When Erica’s pantry begins stretching into impossible darkness, she discovers twisted versions of her own family living inside, and they’d like to keep her there forever. Now she must decide how far she’s willing to go to bring her children back before the shelves swallow her whole.
Please enjoy this horror short, part of a series experimenting with artificial intelligence. I fed a location, plot, characters, scenario, and mood into ChatGPT 5 and asked it to outline and craft a story, then used Stable Diffusion XL to create an illustration. How did it turn out? Well, you be the judge.
The morning began with a burnt Pop-Tart and a small fire in the toaster. An omen, Erica decided. Three kids orbited the kitchen like wild moons. Lucy drummed on a cereal box, Caleb tried balancing yogurt on the cat’s head, and Ben, the baby, had discovered the law of gravity by hurling his sippy cup over and over.
Nate popped in, kissed her cheek, and left for work with his usual parting gift: one dirty coffee cup in the sink.
Erica opened the pantry for pasta and froze. She’d been staring into this pantry for nine years. Shelves had always been an arm’s length deep. Now they seemed… further back.
Too many late nights doom-scrolling recipes she’d never make, she told herself. She grabbed the pasta and shut the door.
Two days later, she reached in for graham crackers and brushed against a cereal box she didn’t remember buying. The space beyond it was dim, lit by a yellow glow, stretching like a grocery aisle. Somewhere deeper, something hummed—like an old refrigerator muffled by walls.
“Mom!” Lucy shouted from the living room.
Erica jerked back, grabbed the crackers, and left without looking inside again.
Over the next week, the pantry seemed to rearrange itself. Cans she’d placed in the front now sat several feet back. Boxes vanished, reappeared, or came back as off-brand doppelgängers: Corn O’s instead of Cheerios, Snap! instead of Snapple.
While hunting for peanut butter, she heard laughter from somewhere inside. It sounded exactly like her kids playing, but muffled.
She stepped in, pushing past cereal, walking down a long, narrow corridor lined with towering shelves.
At the far end was a dining table made of pantry boards. Seated there were Nate and the kids, but not quite them. Nate’s grin was too wide, his eyes glassy. Lucy and Caleb chewed with tiny, precise bites, never blinking.
“You’re just in time for dinner,” Nate said, voice too polite, like a commercial.
Erica’s pulse thudded. “I… left the stove on,” she stammered, backing away. A tower of soup cans toppled behind her in a metallic avalanche. She bolted, slamming the pantry door.
The next day, she convinced herself it was a vivid daydream. She avoided the pantry, but food kept vanishing … entire sleeves of crackers gone, juice bottles missing.
At dinner, Lucy complained. “There’s no peanut butter.”
“I bought some last week,” Erica said.
“It’s gone,” Caleb mumbled through spaghetti.
Erica went cold.
That night, Ben’s cry jolted her awake. She padded into the kitchen, expecting to see him on the baby monitor, but the sound came from the pantry.
She pushed inside. The air was cold. Shelves sloped upward into a spiral ramp made of cereal boxes. She climbed, the crying growing louder.
At the top, she found another Erica—thinner, hair immaculate, clothes spotless. Perfect Erica rocked Ben, smiling like a magazine ad for motherhood.
“I’ve been looking after what you’ve lost,” she said. “I could take care of all of them for you.”
“Give him to me.”
Perfect Erica’s smile widened. “You’d have so much more time for yourself.”
Erica lunged, snatching Ben. His wail shattered the stillness. Perfect Erica didn’t resist, just watched, smiling, as Erica scrambled down and out into her kitchen.
The next morning, the peanut butter was gone again. Then, so was Caleb.
They’d been playing hide-and-seek. She counted to twenty, checked closets, the laundry room, under beds. A muffled giggle echoed from the pantry.
When Nate came home, she tried to explain. He peered inside. “It’s normal. Shelves are right here. Maybe you’re… stressed.”
Of course it looked normal for him.
By nightfall, she had a plan. She clipped the baby monitor to her waistband, grabbed a flashlight and rolling pin, and stepped into the pantry.
The air chilled instantly. She pressed deeper, past soup-can towers into aisles looping like carnival rides. She passed duplicate kitchens frozen mid-meal: families mid-bite, crumbs on plates, eyes tracking her without turning heads.
One family was coated in dust, like they’d sat there for years. Another smiled with eyes that blinked sideways.
Her monitor crackled—Caleb’s voice calling, “Mom?”
She followed it to a high-shelf “nursery,” where a perfect duplicate family stood. Perfect Nate hovered by a crib woven from bread baskets. Inside, Caleb’s cheeks were flushed, his eyes glassy.
“See?” Perfect Erica cooed. “Room for everyone.”
Erica gripped the rolling pin. “He’s coming with me.”
Perfect Nate’s smile faltered.
The pantry groaned, shelves shivering. Erica grabbed Caleb, tucking him under her arm like a football, and ran. Aisles slammed shut and opened again, cans cascading in avalanches.
Behind her, Perfect Erica’s voice rang out: “We’ll still be here when you’re ready.”
Erica burst into the kitchen, the pantry door slamming shut behind her.
Caleb clung to her.
The pantry looked… normal. Too normal. It overflowed with food she’d never bought, rows of identical jars, pyramids of cereal boxes.
Nate walked in, dropped his briefcase. “Wow, you stocked up!”
Erica swallowed. “Yeah… stocked up.”
From somewhere inside, muffled behind neat labels and cardboard, came the faintest whisper: Room for everyone.
The pantry door didn’t quite close all the way.
M.A. Kleen 
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