The shuttle doors opened and the sun hit them hard,
golden and slick as oil on water.
Laughter came first—careless, young, theirs—
then the resort rising from the sand like something
that had always been waiting.
Glass and steel stacked to the sky,
a mirage dressed in architecture,
the ocean behind it blue as a bruise.
They didn’t notice how the light bent wrong
at the edges. They were nineteen.
They’d come to disappear.
Ellie squinted up at it. “This looks like a movie,”
and her voice cracked open with wanting.
Inside: marble floors, chandeliers throwing prisms,
a fountain burbling turquoise lies.
Plush sofas like open mouths.
The concierge materialized—smile stretched too far,
eyes bright as wet stones.
“Welcome to Paradise Cove.
We hope you enjoy your stay…” He paused.
“To the fullest.”
The words hung there,
blackening.
Night came slow and wrong.
Their suite sprawled rich and heavy,
carpets deep as confession,
windows facing an ocean that didn’t move.
“Does it feel off to anyone?”
Mia pressed her forehead to the glass.
“Like it’s watching?”
Jake threw a pillow, laughed too loud.
“We’re on spring break. It’s supposed to be perfect.”
Ellie dragged her finger along carved wood.
“There’s something wrong with the grain.
It almost looks like a pattern.
Like it’s breathing.”
They told ghost stories. They drank.
Alex said, “Those buildings we passed—
abandoned, falling apart.
We should explore.”
Mia rolled her eyes but her voice shook.
“And if something’s living there?”
“Then we run,” Ellie said,
and her grin didn’t land.
Sleep came uneasy.
The walls leaned in.
They dreamed of hands—not their own—
pressing down on chests,
drowning in rooms full of other people’s screaming.
Sunlit days curdling to black.
Pleasure souring on the tongue.
Morning arrived heavy as a body.
The furniture had moved.
Faded. Where vibrant had been, muted now—
the colors of things left too long in the dark.
Jake’s head pounded.
Mia whispered, “Someone was in here.
I felt them. Standing at the foot of my bed.”
Ellie looked at Alex.
He hadn’t moved from the window.
Storm clouds bunched on the horizon
like bruises forming.
Outside, the beach was wrong.
Not abandoned—absent.
The ocean had gone still and flat,
holding its breath.
“What’s going on?” Jake’s voice pitched high.
Something behind his words broke.
Ellie grabbed her keys without thinking.
“We need to leave. Now.”
But the lobby doors opened onto corridors
that hadn’t been there before.
The atrium stretched into itself,
marble floors tilting toward a center
that pulled.
Laughter turned to screaming in their throats.
Paradise meant purgatory—
the same thing, spoken different.
They moved deeper into the resort
that had swallowed them whole,
and every door opened onto another door,
and every window showed the same ocean,
and the concierge’s voice echoed from everywhere:
To the fullest. To the fullest. To the fullest.
Something had been waiting since before they arrived.
Something patient.
Something that wore sunshine and luxury
until the grip was sure.
The resort closed around them like a fist,
and the sun kept shining—
perfect, golden, merciless—
as they learned the only way out
was to stop wanting.