The room was filled with laughter and clinking glasses as the co-founder of Daily Prompt stood before a towering cake, candles flickering like tiny sentinels. Friends and family pressed in around him, each face alight with celebration. He raised his knife, took a deep breath, and prepared to cut the first slice of his birthday cake.

As the blade met icing, the edges of his vision trembled. The nearest smile stretched unnaturally, lips parting to reveal rows of impossibly crooked teeth, each sharpened to a cruel point. He blinked hard. When his eyes opened, the faces had returned to normal—Rosie’s warm grin, Uncle Simon’s jovial wink, Aunt Louise’s proud beam. He shook his head, attributing the fleeting terror to recent deadlines and late-night brainstorming at the office.

With polite applause, he sliced the cake. He lifted the first piece to his lips, but the party’s chorus of “Happy Birthday!” twisted into an endless, mocking chant. The words warped into guttural echoes, punctuated by the grinding of enamel as each guest revealed a grotesque maw. Those pink, familiar smiles became cavernous voids, each mouth widening until cheeks bulged, gums retreating to expose fang-like rows of teeth.

A cold sweat beaded on his brow. He swallowed hard, summoning his composure. It was stress, nothing more. He excused himself and drifted toward the hallway, leaning against the wall as his pulse thundered. He closed his eyes. When he reopened them, the party was just that—a birthday party. He inhaled, willing himself calm, then returned to the fray, feigning cheer as he accepted another slice.

Before he could take a bite, something shifted. The flicker of candlelight seemed to stutter, plunging the room into unnatural shadows. He looked down at his hand and gasped: it was twisted, bone-thin, finger joints clicking like dried twigs. He recoiled, but the floor beneath him felt suddenly slick.

His peripheral vision caught Uncle Simon’s approach—only the man’s face was a snarling mask of raw flesh, lips peeled back to expose jawless gums, silver teeth stabbing outward. Simon reached a trembling hand toward him, and for an instant he believed the man sought to embrace him. Then Simon’s tongue—long, glistening—snaked out, slick with red, and he began to nibble, bit by bit, at the man’s own calf.

A strangled cry tore free as he stumbled back. Terror bloomed in his chest, a thorny vine of panic. The walls pulsed, closing in. He fled down the corridor, heart hammering, convinced he was losing his mind. Behind him, the muffled crunch of bone and Simon’s grotesque chuckle echoed in the distance.

Bursting through the front door into the cool night air, he gasped for breath, skin crawling with dread. In the front hall behind him, he heard Aunt Louise’s voice—tender, alarmed—calling his name. Shaking, he told himself it had to be a hallucination: mere overstimulation, exhaustion, stress. He forced a trembling laugh and nodded, dipping his head as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

But as he re-entered the warm glow of the party, his pulse still pounding, he knew the truth: something had taken root in his mind that night. And with every flicker of candle or shadow at the edge of his vision, he feared those crooked smiles and razor teeth would emerge once more—hungry for another slice of sanity.