Page 24 of The Stuffing Situation

The silence wasn’t empty; no, it was earned.

Traffic passed outside. Life carried on, indifferent, but in that apartment, time had stopped, just long enough for two people to pretend endings didn’t exist.

That goodbye could be postponed.

Just one more night.

11

The Cut That Changed Everything

It was a stupid accident.

A grocery bag tore as Maya set it down, cans clattering across the floor. One rolled toward the edge of the counter, slow motion, sitcom levels of doom.

She lunged and missed, but Felix didn’t. He caught it midair, fast and fluid. But the edge of the counter snagged first. He flinched, just slightly, and a sharp hiss escaped his lips.

Maya straightened, already reaching for him. “Did you—?”

Then she saw it. A thin red line across his palm.

Blood.

Not some kind of oil, or maybe pixel dust. Not a glitching light like she’d seen in a movie before.

Blood.

Actual, red, warm, human-looking blood.

Her heart stuttered. “Felix,” she whispered. “Are you bleeding?”

He looked down slowly, like he was seeing it for the first time. He touched the cut. His fingers came away streaked with red.

“That… is not supposed to happen,” he said softly.

Maya grabbed the dishrag from the sink and rushed to him, wrapping his hand in fabric that was already soaking through. Her hands trembled. “You’ve never bled before?”

“No,” he said, staring at it. “I’ve never been injured before.”

They stared at each other.

The kitchen fell away. Groceries still on the floor, the fridge hummed faintly, and the air was thick with dread, but all that mattered was this:

Her hands were on his, and his blood on hers, and the look on his face, not pain, not fear, but a realization.

“Do you feel it?” she asked.

He nodded. “A little. It’s dull. But it’s there.”

Maya stared at the slow bloom of red beneath the dishrag, heart hammering like it wanted out. Her breath caught, shallow and stuttering, as if her body couldn’t decide whether to scream or sob.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was code. He was pixels. He was supposed to flicker or maybe glitch, but he was not supposed to bleed. To bleed, you needed a beating heart.

And yet, her fingers could feel the heat of him under the cotton. The pulse of something alive, maybe not a heartbeat, she wasn’t willing to let herself believe that yet, but something insistent. Undeniable.

Not a ghost, or a glitch, but something becoming.

She looked up, and the look on his face, quiet, awed, afraid, made her throat close around her next breath.