I thought I recovered from the flu until I went to my friend’s house

I don’t really know why I’m writing this.

Part of me thinks it’s stupid. Another part of me thinks if I don’t get this down somewhere, I’m going to start changing details in my head until I convince myself none of it happened.

And before anyone says it, no, I wasn’t on drugs.

I know what I saw.

At least I think I do.

A little over two weeks ago I got sick. Not horribly sick at first, just enough that I called into work and stayed home. I work in IT, so working from home isn’t really a big deal. Most of my job is remote anyway. Half the time I’m answering emails, resetting passwords, or sitting in meetings nobody wants to be in.

The first day honestly felt nice.

I made coffee, logged into everything from my apartment, answered tickets, joined a morning meeting, and spent most of the afternoon playing games while occasionally moving my mouse so Teams wouldn’t show me as away.

By the second day, the flu actually hit me.

It felt like somebody poured concrete into my joints.

My apartment smelled like sweat, cough drops, and microwaved soup. I barely left bed except to shower or refill water. My nose wouldn’t stop running. My head hurt constantly. I kept waking up drenched in sweat with my shirt stuck to me.

Still, nothing felt abnormal.

Just a really bad flu.

The guys kept checking in on me while I was home. We have a group chat that’s been active almost every day since college. Memes, videos, random arguments about movies or games. Normal stuff.

Ryan kept joking that I caught some ancient plague at the bachelor party we’d gone to the weekend before.

Joe told me if I died he was taking my Steam library.

Brandon kept sending me “helpful” advice like “have you tried getting better?”

Normal friend stuff.

By the end of the week I was mostly okay. Still congested. Still tired. But functional.

That Friday Joe asked if I wanted to go eat at Chili’s Grill & Bar with everyone.

I almost said no.

Not because I felt terrible. I was honestly just exhausted from being stuck inside my apartment all week. The walls start feeling smaller after a while when you’re sick. You start noticing every sound your AC makes. Every creak in the building. Every weird shadow in the corner of your room.

I needed to leave.

So I went.

Everything about dinner felt normal.

That’s the part I keep replaying in my head.

Nothing felt wrong.

Ryan was talking about some horror movie he’d watched and trying to convince us it was secretly genius. Joe was making fun of him for taking movies too seriously. Brandon spent almost ten minutes explaining why some keyboard switch nobody asked about was objectively superior.

I remember laughing so hard I started coughing.

Joe pointed at me and went, “See? Patient zero.”

I flipped him off.

That’s the last moment I remember feeling completely normal.

After dinner we ended up going back to Joe’s house.

Joe lived outside town on a piece of property his family owned. The house sat way back from the road surrounded by trees. During the day it looked nice.

At night it felt isolated in a way that’s hard to explain.

No nearby houses. No traffic. No streetlights.

Just darkness outside the windows.

I remember noticing how quiet it was when we got there. The kind of quiet where you suddenly become aware of your own breathing.

We settled into the living room and started talking about putting a movie on.

I sneezed a few times.

Nobody really reacted at first.

Then I coughed.

It wasn’t unusual. I’d been coughing all week.

But this cough felt deeper somehow.

Wet.

Like something caught in my chest had finally loosened.

I grabbed a napkin from the kitchen counter and coughed into it.

When I pulled it away there was dark mucus on the paper.

Not blood.

Darker.

Almost black.

I remember staring at it longer than I should have.

“You good?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Probably just drainage or something.”

Even now that explanation sounds pathetic.

Drainage.

As if that explains what happened next.

Over the next few minutes the coughing got worse.

Not violent at first.

Just frequent.

Every cough felt like something shifting inside my lungs.

I started getting embarrassed honestly. You know that feeling when you realize you’re becoming the center of attention in a room for the wrong reason?

That.

I told them I might head home early.

Then I sneezed again.

Something warm splattered across my hand.

I looked down expecting blood.

It was black.

Thick strands of dark mucus hung between my fingers like oil mixed with phlegm. Some of it dripped onto the floor in long sticky strings.

Ryan immediately stood up.

“Okay dude maybe you need a hospital.”

I tried laughing.

I really did.

But before I could say anything another cough hit me so hard it bent me forward.

And this one hurt.

It felt like something inside my chest pulled itself upward.

I remember grabbing the edge of the counter because suddenly I couldn’t breathe right.

My throat felt clogged.

Not swollen.

Blocked.

Like something thick was moving upward through it.

Joe came over and grabbed my shoulder.

“Matt?”

I tried answering him.

Instead black liquid spilled from my mouth.

Not vomit.

It poured out slowly at first, thick and stringy, hanging from my lips in ropes before splattering onto the hardwood floor.

The smell hit a second later.

Rot.

Wet soil.

Something dead left in summer heat.

Ryan started swearing immediately.

Brandon backed away so fast he knocked over one of the barstools.

I couldn’t stop coughing.

Every cough forced more of the black sludge out of my nose and mouth. It ran down my chin onto my shirt. Thick clumps splattered against the floor and cabinets.

And then my eyes started burning.

That’s the part I can still physically feel when I think about it.

It felt like pressure building behind them.

Like somebody pushing thumbs slowly into the back of my skull.

I remember screaming.

Or trying to.

Joe kept telling me to breathe.

Ryan was saying they needed to call 911.

Then something hot spilled down my cheeks.

Black liquid.

Coming from my eyes.

I could hear Brandon yelling somewhere behind me.

My vision blurred almost immediately. Dark streaks ran across everything I looked at. I kept wiping at my face but it only smeared the stuff everywhere.

I stumbled backward into the living room.

And that’s when I felt it move.

Inside me.

I know how insane that sounds.

But I felt it.

Something shifted underneath my ribs.

A crawling sensation.

Not in my skin.

Deeper.

Like something alive turning over inside my chest cavity.

I collapsed onto the floor.

The coughing became violent.

Every muscle in my body locked up.

I could barely hear the others anymore over the sound coming out of me.

It didn’t even sound human.

Wet choking noises.

Gurgling.

Like I was drowning while still standing on dry land.

Then I opened my mouth to cough again and something came out.

I didn’t fully see it.

I don’t want to pretend I did.

But I saw enough.

Black strands stretched from my mouth to the floor like thick saliva. More sludge poured after it. Mixed in with it was something darker and thicker that moved independently from the liquid around it.

It pulled itself forward.

Fast.

Ryan yelled something I couldn’t understand.

Joe grabbed me under the arms trying to pull me back.

The thing snapped toward movement.

That’s the only way I can describe it.

One second it was near me.

The next it launched across the floor.

Not fully solid.

Not fully liquid either.

It moved like thick black mucus being yanked by invisible wires.

I remember Brandon screaming.

Not yelling.

Screaming.

The kind of scream that doesn’t sound voluntary.

I tried lifting my head.

For a second I saw black strands stretched across the room from the thing to Brandon’s face and chest. He was clawing at himself trying to pull it off.

Ryan grabbed a fireplace poker.

Joe was shouting something.

Then the lights went out.

Not fully.

I think somebody knocked over a lamp.

The room turned dark except for the TV still glowing blue.

Everything after that comes in pieces.

Noise.

Movement.

Wet sounds.

Somebody crying.

Furniture breaking.

I remember hearing Ryan shout my name from somewhere far away.

Then I heard a noise I still can’t explain.

Not loud.

Not monstrous.

Quiet.

Like whispering directly beside my ear.

I couldn’t make out words.

Just overlapping voices speaking too softly to understand.

And underneath it all I kept hearing this horrible wet crawling sound moving around the room.

At one point I think I saw Joe pinned against the wall.

His face looked wrong.

Covered in black streaks around his mouth and eyes.

But I don’t know if that part actually happened.

The last thing I clearly remember is Ryan swinging the poker downward at something near me.

Then everything went black.

When I woke up the house was silent.

For a few seconds I genuinely thought I’d died.

My whole body hurt.

Sharp pain.

I rolled onto my side and immediately threw up onto the floor.

Mostly bile.

Some black liquid mixed in.

The living room looked destroyed.

Furniture overturned.

The TV shattered.

Deep scratches gouged into parts of the hardwood floor like something heavy had been dragged through it repeatedly.

The smell was unbearable.

Blood.

Rot.

That same wet dead smell.

I tried standing and almost collapsed immediately.

My shirt was stiff with dried blood and black sludge. Some of it had dried across my face and neck. My throat burned every time I swallowed.

I started calling for everyone.

Joe. Ryan. Brandon.

Nothing answered.

No cars outside.

No movement upstairs.

Nothing.

I found my phone underneath the couch.

The screen was cracked.

I checked the time.

9:47 AM.

I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious.

I tried calling Ryan first.

Straight to voicemail.

Joe next.

Nothing.

Brandon too.

Nothing.

I kept telling myself they probably left. That they panicked and went to a hospital or the police.

But deep down I already knew something was wrong.

The house didn’t look abandoned after an emergency.

It looked abandoned after violence.

There were black streaks all over the walls.

Not splatters.

Smears.

Like something had crawled through the house leaving trails behind.

Some of them were high enough on the wall that I still don’t understand how they got there.

I found blood in the hallway.

Not much.

Just enough.

One of Joe’s shoes sat near the kitchen island by itself.

His glasses were broken beside it.

I never found the others.

Not in the house.

Not outside.

Nothing.

And the weirdest part is nobody seems to know where they are.

I left before police ever got involved. Maybe that was stupid. Maybe I should’ve stayed.

But I was terrified.

Not just of what happened there.

Of me.

I went back to my apartment and showered for almost an hour.

The black stuff came off eventually.

Mostly.

Some of it had dried underneath my fingernails.

I kept coughing while I showered.

Every single time I looked down into the water I expected to see black again.

But I didn’t.

Just normal mucus.

Normal blood.

I threw away the clothes I was wearing.

I tried sleeping that night.

I couldn’t.

Every time the apartment got quiet I started hearing things.

Not voices exactly.

Movement.

Soft wet sounds.

Sometimes from another room.

Sometimes directly beside me.

The second I actually focused on the noise it stopped.

But if I distracted myself long enough it would start again.

Last night I woke up because I felt something touch my ankle through the blanket.

I tore the covers off so fast I almost fell out of bed.

Nothing was there.

I keep telling myself it’s paranoia.

Stress.

Trauma.

But there’s one thing I can’t explain.

Earlier today I was brushing my teeth when I started coughing again.

Just once.

I looked down into the sink expecting blood.

Instead I saw a thin black strand hanging briefly from my lips.

It moved.

Not much.

Just enough.

Then it slid back down my throat before I could react.

I haven’t stopped shaking since.

I still don’t know what happened at Joe’s house.

I don’t know what came out of me.

I don’t know where my friends are.

And honestly, I don’t think I want to know anymore.

I’m writing this because if something happens to me, at least somebody will have the full story.

Maybe somebody reading this has seen something similar.

Maybe somebody knows what this thing is.

Or maybe writing this is a mistake.

Maybe it spreads the same way a rumor does.

Maybe attention is enough.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I haven’t been alone in my apartment since that night.

Not really.

Because every once in a while, when the room gets quiet enough, I hear something moving around just outside my bedroom door.

Slow.

Wet.

Patient.

Waiting for me to fall asleep.