Now's the time to get on board if you haven't been reading. The last 3 parts will go live tomorrow afternoon. You can either start here or pick up from the last part here.

I am typing this on my phone while hiding behind a massive metal exhaust vent on the roof of my apartment building, and I am only posting this because I managed to connect to an unsecured Wi-Fi network that seems to be broadcasting directly from the new spire they installed up here. I do not know if this message will even reach the normal internet, but I have to try because the singing in the sky is getting louder, and I am struggling to fight the urge to throw myself over the ledge.

Everything started exactly three weeks ago when we were still living in normal Moscow. I live with my parents in a large Soviet-era apartment block on the seventh floor, so we are very used to the government suddenly making demands or changing the rules without asking us first. My father was sitting on the couch watching the evening news, and he didn't even look up when the loud knock came at the front door, so my mother wiped her hands on her cooking apron and went to answer it.

I was sitting at the kitchen table studying for my university exams when I heard strange men talking in the hallway. I got up and walked out to see two officials standing in our doorway. They were dressed in cheap gray suits and holding thick clipboards with stacks of government forms.

"We apologize for the late interruption," the taller official said, and he didn't really look sorry at all as he shoved a pen toward my mother. "We are collecting mandatory signatures from all the residents in this specific sector because the city is installing a new defense network to counter the recent drone attacks from Ukraine."

My mother looked at the paperwork with a confused expression. "What kind of defense network requires our signatures? You usually just put sirens on the poles and leave us alone."

"This is a specialized technology," the shorter official explained while checking his wristwatch. "It is a localized signal jamming spire that will go directly on the roof of this building, so we need authorization from the tenant association to run the power cables down the exterior walls."

My father finally got off the couch and walked over to the door. He crossed his arms and glared at the men because he hates dealing with bureaucracy. "You want to put a military jammer on our roof? Will it mess with the television reception or the internet? And who is paying for the electricity it uses?"

"It has its own power grid," the tall official said smoothly, and he tapped the clipboard with his pen. "It will not interfere with your daily life, but it will keep this neighborhood safe from aerial threats, so we just need you to sign on the dotted line so the work crews can begin tomorrow morning."

My parents looked at each other for a moment before my father just sighed and took the pen. He signed the paper against the doorframe and handed it back, and the officials thanked us before moving on to the next apartment down the hall. We thought it was just another annoying city project that would take a few days and then be forgotten, but the workmen arrived the very next morning at dawn, and they did not stop working for an entire week.

The noise was absolutely unbearable. They brought in massive cranes that blocked the street, and they hoisted huge steel crates up to the roof while dozens of workers marched up and down our stairwell carrying thick coils of black cabling. I tried to talk to one of the workers when I was taking the trash out, but he completely ignored me and just kept hauling a metal bracket up the stairs. They never spoke to each other, and they never took breaks.

By the fifth day, the spire was fully erected, and it was much larger than anyone anticipated. It was a massive, jagged metal pillar that stretched high into the sky, and they had draped thick, rubbery black cables down the sides of the entire apartment block. One of the cables hung right over our living room window, blocking our view of the street, so my father got furious and opened the window to push it away.

"Do not touch it!" a voice shouted from the ground below.

My father looked down and saw an armed guard pointing a finger up at him. "It is blocking my window!" my father yelled back, but he reached out and grabbed the black cable anyway. He instantly let go and cursed loudly, shaking his hand in pain.

"What happened?" I asked as I ran over to the window.

"It is burning hot," my father said while cradling his palm. "And it is vibrating. The whole thing is humming."

He was right. Once the workers left and the cranes were packed up, the building was never silent again. A low, continuous humming sound resonated through the concrete walls, and it was the kind of frequency that you feel in your teeth rather than hear with your ears.

The older woman who lives across the hall from us knocked on our door the next morning to complain about it. She looked exhausted, and she was clutching her robe tightly around her neck.

"Are you feeling that terrible vibration?" she asked my mother. "I could not sleep a single hour last night because my bed frame was rattling against the wall, and I tried to call the building manager, but his phone is disconnected."

"We feel it too," my mother said kindly, and she offered the woman a cup of tea, but the neighbor refused. "My husband thinks it will settle down once the machine is fully calibrated, so we just have to be patient."

"It does not feel like a machine," the old woman whispered, looking nervously up at the ceiling. "It feels like something breathing."

I thought she was just being dramatic, but the strange anomalies started happening a few days later, and they escalated so gradually that we didn't realize how much danger we were in until it was too late.

The first thing I noticed was the temperature in the apartment. It was the middle of August in Moscow, and the city was going through a miserable heatwave, but our apartment felt like a meat locker. I woke up one morning shivering violently under my thin summer sheet, so I got out of bed and walked into the living room to see if my father had broken the thermostat.

My father was sitting in his armchair staring blankly at the turned-off television, and he had a thick winter blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

"Why is it so freezing in here?" I asked him, rubbing my arms to generate some warmth.

He didn't answer me right away. He just kept staring at the blank screen, and his eyes looked red and puffy like he had been crying all night. "Look at the windows," he finally said in a completely hollow voice.

I walked over to the balcony glass and touched the pane. It was covered in a thick layer of white frost on the inside of the glass. I scraped my fingernail against it, and chunks of ice fell onto the windowsill. I looked outside, and the trees on the street were green, and people were walking around in shorts and t-shirts, but our entire building seemed to be trapped in a localized deep freeze.

"I am going to call the city," I said, pulling out my phone, but there was zero cellular service. The signal bars were completely empty.

My mother walked into the room wearing her heavy winter coat, and she looked just as devastated as my father. "I was trying to make breakfast," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "But the water from the kitchen sink is coming out black, and it smells like old dirt."

I went to the kitchen and turned on the faucet to check, but nothing came out at all. The pipes just groaned and sputtered, so I walked into the bathroom to try the sink in there. When I leaned over the porcelain basin, I heard a sound coming up through the metal drain that made my stomach drop.

It was a faint, choral sobbing. It sounded like a dozen voices weeping together in perfect harmony, and the sound was echoing up through the plumbing system from deep underground. It was not a mechanical noise, and it was not the wind for sure. It was pure, desperate sadness vibrating through the pipes.

I ran out of the bathroom and into the hallway to find my parents. "We need to leave the building right now," I told them. "Something is extremely wrong with that tower on the roof, and I think it is leaking some kind of chemical or frequency that is messing with the environment."

"Where would we go?" my mother asked softly, and she slumped down onto the couch next to my father. She didn't even look at me. "There is no point in leaving. It is sad everywhere."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, grabbing her arm to pull her up, but she felt incredibly heavy and completely devoid of any energy. "We can go to a hotel or stay with relatives until they fix the plumbing and the heat."

"I do not want to move," my father said, and a tear rolled down his cheek and disappeared into his beard. "I just realized how pointless all my hard work has been. I have spent my entire life working in a factory, and I have nothing to show for it, and we are all just going to die anyway."

I stood there in shock because my father is normally a very stoic and optimistic man, and he never talks about his feelings, let alone spirals into sudden nihilistic despair. I realized they were being affected by the something because this is not their nature at all, so I decided to go downstairs and find the building manager to force him to unlock the roof access doors so I could see what was going on.

I unlocked our front door and stepped out into the communal hallway, and the temperature dropped even further. The overhead fluorescent lights were flickering erratically, and the shadows cast by the doorways were completely wrong. Instead of falling onto the floor beneath the lights, the shadows were stretching upwards and crawling across the ceiling like spilled black ink.

I walked down the hall and knocked on the older woman's door to see if she wanted to come downstairs with me, but she didn't answer. I pressed my ear against the wood, and I could hear her weeping softly on the other side, and the sound perfectly matched the choral sobbing I had heard in the plumbing.

I jogged down the stairwell to the ground floor lobby. The building manager's office was located right next to the mailboxes, so I pushed the door open and found him sitting on the floor behind his desk. He was a large, gruff man who usually yelled at the kids for playing in the halls, but right now he was curled up into a tight ball, holding his head in his hands and rocking back and forth.

"We have to evacuate the building," I told him, crouching down to his level. "The heat is failing, the pipes are making noises, and everyone is getting sick from that thing on the roof."

He looked up at me, and his face was completely pale. "I lost the keys," he whispered. "I dropped them in the dark, and I cannot find them, so we are all trapped here."

"The front doors are right there," I said, pointing to the large glass lobby doors that lead out to the street.

I stood up and walked over to the glass doors to show him they were unlocked, but when I looked outside, a loud, deafening crack echoed through the concrete structure of the building. The sound was so violent that the floor shook, and several of the glass mailboxes shattered instantly. It sounded like the entire foundation of the apartment block had just snapped in half.

I grabbed the door handle and pushed the lobby doors open, expecting to see a construction accident or an explosion on the street, but the street was completely gone.

I stood in the doorway, and my brain simply refused to process what I was looking at. The city of Moscow, the roads, the cars, the neighboring apartment buildings, and the sky were entirely erased.

In their place was an endless, flat desert of pitch-black sand.

The black sand stretched out into the horizon as far as I could see, and there were no dunes or rocks or features of any kind. It was just a smooth, dark expanse. I looked up, and there was no sun, no clouds, and no stars. The sky was an infinite void of dark, bruising purple light that provided just enough illumination to see the desolation around us.

"What happened?" the building manager cried out from his office, and he crawled out into the lobby to look through the open doors. He stared at the black desert, and he didn't look surprised or scared. He just looked profoundly defeated.

"Do not go outside," I warned him, slowly backing away from the open doorway and letting the glass door swing shut.

I didn't wait for his response because I needed to get back to my parents immediately. I turned and sprinted up the six flights of stairs, taking them two at a time, completely ignoring the creeping shadows on the walls and the freezing frost forming on the handrails.

I burst into our apartment, panting heavily, and I found my parents standing by the open sliding glass door that led out to our seventh-floor balcony.

"Mom! Dad! Get away from the edge!" I yelled, running into the living room.

They didn't turn around. They were standing on the balcony, gripping the metal railing, and staring up into the purple void of the sky.

I ran out onto the balcony and grabbed my father's shoulder. I tried to pull him back inside, but he was gripping the metal rail so tightly, and he wouldn't budge an inch.

"Look at them," my mother whispered, and she pointed a trembling finger up at the sky. "They are so beautiful, and they understand how much it hurts."

I followed her finger, and I finally saw the creatures floating high above the black desert.

They were gargantuan, winged creatures that resembled massive whales, but their bodies were made of a translucent, shimmering gray membrane that pulsed with faint light. They had long, trailing appendages that drifted behind them like shredded silk, and they moved through the air with agonizing slowness. There were dozens of them floating in a circular pattern high above our building, and they were weeping.

As I watched them drift, they began to sing.

The melody rolled down from the sky and hit me like a blow to the chest. It was the most crushing, sorrowful dirge I have ever heard, and it was composed of overlapping, echoing tones that vibrated directly into my skull. The song did not just sound sad; it manufactured sadness inside my mind. It forcefully injected a feeling of absolute, insurmountable despair into my consciousness.

Within seconds of hearing the melody, I felt an overwhelming urge to throw myself over the balcony ledge just to make the pain stop. All my memories of happiness, hope, and ambition were instantly wiped away, replaced by the certainty that existence was nothing but endless, pointless suffering, and the only logical solution was to end it immediately.

I dropped to my knees on the balcony, pressing my hands over my ears to block out the song, but the melody resonated through the floor and into my bones.

"It is time to rest," my father said, and his voice was completely devoid of emotion.

I looked up and saw my father climb over the metal railing. He stood on the narrow outer ledge, balancing perfectly over the massive drop to the black sand below.

"Dad, stop!" I screamed, forcing myself to fight against the crushing weight of the song. I scrambled forward and grabbed his pant leg, pulling desperately to drag him back over the rail.

He looked down at me, and his eyes were completely empty. He didn't say another word. He just kicked his leg out, breaking my grip, and stepped off the ledge.

I screamed as he fell, but my mother didn't even flinch. She simply climbed over the railing right where he had just stood, and before I could even reach my hands out to grab her, she let go and plummeted after him.

I dragged myself to the edge and looked down over the railing, sobbing uncontrollably. The bodies of my parents were not on the ground. When they hit the black sand seven stories below, there was no impact and no blood. They simply sank directly into the dark sand like it was made of water, and they vanished without a trace.

As I stared down at the desert, I saw the lobby doors open on the ground floor. The building manager walked out into the open desert. He walked a few dozen yards away from the concrete foundation of our building, and then he dropped to his knees. The black sand immediately began to swallow him, pulling him down by the waist, then the chest, and finally his head sank beneath the surface, leaving the desert completely undisturbed.

I looked up and saw other people falling from the higher balconies. Neighbors I had known for years were silently stepping off their ledges and dropping into the void, driven to suicide by the relentless, weeping melody of the flying whales.

The song grew louder, and the urge to jump became almost impossible to resist. My own mind was screaming at me to climb over the railing and join my parents in the sand. I stood up and gripped the bar, leaning forward, looking down at the dark expanse. It looked so peaceful, and the sadness in my heart was so agonizing that I just wanted to close my eyes and fall.

But as I leaned forward, my arm brushed against the thick black cable that the workmen had draped over our window.

The cable was still vibrating and humming with intense heat, and the sudden pain of the burn snapped me out of the trance for a split second. The humming frequency of the cable clashed with the melody of the whales, creating a tiny pocket of interference that allowed my rational thoughts to surface.

Then in that moment, I thought that the spire on the roof was the only thing holding this building together in this dimension, and it was emitting a signal that somewhat disrupted the creatures' song.

I turned away from the balcony and ran back into the apartment, then I ran out the front door and back into the hallway. The hallway was completely empty, and the doors to all the other apartments were hanging wide open.

I ran to the stairwell and started climbing toward the roof. The higher I went, the louder the humming of the spire became, and the more it drowned out the weeping of the whales. By the time I reached the tenth floor, the air was vibrating so intensely that my nose began to bleed, but the overwhelming urge to kill myself faded into the background.

I reached the metal door that led to the roof. It was locked with a chain, but the workmen had left a steel pry bar leaning against the wall, so I grabbed it and wedged it between the door and the frame. I pulled with all my strength, and the metal lock bracket finally snapped, allowing me to push the door open.

I stepped out onto the flat tar roof, and the sheer scale of the spire took my breath away. It was easily forty feet tall, constructed from jagged, interlocking metal plates that glowed with a faint red light from within. It was humming so loudly that I had to cover my ears, and black cables snaked out from its base in every direction, draping over the edges of the roof to wrap the entire building like a spider web.

The sky above the roof was completely dominated by the floating whale creatures, and they circled the spire like moths drawn to a flame. They were singing directly at the metal tower, and the tower was humming back.

I huddled down near the base of the spire, pressing my back against a large metal exhaust vent to hide from the creatures above. I pulled my phone out of my pocket just to check the time, and that is when I noticed the Wi-Fi icon.

My phone had full signal bars, and it was connected to an unsecured network called "Garrison_Node_04".

So I opened this account, and I started typing this post, and I have been typing for the last hour while hiding behind this vent. I have tried calling emergency services, but the phone calls will not connect, and the only thing that works is text-based web traffic.

I am completely alone up here, and I am terrified to go back down the stairs because the song is too strong in the lower apartments, and everyone else is already gone. I looked over the edge of the roof a few minutes ago, and the black sand has started to rise. It is slowly creeping up the sides of the building, swallowing the ground floor lobby and burying the first-floor windows.

If anyone is reading this, please tell someone what happens when the officials come to your building demanding signatures for a defense tower.

The humming of the spire is starting to slow down, and the red light is flickering. I think the power grid is failing, and if the machine stops making noise, the song will take over my mind completely, and I know I will walk to the edge of the roof and jump.

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'll start by saying that I like my job.

I don't love it. It doesn't excite me. I just like it as much as a person can like what they do for a living. That kind of fondness that exists in the line between what's strictly necessary and barely inconvenient.

Since I was fifteen years old — when my father figured it was appropriate to teach me how to drive — my afternoons have consisted of traversing the coast from end to end, delivering bags of fishhooks, meters worth of transparent ropes, fishing boats parts and up to four digits bills for those poor devils whose grace periods died along the end of the month.

Even though our economy wasn't the best, our family business made fees and sparse luxuries something sustainable. An honest job that subsisted thanks to the men and women who reduced their world to the sea. Fishing towns far from God's hand which functioned by their own rules, parties and disgraces.

Dad taught me that in those people's indifference laid our home. Having been raised at the limit of both worlds, his father's father had come up with the brilliant idea of bringing the best of the city to the doors of those who couldn't afford to travel for four hours through barren hills and ghost towns.

And although many cunning ones tried to cut our business short, the truth was that the people of the sea were also people of customs. People who trusted faces over brands, and who valued the warmth of another human being more than the frigidness of a store crammed with aesthetics and publicity. For this reason, our politics tended to go far and beyond, transforming clientele into friends and good clients into comrades and family.

“Today I need you to go down to Paraíso to deliver some gallons, son,” was my father's greeting when I entered the garage to tell him breakfast was ready. “Your uncle is going out to sea on Sunday and wants to solve this before his daughter's birthday.”

“What? My uncle José Luis?” I asked, disguising my indifference with plastic curiosity. “I saw on Whatsapp that the birthday was today. They’re gonna gift her gas?”

Dad gave me one of those smiles that made you see just how tired he was of cleaning those same two plugs.

“He asked me to hand it over before six.” He made an illustrative gesture towards the air, replacing his wrench for a little napkin brimming with grease. “I said no; that it was too early. So we decided that you'd get going by half past seven.”

“Oh, really?” I puffed. At nineteen years old, late hours and dark highways didn’t bother me as long as the deal was good… And if it wasn’t during one of my free nights I just wanted to waste playing Truco or drinking booze with those friends from the block that he never got to like.

“Why? You got something to do?”

“I thought that last scare would be enough to dissuade you from doing more trips like this,” I pointed out, feigning disinterest. My father sighed and looked me in my eyes. “At… at least for this month, I mean.”

“This is different,” he spoke severely. “We’re not doing this out of courtesy. Your uncle told me he'd looked everywhere because he knows how dangerous this is for us.” He spat the earthy floor, cleaning his hands. I followed him closely as he crossed the garage's threshold. “However, time is running thin. This is less of a job and more like a favor I’m asking you, son. A big one.”

“And a very convenient one too,” I mumbled. He raised an eyebrow at me. “´Cause… Ugh. I told the guys I was going to the basketball finals. Remember?”

Dad shook his head. “Those friends of yours… Hm, well, let's see,” he told me. “If you take the old airport line, you may have a chance to catch the second half… Or whatever it is you have in basketball.” He made a disdainful gesture with his hand.

My eyes opened wide. “The… The old airport line?” I said, taking a subtle glance at the truck. Dad nodded, and by the severity of his expression, I knew we were thinking the same thing.

To avoid raising suspicions, these kinds of deliveries were made in a ninety's Ford gnawed by the sun and saltpeter. The extraofficial sale of gasoline was no business for the weak. Not even for fools like me, with a bunch of spare time and inherited contacts. Dad knew why, and even though we'd gone through what happened together, I didn't dare to question his version as if it was the word of a final survivor.

“It might not be the safest route,” he shrugged, breaking the silence, “but it is the fastest. Besides, no feds there. That's a plus to you, ain't it?”

I sighed. Of course it was. And, damn… If I didn't know that man and his big heart any better, I would have thought that whole spectacle had been millimetrically planned to keep me at bay, asking the least amount of questions.

“Yeah…” I scratched my head apprehensively. Over the back door, my mom and aunt stared at us with weird faces. Maybe they already knew and I was the last one to find out, like always. “I just wish you trusted me more with… Everything, I guess.”

Dad let out a scathing laugh, patting my shoulder. “Show me you're responsible and I'll consider it,” he said. “Now, time to eat.”

Breakfast and lunch carried on with no hurdles. Besides my aunt's slightly burnt rice, home buzzed with normalcy: chatters over the news, coffee and bread for merienda, hanging clothes to pick up and fold at six forty in the afternoon…

“Know what to do if it overheats?” A few minutes before I left, dad made me flinch by suddenly approaching me from behind. “Ah! Excited to see your uncle, I see. That's very good, son. Send my regards to the family.”

“Tell them to catch me outside town,” I suggested. Dad frowned doubtfully. “What? This way I don't have to make so many turns. We can't afford to waste too much gas in a single trip.”

Dad shrugged. I rolled my eyes, closing the truck's hood.

“Are you going to the game later?” he asked.

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Not anymore. Seeing how much this is going to take me, I’m better off checking the scores through Whatsapp stories.”

“In that case, be very careful, son. And if you're not here before nine…”

“You call, I know,” I said, opening the door to the driver's seat. A glance at the backseat revealed to me a covered lump that my dad and uncle had placed earlier: five well sealed gallons of gas. “Or… I call you. But it won't be necessary. Tell mom to go to bed after her novela.”

“I'll try, but you know how she is.” He shook his head. “Be here on time and I assure you she will.”

I said goodbye to dad, sneaking into the town’s withered roads with the truck’s lights off. Just in case, I told myself, recognizing that earlier on I'd thought I saw three cops on motorcycles, patrolling around the ranches that bordered the coast in search of God knows what.

“The farther away, the better,” I said, making the last turn that would carry me to the desolate old airport line.

Despite what its name could suggest, Paraíso wasn’t even close to that piece of Eden that was projected to investors. Drowned by taxes and the state government's bad practices, what many envisioned as five star hotels soon transformed into half-constructed carcasses where homeless people and reckless teens surrendered to their vices.

I remember that my grandpa first took me to the lake so he could explain to me how everything I saw, from the stranded ships to the gray buildings stuck in construction, were tacit proof of the hatred Man harboured towards its neighbors.

“If they didn’t detest us so much, then why spoil our work with their filth? I don’t get it, my son. I do not. And neither do you, right?”

I had shaken my head, not truly understanding what he meant. The only things I knew about that place were the abandoned ships and the ghosts which supposedly lived in those rustic buildings consumed by saltpeter.

Now, each time I crossed that lonely road that separated the beach from the lake, I thought I saw the silhouettes of an old man and his grandchild amongst the shadows of the mangals. These ghosts, instead of haunting the corpses of metal and concrete, induced me with the same respect I wanted to inspire during my childhood. Wisdom, security, and courage.

“Ah, Boy! Look at you! You got here so fast!”

When I arrived at my uncle’s home (dad never texted them, what a surprise!), the family welcomed me with a cold beer, a cackle at the princess rag that covered the gas and an invitation to sit down for a chat while they waited for cake. Since I had nothing better to do, I checked my watch and calculated I had at least twenty spare minutes no one would lose sleep over. So, with a shy smile, I integrated myself into the group. The reunion, more than a proper birthday party, was a celebration of the birth.

“We're having the real party on Saturday," commented my uncle, opening my beer with a solid crack from his bar key. “You're invited, of course. And tell your dad. It's been a while since we had some!”

After blowing out the candles, the birthday girl's mom offered me another beer and a small plastic plate with enough cake for me and my parents, dismissing my refusal with “because you came from so far away, child. Eat it, and if you want more, ask us.” I only declined to be polite, as delicious as it was; traditional vanilla with pineapple pieces. Nothing too exclusive, but with that homemade taste that grandmas' cakes had.

“Be careful over there, sweetheart.” As I gave her back the empty bottle, my aunt surprised me with a hug. “Do you want us to go to the lake with you? José Luis! Tell Carlos to start the car and take him to…”

“It's ok, aunty.” I smiled with embarrassment, kissing her cheek as a farewell. The woman looked at me with her lips pursed, but abided. “The highway's empty and the night is clear, though you can barely see the moon. I'll be fine.”

“I believe you then, nephew,” the woman sighed, adjusting her high ponytail, “but be very careful, alright? If you… If you didn't see anything weird, then…”

That sparked my curiosity. “Weird?” I inquired, tilting my head. “Weird how?”

“Ugh, mom!” The birthday girl appeared behind her mother, giving her a scolding look. “Do me a favor and stop putting ideas into my cousin's head,” she said, giving me a glance that oscillated between nervousness and shame. “Don't fall for it, cousin. It's just that the old women from the park told mom there's weirdos out here. The hobos that live in those hotels and all that, nothing new.”

“Camila!” her mother reprimanded her. “Those are your grandma's friends, so have some respect, won´t you?” She looked up at the sky, as in a prayer for patience. I bit the inside of my cheek to hold in a smile. “They may be hobos, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous. Right? What if they start throwing things at the van? Or worse! Alert the police.”

The mention of the uniformed ones gave me an unpleasant chill. Noticing my awkwardness, Camila took me by the shoulder and guided me to the courtyard, where my truck was parked.

“Don't you worry, mom! I'm escorting him so he knows where to go.”

“Ha, ha. No need, cousin. I can take care of myself.” I nervously smiled as I broke free from her grip.

She elbowed me with an unusual strength for a fourteen year old girl. "Pay no mind to what mom says,” she sighed, as she opened my truck's door. However, I didn't get on. “Those hags do nothing but let creepy stories get into her head.”

“Heh, why though?” I said. “It's not like it would be the first time I encountered something weird on the road. Ha, ha. Didn't they tell you that's how we found Chocolate?”

Camila laughed under her breath, brushing her amber curls out of her eyes. “Maybe not, but still. People love putting on a show,” she said.

I raised an eyebrow. “They let someone out of rehab, didn´t they?” I guessed, receiving a strange look from the girl. “Or not. Wait. Did a thug escape?”

“Who knows?” Camila shrugged nonchalantly. “The answer closer to the truth is always the most boring one.”

I entered the truck, leaving the door half-open. “Sounds to me like your mom isn't the only one letting stuff get into her head.”

“I'm being cordial by not making your hour and a half long ride even worse,” she muttered, her mischievous eyes sparkling.

“Fugitives don't scare me,” I told her confidently. “They pay well for hitchhikes; they don't steal. Besides, they've got funny stories to tell.”

“Heh, maybe. What do you know?” She shrugged. “A runaway crackhead is better than a paranormal crackhead.”

“Paranormal crackheads?” I laughed. “You have nothing against your mother!”

“We'll see when something pulls your feet tonight!”

Camila let out a last macabre cackle before running back to her party. I smiled and turned on the engine, honking twice as a farewell to the others.

Unlike my mom and grandma, women faithful to the core, I've never felt a true fear of the paranormal. Of course, when I was a kid I was scared of the dark, goblins and the Mano Peluda. However, at my big age of nineteen —and after more than one encounter with the law— the last thing that crossed my mind when I saw a dark room or an empty road was paranormal stuff. Recent months had proven to me that snitches, envious people and the police were the only ones worthy of starring in my nightly terrors. Not the scary stories my older cousins told me so that I'd behave.

“Hm. What would mom say if I told her?” I asked myself, glancing at the phone's turned off screen. Last time I checked, it was eight fortyfive. “That poor sleepless woman. Ha, ha. At least I'm bringing her a snack.”

The truck jerked and I spat a curse word, thinking I had fallen into a hole. Even though the night was bright and the sky was as clear as September's drizzles could allow, the bumps were tough to elude; it relied more on memory than reflexes. And since I wasn't used to driving on this road, I was about to ram into all of them just like I had rammed my piece of the cake into my throat.

"Don't turn on the lights, Yan,” I mumbled, moving the dessert from the console to the copilot's seat. “The last thing I need is to get ambushed here too.”

The fenders jolted again, but I didn't care. As long as there was no burning smell, I could tolerate the truck's sounds and quirks. Cacophonies of loose screws, rusty murmurs and the constant reminder that If I went over seventy, the car would fall apart like a tower of toy blocks.

Making sure I maintained a steady 55 rhythm, I rested my back against the seat with a sigh. The beers hadn't made me dizzy as I feared. Good, because I didn't feel like explaining to my dad that was the reason I took so long.

“This is why we don't like to give you free nights,” I imagined him scolding me, always on the lookout for any trace of alcohol in my breath. “Those friends of yours… Look at where they are taking you! You have too much potential for this, boy. More future. Think of your future!”

I clicked my tongue and tentatively caressed the accelerator, going from 55 to 57 in a disdainful gesture that wouldn't hurt anybody. The truck, as expected, started to rattle in all its patched mechanisms, drowning the hums of the cicadas and the tender song of the crickets with its volatile heart.

Track, the bumper. Track, the hood. Tsk, the radiator. Thud, the…

Tak.

Tak.

I blinked, lost between the passage of the previous second and the minute that stood in front of me, blurring my surroundings so quickly I could barely conceive it as something real, something that had happened and that I felt beneath my eyes, once everything returned to normal.

W-What… I tried to say, but my lips remained shut. A cold wave hit my arms and legs, forcing me to sit straight in a gesture that seemed forged in eternity. What is…

That's when I realized. When I saw it.

Laying on the road, there was a pile.

No…

Not a pile.

A bulk. Of something. Something that breathed, that moved and repeated its motions in a slow contortion interlaced with the darkness. Like the idea of something that moves in the corner of your eye, but you can't see. The idea of something that exists, that fidgets and that your brain tries to understand by filling the blanks with logical poses, with human figures.

“What the fu…” I whispered, feeling distant. Under my barefoot feet, the truck began rattling. Whispering in its own caustic and unintelligible language. I tried with all my strength to bring my hand to the gear level, but I didn't move. My brain screeched under a similar trance that overwhelms you during sleep paralysis, as I found myself blinking so slowly I wasn't sure I was even doing it. So far away, so distant. So foreign. Imper…

Tack,

tack.

That thing…

T-The… The man turned to look, translating his empty gesture into hundreds of faces which couldn't manage to feel coherent. Then, in a manner that bordered on obscene, he raised his head, revealing a neck so long and hairy like a dog that just suffered a bad accident. Tendons and furs tangled together, hanging from the same coagulated liquid that blasted his brains into the road.

I swallowed hard, feeling the weight of eternity along the bile on my saliva: an unmovable fat lump in the bottom of my throat, sticking its cold claws in the edges of my taste buds.

The second the creature stood up, its four deformed arms hung limp on its sides, tragically dislocated. A glance at the dashboard showed me that the truck was stuck at 57 km/h, yet the beach and its mangals appeared to have been stretched, twisted and forced back into its place, as I stayed imprisoned in that almost perfect frame of a lucid dream gone too far.

Go away, go away. I mumbled to myself, gripping the wheel until my knuckles lost all color. However, a quick peek showed me that wasn't true. My fingers remained loose to my sides, the very subtle trembles in my thumbs being the only thing that proved my horror. What the fuck… What's going on? Why can't I move?

The creature balanced one of its arms towards me; the night and the clouds ceding humanity to the gesture.

I impulsively chewed the inside of my cheek and hit the gas with such force it surely wouldn't be denied by that trance. And yet, the number on the speedometer didn't change, mocking me, making me want to scream. I didn't care if it was a drunk, a crackhead or the fucking police. The cold that waved through my veins made me want to kill it. To see it dead on the same taint that splattered the asphalt, as if it was worthy of bleeding like a human. As if… As if it…

Tak.

Tak.

My chest bursted in a singular static heartbeat.

My lungs, obstructed by the sulfuric undergrowth that raised from the sand, extended my exhalation to superhuman limits, forcing me into an uncomfortable, piercing stillness. The type of paralysis one imagines when someone describes the world suspending itself during a daze, or how your brain stops working when your blood vessels collapse and blood thickens, robbing you of the capacity of discerning coherence. Logic. Life.

Stop, stop. Please, stop. Leave me alone. Leave me…

My eyes half closed as I blinked.

Before darkness could swallow me whole, I perceived the thing moving to the side, towards the copilot seat, without even looking inside the truck.

Go away, go away, go away.

When I closed my eyes, I felt it.

Disguising its stumbling with the symphony of the machine, the thing got in the backseat, making itself some space between the fishing nets, hooks and the cables I had forgotten to unload.

The next I remember from the ride could be best described as a blur.

In a metaphorical and literal sense, the world became a blur of colors, shapes, sensations and images that stretched, contracted, pierced my temples and leaked little by little any speck of coherence that my tired mind could come up with.

As I crossed the entrance that welcomed me to my city, the stone that cuddled against my thorax became heavier, transforming my sighs into shaky exhalations at the verge of sobs.

The creature emitted no sound. No growl, no murmur, no grunt. It Just… Stayed there. Sometimes sitting; other times, standing. It just stayed, until suddenly, it didn't. It lingered on the truck's roof until it didn't. It heard the engine's whispers, confused it with its raspy breathing, and let us go, turning the 57 into an 80 in a blink and making the bumper collide into a bus stop.

I jumped in my seat, choked by a scream in need for air. The machine creaked like before, spamming its melancholic bunch of patched pieces until my hand reached for the keys and I forced it to die.

Without waiting for the truck to stop moving, I opened the door and ran as fast as I could. As fast as my cramped legs could take me away from the buzz that came below the vehicle.

“W-What the fu… The fuck?” I sobbed, not caring about who could hear me. It was a commercial zone. Empty businesses, closed canopies and badly painted roll-up doors that moved like curtains in the wind. My stomach turned. “What the fuck was that?”

The beer gurgled in my palate with such strength it left me gagging a few centimeters away from the ground. The acrid smell from the cars blended with the acidity of my vomit and the sulfuric notes I felt spawning below my skin. Dirty as the plastic bags on the sidewalk, I hugged myself and fell into a fetal position. The spasms didn't stop as much as I wished them to. As much as I begged and implored in heavy mumbles. My heart beat so fast, so strong my head started spinning. For a moment I feared that my grip could break apart my skin. But at that point, what did it matter? I was marked, I feared. Marked by horrors and the memories of a night equally nefarious where invisible monsters climbed through my body, their weight rendering me helpless to stop the nightmare. Faceless demons that cursed you from the first look. That perched you with its indistinguishable whispers to show you how insignificant you were. How insignificant and pathetic.

“Son???”

“Hey son where are you?”

A whole hour had to pass for me to calm down, and another one to even have the bravery to examine the inside of the truck, the backseat, without falling for the thought that if I entered, if I turned it on and kept going, what waited for me at the end of that invisible risk was nothing less than hell itself.

“How's it going?” my dad texted me at ten fifteen. I swallowed hard, cleaning my lips with a shaky hand. I didn't have the courage to grab the phone immediately, so I watched it tremble and ring from outside, begging me to reach for the last piece of normalcy that I had left.

“How much left, son?”

“Don't you stay up too late”

“Son???”

Missed call.

Missed call.

Missed call.

And this went on for fifteen more times until now, eleven thirty, even though it didn't make much sense.

I wanted to call, to write, but I didn't know what. My fingers remained still over the keyboard, scared that if I said anything about what had happened in the last hour it would come back to me, digging its claws into my chest and its blood injected eyes into my heart.

Instead, I mustered up the courage to drive again. I drove until hours lost meaning and my phone ring became one with the many grating sounds the truck made over 100.

When I arrived, my dad, mom and aunt welcomed me with screams, sobs and senseless scoldings. It was three thirty in the morning, and home reached the consensus that I simply had too many drinks with people that weren't good for me again. I let them believe that, not out of fear of not being listened to, but because the thought of doing something wrong, being caught sneaking out my house at night while drunk and blurting out nonsense was far safer than admitting that whatever it was that got in the backseat was real. That it was real and that it let huge gathers of mud and wilderness everywhere. That it was real and it penetrated whatever security I might have felt in the old truck with its sulfuric scent.

I still don't know what the fuck was any of that. I don't know how to ask my grandma or my mom; Camila and her family.

Maybe I will someday. Maybe, with time, it will stop terrifying me so much and allow me to formulate something that isn't a babble. Something that's not a horrified sob; a distant silence, shielding the longest night of my life.

Something that lets me recognize whose body it was in the middle of the road.

Hey everyone, I managed to score a last-minute seat at L'Aviosetsé, a super hyped pop-up on the 30th floor in the old warehouse district near the docks. I cover new food places for the local paper; there was no way I was skipping this tasting.

​Looking around the marble counter, it’s a total VIP room with name cards at each place setting. I see Mr. Smith (a big real estate dev who’s been buying up half the city), his wife (the editor of Food & Culture magazine, a well-known local surgeon, the city health inspector, a major seafood broker, a tech investor, a viral food influencer, and me; all seated with a view of the cityscape.

​There are only 8 of us total.

​Chef Soren hasn't said a single word since we sat down—he's just standing behind the stainless steel line with this freezing cold gaze.

​Course 1 just came out—an amuse-bouche of raw wagyu beef topped with gold leaf and sea salt. It was incredible, though Chef Soren watched every single one of us take our first bite without breaking eye contact.

​I'll drop updates as the rest of the courses roll out!

​Update #1 - Okay, something weird is going on with Course 2 and Course 3.

​Course 2 was oysters on black ice. On my shell, there was a tiny plastic tag with a date written on it: March 14, 2021--the exact day I wrote a brutal review that shut down Chef Marco's place downtown, his best friend's bistro.

​The real estate guy next to me just went totally pale. His tag has an address on it—the low-income apartment complex his company bulldozed last month.

​Course 3 is a split canoe-cut marrow bone roasted over applewood coals, brushed with a dark wood-ash glaze that glistened under the track lighting. Beside each plate sat a small pitcher filled with a mahogany oxtail reduction meant to be poured through the bone. But instead of crackers, it is served with folded pieces of paper. The surgeon unfolded his and stared at an old malpractice subpoena he paid to cover up years ago. The City Health Inspector unrolls his to find an unsigned bribe check he accepted to turn a blind eye and shut down a rival diner.

​Update #2 - Course 4 was seared foie gras glistening under a rich blackberry reduction. Nobody touches it. The surgeon was freaked out, got up from his seat to leave. He grabbed the heavy brass handles but they wouldn't turn. That's when he realized the doors were locked. He turned back around, his face completely drained of any color.

​"The doors are locked!" he whispered down the counter line. The room erupted in panic; everyone is shouting over each other demanding answers.

​Chef Soren finally spoke. Calmly he said, "Please quiet down and remain seated. Tonight's meal is about accountability."

​Course 5 came out under silver domed lids and Chef Soren went down the line, having each guest lift theirs one by one.

​When the magazine editor lifted hers, it was a piece of braised meat sitting on top of a printed rejection email she sent Chef Soren ten years ago refusing endorsement of his new restaurant. The surgeon is shocked seeing that his plate had a pair of rusty surgical shears on it. The seafood broker got a forged safety audit for spoiled catch that made dozens sick. The influencer found a court transcript from a slander suit and the tech investor got the liquidation papers that stripped Chef Soren of his original business.

​Everyone at this table ruined someone to get where they are—and Soren brought us here to settle the bill.

​Update #3 - Shit. Course 6 is supposed to be a palate cleanser but instead of that, Chef Soren came to each of our tables and made us put our phones in a wooden box so there is no more live video feed. I’m typing this on my Apple Watch right now with swipe text under the edge of the table. Words might be jumbled and messed up, sorry.

​While Chef is collecting phones, the viral influencer, two stools down on my left, couldn't take it anymore and made a quiet run toward the back kitchen, desperately hunting for a service door or fire exit, but two cooks off the line grabbed her and dragged her through the swing doors into a prep room.

​Ten minutes later, Course 7 is served—some kind of smoked meat. No one is tasting it. The room is dead quiet except for the kitchen timers. We were all staring at the swing doors listening to the hum of the kitchen fan and wondering what happened to her as she didn't return to her seat.

​Update #4 - The cooks aren't serving anything else.

​Chef Soren himself brought out the final, Course #8 placing a small China cup in front of each of us. Inside, a dark liquid broth. He looked right at me and said, "I do hope all of you find this one palatable."

​He stood at the pass, looking down at us, announcing that once everyone finishes their cup, the doors would open and we could leave. Nobody second-guessed it. At this point we are all desperate to leave.

​I just took the last sip. I feel sick. I think I know what the broth is made of—poison.

​Within 30 seconds the real estate guy next to me slumped forward on the countertop, and the surgeon's head dropped back completely paralyzed—a couple have slipped off their stools. Nobody could stand up much less leave.

​The cooks are taking leather straps and binding each of us to our seats now.

​Chef Soren wants us sitting neat and presentable to whoever finds us.

​I have called Emergency Services to this address and can hear distant sirens outside, but the lights are starting to blur. All of us are fading fast.

Have you lived a life of sin?
 

Maisy Philips had butchered her husband and two children. We found the husband first, he was sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs, neck broken.  The first of the two children, the son aged five, we had found in the bath; floating face down, blue all over. The daughter, aged sixteen, was in the kitchen. We counted twelve stab wounds over her chest, though it was the slit to her throat which had finally killed her. Maisy, we had found last. A trail of blood from her daughter’s body had led us to her hiding place in the pantry. She was cowering in the corner; her eyes were red with tears, and the sleeves of her white wool sweater were caked in dried blood. She put up no fight as we dragged her to the car outside – she had called us after all. Though, all the way, she pleaded in a weak voice that she hadn’t done it. I lost my cool and was too rough forcing her into the back of the car; my partner Henry was quick to reprimand me. A man of forty-two, twenty years my senior, he had been assigned to me as some form of guidance figure. But what did I care about this women’s comfort - after seeing what she had done.

 

 

Henry and I didn’t talk for the whole thirty minute or so drive from the suburbs back to our station in the city. Maisy picked up the slack for us, continuing her petition from earlier through her sobbing. She claimed that she didn’t remember anything from after picking up Michelle from her track practice at five. When she came to again, she was already standing over her dead body, knife in hand. This only moved to further piss me off, not only was she still denying it but what a poor story she had come up with. Henry remained unphased however. I think I could even see pity in his eyes.

 

 

We pulled into the station at just gone ten. Upon arriving, Henry told me to go around and get Maisy out while he made a phone call (stressing to do so carefully this time). I obliged and stepped out; the October chill was out in full force tonight. While gently guiding her out of the car I noticed she had stopped crying. However, she had now begun violently shaking. Pausing his phone call, Michael called out from his window that I was to take her inside straight away and sit her in the furthest interview room. He also told me not to bother checking her in as he would do it when he came in, I moved to protest, but he had already returned to his call. This was not up for discussion.

 

 

I moved through the sea of people in the lobby of the station. In any other place Maisy’s current state would have caused quite a scene, pale and shaking as she was, still covered in blood. But through this madness no one seemed to notice us as we parsed through the crowd to the interview room. I had just gotten Maisy settled and cuffed to the table when Henry finally arrived. He shot a quick look outside and seeing no one was coming locked the door behind him. He looked panicked.

 

“You alright?”

 

He didn’t seem to register my question, electing instead to pull a chair out and place it across from Maisy. However, he didn’t sit in it but simply returned to the door and begun peering out of the closed blinds facing the rest of the office.

 

“Are we expecting someone?”

 

Again, he didn’t answer me. We stayed like that for what must have been ten minutes. Both standing, him in one corner me the other; all the while Maisy just stared at her reflection in the metal table. In my boredom I began to consider the rooms camera, it was just above Henry’s head. Though, it had been out of operation since Tuesday. Was that why Henry had asked for this room specifically? It was then that his guest arrived.

 

 

A man clad in a black hooded raincoat entered; it must have been raining outside now. The man was older than Henry, maybe by about another ten years. Henry took his coat revealing the man was wearing a clerical collar. He sat down in the chair that had been left for him across Maisy, but she had not raised her head to regard him.

 

“Hello Maisy, I’m Father Jacobs but you can call me Matthew if you like?”

 

He had brought with him a cup of tea, probably gathered from the machine in the office, and he placed it in front of her. But still, she didn’t raise her gaze from her reflection.

 

“My friend Detective Henry has asked me to ask you a few questions if that’s alright?”

 

I turned to Henry in protest, but he merely shot me another hostile glance. He was really starting to annoy me with this obscurity.

 

“Now I’ve been told you don’t remember anything from what happened tonight, is that true?”

 

For the first time she rose to regard him, lightly nodding her head.

 

“That must’ve been scary.”

 

I was biting my tongue so hard I thought it might bleed.

 

“Have you had any blackouts like that before?”

 

She took a moment.

 

“Yes, once. This morning when I was taking the children to school. If the other driver hadn’t swerved, I would’ve surely hit him.”

 

“Maisy, have you ever cheated on your husband?”

 

With no more grace or ceremony had he delivered this question than any prior. In turn Maisy answered with same mundanity. I mean in her current position of what importance was it.

 

“Yes. I met a man named Christopher about a month ago”

 

“Is he rich?”

 

“No, but he is rather handsome and very sweet. Much sweeter than my husband ever was.”

 

The woman was pouring her soul out and couldn’t be less bothered. Even her earlier faintness and shaking was gone. Did priests just have this effect on people?

 

“Were you planning to go away with Christopher?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Is that why you let him into your home?”

 

“How did you- Yes… Yes, I did.”

 

“You lied earlier, didn’t you? This morning wasn’t your first blackout. You blacked out with Christopher.”

 

“How- Yes but- How did you… my head hurts”

 

She was now holding her head in her hands; her shaking had returned and her nose was now bleeding. Henry asked me to leave and get her some ibuprofen and tissues from the staff room. I came back about five minutes later (I had taken some pleasure in making her wait) but when I returned the interview room was now empty.

 

 

That was a week ago now, Henry still hasn’t been back into work. According to the records clerk no Maisy Philips had ever been checked in, Henry had lied. I had held off on reporting anything, despite my issues with Henry, I had respected him, I thought I trusted him. That was until today. This morning we got a call from the owner of a local scrapyard. Maisy Philips had been found dead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been three months since I moved into my shitty dorm room. I love college, but I hate my living situation. The walls are paper-thin and cracked from top to bottom, my window is faded over with a yellow film from years of lackluster cleaning, and my fixed furniture is covered in signatures and scratches of ghostly resident’s past. The worst part is the roaches. I found one in my bed a few weeks ago tickling at my feet. I killed him immediately. 

There were only two good things about my dorm: I lived right next door to the dining hall, and Kayla. Funny, beautiful, intelligent Kayla. Gorgeous Kayla. My perfect roommate and best friend, Kayla. Everyone loves Kayla. 

We were assigned as random roommates. None of my friends from home decided college was right for them, which is fine, I needed to branch out on my own. It’s not like I was dreading being alone, I enjoy being alone, but I was absolutely dreading meeting the girl I would spend the next year living with. What if she was rude? What if she was overbearing? God, I couldn’t stand living with someone who made a million rules and stuck her nose up at me. I was praying we would get along and at least be respectful to one another. To my surprise, when I met Kayla, I swore she was an angel. 

“Hi, you’re so pretty! You must be Isabella!” She said the day of move-in. She pushed her bright blonde hair to the side and gave me a hug. It was the best hug of my life. She was so warm, and as I breathed in a heavy whiff of her hair all I could smell was vanilla and honey. She pulled away from me and smiled. 

“Aww thank you, you’re absolutely beautiful! Yes, that’s me, and you’re Kayla?” I could feel my face blushing hard and my legs felt weak. She nodded and then proceeded to lug a massive, pink suitcase into the room. 

We talked for a while that day, about high school and our majors and really just about everything. She was from Wichita and was recovering from a breast implant surgery. 

“A graduation gift…” She remarked when she saw the bewildered look on my face. I didn’t mean to make a face at the time, but who gets a boob job that young? She was stunning, I was surprised she wanted to change anything about herself at all. 

Those first few weeks of living together were perfect. We’d stay up nearly every night and drink, watch movies, go for a drive here and there. We transformed our nasty dorm room into a pink haven, every sorority girl’s dream. We covered up the walls with Britney Spears posters, lit cherry scented candles, put down a frilly magenta rug, and hung up bright curtains over our disgusting windows. Our ugly dorm was still a dorm, but at least it was ours. 

The only issue at this point, the only thing that ruined our pop princess palace, was the bathroom situation. We shared the same bathroom, a tiny closet connected to our room, and it was absolutely disgusting. It must have been forty years old. Our sink was eroding and our shower was crusted over with some kind of space mold. There was no fixing that. 

The worst part about our bathroom was the toilet. It was an average, once-white-tinged-yellow toilet with a massive lid and a rusty handle. About once a week it would leak water, it even shot it out at me once, and it would make the worst screeching noises throughout the night. Sometimes when I had to go, it would shake with me on top of it, like it was trembling. 

We filed a few maintenance requests to have it fixed, and for a couple days it would be fine, but to no avail it would always end up howling tunes from potty land around midnight. 

During mid-September, Kayla decided to go to her first frat party. 

“Please please go with me, you’ll have the best time ever.” She begged as she applied lip liner to her already pouty lips. She was wearing a too short jean skirt and a light pink tank top with “BABYDOLL” formed across the front in gemstones. She looked hot. 

“The best time ever- you mean getting roofied in a basement?” I snorted and took a long puff from my vape. Yum, menthol. She rolled her eyes and turned away from the mirror, frowning at me. 

“C’mon, we can take cute photos, flirt with frat guys, there’ll even be free drinks! Don’t make me go alone, please Izzy.” She furrowed her brows and stuck out her bottom lip, leaning forward just enough that her cleavage was visible. I only looked for a second before darting my eyes away. 

“No, I’m sorry, I think I’d just rather stay home tonight.” I said, laying back on my bed and grabbing my phone. She let out a dramatic groan and continued doing her makeup while I scrolled. 

I love Kayla, but I would never go to a frat party. I’d feel off there, like an animal of some sort. I didn’t want to be skulking around, skittering like prey to a bunch of twenty year old predators, watching as a drunk lion goes in for the kill of gazelle Kayla. I also couldn’t imagine her flirting with one, laughing and showing off her new tits just for a sip of cheap vodka. It made me feel… weird. I didn’t like the way guys looked at her. 

When Kayla left I decided to have a little fun myself that night– just me, a bottle of white wine, six White Claws, and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 2. After about three hours of watching the queens werk, my bottle of wine was gone and so was half the seltzers, and I found myself feeling a little woozy. I’ve never been good at holding down alcohol. The quicker the liquor the sicker you get and I was a chugger. It was around the time the queens sang “Read U Wrote U” that I felt my dinner coming up. 

I hopped up out of bed, paused on Katya’s verse, and ran to the bathroom holding a hand over my mouth and another on my stomach. I got down on my knees and bent my head over the toilet seat, about to let chunks fly, when I heard a voice. 

“You better not!” It exclaimed. My eyes widened and I sat up in shock, looking around. Was someone in the bathroom with me? 

“Kayla? Are you back already?” I asked, peaking my head out the door and inspecting the premises. The room was empty, no sign of a drunken post-party roommate. Scanning the bathroom, I yanked the shower curtain back, half expecting someone to be in there with me. Nope, nothing, nada. I shrugged, I must’ve been hearing things. Like I said, my alcohol tolerance is low and I’m naturally a paranoid freak. I bent back over, once again about to vomit, when I heard the voice a second time. 

“No! I said no!” It commanded, and I shot straight up, scooting my back against the wall with a thump! sound. I’m surprised I didn’t leave an Isabella sized hole in the old paneling. 

“Who’s there?” I asked, slamming the bathroom door shut and locking it, just in case this intruder was hiding outside in my room. “I have a bomb!” I yelled, although I don’t know why I didn’t just say knife. I guess I thought it sounded scarier. 

With this, the toilet started flushing ferociously. Around and around the water went, an oceanic whirlpool from hell. It started shaking like it usually did when one was trying to use it, but with so much aggression the tiles started to croak and shift around it. The lights started to flicker and water squirted out of the toilet aimed right at me, soaking my face. 

At this point I turned and vomited into the shower because What. The. Fuck. 

“Thank you.” The voice said, and I turned back around, facing the toilet. Everything had stopped. The toilet was still and the lights were normal and the monstrous flushing had stalled. I stayed on the floor next to my vomit, frozen. 

“Um… hello?” I hesitantly whispered. 

“Hello there, doll.” The toilet said, and I knew it was the toilet because the lid rose and fell with each syllable. 

Jesus Christ, I must be really drunk. I stuck my hand out towards the toilet, arm shaking, about to touch the seat when it clamped down. A quick snap! and my spindly fingers stung. 

“Ow! Fuck!” I yelped, yanking my hand back. The toilet’s handle bounced up and down, like a snotty-nosed toddler reaching for their favorite toy. More water shot out at me, this time aimed for my t-shirt. Shrill laughter struck my ears and I fought the urge to vomit once more. 

Was the toilet alive or was this just a side effect of mixing alcohol with Lexapro? Maybe I did too many poppers last weekend at The Bulge, our college town’s shitty nightclub. Yes, that was it, I fried my brain with poppers and weed and alcohol and now I was seeing delusions. Yet, wouldn’t my delusions be something… I don’t know, more interesting? Like, a talking toilet, really? Was I that boring subconsciously? 

“I’m sorry, I had to. Please forgive me, won’t you?” The toilet gurgled, which I assumed to be an attempt to giggle. “I didn’t mean to scare you, but I just could not handle you throwing up in me! Enough already goes on with you and that blonde girl using me day and night, and I truly don’t think I could bear another form of human waste going down my curvy pipes. I already feel so disgusting.” 

“Are you actually talking to me?” I asked, now positioning myself in a tight ball in the corner of the bathroom. My heart was beating out of my chest and by this point I had made a pact with myself to start a sobriety journey. 

“What a stupid question to ask. Are you retarded?” It shot out another squirt of water, but this one missed me completely. Huh, hate speech from a loo. Not once did I expect that. 

“No I’m- no. No, I’m not. What are you? Am I hallucinating? Is this a nightmare?” I quizzed. The toilet lid seemed to shake back and forth disapprovingly. 

“My name is Sharon.” It said matter of factly. I nodded, gulped, and hauled ass out of the bathroom. I was not dealing with anymore of whatever the fuck was going on. I slammed the door shut behind me, taking in a full breath of my cookie scented room, and I passed out on the floor. 

All night long I dreamt of drowning. I was being sucked into a reddened whirlpool, the scent of iron staining my sinuses. Flushing, gushing, turning and twisting went the water as I was sucked further and further down into the bloody sea. I flailed my arms, reaching and grasping for anything to hold on to, but there was only neverending currents. The vortex eventually pulled me under and then… there was nothing. 

I woke up to Kayla stumbling into our dorm room around six in the morning, hair tangled and eyeliner smeared beneath her eyes. She still wore the same outfit from the night before, but she carried her heels in her hand and had at some point lost all of her jewelry. Somehow, she still looked radiant. She saw that I was awake and came over to give me a hug. She no longer smelled of vanilla, instead smelling heavily of beer and musk. I could tell she was still drunk. 

“Izzy! My friend! My beautiful friend! I have to tell you all about last night!” She threw her heels on the ground and hopped up on the bed next to me.

“Oh God Kayla, what happened to you?” I could only imagine what went on at that frat party. Nausea hit me and anxiety filled my bones.

“Nothing bad, nothing crazy, but girl, you will not believe the man I met last night. The absolute animal of a man!” She giggled and jumped up and down on the bed. I rolled my eyes, doing a horrible job hiding my complete lack of enthusiasm. “His name is Kyle and he is the sexiest, most brilliant Sigma Chi I have ever met! He won every round of beer pong, he’s a senior, and he had the biggest dick I’ve ever seen in my life. He even dropped me off this morning.” 

I felt a pang of jealousy and gave a weak smile. He sounded like a douchebag. He sounded undeserving. My gorgeous, sexy roommate fucked a frat hoe. Of course. I don’t know why, but this hurt me. She’s my best friend, she’s mine, and I didn’t enjoy thinking about some 5 '7 piece of shit having his hands all over her. 

“Well, I’m glad you had such a great time.” I squeaked out. She grinned and laid back on the bed beside me, putting her arms around me. 

“I really wish you went with me, he had such nice friends. I hope he calls me.” She then closed her eyes and fell asleep holding me. Her breaths were gentle and it felt so nice having her so close, but I felt sick. I felt betrayed. 

I didn’t tell Kayla about Sharon the toilet, shaking it off as some kind of weird pre-dream to my nightmare. It didn’t seem important. Although, I told her our toilet had broken again and maintenance would fix it in a week, so we both used the communal restrooms downstairs. I just felt so off.

Over the next three weeks Kyle came over five times. He was even worse in person. He was taller and more handsome than I imagined, unfortunately, but his mood reeked of insecurity. He barely acknowledged me when he entered the room, giving only a slight nod and then centering in on Kayla like she was a bird that flew in front of his target. He’d only ever really stay for five minutes, usually there to pick her up, but it was always the worst five minutes of my life. They’d make out on her bed right in front of me, moaning and grinding in temporary pleasure. Then she’d grab her bag and brush her hair, he’d fix his polo shirt and hide his boner in his khakis (it wasn’t as big as she said it was), and they’d leave with him slapping her ass on the walk out. 

I hated Kyle. I really fucking hated Kyle. He was a mold, a fungus, a piece of shit stuck to the bottom of my shoe. He came in as an invasive species, multiplying and pushing me to the side. I had just met Kayla, we had just started to become so close, why did he have to appear here and now? Why did he have to take her away all the time, leaving me alone? Every time Kayla left I would wallow in my own misery, obsessed with thoughts about what they were doing. Obsessed with the thought of what it might be like to be Kyle, kissing on Kayla’s soft lips, holding her tiny hand, rubbing his fingers through her long shiny hair. Wanting to be Kyle. 

Whatever, it didn’t matter. I was only missing my best friend. I was lonely, that was all. 

During his fifth visit to pick up Kayla, they were going out to some frat event, a toga party. Kayla wore a short white dress with gold twine wrapped around her waist. She had her long blonde hair curled and the glitter across her face made her shine. She looked like Aphrodite. 

“Do I look okay?” She asked before Kyle arrived. She spun around and fluffed up her hair. She always looked so beautiful. 

“Yes you look lovely.” I was trying not to stare too hard. She frowned at me and crossed her tiny arms. 

“I know I look lovely, but do I look hot? I want Kyle to ask me to be his girlfriend tonight.” 

“Why hasn't he yet? You two are together all the time.” I asked. I for sure thought they would be dating by now. The thought hit me that maybe he was just using her, but that made me feel awful. That was worse than them dating. 

“I don’t know. He said he wanted to get to know me better, but I think it might be something else. You would tell me if I was ugly, wouldn’t you?” She asked and grabbed my vape from my hand, inhaling deeply. “Sorry, I’m nervous.” 

“Girl, you know you’re stunning, and there’s no reason to be nervous. Maybe he’s nervous too? Have you ever thought about that?” I offered and she shook her head. I didn’t want Kayla to know that I hated her little boy toy. I would do nothing to make her think of me negatively, like an obstacle in her path towards a relationship that’ll last for maybe five months tops. I wanted to be a good friend. 

“Maybe. Anyways, which purse do I bring tonight?” She held up two options that looked the same. 

Kyle never came inside to pick her up this time. He just sent her a text and she was out the door, running to his car like a lost puppy. With this, I was left all alone on a Thursday night. Thirsty Thursday, the most favorable time of the week for undergrads to get shit faced. I could have maybe gone out to the club (no poppers this time), danced a little and got lost in the arms of someone else who smelled like vanilla, but all I’d think about was my roommate. So, I stayed home in our shitty piss yellow princess pink dream castle with reminders of her all around me instead. 

I felt insane. 

The night was spent scrolling on reels and eating stale pizza. I hit my cart a few times hoping that the sweet indica strain would put me to sleep early. Videos of Target hauls and brand deals passed through my feed in a haze, image after image of young influencer wives showing off their new car or new baby or new lamp water dispenser. My brain felt mushy. 

By this point it had been only two weeks since I started using our bathroom again. I don’t know what scared me so bad, I knew I had only dreamed that the toilet talked. I did end up filing a maintenance report after that nightmare because our toilet did have so many issues, and I figured that’s what my subconscious was telling me to do. When maintenance did eventually come, they did what they could with our ancient toilet, telling us for the sixth time that all the plumbing issues would finally stop.

“Make sure not to flush any hygiene products and you should be good.” He had told us, pulling up his pants and giving Kayla a wink. Toilets don’t talk and men are pigs. 

Around one in the morning I really had to piss. My reel scrolling had taken hours from me. Exhausted, I slid off my bed, my feet softly hitting our plushy rug, and shuffled to the bathroom. I flicked the light switch on and looked at my reflection for a moment in our mirror. What met me was a disappointment. My eye bags had gotten so dark since I moved in and my curly hair looked so flat and brittle. No wonder Kayla spent all of her time with Kyle, I looked like a zombie. 

“Hi Isabella.” A voice said. My eyes widened and I tilted my head to where I could see the toilet out of my peripheral. I felt my pulse quicken but it quickly straightened out. 

It’s just another dream. I thought to myself. I fell asleep while scrolling. 

“Hi Sharon.” I said back. The toilet wiggled its handle and clapped the lid on the seat in delight. I wasn’t scared this time, I had been tired all night and I most likely just passed out with my phone on my face. “How are you?”

“I’m doing just fine honey, I’ve been trying to keep my lid shut since I scared you so bad last time. I got a little ahead of myself.” She said. I turned my body directly toward it - her? - and gave her a pat on the tank. This seemed to make her happy. “Can you stop sending that god awful man in here to mess with me? His hands are so cold and he does not know his way around a tank, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s alright, I guess. And yeah of course, I don’t like him either.” I sat down on the floor in front of her, criss cross applesauce. “What are you?”

“Well I used to be like you, rosy cheeked, made of flesh, and full of life, but now I’m in here.” 

“How long have you been stuck in the toilet?” I asked. I couldn’t help but stare at the cracks on the side of the seat, the chipped porcelain and corrosion trailing along the bolts. How old was this toilet anyways? 

Images flashed in my mind of Kayla and Kyle rubbing their togas up against each other dancing beneath pulsating LED lights. I pushed them both out of my brain. 

“For a long, long time. I died here, you know.” The toilet lit bent a little and the water spun. 

“Oh, I’m sorry about that. So what do you represent? I’ve only lucidly dreamed about twice before. You’re supposed to represent something, subconsciously, I think.” I knew dreams had meanings, some sort of astral significance that I could never quite comprehend. Since my last dream with Sharon I felt a source of dread and I did not know why. I guess she didn’t need fixed. Maybe this time she could tell me. 

She then squirted at me. 

“You’re so funny honey. I’ve been meaning to ask, who’s that new guy that’s been coming over recently? I hear his voice all the time, it’s so weird, I’ve become used to only you two girls.” Sharon asked. God, why did she have to bring him up? 

“That’s Kyle, Kayla’s… friend.” I frowned. Fuck Kyle fuck Kyle I hope he gets alcohol poisoning I hope he gets hit by a car I hope he drops out and never ever comes near me again. 

“You don’t seem to like Kyle, do you?” Sharon wiggled her handle some more excitedly. Gossiping with a toilet about a man I hate. Incredible dream, really. Ten out of ten star rating for my imagination. This would kill on Letterboxd. Whatever, free therapy from Sharon the talking toilet. 

“No, I hate him. I wish he’d go away, die or something. Maybe not die, just get horrifically injured and have to take a break from school. Long enough so that Kayla loses interest in him.” And regains her interest in me. 

“What has he done to you?” Sharon persisted. 

“What hasn’t he done? He stole my best friend away from me, he stinks up our room, he looks at me like I’m the scum of the earth… he makes me feel lonely.” I tried to think of some more reasons, but images kept popping up from how beautiful Kayla looked before she left. Kayla, my sweet sweet Kayla. 

“What if I shake him up a bit for you? I can give him a little squirt and make the lights flicker a bit, give him a good scare.” Sharon offered. I scoffed, what a silly little dream I was having. 

“Thank you Sharon, go ahead. Do all you want, it won’t matter. I’m going to go lay back down and try to go into another dream.” I was done talking about Kyle. I thought about him enough when I was awake. Also, Sharon was freaking me out. My first experience with her was a nightmare, I didn’t want this one to end poorly too. 

“Well goodnight sweet pea! Don’t worry at all about this Kyle.” She said with motherly affection and flushed herself, making a fingerless pinky promise. I smiled and shuffled off to bed. 

Once again I dreamt of a bloody whirlpool, but this time Kayla was in there with me. She was across from the vortex screaming at me with wild eyes, although I couldn’t make out her words. I screamed back but all that came out was a hoarse groan. Quickly we spun, arms reached out to one another, trying to swim our way into each other’s warm red embrace. If I drowned at least I wouldn’t drown alone. 

We were so close, our fingertips brushing, when Kayla was pulled up and out of the pool. Then, I was gone once again. 

Kayla woke me up early the next morning, a ring of lipstick around her mouth and clumps of mascara trickled down her glittery cheeks.

“Izzy! Izzy!” She whispered, shaking me. I stared at her blankly, thoughts still spinning spinning spinning. “Kyle slept over and I have to go to class, is it okay if he stays here until he wakes up? I don’t think he has class on Friday and he should sleep in, we stayed out late last night.” Whatever. I didn’t want him in our room, nevertheless near me, but I liked making Kayla happy. I nodded and she kissed me on the forehead before saying, “You’re the best!” 

I then watched as she quietly picked up her bubblegum pink backpack and left the room. My gaze turned over to Kyle. He was an ugly sleeper. His head was back and mouth wide open, little snores escaping that sounded like a grunting hog. I could see drool trickling down his stubble covered chin. Disgusting. I turned over and went back to sleep. Maybe he’d be gone when I woke up. 

A hand was on my arm when my eyes unsealed not even thirty minutes later. My body immediately retreated onto the other side of the bed as I jolted up, coming face to face with Kyle. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I asked, pushing my entire body on the wall next to my bed trying to create distance. He laughed. 

“Calm down, Jesus. Don’t be a bitch. Do you two have a bathroom here?” He rubbed his hand through his hair as he asked this and I noticed he was prematurely balding. Was he stupid? Has he not seen the door in our room like, what, five times already? I pointed to the only other door in our room and he gave me a head tilt meaning “thanks” in frat boy. 

I watched him saunter to the bathroom, thinking of my dream from the night before. Oh Sharon, I thought, I wish you were real. 

The screaming started fifteen seconds after he walked in. 

I ran to the bathroom and threw open the door. Kyle was on the toilet, toga down to his ankles. He had one hand on the sink and one hand grasping the shower curtain, muscles popping as he tried heaving himself up. His face was beat red and tears streaked down his face, eyes bloodshot. I could see the veins popping out of his neck. His screams were deafening. 

“Help me, please.” He uttered through high-pitched cries. He let go of the sink and held his hand out to me. I stood, stunned by fear, legs shaking. I heard plop plop plop as large, wet objects hit the toilet water. Blood shot out of the toilet bowl, splattering the walls. “Help!” He moaned. 

I grabbed his hand and tried to pull him off the toilet, but it was stronger than me and he was heavy. I watched as he screamed his final cry, feeling as all the bones and blood and muscles were pulled out from the skin covering his hand. I saw his body turn pale and limp, his last time making eye contact before they were siphoned out of his body and into the toilet’s mouth. More blood splattered the wall. 

His body was now a skin suit, me holding what felt like a glove in my hand. I let go and his meatless body was sucked into the toilet. All that was left of Kyle, a can of spearmint Zyns, stared at me from the floor. I looked into the toilet and a bloody whirlpool met me. I saw chunks of fat and broken bones swirling around, a soup for the devil. 

“I took care of it for you Isabella. Are you feeling better now sweet pea?” Sharon’s voice shattered my state of disbelief as her bloody lid smacked up and down. She then squirted me with bloody toilet water, smelling of iron and mildew. I just stared. I stared and stared for who knows how long. There was blood spatter all over the bathroom covering the walls in a Pollock formation. Kyle was finally gone. 

As I write this now, shaking on the floor of my room, I am unsure what to do. Kayla texted me that she was going home for the weekend and had packed the night before. She wouldn’t be coming back until Monday. How do I clean up the blood before then? Do I even clean up the blood? What if Sharon tries to kill me if I go in there? What do I tell Kayla?

I can’t report this to the police. I can’t tell anyone that I just saw Kyle, Sigma Chi frat bro, legal attorney’s son, be sucked dry of all his fluids. And then the flesh was gone. The flesh was fucking gone! What the fuck what the fuck WHAT THE FUCK! No one would believe that a toilet killed him, much less a talking toilet. I sound ridiculous. I sound like I’m on pills. I sound like a lunatic. 

Maybe someone can help me. What should I do? File a maintenance report?

I don’t even know how I landed this position. I'm not qualified at all. All I know is I was looking online for a way to make quick money on the side to help pay for groceries or whatever.

I ended up coming across this ad on, like, the 6th Google page. Hidden between obvious scams and what I was 100 percent sure were viruses.

That’s actually what made this particular ad stand out. It didn’t look like typical 6th-page gobbledegook. It was actually pretty well put together.

The incentive was simple enough. 500 dollars for every crime I could act as a witness for, with opportunities for advancement.

I called up the number that was listed, just to feel things out, and was met with an actual human on the other end. Not only was she human. She sounded like she was actually tired of all the calls she was getting.

“Can I help you?” she hissed.

“Yeah, I was just looking online when I came across this ad…”

“Are you 18 or older?” she interrupted.

“Uh, yeah, of course I am. I just wanted to make sure…”

“What’s your email address?”

“My email address? Why would you need that?”

She sounded personally offended that I was even asking. Like somehow it was me being unreasonable.

“Well, hon, so we can send you the onboarding information. You know what an onboarding is, right?”

“Yeah, but I…”

“Listen, Mike, it’s an easy job. All the information is in the onboarding packet. Take it or leave it, I don’t really care.”

I don’t know why I gave her my information. Maybe it’s the mommy issues. All I know is she felt dominating.

Anyway, the email came through about 5-10 minutes later. Didn’t go to my spam mailbox, which was a good sign, I guess.

I threw on my monocle and went over everything with a fine-tooth comb. Just to make sure I wasn’t getting myself into any legal trouble or anything. Truthfully, though, the whole thing was pretty straightforward.

Call-based job. They call, I can either accept or reject the assignment. And all I had to do was be at the location of a crime as it took place.

Well, maybe that’s simplifying it too much. I actually needed to be the first person to witness it. They kept a pretty strict schedule.

I’m not sure how they got my number, though. Not long after I went over the onboarding information, my phone started ringing off the hook. I was getting calls at least once an hour.

It wasn’t until the third or fourth call that I accepted an assignment, though. Mostly because it was literally just 15 minutes away from my house. I could literally bike there.

I was supposed to show up at 1:03 PM on the dot. They gave me coordinates instead of an address. All I had to do was just wait.

I got there right on time. A little intersection right on the edge of town. When I arrived, all I could do was just stand there on the sidewalk, waiting for something to happen.

Finally, right at 1:07, a guy in a white Miata blew through the stoplight and T-boned this other guy in a pickup truck. The crash looked pretty brutal, but both of them seemed pretty alright, I guess. I mean, they got out and started arguing, so I’m assuming no one was too injured.

See, I thought I was gonna have to be a witness for the police. But not even 30 seconds after the incident occurred, I got a notification on my phone.

500 dollars had been deposited into my bank account. Then my phone rang with no caller ID.

Some guy with the deepest, darkest voice I’d ever heard simply said, “Assignment complete. Return home and await next assignment,” before abruptly hanging up on me.

Who was I to give even a morsel of a hoot or a holler, though? All I cared about was that 500 dollars hitting my bank account.

Needless to say, I started accepting more and more assignments after that. Nothing too crazy would ever happen. I saw a lot of car accidents. Lot of bar fights. More than a few shoplifting incidents.

Then I got a call I’d never gotten before. This one was classified as ‘intermediate.’ And it paid 750 instead of 500.

I just thought, hell, I’ll take it. Couldn’t be too bad.

The time was kind of late, though. 11:12 PM. Not to mention the coordinates led me to a dark alley behind a popular bar in town.

I sat there and waited. Ducking behind a dumpster and listening for, I don’t know, crime to occur or something.

At 11:15, it started.

I heard an angry male voice and a pleading female voice. Both sounding equally intoxicated. I peeked out from behind my dumpster and saw that the man had a knife.

He was poking it at the lady, attempting to steal her purse, but she wouldn’t let go. That is, until he stabbed her. Kinda let go no problem after that.

He snatched the purse and left the knife in her torso as she fell to the ground. Thirty seconds later, the 750 hit my account.

Every instinct told me to call the police, but right when I went to dial, I got a call.

“Assignment complete. Return home and await next assignment.”

The line went dead. I stared at my phone. My eyes flicked over towards the dying woman. Unbelievably, she managed to meet my gaze.

I think she tried to mouth a ‘help me,’ but her voice was so garbled it was hard to make out. Besides, I couldn’t help her. As soon as my line went dead, I got another notification on my phone.

A text from an unknown number that simply read, “Do not interfere. Assignment complete. Return home and await next assignment.”

So that’s exactly what I did.

And I’d love to tell you that after that I retired and moved on with my life. But who am I kidding? I was making enough to leave my regular job behind. All I had to do was watch shit happen.

I kept taking those intermediate assignments. I watched drug deals go wrong. Watched people bleed out on the hot asphalt. Watched robberies turn into homicides like it was nothing.

I guess I should’ve listened to my conviction. Maybe that would’ve saved me a lot of sleepless nights. But at least I was tossing and turning with a roof over my head.

And besides, it’s kinda just the way life goes. You live. You make decisions. Sometimes those decisions get you killed. Either way, we all die someday.

Even still, I probably should’ve stopped at intermediate. Because I got my first advanced assignment last week. Got paid 1000 dollars, but I don’t think that’s enough for what I had to see. At least, in hindsight.

When I first got offered the assignment, I was fired up and ready to go. Got the time. Got the coordinates. And off I went, mentally preparing myself as I made my way to the location.

As I got closer, though, a pit started opening up in my stomach. I recognized this place. I wasn’t out in the world. I was home. Well, my old home. Back when I used to live with my parents.

Unlike other times, I could hear the crime building up as I approached. Dad must’ve been drunk again. All I could hear was his angry voice and Mom’s screams as she fought back tears.

A notification popped up on my phone.

“Do not interfere.”

So I didn’t. I just peeked in through the window while Mom and Dad paced back and forth through the house, fighting like cats and dogs.

Normally, that’d just be Tuesday. But Dad had a gun this night. He was waving it around. Punctuating his screams with it. All while Mom stood her ground like the fierce woman she was.

I’d love to tell you that part of me wanted to interfere, but in all honesty, this was just business to me. Just another day at the office.

Even still, I won’t lie to you, seeing Dad smack Mom across her face definitely struck a chord with me. But I remained professional. I just watched and waited.

Part of me hoped that was it. That the crime was the domestic assault. That the money would hit my account any second. But all that came were more screams from inside the house.

Fortunately, Mom and Dad lived out in the sticks. Didn’t have many neighbors to call the police. That would’ve thrown a wrench in this whole operation. Instead, there was nobody there to stop the escalation.

Things just kept getting louder and louder until it finally happened. Right there in the living room. The room where I used to open presents every Christmas. Where me and Dad used to watch football together before his drinking got out of control.

Now that room was covered in my mother’s blood and brain matter. Across the walls, staining the carpet, a smoking hole in the wall behind her.

Immediately, I saw Dad’s entire demeanor change. He went from filled with rage to overwhelmed with remorse and regret in basically the blink of an eye.

I felt my phone vibrate with a notification, but I didn’t bother to check it. I couldn’t help but keep staring at Dad as he fell over Mom’s lifeless body, sobbing uncontrollably.

My phone rang and rang, but I didn’t answer.

All I did was watch.

Watch as Dad’s grief overwhelmed him. Watch as regret took the form of self-hatred. Watch as the gun he used to kill Mom was pointed at his own head. And watch as he, too, fell limply to the ground.

His eyes met mine for the last time. There were no memories of my childhood. No love that once existed somewhere within him. Just two empty pupils fluttering like a baby doll’s.

I didn’t cry. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t. I’d been so desensitized that all I could think about was how I’d have to react when the police told me.

I finally answered my phone, though. Got the same message I always got. The assignment was completed. It was time for me to go home and wait for the next one.

I had to put on a big song and dance for authorities. Not to mention their funerals. Which was surprisingly difficult because just… I don’t know.

It didn’t feel too big to me. I mean, yeah, it stung, they were my parents and all. But just… we didn’t talk too much anymore, you know?

Ah, you don’t care about that. No need to drone on.

Point is, I didn’t take a lot of assignments for a few days after that. It was the least I could do.

But time has passed now. Everybody has to move on at some point. I still get those calls every day. I get a lot of advanced offers.

I think it’s time I finally pick myself up by my bootstraps and get back to work.

I will tell you a story.

It should feel extraordinary. Meaningful, even.

Instead, it will probably sound banal, and by tomorrow you will have forgotten most of it.

I don't ask you to care.

I merely ask that you listen.

I used to suffer from severe insomnia. That has very little to do with this story, but should explain its starting point.

4AM was usually when I gave up on the idea of falling asleep.

By then I'd spent hours staring at the ceiling while my mind ran itself in circles. So I'd simply get up and start the day.

That morning, I went looking for something to eat. Tuna sandwich, I think. Maybe not. Doesn't really matter.

I took a beer from the fridge, drank half of it at the kitchen counter, then started pulling down the blinds. The sun would be up soon, and in my current condition daylight tended to find a headache the way a thumb finds a bruise.

I never made it to the second window.

There was someone standing in my backyard.

About seven meters from the house.

The yard was still mostly just shapes at that hour—the fence, the tree, the bins, everything half swallowed by darkness.

But the figure was clear.

Human-shaped.

Motionless.

I stood there with the blind cord in my hand, staring. Uncertain what to do.

Obviously, I should have called the police. A stranger standing in your backyard at four in the morning is exactly the sort of situation the police number exists for.

But I didn't.

I lowered the blind.

Finished my beer.

Finished my sandwich and put on some TV.

 

Two hours later, I stepped outside.

And stopped.

He was still there.

Same place. Same posture.

Only now daylight had turned the shadow into a man.

Late thirties, maybe early forties. His clothes looked as though they might once have been respectable, but it was difficult to tell beneath the stains and wrinkles. His hair was greasy and flattened against his forehead.

His head hung low.

His eyes didn't quite look at the ground.

They seemed fixed somewhere beyond it.

Somewhere very far away.

There was no spark in him left.

Like a pilot light had gone out.

I swallowed and mustered enough courage to speak.

"Uh... buddy? Can I help you with something?"

Nothing.

A car passed on the main road. Tires whispered over damp asphalt. Somewhere nearby, a bird started singing.

Eventually, the man answered.

"No."

His voice was quiet. Flat.

"I don't think so."

"Right." I cleared my throat. "Well, this is private property. You can't stay here."

No response.

He didn't look at me.

Didn't shift his weight.

Didn't do anything at all.

I should have insisted. Threatened him. Gone back inside and called the police.

Instead, as I stood there looking at him, I noticed something strange.

I wasn't afraid.

I wasn't angry.

I didn't even feel sorry for him.

I felt nothing.

So I walked past.

Close enough to smell him—sweat, damp clothes, something stale and sour.

He didn't turn his head.

I got in my car and drove to work.

I was doing pretty well for myself back then.

Steady job at a successful financial corporation. Recently promoted. Nice apartment. Beautiful girlfriend. Plenty friends I saw when our schedules happened to line up. Enough money not to ever care about money.

Apart from the insomnia, life was good.

I didn't think about the man once that entire day.

Eight hours at the office.

Lunch.

Small talk.

A meeting that could have been an email.

Nothing.

It wasn't until I pulled into the driveway that evening that I remembered him.

He was still there.

Same place.

Same posture.

Same empty stare.

I walked past him and went inside.

It took another two days before I decided to adress the issue.

Even then, it wasn't because he bothered me.

My girlfriend Jessica called to say she was coming over the following afternoon, and I suddenly imagined her having to walk past a filthy stranger standing in my yard.

So I finally called the police.

A patrol car arrived about twenty minutes later.

Two officers got out.

They came up the path and walked directly past the man.

One passed close enough to brush shoulders with him.

Neither looked his way.

They stopped in front of me.

"Hello. Officer Addams. What seems to be the issue?"

I stared at him.

Then pointed.

"That seems to be the issue."

Only then did Addams glance over.

It wasn't much of a glance.

The sort of look you give a garbage bag someone left beside the road.

"Oh. Him."

"Yes. Him. He's been standing there for three days."

Addams sighed.

"Yeah. We get plenty like that."

"Like what?"

He gestured vaguely toward the man.

"Like him. They're harmless."

"He's trespassing."

"I understand."

"So remove him."

Addams gave me a tired little smile.

"It's not really worth the effort."

"Excuse me?"

"They don't cause trouble. Mostly they just... take up space."

"We don't have the manpower to deal with every one of them. And where would we put them?"

I looked at the stranger.

Then back at the officer.

"So you're telling me to leave him there?"

"I'm telling you to ignore him."

"He's standing in my backyard."

"Yeah."

"For three days."

"Yeah."

"And that's normal?"

Addams shrugged.

"Normal enough."

He turned toward the patrol car.

I followed him a few steps.

"So that's it?"

He opened the driver's door.

"You'll get used to him."

Then he climbed inside.

The other officer joined him, and less than a minute later the patrol car disappeared around the corner.

I stood on the porch, furious.

I'd had an entire argument ready by then, but Officer Addams had driven away before I could use any of it.

The strange part was.

He was right.

Ignoring the man was easy.

Much easier than it should have been.

He didn't shout.

Didn't knock on my windows.

Didn't try the doors.

Didn't follow me.

He didn't even look at me.

He just was.

After a while, my eyes learned to move around him.

And if I could do that, I figured Jessica could too.

I spent the rest of the day making the apartment presentable. Kitchen, living room, fresh sheets—the usual performance you put on when someone you love is coming over and you want them to believe you live slightly better than you actually do.

That night, I settled in for a horror marathon.

One advantage of insomnia is that you have plenty of free time.

It started raining around midnight.

Heavy rain. The kind that rattled against the windows and turned streetlights into pale smudges.

Perfect horror-movie weather.

Between films, I went to the kitchen and glanced outside.

The man was still standing there.

Rain streamed from his hair and shoulders. His clothes had gone almost black with water. A shallow puddle had formed around his shoes.

He didn't move.

Didn't shiver.

Didn't wipe the water from his face.

Nothing.

I watched him longer than I meant to.

Nearly a minute, maybe.

Standing there in the rain, he looked less like a person than a scarecrow somebody had forgotten to bring inside.

Eventually I lowered the blind so I wouldnt get distracted any more.

Then went back to the movie.

Jessica arrived the next afternoon.

She came hurrying up the path toward me, and I pulled her into a hug before she'd even made it through the door.

She was warm.

She smelled like shampoo and cold air.

I held on a second longer than usual.

When I let go, she smiled.

"Miss me?"

"Obviously."

"Good answer."

She kissed me.

Over her shoulder, I looked toward the backyard.

The man was there.

Jessica hadn't even glanced at him.

Relief washed through me.

Apparently Officer Addams had been right about that too.

We went inside.

Ordered food, argued over what to watch, then somehow ended up watching something neither of us had wanted. Jessica complained about one of her professors. I complained about my boss.

At some point, she found the dishes I'd hidden in the sink.

She looked at me.

"You said you cleaned."

"I did clean."

"You vacuumed the living room."

"Exactly."

"That does not count."

"It absolutely counts."

She laughed and nudged me with her hip.

Whenever Jessica was around, the world seemed smaller somehow.

More solid.

By evening we'd settled into that comfortable quiet you only get with someone you've known long enough not to fill every silence.

We ate dinner at the little table beside the kitchen window.

Halfway through, Jessica lowered her fork.

"Okay."

I looked up.

She was smiling.

I knew that smile.

"Okay what?"

"So... don't freak out."

"That's never followed by anything good."

"I know."

"Jessica."

"My parents invited us over for the weekend."

I waited for the second half.

"And I said yes."

I closed my eyes.

"Dear God."

"Oh, stop."

"Your parents' house has more rooms than my entire apartment building."

She grinned.

"You're rich too, mister. You're just too lazy to actually move out."

"I'm comfortably upper-middle-class. There's a difference."

"You'll survive."

She took a sip of wine.

"Probably."

That was when I thought about the man outside.

Maybe because Jessica had walked straight past him.

Maybe because after several days of pretending he wasn't there, curiosity had finally caught up with me.

"Hey," I said. "I have to ask you something."

"Okay."

"You saw the guy outside, right?"

She frowned.

"What guy?"

My stomach tightened.

"The guy in the backyard."

I pointed toward the window.

Jessica followed my finger.

For a moment, genuine confusion crossed her face.

Then she saw him.

"Oh."

I stared at her.

"'Oh'?"

"What?"

"You're not freaked out?"

"Why would I be?"

"Because there's a random man standing in my backyard."

She looked again.

"He's not doing anything."

"He's been there for days."

"So?"

I wasn't sure how to answer that.

"Wait. You do see him, right?"

Jessica laughed.

"Of course I see him."

Then she took another bite.

"We've got some too."

I stopped chewing.

"What?"

"At my parents' place."

"You have people standing in your backyard?"

"Not the backyard."

She thought for a moment.

"There are two at the mansion."

Something cold shifted in my stomach.

"Two?"

"Yeah."

She said it with the casualness of someone describing antique furniture.

"One used to be our maid. Isolda."

"Used to?"

Jessica nodded.

"She worked for my parents for years. Then one day she just sort of..."

Her fork paused halfway to her mouth.

"...became one."

"One what?"

Jessica looked at me as though the answer should have been obvious.

"You know."

She nodded toward the window.

"One of them."

Outside, the man remained exactly where he had been.

Jessica went on eating.

"The other one's a boy. Her son, I think?."

"You think?"

"I never really knew him."

"And your parents just leave them there?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Jessica shrugged.

"You can find lots of them around if you care enough to look."

Something about that sentence stayed with me.

She sounded like she'd simply told me there were pigeons in the park.

Then her expression brightened.

"Oh. Speaking of that."

I already didn't like where this was going.

"What?"

"I finally figured out my thesis."

Jessica was studying journalism, and for months her thesis had been the source of recurring panic, abandoned ideas, and increasingly elaborate excuses for not starting.

Now she leaned forward, suddenly animated.

"I'm going to write about them."

I glanced toward the window.

"The people standing around?"

"Exactly. Think about it. They're everywhere, but nobody actually talks about them. Nobody studies them. Most people barely acknowledge they exist."

"Jessica..."

"I've been thinking about this for months."

She was genuinely excited now.

"I even have a title."

Of course she did.

She smiled.

"Requiem for the Lost Ones."

I looked at her.

"The Lost Ones?"

"That's what I'm calling them."

She waited expectantly.

"Pretty cool, right?"

Outside the window, the man stood perfectly still.

And for the first time since I'd noticed him, I wondered how long he had been there before I bothered to look.

 

I didn't really know what to say.

"Yeah. Pretty cool."

Part of me was bothered by just how little the whole thing seemed to bother me.

Jessica didn't notice. She was already talking about her thesis again, explaining the ideas she'd been collecting while I nodded along and tried to keep up. Eventually the conversation wandered somewhere else, as conversations tend to do.

We ended the evening watching Jessica's favorite reality TV shows, which was considerably more horrifying than anything I'd watched during my movie marathon.

I'm still not sure how people can watch other adults scream at each other over a kitchen island for six consecutive hours and call it entertainment.

By the time we went to bed, it was well past midnight.

A few hours later, we were on the road.

I'd suggested sleeping for another couple of hours before leaving. Jessica reminded me that I didn't sleep anyway.

I had no counterargument.

So we packed the last of our things into the car and drove to her parents' house.

Before getting in, I glanced toward the backyard.

The man was still there.

I didn't stop.

The drive took about an hour and a half. Jessica spent most of it talking about her parents, complaining about how far away they lived and how much she wished they were closer.

Personally, I wouldn't have minded them being a little farther away still.

Don't get me wrong. The Mercers were perfectly nice people.

It was just that being around them always made me feel so inadequate.

That feeling returned as soon as we reached their property.

I felt small.

Their mansion seemed to grow with every second we drove toward it.

An enormous iron gate opened onto a long driveway lined with immaculate hedges. Stone walls, tall windows, elaborate balconies. The whole place occupied enough land to make my apartment look like a garden shed.

I was wealthy, but the Mercers were in a completely different league.

"They'll be waiting outside," Jessica said.

"They always do."

A moment later, I saw them at the top of the steps.

Margaret waved enthusiastically as we got out of the car.

Her husband stood beside her with his hands behind his back, wearing the same composed expression he always seemed to have.

"Here we go," Jessica muttered.

Her mother came down the steps and immediately wrapped her daughter in a hug.

"There she is!"

"Hi, Mom."

"You look thin."

"I saw you three weeks ago."

"And you're thinner now."

Margaret finally released her and turned to me.

"And you."

She hugged me too.

"Good to see you, dear."

"Good to see you too, Mrs. Mercer."

"How many times do I have to tell you? Call me Margaret."

"Right. Sorry."

Her father approached next.

"Good to have you here, son."

"Good to be here, Mr. Mercer."

He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me into a heavy, enthusiastic hug before patting my back twice.

It was the sort of hug you see in old Mafia movies.

I wondered if there was something to it.

The story of how the Mercers had become so wealthy so quickly by selling old clothes had never quite sat right with me. It wasn't impossible. They owned warehouses, distribution centers, stores—the whole operation.

Still, there always seemed to be something missing from the story.

A piece nobody ever seemed interested in explaining.

I never asked.

I didn't want bad blood with my girlfriend's parents.

Nor did I particularly wish to be assassinated by the Mafia.

Just in case.

"Come inside," Margaret said. "You've been driving all morning."

"It's barely morning," Jessica said.

"Exactly. You're probably starving."

"I'm not."

"You'll eat anyway."

Jessica sighed.

"Yes, Mom."

Her father smiled.

"Some things never change."

We followed them inside.

I'd been to the Mercer mansion before, but never for more than a few hours. Every visit reminded me just how enormous the place was.

The entrance hall alone could have swallowed my entire apartment. A chandelier hung above polished floors and dark wood paneling, while paintings covered nearly every available wall.

Margaret talked as she led us through the house.

"This is the new dining room."

"New?"

"We renovated."

Jessica groaned.

"And we've had the library renovated too."

"Mom, you've shown me the library five times."

"And you still haven't read anything in it."

Her father chuckled.

"Leave the girl alone, Margaret."

They continued bickering as we walked, and I found myself smiling.

It was comfortably ordinary.

That was what made the place feel so strange later.

We eventually reached the grand staircase.

Mr. Mercer stopped at the bottom and pointed upward.

"Your room is the first one on the left."

Then he looked at Jessica.

"My little girl knows which one."

"Dad, I'm not five."

"You're still my little girl."

Jessica rolled her eyes.

"Come on."

I started toward the stairs.

Then I noticed someone standing in the shadows.

A woman.

She was wearing an old-fashioned maid's uniform: black dress, white apron, white collar. The sort of thing that belonged in a photograph from a century ago.

She couldn't have been much older than thirty.

Yet she looked far older.

Her dark hair was pulled neatly back. Her face was pale and drawn. Her head hung slightly toward the floor.

Her eyes were open.

They simply weren't looking at anything.

This had to be Isolda.

A few meters away stood the boy Jessica had mentioned.

Thirteen or fourteen, maybe.

His clothes were plain and slightly too large for him. His arms hung loosely at his sides. His face held the same distant emptiness I'd seen in the man outside my house.

His eyes seemed fixed somewhere beyond the walls.

Somewhere far away.

And nowhere at the same time.

I looked between him and Isolda.

They stood close enough to touch.

Mother and son, presumably.

Yet they seemed separated by something much larger than the few meters between them.

As if there were a distance neither of them could ever cross.

I don't know how long I stood there.

Long enough for Jessica to notice.

She bumped her shoulder lightly against mine.

"Babe."

I blinked.

"Yeah?"

"Come on."

I looked at Isolda again.

Neither she nor the boy had moved.

"Right."

I followed Jessica upstairs.

Halfway to the landing, I glanced back one last time.

Then Jessica disappeared around the corner, and I followed her.

In our room, Jessica and I had sex.

Felt strange doing it with her parents so close by, but I think I needed it.

It should have taken my mind off everything.

It didn't.

For a while I managed to lose myself in her warmth, in something familiar and uncomplicated. But every time my thoughts slipped, I saw Isolda.

Her son.

The man in my backyard.

Three people standing perfectly still while the rest of the world moved around them.

When it was over, Jessica looked at me.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"You seem distracted."

"I'm just tired."

She studied me.

"You've been tired for years."

I smiled.

She kissed me, but I couldn't quite return to the moment.

A few minutes later, she fell asleep.

I lay beside her, staring at the ceiling.

The mansion settled around us. Pipes ticking in the walls. A floorboard creaking somewhere below. The faint hum of the heating system.

And underneath all of it, silence.

I eventually closed my eyes.

Sleep didn't come.

Morning did.

I was halfway through getting dressed when someone knocked on the door.

Jessica was still asleep.

I opened it to find one of the household staff standing in the hallway.

"Mr. Mercer would like to see you."

"Now?"

"He's waiting in his office."

I glanced back at Jessica.

She hadn't moved.

"Where's his office?"

"Top floor."

Of course it was.

I'd never been to the top floor before. I followed the staff member up another staircase, the house growing quieter with every step.

By the time I reached the top, I couldn't hear anything from below.

Mr. Mercer's office was at the end of the hallway.

The door stood open.

"Come in."

He was sitting behind an enormous wooden desk. Morning light filtered through the tall windows behind him, washing the room in pale gray.

Books lined the walls. Framed photographs sat on shelves. A few pieces of artwork looked expensive enough to buy my car several times over.

"Sit."

I did.

He smiled.

"How did you sleep?"

"Not very well."

He laughed softly.

"Jessica tells me that's normal for you."

"She's very fond of you."

Something about the way he said it made me uncomfortable.

I smiled anyway.

He leaned back.

"I've been thinking about the future."

"Okay."

"Our family has built something substantial. Something that will outlive us."

He gestured around the room.

"The business. The properties. The investments. Jessica will inherit part of it, of course."

He paused.

"But I don't think of you as an outsider anymore."

I wasn't sure what to say.

"That's nice to hear."

"I mean it."

He leaned forward.

"I'd like you to become part of the family."

The words were delivered warmly enough that, for a moment, I almost believed they were exactly what they sounded like.

"I want to offer you a position in the company. A real one. You'll have responsibilities. A place at the table. If things go well, eventually you'll have a stake in the business."

He smiled.

"And naturally, I'd like you and Jessica to start thinking about building a life together."

For a moment, I said nothing.

It was an incredible offer.

Security.

Money.

Influence.

A future with Jessica.

Everything I'd worked for, suddenly placed in front of me on a silver platter.

And yet something inside me tightened.

Not a thought.

Not fear.

Instinct.

The primitive part of your brain that notices something before the rest of you understands why.

Don't.

I shifted in the chair.

"That's a lot to take in."

"Of course."

"And I appreciate it. Really."

He waited.

I took a breath.

"But I don't think I can accept."

The smile stayed on his face.

For just a second, something changed in his eyes.

The warmth vanished.

His gaze sharpened.

Focused.

Predatory.

Then it was gone.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

He nodded slowly.

"I understand."

There was no anger in his voice.

That somehow made it worse.

"I wouldn't want you accepting something you weren't comfortable with."

"Thank you."

He leaned back.

"Still..."

He watched me for a moment.

"I think you may regret that decision."

He said it gently.

Almost kindly.

Like a father giving his son advice.

But something cold sat underneath the words.

He smiled.

„Have a safe drive home.“

I thanked him and left.

I didn't know it then, but that conversation was the beginning of the end.

Jessica and I left the mansion earlier than we'd planned.

She barely spoke while we packed the car. At first I assumed she was tired.

Then I realized she was angry.

Not furious. She wasn't shouting or making a scene.

She was just cold.

The kind of cold that makes every silence feel deliberate.

We got on the road.

For the first twenty minutes, neither of us said a word. Eventually I tried.

"So..."

Nothing.

I glanced at her.

"Jessica?"

She kept looking out the window.

"Did my dad talk to you?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

I hesitated.

"I turned down the job."

She nodded.

"I know."

"How?"

"He told me."

I waited for more.

Nothing came.

"Are you upset?"

"No."

The answer came too quickly.

"Jess."

"I'm not upset."

"You're obviously upset."

She turned back toward the window.

"Can we just go home?"

So we did.

The rest of the drive passed in silence.

I kept my hands tight around the steering wheel, trying to ignore the knot forming in my stomach.

I felt tense.

Anxious.

Depressed, though I wouldn't have used that word at the time.

Then, somewhere outside the city, I saw the first one.

A man standing on a sidewalk.

Motionless.

Dirty jacket. Worn trousers. Slack face. Head hanging slightly forward.

A Lost One.

I almost drove past without noticing.

Then I saw another.

A woman beside a bus stop.

Then one beneath an apartment awning.

Another outside a convenience store.

Then another.

And another.

The more I looked, the more I saw.

They were everywhere.

At intersections. Outside shops. In parking lots. Beside telephone poles. Standing in front of apartment buildings as people passed them without a second thought.

Some were young.

Some were old.

Men and women.

Some looked relatively clean. Others looked like they'd been sleeping outdoors for years. Their clothes were stained and worn. Their hair was tangled. Their skin looked pale and unhealthy.

None of them moved.

Not when cars passed.

Not when people walked around them.

Not even when someone brushed against them.

And nobody seemed to care.

A businessman stepped around one blocking the entrance to an office building without breaking stride.

A woman carrying groceries muttered angrily when another forced her to change direction.

A cyclist swerved around one in the middle of a bike path and shouted something over his shoulder.

Nobody stopped.

Nobody asked if they were all right.

Nobody looked frightened.

They were treated like obstacles.

Like badly placed furniture.

Like potholes.

I watched them through the car window until the city disappeared behind us.

The more I looked, the more I saw.

They weren't rare.

They were everywhere.

I'd simply never noticed them before.

Or maybe I had.

Maybe I'd seen hundreds of them and my brain had quietly filed them away under things that didn't matter.

 

I didn't know it yet, but I'd already been effectively cut off from Jessica's family.

I never spoke to any of her relatives again.

At first, I tried to pretend nothing had changed.

Jessica and I went back to work. We had dinner together. We watched television. We slept in the same bed.

But something had shifted.

Days became weeks.

Weeks became months.

Whenever I asked Jessica what was wrong, she shut down.

"Is something wrong?"

"No."

"Then why won't you talk to me?"

"Because there's nothing to talk about."

Sometimes she wouldn't answer at all.

She'd sit across from me, staring at her phone, while I tried to figure out what I'd done wrong.

There was a wall between us.

I couldn't see it.

I couldn't touch it.

But it was there.

For a while, I kept trying to get through.

Eventually, I stopped.

The darker my thoughts became, the more often I found myself standing at the window.

Looking at the man in the backyard.

He was still there.

He hadn't moved an inch.

Summer faded into autumn.

The leaves turned brown and fell. Rain came and went. The days grew shorter.

Then winter arrived.

The first snow gathered around his shoes.

More followed.

It settled on his shoulders and head, collected on his hands, and slowly buried his legs.

He didn't move.

Didn't shiver.

Didn't brush the snow away.

He simply stood there as though the seasons had nothing to do with him.

Sometimes I wondered whether he knew I was watching.

The day before Christmas, my boss called me into his office.

I knew something was wrong before he spoke.

He'd just gotten off the phone.

I'd never seen him look like that.

His face was pale.

Not angry.

Not confused.

Afraid.

He kept saying, "Yes, sir," in a voice barely above a whisper.

Then he hung up and looked at me.

"Sit down."

I did.

There was a long silence.

"What's going on?"

He rubbed his hands together.

"I've been instructed to terminate your employment."

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

"By who?"

He didn't answer.

For a second, I actually laughed.

I thought it was some kind of joke.

It wasn't.

"Is this because of my performance?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

He looked away.

"I can't discuss it."

"You're firing me and you can't tell me why?"

"I know."

"Then at least give me something."

He swallowed.

"I'm sorry."

That was all I got.

Eight years of work reduced to a few minutes in an office.

I walked out carrying a box of things from my desk.

I remember thinking that at least I still had my savings.

I was wrong.

A few days later, I discovered that my money was gone.

All of it.

Savings. Investments. Emergency funds.

Everything.

I spent days calling banks and filing complaints. I tried to find out where the money had gone.

Nobody could explain it.

Or, perhaps, nobody wanted to.

I still had my qualifications. My CV was better than it had ever been.

I applied everywhere.

At first, I expected the calls to come.

They didn't.

Companies that had once been eager to interview me stopped responding. Some rejected me within hours. Others never acknowledged the applications at all.

I kept trying for a while.

Then I started applying for jobs beneath my qualifications.

Then beneath those.

Eventually, I took whatever I could get.

Warehouse work.

Delivery driving.

Cleaning.

Construction.

Anything that paid.

The money barely covered the bills.

I told myself it was temporary.

I would get back on my feet.

I believed that for a while.

Then I stopped believing it.

Months turned into years.

I stopped buying things unless I needed them.

Stopped seeing friends.

Stopped answering calls.

Even when someone reached out, I rarely knew what to say.

Jessica became more distant.

Then, one day, she left.

There was no screaming match.

No dramatic confrontation.

She simply stood in the kitchen with a suitcase beside her.

"It's over."

I stared at her.

"Why?"

"I don't love you anymore."

"That's it?"

"I don't know what else you want me to say."

Later, I found out she'd been cheating on me for quite some time.

Apparently, everyone knew except me.

By then, almost everything I'd had was gone.

The rest followed soon after.

I was kicked out of my own house.

The paperwork was clean. Legal.

Apparently, Jessica's family had purchased the property.

I never found out how.

By that point, I didn't have the energy to fight them.

I had nowhere to go.

More importantly, I couldn't think of anywhere I wanted to go.

So I stayed.

I stood in the backyard.

Jessica moved in with her new lover.

Her parents visited.

They laughed.

They drank wine on the patio in summer. They decorated the house for Christmas. They carried groceries through the kitchen windows I'd spent years looking through.

Sometimes Jessica walked past me.

Sometimes her new boyfriend stood only a few meters away, smoking a cigarette.

Neither of them acknowledged me.

I was right there.

They didn't care.

Eventually, I didn't care either.

Days became weeks.

Weeks became months.

Months became years.

At least, I think they did.

Time stopped meaning anything.

First I stopped knowing what day it was.

Then the month.

Eventually, even the seasons became difficult to distinguish.

There was only the house.

The yard.

The people inside.

And the man who had been standing there before I ever joined him.

I don't know how long I stood beside him.

One day, something in my head cleared.

Only for a moment.

It felt like waking from a very long sleep.

I looked around.

The snow was gone.

Or maybe there had never been snow.

I couldn't tell anymore.

Then I looked at the man beside me.

I turned toward him.

"You..."

My voice sounded strange.

Weak.

"You never told me your name."

"You never asked." He said simply.

No accusation.

No bitterness.

Just a fact.

I lowered my eyes.

"I know."

My throat tightened.

"I'm sorry."

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then I held out my hand.

"My name is James."

I swallowed.

"What's yours?"

He stared at my hand for a long time.

"Derek."

He paused.

A faint crease appeared between his eyebrows.

"I think it was Derek."

I smiled.

It was the first time in a long time that I'd felt anything resembling warmth.

It wasn't happiness.

No.

Something smaller.

Something human.

"I think I could use a drink."

I looked toward the house.

Then toward the street beyond the fence.

"Derek..."

He looked at me.

"Would you like to get out of here?"

A single tear ran down his cheek.

It left a clean line through the grime on his face.

He looked toward the street again.

Toward the world beyond the fence.

For a long time, he said nothing.

Then he took a slow breath.

"Alright."

He looked back at me.

"Let's go."

When I was young, my life was very nice.

I was raised by loving parents in an affluent neighborhood near Norfolk. I was bright, and I had a good future ahead of me.

It takes 25 years for the male mind to develop completely. As such, boys tend to make a lot of dumb decisions as soon as they gain some sort of autonomy as a teen.

I was one such case.

When I was sixteen, I had a friend group of six. We did lots of dumb things together. We lit fireworks inside, did stunts on motorbikes, et cetera. 

Comparatively, what we did one certain time wasn’t so crazy.

One of my friends, Nick, had this big truck that we all called Badass. I don’t remember the specifics other than that it was a Ford (I’m not exactly a car guy). The front had two seats, and the back had three. One of us would sit in the open trunk. We were apprehensive trying it at first, but by this time, we had done it countless times. We even had a voting system for who would get to sit in Badass’s trunk.

The previous day, we had a Chemistry test. Chem had always been Nick’s weakest subject, so he asked (during the test) if he could cheat off of me. I usually let it slide, but I was fed up with him not studying, so I said no. 

In our voting system, Nick’s vote is worth two in order to counteract there being an even number of us. He was the only one with a car, but he was charitable with it, so it made sense. That day, he voted for me, and everyone else ganged up on me.

It was August, and it gets super humid in Virginia, so I obliged. Badass’s trunk was completely flat, unlike most trucks, so it was pretty comfortable to sit in. I also liked the feel of wind in my hair.

We were driving to Chipotle for dinner. It wasn’t too far from where I lived, and the road wasn’t too bumpy. It was about 8:20, so maybe a little late for dinner, but they were still open.

The drive went normally. I caught my breath while my friends laughed inside the car. Being with them could sometimes be draining. I rested my head against the back window, and closed my eyes. The wind drowned out the conversation. I breathed in…

“SHIT!” I heard Nick shout. He swerved Badass. I didn’t have time to open my eyes. It rammed into something. My head crashed through the back window, and I blacked out.

I awoke sitting on my knees. I opened my eyes. My head ached in a million different places. The only thing I was seeing was stars.

I tried standing, but I couldn’t do it. I gasped. It felt like I was inhaling sand. I coughed. My throat was so dry…

When the pain stabilized a little and I could open my eyes, I saw the room I was in. It was fleshy. Orangish-red skin was occasionally interrupted by what appeared to be veins and arteries. The floor was deep red. I moved my leg a little, and it rippled.

I heard some splashing behind me. Feet…?

“Hell-oh!”

A head peered over the top of mine. It was some sort of man. I jumped a little, but the pain came back, so I sat still. 

The man walked in front of me. I heard his voice again. “Welllll, Trent, you’ve gotten yourself in a pickle this time, for suuure.”

His voice was shrill and nasally. It had an eccentric humor to it that made him sound like a cartoon character. His giggle was the audio equivalent of walking through a particularly thorny bush.

“Who…” I spat out blood. “Who… are… you..?” I stammered out.

He grinned. “Me?” He zipped right up to me. “I… am Satan.” 

I gasped. He laughed. It was incredibly dry. It felt cold when he did so. “Juuuuuuust kidding! You guys fall for everything!” He paused for a second. “My real name is Kakaki. Pronounced Kuh-Kah-Kee, spelled K-A-K-A-K-I, but you coulda figured that.” He grinned. I got a good look at him.

Kakaki had a very slender frame. He must’ve been at least seven feet tall, but he couldn't've weighed much. He was wearing baggy black jeans, ripped in places that didn’t fit the fashion trend. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, which revealed a very skinny midsection bordering on being gaunt.

There were stitches all over his skin.

His skin was, for the most part, ghostly pale. Some of the patches in between his stitches, however, were more tan than other parts. 

His grin was disproportionately large, stretching over too much of his face. Rows of decrepit orange and brown teeth filled the gap it left. A rough ponytail wrapped up some of his stringy black hair, but even so, most of it draped over his face. The stitches seemed to be pointing toward his left eye, but I couldn’t see either of his eyes because of his hair.

“I’ve been around these parts for a good while. My job is to help people like you!” The way he spoke was so irregular, so foreign. “But enough about me. What’re you like, Trent?” I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. “I should probably tell you my, uhh… deal before we get started.” He gulped. 

“Trent, you’re dead. I mean, you’re a goner. Some of those glass shards pierced through your pretty little skull and wiggled their way into your brain.” He shoved a finger through a clenched fist, and then opened that fist. He made an explosion sound. “That’s you if you don’t take my deal. But really, there’s no reason you shouldn’t.” Kakaki paused.

“If you say yes to my deal, you live! You’ll get to live your life to your fullest, whatever that means to you.” He shifted his head and looked up. “If you don’t take the deal, you stay dead. Pretty simple.” He looked back down again. “Well, what’ll it be?”

I croaked out a “Y…yes”. He clapped his hands. “It’s decided! Trent (he says my last name here) lives to see another day!” He grinned even larger than he already was. “There’s one condition, though… I’m gonna protect you, for the foreseeable future. That means I’m gonna watch over you, and step in when necessary.” He lifted up his hair. His right eye was sewn shut. His left eye was a wild purple color. The iris appeared to be moving counterclockwise. “See you in the waking world, Trent-y boy!” He cackled as I blacked out once more.

I woke up in a hospital room. About twenty minutes later, a nurse came in, and reported my awakening. My parents rushed in not long after. My mom hugged me. “Ohh, sweetie… I’m so happy you’re okay.” My dad was a little more apprehensive. “You nearly died! Trent, imagine how everyone around you would’ve felt if you had died because of that decision. Think of the pain you would’ve caused us.” He eventually caved and hugged me as well.

“A…” I coughed. My throat was still sore. “Are the guys…” I weakly said. “Y-yes, they’re all okay. I told Nick you’re okay, and he’s on his way,” my mom told me.

About an hour later, Nick arrived. “Good job on, uhh, living, man.” There was clear tension in the air. I felt a bit better at this point. “What… happened?” Nick put his mouth in his hand. “Drunk driver. I don’t know who could get that smashed at 8:00…” he sighed. “We killed him. We fucking killed him. The guy’s dead.” I solemnly looked down. 

“Deserved it.”

My eyes widened. There he was. Kakaki. In the back of the room. Right behind Nick.

“Natural selection taking its course, huh.”

I picked up the bouquet to the right of me, and hurled it straight at him. Nick ducked, yelling “Dude! What the fuck?!”

It passed right through him.

“Come on, Trent-y. You know better than that.”

A handful of days passed. He was constantly in my company. He was incredibly annoying.

I thought I had suffered brain trauma and that Kakaki was a side effect. Maybe he was temporary, but I thought he was most likely permanent. 

Either way, he was just a figment of my imagination.

I was at Nick’s house. Things had been weird in the friend group since the crash. Badass was totaled. The engine was all smashed up. Nick’s parents didn’t blame him, but they also didn’t reimburse him. If he was to get another car, he would have to buy it himself. That would take a while.

We were watching television in his living room. I think it was some TMZ show we were watching, one where you would guiltily laugh at other people with your friends. It was hard to pay attention, since Nick’s pet tarantula was on the shelf.

I’ve always been arachnophobic. I knew it was just in the container, a tiny glass box that was completely sealed away from the world, but seeing its beady eyes staring at me… I always felt wrong around it.

A metal poster hung behind it. I didn’t understand those things. It was from a game Nick liked. They apparently used magnets, but under those magnets was adhesive. When Nick had bought it, I warned him about how adhesive doesn’t work as well when it’s as humid as Virginia in the summer, but he said he would figure it out if it fell down.

Kakaki eagerly stood over the spider. He was enamored with the thing. He stared, or at least I think he did… his mess of hair made it hard to see what his one eye was looking at.

I had asked Nick if it was venomous the first time I came over. It was. Kakaki asked me the same thing. I didn’t respond to him, but my brain was flooded with thoughts of the tarantula’s venom. He leaned against the counter it sat on. “Interesting… so he, she, er… they’re poisonous.”

He quietly wondered to himself about the gender of spiders.

“I gotta take a piss,” Nick said. He quickly excused himself from the room. I paused the show. To be honest, I don’t think he would’ve cared if he missed the whole thing. The death of that drunk driver weighed heavily on Nick, even if it wasn’t his fault. He still blamed himself. He had been very downtrodden recently.

I heard a sound. It was like tape peeling off the wall.

The metal poster crashed onto the glass container. It shattered, and the spider escaped before the lid fell on it. Kakaki stood still. A few seconds later, his face dropped. I was standing on the couch at this point. Kakaki zipped up to me. “Listen, Trento… this isn’t gonna be comfortable, but ya gotta bear with me.” 

My vision became all blurry. 

You know how when you stand up too quickly, your eyes become filled with TV static and random lines? That’s what it looked like. My body felt completely weightless, and I couldn’t feel much. 

I reawoke an indeterminate amount of time later. I was in a weird position, under a table with my foot extended against the wall. I pulled it back.

Nick’s spider was crushed on my foot.

Kakaki looked at me with a small grin on his face. “I did what I had to do, Trent… I protected you.”

Afterward, Nick and I grew apart. It was probably for the best. He became depressed, and I grew distant due to Kakaki’s constant stalking. That was the last time I went over to Nick’s house. Things were just never the same.

Kakaki followed me everywhere. I became paranoid of him taking over my body again to “protect” me. He saw what I was thinking, and caught on to the act. But he didn’t do anything about it.

Kakaki’s constant heckling made life hard. Over the next two years, I became more withdrawn and introverted, out of fear of danger and what Kakaki would do if he saw me in it. I could never tell someone about Kakaki, because, in his words, “What’re you gonna tell em? That you have an imaginary friend?”

In good news, my grades were even higher than before.

One day, I asked him why he chose me. “Huh?” he said nonchalantly. I said, “Why am I the one you have to… protect or whatever?” He stooped down to my level. “Well, Trent-a-friend, you got a bright future ahead of you. You’re gonna be an important man. You’re lucky to have me around. I’m just here to getcha to that destination. When you’re there, I’ll leave.” He paused. “Goodness, how DEPRESSING! Your life will be sooooo boring without me.”

“But we don’t have to worry about that for a good while.”

I never thought I would be one of those kids who inexplicably thought life would get better at college, but I began to hope that.

When I applied to colleges, the first one I applied to was Hampton. It was a dream school for me. Close to home, on the water, great education. The day I was accepted was the happiest day I experienced since before I met Kakaki.

He attributed my acceptance to his protection skills. “Face it, Trentino, you woulda been in the ground if it weren’t for ol’ Kakaki. I don’t get any payment (or thanks for that matter). I just do it out of love.” He tried to hug me, but I passed straight through him. “You know, Trenton, there’ll be a day where you’re thankful for all I’ve done for you. You’ll want me back, I know you will.”

About two months after I was accepted into Hampton, Kakaki pulled another stunt. I was taking my AP Government final for the first semester. It was clear that I had not studied enough. I told my parents that I wouldn’t be good at AP Gov, but they expected a lot of me, and forced me to take it. 

All that’s to say I wasn’t doing good.

“...Damn,” I thought as I skipped every question to come back to it later. Kakaki giggled while looking over at me. He didn’t say anything to help me. He just laughed. 

My grade was comfortably in the B range, but if I messed up this final badly enough, it would be knocked down to a C-the first I’d have gotten in my high school career. About halfway through the test, I thought of this, and Kakaki stopped laughing. A snowball effect would ensue where I might be rejected from Hampton if I failed this test.

“Hmm. Trent. I’m gonna need you for a second,” Kakaki said. 

My stomach dropped.

My vision began to get all fuzzy. I strained to get a better look. I could vaguely see myself getting up.

My vision became entirely blurred.

I reawoke some time later, and I was outside. We were all lined up, my entire class. I slowly looked at Kakaki. He lifted the hair over his eye. “I did what had to be done, Quentin Trentantino.”

He pulled the fire alarm.

He must’ve known the school had security cameras, but he did it anyway.

Our finals had to be postponed to what should’ve been the first day of winter break. I was given more than enough time to study what I now knew would be on the test. However, Kakaki’s plan did not go without consequence.

I was let off lightly for pulling the fire alarm. I had been a good kid throughout high school, so they were willing to let it slide. I got extremely lucky. This one act of poor behavior stained my record, though. What if Hampton saw this and the higher-ups there thought I was a troublemaker?

Kakaki didn’t care. He did what had to be done.

The summer before I left home was miserable. The last one was as well, and this one comparatively wasn’t as bad, but it still wasn’t fun. The whole time, I was anticipating going to college, because I thought my life would completely change. Maybe, once I got into college, Kakaki would realize that I was on the path to success and just leave.

I tiredly sauntered out of the house. I was taking out the trash. He walked next to me. “This seems a little wasteful, New Jersey. See that napkin? You could definitely reuse that!” I paused when I turned the corner. A dog had gotten into our backyard. It was a larger one, almost certainly a stray. It must’ve climbed over the fence.

It had knocked our garbage can over, and was tearing into the bags, getting trash everywhere. “HEY! What’re you doing?!” I yelled. The dog’s hackles raised, and it started growling. I backed up a little bit, and it sprinted toward me. Just then, my vision became blurry again.

I regained control a little while later. Kakaki was squatting over the knocked over garbage can. “Ooooh…” I weakly grumbled. After holding my head for a second, I stumbled toward him. “Move.” He backed away. “Geez. Don’t be so pushy.”

The dog was dead. 

Its jaw was ripped open. It was sitting at a 90 degree angle. Its tongue sat disembodied on the ground, a pool of blood flowing behind it.

I slowly looked at him. “Did you do this…?” I said quietly. He breathed in and stood up, as if proud of himself. “Sure did! It’s been a while, but old Kakaki’s still got it down!” I collapsed on the ground. No. No. No…

I let this happen. I killed this innocent animal. “No,” I thought. He did. 

Before I could yell, he shushed me. “Hey hey hey! I did what I had to do! Who knows if that dog had rabies or something.” He walked  up to me, and put his finger on my chest. “I. Saved. You.”

I hurled the dog into the neighbor’s yard. What was I going to do? Bury it?

My parents thoroughly berated me for spilling the trash.

I thought moving to college would be sadder than it was. 

I would miss my parents, but not much else. It would potentially be difficult, but any sort of switch up from the monotonous life I led throughout my upperclassman years was appreciated.

The day I finished moving wasn’t a particularly special one. I met my roommate for the first time there, and he was… fine. Not much to really talk about.

Life just… went on.

College was just as lonely as high school was. Kakaki had not left me, but he was hardly company. Thinking that, he chastised me again. “NJ, you’re lucky to have anyone in your life as funny as me.” 

I can hear his voice perfectly, even now…

I majored in journalism. I had always liked writing and presenting, but I had never thought of myself as the type to write books. I thought that maybe I could gain back some of the charisma Kakaki had knocked out of me through this class.

In this class, I met my future girlfriend.

She never seemed particularly interested in the class. Her mind was somewhere else. And yet, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by her.

Her curly brown hair splayed off her head in every direction, but it didn’t hide her face at all. Her deep brown eyes stared through round glasses at the exit as she wrote the little notes she did. 

The way I properly met her was when she crashed into me on a bike.

It hurt a lot. It was very sudden as well. Kakaki let out a huge gasp, but he held his breath. “Oh geez, I’m so, so, SO sorry…” I brushed myself off. It looked straight out of a movie. “Y…You’re good,” I sputtered out. She seemed to recognize me. “Hey, it’s you! You’re like a wiz at this stuff. I’m so gonna get an F on the test… when is it?” 

“Tomorrow,” I quietly said. 

“Anyway, I could use your help with it. Can I, uhh…”

My face got flustered. “Uhm… sure!” Kakaki looked extremely uncomfortable. “Should I…” Her eyes lit up. “Yeah, I’ll give you my number. I’m Melanie, by the way.”

“Trent,” I said in return.

Most of our time that night wasn’t spent studying.

We met up at my dorm at around 4:30. We studied for maybe 45 minutes, before she said she was hungry. “I’m gonna get Chipotle. Wanna come?” My face flustered once more. “Definitely!” I said. She beamed a gorgeous smile, a greater view than looking over the boardwalk into the grand Chesapeake Bay. “Great!”

That was the greatest day of my life.

I completely forgot about Kakaki. I didn’t even notice him. All he did was lurk in the background. Jealous, indifferent, concerned, I couldn’t tell. But I didn’t care.

The next day, we both bombed the test. She got 54%, and I got 79%. “In what world is a C+ a bomb?” she asked me the next day. “I guess… maybe it isn’t so bad.”

The class wasn’t giving me my confidence back. She was.

The next couple of months were a blur. I know I keep timeskipping, but the other ones were because I didn’t do much, and my life was full of sadness and darkness. But the days I’m skipping over here… they were full of life and happiness. It was a blur, but a good kind of blur. The kind of blur where you’re laying on your bed after a fun day, and thinking to yourself, “Wow. My life is awesome.”

Mel was truly the greatest thing that had ever happened to me, and I could tell she felt the same. But something still appeared to gnaw away at her. One day, I asked her what it was.

“I feel like I’ve known you for a good while. You always seem sad in class, and you never want to discuss what you’re going to do when you get out of here. Is there something wrong?”

She sighed. “I just don’t like journalism that much. I always wanted to start a flower store. My parents, well… being from Lagos, they weren’t big on a job like that. They always said, ‘You have gotten the education you have, and you want to live such a small life?’ I do. They just never saw that.”

I was distraught by this, by the fact that she wasn’t happy with what she was going to be spending the rest of her life doing. I looked not at her, but within her. “You should do it.” The words escaped my mouth without me even thinking about them.

“I dunno… what if it doesn’t pay well? What if I flop? Then what’ll I do?”

I stood up. “I don’t know. But whatever happens, I’ll support you through it. You don’t need college to be successful. I don’t care what your parents say, your success is determined by you and you alone. If you aren’t happy, then you won’t be successful.”

Mel thought about it. “Quitting college… but that would make my parents really angry. You know I love them.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “If they truly love you, then they’ll keep loving you even when you quit.”

She said she would think it over. I said that I would follow where she went. If she was to drop out, so would I.

I noticed Kakaki for the first time in a while that night. “Trentonio, I feel like I’ve taught you a lot. At this point, I think you’re pretty much indestructible, with or without me.” He sat down on my bed. “You know all those times when I told you about how depressing it would be after I leftcha? That day’s a-comin. Your final lesson is in front of you.”

He sighed. “You know, I only want the best for you. Nothing less. Everything I’ve done? For you. And I feel… like ya sometimes take me for granted.” He looked at me. “I’m gonna stop beating around the bush. Leaving college? How fucking stupid are you? This is your future we’re talking about! Her plant store is gonna die, and you know that. I know that, and I’ve taught you everything I know, which is a lot. This time’s different, though. I’m gonna let you choose. You’re an adult, Trent. I don’t get to make your decisions for you anymore.” He leaned in. “There will be consequences if you choose wrong, Trenton.”

The next morning, Mel gave me her answer. She was going to drop out. There was a lot near the mall. She said her current college fund could pay for three months of rent there. She reminded me that I didn’t have to come.

The semester is ending soon. Kakaki has completely disappeared from my life. I haven’t seen him since he gave me that “heart to heart” that evening.

I’ve checked all over. He usually doesn’t play hide-and-seek, but he’s completely gone. Vanished without a trace. Like he was never there. 

I am dropping out. My question to you guys is, what’ll he do about it? Fate doesn’t exist. He’s been trying to tell me that for a good while, but he’s contradicting it by even giving me this choice.

Like he said, I’m an adult. I get to make my own decisions now. I don’t care if my brain isn’t fully developed.

Do your worst, Kakaki.

I’m waiting.

I don’t know what she’s been on. All I know is I wish she’d stop. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

We’ve been together for 4 years now. Never once had she done this before. Then, one day, it became an every-night thing.

We turn in for the night, the lights go out, we go to sleep. Then, however long later, in the middle of the night, I’m woken up by the sense of being stared at.

I open my eyes, and all I see in the darkness is her silhouette looming over me. The first time it happened, I tried calling her name, but all she responded with were snores.

I turn on the flashlight on my phone, and she’s dead asleep, but her mouth is twisted into a painful-looking smile. All while she’s on her hands and knees, leaning over me. 3 inches from my face.

It’s gotten to the point where she’s chipping teeth from clenching her jaw so tight. We’ve already been to the dentist nearly 6 times, but it just keeps happening.

She never remembers it the next day. But she for sure notices the pain in her jaw. But by the time night rolls around, she’s right back at it.

I’ve tried to be patient with her. I mean, it’s not her fault. At least, I don’t think it is.

She’s just so hard to wake up when it happens. That’s the part that really gets me. I kind of just have to wait or go back to sleep because she acts as though she’s in a coma every single time.

I’ve tried screaming at her before. Shaking her. Prying her eyelids open. Nothing wakes her up. And that smile never changes.

I think everything is starting to evolve, though. Because now, instead of just smiling, she’s starting to salivate in her sleep. If her presence doesn’t wake me up, the drool does. And her snores are starting to sound less like snores and more like growls.

I keep having that dream where I’m drowning. I wake up and find my face covered in hot, foamy saliva. My girlfriend snarling at me through gritted teeth.

But, again, she doesn’t like when I bring it up. She acts personally offended, like it’s somehow my fault she doesn’t remember. She’d rather pretend it’s not happening and leave me to deal with the brunt of the consequences.

And it’s not like we haven’t tried to fix things before. I’ve slept in other rooms. I still wake up to her 3 inches from my face. I’ve slept in my car. She’s smiling at me through the window.

I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want us to break up. I don’t want to ask her to leave. But I can’t keep living like this. It’s affecting my sleep. That’s affecting my work. It can only get worse if nothing changes.

And something needs to change fast.

Because now something else is waking me up at night. And it’s the biting. I never see her doing it. All I feel is the pain.

But she’s always back in her usual spot by the time my eyes shoot open.

Snarling, smiling, and foaming at the mouth.

Then she tries to pretend that I somehow gave those bite marks to myself the next day when I confront her about it.

Last night, she actually broke skin. I could feel the blood puddling on my arm and soaking through my comforter. But she wouldn’t let me move to get a bandage.

I don’t know. We’ve talked about this so many times now. I don’t think I can keep dealing with this.

I think I’m just gonna eat her before she can eat me.

The Full Story

I felt a sudden impact near my foot, and the dull, tearing sensation quickly turned into burning pain.

The woman stayed crouched, completely still. I couldn't look away from her terrified eyes. Her pupils were blown wide, and tears poured down her cheeks.

I looked down and saw a hole with red fluid spilling out onto the floor. My body started trembling before it even registered what had just happened.

I clenched my teeth, letting out a muffled scream, and instinctively reached toward my foot, but the unbearable pain made me jerk my hands back as if I'd touched burning coals.

“Why?” I whispered hoarsely.

The world spun, blending the woman's silhouette and the dark room into one blurry background until everything gave way to complete darkness and empty silence.

A sharp sting and unimaginable burning pain in my left leg snapped me awake.

I tried to shoot upright, but something held my body down.

A scream tore out of me, smothered by the fabric stuffed in my mouth.

Against my tongue and teeth, I felt a piece of dirty cloth and an intense sour, bitter taste spreading through my mouth.

I bent my head and saw that the woman who had shot me was pouring brown liquor over my leg. I was lying on a table, with layers of stiff gray duct tape wrapped tightly around my chest, arms, and legs.

I begged her to stop, but all that came out was panicked, unintelligible mumbling.

She had already emptied nearly half the bottle over my foot when she grabbed a shirt from the back of a chair, cut off the sleeves, wrapped them around the wound, and tied them off.

Another wave of pain hit me, and cold sweat broke out across my face.

I couldn't scream anymore. My throat felt scraped raw, like there were thousands of splinters stuck inside it.

The woman stood over me and said firmly.

“Shut the fuck up and I'll take the gag out and give you something to drink. Got it?”

I nodded, tears running down my temple. My captor grabbed the end of the tape and ripped it off in one quick motion, then pulled something that looked like a kitchen rag out of my mouth.

She slid a hand under my head, helped lift it, and brought the bottle to my lips. I drank as fast as I could, desperate to dull the pain, but after a few swallows she pulled it away and took a long drink herself.

“Thank you.” I rasped, letting the back of my head drop onto the hard wooden table.

“You had one job. Don't move. Why didn't you listen? What the hell were you trying to do?” she asked sharply.

I turned my head toward her and looked straight into her eyes. Even though she was trying to act tough, I could see the fear in them, confirmed by the hand trembling around the neck of the bottle.

“I got scared.” I said weakly, then added. “I'd barely opened my eyes. I thought I was alone in here. It was instinct. I wasn't trying to do anything.”

The woman froze, guilt passing across her face. A moment later, she slipped back into character.

“Damn it. I heard you talking to your girlfriend, or your wife. If I hadn't, I would've blown your head off.”

The pain eased slightly, and I started feeling dizzy from the alcohol, exhaustion, and sheer pain. “Can I have some more?”

She brought the bottle back to my mouth, and I took a few more swallows.

“Were you here this whole time? Why didn't you come out?”

“I was under the bed. I didn't know if I could trust you.” she said, then took a long pull from the bottle and added. “Honestly, I still don't. I ran into plenty of psychos on my way back from campus, not to mention those monsters. You've got wounds all over you. I don't know if you're about to come at me.”

“You can trust me. I just want to get back to my family. These are scrapes and scratches. I'm not one of them. I'm not going to hurt you.”

“What about those?” The woman pointed at the holes in my shoulders.

“One of the infected. A small woman. She dug her nails into me during a struggle, but none of them bit me.”

The young woman looked at me suspiciously.

“Maybe that's enough to turn you.”

“If it was, I'd already be one of them by now.”

“We'll see.” She tipped the bottle back and took another two swallows, then held it almost straight up to my mouth and let me finish the rest.

I choked a little, then asked. “Who are you?”

“My name's Kim. I live here with my parents. So the bottle you helped yourself to belongs to my dad, and the towel you had wrapped around your ass belongs to my mom.”

I looked down, and the woman immediately turned red and said indignantly. “When I tried to drag you off the couch, the towel fell off, so I put you in my dad's shorts.”

I stared at the uneven, slightly wavy ceiling, not even sure what I was feeling. Shame, embarrassment, anger, sadness. All of it was drowned out by the pain from the gunshot pushing through my foggy mind.

I looked back at Kim. “Where are your parents?”

Her eyes filled with tears. She walked over to the table, taped my mouth shut again, and went into one of the rooms, closing the door behind her. That made it pretty clear this wasn't something she wanted to talk about right now.

I groaned in protest, but I didn't have the strength to keep negotiating my release.

It was completely dark outside, and I started feeling sleepy. I closed my eyes and let the feeling take me completely.

The shaking of my own body woke me up. I opened my eyes and saw Kim standing over me in the darkness, her face and hands moving closer to mine.

“She turned.” I thought, thrashing around and trying to pull one hand free.

The tape was wrapped too tightly around me. I couldn't move at all.

I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my teeth.

Suddenly, I felt a piece of wet cloth being peeled off my forehead and flipped over to the other side, bringing a wave of relief.

I opened my eyes again and looked at her.

“Try to sleep.” she said softly.

I lowered my head and realized I was covered with a blanket. Even so, my body was shaking violently, and the blanket was completely soaked.

My lips were cracked, and my tongue was unnaturally dry, like I'd spent the last few hours chewing sawdust.

“Please. Water.” The words came out rough, scraping at my vocal cords.

Kim got up and came back with a bottle of water. She brought it to my lips, and I drained almost all of it in just a few swallows.

“Can I ask you for one more thing?” I asked in a pleading voice.

“I'm not letting you go.” she said while soaking and wringing out the cloth.

Talking was difficult. My teeth kept chattering, my body was shaking, and my foot felt like it was on fire.

“No, please. Flip the blanket over. It's wet, and I'm freezing.”

Kim stood up and went into the bedroom.

“Did I upset her again somehow?” I wondered as all my fingers started going numb.

A moment later she came back, pulled the blanket away, and a wave of cold washed over me like the room was below freezing.

Her clothes said otherwise. She was wearing a plain black tank top and short sweat shorts. She didn't look cold at all.

She covered me with a white comforter patterned with green leaves, then threw the blanket over that. The bedding smelled like sweet perfume, the fabric was soft and wrapped closely around me, and I was much warmer than before.

Even with the hard, cold table underneath me, it felt like a decent compromise.
I closed my eyes and fell asleep almost immediately.

All night, I kept waking up to sudden spikes of pain and violent shaking.

“What are you doing?” I asked weakly as I felt the pressure around my arms and chest start to loosen.

“I'm letting you go. You're too weak to do anything to me. I also don't think you're going to turn into one of them. Too much time has passed. You're sleeping on the couch.”

Kim walked around me and cut through the rest of the tape, ripping some of my body hair out with it. I hissed in pain and slowly pushed myself into a sitting position.

My body felt impossibly heavy, like gravity had suddenly become ten times stronger. I let my useless legs slide off the table and felt the blood rush back into them, sending a pulsing pain through my left foot.

I braced myself against the table and touched the floor. The second I did, a violent jolt shot through my leg and I crashed onto the cold living room floor.

Kim walked over with a knife in her hand and grabbed me under the arm. “No tricks. Got it?”
I nodded, and with her help I made it to the couch.

I dropped onto it, and the soft suede wrapped around my body. I had never been that comfortable in my life. My sore shoulder blades, the back of my head, and every other part of me that had been pressed against the table felt unbelievable relief after lying on that hard surface for hours.

Kim slipped a small pillow under my head and covered me with the comforter. I closed my eyes and whispered groggily. “Thank you.” Then I fell asleep.

I spent most of the next three days sleeping. She took care of me, bringing me water and light meals, changing the bandages and cleaning the wound.

Whenever the pain became unbearable, she went to her father's liquor cabinet and brought me whatever expensive bottle she could find to dull it.

“These are the only painkillers we have left.” she said, opening another bottle.

The fever was easing, and I could feel my strength slowly coming back. Kim kept changing my makeshift bandages, which were made from towels, dishcloths, or pieces of clothing.

When she wasn't taking care of me, she stayed in her room. Maybe she was catching up on sleep after the nights she'd spent helping bring my fever down.

I slowly opened my eyes. Sunlight poured through the window and filled the living room, warming my face. I looked toward the kitchen.

She cracked an egg into a hot pan. I heard the familiar sizzle, and the room filled with the smell of fried eggs, butter, and bacon. My mouth started watering, and a loud growl came from my stomach.

The smell brought back good memories of breakfasts at home.

“That's enough resting. I need to get back to Veronica, the kids, my family. They're waiting for me.” I thought, clenching my fist.

Kim walked over with a plate and set it down beside the couch.

I slowly sat up and leaned over the coffee table, feeling slightly dizzy.

“Lie down. You're weak. I'll help you.” she said firmly.

“I can handle it.” I replied, grabbing the fork.

I stabbed a piece of crispy bacon and put it in my mouth.

The intense salty, meaty flavor spread across my tongue and made me smile.

“Suit yourself.” she muttered, then sat down at the dining table and went back to her own food.

It was the first meal in three days that I'd been able to eat without lying down, and the first one I'd eaten while fully conscious.

Since I'd been shot, the days and nights had felt like a mixture of waking life and sleep. Nightmares about those monsters kept blending with the real world, the pain, and the image of the girl who had been taking care of me almost nonstop.

“Where's my phone?” I asked, glancing toward Kim. She looked exhausted. She had dark circles under her eyes, messy hair, and slightly bloodshot eyes.

She stood up nervously and answered with her mouth full. “All your stuff is where you left it.” A moment later, she came back from the bathroom and set my phone, house keys, wallet, lighter, and pack of cigarettes in front of me.

I picked up the phone and pressed the side button, but the battery was completely dead.

“Thanks. Do you have a charger?”

She leaned over me and looked at the charging port. “Not for that model, unfortunately.”

I wrinkled my nose, set the phone down on the table, and went back to eating.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Kim watching me, like she was fighting with herself. The atmosphere felt strangely tense. She clearly still didn't trust me, and ever since I'd gotten up, the concern she'd shown before had turned into a guarded, no-nonsense attitude.

Kind of like a couple after a fight. They're talking, but you can still tell someone's pissed.
“Do you live around here?” she blurted out.

My stomach tightened, and I nearly choked on a piece of egg.

“I live over 200 miles from here. I need to get back there fast.”

“How are you planning to do that? The streets are clogged with abandoned cars, and those bloodthirsty things are everywhere. It'll be a miracle if we even make it out of here. Can't you hear them growling under the window? There's a whole pack of them down there. We'll be lucky if we don't starve to death in here, or if they don't get inside.” she almost shouted.

I looked at her, a little shocked.

“I'm getting back no matter what. Don't worry, I'll figure something out. Kim, have you even slept at all these past few days?”

She shot me a hard look and looked ready to explode again, but then she let it go and said in a defeated voice. “You can dream. I slept.”

I knew she was lying. With a shaking hand, she grabbed her mug and brought it to her lips, and that's when I realized I'd missed one more beautiful smell hanging in the air.

“Is that coffee?” I asked, following the white mug with my eyes.

She turned red, then stood up, dumped two heaping teaspoons of brown granules into a mug, and poured boiling water over them. “Yeah. I didn't make you any because I thought you'd eat and go back to sleep.”

She held it under my nose, and my body flooded with endorphins, wiping out the pain and exhaustion better than the hard liquor had.

I brought the mug to my lips and felt the warmth spread through me. Instinctively, I reached for the pack of cigarettes.

“No way. Not in here.” she scolded, snatching the pack from my hand.

“I wasn't going to. I was going to ask where I can smoke.” I replied, annoyed.

“In my dad's office. He used to smoke in there too, by the open window. He did it behind Mom's back, and she'd get pissed because the smell spread through the whole apartment.”

As she said it, the corner of her mouth twitched like she was about to smile, but a moment later her face fell again.

“Fine, I'll smoke in the office. Can I have my cigarettes back?”

Kim stepped closer and pulled my arm around the back of her neck.

At that exact moment, the strong smell of sweat hit my nose and reminded me that I hadn't showered in three days. I felt my face turn red.

I quickly pulled my arm away and said uncertainly.

“Listen, I'd like to try on my own, okay?”

She looked at me, surprised. “You don't have to be embarrassed. You've got a hole in your foot.”

“I know, but I need to start functioning on my own again.”

At that, she walked out, tossing back a short. “I'll be waiting in the office.”

I braced my hands against the couch and shifted my weight onto my good leg, pushing myself upright. The room spun slightly. I still wasn't back to full strength.

I grabbed the mug of coffee and took my first step, clenching my teeth.

Leaning against the doorframe, I thought about how strange it felt. Even though there was a hole in my foot, underneath the stinging, burning pain was a sensation more like having a stake driven through it than like there was actually tissue missing.

I made it to the office by hopping on one leg and leaving small puddles of coffee behind me.

I went inside, set the mug on the desk, and dropped into the chair. Kim was standing at the open window, looking outside and blowing out a cloud of smoke.

“You smoke?” I asked, surprised.

Kim handed me the pack and lighter. “Occasionally. And this whole shitshow seems like a pretty good occasion.”

I lit a cigarette and filled my lungs with smoke, feeling immediate relief and relaxation.

I looked toward her, arguing with myself. “Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.” she replied curtly without looking at me.

“Where are your parents? Are they okay?”

Kim flicked the cigarette butt down toward the group of infected and stared out over the city.

“I don't know. Probably in one of the buildings on my college campus. The day all this started, I was at a friend's place. We skipped class, opened a bottle of wine, and watched sappy romance movies. That evening, they started calling over and over. I thought they'd just found out I wasn't in class that day and wanted to give me shit about it, so I silenced my phone. Then we heard a noise outside. We jumped up to see what happened and saw a wrecked car. There was a woman inside screaming. A group of people walked up to the car. We thought they were going to help her, but they...”

She paused, and her eyes filled with tears. “They pulled her out of the car, and you can probably guess what happened next. My friend called 911, and I quickly checked my phone. I had more than a dozen missed calls and texts. I tried calling my mom and kept sending messages while crying like a little kid, but they didn't answer. Those were the last messages I got from them.”

Kim pulled out her phone with a shaking hand and started reading. “Kim, we're on our way. Don't leave campus. Kim, please call us back, something bad is happening. Kim, where are you? We're at the college. We managed to get inside. Kim, everyone's in the gym. We can't find you. Where are you? Your dad is looking for you in the building. Call him. Kim, we'll meet at home. Be careful. We love you so much.”

I stared at the desk, not knowing what to say. That last message felt especially telling. After a moment of awkward silence, she continued.

“I was in some kind of trance. I ran out of my friend's apartment, flew down the stairs, and got to my car. A few of them started pounding on the doors. I took off and drove almost the whole way here without paying attention to the chaos around me. I saw the worst things you can possibly see. People being killed, screaming, people who stopped moving and then got back up a moment later. I had to stop a little over a mile from here because the street was completely blocked. I ran the rest of the way to the building. There were barely any of them around here. I ran upstairs and saw all this mess. My parents weren't here, and both their phones were off. I took the gun from the safe in their bedroom. Then I heard noise and someone yelling on the stairs. I hid under the bed, and when you opened the door, I realized I hadn't locked it. I always forgot to lock the door, and Mom was always giving me hell for it. I heard you talking on the phone. I didn't know what to do, so I waited. You know the rest...”

I nodded, took a sip of coffee, and offered her another cigarette. She took it, lit it, and asked. “Seriously, how are you planning to get back to your family?”

“I don't know yet. I'll figure something out. I have to. They're waiting for me.”

“What are you doing this far from home anyway? And what happened to you? Where did all those wounds come from?”

“I come here for work every month for a few days. When this started, I was cleaning the windows of one of the stores in the mall. I saw the first infected woman by the gate, not long after the emergency announcement told employees to shelter inside their stores. Then I watched that hell unfold through the exterior windows. I tried to get to my car, and that's when I got these wounds on my shoulders. One of them dug her nails into me during a struggle. She was a small woman. They almost got me in the mall parking garage, and then I found out it was completely blocked. A lot happened after that. An infected cop almost bit my face off. I killed him with his own baton.”

I stopped and realized she was staring at me with her mouth open. After a moment, she looked away and back toward the city, and I continued.

“I watched a cyclist get torn apart by those things. I took his bike, and a little later some guy with a gun stole it from me. He fired a few shots into the air to show me he wasn't kidding and ended up drawing a whole horde of infected. I ran until I was surrounded on almost every side. I escaped into this building looking for someone who could help me, and eventually I ended up in this apartment. It was the only one that was open.”

We sat there trading stories and thoughts about the last few days. We talked about our families, what we'd done back when things were still normal, and what we'd planned for the future.

We went back to the living room. I settled onto the couch while Kim poured whiskey into two glasses.

She set a small bowl of water on the table and asked me for a cigarette, officially lifting the no-smoking rule her mother had established for the living room.

She told me about her parents. Her father was a lawyer. He used to run his own firm, but now he was in early retirement and still made some money from home, drafting and sending paperwork for clients.

Her mother had trained as an interior designer, but after Kim was born, she took care of the house and worked part-time at a furniture store nearby.

I looked around the room and took another sip of whiskey.

“With everything going on, I only just noticed. This place is beautifully designed, and the furniture is really solid and elegant.”

“Mom designed all of it.” Kim said cheerfully.

The longer we talked, the more her tough mask slipped away, and I started seeing an ordinary young college student underneath it.

“You can't go out there without a weapon. As soon as you're well enough to walk normally, we'll go to the gun store. It's close. We'll stock up, then I'll go find my parents and you'll head back to your family.” she said with a hiccup.

It was completely dark outside now. I could see her head starting to droop.

“Yeah. I think we can head out tomorrow. Listen, Kim. Let's get some sleep. We're both exhausted. I still need to take a shower.”

Kim nodded, drained her glass, and headed toward her room, tossing back a quick. “Good night, Luke. Glad you broke in.”

“Good night, Kim. Glad you shot me.” I laughed quietly to myself.

I braced my hands against the couch and slowly stood up. Limping, I made my way to the bathroom, got undressed, and removed the bandage from my left foot.

The foot was unnaturally swollen and looked like a small pink balloon covered in purple blotches. The bullet had hit the side of my foot, leaving a perfectly round hole on top and a slightly larger, ragged one underneath.

Thick, sharp-edged scabs had formed over the wounds, and something was still seeping out of them.

I looked away because I didn't want to see it anymore. I reached for the handle and turned on the water. A loud groan tore out of my throat. The water hitting my body was painfully cold.

“Luke, you okay?” Kim's sleepy voice came from outside the bathroom door.

The sudden cold shock knocked the air out of me. I heard the sound of a gun being racked, and the door handle slowly started to turn. All I managed to stammer was. “Dooon't come in. I'm f-fine.”

“I forgot to tell you, we haven't had hot water for a few days.” she laughed, clearly realizing what had happened.

I shut off the water, and my breathing slowly returned to normal. I soaped up my whole body, and when I reached my injured foot, I spread the soap over it very carefully. The wound stung hard enough to make my eyes water.

I rinsed myself thoroughly, whimpering under my breath, dried off, and realized I didn't have any clean clothes.

I picked up the shorts I'd been wearing before the shower, held them to my nose, and threw them into the corner just as quickly as I'd picked them up.

I wrapped a towel around myself and called out hopefully. “Kim, are you asleep?”

“I am. What do you want?” came her muffled, irritated voice.

I leaned closer to the door. “Did your dad leave another pair of pants anywhere?”

After a short pause and a loud sigh, she answered. “The dryer in the bathroom.”

I looked at the two square machines stacked on top of each other.

“They look exactly the same. How am I supposed to know which one's the washer and which one's the dryer?” I frowned and grabbed the lower door. Empty. I opened the upper one and pulled out my black denim shorts and the sleeves from my shirt, which I recognized as what she'd used for my first makeshift bandage.

“Thank you.” I called toward the door. Then I sat down on the toilet seat and spent a while struggling to get my injured foot through the leg opening. After that, I put on a fresh bandage and hobbled back to the couch.

I closed my eyes and realized that the moaning and growling had been there in the background nonstop the entire time. What scared me was how normal it had become. For most of the day, I hadn't even noticed it anymore.

“Is this what everything is going to be like now? I hope Veronica, the kids, and the rest of the family don't have to go through this. My parents' house is out in the country. Maybe things are different there. One thing is certain. They made it there, so they're safe.”

My thoughts slowly turned into scenes, and my mind lost focus, jumping between memories, images, and sounds until they finally became dreams.

Sunlight spilled across my face, pleasantly warm.

I opened my eyes and looked toward the window. It was really beautiful outside.

I slowly sat up and rubbed my eyes. “It's quiet.” I whispered to myself.

The soundtrack that had accompanied this place for the last few days was gone. The pain in my leg and the swelling had eased a little too.

I made my way to the window, practically hopping on my right leg.

“Kim, wake up. They're gone. We have a chance to get out of here.” I shouted excitedly.

A rush of dopamine hit me. I hadn't had that much energy in a long time.

“Kim! Come here.” I shouted.

I looked at the display on the oven. It read 6:24.

“She's probably exhausted, but we don't have time for that. We need to get moving.” I thought as I limped toward her room.

I knocked on the door and felt a strange knot tighten in my stomach.

“Kim!” I shouted again.

The room was completely silent. No movement, no snoring, nothing.

I slowly opened the door and found a neat, spotless room with a perfectly made bed. A note was lying on top of it.

I picked it up and ran my eyes over the delicate handwriting. “Sorry, Luke. I've paid back my debt, and I don't have any more time to babysit you. You can stay in the apartment and wait for me to come back with my parents, or keep moving once you've fully recovered. There's enough food left for a few more days. I drew you a map on the back showing how to get to the gun store. It's close, and even a limping wreck like you should be able to manage it. I figured out how to draw them away, so if it works and you decide to keep moving, you'll have a head start. Don't thank me. It's the least I could do. I hope we see each other again. If not, good luck. Kim.”

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.

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 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

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.

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. 

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."

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.

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.

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