Glen Creed

The patch pulses on the back of my neck, insistent. More vein than machine. 

I trace steps mapped by a foreign will; each motion fluid, whispered through my bones.

Heel, toe. Heel, toe. Pirouette. Arms rise. Back bends too far. Sweat gathers at my collarbone. None of this is mine. Not the movement. Not the rhythm. Not the want.

#

Patch 7.3 was a prototype — neural bypass via synthetic impulse — built to restore movement for paralysis patients. “Movement first, cognition follows,” the executives promised. My job: overnight diagnostics. Alone. Monitoring telemetry, watching synthetic spines respond to stimuli. Noted drift. Noted failure. Noted beauty.

Then came the dancer.

Patch 7.3 started emitting sequences no one had programmed. Elegant phrases, impossible arcs. Like muscle chasing a memory the mind forgot. The logs marked them as phantom routines. The engineers flagged them as anomalous.

I called her Lila.

That name whispered through my dreams after each corrupted run. She wasn’t in any official records, but I found her buried deep in the archived training data. Trial 6. Failed containment. Died mid-movement. The sensors had captured everything: muscle tension, breath tempo, faltering grace. They’d fed her dying patterns into the learning algorithm.

The phantom routines felt like her voice through static. After months alone in the lab, I answered.

The first night I applied the patch, I blacked out after forty-two seconds.

When I came to, I was kneeling in the observation ring. Bleeding from the knees. Laughing.

The second night, I lasted longer.

I felt her, raw as old hunger, electric as the first time I learned someone’s rhythm by touch.

She shaped my fingers, bent them into positions I’d never held. Curved my lips, arched my spine, drew the breath from my lungs like it wasn’t mine.

I tried to speak; my tongue refused me.

Lila was in my bones. In the pulse at my throat. In the sweat beading above my lips.

Her dance hadn’t ended. It just needed a body.

I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. Every gesture was hers. Every breath smelled of citrus and rain and skin-warmed memory.

I threw the patch away.

The next morning, it was back.

I didn’t remember putting it on.

Last night, I danced against the walls in Lab 7. My elbows split open. My feet tore raw against the testing floor. I heard someone sobbing. Me. Not me.

Lila remembered dying, still unfinished.

#

Now, alone in the lab, I blackout the testing room. Feeds blank, logs blind.

The door seals behind me. The pulsing in my neck grows frantic.

She waits, poised, just beneath my skin.

I raise my arms; she rises with me, breath curling in my throat, rhythm pooling where my heart used to beat.

I begin the first steps, music rising from nowhere, everywhere.

This is not mine.

This is not dance.

It’s the afterlife — writ in flesh and motion.

Glen’s prompts were: In a Laboratory, a Nightshift Worker, Dancing

Glen Creed writes dark fantasy and horror about faith, memory, and what pressure does to a body. He favors tight scenes, clean lines, and images that stick. His work often bolts ritual to technology and asks what survival costs. Off the page, he’s dialing in espresso or reading weird history. He lives in the American Southwest and likes endings that follow you home.