanation. Just the hair, ribboned and silent. She tossed the box into the trash and locked her door. That night, she dreamt of scissors cutting close to her scalp, their cold steel grazing her skin.

The second package came three days later.

Clara found it on her doorstep in the early morning, sitting in the exact spot where the first had been. She shook it, a faint rattle was heard from beneath the cardboard. Her stomach clenched as she brought it inside. This time, she tore it open with trembling hands.

Inside was a tooth.

It gleamed white, polished to perfection, save for the faint chip on its edge. Her tongue instinctively ran over her molars, searching for the imperfection. Her teeth felt intact, solid. Yet her hands were shaking as she turned the tooth over and over.

A note rested beneath it:

"Protect what you can. It’s already started."

Her mind spiraled. Was this some cruel joke? A stalker? She  should call the police, but they would dismissed her concerns. No threats. No evidence. 

“Just a tooth, Miss Walker. Probably a prank.”

But Clara knew better. She didn’t sleep that night. She couldn’t.

The third package was heavier.

When she peeled back the cardboard, she gasped. Three fingers, two from the left hand, one from the right lay inside, pale and stiff. One still wore a thick gold ring, her initials engraved on the inside with a green gem resting on top of the shiny rim of jagged silver. A ring identical to her own.

Her stomach churned as she stared at them. The nails were trimmed neatly, the skin impossibly familiar. She held her trembling hands up to compare. They were still there, every digit accounted for.

But then she tried to move her left index finger. Nothing.

Her hands convulsed as she tried again, harder this time, but the finger remained limp, useless. She pressed it against the table. No pain. No sensation.

A new note lay beneath the severed fingers:

"You didn’t listen. Look closer at what’s missing."

Her reflection in the window stared back at her, pale and drawn. She ran to the bathroom, heart pounding, and stared at her hands. The fingers attached to her body felt alien now, like more then just dead weight.

Clara didn’t leave her house after that.

She sealed the windows, checked the locks twice an hour, and ignored the growing pile of mail on her doorstep. Every shadow seemed to move. Every creak in the floorboards set her heart racing.

And then came the whispering.

It started faint, barely audible over the hum of her prehistoric refrigerator. But at night, as the house grew silent, it became impossible to ignore.

"It’s not too late."

The voice was hers. Not just similar. identical. It repeated the same words, over and over, like a scratched record: “Stop them before they find you.”

One night, Clara couldn’t take it anymore. She ripped apart her home, searching for speakers, hidden microphones, anything that could explain the voice. But she found nothing. Only silence.

The final package arrived a week later.

It was larger than the others, heavier. Clara didn’t want to open it, but her hands moved on their own, as if possessed by the psychopath sending these packages.

The box revealed her own severed head.

Her own face stared back at her, pale and lifeless, with a jagged cut tracing the curve of her neck. Her eyes were stitched closed, her mouth open in a frozen scream. Her lips sliced from ear to ear, with dry blood still crusting on the sides of her wound. The hair, her hair,was tied back in a neat braid, streaked with gray.

Her knees buckled as she stared into her own dead eyes. She scrambled back, bile rising in her throat, but something stopped her.

A note.

"This is your last chance. The clock is running out. If you don’t stop them now, this is all that’s left of you."

Beside the note was a photograph. It showed a familiar alley, one she passed every day on her way home from work. The timestamp read: Tonight. 8:42pm.

The clock read 8:30 when Clara reached the alley.

Rain slicked the pavement as she scanned the darkness, her pulse hammering. The air was heavy with the smell of damp concrete.

And then she saw her.

A woman stepped out from the shadows, her face a mirror of Clara’s. She looked older, gaunt, with hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes. In her hand, she held a knife.

“I told you to stop them,” the woman said, her voice trembling. “But you didn’t listen.”

“Who are you?” Clara whispered, though she feared she already knew.

“I’m you. What’s left of you.”

The older Clara stepped closer, and the knife glinted under the streetlight. “They’re coming. And if you don’t stop them now, they’ll take everything. Piece by piece.”

Before Clara could ask who “they” were, shadows moved at the edge of the alley. Dark figures loomed, their shapes fluid and inhuman. The air grew colder.

Her older self lunged, shoving the knife into Clara’s hand. “Fight,” she hissed. “Or end up like me.”

Clara’s scream echoed down the alley as the shadows descended towards her.