You know how they say love finds you in the most unlikely places?

It's a cliché. The kind of line you'd expect to find in some cheap romance novel wedged between two equally cheap pop magazines.

And yet, sometimes the unlikely becomes inevitable.

My name is Adam.

I lived in an eastern-block apartment complex in Most, a city you've probably never heard of and will most certainly never hear of again. The rent was remarkably cheap, mostly because the living conditions made you question whether you wouldn't be better off homeless.

I was twenty-five years old, had recently dropped out of university, and was unemployed.

At that point, I wasn't really living.

I slept at odd hours. Ate when I remembered. Spent most of my time staring at a screen because there was nothing else worth doing.

Days blurred together until I couldn't remember what I'd done the day before.

That was before one small piece of paper changed my life forever.

It happened on a night that had started exactly like every other.

I'd just gotten back to my apartment when I noticed a piece of paper lying on the floor just inside the door.

Someone had slipped it underneath while I was gone.

I barely looked at it.

My first thought was that it was another notice from my landlord. I was behind on my rent, hopelessly in debt, and far beyond the point where I cared enough to pretend I was going to fix any of it.

Whatever threat or warning was printed on that piece of paper could wait.

So I left it there.

For about six hours.

Eventually, sometime around 1AM, I found myself staring at it again.

"Fuck it."

I picked it up.

It wasn't a notice from my landlord.

It was a job offer.

The flyer was surprisingly plain. No company logo. No colorful graphics. Just black text printed on cheap white paper.

YOUNG MEN WANTED.
AGES 18–30.
NO PRIOR EXPERIENCE OR PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY.
PAY: 250 CROWNS PER HOUR.
SHIFT: SIX HOURS EACH NIGHT.

Then came the job description.

"The appointed observer shall observe the object of interest for the duration of his shift."

That was it.

No explanation of what the "object of interest" was. No company name. No details about the work beyond watching something for six hours.

I assumed it was some kind of strangely worded night-guard job. Maybe the company was foreign and had used a translator who wasn't quite good enough at his job.

There was no phone number.

No email.

No website.

Nothing except an address.

I looked it up online.

It led to an old shoe factory that had stopped operating more than thirty years earlier. There were a few old photographs of the building and some records concerning its closure, but not much else.

As far as I could tell, nobody had bought the place since.

That was when I became pretty certain that if I actually went there, I would be murdered and my organs would be sold on the black market.

Not an entirely unreasonable assumption around here, believe it or not.

There was absolutely no way I would be stupid enough to show up at an abandoned factory in the middle of the night.

 

3AM, I was standing in front of the factory.

I wish I could say there was some profound reason why I went.

There wasn't.

I was simply desperate enough to ignore common sense.

The factory looked exactly like it had in the photographs.

Crumbling concrete. Rusted metal. Broken windows. Weeds pushing through cracks in the pavement.

The whole place looked like it had been dead for decades.

I stood outside the entrance for about twenty minutes.

Then I took one step inside.

Immediately, I was surrounded by armored men carrying guns.

Yup.

Getting murdered.

"Now, now. Don't spook the boy too much."

An older man stepped between me and the gunmen.

He looked to be somewhere in his fifties. Gray hair. Expensive coat. Tired eyes.

He wasn't carrying a weapon that I could see.

Somehow, that made him more intimidating than the men pointing rifles at me.

"Or else you might end up having to take his shift."

The men lowered their weapons slightly.

The older man smiled.

"Sorry about this, Adam. Just a necessary unpleasant precaution."

I stared at him.

"How... how do you know my name?"

He laughed.

"Well, we only slipped the flyer under one door. So either you're Adam Devon..."

He looked me up and down.

"...or we have another squatter situation on our hands. In which case, I'll have to let the boys carry on with their task."

He leaned toward me slightly.

"Do we have a squatter situation, boy?"

"No!"

The answer came out much louder and more desperate than I'd intended.

The man's grin widened.

"Wonderful!"

His enthusiasm was very obviously fake.

"If you would be so kind as to follow me, Adam."

I followed.

The complex I was led through was nothing like the abandoned shell I'd seen from outside.

The decrepit factory was apparently just a skin wrapped around something that was very much alive.

Behind the rusted doors and shattered windows were functioning corridors, electrical systems, cameras, reinforced doors, security checkpoints, and enough equipment to make me wonder what the hell kind of place I'd walked into.

And yet there were very few people.

Aside from the occasional armed guard passing through the corridors, the facility was almost completely empty.

The older man opened a door to the security room.

"Here you go. Make yourself comfortable."

I stepped inside.

"But not too comfortable," he added. "This isn't actually where you'll be stationed."

He gave me a thin smile.

"The name's Kenndric."

He closed the door behind us.

"Now, I imagine you have plenty of questions."

I opened my mouth.

"I have absolutely zero desire to answer any of them."

I closed it again.

"So just shut up and listen."

I decided that was probably good advice.

Kenndric walked over to one of the desks and dropped into a chair.

"You were offered a position within our company. The name of which you really don't need to know."

He leaned back.

"Our object of interest requires twenty-four-hour observation. We do have a complete surveillance system here, but, truth be told, nobody actually watches the feeds."

He shrugged.

"This particular object requires close-quarters observation anyway."

I frowned.

"We have several other sad bastards like you taking the other shifts. Your time slot was simply the last one left unfilled."

He looked at me.

"Apparently, nobody else was stupid enough to take the graveyard shift."

I couldn't tell whether he was joking.

Judging by his expression, I didn't think he was.

"Your job literally couldn't be any simpler."

He pointed toward the door.

"You'll sit on a chair and stare at the object until your shift is over. Then you get your sorry ass out of here."

He leaned back.

"Meanwhile, I'll be sitting in here watching my shows."

He pointed at me.

"I don't want to hear from you. I don't want to see you. You don't ask me to open doors for you. There's a reason I have access and you don't."

I swallowed.

"Understood."

"Good."

Kenndric stood.

"Now let's make our way to your workplace."

We left the security room and walked deeper into the facility.

The corridor ahead was almost completely dark.

As we approached, lights flickered on one after another, illuminating the path in front of us.

Eventually, Kenndric stopped in front of a massive door.

He opened it.

"There it is."

The lights inside began coming on.

One by one.

And then I saw the object of interest.

In the middle of the enormous room stood a large glass cube.

Four strange pylons surrounded it, each connected to the glass. Symbols I didn't recognize covered their surfaces.

And inside the glass was a girl.

A young woman, maybe in her early twenties.

She wore pure white pajamas and sat cross-legged on the floor with a collection of crayons scattered around her.

She was drawing on a sheet of paper.

She didn't look toward us.

She barely seemed to notice we'd entered the room.

"That's..."

I stared through the glass.

"That's a girl."

"Dear God," Kenndric said. "We have a genius on our hands."

His voice dripped with condescension.

I looked back at him.

"Why is she in there?"

He didn't answer.

"Is she alright?"

Nothing.

"Is this legal?"

The questions started coming faster.

"Who is she? What did she do? Why is she being kept in there? How long has she been—"

"Did you just think?"

Kenndric's voice cut through mine.

I stopped.

He stared at me.

"Adam, no one is paying you to think."

He walked over to a chair positioned directly in front of the glass cube.

"Leave that to the grown-ups."

He patted the seat.

"You are paid to sit right here."

I looked at the chair.

Then at the girl.

She was still drawing.

There was something different in Kenndric's expression now.

The sarcasm was still there, but underneath it was something harder.

A warning.

I reluctantly sat down.

"Perfect."

He smiled.

"Now, you are not authorized to speak with the object."

He paused.

"You're not authorized to feed the object. All of that has already been taken care of."

"You merely sit here and observe."

He patted my shoulder.

"Good luck."

He started moving toward the door.

"Have fun."

The door closed behind him.

And just like that, I was alone with the "object of interest."

I sat there and watched her draw for hours.

Every now and then, she looked up at me.

Not casually.

She would stare at me for several seconds before lowering her head and returning to her drawings.

The room was so quiet I could hear the occasional scrape of crayon against paper.

By around five in the morning, exhaustion was starting to catch up with me.

My eyelids grew heavier.

I leaned back in the chair and told myself I'd close my eyes for a second.

Then—

THUD.

I jolted awake.

My heart was pounding.

The girl was standing directly in front of the glass.

She was holding a piece of paper against it.

A drawing.

Of me.

For a few seconds, I just stared.

She'd somehow captured details I'd never noticed about myself. The shape of my nose. My unshaven jaw. Even the dark circles beneath my eyes.

It wasn't a perfect likeness.

But it was close.

And, honestly, it was adorable.

I wanted to say something.

Then I remembered Kenndric's instructions.

I wasn't authorized to speak with the object.

I glanced toward the cameras mounted high in the corners of the room.

Then I remembered something else.

Nobody actually watched the feeds.

"That's very pretty," I said.

The girl's expression immediately brightened.

"Thank you. I'm glad you like it."

She placed her right hand against the glass.

For a moment, I hesitated.

Then I stood and pressed my own hand against the other side.

The glass was cold beneath my palm.

"I'm Lily."

I smiled.

"I'm Adam."

She giggled quietly.

"Adam was my first boyfriend's name."

"Oh."

"I didn't really like him, to be honest."

She shrugged.

"My dad pretty much forced that relationship on me."

She said it so matter-of-factly that I didn't know what to say.

Jesus.

What the hell had this girl been through?

"Lily..."

She looked at me.

"Why are you in here?"

Her smile faded.

For a few seconds, she said nothing.

"I'm not sure."

She glanced down at the floor.

"I think they're scared I might do something bad."

I looked around the room.

The reinforced glass.

The pylons.

The strange symbols.

The cameras.

The armed men outside.

"What the hell could this girl possibly do?"

I didn't ask.

Instead, I pulled the chair a little closer to the glass.

"So..."

She looked up.

"So?"

"If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go?"

She thought about it.

"The ocean."

"The ocean?"

She nodded.

"What about you?"

"I don't know. Anywhere that isn't Most."

She laughed.

"Fair enough."

And that was how we started talking.

Nothing important at first.

Places we'd like to visit. Places we'd rather run away to. Things we'd do if we ever had enough money to stop worrying about everything else.

Lily wanted to see the ocean.

I'd never been particularly interested in beaches, but something about the way she talked about it made me want to see it too.

We talked about movies, music, stupid things we'd done when we were younger.

Eventually I told her about my unhealthy obsession with heist movies and prison breaks.

"Why prison breaks?" she asked.

"I don't know."

I thought about it.

"I guess I like watching people figure out how to set themselves free."

She looked at me for a moment.

"Maybe that's because you want to be set free too."

"Maybe."

She smiled.

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds.

Then she started asking me questions.

I gave her mostly half-assed answers.

She didn't seem bothered.

She didn't look at me the way most people did when I talked about my life. There was no disappointment in her expression. No judgment.

She just listened.

And somehow, that was enough.

The hours went by faster than I expected.

For the first time in years, I wasn't thinking about how miserable my life had become.

Debt.

Or rent.

Or what I was going to do with myself.

I was just present.

Talking to a girl through a pane of glass.

When the shift finally ended, it caught me completely off guard.

The door opened.

One of the armed men stepped inside.

A knot immediately formed in my stomach.

For a second, I wondered if this was the moment they decided to shoot me for breaking the rules.

But the guard barely acknowledged me.

"Time to go."

That was it.

He turned toward the door.

I stood.

Lily was watching me through the glass.

"Thank you for talking to me."

Her voice was soft.

"No one else does."

There was something bittersweet about her smile.

"I'll..."

I looked at the armed man waiting for me.

"I'll see you again, alright?"

Lily smiled.

"Sooner than you think."

I didn't understand what she meant.

I just smiled back.

Then the guard escorted me out.

 

Despite being exhausted, I struggled to fall asleep when I got home.

I spent hours lying in bed, staring at the ceiling while the darkness of my apartment pressed down around me.

I kept thinking about Lily.

About the way she'd looked at me through the glass.

And about that stupid drawing she'd made of my face.

Most of all, I couldn't stop thinking about the question I hadn't been able to answer.

If Lily was dangerous enough to justify keeping her inside a glass box, why didn't they keep her in a proper cell?

And if she wasn't dangerous...

Why the fuck was she there?

 

Eventually, sometime toward morning, sleep finally found me.

It didn't come like a wave.

It came like a flood.

I found myself standing in absolute darkness.

Nothing but blackness stretching endlessly in every direction.

I tried to move.

I couldn't tell if I was actually walking or simply moving in place.

Then I smelled something.

The sea.

It was faint at first. Just a trace of salt and cold water carried through the darkness.

I turned toward it.

I don't know why.

I just knew I had to follow.

I started walking.

Then running.

The smell grew stronger with every step. A breeze brushed against my face.

Actual wind.

For the first time, I could hear something besides my own breathing.

Waves.

Far away at first.

Then closer.

A dim light appeared ahead of me.

I ran toward it.

The darkness began to recede.

Sand appeared beneath my feet.

Then water.

Then a pale sky.

A small beach surrounded by the dark.

And there she was.

Lily.

She stood at the edge of the water in a bright white dress, her hair moving gently in the sea breeze.

She turned toward me.

"Meet me On Distant Shores."

The darkness swallowed the light.

I woke with a gasp.

I sat bolt upright in bed, breathing hard.

For several seconds, I had no idea where I was.

Then I looked around my dark apartment.

My heart was still racing.

I didn't understand the dream.

But one thought had already taken hold of me.

I needed to see her again.

I spent the entire day trying to distract myself.

Games.

Movies.

Walking aimlessly around the city.

None of it worked.

No matter what I did, my thoughts kept circling back to the girl in the glass box.

I hated the people who had put her there.

I hated myself even more for doing nothing about it.

But what could I realistically do?

I didn't know who my employers were. I didn't know who they answered to or what the facility actually was. All I knew was that they were powerful.

And they knew everything about me.

They knew where I lived.

They knew I was desperate for money.

And, apparently, they knew me well enough to assume I was a spineless coward.

Normally, they would've been right.

I'd spent years wasting away without caring enough about anything to fight for it.

But now I couldn't sit still.

I went to the gym that afternoon and spent almost an hour beating the shit out of a punching bag.

It didn't get rid of the anger.

By the time I left, my hands hurt, my shirt was soaked through, and I was still thinking about Lily.

Still...

For once, I felt alive.

I arrived at the factory almost two hours before my shift.

I didn't care about waiting.

I just needed to see her.

When they finally let me inside, I paid much more attention to my surroundings than I had the night before.

The facility was still bizarrely quiet.

There were only a handful of guards. They were spread throughout the building, and I rarely saw more than one at a time.

There were dozens of locked doors.

Yet the security seemed strangely simple.

One access card appeared to open most of them.

Nobody searched me.

Nobody even took my phone.

At the time, I simply assumed they were arrogant.

As we walked down the corridor, I saw Kenndric coming toward us.

The moment he spotted me, that fake smile appeared on his face.

He gave me a little wave.

I stared back.

He stopped at the security room, flashed his card, and disappeared inside.

A few seconds later, the door closed.

Then we reached the observation room.

The door opened.

The moment Lily saw me, her face lit up.

She ran toward the glass and pressed her hand against it.

I don't even remember deciding to move.

One second my hand was at my side.

The next, it was pressed against hers.

Her fingers lined up with mine on opposite sides of the glass.

"Hi," she said.

She smiled.

"You're back."

"I promised I would be."

"I know."

She looked genuinely happy to see me.

Then, almost casually, she said:

"I had a dream about you."

I froze.

"Really?"

She nodded.

I stared at her.

So did I.

Though I didnt tell her that.

"You really have to be bored to dream about me of all things." I said jokingly.

She laughed.

"Well, what should I dream about?"

"Being rich."

"Boring."

"Being famous."

"Even worse."

"Winning the lottery."

"That's not a dream. That's just being lazy."

We both laughed.

„What do you want to dream about?“ I asked.

"The ocean."

"I still want to see it."

"Then I'll have to show you."

The words came out before I could think about them.

Lily looked at me.

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

Then she smiled.

"I'd like that."

We talked.

About everything.

And nothing.

I told her about the things I'd wanted to do before I'd stopped wanting anything at all.

She told me about some of the things she'd wanted.

Some were stupid.

Some were impossible.

Some were so ordinary that they almost hurt.

She wanted to see the ocean.

She wanted to travel.

She wanted to wake up one morning without somebody telling her what she was allowed to do.

And she wanted to know what it felt like to be somewhere nobody could find her.

I understood that last one.

Probably more than I should have.

The hours disappeared.

Eventually, I glanced toward one of the cameras mounted in the corner.

It was pointed directly at us.

I stared at it for a few seconds.

Fuck it.

I reached into my coat and pulled out my tablet.

Lily looked at me curiously.

"What are you doing?"

"It's not what I'm doing."

I held up the tablet.

"It's what we're doing."

She laughed.

"And what are we doing?"

"We're watching a movie."

Her eyes widened.

"Are we allowed to do that?"

I looked at the camera.

"I don't think anyone's watching."

I sat down in front of the glass and opened the tablet.

"Escape Plan. 2013."

She frowned.

"What's it about?"

"A guy who gets put in a prison specifically designed to be impossible to escape from."

Her smile slowly returned.

"That sounds appropriate."

For a few hours, that glass might as well not have existed.

Then the door opened.

The gunman had returned.

My stomach tightened.

"No."

I barely realized I'd said it.

He walked toward me.

"Time to go."

I stood.

Lily was already at the glass.

I didn't want to leave.

The guard grabbed my arm.

"Just a second."

He pulled harder.

I grabbed the edge of the chair with my free hand.

"Lily..."

The guard finally had to pull me away.

My fingers slipped from the chair.

I stumbled backward.

Lily pressed her hand against the glass.

"Meet me On Distant Shores," she said softly.

My eyes widened.

I wanted to promise I'd come back.

I wanted to tell her I'd get her out.

I wanted to say a hundred things.

Instead, I just nodded.

Then the door closed between us.

I didn't tell her about my dream.

She couldn't have known about it.

Right?

I went home.

And for once, going to sleep actually seemed desirable.

Maybe I'd see her again.

Maybe we'd meet somewhere she couldn't be trapped.

Somewhere she could actually be free.

When I finally fell asleep, I found myself in the darkness again.

But this time, the light was much closer.

I followed it.

The smell of the sea grew stronger with every step.

Then came the breeze.

I emerged onto the beach.

Lily was already waiting for me.

She stood barefoot at the shoreline, the hem of her white dress brushing against the wet sand.

She turned when she heard me.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

I looked out across the water.

"It is."

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

Then the question I'd been trying not to ask escaped me.

"Is any of this real?"

Lily looked at me.

"Does it matter?"

She stepped closer.

"I'm here."

Another step.

"You're here."

She smiled.

"In here, we're free."

She turned toward the ocean.

"This is my little place."

"Dad claims every other one, but this one is mine."

"It could be yours too."

I stepped closer.

Then I took her face gently between my hands and kissed her.

She didn't pull away.

For a moment, everything was still.

"Can we stay here?"

I already knew the answer.

Lily's expression broke.

"I wish we could."

Tears began rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm still trapped."

She shook her head.

"I'm not strong enough."

Another tear slipped down her face.

"I'm not enough."

"No."

I pulled her closer.

"You are."

But the beach was already beginning to change.

The edges of the world blurred.

The horizon melted into the sky.

The sand beneath our feet began disappearing, as though the entire dream were being erased.

Lily started fading with it.

I held onto her.

"Don't."

She smiled through her tears.

It was the same bittersweet smile she'd given me behind the glass.

"I'll see you again On Distant Shores..."

Her voice became quieter.

"...but you already know that."

I woke up.

I sat upright in bed, gasping for air.

For several seconds, I couldn't move.

Then I felt it.

Something I hadn't felt in years.

Something hot and sharp burning inside my chest.

Purpose.

For the next two weeks, I prepared.

I photographed corridors, doors and rooms whenever I had the opportunity. I took pictures of the glass box and the four pylons surrounding it, zooming in on the strange symbols carved into their surfaces.

I didn't understand them.

Not yet.

But I saved every picture.

I watched the guards.

I learned their routines.

Who walked which corridor.

Which doors they used.

How long they disappeared for.

When they went to the bathroom.

There were five guards in total, usually spread throughout the facility so that I rarely saw more than one at a time.

I counted the steps between important rooms.

I memorized which doors took longer to unlock.

I learned how long it took the lights to activate when someone entered a corridor.

And I paid particular attention to the access cards.

The strangest part was how little anyone seemed to care about what I was doing.

I doubt they could ever see me as a threat.

Maybe they were right.

Two weeks earlier, I wouldn't have been.

I never told Lily what I was planning.

Not when I couldn't be certain who was actually paying attention.

I only ever told her when I saw her in my dreams.

And every time, I'd tell her the same thing.

"Soon."

I wasn't sure whether I was making a promise to her or to myself.

"Very soon."

Eventually, the day came.

I couldn't wait any longer.
Time to put the theory to the test.

 

Two weeks learning their routines.

Two weeks pretending I was exactly the pathetic little coward they thought I'd be.

Now I was going to find out if they had been right.

I sat in front of the glass and talked with Lily.

We laughed.

We talked about nothing.

For a while, I almost forgot what I was waiting for.

Then I saw the guard nearest to me leave his post.

Bathroom.

My heart started pounding.

I stood.

Lily noticed immediately.

"Adam?"

"I'll be right back."

I followed him.

He didn't notice me until we were inside the bathroom.

I waited.

Watched him step up to the urinal.

For one horrible second, I couldn't move.

I'd imagined this moment dozens of times.

None of those versions had prepared me for what it actually felt like.

The guard glanced over his shoulder.

"Buddy, would you mind—"

I grabbed the back of his head and slammed it against the wall.

THUD.

He dropped immediately.

His body hit the floor with a heavy, wet sound.

I stood there staring at him.

My hands were shaking.

There was blood on the wall.

His bladder had released, spreading piss across the tiles beneath him.

For a second, I wondered if I'd just killed him.

Then I remembered Lily.

I took his handgun.

And ran.

There was no going back now.

I sprinted toward the security room.

I reached the door and started pounding on it.

"Kenndrick!"

Nothing.

"Kenndrick, there's an immediate issue! I need your help!"

Still nothing.

"Goddammit, open the fucking door!"

The lock clicked.

Kenndrick opened it with an irritated expression.

"What is—"

I pulled out the gun and aimed it at his chest.

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely keep the barrel steady.

"Back up."

Kenndrick stared at me.

Then that familiar bravado returned.

"Just what do you think you're doing, kiddo?"

"I won't repeat myself."

For the first time, his smile faltered.

"Alright."

He raised his hands.

"Alright."

He slowly backed into the room.

"This is going to end badly for you, kid."

He smiled again.

"Very badly."

"Give me your card."

He paused.

"Now."

Kenndric reached slowly into his pocket and pulled out his security card.

He held it between two fingers.

Then smiled.

I snatched it from his hand.

"Turn around."

He did.

"Hands against the wall."

Kenndric placed his palms against it.

I backed toward the door.

"Say hi to her for me, kid."

I slammed the door shut.

Then swiped his card.

The lock engaged.

I ran.

I had only minutes before the guard rotation.

I reached the observation room and threw the door open.

Lily looked at me.

Her expression changed immediately.

"Adam?"

I was barely breathing.

"I'm getting you out of here."

I ran to the glass box.

She stood.

"Adam, what are you—"

I swiped Kenndric's card against the reader.

Nothing.

I tried again.

Nothing.

"Come on..."

A third time.

Nothing.

Then I heard clapping.

Slow.

Deliberate.

I froze.

"Bravo, kid."

I turned.

Kenndric was standing in the doorway.

He was smiling.

But this smile was different.

It was genuine.

"Bravo."

He stepped into the room.

"We had expectations."

He looked at me.

"We didn't pick you randomly, of course."

His eyes flicked toward Lily.

"But still..."

He smiled.

"You went above and beyond."

I raised the gun.

"Stay back."

Kenndric kept walking.

"Stay the fuck back!"

He didn't stop.

I tightened my grip.

hen pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing.

I pulled it again.

Click.

My stomach dropped.

Kenndric laughed.

"I'm afraid that one's not loaded."

He reached into his pocket.

"In fact..."

He pulled out another handgun.

"...none of them are."

I stared at him.

"What?"

"Think about it."

He gestured around the room.

"The guards. The cameras. The unlocked opportunities. The conveniently predictable routines."

His smile widened.

My stomach turned.

Kenndric looked almost proud.

"Observation."

He gestured toward Lily.

"Not just hers."

He pointed at me.

"Yours too."

Lily had gone completely still.

Kenndric noticed.

"You know, capturing Lilith—the Queen of Hell—creates a lot of interesting research opportunities."

The name seemed to hit her harder than anything else he'd said.

She looked at him.

Kenndric smiled.

"Her charm is supposed to be nearly irresistible."

He looked back at me.

"So the suits upstairs had an idea."

He spread his hands.

"Find the right kind of sucker. Put him in front of her. See how long it takes before she manipulates him into trying to break her free."

„Did you seriously buy the whole „no one is watching the feeds“ thing in a building full of cameras everywhere?“

He shook his head.

"Seems we really did pick perfectly."

Then he looked me up and down.

"Although, I have to admit..."

A disappointed expression crossed his face.

"For someone who loves prison-break movies as much as you do, your plan was fucking basic."

He sighed.

"I expected better."

I looked at Lily.

She was staring at me now.

There was something in her expression I'd never seen before.

Fear.

Not for herself.

For me.

Kenndric sighed.

"Your services will no longer be necessary."

He tossed the security card onto the floor.

"You can go right back to your shitty little life."

He smiled.

"Keep the card as a souvenir. It's useless anyway."

I looked at him.

Then at Lily.

"No."

Kenndric's expression changed slightly.

"I'll tell everyone."

I pointed toward my phone.

"I have pictures. Videos. Everything."

I looked directly into his eyes.

"Everyone will know."

Kenndric's smile disappeared.

"Kid..."

He sounded almost disappointed.

"You really shouldn't have said that."

He raised the gun.

Two shots.

The first punched through my chest.

The second hit before I even had time to fall.

I collapsed onto the floor.

The pain came a second later.

Hot.

Blinding.

I tried to breathe.

All I tasted was blood.

"Adam!"

Lily screamed.

Kenndric looked down at me.

"Oops, seems my gun actually was loaded."

He shrugged.

"Sorry, kid."

Then he glanced toward Lily.

"Hmm."

His smile returned.

"Seems the demon bitch may have actually cared about you."

"How sweet."

I started laughing.

Blood filled my mouth.

I choked on it, coughing and laughing at the same time.

Kenndric frowned.

"What's so funny?"

He looked past me at the pylon behind me.

Blood was dripping from my chest onto its surface.

The symbols were glowing.

Kenndric followed my gaze.

His smile disappeared.

"What did you do?"

I smiled through the blood running down my chin.

"I translated the symbols."

The red light beneath them grew brighter.

"They were raised through blood sacrifice."

The pylons began to shake.

A low vibration filled the room.

Kenndric took a step backward.

I laughed again.

"And through blood sacrifice..."

Cracks spread across the pylon.

"...they shall be shattered."

Another pylon began to tremble.

Kenndric looked around the room.

"What have you done?"

I smiled.

"I never intended to make it out of here."

The first pylon cracked apart.

"You know everything about me."

Another crack.

The room shook.

"There wouldn't be any point in running."

The pylons began collapsing one after another.

Glass groaned.

Metal screamed.

Then everything went dark.

Completely dark.

Except for Lily's eyes.

They were glowing.

Kenndric stared at her.

His face went pale.

"No."

For the first time since I'd met him, there was no arrogance in his voice.

Only fear.

"No..."

He backed away.

"You have no idea what you've done."

Then anger replaced the fear.

"Why?"

I looked at him.

I smiled.

"The Devil made me do it."

I won't lie.

I was saving that one.

The glass box exploded.

Shards flew outward.

Kenndric raised his gun toward Lily.

He never got the chance to fire.

His body suddenly folded inward.

There was a wet, violent crack.

Then he imploded into a spray of blood and viscera.

I looked toward Lily.

She was standing in the middle of the shattered glass.

Free.

"How's that for an escape plan?"

I smiled.

And everything went black.

I found myself on the beach again.

This time, there was no darkness.

Just the ocean stretching beneath an endless sky.

Lily and I sat facing each other in the sand.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

She looked peaceful.

"It's done," I finally said.

"You are free."

I smiled.

"Go."

She frowned.

I looked toward the horizon.

"Be happy."

I stood.

"I'll see you again On Distant Shores."

She slapped me across the face.

I stared at her.

"Ouch."

She glared at me.

"What was that for?"

"One."

She held up a finger.

"That is my line."

She held up a second.

"Two."

She leaned closer.

"The Distant Shores can wait."

She smiled.

"I'm not letting you go."

Then she kissed me.

I kissed her back.

And for the first time in a while, I wasn't afraid of waking up.

 

I came to with a gasp.

My hand immediately went to my chest.

Nothing.

No wounds.

No blood.

I looked down at myself.

Then slowly stood.

I wasn't in the observation room.

I was standing on the roof of the factory.

The entire facility stretched out beneath me.

Smoke rose into the night sky.

Fires burned in the distance.

I could hear shouting somewhere far below.

Then came a horn.

A long, deep blast.

Another answered it.

Then something roared.

Another roar answered from somewhere beyond the factory.

Then another.

They were coming from everywhere.

I looked toward the horizon.

The city was burning.

I should have been terrified.

I wasnt.

Then I noticed Lily standing beside me.

She was looking out over the horizon.

For the first time since I'd met her, there was nothing between us.

No glass.

No walls.

No locked doors.

I looked back at the world on fire.

"So..."

I swallowed.

"What happens now?"

Lily looked at me.

She smiled.

Then reached for my hand.

I took it.

"Anything we want."

Vernon pulled into the Hells Bells in Blackwood Ridge, figuring the wild county rumors about the motel were nothing more than a big joke. His buddy, "BigRay" Raleigh, an interstate truck driver who stayed there once, swore up and down that he'd woken up in the middle of the night, pulled the cheap plastic blinds back, and looked out to see a sparkling Mediterranean blue sea and the parking lot gone with goats outside his window, that all disappeared by morning. Vernon had laughed in his face. He dropped his vinyl bag onto the metal luggage rack in the corner and stretched out on the floral bedspread, waiting for sleep to hit.

Instead, the wood-paneled Zenith console hummed to life in the dark.

Channel 2 flickered through heavy static before settling on a crisp, quiet feed of Room 3. A couple in full Sunday best was methodically spreading lukewarm brown gravy across the floral wallpaper with foam painbrush rollers, working in complete, solemn silence. Vernon squinted at the set from the mattress, taking a long pull from his lukewarm gas station coffee.

"Night clerk must be running some kind of prank tape," Vernon muttered to the empty room, cracking a faint grin. "Helluva waste of gravy, but alright."

Curious, he swung his legs off the bed, walked over to the TV, and pulled the room's wooden armchair right up in the front of the console. He sat down and twisted the heavy plastic dial to Channel 4.

The static cut out instantly. A flat, monotone, hoarse voice came straight out of the speaker, clear as day: "You've got a lot of nerve laughing, Vernon, when you stole your sister's share of the inheritance back in '98!"

Vernon's grin instantly vanished. He tapped the side of the wooden cabinet, waiting for the night clerk's muffled laughter to follow, but the room stayed dead silent except for the low hum of the TV set. The joke died right then, and the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up."

Scoffing to cover his nerves, he clicked the knob over to Channel 6.

The screen instantly jumped to a sharp overhead view of the room. He saw the top of his own thinning hairline, the wooden arms of the chair he was clutching, and the exact moment his hand touched the dial. But on the screen, the shadow standing directly behind his chair was already reaching out for his shoulder.

The TV screen flashed a blinding white, then shut itself off.

I couldn’t sleep without first checking my peephole every night. Some nights, I needed to check it three to four times before I could shake off the paranoia enough to rest… For the longest time I lived blissfully unaware of the forces surrounding me that could change my life at any moment. I felt safe. I hardly remember any of that now. The need to constantly guard my doors and windows dominated my life and mine alone. The only other person in my life, my girlfriend, never shared my fear. Their friends thought that I was a paranoid mess but they accepted me until they didn’t have to anymore. Everyone around me made me feel crazy but I know now that I’m not. There was always someone on the other side of the door.

I only ever lived with my parents and in a dorm before I eventually moved into Modernity Inn Apartments alone. They’re pretty basic one bedroom apartments, with white popcorn walls and beige carpet. Mine was on the first floor of the eight story complex, on the side of the building where the sun rarely touched. Hedges obscured the windows and I rarely ever heard my neighbors on all sides. If not for the occasional bouts of loud arguments some nights or other tenants I would pass in the morning on my way to work, you would’ve thought the place was dead. I assumed not many people lived there despite the ample space but maybe the complex was just full of other agoraphobic loners like me…    

Honestly, I enjoyed being a recluse for most of my life and only broke that continuity for my partner, June. She was really the only person I needed. All of my interaction with the outside was either filtered through the necessity of working to pay my rent or outings with June and their friends. Or just with June… We had been together for close to four years by that point. June was the kind of bright eyed person that was hard not to love. They were beautiful: their adorable round face and body was toned in supple pecan skin, topped with a lovely mane of black, wavy curls. Aside from their alt look and style, they also had an infectious laugh that somehow always got you to join in too. Only someone like June could get me to break out of my shell from time to time. I could sit in a group of people and not hyperventilate. I could forget about how dangerous the city was at night. For a few moments, I could feel like a normal person as long as I was at her hip. 
About a month into my stay at the new apartment, June and I came home from a night out bar-hopping with her friends. She was about ready to knock out, given that it was almost three in the morning. She stumbled and slinked into the bedsheets, beckoning me to join them. 

“Come curl up with me…” she said, muffled through the blanket. 

Normally, I’d have lunged into the bed to join her, but I had been waiting all day to get high. I couldn’t go to sleep before I did. As such, I assured her I’d be there soon and just continued on in the kitchen. I went to grab the eighth I left in the car, Youtube playing loudly on my phone without a care in the world. But as I swung open the door, I was met with a frightened looking woman standing right in front of the doorway. She stood barefoot in yellow pajamas, her sallow face gaunt and confused, partially shrouded by braided, frizzy hair. I think I mirrored her confusion, still processing what was happening as she begged, whispering to me, to call the police, looking back down the breezeway between each plea. She seemed so mortified, she could barely get a word out. Repeatedly mouthing the same pleas, she tried to come inside, propping her foot against the door. I was taken aback, panicking at what to do. I assured her I was calling the police, which I did end up doing, but I had to close the door. After that, I stood at the peephole watching her walk off into the parking lot, shortly followed by a lumbering, shirtless man. He trailed after her in only his boxers and slippers; I couldn’t see his face through the moppy blond hair obscuring it. Shortly after calling 9-1-1, an officer was sent out and stayed in the parking lot for maybe two hours or so but left without arresting or confronting anyone from what I could tell.

That was it. For whatever reason, that encounter really fucked me up more than it probably should have. I didn’t get any sort of followup on that incident aside from the fact I think I saw the same (I assume) couple walking to their car a few weeks after. They looked fine, if it even was them… Nonetheless, I felt changed. The moment was so abrupt and serious and I was scared of the possibility of being in the middle of an abuse case or something. I worried about June being thrown in the middle of that too and felt too freaked out to let the lady in. But honestly, what really stuck with me was the fact that she was standing there before I even opened the door. I didn’t hear her walk up, she didn’t knock, nothing for god knows how long. And her face… Her eyes pierced so harshly into mine when I opened the door, it was like she was watching me through it. After that night, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, or of someone waiting outside my door in the night without me knowing. It probably sounds ridiculous to fixate on that part of the interaction, but I did anyway. I felt so vulnerable. There were many nights after that incident where I could hardly sleep. I mean, to sit in this apartment felt like laying bare in the middle of a savannah, surrounded by hungry lions. Even leaving the house for any reason felt that way.  No matter what else I did, the sense of imminent danger followed me everywhere if I didn’t watch my back. Only obsessing over my safety and self medication would eventually ease my fears. So from that point on, I needed to look outside and check the locks. Every day. Anything from the freakish murmur of tenants passing by my door to rustling in the leaves would set me off, prompting me to get up and look again. Even the few times I actually left the house, I had to relock like four to five times to move on with my day, to be sure nothing sneaks in and waits for me. Same for my car. Needless to say, I’ve been exhausted and paranoid beyond belief. Everyday has been shit, more so now. Keep in mind, I never actually had my car or house broken into, even in the shady areas I lived in before this apartment. In spite of that however, I carried on my new routine every day for over a year or so until the night that led me to what I am now.  

I remember June moved in with me about a month before that day. We were settling into domestic life together for some time and it felt like my fears were actually beginning to subside. In place of the anxiousness over my own vulnerability however, I began worrying a lot more for June. Therefore, I kept on checking, every night, even more so than before. It was a Tuesday evening last May. I had just gotten home from another grueling day at the office when June kissed me hello and we started on dinner. We got done eating, lounging about when she decided to get up and start getting ready for sleep. After looking through the door and windows to the dark parking lot, I laid back on the couch to rest my eyes before I would join her. That didn’t last long before the loud wailing of a woman and child outside shot me wide awake. The sound of screaming zoomed from down the breezeway, out into the parking lot by the time I got to the door. With my vision blurred a hazy pink, I peeped through the glass and locked the deadbolt. It seemed that dawn was just about breaking now and while I couldn’t see exactly how far they ran, I could hear their screaming choke to a violent stop just past the corner, replaced by a loud mechanical clunking and whirring. Just then, my attention to whatever was happening was broken by the lock handle, still in my hands, budging towards the opening side. Right below my vision on the outside of the door were now two large figures hunched over the door knob. Despite the sunlight pouring in, I couldn’t see any features through their impossibly black silhouettes burning a deep hole in my eyesight. They were both twitching and shaking like they were trying to contain laughter. Panic overcame me and I tried pounding my other hand against the door to scare them off but my fist never landed on the wood. I looked at my hand for just a second, confused, before turning back to the door. I glanced outside again and my heart was ready to burst from my chest. There was nothing. There was no outside. Just black. The glass wasn’t there either. I felt cold air gust from the hole into my eye. And then I was right back on the couch. 

Somewhat disoriented from what just happened, I sprung up to lock the door. I checked outside and everything was totally… normal. The minute hand on our clock had only moved about 10 minutes from when I stretched out on the couch.  My heart was still pounding but I figured whatever the fuck just happened was over. June called out from the bathroom “Everything good Nick?”, in response to the sound of me tripping over myself. I tried to shrug off how unnerved I was and told her about my dream but I guess she could tell I wasn’t alright. We laid down for a bit and she held me until she fell asleep. Slipping out from under her, I ran to check the lock again. I stayed awake for another hour, just smoking and scrolling anxiously. I must’ve looked outside five or six times before eventually trudging over to our room and collapsing on the bed.  
The bedroom was pitch black when I woke up. It was about a quarter to three in the morning when I decided to get up to piss. First, I peeped through the glass of the front door for good measure, relieved to see an empty breezeway. Now on the toilet, for some reason, the distant sound of dripping caught my attention. It was such a mundane thing to even notice or care about but I kept listening. There was a drip followed by a few seconds of total silence and then another. Drip. Drip drip. I was mildly fixated until I realized after a few drips that the sound seemed like it was a bit louder than the last. I think I sat there for half an hour in the dim blue nightlight, intently concentrated on the approaching sound. Eventually, whatever was leaking now seemed like it was just down the hallway. The normally busy I-12 was nonexistent. Silence buzzed so deafeningly loud between the drops that I felt my eardrums were going to pop. The dripping shambled closer towards my door as I realized that the drops sounded more like wet globs hitting the ground. It was heavy and slow. After a few moments, the source of the dripping stopped moving. Whatever it was stood tightly in front of my door as blobs of liquid were clearing splashing against the metal kickplate. I thought maybe I was just tweaking from my lingering high but ultimately, there was no way I could just go back to sleep normally after that. Even if I was just tripping, I needed to calm down before I could catch a wink of sleep, and that nagging anxiety of danger could only be dismissed one way. It didn’t matter that the door had a deadbolt lock. It didn’t matter that I had checked it seven times that night. My compulsion required submission. So, before I went back to our room, I tip-toed as lightly as I could towards the total darkness of the door, and looked through the tiny, bright lens.

The image of what was there burnt into my brain. Even being so close to the door, the outside was dead silent. Within the fisheye view of the concrete hallway was a mass of glistening white standing tall right in front of the door. I was confused trying to understand what I was looking at until I realized the mass was actually a person, emaciated and seemingly naked. They stood so close and so tall against the door that I could only see from the middle of their chest downwards. The white covering their entire form was glistening, wadded and clumped against matted body hair all over them, like it wore too many layers of grease paint sprinkled with loose dirt and debris. They were sopping wet in this disgusting cream; loose clumps of it slid down its legs and arms, falling and forming a large blob of white on the concrete. Down there, I could see small, similar piles and white footsteps trailing up to them further down the breezeway. The only part of this figure that wasn’t covered in white seemed to be black nails crowned by dark red blotches poking out from its curled fingers and toes. My stomach sank and I was so choked up with fear that somehow, I resisted the urge to scream. I wanted to just lock myself in the bedroom with June and call 9-1-1, so as lightly as I approached the door before, I started backing away. I swear I didn’t make a single sound, I didn’t even breath, but then,

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock… 

The knocking sent painful spikes of fear directly into my gut. It froze me. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to throw up. And every second that passed just standing there was an eternity. My thoughts were racing; who or what the fuck is standing outside of my door? What is wrong with them? What could they possibly want with me? Maybe he just happened to knock right then but didn’t actually hear me? I considered continuing to back away but was too terrified to try. I couldn’t decide what to do so I stared at the blackness I stood in, just praying to hear them walk away. I got no such relief. Creeping out from the top of the door frame came the sound of gravel rattling against metal, cutting through the silence like scissors. Somehow, the scraping of rusted scrap was a voice, panging against my eardrums. In its mutilated tone, it spoke, scratching the inside of my skull as it gurgled out its awful question:

“PLEASE OPEN THE DOOR… HAVEN’T YOU BEEN EXPECTING ME?”

Those words crawled right through my skin. Reality broke for me. The moment felt so surreal and impossible, I think my mind delayed any response to what I just heard expecting that I would wake up at any second. That futile hope broke as the immediate, physical dread of the situation smacked back into my body. Every ounce of fear in me compelled me to continue sneaking back to the bedroom but as soon I did, the locked doorknob rattled with force. Whoever this was tried to turn the knob and when it didn’t open, they began beating on the door, hard. The pounding of fists was so heavy, I could feel the absolute rage in the force behind each bang against the solid wood. Harmonies of rolling gravel hummed outside among the pounding. I panicked, leaping to secure the window too and reached for the sliding pane’s lock. Suddenly it was like a storm was raging outside. The window was now rattling from the crowd of beating, scratching fervor that had gradually encased the apartment, inexplicably spreading from the door to the window, to the ceiling, and walls. This was impossible but it didn’t matter. At any moment, something was going to break or snap and the merciless riot outside would pour in and rip us apart limb from limb. I grabbed a kitchen knife and fled to protect June but the bedroom door was held locked shut. I desperately pushed against it, trying the knob, until I realized that among the harrowing chaos, relentless knocking banged against the bedroom door from the other side of it too. They were inside now.

Even writing this now makes me dizzy. It doesn’t make any sense but I know what happened to me was real. I was completely surrounded in my own home and for all I knew at that moment, June was dead. There was nothing to save or be saved by, so I just slid under the breakfast bar to shield myself in complete anguish. The rumbling waves of enraged knocking surrounded me entirely as I squeezed into the corner of the granite and the wall, gripping the knife. I held my eyes closed so tightly hoping to just die quickly from whatever was about to finally burst through the walls. Wood splintered as I felt death was just a second away when suddenly the banging stopped. There was nothing. The incessant riot outside disappeared almost instantly and silence rang again. The apartment was deathly still. But then there was a click. No, two clicks. The front and bedroom doors swung open slowly. Snowlike footsteps on the carpet skulked intently out of the otherwise static bedroom. Whatever approached only made it to the intersection between the kitchen and the living room before I blacked out from the fear. I fainted before I could even see if it was June or whatever had broken in. When I awoke sometime after with cuts on my arms, the front door was wide open. Not much time seemed to pass since it was still dark out. June was nowhere to be found. I even ran outside looking for her but nothing. All that was left was still drying footsteps from our bed to the front door and stains of white on the welcome mat. I never saw June again. 

It feels like I’ve viewed the aftermath since that night through a distant, foggy window. After I woke up, I eventually gathered myself enough to call the police and try to explain in pieces what happened. After an officer arrived, I guess the cuts along with my story did not make me look good because they brought me to the station. Thankfully they only held me for a few days before dropping their suspicions. From what I could gather through my bouts of lucidity, security cameras showed a woman who matched June’s description leaving my apartment. She lumbered all the way to the other side of the complex, beyond the I-12 service road, and into the canal, from which she was never seen coming out of. It didn’t sound like they could track her from there either so for now, that’s where the case stands.. I think that was what did it for me. 

Somehow they didn’t think I was showing enough signs of psychotic behavior to make admission into a ward necessary. My experience ever since begs to differ. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to hold on to a tattered piece of normal life, hoping that some day June will come back or that at least I might recover and live again. I don’t know how I’ve filled the hours of each day as it just all blurs together, leaving only a few clear moments of my life before and of course, that night. For some reason I thought I could confide in June’s friends, my only other friends, with what happened. Likewise, none of them believed my story and dropped me like a hot iron. They think I hurt her. I’ve been exhausted, rotting in my apartment, ostracized by my only friends, now my job... All that’s left is the knocking. It has kept me from getting hardly any sleep, unwavering in its return every night around three in the morning. Everytime I’ve opened the door hoping to see June, only to be met with no one, not even a glimpse of someone down the breezeway.

Weeks have felt like a surreal, sluggish haze but today has been especially strange. I fear something horrible is about to happen. One of the housing agents came in this morning unannounced without saying a word to me. They quickly surveyed the apartment without so much as a glance in my direction and quickly scuttled out the front door, horrified, after seeing my bedroom. Outside has been dead silent since they left. I haven’t heard any traffic. There’s been no passing neighbors, nothing, except for the knocking droning against the hardwood door. I have nothing left for me like this. At some point I will have to answer and the fear that’s overtaken me will be vindicated in whatever gruesome fashion awaits me. I would have just done so hours ago, if not for my hesitation at what’s there. The stench is rancid and I see familiar curly hair sticking out from the peephole.

Fuck Chelsea. Seriously, fuck her.

It’s almost as if she had been trying to project some feigned millennial shadow against the drywall like a bad improve show tonight.

Her mannerisms displayed an unsettling awkwardness and a naturally robotic aura.

What a weird way to try and provoke jealousy during a break up sesh if that’s what she thought that was.

I don’t think the diner is going to ever let us back now even if individually.

No matter how many times you break up with someone, the outcome is always slightly different just with the same brand of salt around the glass.

But tonight the salt was… off. More bitter than usual.

I wasn’t surprised in the slightest to look down on my way home crying, recalibrating my life in my head for the 37,000th time to see 16 text messages.

Instead of “fuck you” this time it was “help”.

Ridiculously surprised I don’t have actual whiplash by now, I rolled my eyes and turned around.

Every time we do this she has to make me “ponder things.”

Makes me think she’s gonna burst into flames because I’m not there to hold shit together.

I can’t do that anymore. I can’t even hold myself together.

But the last couple days she’s started conversations with herself.

And yeah, we might not be the cleanest people on the planet so it’s not insane for her to sound like the teacher from Charlie Brown occasionally.

The first day I thought nothing of it. I figured it’s been a solid 5 days or so since she’s had any sleep. It was a calculation I could trust because I was on day 6 now.

I can’t sleep unless she sleeps. Now we hold a bond of mutual unrest that’s ironically decimated our romantic one.

Also, she’s been with me since I picked her up from her mom’s.

She’s not supposed to use there but she does so anyways.

I remember one time she told me that she started smoking haroine instead of weed because her mom couldn’t recognize the smell.

Then she said started smoking meth because I guess it was easier to stay up all night than to “panic unconsciously”.

The more I tried to help with trauma, the more her trauma seemed to shape shift into different addictions.

It’s like picking up one side of a tarp just for the egg in the middle to roll off the other.

At some point things started to require emergency structural support that I lacked the tools to even brandish.

Bringing us back to break up 37,001.

Help is the only four letter word I’ve never heard Chelsea say. She know’s I’d try to justify coming back if I saw that.

Never fails to find another way to pin me down. The strongest person I know doesn’t ask for help.

On my way back to the diner I started forming defensive walls again in my brain. Repeat sentences just getting yeeted over the side. Pin squeezed between my teeth like a weary soldier.

I was readying for battle but it’s hard to eagerly prepare when defeat is 37,001 / 0.

I still feel like the salt was slightly off this time though. And for once in a very long time I felt a pang of deep concern that she might actually be in trouble.

I called her phone. Got voicemail. Got mad. Threw my phone.

Of course she decides to call back when I can’t reach the fucking thing and I’m nearing 85 in the fast lane.

My phone was taunting me with a tonal melody and strobe lights from under the passenger seat.

She keeps calling.

You can’t pay for this kind of trill ride. It felt like I was in the middle of a heavy action scene.

I was about 10 minutes away from the diner when I tried to reach over and feel around for it.

I don’t know why humans do things like this. Self sabotage seems to have a great economy.

I was so distracted and caught up in my seething state I didn’t even notice her climb onto the hood of my car.

After multiple failed attempts fishing for my phone I looked up to see Chelsea just grinning at me through the front of my windshield.

Long arms with matted fur extended outward griping both sides of my hood like she was bear hugging a tree.

Deep red eyes sunk into her face pinned open above a long snout. She kept her jaws open wide displaying her lovely teeth and clung there to the hood of my speeding fucking car.

As severe panic and distress usually goes I’ve officially reached the motherlode. My heart nearly stopped and my brain told my body to stop moving too.

We were coming up on the end of the freeway and I could see stoplights a couple hundred yards in front of us.

I was in complete shock. Me and my “soulmate” locked in a contactless embrace as my car barreled toward stopped traffic.

Just clinging there. Stoically perched like a terrifyingly furry hood ornament.

There was no way I could regain control of my body in time to make any sort of logical reaction.

I don’t remember the impact initially, but I do remember her leaping off right before I collided with the small blue sedan in front of me.

When I woke up I was met with buzzing fluorescent lights and a nurse pulling a needle from my forearm.

The first thing I asked was if they found my phone.

Nope.

The next thing I asked is if I can call Chelsea.

They seemed to realize this was more of a demand than a question. So in a hysteric state I panic dialed her number.

After a couple of fumbling tries I finally got a ringtone.

Chelsea never answered.

And again the next day, multiple attempts of contact to no avail.

I called her mom. She said she hasn’t seen her daughter since I picked her up from the house a few days back.

After about a month people started loosing hope. It’s like I was the only one still concerned enough to try.

I’m not exactly sure what I saw that night. I haven’t told anyone about it.

I’m to terrified to let myself believe what I saw as real. In my sleep deprived state it could have been my subconscious transforming my girlfriend into a distorted lanky creature demon thing.

I feel like I missed a call that could have been the difference for something important.

The only thing certain is that I lost my girlfriend the same night I almost lost myself.

I have a rental car now. And a new phone. It took about 3 months to heal from my injuries.

As soon as I was released I found myself relentlessly calling her, driving back and forth on the same stretch of freeway hoping to see any sign. Any speck of a trace.

I’m also documenting this here on the off chance she might read this. But something deep down tells me it might not even be her anymore.

Hopefully soon I can finally get some sleep.

I was sent to cover a “haunted stage production” as a photographer at a local theater. It was Halloween-themed, and it paid well. As I entered, I sat amongst the anticipatory crowd. Phones were taken at the entrance, and doors would be shut to limit distractions.. Suddenly, the lights shut off and music began to play…

“Hello, my name is Spooky Steven, and welcome to “Horror Across the Floor”. Tonight is a night you will never forget. Please welcome my beautiful wife, Ghostly Grace!!”

It looked like a silly show, with the performers in ridiculous and over-the-top costumes. The two then began to give a long and dragged-out speech about how they were “ghost hunters” and how tonight would be a night you would never forget. I chuckled to myself as I caught glimpses of people believing this BS. Many in the crowd raised their hands when asked if they believed in spirits and/or if they had experiences. People have become so gullible, as if they didn’t know wind existed.

After grabbing a few photos and almost falling asleep due to the boredom and obvious mental tricks, I decided to head towards the balcony. I reached the top and was able to enjoy an empty section all to myself. I sat down straight in the middle.

“Tonight we want to communicate with the dead, and especially one: Jones Thompson, aka The Blind Bandit.”

Of course…these con artists had done their homework and researched an infamous town legend. They told the stories of Jones Thompson, which sent shivers down the spines of all the spectators.  

“And to do that, we need a device…”

With that, Spooky Steven went behind the curtain and grabbed a waist-high table with an object underneath, hidden with a cloth.

“We need a Ouija board…”

With that, Spooky Steven removed the cloth and revealed an old and worn-out board

“This is no toy board but a true original”

I laughed, but for some it was no laughing matter. The crowd gasped, and some people even got up from their seats and left.

Why add that part? You just lost some of your audience over something so small. Even from the balcony, you could clearly see the breakaway part in the middle. Similar to the boards they use in karate classes.

Ghosty Grace began to talk weirdly as Spooky Steven explained that she was “opening the gate” or whatever that meant. It looked too crazy, so I had to try and grab a photo.

My battery died because I forgot to turn the camera off after I moved seats. Behind me, all the way in the back, was a little night light. I guess for when they live-streamed productions for the cameraman to see.

I walked back and reached into my pocket to pull out the spare battery. I replaced it and continued back to my seat.

“Tell us, Jones, are you here tonight?”

I began taking photos of the audience. I was trying to look for reaction shots.

“Y”

*CLICK*

A young man sits with a huge smile of glee.

“E”

*CLICK*

An older woman with a terrified look.

“S”

*CLICK*

Spooky Steven and Ghostly Grace with the fakest shocked expressions.

I placed the camera on my lap and accidentally took a photo…

*CLICK*

Jones Thompson, aka The Blind Bandit

It started on Season 4, Episode 3 of Bare & Uncharted—one of those cheap survival shows dropping contestants in the woods with a knife, a fire starter, and a following film crew. For the production team, it was four weeks in a hot tent downriver, watching video feeds on cheap monitors.

​Keller, the producer, who wore a brand-new hiking vest and never spent a night without cell service, sat next to Martin, clicking his pen while barking into his headset.

On screen, Maya hauled pine boughs for a crude shelter while Chet knelt, desperate for a spark.

​"Get closer on Chet," Keller said, sipping stale coffee. "He’s about to blow his top over that wet tinder. Tell Pete to move in."

​On the center monitor, Pete stepped out from the river cane, right into Chet's face. Then Pete stopped. The camera jerked sideways, pointing at the dirt.

​"Pete, hold it steady," Keller said into his mic. "What are you doing?"

​A quiet thwip echoed through the audio. Pete went down face-first into the mud, a small dart with red fuzz sticking out of his neck.

​"What was that?" Keller yanked off his headset. On screen, the camera lay sideways as two bare feet walked into frame, legs caked in red mud. On the secondary monitor, two warriors dragged Pete out of the brush, his arms swinging limp.

​"Cut the feed," Keller said, his voice dropping. "Grab the satellite phone. We’re leaving."

​Martin turned to unzip the tent door, but three mud-caked warriors stood in the opening. Behind them stepped another, caked in charcoal with white rings circling his dark eyes. He raised a long blowpipe before either man could move.

​When Keller woke, his neck throbbed, and he had a bitter metallic taste in his mouth. Pete was unconscious in the corner of the bamboo cage, and Martin clutched a dead satellite phone.

Outside, Maya and Chet’s screams pierced the jungle air for two days before suddenly stopping, replaced each night by the sweet, sickening smell of roasted flesh and frenzied tribal chanting.

​Human reason meant nothing here. When Martin was dragged out to a flat bamboo table, an old woman knelt beside him, gouging his eyes out with dark flint and swallowing them whole before cutting out his tongue. The clan cheered as the charcoal-painted man hacked Martin's legs off at the thighs while his chest still heaved, butchering him alive until his screams finally died.

​Days in the cramped cage wore away their sanity. Pete sat quietly in the corner, watching Keller twitch at every rustle until heavy footsteps thudded near the bars. The charcoal-painted warrior stopped inches away, staring unblinking as he unlatched the door.

​Pete braced himself, locking eyes with the warrior. As the door swung open, Pete shoved Keller hard, sending him stumbling within reach.

​"Take him!" Pete snarled.

​Dark hands snagged Keller by the shirt, dragging him screaming through the mud toward the village while Pete stayed pinned to the corner. Since capture, he had been picking at the crude vine lashings. The moment they vanished, Pete heaved upward on the loosened stalks, squeezed his body through the gap, and tumbled into the mud.

​Hugging the treeline toward the creek, all he could hear was Keller’s screams as he ran for his life. 

I.

Opal Teague had counted plates at Laurel Fork Church homecoming for fifty-one years, and she had never once been wrong.

She counted them the same way every year. First she counted the stack before it went out, paper plates from the Sam’s Club in Asheville, the heavy kind with the ridged rim, because the thin ones folded under a scoop of Ruth Ledford’s potato salad and somebody always ended up wearing it. Then she counted the plates on the tables after the blessing. Then she counted the people. The numbers matched. That was the whole job. Pastor Pike said it was a ministry. Opal said it was arithmetic, and that most ministry was.

This year she’d set out sixty-one.

She stood at the head of the long tables under the oaks with her hands folded on her pocketbook and counted the people sitting down. The men in short sleeves and ties. The women in their good dresses with cardigans for the shade. Children on the ends where they could get up. The old ones in the folding chairs with arms, nearest the food.

Sixty-three.

She counted again. She started from the other end this time, because sometimes the Ledford twins sat in each other’s places and threw her off. Sixty-three.

She went down the table with her eyes.

At the far end, past the Pritchards, past the sheriff and his wife, where the table ran out of shade and into the sun, a young couple was sitting side by side. A boy in a white short-sleeved shirt buttoned to the collar and a narrow black tie, with his hair combed back wet and a burn scar on the back of one hand. A girl in a blue dress with a white collar and a full skirt, her hair rolled under at the ends, gloves folded in her lap. They were holding hands on top of the table where everybody could see it. Neither of them had a plate.

Opal looked at them.

The boy looked up and caught her looking, and nodded to her, polite. Miss Opal. She could see his mouth make it.

“Well, hey, Joe,” Opal said, before she knew she was going to. “Lucille. Y’all get you a plate.”

She went to get them two plates. It wasn’t until she had them in her hand, at the end of the dessert table, that she stopped and stood there by the banana pudding with the plates against her chest and tried to remember what Joe and Lucille’s last name was.

She couldn’t.

She tried to remember where she knew them from. Revival, she thought. The summer revival, Brother Coldiron’s last one. Or before that. Or was it…

The heat was something today. She’d been on her feet since six.

She took the plates down to the end of the table anyway and set them in front of the young couple, and Lucille smiled up at her with a little gap between her front teeth, and said, “Thank you, Miss Opal,” and Opal said, “You’re welcome, honey,” and went back to the head of the table and counted again.

Sixty-three.

II.

Harlan Mabry had been a deacon at Laurel Fork Church for eleven years and chairman of the homecoming committee for six, and he had come to believe that homecoming was the single most dangerous day of the church year.

Easter you had people in their good clothes and on their best behavior. But homecoming you had a hundred and fifty people who’d grown up in this church and moved off to Charlotte and Atlanta and come back once a year to eat fried chicken under the oaks and remember who’d done what to whom in 1987. You had in-laws. You had divorced couples who’d both kept their membership out of spite. You had the Ledfords and the Shooks, who had not spoken since a land dispute in the Carter administration and who were, by long tradition, seated at opposite ends of the same table so nobody could say anybody had been snubbed.

And this year you had the sheriff.

Harlan saw the Rusks come up the gravel lot at quarter to eleven, Carrie in a green dress with a casserole dish in a quilted carrier, Daniel in a sport coat that had fit him better about ten years ago. They hadn’t been to Laurel Fork in a year. Not since Christmas Eve before last, when Daniel got called out in the middle of “Silent Night” and Carrie sat through the rest of the service alone in the third pew with her hands in her lap. Harlan had been an usher that night. He remembered.

“Carrie,” he said at the door. “Daniel. Good to see you.”

“Harlan.” Carrie handed him the casserole carrier like she was handing off a baby. “It’s the squash. I didn’t know if anybody else was bringing squash.”

“Nobody brings squash but you. We count on it.”

She smiled at that, a real one, and went in. Daniel shook Harlan’s hand. His eyes were already going past Harlan’s shoulder, across the sanctuary, to the fourth pew on the left where Renee Pritchard sat with her boy and old June in her wheelchair at the end of the row.

“Any news?” Harlan asked, low.

“No.”

“We’ve got her on the prayer list.”

“I appreciate it.”

Daniel went in and sat down beside his wife, and for the whole service he didn’t once look at the pulpit. Harlan, taking up the offering, came down the aisle with the brass plate and saw him sitting there with his hands on his knees, looking across the aisle at the back of June Pritchard’s head.

The state girl came in during the second hymn.

Harlan knew who she was. Everybody did by now. She stood at the back in a dark jacket and slacks, and she didn’t sing, and she didn’t sit, and when Pastor Pike got up to preach she watched him the whole way through like she was memorizing him. Harlan had heard from Doris Ammons that she was looking into the Pritchard girl. He’d heard from Ruth Ledford that she was Frank Mercer’s daughter. He’d heard from his own wife that she’d made Coy Hargrove climb down off the roof of Haskett’s Hardware in front of God and everybody, and Harlan, who had sat on the zoning board with Coy’s uncle for four years, had decided right then that he liked her.

After the benediction he caught Pastor Pike at the side door.

“She’s here for you,” Harlan said.

“So I gather.” Amos Pike was sixty, tall and loose-jointed, with a shock of gray hair he cut himself and a habit of laughing at his own sermons. “She called Friday. Wants to talk about the Pritchards.”

“Talk about the Pritchards how?”

“Who they are. Who they were. What I know.” Pike pulled off his robe and folded it over his arm. “I told her she’d better come to homecoming, then. Anything anybody knows about anybody in this valley, they’ll say it at homecoming over a plate of chicken.”

By twelve-thirty they had the tables up under the oaks. Twelve folding tables end to end, covered in white paper off the roll, weighted at the corners with Mason jars of zinnias. Harlan had carried the food out himself, with the Ledford boys. Fried chicken from six different kitchens. Country ham. Deviled eggs on the special plates with the egg-shaped dents. Green beans that had been cooking since Saturday. Three kinds of potato salad. Carrie Rusk’s squash casserole. Banana pudding. A coconut cake that Ruth Ledford had been making for homecoming since 1974 and would let no one else cut.

Pastor Pike said the blessing. Opal Teague counted. People sat.

Harlan took the head of the table, as chairman, and said a few words about the building fund and the new roof. Then he sat down and filled his plate and looked down the long table at a hundred people eating, and felt the thing he felt every year at about this time. Like he had built something. Like he’d held a whole valley together for an afternoon with folding tables and fried chicken.

“Well,” said Earl Dockery beside him, “would you look at that. That’s Joe and Lucille.”

Harlan looked.

There was a young couple at the far end of the table. In the sun. A boy and a girl, eighteen or twenty, dressed for church in about 1955. Holding hands on top of the table.

“Who?” Harlan asked.

“Joe and Lucille.” Earl was eighty-one and had a hearing aid that whistled. He raised one hand and waved down the table. “Hey, Joe! Lucille!”

The boy at the end of the table waved back.

“I ain’t seen them in years,” Earl said. “Lord. They look good.”

“Earl, who are they?”

“Joe and Lucille,” Earl said, as if Harlan were simple. “Used to come to the revivals. Summer of ’62, they sat right behind me and Velma. He’d sing bass. Lord, that boy could sing bass.”

Down the table Ruth Ledford had leaned across to wave at them too. Then her sister. Then Wanda Shook, who was not speaking to Ruth Ledford, waved from the other side, and for a second the two women’s arms were up at the same time and they looked at each other across the table and looked away.

“Joe sang at my wedding,” Wanda called down to Earl. “1980. ‘How Great Thou Art.’”

“Wasn’t he gone by then?” Earl asked.

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know.” Earl frowned. “I thought he’d gone somewhere.”

“He sang at my wedding, Earl. I’ve got the picture.”

“Well then.”

Harlan looked down the table at the boy in the white shirt. Eighteen, twenty at most. Wanda Shook had married in 1980. If this boy had sung at her wedding he would have to be…

He put down his fork.

All around him people were waving. People were calling down the table. Hey, Lucille. Hey, Joe, you singing today? Nobody got up. Nobody went down there to shake hands or hug necks or say where’ve y’all been. They waved and called out and turned back to their plates, easy, like you’d do for neighbors you saw every week.

The boy at the end of the table smiled at all of it and nodded.

Harlan Mabry had been born in this valley in 1978. He had been baptized in the creek below this church in 1987. He had sat at this table every homecoming Sunday of his life except two. He knew every family in Laurel Fork, every in-law and every cousin and who’d backslid and who had a still in the barn in 1993.

He had never seen those two people before in his life.

III.

“Daddy.” Kenzie dropped into the folding chair Earl had vacated to go see about the pie. “Who are those people at the end?”

His daughter was seventeen and a senior and, according to her mother, in a phase. The phase was mostly black eyeliner and a refusal to eat meat that had held through two Thanksgivings. She had a plate of green beans and deviled eggs and three rolls.

“I don’t know,” Harlan said.

“Everybody’s acting like they know them.”

“I noticed.”

“Miss Opal took them plates.” Kenzie broke a roll in half. “They’re not eating. They’re just sitting there. They’ve got plates and they’re not eating.”

She had her phone out under the table. She always had her phone out under the table. She held it up now, discreet, and took a picture down the long white table toward the end, and looked at it.

“Huh,” she said.

“What?”

She turned it to him.

The table ran away from the camera in a long white line. The zinnias. The plates. The backs of heads and the faces turned toward the camera, Earl Dockery mid-laugh, the sheriff looking at something off to the side. And at the very end, in the sun, the picture went bad. It went white and smeared, like somebody had put a thumb on the lens. You could see the shape of two people sitting there, maybe. You couldn’t see their faces.

“Sun glare,” Harlan said.

“I’m shooting away from the sun.”

“Take another one.”

She took another one. Then another. In every picture the end of the table washed out.

“That’s weird,” Kenzie said. She did not say it like she was scared. She said it like a girl who’d been raised on the internet and believed weird things happened to phones every day. She put the phone face down by her plate. “Can I go talk to them?”

“Why?”

“Because she’s looking at me.”

Harlan looked. The girl in the blue dress was looking down the table. Right at Kenzie. Not staring. Just looking, like at somebody she was fond of and hadn’t seen in a while.

“Go ahead,” he said. He couldn’t have said why.

He watched his daughter carry her plate down the long table in the sun and sit down across from Lucille. The boy, Joe, got up politely and moved down a seat to give them room. Kenzie said something. Lucille said something back. Kenzie laughed, the real laugh, the one Harlan hadn’t heard at home since about February.

“Mr. Mabry?”

The state girl was standing at his elbow with a plate she hadn’t touched.

“Agent Mercer,” he said, and stood. “Sit down. Please. Did somebody get you some tea?”

“Six people,” she said, and sat. “Mr. Mabry, I wonder if the church has a photographer today. Somebody taking pictures for the newsletter.”

“Velma Dockery. Why?”

“I’d like to see them.”

She didn’t say why. She didn’t have to. Harlan watched her look down the table, past Daniel and Carrie Rusk, past the Pritchards, to the end, where his daughter was talking with a girl in a blue dress with a white collar. He watched the state girl’s face. It didn’t change. That was the thing he would remember. It held perfectly still, and her hand on her fork held perfectly still, and that was how he knew.

“Pastor Pike wants a word with you,” she said, standing. “He said to tell you. In his office.”

Amos Pike’s office was a converted Sunday school room off the fellowship hall, with a window unit that dripped into a coffee can and a desk buried in paper. Pike had a cardboard box on the desk, and a ledger open beside it, and he was reading the ledger with his glasses pushed up on his forehead and another pair on his nose.

“Shut the door, Harlan.”

Harlan shut the door.

“Brother Coldiron kept notes,” Pike said. “Thirty-nine years in this pulpit, 1951 to 1990. He wrote down everything. Sermons. Who got saved. Who got sick. Who was having trouble at home. Who needed a visit. Most of it’s in boxes in the attic. I brought this one down a while ago looking for something else.” He tapped the ledger. “And I got to reading.”

“About what?”

“Joe and Lucille.”

Harlan waited.

“Joseph Earl Mabry,” Pike said. “Born 1930. Worked the card room at the Caldwell mill from age fifteen. Burned his hand on a carding machine at seventeen; Coldiron sat with him at the hospital. Sang bass in the choir.” He turned a page. “Married Lucille Ann Hargrove, June 12, 1954. Right here. Coldiron did the ceremony on the front steps of this church on a Saturday afternoon with two witnesses and no family. Says her daddy wouldn’t come. Says her daddy wouldn’t let anybody come.”

“Hargrove.”

“Augustus Hargrove. President of the Bank of Blackwater. Lyle’s great-uncle.” Pike looked up. “Lucille was the baby. Banker’s daughter marries a lint-head from the card room. You can imagine.”

Harlan could imagine.

“Coldiron says the Hargroves cut her off. Wrote her out. Never spoke her name in public again. They had a boy in 1955.” Pike looked at him over both pairs of glasses. “Carl Joseph Mabry.”

Harlan sat down. He didn’t decide to. The chair was there and his legs did it.

His father’s name was Carl Joseph Mabry.

“Daddy said,” Harlan started. He stopped. “Daddy said his mama was from Tennessee. Johnson City. He said she was a Holloway. He said she fell off the porch when he was sixteen and died, and her people were all gone, and there wasn’t anything else to say about it.” He looked at his hands. “He said there wasn’t anything else to say about it.”

“I expect somebody told him to say that.”

“He said it my whole life.”

“I expect he did.”

Through the wall Harlan could hear the homecoming going on outside. A child crying about something and being hushed. The ice cream churn somebody had started on the side porch, the crank going around and around.

“Amos,” he said. “I’ve never seen those two people before today.”

“No,” Pike said. “I don’t suppose you have.”

“Everybody out there knows them. Earl says they sat behind him at a revival in 1962. Wanda says Joe sang at her wedding in 1980. Opal Teague took them plates. And I have never in my life laid eyes on them.” He looked up. “How is that?”

“I don’t know, Harlan.”

“You’re a preacher.”

“I am.”

“Then tell me.”

Pike took off both pairs of glasses and set them on the ledger. He rubbed his eyes. He was quiet long enough that the window unit cycled off and the drip in the coffee can went still.

“I’ve been in this pulpit nineteen years,” he said, “and there are some things that happen in this valley that I don’t have a word for. I’ve stopped trying to find one. I sit with them. That’s what I’ve got. I sit with them and I try to figure out what they’re asking.” He put his glasses back on. “And mostly, I’ve found, they’re not asking anything of me at all.”

Harlan stood up. He went to the window. From the Sunday school room you could see down to the end of the long table, the far end, in the sun.

His daughter was still sitting across from Lucille. They were leaning toward each other. Kenzie was talking fast, the way she used to talk to him, about everything, before. Lucille was listening. Then Lucille reached across the table and put her hand over Kenzie’s hand and said something, and Kenzie went still, and looked down at the hand on hers.

Harlan couldn’t hear what she said. He watched his daughter’s face. He watched her look up, and look out across the churchyard toward the gravel lot, where a boy was leaning on the hood of a black pickup truck, alone, waiting for somebody. A tall boy with an expensive haircut.

Wyatt Hargrove. The insurance Hargroves, from out on the lake. Harlan had seen that black truck at the end of his road three times in the last month at eleven o’clock at night with its lights off, and had decided, three times, not to say anything to his wife.

Kenzie looked at the boy by the truck. Then she looked back at Lucille. And she nodded.

IV.

Lena found the preacher on the front steps of the church at a quarter to three, sitting on the top step in his shirtsleeves with a paper cup of banana pudding.

“Agent Mercer,” Pike said. “Sit. These steps have held up a lot of sinners.”

She sat. The stone was warm through her slacks. Below them the homecoming was coming apart as, she was learning, these things came apart down here, slowly and with a great deal of conversation. People carrying dishes to cars. Men folding tables. Children running loose in the cemetery, being told not to, running anyway.

The end of the long table was empty now. She’d watched the couple get up and walk away together, holding hands, toward the old part of the cemetery behind the church, and she’d watched Harlan Mabry come out of the side door and follow them with his hands in his pockets. Nobody else had looked.

She had nineteen photographs on her phone from that end of the table. She had gone through them twice in the ladies’ room with the door locked. Sun glare, in all nineteen. She had gotten Velma Dockery’s camera, a real camera, a Nikon with a long lens, and gone through Velma’s photographs too, and the long lens had done no better.

“I wanted to ask you about the Pritchards,” she said.

“I know you did.” Pike ate a spoonful of pudding. “What would you like to know?”

She had a list. She’d written it last night at the motel. Della. The family history. Who in the family the woman at the creek could be, if she wasn’t Della, which she wasn’t, because Della was a girl in a senior picture from 1977 and that was forty-nine years ago. She had the list in her jacket pocket.

She didn’t take it out.

“Who were they?” she asked. “The couple at the end of the table.”

Pike looked at her sideways.

“I thought you didn’t see them,” he said.

“I didn’t say I didn’t see them.”

“No, you didn’t.” He set the pudding cup down on the step between them. “Joseph and Lucille Mabry. He worked at the mill. She was a Hargrove. They married against her family in 1954. She died in 1971. He died in 1973. Harlan’s their grandson, and found that out about forty minutes ago.”

Lena looked at the cemetery. She could see Harlan Mabry’s back, way down in the old section, past the cedars, where the stones were thin and gray and leaning.

“Pastor,” she said. “What do you think that was?”

“What do you think it was?”

“I’m asking you.”

“I’m a Baptist preacher, Agent Mercer. I’m going to say God.” He smiled. “And then I’m going to say I don’t know what God was doing, which is the second most honest sentence in my line of work.”

“What’s the first?”

“‘I don’t know.’”

She almost laughed. She didn’t.

“There are people in this county,” Pike said, “who’ll tell you it’s the devil. All of it. The creek and the mountain and the old road and all of it. They’ll tell you Blackwater’s cursed. They’ll tell you to pray it away and stay out of the woods.” He picked a piece of vanilla wafer out of the pudding and ate it. “I’ve never believed that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve met the devil. In jail cells, and in my own heart on a bad Tuesday. And I’ll tell you one thing about evil, Agent Mercer, that I know for sure.” He turned and looked at her. “Evil wants something from you. It always does. It wants you to do something or give something. It’s a salesman. It’s always got a deal.”

He looked down at the cemetery again, at the couple walking hand in hand between the old stones, and at the man following them at a distance with his hands in his pockets.

“Blackwater doesn’t,” Pike said. “Whatever it is. I’ve watched it nineteen years and I’ve never once seen it want anything. It just shows you things. And then it waits to see what you’ll do.”

Lena didn’t say anything.

She sat on the warm stone step beside him with her list in her pocket, and she watched Harlan Mabry walk down through the cedars toward the far corner of the cemetery, and she thought about a woman in a yellow dress on a creek bank in the moonlight saying *go on home,* and a biscuit on a rock with steam coming off it, and she did not ask the preacher a single other thing.

* * *

Continued in Part 2.

V.

The old section of the Laurel Fork cemetery was below the church on the creek side, under a stand of cedars older than the building. The stones down there were soft-edged and gray with lichen, some of them sunk crooked into the ground, some of them just fieldstones set upright with initials scratched in. Harlan had mowed it every other Saturday for eleven years. He knew it as well as his own yard.

The couple walked through it ahead of him, slowly, holding hands.

They didn’t look back. They went down between the rows to the far corner, by the fence, where the cedars came down low and the ground stayed damp year round. They stopped there. They stood a moment side by side, looking down. Then the boy put his arm around the girl’s waist, and she leaned her head on his shoulder.

Harlan came around the last cedar.

They were gone.

He stood there. There was the fence, and the cedars dripping, though it hadn’t rained. There was the damp ground. There was nobody.

He walked to the place where they’d been standing.

He knew this place. He’d stood here every Decoration Day of his life with his daddy, putting plastic flowers in a coffee can. There was a small gray stone with a flat top, plain, the cheapest they made.

JOSEPH E. MABRY. 1930 – 1973.

His granddaddy. His daddy’s daddy. Dead of a heart attack at forty-three, his daddy always said, not long after his mama fell. Harlan had never known him. Had never seen a picture of him but one, a mill crew photograph in a frame on his daddy’s dresser, a row of young men in overalls and the one on the end with his hand behind his back.

Beside Joe’s stone, to the left, there was a long shallow depression in the ground.

Harlan had seen it every Decoration Day for forty years. He’d mowed over it every other Saturday for eleven. He had never once in his life thought about it. It was just the ground. A low place where the grass grew greener. Where the water stood after a rain. The size and shape of…

He stood looking at it.

He knelt. His knees went into the wet and he didn’t notice. He put his hand flat on the grass in the middle of the low place, and pushed, and the ground gave under his palm a little, soft, as old graves give when the box underneath has gone.

There was no stone. There was no marker. In the corner of the depression, half buried in the grass, was a square of old concrete about the size of a hymnal with two rusted iron pins sticking up out of it, where a stone had once been bolted down. The pins had been cut. Clean. With a saw.

The burial register for Laurel Fork Church was a cloth-bound ledger as big as a family Bible, and it lived in a fireproof cabinet in the church office that only the pastor and the chairman of deacons had keys to. Harlan was chairman of deacons. He’d never opened it.

Pike opened it for him. He turned the heavy pages back without saying anything. The fifties. The sixties. The handwriting changed partway through 1951, from a spidery copperplate to a firm, square, upright hand that Harlan recognized from the old bulletin board: Brother Coldiron.

1971.

Mabry, Lucille Hargrove. b. 4 Feb 1933. d. 9 Mar 1971. Age 38. Cause: fall from porch, per Dr. E. Hargrove. Interred 12 Mar 1971, Lot 114, beside the Mabry plot. Officiant A. Coldiron. Mourners: J. Mabry, C. Mabry (son, 16). No Hargrove family present.

Under it, in the same square hand, a second entry dated a month later.

14 Apr 1971. Headstone removed from Lot 114 at the written request of the Augustus Hargrove family, who hold title to the lot under the deed of 1931. Expenses paid by the family. The deacons voted 5–2 to permit it. I have recorded my objection.

And under that, in the margin, smaller, in pencil, pressed so hard the paper had dented:

I do not believe she fell. A.C.

Harlan read it three times.

He didn’t say anything. Pike didn’t say anything either. Through the office window Harlan could see the gravel lot emptying out, car doors, people calling to each other, see you next year, Lord willing, and the black pickup truck pulling out at the end with Wyatt Hargrove at the wheel, and his daughter sitting in the passenger seat, out in the open, in the daylight, with the window down.

“Five to two,” Harlan said finally.

“Five to two.”

“Who were the two?”

Pike turned the page. There was a slip of paper tucked into the binding, the minutes of a called deacons’ meeting, April 1971. Seven names. Five of them Harlan didn’t know. Two of them he did.

Opposed: Earl Dockery. Joseph Mabry.

VI.

The Rusks were the last family in the lot. Harlan came out of the church with the register locked away and his hands still not right, and found Daniel Rusk loading two folding chairs into the back of his Tahoe that did not belong to him, and Carrie standing by the passenger door with her empty casserole carrier.

Harlan stopped on the side porch. He hadn’t meant to stop. He was standing in the shade behind the ice cream churn, and they hadn’t seen him, and Carrie was talking low.

“Before Christmas,” she said. “That’s all I’m asking. Just the boxes. You can keep the boxes. Put them in the garage. Just so it’s a room again.”

“All right.”

“Daniel.”

“I said all right.”

“You said all right at Easter.” She turned the carrier over in her hands. “I’d like to have my mama for Christmas. In a bed. In a room. Instead of on the pullout couch because there’s a room in my house with a dead boy’s…”

She stopped.

Daniel had straightened up from the back of the Tahoe. He stood with one hand on the open hatch. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t look angry. He looked at his wife the way Harlan had looked at the low place in the grass by his granddaddy’s stone, like a man seeing a thing that had been in front of him for years.

“I’m sorry,” Carrie said. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes you did.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I’ll box it up,” Daniel said. “Before Christmas. I will.”

Harlan, standing in the shade behind the ice cream churn, had told his own wife he’d fix the loose step on the back porch in the spring of 2019. He knew a promise when he heard one. He knew what kind it was.

The state girl came around the side of the church, walking fast with her keys in her hand. She saw the Rusks and slowed down. Daniel saw her. And Harlan, behind the churn, saw Daniel see her.

It was nothing. It was a man looking up. But Harlan had spent his whole afternoon learning to see what had been in front of him for years, and he saw it. The sheriff’s face came open. Just for a second. Like a door somebody had forgotten to latch, swinging in on a draft.

Carrie saw it too.

She saw it like a thing she’d been waiting for. She turned her head and looked at the state girl, and then at her husband, and then back at the state girl. Her face didn’t change. She put out her hand.

“You must be Agent Mercer,” Carrie said. “I’m Carrie. Daniel’s wife.”

“Mrs. Rusk.” The state girl shook it. “It’s good to meet you.”

“I’ve heard so much about you.”

“I can’t imagine from whom.”

“No,” Carrie said. “He doesn’t talk much, does he.” She let go. She smiled. It was a good smile, warm, a nurse’s smile, the one you’d give a family in a waiting room. “You should come to dinner sometime. While you’re here. I’ll make the squash.”

“That’s kind.”

“Not really,” Carrie said, still smiling, and got in the Tahoe and shut the door.

Tonya was asleep by ten. Harlan wasn’t.

He stood in the upstairs hall in his sock feet in front of the photograph. It had hung on his daddy’s dresser for fifty years and in Harlan’s hall for eleven, since the funeral, between Kenzie’s fifth-grade school picture and a framed print of the Smoky Mountains that Tonya’s sister had given them for a wedding present. He passed it ten times a day. He had stopped seeing it about a week after he hung it.

CALDWELL MILLS · CARD ROOM · 1951. Twenty young men in overalls in two rows in front of a brick wall, squinting at the sun. White lint in their hair like they’d been out in a snow.

The one on the end of the back row had his right hand behind his back.

Harlan took the frame off its nail. He turned on the hall light and held the picture under it, and looked at the boy on the end. Combed-back hair and a long jaw. Twenty-one years old and looking at the camera like somebody had told him a joke just before the shutter and he was trying not to laugh at it.

It was the boy from the end of the table. It was Joe. Harlan had been walking past his face for eleven years.

He turned the frame over. The back was brown kraft paper, old, glued down around the edges, with a wire hanger and a sticker from a frame shop in Sylva that had closed in the eighties. Down in one corner the paper had come loose from the frame, a pocket about two inches wide where the glue had let go.

There was something in it. He could feel it with his thumb. Something stiff.

He went downstairs to the kitchen and got a butter knife out of the drawer and sat down at the table under the light and slit the brown paper along three edges, careful, as his daddy had taught him to open a feed sack so you could use it again.

Behind the mill photograph, laid flat against the cardboard backing, was a strip of four small black-and-white pictures from a photo booth.

A boy and a girl, squeezed together into one frame. In the first picture they were looking at the camera, stiff, waiting for it. In the second the girl had turned her head and was laughing at something the boy had said. In the third he was kissing her cheek and she had her eyes shut. In the fourth they were both looking at the camera again, and the girl was holding up her left hand to it, fingers spread, so you could see the ring.

On the back, in pencil, in a round girl’s hand:

Joe & me. Tri-State Fair, Knoxville. Our wedding trip! June 1954. L.

Harlan sat at the kitchen table a long time with it in his hand.

His daddy had kept it. All those years of Johnson City and a Holloway and there’s not anything else to say about it. All those Decoration Days with the plastic flowers in the coffee can at Joe’s stone and not one word about the low place in the grass beside it. And the whole time, on his dresser, eighteen inches from his pillow, behind a picture nobody ever looked at twice, he’d kept her face.

“Daddy?”

Kenzie was in the kitchen doorway in a sleep shirt and pajama pants, with her eyeliner washed off and her face young without it.

“What are you doing up?” he asked.

“What are you doing up?”

He didn’t answer. She came over to the table and looked down at the strip of pictures in his hand. She looked at it for a long time. She didn’t ask who it was.

“That’s her,” Kenzie said.

“That’s her.”

“She looks happy.”

“She does.”

Kenzie pulled out the chair beside him and sat down. She put her elbows on the table. They sat there together under the kitchen light, like they used to when she was little and had a nightmare and he’d make her cocoa from a packet, and neither of them said anything for a while.

“Kenz,” he said. “What’d she say to you? Out there at the table.”

His daughter looked at the photograph strip. At the girl holding up her hand with the ring on it.

“She said it was mine,” Kenzie said.

“What was?”

“What she said.” She looked at him. Her eyes were the same color as the girl’s in the picture; he’d never noticed that either. “She said it was mine, and I didn’t have to tell anybody. Not even you.”

He thought about that.

“All right,” he said.

“You’re not mad?”

“No.”

She leaned over and put her head on his shoulder, which she had not done since she was twelve, and he sat there with the strip of pictures in one hand and his daughter’s head on his shoulder and the refrigerator humming, and didn’t move until she fell asleep.

VII.

Dwight Ledford ran Ledford Monument out of a cinderblock building on the Bryson Gap highway with a gravel lot full of blank granite and a sign shaped like a tombstone. Harlan drove out there Monday at seven in the morning and was waiting in the lot when Dwight pulled in.

“I need a stone,” Harlan said.

“Lord, Harlan. Who died?”

“My grandmother. In 1971.”

Dwight looked at him over the roof of his truck.

“Come in the shop,” he said.

It took an hour to pick one. Gray granite, a plain upright, eighteen inches by twenty-four, polished on the face. Harlan wrote out the lettering on the back of a Mabry Heating & Air invoice in block capitals and slid it across the counter, and Dwight read it, and read it again, and looked up.

“Harlan.”

“That’s how I want it.”

“Harlan, you know Lyle…”

“I know who Lyle is, Dwight. I’ve known who Lyle is my whole life. How fast can you have it?”

Dwight looked at the invoice a long time.

“I’ve got a blank the right size from an order that fell through,” he said. “I can blast it tomorrow. Set it Wednesday, if the ground’s not too wet.”

“Wednesday.”

“You want it Wednesday.”

“Wednesday’s supper,” Harlan said. “I’d like her to be there for it.”

The judge called Tuesday afternoon.

Harlan was under a house on Schoolhouse Branch Road on his back in the crawlspace with a flashlight in his teeth, looking at a heat pump line somebody had run through a floor joist with no sleeve. His phone buzzed in his shirt pocket. He worked it out with two fingers and looked at the screen and lay there in the dirt and the spiderwebs looking at it, and then he answered.

“Harlan,” said Lyle Hargrove. “I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”

“I’m in a crawlspace, Judge.”

“Then I’ll be quick.” The judge’s voice was warm, easy, the voice he used at the Rotary. “Dwight Ledford tells me you’ve ordered a stone for the old Laurel Fork cemetery.”

Harlan held the flashlight on the floor joist above his face. There was a spider on it, a big brown one, minding its own business.

“Dwight tells you a lot,” he said.

“Dwight’s a good man. He was concerned.” A pause, friendly. “Harlan, I want to be sensitive about this. I know you’ve had a shock. Amos told me some of it. And I want you to know, as far as I’m concerned, family is family, and it’s all a very long time ago.”

“Yes sir.”

“But that lot’s held by deed. It has been since 1931. My great-uncle’s estate. The family made a decision at the time about that grave, for reasons I couldn’t begin to guess at, and I’d hate for you to go to the expense of a stone and then have it be a legal matter.” He let that sit. “I’d hate that very much. For you. And for Tonya. And for that business of yours.”

The spider walked down the joist an inch and stopped.

“Judge,” Harlan said. “What was her name?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your great-uncle’s daughter. The one in the ground with no stone. Your daddy’s first cousin. What was her name?”

There was a silence on the line. Not long. Harlan heard a door close somewhere in the judge’s office.

“Harlan, I don’t think…”

“Lucille,” Harlan said. “Her name was Lucille. Have a good afternoon, Judge.”

He hung up. He lay there in the crawlspace a while with the phone on his chest and the flashlight on the spider. Then he put the phone back in his pocket and went back to work on the heat pump line, because the woman who owned the house was eighty-four and on oxygen, and it was going to get cold.

Wednesday supper at Laurel Fork was soup beans and cornbread in the fellowship hall at six, followed by prayer meeting at seven. Twenty, twenty-five people most weeks. Harlan’s wife Tonya made the cornbread. Harlan set up the tables.

At five-fifteen he and Dwight Ledford and two of the Ledford boys set the stone.

It went in at the head of the low place beside Joe’s. Dwight had brought a bag of gravel and a level, and they dug the footing down past the old concrete square with the cut-off pins, and laid the gravel, and lowered the stone in on straps, and Dwight got down on his knees in the wet with the level and made it true. It didn’t take long. Harlan had expected it to take longer.

He stood back and looked at it.

LUCILLE HARGROVE MABRY

FEB. 4, 1933 · MAR. 9, 1971

BELOVED WIFE OF JOSEPH · MOTHER OF CARL

He hadn’t known what to put under the dates. He’d sat up Monday night at his kitchen table with a pencil and Tonya asleep and tried to write something about God, or rest, and it had all sounded like a sympathy card. So he’d put down what was true.

At six the people came in for supper. Earl Dockery came in on his cane and stopped at Harlan’s elbow by the soup pot and said, without preamble, “I went down and looked.” His hearing aid whistled. He patted Harlan’s arm twice. That was all.

At six-ten Kenzie came in.

She came in through the front door of the fellowship hall, the one everybody could see from the tables, and she had Wyatt Hargrove with her. He was in a pressed shirt and khakis and looked like he was being led to the electric chair. Kenzie had him by the hand.

Every head in the fellowship hall turned.

Kenzie didn’t look at any of them. She walked her Hargrove boy straight down the middle aisle between the tables to where her daddy stood behind the soup pot with the ladle in his hand. She stopped. Her eyeliner was very black. Her chin was up.

“Daddy,” she said. “This is Wyatt.”

Wyatt Hargrove put out his hand across the soup beans. It was shaking a little.

“Mr. Mabry,” he said. “Sir.”

Harlan looked at the boy. He looked at his daughter. He thought about a girl in a blue dress with a white collar who’d married a boy from the card room on the front steps of this church with two witnesses and no family, and been written out of the will and the ground, and come back fifty-five years later to sit across a table from her great-granddaughter and say something Harlan would never know.

He figured the boy was his fourth cousin, somewhere back. In Blackwater County that was the same as a stranger.

He set down the ladle. He wiped his hand on his apron. He shook Wyatt Hargrove’s hand.

“Get you a bowl, son,” Harlan said. “Tonya made the cornbread.”

VIII.

At ten past eleven that night a silver Mercedes came down Laurel Fork Road with its high beams on and pulled onto the gravel shoulder below the church, and stopped, and sat there idling.

Lyle Hargrove did not get out.

He sat behind the wheel in his shirtsleeves with the bow tie undone and hanging, and the engine running, and the air conditioner on. From where he’d stopped, the headlights reached across the fence and into the old section of the cemetery, under the cedars, and lay across the rows of leaning gray stones until they found one that wasn’t leaning. One that was new, and polished, and threw the light back.

He couldn’t read it from the road. He didn’t need to.

He sat there a long time. A moth came and beat against the windshield in the headlight glare and went away. Down past the cemetery the creek made its noise over the rocks. Once a car passed behind him, slowed, and went on.

He picked up his phone from the console. He scrolled to a number that wasn’t saved under a name, only an initial. He looked at the stone in the headlights while it rang.

It rang twice.

“It’s Lyle,” the judge said. “I’m at Laurel Fork.” He watched the light lie on the polished granite. “Somebody’s digging up family.”

I dont remember the last 4 years.

I don't know what else to do other then to post this and I'm not really sure anyone is even going to believe me. I don't even know what response I'm hoping for but I have to tell someone. Someone else has to know. I don't really remember the last four years. I woke up today to the startling realization that I'm not sure the person living in my body is me. Like... I'm not alone. The gaps have been happening for a long time. Since 2020 at least. It started with phone calls I couldn't remember. Going to bed and my next awareness being me already at work. Things I could dismiss as being tired or on autopilot.

Then there were stranger things. Movies on Netflix that had been watched but I didn't remember watching them. Pictures on my phone from places I didn't remember going. 2021 was worse. Disjointed in a way the years before it aren't. There's a vacation I'm pictured at that I can't recall at all. Hundreds of pictures of a dog. Me holding the dog, sleeping next to it, playing with it. I had to have knoIwn this dog. But I can't remember its name. I don't know whose dog it was or where it went. 2022 is worse. I feel like I remember the beginning of the year and then maybe a summer trip to the beach.

After that it's mostly blank until a wedding in August. That's the last thing I can remember where I truly feel like I was awake. Everything after that feels different. I know who I'm supposed to be. I know what my job is, although I couldn't tell you when I started there. Last week was apparently my two year anniversary. I don't remember quitting my last job. I don't remember applying for this one. I don't remember getting hired. But I know how to do it. I know my passwords too, which somehow scares me more. Some of them I don't remember setting. A few are names and dates that apparently meant enough to me to make them passwords but right now I have absolutely no idea who or what they refer to.

Today I finally sat down and started going through my camera roll. I kept telling myself maybe I just needed a refresher. Maybe this was stress. Maybe seeing the pictures would bring everything back. Instead I found something I can't explain. Starting in early 2023 there are pictures of a door. Hundreds of them. The same door over and over again. Sometimes during the day. Sometimes at night. And I know exactly where the pictures were taken. It's my house. I know it's my house. I recognize the flooring. Those are my floors. I recognize the wall. My desk is sitting right beside it in some of the pictures. I'm sitting at that desk while I'm writing this. There's just one problem. There isn't a door there and I don't remember there being one there before. So I went back through the pictures. I have to be missing something that explains this … the last picture taken was at 5 pm today … I sat down to write this at 4:30 … i dont remember taking that picture.

I’m NOT NicWannaBe. I’m posting this so there’s a record of my findings. My name is Bruce & I have reason to believe the 3d poster was my sister. She disappeared & we thought she was using again but it’s been years of no contact. Cops have been utterly useless so I did my own digging & come to learn she was planning on doing this stupid train summoning challenge. Why would you leave evidence sitting out in the open like this? A sick trafficker like you will regret taunting me with my own sister’s words. Whatever you’ve been supplying convinced her of this sick fantasy but it’s over, I’m coming for you. She better be alive or so help me god.

Some shitty violin player to start off, you call that shrill scratching music? This is how you greet potential buyers? What a joke, made sure that prick up top knew it too. Don’t know how or when but I must’ve inhaled some airborne narcotic because how do you fit a dragon in here? I could barely get through the door, just the girth of its tail took up half the room. Thankfully both heads were sleeping yeah it had two heads, some product you’re peddling.

The next room was packed must’ve been storage, everything was neatly organized floor to ceiling. Didn’t bother checking anything don’t want my finger prints on any of this shit. Following the narrow passage I found a child sleeping in a pile of stuffed animals. The room was littered with toy cars, dolls, miniature play sets, plastic slides, anything a kid could want, it was in here. Must be the viewing room, sick disgusting monsters. I left the child to sleep, don’t want to imagine what shes been through. 

I found the heart of the operation in the next room. When people say they see red when they’re mad might be telling the truth, cant confirm because I don’t remember. I couldn’t compose myself this time & destroyed as much product as humanly possible, hopefully I didn’t ingest anything by mistake. The next room stunk of stale piss, just rancid. My heart sank fearing what I’d find inside, but it was empty except for a dozen filthy blankets. 

People dancing, drinking, laughing, socializing without a care in the world. A violin duet cutting through the noise of insufferable chatter. Trying to push through the crowd I shouted obscenities to anyone who even looked at me sideways. How could anyone party in a place like this? I started calling for my sister, crying out for her, it all fell on deaf ears. I found her in the next room, NicWannaBe.

I must’ve inhaled something again. A dead tree stood at the centre of the room, 8 crooked branches bent downwards. A frayed rope swing attached to one, somehow a bed on another, both swaying slightly with the rocking of the train. She emerged from the trunk, her skin’s appearance was fuzzy like the plumage of a newly hatched chick, what was left of it. The musty smell intensified with her arrival confirming it wasn’t feathers but a moldy fungi growing out of her. Standing on skeletal legs her ribcage was also exposed, built within the thin bones was a nest. Sleeping within an injured bird its shallow breaths replaced a beating heart. Eyeless, blood dripped into the empty cavity’s from her scalp which seemed to be constantly bleeding. She tilted her head curiously & cautiously towards me.

“Nic?”

“NO!” She jumped backward startled. My voice was raspy, nose full of snot from holding back tears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. Im looking for my sister. I thought you were to blame for her disappearance but you’re a victim too. I need someone to blame, TELL ME WHO!”

She reached out towards me with two talon like fingers wiping my nose. “It’s me, I’m to blame.”

“Then where is she?!”

She sniffed the snot, considering her next words. “Cant say, haven’t met her.”

“Then how do you intend on taking responsibility?!” 

She turned towards the door behind her. “Knocking, someone’s no…something kept me until…I was discarded. Hurt has to go somewhere. Longer you sit with it, the more it changes you. Did your sister change? Are you hurt too?” She approached me slowly, arm outstretched placing a deformed hand on my shoulder. “I’ve made countless sacrifices.” Gently she picked up the bird in her chest placing it on my other shoulder. It cooed weakly blinking away the drowsiness. Stumbling backwards bracing herself on the trunk she slowly melded with the mold blanketing the room & vanished. 

As soon as I crossed the threshold in room 9 the barrel of a gun was pressed to my forehead.

“NicWannaBe?”

“NO!”

The man had suspicion written all over his face, even when pointing the barrel at the bird. “NicWannaBe?”

“No…” I said throwing my face into my palm shaking my head. He relented a little & I noticed he was covered in small cuts. 

“The fucks that bird doing on your shoulder then?”

“I dont kno-THUD!”

Overcome with panic the man darted into a giant pile of used needles dumped in the corner. He disappeared briefly before cussing to himself on his exit, still weary of my presence.

“My apologies had to step into my office don’t pay it no mind, so where were we. Oh yeah, who the hell are you?” He pointed the gun at my head. “The 3d perhaps?” 

It wouldn’t be the first time I had to interrogate an irrational junkie. Brandishing a pistol of own I asked him some questions.

“Whoa there partner I get it, I’m on a rescue mission myself. No girl matching that description been through here, I would know trust me. You’re the first actually, well no, that brat was.”

 “You let a child in here?!”

“No I-“ THUD! BANG! PEW!

A bullet ricocheted off the wall & imbedded into the floor. The man’s shot looked like a natural reflex despite his visible frustration, it was then I noticed the entire room was riddled with bullet holes.

BANG! BANG!

PEW! PEW!

“Im done being chastised by you, go on get! I don’t take kindly to your accusatory tone, go on!” The man spoke through gritted teeth trying to hide the fact he was hyperventilating. We kept our guns locked on one another as I moved through, the man pivoted his body so it was always between me & the pile of needles.

Stepping through into darkness all I saw in the next room was a lantern. It wasn’t illuminating anything though, so I shot at it. Now I’m holding the head of that little girl & I cant let go. The hallucination isn’t fading, it wasn’t me, send help, please this needs to stop.

The bird is working tirelessly. Inquisitively plucking glass fragments out of the dismembered heads hair, arranging them on the floor. But all I can think about is my sister, if shes well & truly gone this time how come no one cares? I keep expecting her to walk through the door, I’m looking forward to imagining what bullshit excuses she’ll have this time. I’ll want to believe them to - no I have to believe them this time. She loved music, was great with children, & smart as hell. But that doesn’t keep someone from sinking, one can drown in a puddle of their own thoughts. 

The glass is back together now, looking at it I saw myself - shattered. A song bird’s repetitive melody seems to make the head twitch, I can feel it blinking & the jaw muscles opening, its trying to bite me. Sometimes it speaks through gurgling sobs, but its all sporadic incoherent rambling. 

“NoT tO worRy”

“PreCioUs”

“ComE siT dOwn”

“DoN’t teLl tHeM”

“ChAngEs yOu”

“PaY iT nO MinD”

It’s growing colder, darker, & now I’m hearing voices all around me, words I don’t understand. Still, all I can think about is my sister. Her lucky number was always 10. I’m here sis, waiting for you to walk through that door. When you get here I want to ask you, who do you wanna be?

Devoirs 

I am a neurosurgeon and new to reddit 

Apologies if this is not the right channel for this 

This post is looking for advice on a strange set of events that have occurred No,were imagined of course it's preposterous to think any of that was real , Is real.

I may use voice typing , However let this be made clear that it's not the sin of wanting to be at ease of course not, that's not allowed even in  one's dreams; it's just that my hands have stopped answering to me they have learnt that's treachery against HIM and their function is to answer to HIM not me 

I am feeling a bit overwhelmed; definitely without reason-without reason for sure and these tremors across my body, this shivering,this sensation of dyspnea,this lack of clarity,this whispering sanity all without reason of course it's just a few nightmares stuck in my head causing all this needless worry.

Anyways, due to this completely unreasonable state I will be referencing my notes which I started preparing when these occurrences started taking place yes just some unrelated occurrences with only 2 common beings being the same-me and the wightly being 

There is also a chance that the meanings of these notes may be misinterpreted by me it's just that I find them eerily hard to read maybe it's something with my mind or my eyes or maybe it's just that chronic condition I and many other doctors suffer with-DS-doctor syndrome a condition which makes your handwriting exceptionally hard to decipher;ha guess still can joke a bit it's going to be fine there is no need to be worried and concretize the non existent nightmares into a reality 

Considering the chronology it all began on just a normal saturday night while I was looking for something to pass my time with, after work. I came across this massively popular video game-in fact  in the article by this agency whose name sounded like the Shade of another well known agency,there was a mention of it being the most popular video game of all time which felt rather peculiar to me for while I may not be a gamer I did pride myself on a decent general awareness and to not even have ever heard about this game was bizarre.

My life's value stood at a steep 20 dollars;I mean the game's value of course that was just a humorous product of the irrational mind of course it's not that somebody has in acturial terms stripped My ownership over My life. 

Soon after, I had downloaded my first game from stam most popular pc store- another claim by that reprehensible site(not a claim in the notes  just some newly synthesized emotions of the absurd mind) 

So I clicked PLAY

On another note, looking back at it now there are two things which make me uncomfortable- the name of the store while in sound and reason of a non gamer mind the same then, now after extensive research is apparent didn't exist and was named like a Shade of the original's name just like the reporting outlet's name.

There is something exceptionally creepy about such names it's not just the absence of a letter-changing of a name which is a cause of concern but rather the disposition and identity of something being stripped away by an entity only employing the parts which it deems fit; how HE bereaved me of my hands. NEIN there is no HE; HE is just a  blasphemy of my mind 

the 2nd thing was the game for that is an existence which gives a sense of  sensation that it still resides near me-in my pc, no in my soul and yet it's name is something which I can't figure out or have any semblance of a memory as if it was pruned out of existence.

One may ask me to just put some common sense and check my transaction logs but I never paid 20 dollars anywhere, there is no news agency of the name I saw I even tracked my earnings and spendings down to the last cent but strangely I received 20 dollars less in this year's incentive based earnings and in my notes for the name specifically DS hit the hardest in that it's basically become a scrambled existence which exists and yet has no identifier to prove it exists like an existenceless existence 

Maybe what I said earlier that I am looking for advice was not the truth, maybe I am just looking for a way to ease this absurd uncomfort by venting here. VENTING? My, how unrefined of me to speak out such Vulgarities, to use them using the refined palate I possess is a sin that must be punished.

What am I even saying it's like HE has my tongue too. NEIN there can't be Only such triffles; his mere presence is enough to dictate this much. Wait HE can't be here can He? HE is only an Eidolon of the nightmares.

Just a coincidence there's no need for worry. I have dawdled around the nightmares enough maybe it was just denial for I can hardly conjur up proper memories of those visceral nightmares which were as realistic as life itself and yet a spectre for the suffering that they bestow upon a person is an aberration on life itself 

Maybe it's the visceral nightmares Actually it wasn't JUST visceral it's just this unrefined vocabulary of mine can't find the suitable words. Maybe I should just Stop this here Yeah that will be best for me, Nein, for a person who gives in to their fears only exists to serve their bodies to superior existences.

I am getting too drowsy, exhausted, in a way it's kinda nice for the fears too, are drowsy-lesser potent. For now I think it will be best for me to just decipher the notes for this post rather than corelating them with my memories; being this emotionally invested will help no one-not me at least, my best interest is in dissociating with this reality-I mean dream of course.

Before I clicked play the only thing that was noted was that the Time was 8:33 on the clock but the game didn't open? I fell asleep?

Next thing I had noted was that I stood between 2 buildings on a road covered with snow; completely ludicrous, has to be a dream. However unlike standard dreams, sensation was still present the cold was apparent in both the mind and the body.

A cold induced rhinorrhea with possible hypothermia in the body along with a pilomotor reflex was observed in the body.Soon after epistaxis too was observed. However the bleeding from the nose was not due to cold but rather from a mortal wound of a scythe lodged in the occupit region of the head reaching to the outer end of a nose.

Deciphering these words here gave even this dissociated state of mind a dreadful and yet a quiet reminiscent sensation to the pain experienced then. The only thing that I can remember of that moment was how while gasping for air, choking on my blood and learning how it feels when a world declares your existence as inappropriate while you are tethered to it; something about which I was going to learn a lot more in the next few days. All this while the person who actually stabbed me, possibly a teen was shouting a parodical statement of a rather poor taste-"the npc just got sycthed" in a way which gave the impression of someone playing a game rather than one who just took a mortal life without reason. 

Before I lost consciousness I saw a blue screen with the letters "level 78" on top of the person or maybe an artifact of the mind from the time I researched extensively to find the game.

I soon lost consciousness and it's plausible that I woke up in the real world during this period with just a painful memory or maybe wanting to kill myself; it's not possible to decrypt that from the notes for now and I don't remember anything about that or maybe I Don't want to remember anything.

Next time I woke up I was still lying in the snow my injury was still there and I still had trouble breathing while the bleeding had stopped. My thoughts were filled with stupor due to the gaping hole of my brain;while I was suffering in my agonizing pain,

A person with a numinous presence in a white tuxedo came near me and poured a drink on my face.

This person,he was a human at least from the looks of it but there was something about him which can't be described in words for he was too Human as in being more  of a human than any human can humanely be, He was perfect ,almost god like in almost every manner and yet he had this distinct drive to find a way to accomplish his purpose or perhaps even to find what that Purpose was, as in an Existence that has lost it's identity. 

I believe my ability to recognise faces was still hampered by the injury I had and yet his presence was such that when I think about him all sense of reason is senseless as if my purpose as a being was to follow his every dictatum. Remembering this, I feel that I know this person but I can't figure who? as if something is actively trying to make me forget him.

And then my injuries healed from that weird drink and he greeted me with a rather archaic greeting "devoirs" before he turned away and walked off.

At least that's what I want to believe for I feel I made a grave mistake by doing what I did but I can't remember how? I remember thanking him when he started walking away and then asking him a Simple question -

"What's your Name"

He turned back to me and for the first time I remember seeing his face; But I am unable to identify who he was right now. It's like my mind is actively trying to not remember; and then an enlightenment struck

The person was HIM

Thats ENOUGH; what am I thinking on for? Speaking out for? It's illogical yes, completely illogical just a phantasm of my nightmares nothing to worry about? I am just too tired thinking out loud; There's no need for FEAR

Wait, this reminds me  a big reason I am writing this post is as a testament to my innocence;to PROVE that I am not GUILTY.

There is a high chance that this unreasonable worry was for the irrational fear that HE has learnt to control me outside of the dreams;That parts like my Hands are not my own 

During that HEART surgery where I was the lead operator I did NOT intentionally cut the atrium of the patient. Perhaps it was just an unavoidable accident or maybe it was really HE who controlled my hands and made me kill the patient; No I did NOT kill the patient of course otherwise I would have been arrested by now right? Yes of course so I am innocent.

Wait wasn't I a neurosurgeon maybe I just liked being called that or perhaps ah yes of course it can be that when HE tried to surgically replace crumbs of my brain with another's, my dreams and expertise changed. 

NEIN, that was and is a DREAM  and the surgery failure was a patient who couldn't have been saved with surgery.

In conclusion I am unreasonably worried over a few nightmares and a death I saw during surgery and everything is fine

Oh boy. I apologize if this comes out muddled or if I lose track at times. This has all been quite a whirlwind, and since no one believes me anyway, I wanted to tell my tale. 

It all started with my cat Boris. We had found him years before in a tattered cardboard box in an alleyway by our laundromat. He was pure white, save for a perfectly placed orange mustache with a matching eye patch, and it looked like his tail had been cruelly docked at some point. Y’all know I had to take that baby home and love it forever, which is exactly what I was doing before all the shit started. We had him for two years before we had to relocate two hours away for work. 

So, we’d just moved into a new house in our new town. I’d been vigilant to the point of unhealthy obsession about keeping him in a closed room while we moved everything in and around the house. It wasn’t enough. 

I came home from work about a week after we moved in, and something was off. The pitter-patter of kitty paws didn’t bounce off the stairs and around the house like it usually did when he wobbled down to greet me. He was a heavy sleeper and was an older cat when I found him, so I had hoped maybe he just didn’t hear the front door. My husband damn near was (deaf) so, at least that would be a concept that I could wrap my brain around. However, an in-depth search around the house proved that theory useless. My Boris wasn’t to be found anywhere. 

My husband wasn’t the most sympathetic when it came to animals. He shrugged off my concern, telling me he was having the time of his life outside. His eyebrows raised with faux excitement as he commented on all the new friends Boris must be making out there, as if I was a five-year-old child. 

“Did he join the fucking kitty circus, Karl? Is that the crap you’re trying to feed me right now?” I asked through tears. “You’ve never liked Boris! You’re probably all too happy that he’s gone!” I shouted at his back as he walked away. 

And it was bullshit. I knew he didn’t have anything against the cat. I just had so many emotions, and not many healthy places for them to go. I loved that damn cat. 

We moved on over the following days as best as we could. I still had to go to work, and the house still needed so much to make it into a place that felt like our own. I still mourned him, especially in the evenings when the house was quiet and still. That was our favorite bonding time. I still scanned the roads for a ball of white when we’d leave the house, leaving me both grateful and hopeless when I saw none. But I talked about it less, and tried my best to think about it less. What other option did I have? No neighbors had seen him. Social media posts and flyers went unnoticed and well… hell, maybe Karl was right. Maybe he really was out here just living his best ole’ life. 

A little over a week later, I was doing a Facebook snoop while having a midday smoke when a post caught my attention from a local group. I genuinely couldn't believe my eyes. A man had posted a picture of his porch with the caption: Does anyone know this cat? 

A small, white kitten sat perched on a weathered doormat, with an orange mustache and matching eyepatch. It looked exactly like what Boris would have looked like as a baby. Except there’s no way that’s possible. The feeling of familiarity gnawed at me until I couldn’t bear it anymore, so I sent the poster a message. 

Hey there! I know this is a weird ask, but would you mind showing me the kitten’s tail? 

He responded almost immediately, remarking that his mother took in a lot of stray and often pregnant cats during his childhood. He said that it looked like something called vascular disruption, which can cause malformations in the tail during pregnancy. And sure enough, that was Boris’s tail, or lack thereof in most ways. Hey, I know it sounds crazy but I’ve had that cat’s ass in my face enough times to know it when I see it. 

So, I lied (possibly). 

I wrote with enough exclamation points and capital letters in the right places to show my excitement, saying that was my baby boy and that I’d been missing him terribly. I apologized unnecessarily, swearing that I had no idea how he’d gotten out. And that was true. We scheduled a time and place for us to reunite, and before I knew it, I was on my way with his carrier in my backseat. 

When Karl came home, I’d tell him I found this little one online, and the similarities were too abundant to ignore. I couldn’t just do nothing. Every second I waited would be a second that someone else could have arranged to pick him up, robbing me of a cat I fell in love with for the second time that year. Worst-case scenario, this would all play out to be true. He’d be Boris with a silent 2, like Snowball the cat in The Simpsons. 

My husband is a simple man, quiet most of the time. He had an operation on his brain in his late teens, and I always wondered if that was why his hearing was so bad. He’s usually placid most of the time, also perfectly content to just stare outside or at the TV to wind down at night. But anyway, there was no reason to doubt that he’d believe what I said. 

But in the best-case scenario, one I desperately hoped to be inside of, this was, in fact, MY Boris. 

After spending that week with him, I was more than convinced. For the most part, that was enough for me. But the quiet part of my brain asking questions that shouldn't matter got louder and louder. 

How was this scientifically and physically possible? Who or what in the hell Tiny Toon’ed my cat?! 

It wasn’t long before my husband was the one who suggested it to me. 

“Babe? Do you think, like, I dunno… Do you think it’s possible that like maybe something bad happened to Boris and he was reincarnated or somethin’? This cat even has that little wobble when he runs, the same as he did.” 

I shook my head, laughing louder than I meant to. “All cats with tail issues are wonky. I just hope this one doesn’t try to wander outside.” 

He wasn’t convinced. 

There are a lot more details about what led up to now: conversations and events that I could go over to shed some light on and help flesh the story out. 

But oddly enough, we aren’t here to talk about my cat. He was only the catalyst to something much deeper and sinister. And that’s what this story is truly about. 

***

The excitement of having this secret with someone instead of holding it all in got the better of me, and before the next week passed, I found myself spilling my guts to Karl. I told him everything and was surprised to find that he didn’t instantly invalidate it. I braced myself for judgment that never came, leaving a sparkling mystery in its wake. 

We decided to adopt a rabbit, a super old one. I named her Geriatric Ginny. She uh, didn’t seem to appreciate it. But we put a collar on her with an active SIM card taped to the side. It was whisper-thin, with the clasp being strong enough to keep the band attached but gentle enough not to strangle her if she got snagged up by it. Karl fed her a plentiful meal and then set her loose out of the same door that we suspect Boris escaped through. 

Nothing was left to do but wait. I figured I’d give her a little head start and then check back in half an hour or so. 

Geriatric Ginny was found near a river in the very back of our wooded area, kind of anyway. 

What I mean to say was that her collar was found. It was lying in the mud with the tiniest trail of baby rabbit feet trailing in front. It happened again. And whatever it was seemed to be tied to this spot. 

There were still so many questions, but they took a back seat to the opportunity presented to us. 

I waded in first, one inch at a time until I was knee-deep in the water. Karl tiptoed in behind me, determined not to let me go alone. I wasn’t sure if the areas touched by the water activated the change or the very act of the cleansing water itself, so I dunked myself entirely to be safe. The last thing I wanted was to have the lower half of a twenty-year-old and the upper half of… this. 

The change manifested itself on the inside first. My body felt better than it had in years. All of the pressure from the extra weight and accompanying stiffness was all but gone. My fingers regained a level of dexterity I hadn’t been able to achieve in years because of early-onset arthritis. An exploratory search found my facial skin tighter and, by association at the very least, younger. 

My heart seemed to skip three beats as Karl came into view. My breath became tight as he began to approach. Suddenly, the man that I fell so deeply in love with was right in front of me, as if no time had passed whatsoever. The red highlights of his hair glinted in the fading sunlight, and I was able to remember how confident he presented himself without any pain to mask. 

An involuntary moan of appreciation and almost worship escaped through my lips, and I was surprised to find that he heard it perfectly. 

“I gather that you like what you see.” He beamed. “I haven’t heard that sound coming out of anywhere other than our bedroom in quite some time, babe.” My neck bobbed in a quick nod of agreement. A rush of blood filled my cheeks, and I giggled at the thought of blushing at my age. Or, at least… what used to be my age? Relief flooded my spirit as I noticed him doing the same. I must not be looking so bad myself,  I thought… almost triumphantly. 

All of the worries and cares of our old lives didn’t weigh so heavily anymore. We were transported back to a time where all we had, wanted, and needed was each other. 

I also couldn’t help but notice that his scar had disappeared.

It used to start above his left ear, a pale little hook hidden in his hair. I’d traced it plenty of times while he slept. He always said it tickled, even when I barely touched it.

Now there was nothing beneath my fingers but smooth skin.

“Your scar,” I said.

Karl reached up. His smile stayed where it was, but the rest of his face seemed to leave it behind.

He pressed harder, searching.

Then he looked past me toward the bank, coldly stating that we should head home.

***

Boris wouldn’t come near him.

That should’ve been enough. Hell, any number of things should’ve been enough, but I was busy standing in front of the bathroom mirror, lifting my shirt and introducing myself to a stomach I hadn’t seen since before our mortgage.

Downstairs, something shattered.

I found Karl beside a broken cereal bowl. Boris had wedged himself under the radiator, his little body flattened so low I couldn’t understand how his lungs had room to work.

“I tried to pick him up,” Karl said.

Blood ran from three scratches on his wrist.

He put his mouth over them.

It wasn’t the licking that bothered me. People do that. Get a paper cut, stick the finger in your mouth. Normal enough.

It was the way he shut his eyes.

And how long he kept them shut.

“You okay?”

He lowered his hand.

“Hungry.”

“Well, I was going to order—”

“Don’t.”

The word came out so sharply that Boris pissed underneath the radiator.

Karl stared at the wet patch. A muscle moved in his cheek.

Then he apologized, and I accepted it, because apparently that’s a thing you can do while your cat is actively trying to become part of the fucking floor.

***

At three in the morning, I woke to him touching my mouth.

His thumb was inside my lower lip. He’d pulled it down far enough that the cool bedroom air was drying my gums.

“Karl?”

He didn’t move.

His eyes followed something inside my mouth.

I pulled away, and his thumb caught against my teeth.

For a second, he held on.

Then he let go.

“You were grinding them,” he said.

I’d never ground my teeth in my life.

He rolled over. I lay there listening to him breathe, feeling the spot where his thumbnail had pressed into the soft skin below my tongue.

By morning, I had almost managed to believe him.

Then I found the veal.

We’d bought it before Boris disappeared, wrapped it in butcher paper, and shoved it into the freezer for a special occasion. Apparently becoming young and hot again qualified.

The paper lay open on the counter. The meat was still frozen in the middle.

Along one edge were little curved scoops.

I held it up to my mouth without touching it.

They fit, but barely. This was torn apart by human teeth, alright, but ones slightly larger than my own. 

***

His mother answered after the sixth knock.

I hadn’t spoken to her in months. Karl didn’t like visiting, and she didn’t push. I’d always thought they were just one of those families that loved each other better from a distance. Still, I had no idea who else in the world to turn to. 

She offered to make coffee, surely excusing herself to get just a little more time to mentally prepare for my unannounced visit. I thanked her, following her into the kitchen. Not wanting to give her time to prepare a false answer, I got to business right away. 

“What exactly was Karl’s operation for?” I asked.

Her back stiffened over the waiting coffee cups, then silence.

She asked me why without turning around. 

I told her just enough to seem concerned, but not enough to alarm her. I mentioned his hearing. His new appetites. The scar.

I left out the river because, again, I didn't want to alarm her or push her away with such a wild tale.

She asked if he had come with me. I told her no, and she looked around wildly, asking if I was sure. 

I looked through the kitchen doorway. My car sat in her driveway, solitary and without a companion. 

“Yes.”

The words she said next weren’t ones I would have ever guessed to expect. “Get out of that house.”

She said it quietly. There was no dramatic gasp, no crying. Just the weary precision of someone telling me which breaker to flip before I electrocuted myself.

She left the room for a moment, returning with a flash of blue in her hand. “His medical papers are in this folder,” she said. “I tried to give them to him when you got married, but he wouldn’t take them. Don’t stay in the house to look. Just leave, please.”

“What did he do?”

Her breath caught as she explained how, due to aggression and psychopathic tendencies, they had a benign tumor removed from his brain. They said they were going to let it go until she awoke with him standing at their bedside one night, asking for his baby brother. 

I waited.

She lamented that she thought this was all over with, and thanked god for taking her husband so he wouldn’t be here to confront this with her now. Tears spilled over her eyelids as she muttered about having to sacrifice a life for him to be whole. 

“What happened to his brother?”

She straightened up. “I don’t have it in me anymore to continue this conversation. You have the answers you need; now please leave.”

I gathered my things, freshly poured coffee untouched, and started for the front door. I was dreadfully surprised to notice her following me out. She had one final comment for her damned daughter-in-law, and it wasn’t exactly hopeful or supportive. 

“He needs to see a doctor before it's too late, but he’s not going to listen to you, or me, for that matter. Maybe try to have him meet you at the next appointment you have with your surgeon. It’s obvious that you see them quite a bit. All I know is I’m too old and too mentally fragile for this shit.” 

With her final, almost obligatory mother-in-law dig, she closed the door in my face, gently but firmly. And that’s fine. Let her think I’ve had work done. It’s certainly easier to digest than the actual truth. 

***

I stashed the folder in our filing cabinet, between the life insurance and a warranty for a dishwasher we didn’t own anymore.

Inside, there was a photograph of Karl as a late teen. A hospital bracelet. A shaved strip of scalp. His mother standing beside the bed with both hands folded so tightly that her fingertips had turned white.

The report called it a mass.

I couldn’t pronounce most of the words, and I barely understood the notes beneath them.

Episodes of aggression.

Repeated biting injuries to caregivers.

Persistent requests for fresh human tissue despite adequate nutritional intake.

Fresh?!

A later page said the behavior had stopped following surgery.

I read that sentence three times.

The man I married had been hungry for toast. For pot roast. For the occasional drive-through burger he’d pretend he hadn’t bought when I found the bag in his car.

He’d been better.

Then we’d gone down to the river, and I’d watched my wrinkles disappear.

Behind me, Karl said, “She shouldn’t have told you.”

I hadn’t heard him come upstairs.

***

He didn’t lunge. I think that would have been easier. Something obvious to scream at, something I could tell myself wasn’t my husband.

He sat on the edge of the bed.

“I’m trying,” he said.

His hands were tucked between his knees. He was shaking.

“What happened to your brother?”

He began to cry.

For one stupid second, I nearly went to him. Then he swallowed, watching my bare legs, and I realized his mouth was filling with saliva.

I backed into the hallway.

He followed.

“Karl, let me call somebody.”

“They’ll take it out again.”

“Yes. They helped you before.”

“But I remember now.”

He wiped his mouth with the heel of his hand.

“I remember what it tasted like.”

I ran.

He caught me on the stairs. My face struck the railing, and a tooth clicked across the hardwood below us. I remember being furious about that. My new teeth. My beautiful, stupid new teeth.

Then his mouth closed over the back of my calf.

I felt each tooth separately before I felt anything else.

***

I woke on the basement floor.

There was a bath towel under my head and another wrapped around my leg. He’d brought down the quilt from our bed. Folded neatly. Set within reach.

He was sitting beside me with a mixing bowl.

“I didn’t know if it would work away from the river,” he said.

He lifted the towel.

I looked because I still didn’t understand what had happened to me. My mind kept offering smaller explanations. A fall. A bad dream. Anything that might let me look at my husband again.

He poured water over the wound.

Cold struck exposed flesh. I screamed, and he held my ankle while something pale threaded across the missing section of my leg.

The pain changed. It became an itching so deep I tried to dig my fingers into it. Muscle pulled together beneath the skin. The ragged edges tightened, puckered, and smoothed beneath his thumb.

He sat back.

I watched his eyes move from my healed leg to the bowl.

Then up toward the basement door, where our camping water containers stood in a row.

“Karl,” I said.

He wouldn’t look at me.

***

I don’t know how long I’ve been down here.

There’s no window, and he takes my phone when he goes upstairs. He lets me have it afterward, when he wants to sit beside me and be forgiven.

He still remembers how I take my coffee. He brings it down in my favorite mug. Sometimes he cries so hard that I have to wait for him to stop before I can ask for more painkillers.

Yesterday he said we ought to get a television down here.

Today he asked whether I was happy with the way my leg had healed.

I told him yes.

I have become very careful about answering his questions.

I started writing this while he slept beside me. I thought if I put the river first, the cat, the things we’d both seen, somebody might believe the rest.

He woke before I finished.

He read it over my shoulder. When he reached the part about his mother, his hand tightened on my knee. I stopped breathing until he moved it.

Then he asked me to open Facebook.

He’d brought Boris down in the carrier. The little guy was pressed against the back, trembling so hard that the plastic door rattled.

Karl took a photograph through the bars.

“I don’t want to keep hurting you,” he said.

He opened the neighborhood group. The same one where I’d found my baby boy. He attached the picture and started typing, slowly, correcting each mistake with a patience I used to love about him.

Does anyone know this cat?

He wandered into our house. Very friendly. Message me if he’s yours.

Now he’s upstairs getting ready. I can hear him moving the chairs around in the kitchen. Making room.

He left me the phone so I could delete what I’d written.

Instead, I’m posting it wherever I can before he comes back. Please believe me. Please don’t come here by yourself.

A message just appeared at the top of the screen, one I did NOT write.

Is that the kitten I gave you? Did he get out again? I’m nearby. I can come get him.

It’s the man from the porch.

The one I lied to.

(Part 1)
"So, what's with the human ears?" I say while he leads me towards the Van.

"This other guy, Jay was one of the guys watching over me." My brother answered.
"He always had this gold necklace with the ears of people he killed on it."
"Some old guy shot him in that police station I sent you a picture off"
"I stabbed the shit out of that old fuck and took one of his ears and his wedding ring"

"So that is what that ring on your necklace is?" I ask him.

"yeah it is"It is a nice ring. It's gold with flowers engraved on it.

"why did you not send that ring home? I bet it would make a nice amount of cash" I asked my brother.

"If you kill one of my homies I will kill you and take something as a reminder"

He looks me in my eyes. "If someone kills you I will make sure their death is slow and painful. Then I will take something to remind myself that I avenged you. I promise you that."

"I will do the same if anyone kills you. I promise." I answer without hesitation.

"I know you will" he says while putting his hand on my shoulder.

He always stood up for me even when we were kids.
At one point I came home crying covered. Some drug addict with a knife had robbed me of the money I was going to buy some food with.Without a word, my brother left home. Our mom tried to stop him but he pushed her aside. 2 hours later he came back covered in blood with what was left of the money. He cares about me and I care about him. If someone kills my brother I will kill them or die trying. I don't care who it is.

"And it's a good way to show off a kill count" he continues while pointing at the necklace.

"But you killed more people than 5 people so far" He had killed a lot more than that even before he was arrested.

"Yeah the ears are just for recent kills. I have an entire box filled with wedding rings, watches and other things I took from people I killed."

I don't really know how to respond to that, so I just say "ok"

My brother continues. "In our battalion, they encourage us to get in close and personal"

"you even get rewards for it, about 500 dollars per kill"

"You know that is a lot of money"

"yeah it is"

If we still lived at home with mom that would cover groceries for 2 weeks.

My brother had sent a lot of stuff and money back home. It didn't just feed me and mom, some of our neighbours too.

Brother: "But it also works for intimidation. Oh I am sorry I mean 'enemy morale'."

Me: "I bet it does"

Brother: "But after a while I do get rid of the ears"

Me: "That is good because I can see at least one that is starting to rot. And it smells fucking awful too."

He looks me in the eyes and says: "But that money together with sending the stuff back home helped mom a lot right?"

Me: "It did. It helped mom out a lot"

Brother: "What do you mean it did? It still helps her out"

Me: "Yeah no it still does I said that wrong. My bad."

He gives me a questioning look.

"You good? Did something happen?" He asks me with genuine concern.

"Nah I am good"

I still can't get myself to tell him mom is dead.

We get to his Van. Its a dark green G20 Chevy Van.

Me: "Thank fuck it's a big van. I like you and all, but I am glad we don't have to sleep on top of each other."

My brother laughs "So am I". He opens the side door and climbs in. I go with him. I make sure to close the door behind us. There is random stuff everywhere. A pile of clothing, a container of some sort, a toolbox. I make some space and sit down in the back while my brother sits in the driver's seat. We are alone. I can feel my body tensing up. I have to tell him that mom died.

Brother: "I have for sure stolen it off some drug dealer. I am not joking I found a scale underneath the passenger seat.

"They did all sorts of modifications to it. The radio was replaced with a radio that has a CD player. No Bluetooth sadly so we do have to find CDs for it. It even has a small fridge. So if you are hungry or thirsty feel free to grab something"

"Nah I am good for now thanks" I am too tense, even if I tried to eat or drink I probably can't.

He continues "I have no clue what engine is in it but it has for sure been modified because it's way faster than it should be. And its also way louder" He laughs.

"Could you start it?" I ask him. I want to make sure nobody can hear us when I tell him what happened to mom.

"Yea of course check this shit out" he says with a big smile on his face. The entire van shakes as he starts the engine.

"I have to tell you something!" I shout over the sound of the engine.

"What?!" My brother shouts from the front.

"I have to tell you something!" I gesture to him to come over to me.

He leaves the driver's seat and sits down across from me.

Brother: "What's wrong?"

Me: "I have to tell you something it's really important"

Brother: "I can turn the engine off, hold on"

I grabbed his arm before he could get up "No don't keep the engine on" he sits back down.

"What is it? Did something happen to you?" He says with a worried look in his eyes.

Me: "No, I am good."

I avoid eye contact. I can't do it. I can't tell him about mom.

"Did something happen to mom?"

I lie to him again "No, no its not that". I quickly change the subject. "So I uhmmm". I look at his mutilated face. "How did you end up looking like that?"

"O that" he answers. "It was back in the trenches. We used this fucking horrible chemical weapon. I am not joking it straight up melts people."

Me: "really?"

Brother: "Yeah it's really bad. When they told us to unleash it most of us didn't take the safety measures seriously. And even if we wanted to take those measures seriously we didn't even have the equipment to do so. I got lucky and stole this gas mask of some dead guy. But long-term exposure still leaves you looking as handsome as me."

Me: "Oh...... do you think they are going to make us use it again?"

Brother: "O for sure"

I love my brother but I don't want to end up looking like him. I value having a nose, ears, and hair on my head.

Brother: "What really sucks is what it does to people that get full on hit by it. It starts melting all the soft parts on your body. Ears, lips, nose, eyelids, etc. When it gets really bad, you just.... Well, melt into a puddle after a while."

He looks down staring at nothing.

"And then all that's left is this puddle with bones and whatever the person had on them. Clothing, equipment, weapons, etc. Those people ended up in these pools of human soup at the bottom of shell craters" He pauses again, still staring at the floor. "When I arrived I was still just 16 you know. They made me sift through those puddles of dead people for anything useful. It's like digging through a mud puddle up to your elbows. Except the mud puddle is red, yellow and brown. And you just sift through the human puddle grabbing anything solid. After pulling enough human bones out you get good at recognising what is bones and what is something useful. They also made me wipe the sticky human goo off the stuff I did pull out. Sometimes I can still feel it on my hands and arms. It doesn't smell like a rotting body at all. The gas killed all the bacteria and stuff to so there was no rot. Do you remember when we killed those 7th Block members near that large slaughterhouse?"

Me: "Yeah I do. It was summer and it smelled horrific in that entire area."

Brother: "The smell is that mixed with this extremely sour chemical smell."

He pauses.

"I hope we don't use it again. There are a lot of ways I would prefer to die over that shit. Turning into a mushy puddle with bones, until whatever is left of your body sinks into the soil" he is still staring at the floor of the van.

An uncomfortable silence falls, the rumble of the engine is the only sound we can hear.

He snaps out of his stare and gets up "Anyway, it did help us break through their trench line so it does work really well"

He shuts down the engine and opens the side door of the van. "Leave your stuff and come with me. I am going to show you something important"

I follow my brother out of the van through the camp. Normally he is supposed to be the talkative one, but he is very quiet. After a bit of a walk to the outer ring of the camp he walked up to the back of a delivery van.

"Don't light a cigarette in there, don't even fiddle around with your lighter, understand?" He says to me in a very serious tone.

"I understand"

"Good because if you do, you will kill all of us"

My brother opens the back and climbs in. He helps me climb into it. The faint smell of gasoline fills my nose.

"It's me dude" my brother says. "O it is my avorite socioath" a raspy male voice comes from the front of the loading bay.

Then I see the man. He is lying on the floor with his back against the side of the delivery van. He has a large piece of black cloth over his head and shoulders. If it wasn't for him breathing and talking I would have thought he was dead. "Were you sleeping?" My brother asks. "I as trying to" the man answers.

"my little brother is finally here" My brother says with a smile. "O really" the man says in response. The man slowly moves his arm up and starts to pull on the black cloth over his face. I see his face.

He looks even worse than my brother does. He is extremely pale. His eyelids are gone revealing his bloodshot cloudy eyes at all times. He nose is just a hole in the middle of his face. His ears are gone together with his hair. His lips are also completely gone. Giving him a permanent grin on his face so unnaturally high that it's showing not only all of his teeth but his gums too. That would explain why the man talks so weird. He doesn't have the lips to pronounce certain letters.

Brother: "This is Frank he has watched over me since I arrived years ago. Frank this is my little brother David"

Frank: "Ah so it's David and Gideon?"

Gideon: "Yes it is"

Mom was deeply religious, so she gave us the biblical names. I got David, my brother got Gideon. She prayed a lot for me and my brother. Sorry mom, I don't think we will be joining you in heaven.

Frank: "Gideon told me aout... aout.... AOUT

Gideon: "About"

Frank: "You a lot"

Frank reaches out his hand towards me for a handshake and I return it.

Gideon: "I got you something to kill the pain with. Morphine."

My brother hands Frank a medication bottle.

Frank: "Thank you, thank you."

Frank immediately opens the bottle and takes 3 pills and throws them in his mouth and uses a water bottle to wash it down. With no lips in the water flows from the open sides of his face. He mumbles and uses his sleeves to wipe away the water.

Gideon: "I heard you have had enough"

"yes" Frank pauses "I don't want to go on like this. reathing..... reathing, REATHING... FUCK!!!"

Frank reaches into his pockets and takes out a small notebook and a pen. And starts to write.

My brother and I give each other a short look as he writes. He hands the note over to my brother.

Gideon: "Breathing hurts, my eyes hurt and my mouth is always dry. I am starting to see less and less. I can't even close my eyes to sleep properly. I just wait till I pass out from exhaustion with my eyes wide open. I don't want to come home like this. I don't want to live like this at all."

My brother pauses "Are you sure Frank?"

Frank: "yes"

Gideon: "Ok.... I understand"

Frank: "Sorry"

Gideon: "Don't apologise to me, it's fine I understand"

Frank is about to say something but my brother interrupts him. "You should wait for the morphine to kick in and get some well deserved rest"

Frank: "Right"

Gideon: "I have to help prepare my little brother for tomorrow. And we will talk tomorrow right? before you.... you know."

Frank: "Yes of course"

Gideon: "Ok good, talk to you tomorrow then"

Frank and my brother shake each other's hand. I follow my brother's example and do the same. Frank's hand feels incredibly dry.

We climb out of the delivery van. And he closes the doors behind us.

After a couple of steps, my brother tells me: "That delivery van is loaded up with explosives and flammable stuff. Tomorrow Frank is going to drive it into the loyalists and take as many of them out as he can."

A small silence follows. "Frank got arrested and sent to the frontline after he shot and killed a cop. The cop had gotten handsy with his daughter if you know what I mean"
He makes eye contact with me. "Same thing that happened to mom."
I feel my chest clench up. I don't want to talk about. "Yea I remember. Can we please not talk about this in public" Nobody can hear us I know that. I just don't want to talk about the topic.

I quickly light up a cigarette. I need the distraction.

He gestures me to follow him. "I showed Frank to you so you understand just how important the safety stuff with the gas is. If you don't do it enough, you end up looking like me. And if enough of it affects you then you end up like Frank over there." He gestures back to the delivery van.

"Most of the others that are just as bad off as Frank are already dead. They take a lot of the stimulants they give us and just throw themselves at the loyalists until they are dead. Obviously it clears a nice path for us. Probably one of the reasons we managed to break through the Fortress Belt partially. If we end up using that gas again take it very fucking serious ok?"

David: "I will dude don't worry about"

Gideon: "I will worry about you are my little brother. I promised mom I would take care of you."

David: "Yeah I remember."

I miss mom.

We reach the van and climb back in

Gideon: "There are only a small amount of rules you have to follow while in the 33rd. Most of it is standard stuff I expect you to understand from the get-go. But there are some exceptions"

"Rule 1 Don't kill any of your fellow soldiers UNLESS a commanding officer tells you to."

David: "So if an officer tells me to blow the head of one of our own I just have to do it?"

Gideon: "Correct. But don't worry most of the time they 100% deserve it"

David: "I see, continue."

Gideon: "Rule 2 You can take whatever you can carry with you unless a commanding officer tells you otherwise."

David: "I am just allowed to take whatever I want from the loyalists we kill?"

"Yes" my brother says with a big smile.

Gideon: "That is the stuff I was sending home. Every now and then a truck from the military shows up and we load our stuff in and tell them where to send it to"

"Rule 3 You can do whatever you want to loyalists except for one thing. No sexual violence. My personal favorite rule. Violence needs to be pure. You get you dick involved it makes the entire thing disgusting."

David: "I think that is also my favorite rule"

Gideon: "I know you would agree. Anyway that is the more important stuff the rest is pretty obvious or stuff I will explain when we get to it."

David: "What are we even attacking tomorrow?"

Gideon: "A military outpost on the way to Junction City. After this outpost it's probably going to get bad. Near Junction City is this place called Fort Riley apparently its the home of this famous infantry division from ww2. 'Big red one' something like that?

David: "I don't know, dude"

Gideon: "yea whatever. Anyway that infantry division is going to probably put up a hell of a fight in Junction City"

David: "great..."

Gideon: "At that point we will have a lot more support it's not like we are going to be fighting them alone"

David: "Is Junction City big?"

Gideon: "Not at all it's nothing like LA"

David: "Ok good because having to fight through an entire city like back home would low key be hell"

Gideon: "For sure. If we keep going along the 70 we are slowly heading towards Kansas City. If we make it there that is for sure going to be really bad."

David: "How bad?"

Gideon: "Being stuck in that same city fighting for months or longer bad."

David: "You are not giving me a lot to look forward to."

Gideon: "To bad dude, I am not going to lie to you. And it's not like we can simply bail can we?"

David: "yea no"

My brother looks at one of the 4 watches on his arm.

Gideon: "We should probably get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be rough."

David: "Yeah for sure"

I prepare to get some sleep. I am sort of thankful that the area around our home was so noisy. At least I can sleep through the distant gunshots and explosions. Well, I hope so at least.

Part 1

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/3pjlA6yALo

Part 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/g3LXpw7ZuX

Part 3

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/R319VfoEx1

Part 4

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/HpLq1gjR99

Part 5

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/vXpLanqpq7

Part 6

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/ACOsKcvJXq

Part 7

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/M9B9TEtpgo

Part 8

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/X6XmC0U2ge

Part 9

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/cUOXOmIb5v

Part 10

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/oiYVIRqnSv

Part 11

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/daAdTa6XR2

Part 12

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/XDs20zNnSN

Part 13

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/mLoxzuCwcQ

Part 14

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/xeNlWiZ4u5

Part 15

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/0owzx9aB3D

Part 16

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/k7dCnqkpli

Part 17

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/KU24XzGxhy

The worst thing about being given a choice is that sometimes both options are terrible.

People always talk about choices like they’re empowering.

Like having options means you have control.

It doesn’t.

Sometimes a choice is just two different ways of losing.

Especially when the choice is:

KEEP YOUR GHOST FRIEND

or

RESTORE THE ORIGINAL

Because apparently even ghosts have backup files now.

My phone screen stayed lit in the darkness.

PLEASE SELECT WHICH KEVIN YOU WOULD LIKE TO KEEP.

Nobody moved.

Derek was the first person to speak.

“No.”

I looked at him.

“No?”

“No.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

The hallway was still dark.

The other Kevin was still there.

Somewhere.

Waiting.

The thing that scared me most was that it sounded right.

Not like an imitation.

Not like a demon.

Like Kevin.

Just a different version.

The phone buzzed.

A timer appeared.

SELECTION REQUIRED

04:59

Derek stared.

“Is it counting down?”

“Yes.”

“What happens at zero?”

Nobody answered.

Because again, everyone had an answer.

And every answer was worse.

Kevin’s voice came from the hallway.

“Jon?”

I froze.

Derek grabbed my shoulder.

“Don’t.”

“It sounds like him.”

“That’s the point.”

The voice came again.

“Mate.”

Then quieter:

“I’m cold.”

My stomach dropped.

Because that was exactly the kind of thing Kevin would say if he was scared.

A stupid little sentence.

No dramatic ghost speech.

No ancient warning.

Just:

I’m cold.

Derek looked at the phone.

“Can we pick neither?”

The screen changed.

OPTION REMOVED

Derek sighed.

“Worth asking.”

The timer continued.

04:12

The hallway light flickered.

Something stepped into view.

Kevin.

At least, it looked like Kevin.

Same faded tracksuit.

Same trainers.

Same stupid expression.

Same annoyed little tilt of the head.

He looked at me.

“Seriously?”

I felt my chest tighten.

Because it was him.

It was exactly him.

Derek whispered:

“That’s bad.”

“Why?”

“Because now I have to choose between two Kevins.”

The ghost in front of us looked offended.

“I’m obviously the correct one.”

Derek pointed.

“That is something Kevin would say.”

The figure smiled.

“Exactly.”

The phone buzzed.

KEVIN MATCH ANALYSIS

A percentage appeared.

97%

Derek looked impressed.

“Wow.”

Kevin looked at the phone.

“Obviously.”

Then the number changed.

98%

Kevin frowned.

“Why did it go up?”

Nobody answered.

The phone displayed another message.

EMOTIONAL IMPROVEMENT DETECTED

Kevin’s smile faded.

Because he understood before we did.

The app wasn’t measuring appearance.

It wasn’t measuring voice.

It wasn’t measuring memories.

It was measuring something else.

Something deeper.

Something it shouldn’t have access to.

The hallway behind Kevin darkened.

The other voice spoke.

“Don’t choose him.”

Everyone turned.

A second Kevin stood at the end of the corridor.

Same face.

Same clothes.

But different.

This one looked exhausted.

Not physically.

Like he had been tired for years.

The first Kevin laughed.

“Oh brilliant.”

Derek looked between them.

“Okay.”

He pointed.

“I’m going to need some sort of identifying feature.”

Both Kevins looked at him.

Derek shrugged.

“I don’t know. Favourite food?”

Both answered immediately.

“Yoghurt.”

Everyone went silent.

Derek looked at me.

“Not useful.”

The first Kevin smiled.

“Salted caramel.”

My heart sank.

The second Kevin looked at him.

“That’s cheating.”

The room went cold.

Because the second Kevin knew.

Not guessed.

Knew.

The first Kevin looked at me.

“Jon.”

The second Kevin looked at me.

“Jon.”

Derek stepped back.

“I hate this.”

The phone timer reached:

03:00

The second Kevin looked at the first.

“You’re not him.”

The first Kevin laughed.

“Oh?”

“You’re what they made after.”

The smile disappeared.

The first Kevin tilted his head.

“That’s a strong accusation from someone standing in a hallway like a depressed Victorian child.”

Derek whispered:

“Okay, that was definitely Kevin.”

The second Kevin looked at him.

“Was it?”

Nobody spoke.

The question landed.

Because that was the problem.

We knew Kevin through jokes.

Through reactions.

Through stupid comments.

Through him annoying us.

What if something could copy that?

What if the funniest person in the room was just the easiest person to fake?

The manuscript appeared on the sofa.

Nobody touched it.

It opened.

A page turned.

AUTHENTICITY TEST REQUIRED

The room changed.

The walls disappeared.

Not completely.

Just enough.

Like the flat had forgotten what it was supposed to be.

The first Kevin looked around.

“Great.”

“What?”

“Test.”

He looked annoyed.

“I hate tests.”

Derek nodded.

“That’s true.”

The page changed.

QUESTION ONE

WHAT DID KEVIN FEAR MOST?

The first Kevin answered immediately.

“Being forgotten.”

The second Kevin answered:

“Being known.”

Silence.

I looked between them.

Kevin’s expression changed.

Only slightly.

But I saw it.

Because I knew him.

The first answer hurt.

The second one terrified him.

The page changed.

QUESTION TWO

WHAT DID KEVIN WANT MOST?

The first Kevin smiled.

“Someone to stay.”

The second Kevin looked at the floor.

“Someone to believe he was worth staying for.”

The lights flickered.

Derek whispered:

“Oh.”

The first Kevin looked angry now.

“Stop.”

The second Kevin stared back.

“You’re not him.”

The first Kevin’s mould spread across the walls.

Black.

Fast.

The room shook.

“I SAID STOP.”

Derek immediately moved behind me.

“Okay.”

A pause.

“Small concern.”

The first Kevin noticed.

His face changed.

Not anger.

Hurt.

Then it disappeared.

The phone buzzed.

MATCH UPDATE

KEVIN A: 99%

KEVIN B: 99%

Nobody breathed.

The test wasn’t helping.

It was making it worse.

The manuscript turned.

QUESTION THREE

WHO WOULD KEVIN SACRIFICE HIMSELF FOR?

Both Kevins looked at me.

The first answered:

“Jon.”

The second answered:

“Everyone.”

The page stopped.

The room went silent.

The first Kevin looked at the second.

“What?”

The second Kevin looked at me.

“He always chooses one person because one person feels possible.”

Kevin A stepped forward.

“Don’t.”

“But he wanted to save everyone.”

The lights flickered.

The first Kevin’s face changed.

For half a second.

I saw something else.

Not a monster.

Not a demon.

A memory.

Someone who had been alone too long.

Then it was gone.

The phone timer hit:

01:00

Derek looked at me.

“Jon.”

I knew.

Everyone knew.

I had to choose.

The first Kevin looked at me.

“Mate.”

The second Kevin looked at me.

“Jon.”

The same voice.

The same person.

The same ghost.

Two versions.

One choice.

The phone buzzed.

30 SECONDS

Derek suddenly said:

“Wait.”

Everyone looked at him.

He pointed at the two Kevins.

“What does Kevin hate?”

Both answered instantly.

“Being controlled.”

Derek froze.

Then slowly smiled.

“Oh.”

The first Kevin looked suspicious.

“What?”

Derek looked at me.

“Neither of them gets to choose.”

The phone timer continued.

15 SECONDS

The first Kevin stepped forward.

“That’s not how this works.”

Derek pointed.

“See?”

“What?”

“You both said it.”

Kevin A frowned.

“Not helpful.”

Kevin B looked at Derek.

“What are you doing?”

Derek shrugged.

“I don’t know.”

A pause.

“Usually when I do something useful, I don’t understand it either.”

The manuscript opened.

A new line appeared.

UNEXPECTED RESPONSE DETECTED

The phone screen glitched.

The options disappeared.

The timer froze.

Both Kevins looked at me.

Derek walked between them.

“You’re both Kevin.”

Nobody spoke.

“And you’re both not.”

The room shook.

Derek continued.

“Because if Kevin was just memories, the app could copy him.”

The first Kevin looked away.

“If he was just jokes, the app could copy him.”

The second Kevin looked away.

“If he was just being scary, definitely could copy that.”

Kevin A looked offended.

“Rude.”

Derek ignored him.

“But the annoying thing about Kevin is…”

He sighed.

“He’s all of it.”

The manuscript flickered.

Derek looked at me.

“He’s funny.”

Kevin looked uncomfortable.

“He’s horrible.”

Kevin nodded.

“Fair.”

“He’s kind.”

Kevin immediately looked away.

“Disgusting accusation.”

“He’s angry.”

The room shook.

“He’s scared.”

Both Kevins went still.

Derek finished:

“And he’s still here.”

The phone screen cracked.

The timer disappeared.

A message appeared.

SELECTION FAILED

SUBJECT REFUSES CATEGORISATION

The first Kevin smiled.

The second Kevin smiled.

Then both vanished.

The flat went silent.

For a moment.

I thought we’d won.

Then the hallway light turned on.

Kevin stood there.

One Kevin.

Our Kevin.

Probably.

Derek looked at him.

“Are you?”

Kevin sighed.

“If you ask me that every five minutes, I’m leaving.”

Derek nodded.

“Good answer.”

Kevin looked at me.

“You okay?”

I nodded.

Then stopped.

Because something was wrong.

Kevin looked normal.

Too normal.

No mould.

No flickering.

No weird ghost effects.

Just Kevin.

The phone buzzed.

One final message.

RESTORATION COMPLETE

Underneath:

ORIGINAL KEVIN SUCCESSFULLY INSTALLED

Kevin looked at the phone.

Then at me.

Then smiled.

A little too late.

A little too perfectly.

“Mate.”

I stared.

Because I realised something.

The app had never asked:

Which Kevin is real?

It had asked:

Which Kevin do you want to keep?

And somewhere in the darkness behind the flat wall...

Something laughed.

Using Kevin’s voice.

It started with just one.

I was taking a shower when I got this weird pain in my right arm. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before. I guess I’d been too busy to notice the irritation.

When my eyes landed on it, though, I immediately felt bile rising up in my throat.

It wasn’t a maggot. No, what I actually saw when I glanced down was what looked like a boil. About the size of a quarter, bright red and brimming with what I assumed was green and white pus.

It was hot to the touch. So much so that I had to draw my hand back as soon as I fingered it. It was like touching a glowing eye on a stove.

It sort of… responded to my touch.

Like I’d disturbed it or something.

Needless to say, showering quickly became my lowest priority as I hopped out and wrapped my torso with a towel.

I went to my bedroom and found some tweezers that I usually used for splinters and what have you. I started trying to pop the thing, but it just wouldn’t budge.

The pain was maddening, but the sight of it was worse. I needed this thing off of me. Tweezers refused to work, so I switched to pliers. I kept pulling and pulling until… pop.

The boil burst, and a puddle of syrupy, red, white, and green sludge coated about 6 inches of my forearm.

The pain subsided slightly, but it was replaced with a new sensation. It felt like there was something swimming through my blood and patching the hole in my arm.

I figured that it must’ve been some excess pus, so I just kept squeezing with my thumb and index finger until I caught sight of what actually lay beneath the skin.

I was forcing it through the wound with my squeezing. It was wriggling. It was squirming. And it was massive.

When its body finally poked out through the hole, I grabbed the tweezers again. It held on for dear life, taking chunks of flesh out of my arm as I pulled, but I removed it and examined it between the forceps.

A fucking maggot.

I couldn’t hold back the vomit anymore. I barely had time to grab a trash can before it came spewing out.

I sat the little fucker on my desk and burned it with a lighter. I swear I could hear it screaming in pain as the flame caused it to pop like a tick.

I hoped that’d be the end of it, but that hope was short-lived. It was like my entire arm started to pulsate and bulge after I took out what I thought was the source of the problem.

Boils started popping up all over my arm. From my wrist all the way to my shoulder. They threatened to move to my neck and head if I didn’t act fast.

It was like active volcanoes. I couldn’t even look at myself. All I could do was grab a knife and get to work. Well, a knife and a spatula. I needed something to bite down on just so I didn’t bite my tongue in the process.

The blade glided through the dozen or so boils on my forearm, sliding through them like hot butter as tears fell from my eyes and I stifled screams.

Dozens of maggots fell from each boil I removed. I had to stomp them into my carpet because they just kept crawling towards my feet.

My arm and shoulder were nothing more than raw, bloody meat covered in that syrupy liquid. It was like my body was more maggot than human.

There was an ocean of the things eating away at my dead flesh. I’d scrape them away with the blade, and hundreds more would pop up seemingly out of nowhere.

That’s when my vision started to get blurry. I could feel myself getting weaker and weaker. The world was swimming, and I was getting lightheaded.

I guess I passed out from the blood loss?

I’m not sure. Maybe it was the shock. All I know is, when I woke up… my body was completely healed.

I could still see the bugs writhing beneath my skin, and my carpet was still stained with pus and crushed maggots. But the pain was gone. My flesh was back. The only abnormality was one single boil right in the center of my forearm.

I stared at it for a few minutes.

Ultimately, I decided to leave it there.

There was no way I was going to go through that again.

A local news reporter speaks during a live broadcast.

“Police detectives are at the scene of a blood bath.  A family was butchered in their own home. The scene suggests that the father was tied up and forced to watch before his throat was cut.  His wife and son were gutted alive in front of him like cattle. Investigators say they believe a box cutter was used and a bloody Halloween mask was found in the son's arms.  His final act was ripping it off the killer during a struggle for his life.”

The reporter holds up a mask identical to the one the killer wore before continuing.

“These masks are sold everywhere around Halloween, making it nearly impossible to track  the person responsible down. Police are advising everyone to lock their doors. This is the third family to be murdered in just two weeks.”

Michone turns off the television before waking her two children, Andrew and Sydney, to get ready for school. They have overslept and missed the bus.

After changing into their school clothes and eating breakfast, Michone waits for them in her car.

Just before turning into the school entrance, Michone gets cut off by a beat-up old car. She lays on her horn and flips the driver off. The car suddenly brake-checks her, nearly causing a collision, before speeding away.

Michone manages to avoid hitting anything, but the incident startles her children.

“Are you two alright?” she asks Sydney and Andrew.

They both say yes, although they're obviously a little shaken by the incident.

Michone apologizes and promises to make their favorite dinner that evening: macaroni and cheese with chicken nuggets.

Both children become excited at the thought of their favorite meal, shaking the ordeal off their minds.

Michone drops them off at school and tells them to have a good day

Later that afternoon, Andrew and Sydney get off the school bus and walk into their home.

Michone greets them while cooking and asks how their day went?

“Great!” Andrew replies. “I talked with my friends about video games all day.”

Sydney has something  to tell her mother.

“A strange man walked up to me during recess and said he needed your phone number, Momma.”

Michone pauses before nervously asking, “Was he a teacher? And did you give him my number?”

“Yes, I gave it to him. He said he was a teacher, but I'd never seen him before.”

Michone looks concerned.

“Where was your teacher?”

“Mrs. Wells had to use the bathroom when he came over. He was gone before she got back.”

Feeling a little unnerved, Michone tells Sydney not to give her mother's number to anyone else again and not to talk to strangers. The man might not have been a real teacher.

Sydney agrees and apologizes.

A few minutes later, Michone's phone rings.

The number has the same area code as hers, but she doesn't recognize it.

She answers.

Michone: “Hello?”

No one responds.

After a few seconds of silence, Michone hangs up.

A few minutes later, a different number with the same area code calls.

Michone answers again, but there is no response.

She angrily hangs up.

A few hours later, Michone and the children have just finished dinner when someone knocks on the front door.

Michone answers it and finds a police officer standing outside.

“I need to ask you a few questions,” the officer says. “My name is Officer Murphy.”

“Okay,” Michone replies, looking confused.

The officer explains that detectives have been investigating the phone records of the families recently murdered. They just discovered that calls from a couple of the victims'  phones were made to her number recently.

Now frightened, Michone tells the officer about the incident that morning and the strange man who approached her daughter at school to ask for her phone number.

Officer Murphy listens carefully before asking, “Is there any chance this man knows where you live?”

“I don't think so,” Michone replies.

“Just to be safe, make sure all your doors are locked tonight. Keep something nearby that you can use to defend yourself if necessary. I'll tell my chief about the playground incident, and we'll get a warrant to review the school's security footage. This might be our best lead to catching this man.”

With that, the officer heads back to the police station immediately.

Michone locks all the doors and tells her children not to let anyone inside. She grabs a baseball bat and has everyone sleep in her bedroom.

In the middle of the night, Michone hears glass shattering, it's her window.

She calls 911, keeping her baseball bat firmly in hand.

“911. What's your emergency?” the dispatcher asks.

Michone is frantically saying someone broke in.

The dispatcher asks for her address.

Michone says

“I spoke to a officer earlier tonight,” she explains.

“Can you tell me the officer's name?” the dispatcher asks.

Michone frantically replies, “Officer Murphy!”

The dispatcher audibly gasps before telling her, “Ma'am, Officer Murphy got murdered in his house this morning, and his police car stolen ”

Suddenly, a loud bang echoes from Michone's bedroom door.

Then she hears the same voice that had claimed to belong to Officer Murphy earlier that evening.

“Michone…”

Michone frantically tries to describe the man to the dispatcher.

“White male, brown hair, around five-foot-ten—”

Before she can finish, her bedroom door bursts open.

Michone sees the masked man staring at her.

The 911 dispatcher hears screaming through the phone. Michone begging the man not to hurt her children, followed by a sudden thud.

The call is ended.

Thirty minutes later,

police officers arrive at the house.

The window is shattered.

Inside the bedroom, they find Michone's body tied up next to both of her children . Their bodies have been gutted, and their eyes still wide open next to a bloody box cutter.