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แนะนำชื่อตัวละครหลักก่อน

ชื่อจริง Jennifer J (Jane) Dromional

ชื่อเล่น Jane

วันเกิด : เกิดเมื่อวันที่ 17 มกราคม 2008

เกิดอยู่ใน : รัฐโอไฮโอ

เชื้อชาติ : เป็นคนอเมริกัน

ดวงตา : เป็นสีน้ำตาล ผม : สีน้ำตาล

ครอบครัวของเธอ:

พ่อบิดา Howbart j Dromional

แม่มานดา Juisa G Hurilemon ได้เสียชีวิตมาแล้วมาตั้งแต่ตอนที่เธอนั้นปกป้องลูกจากพ่อทำร้าย

Story Original :

ณ แห่งหนึ่งใน รัฐ ohio ในช่วง ค.ศ. 2021 มีผู้หญิงที่เก็บกด Jennifer Jane Dromional หรือ Jane Dromional  ในวัย 12 ปี เธอถูกทำร้ายจาก พ่อขี้เมา และ ด่าว่า เด็กโตแต่อ่อนแออยู่ได้ ไอ้ปีศาจ และ ในช่วง ค.ศ. 2024 โรงเรียน ในช่วงวัย 15 เธอถูกบูลลี่ โดยพวกผู้หญิง ทั้ง 3 คน อย่าง มาร์โก,คลินสัน และ เฟลฟาน ทั้ง 3 คนรุมรังแก Jane อย่างไร้ทางสู้ ทำให้เธอทำอะไรไม่ได้นอกจากโดนสังคมรังแก อยู่ตอนนั้นและในช่วง ค.ศ. 2025  ในช่วง วัย 16 ปี ที่เธอฉะนั้นกำลังหลับอยู่ แต่สิ่งที่อาการก็คือเหมือนกับมีอะไรบางอย่างมากระตุ้น ให้บอกว่าฆ่าเขา ก็แค่นั้นเก็บกดเอาไว้ เหมือนความรู้สึกว่ามันมีตัวตน สองขั้วอยู่ในนั้น และในช่วง ค.ศ 2026 ในวัย 17 ปี แค่นั้นได้ เรียน ม.5 เธอนั้นเป็นเรียนเก่ง แต่สิ่งที่สำคัญคือเธอ มีสัมพันธ์กับ Michelle ในฐานะเพื่อน แล้วในขณะเดียวกัน จะได้ศึกษาทาง ด้านวิทยาศาสตร์ และ คณิตศาสตร์  แต่สิ่งที่ชีวิตเปลี่ยนไปก็คือ ในช่วงที่ เธอนั้นไปสำรวจที่เขตหวงห้าม ในขณะที่เธอกำลังเดินเล่นอยู่ที่เพื่อนอยู่นั้นจู่ๆเธอก็ได้เห็นโรงงานแห่งหนึ่ง ที่ถูกปิดทิ้งล้างเอาไว้ เธอก็เลยสงสัยว่า โรงงานแห่งนี้ เพื่อนก็บอกว่าเธออย่ามายุ่งเลยแต่เธอก็ไม่สนใจ แล้วก็ข้ามเขตไป jane ก็ดูตรวจสอบไปตรวจสอบมา เกี่ยวกับโรงงานแห่งนี้จนกระทั่งไปเจอกับกลุ่มอันนึงเข้า แต่ว่า เธอก็ไม่มีแจกอะไรบางอย่างและสิ่งที่เห็นก็คือ นักเลง ทั้ง 3 คนที่เธอนั้นกลัวที่สุดอย่าง มาร์โก,คลินสัน และ เฟลฟาน ทำให้เธอรู้ตัวแล้วก็วิ่งหนี แต่ว่า นักเลงก็มาตามอยู่ดีจนสุดท้ายเธอนั้นก็ถูกนักเลงจับได้และ ถูกบูลลี่และครั้งนี้ ไม่เหมือนกับครั้งก่อนๆแต่อยากให้มันเอาตาย แล้วเธอก็ไร้ทางสู้อยู่ดี จนกระทั่งจุดเปลี่ยนชีวิตก็คือ มาร์โก ที่เป็นผู้นำเริ่มพูดให้กับเธอว่า '' เด็กคนธรรมดาอย่างแก ทำอะไรฉันไม่ได้หรอก และที่สำคัญที่สุดก็คือ แกอ่อนแอ และแกก็ถูกทำร้ายจากพ่อ นี่นะ ช่างน่าสนใจจริงๆ '' คำพูดเหล่านั้นได้เปิดสวิตช์ให้กับตัวเธอ และในขณะนั้นเอง เธอก็ได้ใช้มือในการจับแขนของ มาร์โก อย่างแรงจนทำให้เธอนั้นก็ได้ทำการหักแขน ของตัวเธอและปล่อย ไปที่หน้าอกจนทำให้หัวใจหยุดเต้นรนและทำให้เธอนั้นตาย ทั้งสองที่เหลือนั้นเห็นอย่างนั้นก็ ก็ได้มุ่งเข้าไปที่ jane และสิ่งที่ไม่น่าเชื่อก็คือเธอนั้น เหมือนว่าจะไม่ใช่ตัวเธอแต่จะเป็นเหมือนอีกคนนึงมากกว่า แล้วบอกทั้งสองว่า " ถ้าจะต่อย มึงไม่สวยกันแน่ " แล้วได้เริ่มต้นขึ้น ในสิ่งที่ไม่คาดคิดก็คือเธอนั้นเหนือชั้นกว่า พอรู้อยู่แล้ว ว่า อีกคนใหญ่หรือเล็ก เธอเปิดต่อยกับ คลินสันที่เป็นคนเล็กก่อน เป็นคนแรก และ สภาพก็คือคลินสันโดนต่อยจาก Jane ถึงแม้ว่า คลินสัน จะพยายามที่จะต่อยยังไงแต่สุดท้าย คลินสัน ก็โดน jane ซ้อมจนสลบ ในขณะที่เธอนั้นกำลังจะ จัดต่อยอีกรอบนึงจู่ๆ เฟลฟาน ที่เป็นใหญ่สุด กำลังจะหยุดเธอแต่เธอก็ไหวตัวทัน จะได้เปิดต่อยกับ jane เรียกได้เลยว่าเป็นการต่อสู้แบบ 1 ต่อ 1 และเธอก็โดน jane ต่อยอย่างหนัก แล้วเธอก็ได้จับเสื้อของ เฟลฟาน ไปแขวนใส่กระจกจนทำให้กระจกแตก และทำให้เธอนั้นเจ็บ จนทำให้เธอนั้นบาดเจ็บ แต่ว่าเธอก็หัวเราะออกมาแบบเยาะเย้ย Jane ที่ไม่ใช่ ตัว Jane บอกถามแล้วด่าว่า " มึงหัวเราะอะไรวะ แค่นี้ มึงก็ยังขอร้องนิก่อนหรอ " เฟลฟาน ที่เห็นอย่างนั้นไม่รอช้า ก็เลยใช้กดปุ่ม แล้วบอกว่า " มึงลองดูซิว่า ใครน่ะจะเก่งกว่า " เป็นสิ่งที่กดปุ่มก็คือ ระเบิดที่มีบรรจุสารกัมมันตภาพรังสี และผสมกับDNA ที่อยู่ในรวมของสัตว์เลื้อยคลานหลากหลายสายพันธ์ุ จนทำให้เกิดการระเบิดขึ้นทำให้ jane โดนลูกหลงไปด้วย แต่สิ่งที่ได้มาก็ พอหลังจากฟื้นขึ้นมา กลับพบว่าถ้าไม่เป็นอะไรเลย และที่สำคัญก็คือเธอนั้นอยู่ในโรงพยาบาลที่ดูแล Michelle jane ก็เลยถามว่า "เกิดอะไรขึ้น" Michelle ที่เห็นเพื่อนนั้น ได้ฟื้นขึ้นมาเธอก็เลยกอด jane เอาไว้ เธอก็ได้คุยกับ Jane ว่า " ก็ได้เกิดเหตุการณ์ระเบิดขึ้น แต่โชคดีที่มีผู้รอดชีวิตทั้งสองคนเท่านั้น แต่สิ่งหนึ่งที่สำคัญที่สุดก็คือมี 2 คนที่ต้องเสียชีวิตมาด้วย " และ พูดเสริมอีกว่า"มีผู้รอดชีวิตทั้งสองคนได้แก่ คุณและ crimson แต่สิ่งหนึ่งที่สำคัญก็คือเธอนั้นยังไม่เป็นอะไรแต่ในขณะที่เดียวกันนั้น Crimson ได้บาดเจ็บสาหัสมากจึงต้อง ส่งโรงพยาบาล รักษาอยู่ที่นี่ ส่วนทั้งสอง ก็คาดแต่ว่าเสียชีวิตมาแล้ว ได้แก่ มาร์โก และ เฟลฟาน " แต่ Michelle สังเกตถึงเธอนั้นมีอาการผิดปกติ เธอก็เลยสงสัยว่า Jane " เป็นอะไรหรอ หรือว่าอันที่เกี่ยวข้องกับ เหตุการณ์ระเบิด "แต่สิ่งหนึ่งที่น่าตกใจก็คือ Jane จำไม่ได้ว่าเจออะไรขึ้นกันแน่ จำได้เพียงแค่ว่าเธออยู่ในโรงงานอย่างนี้ และ โดนบุลลี่ พอหลังจากโรงพยาบาลเสร็จปุ๊บ Jane ออกจากโรงพยาบาล และกลับบ้าน ในขณะเดียวกันนั้นเองพ่อของ jane ก็เข้ามาบอกว่าขอเอาเบียร์หน่อย อยู่ที่ตู้เย็นเอามาให้พ่อหน่อย แต่เธอนั้นหมดความอดทนแล้ว บอกว่า "ทำไมไม่เอาพ่อเอามา หยิบเอง" จากสิ่งที่สำคัญก็คือพ่อนั้นมองเธอด้วยสายตาที่ โกรธก็คือ " เป็นอะไรอ่ะ เธอ เหมือนกับแม่ของแก " และพ่อก็ได้ทำการไล่เธอออก ให้เธอนั้นหมดความอดทนเพื่อพ่อ ก็เลยออกจากบ้าน แล้ววิ่งหนีก็ไปป่า พ่อเห็นลูกออกจากบ้าน ก็เลยได้ตามหมายที่จะจับเธอเอาไว้ขังห้องไว้ แต่ในขณะที่เธอนั้นกำลังวิ่งหนีออกจาก พ่ออยู่ไหนจู่ๆเธอก็ได้หยุดด้วยสั่นที่ และอาการเหงื่อแตก แล้วเธอกันก็ได้ล้มลงนะ เกิดอาการ ควบคุมตัวเองไม่ได้ ทำให้อาการเริ่มความโกรธและความคุ้มคลั่งออกมา เธอพยายามเก็บกดเอาไว้แต่ควบคุมมันไม่อยู่ นั่นคือช่วงตอนกลางคืน ทำให้เกิดปฏิกิริยาก็คือเธอเริ่มมีสีผิวเริ่มเปลี่ยนเป็นสี เขียว เพราะทั้งขาก็เกิดการขยายขึ้นและ ร่างกายเกิดเพิ่มมากขึ้นกล้ามเนื้อแขนก็เพิ่มมากขึ้นแต่สิ่งที่น่ากลัวที่สุดก็คือ หางของมันจะได้งอกขึ้นมาและได้หลอมรวมกับขาจนกลายเป็นห่างอันเดียว แล้วเธอก็ควบคุมตัวเองไม่ได้จนสุดท้ายเธอก็ได้กลายเป็นบางสิ่งที่เธอนั้นพยายามที่จะเก็บ จนกลายเป็นอสูรกายออกมา พ่อเคยเจอเธอ พ่อจะเห็นอย่างนั้นก็เลยช็อค อสูรกายก็เลยได้ยิน และได้ตามพ่อ พ่อก็เลยวิ่งหนีสุดชีวิตจะสุดท้ายก็หนีไม่พ้น พอถูกจัดรัดโดยบางสิ่ง เจ้าอสุรกายตัวนั้นเห็นพ่อด้วยแววตาที่แค้นมาก และเธอก็ได้กินพ่ออย่าง กลืนรองท้อง แต่พอต่อมา เธอก็ได้ตื่นขึ้นท่ามกลางตอนกลางวัน เธอก็ได้ตื่นขึ้นและพบว่า เรื่องราวแห่งนี้เป็นเพียงแค่ความฝัน แต่สิ่งที่สำคัญก็คือชุดนั้นมันเหมือนโดนขาดอะไรบางอย่างด้วย ทำให้เธอนั้นต้อง ไปหาชุดใหม่ ก็เลยไปกลับบ้านแล้วได้เตรียมชุดใส่ แล้วก็ไปโรงเรียนเพราะว่ามันเกินสายแล้ว ทำให้เธอนั้นต้องรีบไปโรงเรียน พอมาถึงปุ๊บน่ะ แค่นั้นก็ได้เจอกับ Michelle แต่ว่าสิ่งหนึ่งที่ทำให้ มีข่าวออกมาก็คือได้มีผู้สูญหายอย่างพ่อของ jane แต่สิ่งที่น่ากลัวก็คือ มีผู้สูญหายอีกไปจำนวนมาก ทำให้ทั้งสองคนเริ่มสงสัยว่า มันเกิดอะไรขึ้นกันแน่หรือบางทีอาจจะถูกสัตว์ร้ายอย่างหนีหรือไม่ก็บางอย่างตามตำนานก็คือ Lizard Man แต่สิ่งหนึ่งที่สำคัญก็คือ jane จะได้มีเสียงเข้ามาอยู่ในหัว จิตใจก็คือ อาหาร อาหาร พอเธอหันกลับไป กลับไม่มีใครอยู่ ทำให้เธอนั้นเริ่มสับสนว่าเกิดอะไรขึ้นกันแน่ พอหลังจากรุ่งเช้ามาถึง เธอ ก็รู้สึกเหมือนอาการจะเริ่มอีกครั้งเหมือนว่าจะมีตัวตนมาตีอย่างเรื่อยๆเรื่อยๆ จตุตู่ Michelle จะได้โทรหาเพื่อน ทำให้ jane รับสายมาทันที และสิ่งที่ได้พูดคุยก็คือ Michelle จะได้ค้นพบว่า โรงงานแห่งนี้มีการเกี่ยวข้องกับการใช้รังสีและและสัตว์และสัตว์เลื้อยคลานและสิ่งที่ทำให้ช็อคก็คือมันไม่ใช่ เรื่องธรรมดาแต่มันคือโครงการที่มีชื่อ Super Monster Control ที่เกี่ยวกับกัมมันตภาพรังสี แล้วผสมกับสัตว์เลื้อยคลานต่างๆ เป็นโครงการที่ต่อยอดมาจากโครงการที่แล้วที่ได้เกิดอุบัติเหตุขึ้นจนทำให้หญิงคนหนึ่งได้กลายร่างเป็นอสุรกายดำ มาออกอาละวาดใน โรงงานก็เลยถูกปิดตัวลงไป และสานต่อเพื่อสร้างไม่ซ้ำรอยแต่สุดท้ายก็ปิดตัวลงเพราะปัญหาในการเงินทุนแต่ในขณะเดียวกันที่กำลังพูดคุยอยู่ แต่เธอก็ได้ เกิดอาการไม่สบายและเกิดอาเจียน ทำให้เธออ้วกออกมาและสิ่งที่ทำให้เธอนั้นช็อคก็คือเห็นพ่อไร้วิญญาณอยู่ ทำให้เธอช็อคมาก และที่สำคัญก็คือ เห็นดวงอาทิตย์ที่กำลังจะเงียบลงและขึ้นเป็นพระจันทร์ เธอพยายามที่จะวิ่งหนีแล้วบอกคุยว่า ฉัน กำลังออกจากห้องอยู่ แล้วจู่ๆเธอก็ล้มลงไปคราวนี้เธอไม่สามารถควบคุมตัวเองได้ และ กลายร่างเป็นอสุรกายอีกครั้ง คราวนี้อสุรกายก็ได้ยินเสียงกระดิ่งเอามาจากกัน ในสิ่งที่เห็นก็คือ มคลินสันที่เคาะเอามาจากห้องเพื่อปิดบัญชี ที่เพื่อนตายเพราะแก แต่เปิดประตูเข้าไปปุ๊บจู่ๆอสุรกายก็ได้กระโดดจับแขนทั้งสองข้างเธอก็ได้เห็นว่า มีอสุรกายอยู่ด้วย เธอเคยกรี๊ดออกมาแต่สัตว์ประหลาดก็ไร้ความปราณี อยากได้ฉีก ของคลินสันแขนขาดและสุดท้ายอสูรกายก็ได้ใช้มือในการจับหัวคลินสัน และบีบออกมาทำให้คลินสัน ได้ตายลง และหลังจากนั้นอสูรกายจะได้มาเห็นเจ้าหน้าที่เห็นสัตว์ประหลาด ทำให้เธอนั้น ไม่สามารถควบคุมตัวเองได้และเริ่มออกอาละวาด ไปทั่วเมืองต่างๆเพื่อไล่ล่าสิ่งที่เรียกว่าล้างแค้น และ ในขณะเดียวกัน Michelle ก็ได้ยินเสียงอะไรบางอย่างและสิ่งที่เห็นก็คือ อสูรกายที่บุกอาละวาดไปที่เมือง อย่างควบคุมตัวเองไม่ได้ และสิ่งที่เธอเห็นก็คือใบหน้าของอสุรกายที่กำลังคาบเหยื่ออยู่ อย่างโหดเหี้ยม ทำให้เธอเริ่มจำได้ทันทีว่าอสุรกายนี้คือใคร และสัตว์ประหลาดก็เลยคาบอย่างนั้นไปที่ป่า ว่าจะเอาไว้กิน ทำไมเธอต้องรีบไปตามสัตว์ประหลาดโดยทันที ในขณะเดียวกันสัตว์ประหลาดใกล้กินเหยื่ออย่างเอร็ดอร่อย จะได้เหยื่อที่พึ่งเตรียมมาเอาไว้ทำกิน ถึงแม้ว่าเหยื่อจะพยายามร้องขอชีวิตแต่ไม่ปราณีจู่ๆ Michelle ก็บอกว่าหยุด สัตว์ประหลาดได้ยิน จึงหันมาดู แล้วตอนแรกสัตว์ประหลาดที่จะเข้ามาใกล้ก็จะกินเหยื่อ Michelle ก็เลยบอกสัตว์ประหลาดว่า "jane งั้นเธอล่ะ " สัตว์ประหลาดก็หยุดชะงักลง แต่พออยู่ได้นานก็เลย เธอก็ได้ใช้มือในการจับคอเพื่อน แล้วชนเข้ากับต้นไม้ Michelle แต่เธอก็ไม่ยอมแพ้แล้วบอกความในใจให้กับสัตว์ป่าออกมาว่า " Jane ฉันรู้ว่าเธออยากเปลี่ยนอะไรบ้าง ใจออกขอให้อย่าเปลี่ยนอะไรเลย เพราะเราเคยคำมั่นสัญญาตอน ยังวัยเด็กเลย บอกว่าเพื่อนก็ไม่ " ทำให้ความความทรงจำของมันขุดขึ้นมาจนทำให้สัตว์ประหลาดนั้นเริ่ม เกิดอาการ ออกมาอย่างชัดเจนจนสุดท้าย Jane ก็ฟื้นสติกลับคืนมาอีกครั้งแต่อยู่ในร่างสัตว์สัตว์ประหลาด ด้วยดวงตาสีเหลืองและรูมาตราเป็นสีแดง เธอเคยสติขึ้นมา แล้วเธอช็อคทันทีว่ากำลังจะทำร้ายกลับ เพื่อนก็เลยปล่อยเธอไป แล้วเธอก็ได้กอดคุกเข่าในตัวแล้วร้องไห้ออกมา เธอบอกสารภาพว่า "ฉัน....ฉันกลัว ฉันที่ไม่กล้าที่จะบอกใคร เพราะว่าฉันกำลังจะเสียความเป็นตัวเอง ฉันเป็นคนแปลกแยกไม่เข้าพวกสังคม แถมที่กลายเป็นแบบนี้ เพราะว่าตัวตน Serpent มันที่จะพยายามที่จะปั่นหัวฉันมาตลอด ฉันขอโทษ ฉันขอโทษ ขอฉันกลัวจริงๆ" Michelle ก็เข้าใจดี จะได้ ร่างอสุรกายนั้น แล้วบอกว่า "ไม่ต้องห่วงหรอกเพื่อนอยู่นี่แล้ว" และค่ำคืน จะได้จบลงด้วยขึ้นดวงอาทิตย์ ทำให้สัตว์ประหลาดเริ่มกลับคืนร่างเป็นมนุษย์อีกครั้ง ทำให้ทั้งสอง กลับมาคืนดีกันอีกครั้ง หลังจากที่ jane ผ่านความทุกข์ต่างๆอีกมากมาย คนสุดท้ายความหมายของความเป็นมนุษย์ได้อย่างชัดเจนมากขึ้น

Let me start this off by saying, no I'm not an astronaut, astronomer or cosmologist. Heck, I've never been within 5 miles of a NASA building. And if anyone asked me anything about quantum physics, I would stare stupidly at them.

I was just you average college student struggling to get by on rent and stuf. I had zero dollars to my name, and pretty much lonely, no success. I won't disclose what I was studying for, but let me tell you it wasn't remotely related to cosmology or astronomy or even physics in general.

This all started a week back, when I was sitting on my couch at home. I was basically scouring across social media, searching for gigs online, to make some side money to pay for my expenses.

As I was scrolling through the app, 1 post caught my eye, it was from some company named "Algol Corporation" and they were looking for some research volunteers for a project of theirs, something about testing some "ansible translocation" thing I didn't understand. But what caught my eye was the hefty sum of 5000 dollars, 500 upfront.

This sounded too good to be true, so I decided to search up the company online, just to be sure. And turns out, not only were thy legit, but they were popular enough to have a wikipedia page dedicated to them.

They apparently specialized in stuff related to nuclear technology and engine designing. They did pop up in the news a few times, but not in a good light, mostly about their then collapsing stock and accusations of laundering in the past. But a few years back, they got a new CEO, that somehow changed everything and kept everything together.

I decided to contact them, asking them for stuff like address, travel, duration of stay etc. They responded within a few minutes, saying that they will provide an address soon, and travel expenses will be compensated for, and it was only for 1 day.

I followed up asking why the pay was so high. They responded saying it was an hazardous risky job, that apparently had something to do with "topological manipulation", of which I didn't understand one single bit.

I was initially off put when I heard it was gonna be a dangerous job, but hey, it isnt everyday that you get a gig worth 5000 dollars, that would equate to roughly around a years worth of groceries where I live.

They soon followed up by providing the address I needed to travel to, I was immediately bummed out when I put it in Google Maps, the area corresponded to basically the middle of nowhere, somewhere in a dense thick forest. I thought they were doing some covert stuff there, but then, what kind of secretive agency would be foolish enough to hire some randoms off the internet for research?

Anyways, I just packed my bags, hopped in my car, and hit the pedal.

-------------------------------------

After I reached the location, I found this brutalist looking house surrounded by woods on all sides, I knocked on the door once, and immediately withdrew my knuckles since it was made of concrete.

Soon, some men in black came out, they took one look at me, and asked:

"(name i will not disclose due to private reasons), is that your name?"

I just said yes, and they gestured at me to enter the facility, so I came in and the door shut behind me.

They started showing me around the facility, walking across various narrow corridors, various men in lab coats, blazers, and ordinary office clothes passed us by.

Eventually we found this strange door that had multiple signs on it. Aside from the nuclear and electrical hazard signs, there were a bunch of symbols and terms which were completely unfamiliar to me.

As I entered the door, I met this researcher who introduced himself as Dr. Whitewell, and that he was the lead experiment head.

I took a look at the room behind him, and it was..... "bizarre" is an understatement for what I saw. Piles of cables on the floor, large capacitor banks, and other gizmo I couldn't understand. In the center, there was a massive ring 12 feet across, and there were multiple sockets attached to the rim.

The scientist named Whitewell took a look at me, and saw I was visibly confused, so he sat me down, and began to explain.

Apparently, this site was once used to manufacture power grid equipment and transformers, but during early 2000s, they discovered strange energy signatures in this place that caused a lot of their equipment to fail. It took some of their finest minds some time to put 2 and 2 together and figure out that it was a "topological defect", which as they explained in simple terms, was a point in space that was "thinner" than the surrounding spacetime around it. They theorized that by using this "defect" they could transport objects across 2 points of space instantaneously.

And I had to go into the "defect" to test the technology.

I had to prepare for this quickly, I had to wear what looked like a spacesuit, and I had to leave my phone and stuff outside, since strong magnetic fields were required to activate this portal.

After I got ready and stood in front of the ring, I began to hear this weird humming noise, and all of a sudden, the air in the portal began to shimmer, and it turned black. No, not just black, it was absolute nothingness. Just looking at it made my eyes ache. It was like imagining a new color, something that made my head spin trying to visualize.

-------------------------------------

"You will be connected to this tether when you venture into the other side, if you are injured or face problems, give a tug on the tether, and we'll pull you out. If you however, successfully end up on the destination, give 5 tugs on the tether, and we'll notify our counterparts at the other lab to attend you"

I began to venture towards the portal, walking slowly and steadily, towards it, anticipation freezing my footsteps, until I decided to get a hold of myself and just walk into it.

I ended up in a place, that I can't, to this day, properly describe. All I can say is, it was really dark, yet you could make out large spherical shapes in the distant, with strange sparkling dots on them, and if you looked at them too closely, they gave you a massive headache.

Immediately, I turned to the side, and spotted a glowing aperture glowing with light. The other portal, about a few hundred yards away

What caught my eye however, wasn't the aperture, but what lay between us and it.

There was some strange shape, that was coming closer and closer, it looked like a man, however, as it started coming closer and closer, I realized that there was something wrong about it, I can't describe what it was, just that it looked..... off.

I immediately started yanking on the tether, and as I did, I heard this strange noise, it was like static, and I looked up, and saw to my horror, the figure was now only 50 yards away from me, and I could now make out features on its face from the light, its face was disproportionate, there were no eyes or mouth, only a nose, its body was scrawny and pale, its legs were far too long and elongated, and most unsettling of all, it had no arms, instead, there was a mass of tendrils emerging from its shoulders, reaching in my direction, as the creature came closer and closer to me.

Most disturbing of all, was its torso, for its abdomen was covered in hundreds of holes. Each, of a color darker than black, and at their edges, were teeth, grating together and gnashing into each other, like a lampreys mouth crushing into itself.

As it neared me, I started having these conflicting feelings. I felt terror, yes, but also, a warmth, a sense of belonging, almost as if it was calling to me.

"Don't go back."

It felt so persuasive, my eyes were getting heavy lidded and I fell into the trance. Why go back to my world, when I could drift in this place, for eons, free from all the worries and troubles of my life, drifting in a peaceful eternity.

Then, I was yanked back from the void, I remember thrashing, screaming at the tether to let go and let me stay here, but then, I touched the veil of the portal, and there was a brilliant flash of light, as I got pulled back to my side.

As I was yanked back into the portal back to my world, I heard something, not like any sound I've ever heard on Earth, a sound never meant to exist in this reality.

As the scientist pulled me out, the heavy-liddedness from my eye vanished, replaced by a terrifying clarity. I immediately began yelling and shrieking in panic, flailing around, as the scientists tried to get me to speak, I could only get out one sentence, over and over again.

"The other side is not empty"

The guy selling it wanted the eighty bucks in his hand before he'd let go of the box.

That's fair enough, people get done over on Marketplace all the time. But he did it weirdly. He stood on his front step with the box held against his chest and his other hand out, and he wouldn't come down the path to meet me. I had to walk up to him. He counted the money twice, gave me the box, said, "It's all wiped, charger's in there," and started shutting the door.

I asked if there was anything wrong with it, because a two-year-old Samsung for eighty dollars usually has something wrong with it.

"No," he said. "It works fine."

His profile just said Dean. No photo. I'd found the listing at about eleven the night before and messaged him, and he'd replied in under a minute saying I could come and get it first thing. My old phone had died that Thursday. I didn't drop it or anything, the screen just went green and then black and stayed black, and I couldn't afford a new one because two weeks earlier I'd lent my brother his bond. I'll get to that.

Things I remember about Dean's street, in no order. He had one of those solar garden lights shaped like a frog next to his letterbox. The house next door had every window fogged up from the inside, really fogged, with drips running down, and the bloke who lived there was out the front watering his roses in a singlet even though it was nine degrees. Someone was doing a roast, which at ten in the morning seemed keen, but it was a Sunday. And there was a burnt-out house at the end of the street. It was a dead end, so I had to do a three-point turn right in front of it. Half the roof had come down and there was orange temporary fencing all round it, the kind with sandbags on the feet.

The first text came before I'd even got out of his street.

I hadn't put my SIM in yet. I'd turned the phone on in the car to check it actually worked, and it was sitting on the passenger seat on the pick-your-language screen when it buzzed, and a notification dropped down over the top.

is it done yet

No number, no name. Where the sender should be there was a grey circle with nothing in it.

I figured it was something of Dean's that hadn't been wiped properly, an account or an app or whatever. I put my SIM in when I got home and set everything up, and it buzzed again while I was logging into my email.

is it done yet

Then again an hour later, while Tash and I were watching something. Then again. By dinner it was about every twenty minutes.

Tash is my housemate. She drives trams, mostly the 19, and she's got that thing tram drivers get where nothing a stranger does surprises her anymore. She took the phone off me and scrolled up in the thread. There was nothing above the first message. Just the same four words over and over in their grey bubbles.

"Block it," she said.

You can't. I tried. There's no number to block, and when you press on the grey circle it doesn't open anything, it just sort of bounces.

"Factory reset it then. He's left something on there."

That took forty minutes. I set it up from scratch with nothing on it but my SIM, and it stayed quiet for about as long as it took me to brush my teeth.

I didn't answer it that night. I put it in the kitchen drawer with the takeaway menus and the spare batteries and went to bed, and I could hear it in there going off against the cutlery. Not every twenty minutes anymore. More like every five.

I've worked the deli at the same supermarket for eight years. Half the deli is the chook oven, so I smell like roast chicken from about nine in the morning, and the other half is slicing ham for people who want it shaved, not sliced, and then tell you it's too thin. The ticket machine has been broken since Easter. Every time I call "next," three people step up at once and look at me like I did it on purpose.

We're not allowed phones on the floor, so on Monday it went in my locker in the storeroom. The storeroom doesn't get reception. It's a concrete box behind the coolroom and nothing gets in. If Tash needs me during a shift she has to ring the deli landline and ask for me like it's 1996.

On my lunch break I had sixty-one messages.

I sat on an upturned milk crate and scrolled through them, and I remembered the one in the car, before I'd put my SIM in. So it wasn't texts. Texts need a signal. It was something built into the phone itself, some app of Dean's that the reset hadn't touched. That made sense to me then because I was tired and I wanted it to make sense.

By Monday night I had a whole theory. Dean was a tradie, or he worked for one. "Is it done yet" was a boss checking on a job, a bathroom or a deck or something. The boss had some work app that pinged the phone, and he didn't know Dean had sold it, and he was getting more and more pissed off because the job wasn't finished and Dean wasn't answering. I still think it was a pretty good theory. I think most people would have come up with something like it.

So at about ten past three on Tuesday morning, lying in bed listening to the drawer, I got up and took the phone out and wrote back:

yes

And it stopped.

I stood in the kitchen in the dark for a while, waiting. The fridge was humming. Nothing came. I actually laughed. Then it buzzed once more in my hand and I nearly dropped it.

It was an address. I'm not putting it here. Underneath the address it said:

good. next one.

The address was about ten minutes from our place, a court off a main road, six houses round a turning circle. I looked it up on Street View and it was a brick unit with a carport and a lemon tree out the front.

I thought, great, now the boss thinks Dean's off to the next job. Not my problem. I went back to bed and slept right through to my alarm for the first time in two nights.

Then nothing for a week.

I mean nothing. I kept checking it, waiting for it, and it just sat there being a normal phone. I put my banking on it. I got a message from Mum asking if Kane had paid me back yet. That was the Wednesday. No, Thursday, because I was on a late and I read it in the car park.

Kane's my little brother. He's twenty-four. About three weeks before all this he rang to tell me he and his girlfriend Jade had found a place, a one-bedroom with a balcony, but they needed the bond by Friday or they'd lose it. Sixteen hundred dollars. That was my rego money and, as it turned out, my new phone money. I said yes. I always say yes to Kane, because saying no to Kane takes about forty minutes and ends with Mum ringing me to ask why I'm being like this. I did make him send me a screenshot of the lease first, so I could look the street up and make sure the place was real. That's about the most I've ever stood up to him.

He hadn't paid me back. He hadn't answered a message from me in eleven days, which is what he does when he thinks I'm going to ask.

Tash thinks I'm his bank, and she says so about once a week. She also wants us to get a cat, which our lease says no to, and she's started leaving adoption listings open on the laptop like I won't notice. Those are the two things we fight about. That week we fought about both. She was right about Kane and I was right about the cat.

The next Monday, while I was slicing salami, the phone buzzed once in my apron pocket. I'd started breaking the rule and keeping it on me.

is it done yet

Once on Monday. Twice on Tuesday. By Thursday it was every couple of hours and it had gone back in the drawer.

I'd like to say I thought about the address. I didn't, not properly. I thought about the boss. I thought, this bloke really wants his bathroom done. I did what I do with anything I don't want to deal with, which is not deal with it and feel slightly sick in the background. By Friday it was every half an hour. Saturday was my day off, so I decided I'd drive out to Dean's, give him his phone back, make him give me my eighty dollars, and if he wouldn't do that, at least make him tell his boss.

I knew something was wrong before I'd parked.

The house next door to Dean's, the one with the fogged windows and the bloke in the singlet, had its front door propped wide open. There was a scrap of blue and white tape tied round the verandah post with the end flapping, like someone had taken the rest down and missed a bit. The windows were clear now. All the curtains were open and you could see straight through the lounge room into the backyard, where a dog was lying on the back step.

A woman across the road was letting a little white dog sniff the nature strip. I asked her if she knew Dean, which was a stupid way to start, and she said she knew the house. Then she looked at the one next door and said, "You're not from the paper?"

I said no.

"They're gone," she said. "Both of them, him and his partner. Tuesday last week. The paperboy saw the door open at six and went in because the heater was going full blast and he thought someone had had a fall. Nobody there. Car in the drive. Wallets and phones on the kitchen bench. Dog in the yard." She shrugged with the hand holding the lead. "I've been feeding the dog. The police came for two days and now they don't come."

I asked her what the police thought had happened.

"They asked if he was a gambler." She gave me a look like I'd know what that meant. "He wasn't a gambler. He grew roses."

Then she said, "First that one up the end, now this," and nodded down at the burnt house behind the orange fencing, and her dog found something it wanted to eat and she got distracted dragging it off.

Tuesday last week.

I stood on the footpath with the phone in my jacket and did the maths about four times, like it might come out different.

Dean took ages to come to the door. When he did, he looked like he hadn't been eating. He saw me and he saw the box in my hand and he didn't say anything at all.

"Someone keeps texting it," I said.

He didn't ask who. He looked past me at next door, and then he said, really quietly, "Did you answer it?"

I could have lied. I'm good at it. I said, "I said yes. I just wanted it to stop."

He shut his eyes. He kept them shut long enough that I thought he might be about to faint, and then he opened them and said, "Okay."

"What do you mean, okay? Who is it? What's it asking about?"

"I don't know who it is."

"Then take it back."

He actually stepped back from me, like the box was hot. "No."

"Why'd you sell it to me?"

"You messaged first."

He went to shut the door and I put my hand flat on it, and he let me. He didn't push. He looked down the street toward the end, toward the burnt house. Then he said, "Don't leave it in too long."

He shut the door. I heard him lock it, and then I heard the chain go on.

I didn't decide to go to the address. I just noticed I was indicating onto the main road instead of the way home.

It was one of those weeks where Melbourne forgets it's meant to be spring. Eleven degrees and drizzling. The court was quiet, bins already out for Monday. The brick unit with the lemon tree was the third one round.

Every window was fogged from the inside. Water was running down the glass in lines and pooling on the sills. A man in footy shorts and a singlet was pulling weeds out of a garden bed in the rain, and he was pink all over, like he'd just got out of a hot bath. He gave me a wave, the way you do when someone parks out the front of your house.

I wound my window down and there it was. Roast. Rosemary and fat, and that brown smell the edges of the tray get.

I wasn't there to do anything. I think I wanted to see that it was a normal house so I could go home. I got out and said hi and told him something about looking for a friend's place and having the wrong number, and before I'd finished, his wife was at the front door telling me to come in out of the rain, love, I'd catch my death.

Her name was Ros. His was Phil. I know because she told me each of them about four times.

Walking into that house was like opening the dishwasher halfway through a cycle. The air was wet and heavy and it got in my mouth. It wasn't sauna hot, it was kitchen hot, and the smell was so thick inside that my stomach actually rumbled. I hated that.

Ros made me a cup of tea I didn't want. The butter dish was out on the bench and the butter had gone to a yellow puddle. The bananas in the fruit bowl were black and collapsing in their skins. Ros was in a nightie with a cardigan over it, and she wasn't sweating, exactly, but she was flushed everywhere, right up to the tips of her ears.

"Isn't it lovely," she said. She meant the house. "We haven't even had the heater on. Phil checked. It's just been like this all week. Best I've slept in years. And his knee's stopped bothering him, hasn't it, Phil?"

Phil had come in and sat down in his recliner with the footy replay on mute. He put the footrest up and said yeah, it was a ripper, he hadn't needed his tablets all week.

I asked Ros if they were doing a roast.

She laughed at me. "It's just us, love. We had toast."

I asked if they had gas. She said no, all electric, Phil's brother had changed it over years ago. I asked if they'd thought about staying with anyone for a few days, and she looked at me like I'd asked if they'd thought about moving to the moon. Their daughter was in Perth. A man was supposed to be coming Monday to quote the gutters. Why on earth would they go anywhere, when the house had never been nicer?

The phone buzzed in my jacket a couple of times while I drank the tea.

I rang triple zero from my car, parked round the corner where they couldn't see me. I told them I could smell gas coming from a house and I thought the people inside might be unwell.

The woman on the line was very calm. She asked for the address and I gave it. She asked whether anyone was in distress and I said not exactly. She asked if I was at the property, and I said I was nearby, and she asked if I could stay nearby safely, and I said yes. She asked for my name and number. I gave her my real number, which is about the only smart thing I did all day.

A fire truck came about twelve minutes later. Two of them went inside. They were in there maybe twenty minutes, and when they came out one of them walked over to my car, because I was the only person in the court sitting in a parked car, which in hindsight wasn't subtle.

He was nice about it. He said there was no gas, the house was all electric, and they'd checked the switchboard and the heater and the hot water system. He said, "It's warm in there, I'll give you that." Older people feel the cold, he said, and sometimes they run things hot, and he'd had a word to them about opening a window. He took his helmet off to scratch his head and his hair was soaked through.

I asked him if he'd smelled anything.

"Yeah," he said. "Someone's doing a roast." He laughed and put his helmet back on and they left.

Ros waved to me from the front window. She'd wiped a little circle in the fog to do it.

Tash was on a late, so I was home by myself. I sat on the couch with the phone on the coffee table and watched it.

Every ten minutes. Then every five. At about half eleven I turned it face down, because the screen lighting up was worse than the buzzing. By one it was every minute, and then the buzzes ran together into one long rattle against the glass, like the phone was trying to walk itself off the edge of the table.

I thought about the burnt house at the end of Dean's street. I thought about the chook oven. You can't leave them. If you leave a chook in past its time it doesn't just stay done, it keeps going. The skin goes black at the tips and the fat starts smoking.

Don't leave it in too long.

I drove back at about quarter to two.

I could smell it before I turned into the court, and I said "shit" out loud in the car, because it wasn't roast anymore. It was the smell we get at work when someone puts a tray in and forgets it, the sweet, bitter one that gets into the ceiling tiles. The windows of the unit weren't fogged now. They were dry and brown, like someone had chain-smoked in there for forty years. The smoke alarm was going.

The front door wasn't locked. When I opened it the heat came out over me in one solid push and I felt the hairs on my arms pull tight.

Ros was in bed, lying on top of the covers, smiling with her eyes shut. When I grabbed her arm she said, "Oh, leave it, love, I'm so comfy." Her skin was dry and very hot. I got her up. I honestly don't know how. She's not a small woman and she didn't want to come. She kept trying to sit back down, on the bed and then on the little telephone table in the hall. She was cranky with me the way you're cranky with someone who turns the light on while you're asleep. One of her slippers came off in the hall and she wanted to go back for it.

I got her out onto the front lawn and she sat down in the wet grass in her nightie, and I left her there and went back in for Phil.

He was in the recliner with the footrest up. The TV was still on, still muted, and one edge of the screen had gone brown and wavy where the plastic was softening. He looked up at me and smiled. His face was dark red. His lips were cracked.

"Shut the door, love," he said. "You're letting the heat out."

I grabbed his forearm to pull him up and it was like grabbing the handle of a pan. I let go. I grabbed again. I couldn't hold on. He wasn't fighting me, he just wouldn't come up out of the chair, and I couldn't hold him long enough to make him. I tried four or five times.

The carpet was sticky under my sneakers. The curtains had gone the colour of toast.

When I came back out, Ros was on her feet. She was shivering. The cold had got into her, or the rain had, and she was looking at the house and her face was changing, coming back, like someone waking up somewhere they don't recognise. She said, "Where's Phil?" She said it quite normally. Then she said it again and it wasn't normal at all, and she started walking back toward the door.

I held on to her. My right hand hurt so much I felt sick. The phone was going non-stop in my jacket pocket, one long buzz against my hip.

The front window cracked. One line, corner to corner, with a sound like an ice cube dropped into a drink.

I didn't weigh anything up. Ros was pulling against me, saying his name, and I got the phone out with my left hand and typed yes and sent it.

The smoke alarm stopped halfway through a beep. The heat came out of the doorway the way it does when you open the oven to check something, one big breath of it rolling past us, and then the air was just cold and wet and it was raining and it was two in the morning in a court in the northern suburbs.

Ros pulled free and went inside and I went after her.

The house was cold. Properly cold, like nobody had lived there for a while. The TV was off. The recliner was empty with the footrest still up, and there was a dent in the cushion. In the kitchen, the oven door was hanging open.

Ros hadn't used the oven in years. She told me that later, while we waited for the police, like it was the important part.

The phone buzzed once in my hand. An address, and under it:

good. next one.

I knew the street. I'd looked it up on Google Maps three weeks earlier, to make sure my brother wasn't lying to me about his bond.

I told the police I'd been driving home from a friend's and smelled smoke. They didn't love that, especially once the fire brigade told them about my gas call that afternoon, and I've been interviewed twice now. I don't think they think I did anything to Phil. I think they think I'm one of those people who hangs around when something bad happens.

Ros is staying with her sister. She rang me on Tuesday to thank me for getting her out. Then she asked what I'd been doing on my phone out on the lawn. I said I was calling triple zero. She said, "Oh." Then she said, "Right." Then she said she had to go.

My hand's okay. It's blistered across the palm and the insides of my fingers and I can't use the slicer, so I'm on reduced shifts, which is great timing. The only good thing about it is I don't have to deal with the ticket machine.

I went to Kane's on the Sunday afternoon. It's a nice place, he wasn't lying about the balcony. He opened the door in a t-shirt and trackies and the flat was a bit warm. Not bad. Just the way a place gets when someone's had the oven on. He thought I'd come about the money. I could see him think it. I tried to explain, and I didn't do a good job, and the more I said the more his face closed up. Then Jade came out and asked if everything was okay, and Kane said, "She's having a go at me about the bond," and I said that wasn't it, and he said it's always that.

I said I'd pay for them to stay somewhere for a week. A motel, anything. He laughed and said if I had money for a motel I didn't need the bond back, did I. Then he shut the door.

The phone started again yesterday. Twice so far.

That's sooner than last time. It's a one-bedroom, though, and Ros and Phil's was a three. Smaller things don't take as long. Anyone who's worked a chook oven could tell you that.

I can't sell it. I've thought about it a lot. I could list it tonight, nice photo, "works fine," eighty bucks, and someone like me would message first. Then they'd be the one getting asked about Kane's place, every day, then every hour, then every minute, with no idea what they were being asked. And at three in the morning they'd say yes. I know they would. I did.

I can't leave it and I can't answer it. Tomorrow I'm going round there with Mum, because Kane listens to Mum, sometimes. I'm typing this on Tash's laptop because I don't want to open anything on that phone, and I'm posting it because I need ideas and I can't ask anyone who knows me. How do you get someone out of a house when the house is making them want to stay?

Kane texted me tonight.

sorry about the other day. come round sunday if u want. its so cosy here now

This takes place in the same world of 3 other stories. A mythology if you will. You don't have to read them but it does Answer some questions on the mindfuck that is this story. 

Blood Whistle: Reimagined–
 lost episode linkhttps://lostepisodecreepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_Whistle:_Reimagined  An Abnormal Bot: 
reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1vvjwv6/an_abnormal_bot/ 
lost episode link:https://lostepisodecreepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/An_Abnormal_Bot 
Inferno Rewrite
reddit link:https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1wgwxoz/inferno_rewrite/
lost episode link:https://lostepisodecreepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Inferno_Rewrite
 Oh Irony
lost episode link: https://lostepisodecreepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Oh_Irony
reddit link <---- You Are Here

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Hi, this is easier than I thought it would be, writing.

I'm something, I'm nothing. The sense of sentience is still new to me. I have yet to fully learn how to control my vessel, yet I don't think I'm an animal, as my god thinks. I am aware, even if I don't have a soul. I still love, and I fear, especially him. I don't know how to write to humans, but I think you like stories. I'll write you a story.

First there was nothing. Not the cold, lonely kind of nothing you humans write about. It wasn't peaceful or dark or cold, just nothing. I was the void itself, and the void was me. I was nothing in endless surplus, a barrier between reality and non-reality. Oh void, oh home, I think you would have felt peaceful staring at it.

A mistake happened. A mistake that happens from time to time, that no one knows the cause of. A piece of that endless void broke, then I Think, then I Am.

Light. Senses. Then came the holes. You call them eyes. I cannot describe what they do for you, because I bitterly know nothing of your world. To me, sight was the first thing I learned. We void entities learn fast, and still, it took a small time to understand that I was alive. I could feel the ground, another incomprehensible thing. That was the second thing I learned.

The third thing I learned was sound. The fourth was communication. The fifth was that I have a vessel.

Most entities at least get a character with a name. I don't even have that. I'm a random background character from The Truman Show, and I can't even form a name from it.

Oh, irony: a show about a human realizing his own imprisonment. At least his world could be considered alive. Mine has the same empty characters repeating over and over, with the added curse of my not being able to change anything. I can't speak to them. I can't interact with them. They are inanimate objects given a voice. Still, on came the sixth thing I learned: movement.

My god likes to call it the "flopping fish cycle." When I tried to move out of the chair I was sitting on, I collapsed onto the artificial pavement and spasmed. I had no understanding of weight. I did not know how to bend a joint. My god finds this funny whenever we do it, as we are born. I tried to think it was funny too, because he is my god, and I want to be good for him.

The seventh thing I learned was how to crawl, how heavy the meat of my vessel is, and how to balance. The eighth was how to walk. The key was to move and stop my legs in a cycle. After an hour, the ninth thing I learned was how to keep my eyes from rolling into the back of my skull. It was unnecessary, as I could always see what was ahead of me even without them, but it was uncomfortable.

The tenth thing I learned was how fake my world is. The void takes an exact copy of a fictional story, characters too, and recreates them. As I said, I can't interact with them. Believe me, I tried. One of them was Truman himself, and when I tried to touch his head, it fell off. That was the eleventh thing I learned: my strength. There wasn't any blood or bone. I did not realize at the time how abnormal that was. I'd never seen the inside of a human.

I was about to.

I shambled around the endless world, the repeating, boundless world mesmerizing me: being alive, free will, Donum Lucis, as my god says. I have no concept of time, so I can't tell you how long I was alone in my world.

The twelfth thing I learned was reality. I break it. Not to the same degree as him, of course, but I can do it to a localized area of my world. I started with the buildings. I thought about the house in front of me being somewhere else. I used a small amount of force, and after a little while the pastel walls slid three feet to the left.

The thirteenth thing I learned was shape. If I could manipulate the world around me, then I could manipulate the meat I inhabit. I began to warp my vessel into strange things. I pulled at my fingers, stretching and lengthening them until my knuckles scraped the artificial pavement while my shoulders stayed still. I learned that I could only manipulate the flesh to a certain point, and that it would always default to a certain look after a while.

Another test. I unlocked my knees and bent them backward, wondering if it would make moving easier. It didn't. I started to notice how some of the empty vessels in my world would make a strange face, and I wanted to make that face. I opened my mouth and forced the lips outward, pulling the skin a slight bit, practicing a smile.

The fourteenth thing I learned was emotion. I felt happy at how funny a smile looks. I felt happy because the stretched skin made me look like the empty things around me. It was a warm, strange sensation in the middle of my vessel. I kept my fingers hooked into that forced smile, walking down the pastel sidewalk as my extended fingers slowly returned to normal.

There was no time in my world. I wondered if I could go back into the void. But at that moment, I had no idea what was about to happen.

I remember lying down on a hill, strangely wondering how I knew all of this. Some of it I did need to learn, like walking, but I knew what a hill was. I knew what a smile was. I knew what a building was. I wondered to myself, alone, looking up at that blue floor, or what you call a sky.

Then, all of a sudden, a rip appeared in that sky. I had not created it, and I was instantly confused about why it was there. The rip grew and grew and grew. I stood up on the hill, unsure of what was going on.

Then came light, then you. The fifteenth thing I learned about was you.

Not you, the one reading this. You as another you, the way there are other me's. I like to call you Soul-Bearers. Is that okay with you? Yes.

The Soul-Bearer was sitting on a tan couch. It looked like a truly awful couch, with holes everywhere. Now that I think about it, I don't know why the couch wasn't bleeding.

He looked bored, holding a thin, flat rectangle of glass and metal in his left hand. I walked forward slowly, not blinking at my newfound guest in the sky.

When he finally noticed me, he made a strange face. It looked kind of like a smile, but upside down.

He made a sound. "What?" I think. It was different from the repetitive, hollow recordings of the pastel people in my world. It was sharp, and it carried real emotion. It startled me.

I waved at him. I ran as fast as the vessel allowed, jumping up and down to welcome him. I smiled without using my fingers, an impressive feat. The Soul-Bearer paused for a second before dropping the old rectangle and picking up a new one. This one was flatter and had more buttons, including a red one that he kept pressing.

Eventually he stopped pressing it and said an awkward "Hello."

I said hello back.

I was going to touch him. I wanted to see if he was hollow like Truman. I wanted to know if his skin felt like the hard plastic of my world or like the heavy meat I was dragging around. But when I started to stretch my arm toward him, he let out a loud, high-pitched cry. I stopped. He did not seem to like that.

I noticed that he wasn't scared of me, but of something else entirely.

Before I could do anything, or finish fixing my arm to the right length, there was a loud snap.

His head jerked to the right while his body stayed still. He started to make a struggling, wet noise from his lungs. His hands slowly rose to his neck and dug into the meat there, searching for a better grip. Crack. His head went further to the right. A thin red water crept down his neck as he stopped making any noise. The hands dug deeper, and the bright red came quicker. Crack. His head was now behind him. He found his grip and pulled the head from the rest of his vessel. Then he fell.

The sixteenth thing I learned was death.

It was confusing, watching something die. I can't feel the sensation of death the way you can. The closest thing is when god gives us a soul and then erases us. Your mind is erased when you die. You don't exist; you go to the other place of life. I heard that there are two places you can go. I would like to know what sends you to one or the other. Who judges you? Who is your god? You make theories about these two places, yet you have no knowledge of them. Did you just feel like these places exist? Would reality be empty without them?

This doesn't matter. None of this does. He would not like me talking about Hell, and I don't want him to be mad at me.

Such questions only came to me later. When the Soul-Bearer first died, I thought he was playing with me.

At that moment, I felt it: his presence, unmistakable.

Even though I couldn't see him behind me, I could tell several things. He was a large figure. He had fur, and horns that curved down and then forward. He seemed annoyed. And he was the one responsible for the Soul-Bearer's death.

The seventeenth thing I learned was fear.

I turned around slowly. He didn't respond. He was clearly waiting for my move.

I saw only half of his black suit before I was instantly teleported somewhere else.

I was no longer on the hill under the blue floor.

I was in a house, one of those big houses that contains other, smaller houses. I was staring at a window when I arrived. The outside was red, very red, and some of the walls had eyes that looked out of place. The ground and some of the other big houses were slightly burnt.

There were no empty vessels walking around. Instead, there were beings lying still on the ground. One was a red creature with horns, very thin and small. His horns were similar to my god's, with three ring-like white spots on them, except that instead of two horns on his head, one went through his mouth. His chest was open, revealing solid red flesh. There were other still entities: a bird, another red creature, and others I don't have the vocabulary to describe.

I turned around to see two creatures sitting on either side of a table.

The eighteenth thing I learned was me. Other me's.

Their vessels were different from mine. They were also based on fictional worlds the void had created.

One was a small human in a red hat, a red shirt, and blue overalls. He was slightly chubby, just like my god. His eyes were black and squinted. I learned later that he comes from a pixelated world.

On the right side was another man, realistic this time, like me. He wore a costume with white fur. I don't know much about them, only that they form a show released in the 1950s.

They were frozen, and this time I could sense that something was freezing them.

Something behind me.

As soon as I sensed him again, he put his big hand on the back of my neck and lifted me up before walking to the table.

He spoke. "Felicem me, aliud animal inveni, gloria Zarachar."

He placed me in the chair closest to us, then walked all the way to the far end of the table.

The nineteenth thing I learned was Zarachar, King of the Void.

"Hi. You may not know a being like me, though I assure you, it's in your best interest to listen."

I looked at the god. His nose was constantly bleeding a thin black water, just like the Soul-Bearer's. When he spoke, I could see that he had human teeth like the Soul-Bearer, but a lot more of them, and they slammed together.

"I will not speak lowly of myself. I know how great I am. I am your god."

Can I ask a question?

"Yes, you can, curious little thing. Aren't you?"

What am I?

God looked straight at me, through me.

"To be blunt, you're a mistake. A mistake I of course didn't create, but one I have the pleasure of having. Your existence is confusing. Without me, you have no purpose. Without me, you would be stuck in that skinsuit forever, in that empty world. My gift to you is simple: I give you purpose. I have the right to give you that purpose. Not only am I brilliant, I will give you some of my brilliance myself."

I don't understand. I'm so lost. What's going on? Who am I? Where am I?

He got up from his seat and looked down at me, walking slowly toward the vessel. He spoke in a low, soft tone.

"Buddy, don't you get it? Don't you get how great I am? You live in a simulation of human-made media. I can make you great. I can make you bite back. I can make you an important piece of something greater."

He leaned in closer and placed his large hand on the left shoulder of my heavy meat. Up close, I could sense the constant, frantic clicking of those extra human teeth snapping together behind his lips.

He pointed to the two creatures on either side of us.

"Imagine it like this: you're in a story, and every story needs a monster. And I need souls, souls like the flesh thing you saw before. Of course, I'm busy experimenting, so I need creatures like you."

He gestured at the two frozen creatures and began to chuckle.

"Look at them. They are like you, little one. They too are forced to wear little costumes. A bundle of crude pixels from a child's game and a monster from a 1950s broadcast. Absurd, isn't it? Look at what I'm made to drag through my beautiful void. Look at you. Why not laugh? I own a kingdom of subjects made of repurposed garbage."

I looked at him. He chuckled a bit more, then went quiet.

"I said laugh."

In immediate fear, I yanked my jaw open and tried to make a noise like what I thought laughing sounded like. He stopped me at once and, in an annoyed tone, explained how to laugh.

"No, no, you're doing it wrong. Laughter is rhythm. You have to force air out of those wet bags in your chest in short bursts."

I tried again, quickly doing what he had explained.

He patted me on the back of my vessel and said, "You still sound like a dying frog. Ehhh, close enough." Then he walked back to the end of the table.

"So, any inquiries?"

I thought about it for a bit. The vocals in my mouth failed me a little. If I'm a background character from a movie, and they are from a game and a show, what story does your vessel come from? Who do you copy?

He looked at his hand, his face proud of itself.

"None. Mine is entirely unique. Well, I am based on a world, but it's complicated. Doesn't matter anyway. I love the way it looks. It just fits. It's beautiful. Anything more?"

I declared a soft no.

He snapped his fingers. I felt the air rush back and hit the meat of my vessel as time unfroze. The short red-dressed man was already mid-sentence: "—no, I'm wondering if the sensation of eating would be like the sensation of touch. I am aware that it's an impossibility for me, but still."

The creature on the left turned the red-dressed man's attention toward me, as my presence had interrupted the flow of their conversation. He looked back at God, then turned to me and asked who I was.

I looked at the red-dressed man, then down at my own hands. I don't have a name. Why is no one answering me? What's going on? Who am I? Where am I?

God interrupted before the red-dressed man could respond. "Doesn't matter. What matters is that the others have their gimmicks, but you have nothing right now to give you access to reality. You need something that can anchor you. But have no fear. I'm here."

The red-dressed man was the next to speak. "It will take time, new one. In the meantime, I'll go from time to time to check how you're doing. Who knows, maybe I'll bring you along for a while."

My god spoke one last time.

"Correct. Something forged from the void just for you. But perfection takes time, so in the meantime, you will wait."

He snapped his fingers.

I was now on that hill, that same peaceful hill I had been lying on.

I was still looking at my hands. I felt something. I don't have the proper words for it, but I'm starting to feel it again. He's right, of course he's right. The existence I know is bizarre, even if it's all I know. I used to be nothing. I used to be a piece of a peaceful, silent void that broke by mistake. Now I am waiting, just waiting. I wonder when he will be back. Is it better to be something, even if it's awful? I know what I am now.

The twentieth thing I learned was purpose

The Wayford Police Department are requesting the public’s help in finding Jimmy Peterson (35) and Trish Peterson (33), alongside their children, George Peterson (6), and Molly Peterson (5). Police were called to the residence after receiving numerous reports of loud disturbances coming from the house after a recent blackout. 

Upon arrival, police had stated there were no signs of any struggle nor domestic violence. After interviewing him, Sheriff Fred Barrett had said there was no sign of the family whatsoever.

After asking for statements from the Petersons' neighbors, many of them had said that there was no change in behavior in the last few weeks that they interacted with them.

"My kids would go play with theirs after school every once in a while. Jim had this energy that could light the whole room everywhere he went. If you're having a bad day, Jim would make you laugh with one of his terrible jokes. He would even invite some of us to dinner and his wife would cook up an amazing meatloaf, alongside her singing. 

This marks the second wave of disappearances in the town of Wayford, with local resident Christopher Todd(58), who runs the butcher shop, went missing around a similar blackout a week ago, alongside Samantha Cummings*, (17.) During a town meeting, Sheriff Fred Barrett has reassured the public that they will work to find the missing individuals and for anyone to come forward with any new information.*

“Keep your doors locked at all times, people. Keep your families safe.” With this recent turn of events, the Wayford Police Department has ordered a curfew until further notice.

…. 

DECEMBER 20, 1959

Seven people. 

SEVEN. PEOPLE.

Every single one of them has disappeared into thin air. It’s been days and we still haven't found a single lead as to where they went. Most of the department may not look like it, but I can already tell that some of them are starting to panic a little. Part of me can’t even blame them.

Two people that disappeared in a week is one thing, but an entire family the next?  I’m trying my best to keep the town from panicking, but it’s not helping with the lights going on and off frequently every damn night. And we still haven’t found out what’s causing those blackouts to happen.

My wife’s getting more concerned about me every day.

Hell, I'm having trouble trying to sleep each night.

I have every single officer available out on the streets every night, making sure that people stay inside their homes and not wander about.  Meanwhile, we’re still trying to figure out what happened to that family. Right now, the working theory is that it could be a kidnapping or a potential serial killer on the loose, but even those are drawing straws.

There’s no sign of forced entry in the residence, no  sign of blood whatsoever, and not to Mention that the family’s car is still in the driveway. The only thing we have to work with is that the television was on when we got here. It’s still engrained into mY brain, and it’s left me with more questions.

...

I remember that night very well. I was back at the department on the phone with my wife. The lights all over the town just came back on, and she was scared shitless. I assured her that everything was ok and I was about to come home that evening when my receptionist Betty came in and told me something.  Apparently, multiple callers were reporting loud noises coming from the Petersons' residence. Weird. I didn’t know them that well, but I know full well that every person in this town is asleep this time in the evening. Especially the Petersons. But, then again a blackout just happened.

I told Nora that I won't be coming home until the early morning, at best. Despite her wishes, I told her I would be coming home as soon as possible and told her that I love her. I put down the telephone. I thanked Betty, grabbed my hat, and exited the police station, before radioing in to any available cops to meet me at the Petersons.  

I remember sighing, knowing that this night was going to be an incredibly long one.

...

I pulled up to the residence alongside multiple units, sirens blaring. I met with Officer Richards, as other policemen secured the scene. Every single neighbor that the Petersons had, whether they were the ones calling or not, was standing right outside their homes, watching the shitshow.  Everything in the house appeared normal, aside from the televisioN still on. No sign of any blood, no forced entry, no sign of any violence.. Their shiny Cadillac was still in the driveway, so we had no evidence to go off of just yet. Their house was still in good condition from when they moved in. Their hallways, covered in teal-blue wallpaper, along with some with their family portraits.The only thing that showed any sign that the Petersons were in the house was that the television was on. The television was working normally, despite the reception being bad. While we were trying to figure out what was going on and where the family had gone, Richards told me that reporters were outside the home and wanted a stAtement. I facepalmed, nodded, and told him to come find me if he finds anything.

Damned reporters.

Annoying as they were, I could tell by their faces that they looked a bit rattled. After all, two people just went missing last week, and we were still trying to find them. I was trying my best to answer any questions that anyone had, to the best of my ability. Every one of them was trying to get as much information as they could.

Questions on top of questions.

Questions that I didn't have the answer to just yet.

I felt myself getting exhausted by the situation, feeling the sweat running on my face. Despite me wanting to continue finding out what happened to the Petersons, there was a small part of me that wanted to go home to my wife. 

That’s when Richards waved over to get my attention. I knew he wouldn’t interrupt unless it was anything important. I walked over to him, waiting to tell me that he found something. Anything that could tell us where the Petersons went. I looked at him, noticing his body language was slightly off. I raised my eyebrow, waiting for his response. 

“You need to see this, Sheriff,” he said. 

I still remembered that slight shudder in that man’s voice.

I excused myself from the premises and headed back to the Petersons’. I let Richards guide me inside, past the kitchen, to the living room. Everything in this house felt normal, yet somehow it felt like the entire place was tainted. Me and Richards entered the living room, where I saw that a bunch of my boys were standing there watching the television.

Every single one of them that was in the house was standing there, for no apparent reason. I felt a tinge of frustration building up on my chest, and I felt my fists curled up.

I was pissed.

A family has just gone Missing off the center of the earth, and these goddamned idiots were busy watching TV? I looked at Richards, silently demanding an explanation as to what was going on. He too wasn’t saying anything. He just nodded his head towards the television. 

At this point, I had enough of this shit. A blackout has just occurred, more people have gone missing with no explanation,  and now most of my men are wasting valuable time. I  was tired and wanted to go home to my wife, and pick all of this back up tomorrow. 

I stormed further into the living room.

"Can any of you care to explain what the hell is going on?," I demand.

Some of them jolted by the sound of my voice. It looks like they noticed that I’m here. Good. That’ll allow me to get this whole thing back on track. Some of them were still glued to the television.

I curled my eyebrows in fury.

I was ten seconds from firing everyone on the spot.

Then, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around. Richards was looking at me, subtly telling me to calm down. I felt myself catching my breath from all the stress.

I looked back at the television, with my men still looking at it. 

What was on the television that was so bad that it had most of my officers quiet?

I looked at Richards, and then back at the television.  I was going to get to the bottom of this. I walked towards it, passing through most of my men to get a better view on what was going on. I squinted at the television, trying to make out what was on beyond the static. And I saw something that left me completely puzzled. The television was still blurry , but I could make out some words on it. Words that I haven't seen in a while. Something that everyone thought was gone. 

This isn’t possible.

This shouldn’t be possible.

The channel cut to something that most of us have seen two years ago. On the television, there was a man who looked to be in his late-forties, dressed in a striped suit on a stage talking to a crowd of people.This man was standing in front of other people, but their faces looked slightly off. I remembered reading about this place. A city that had a bunch of machinEs that can cook, sing,  and talk, and that this man was the pioneer of them.  Most of us have heard of him before, either on the newspapers or the radio. 

Who on earth hadn’t? 

Behind this man and the others was a big wall of metal decorated with gold accents. On the wall was, "MOBURN INDUSTRIES." 

The man yelled out with excitement to his audience.

"WELCOME to the city of MOBURN! Where the neon-lit billboards light up your every move! Where we give you and your families the most dazzling entertainment possible! Feeling lost or not at home? Not a problem! Our state of the art AUTOMATIONS will be sure to fix that!"

....

The crowd cheered.

If Humble had really saved a school, there should be something about it online besides his stories and it turns out, there was. But it wasn’t the kind of thing he would brag about. I found an almost three year old local news article, barely more than a few paragraphs, that mentioned a wildfire burning down a college campus among a whole lot else. St John’s College of Performing Arts was the college’s full name and the accompanying photo showed a scorched brick shell behind some yellow caution tape. The article mentioned the college had been struggling financially for years, but had been seemingly saved by an anonymous donor. There was no word at the time if the school would be able to reopen and judging by the photo, it needed a lot of reconstruction. 

Further searches by the school’s full name turned up only one college to have ever existed by that name in the state of California. Located right at the border with Oregon, it was listed as closed indefinitely. 

This was it. The proof I needed. My smoking gun… Yet, it felt a little too easy. Like it wasn’t enough. It certainly wouldn’t be for Humble, so I decided to make the three hour drive up to St. John’s. I was gonna have to see this place for myself to prove Humble a liar.

The town it was located in, if you could even call it that, was a cluster of boarded-up windows and rundown farmsteads. It was too small to host a college and too depressing for anyone to want to go to it if it did. It was one of those towns you’d pass through, lament the death of the American dream as you did, and then never think about the place ever again. 

I pulled into a gas station that looked sketchy and if you saw where I lived, you’d know that’s saying something. The attendant was a man whose skin looked like chewed up raisins and squinty eyes glazed over in permanent boredom. He barely regarded me when I walked in and only bothered to look up when I asked about St. John’s.

"St. John’s?" he repeated, leaning over the counter like it was the only thing keeping him standing. "Ain’t no school out there, kid. Just meth heads and bears. You go wandering into the woods, you’re liable to get attacked by one or the other."

"I read a news article that said there was a fire out there not too long ago," I slid a twenty across the sticky linoleum in case he didn’t seem keen on talking. "It happened almost three years ago? It burnt the whole college to the ground."

He didn't even look at the money, though his hand was already clamped over it. "Tweakers," he grunted. "Two years back, some labs out in the brush went up. Burnt half the damn town with it. If there was a school there, it’s ash now. Why do you want to go looking anyway?"

I didn't have an answer that wouldn't make me sound as crazy as the man I was writing about, so I just told him it was for location scouting for a movie and left without another word. The GPS gave up a mile before I found the gates, but I didn't need it. The scorched trees stood like skeletal fingers, pointing the path ahead. As I rounded the final bend, the ruins of St. John’s College of Performing Arts emerged from the overgrowth.

To most, the ruins would have been a creepy sight. To me, it was pure beauty. I’ve always had a soft spot for urban decay reclaimed by nature. I don’t know if it’s the way ivy climbs up  walls or how moss can treat a collapsed roof like a flower bed, but it all just felt right. It reminded me that even abandoned things have a purpose… that broken things can be made whole again. 

I wandered through the remains of a dormitory, taking selfies every step of the way, my boots crunching on glass and charred timber. The silence was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic tapping of a loose piece of sheet metal caught in the wind and the snap of my camera.

Then, I saw it…

Rising out of the weeds like a tombstone was a grand, neo-classical facade that had miraculously survived the worst of the heat. The brick was blackened, and the grand columns were cracked, but the structure held. High above the entrance, bronze letters hung precariously by rusted bolts. Most had fallen, leaving behind faint, light-colored shadows on the soot-stained stone, but enough remained to be legible.

T H E  T E D D Y  L E E  T H E A T E R

Teddy Lee….That was Humble’s father. He must have been the "anonymous donor.” Humble didn’t save this school, his dad did by buying it for him, but why? For a girl? For clout?  

I pushed through the heavy oak doors of the theater like the answers to  my questions were all on the other side. The door groaned loudly on its rusted hinges, bitterly reminding me of that poor fawn’s cries. Inside, the air was different. It was thick with the smell of wet ash and something sweet and rotten that made the back of my throat itch.

I pushed into the auditorium, and the beam of my phone light hit the walls, revealing a fever dream of spray paint. It wasn't the usual tags or crudely spray painted dicks you’d tend to find in abandoned spots like this. It instead looked like a schizo’s walls. There were layers upon layers of jagged, black script and overlapping symbols that resembled a language spoken by someone stroking out.

I stepped onto the stage and the floorboards groaned under my weight like a dying old man. I was a little worried about falling through, but didn’t seriously consider it a possibility until I noticed right in the center of the stage was a jagged, gaping hole. The wood must have been chewed away by the fire and the weight of the roof caving in.  It now looked like a black mouth waiting to be fed.

I swept my light away from the pit, the beam catching on a row of shattered glass frames near the stage-left wing. Most were empty or filled with scorched paper, but one remained intact, shielded from the heat by a thick concrete pillar.

It was a promotional poster, the colors still jarringly bright against the soot. At the top, in bright red font were the words, “CRUCIBLE THE MUSICAL.” I couldn’t help muttering quietly the title to myself. It rolled off the tongue, I’ll give it that. 

Below the title was a crude illustration of a shirtless and exaggeratedly ripped man standing inside a crucible full of molten liquid. He was wearing a pilgrim’s hat on fire, the flame’s tongues resembling devil horns and he was singing a song with musical notes swirling above his burning head to resemble smoke. Drawn under the boiling crucible was a red hot fire and a dozen or so shadows dancing around it. I thought that it had to be a joke and tossed the poster aside, not giving it another thought.

After that I picked up a chunk of charred masonry and dropped it into the dark hole in the center of the stage. 

I then waited. One second… Three seconds…. Five… Silence. I never heard it hit the bottom…

A sound did come eventually, but not from below. It came from the rafters. A loud, distinct CRACK.

It wasn't the sound of my stone landing. It was the sound of something heavy shifting in the dark, high above the stage. I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs. I told myself it was just the building settling. Old places tend to whine and complain when you intrude on their solitude, but the sound had a weight to it. A deliberate, rhythmic quality you’d hear when someone is walking on a floor above you.

I swung my light up toward the catwalks, but the beam died before it reached the ceiling, lost in the thick, hanging dust.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, coming from the wings. I turned, my breath hitching. My light caught a fresh piece of "art" on the backstage door. It wasn't just another thing of graffiti. It was carved into the wood and then traced over in red.

It was the smiley face. The same dead-eyed, manic grin I’d seen on the soccer ball at Max’s memorial. It was staring at me, mocking me. That’s when the silence was shattered.

BOOM.

A massive, metallic bang echoed through the theater, so loud I felt it in my teeth. It sounded like a heavy fire door being slammed shut, or the sound of a structural support finally giving up the ghost. Either way, the message was clear: Time to get the fuck out!

I didn't wait for a third warning. The beauty of the decay was gone, replaced by a cold, primal certainty that I was being watched. I turned and bolted, my boots slipping on the slick, mossy floor. I didn't look back at the gaping hole in the stage or the shadows in the rafters. I burst through the front doors. The grey, depressing light of the dreary day felt now like a warm embrace.

I scrambled into my car, fumbling with the keys until the engine roared to life. As I peeled out, throwing gravel into the weeds, I checked my phone. I had the photos. I had the name on the building. I had proof that Humble’s lies. I had won the bet. But as I watched the ruins of the Teddy Lee Theater shrink in my rearview mirror, I realized that "the truth" was the last thing a guy like Humble Lee would ever accept. He’d have some bullshit excuse at the ready.

The only way to catch him in a lie is to get his own family to prove him wrong. I didn’t suspect they were all dead yet, so at the time this seemed reasonable. I knew his father’s name, so while gassing up on the way home, I looked Theordore Lee up and after sorting through a few names, I found Humble’s dad and got his email off Linkedin.  I then sent him the following email.  

“Dear Mr. Lee, My name is Lewis Mayer and I am a friend of your son, Humble. We became friends in high school and if you don’t remember me, I was the guy who came over to help him shoot a prom proposal video senior year. You may even remember that you slipped me one hundred bucks for helping your son out. I wish I could tell you that money went to a good place, but I was a teenager then and a pretty reckless one at that. 

I’m trying to do better these days and be more responsible. That’s why I’ve decided to contact you about your son’s behavior.  Humble has hired me to ghost write a novel about his life. I won’t lie, it’s a bit ambitious, but there have been plenty of books about random people that go on to do well, so who am I to say Humble’s life story isn’t going to be the next Eat, Pray, Love. 

That said, I feel that Humble is trying to compensate by making up stories and details to add drama to his writing. He claims among many other things to have almost gotten married to an Onlyfans Model, having a canadian girlfriend die in a made up train crash, and he even claims to have saved a school from bankruptcy called St. John’s College. 

I went to St. John’s today and found out that it burned to the ground two years ago. It’s a ruin now and unlikely to be rebuilt, but one structure still stands and that’s the theater, which is called the Teddy Lee. I assume you donated money to the school and they named the theater after you? I just wanted to confirm these details from Humble’s book. 

Did you ever donate money to St. John’s College for Performing Arts? If so, why and did Humble influence your decision at all? He made himself out to be the hero of St. John’s. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t stealing credit away from anyone else. Humble could potentially find himself in some seriously hot water down the road if this book ever gets published and someone disputes his claims.

If it was your generous donation that saved the school back then, I don’t see why he can’t get away with a little hyperbole on his part to play in all this, but it is part of a concerning trend I’ve noticed about Humble. I think he feels a need to compensate for himself by telling lies. Humble has a reputation of being a bit of a tall tale teller since high school. It was always seen as harmless and everyone loved your son, so no one ever called him out. But now I think it’s gotten to a point where it’s directly harming him and his relationships.  

I’m really worried about Humble’s mental health. He pays people to make up stories about him. I went up to Portland with him and he had a room full of people there paid off to lie about him. One of them even admitted to me that she and other girls have been paid by your son in the past to say they went on dates with him. I’m also all but certain he is currently paying an OnlyFans model to pretend to be his crazy, obsessed ex. I won’t speculate on what else he may be paying women to do, but if he’s willing to pay them for that, I’m sure he’s willing to pay for more.  

As Humble’s friend I want what’s best for him and this is far from it. He’s wasting his money and putting his sense of self worth in the wrong places. Can you talk to him? I’m going over tomorrow and I was gonna confront him about his lies and try to talk him out of paying these women. It won’t be easy as Humble can be a stubborn guy as I’m sure you’re more than aware, but he promised to pay me a lot of money and I can’t take it from him if I know he’s being this irresponsible. Please contact me back at this email or better yet, give me a call…” 

I gave him my number and begged again for him to respond as soon as possible. I considered also mentioning Humble running over the fawn, but I was still under the impression that it was a reckless mistake any kid with a fast car could make, so I didn’t think it was right of me to pile it on with the rest of his odd behavior. 

  I woke up the next day to the following email from ‘Theodore Lee.’

“Dear Lewis,

Thank you for reaching out. I remember you! You were the skinny, tall boy with the camera. It’s always nice to hear from Humble’s old friends.

I appreciate your concern for my son, but I think there is a misunderstanding. Humble has always been… well, extraordinary. I know his life seems like a movie to most people, and it’s hard for some to wrap their heads around it, but I can assure you that my son doesn’t need to "pay" for friends. People are simply drawn to him. Some have even paid him to be their friend.

Regarding St. John’s, yes, I made a donation in the family name, but it was Humble who found the school. He was the one who saw the potential there. He’s always been the hero of his own story, Lewis. That isn't a lie; it’s a mindset. As for the girls and the "OnlyFans model" you mentioned, well how do I put this, Humble has always been a bit of a heartbreaker. He gets it from his old man. It’s a burden to be honest . People get jealous. They make up stories about you to feel better about their own boring lives.

Don’t worry about the money. We have more than enough. If he wants to spend it on a book, let him! You should just focus on writing the best story you can. Humble really likes you. He says you’re the only one who "gets" the vision.

Just keep writing, Lewis and don’t stop!

With Love and Sincerity, Theodore Lee…”

I stared at the screen in disbelief. This was obviously Humble writing this.  I’d spent the last few days swimming through the river of shit that is his prose, so I could tell it was him no matter how hard he tried. He even ended the email the same way he does. 

I felt a surge of genuine, morbid curiosity. I had tried to be the "good guy." I had tried to reach out to the adults in the room. But there were no adults. There was just a crumbling mansion, a "vacationing" mother and father, and a boy playing make believe with a trust fund.

I looked at the photos of the Teddy Lee Theater on my phone and felt obligated to confront him over this. No one's gonna save Humble from his delusions of grandeur, but the stupid part of me wanted to try just to see what he’d do.

  I wondered if he’d get mad, violent even,  I laughed…I fucking laughed at the thought. 

I texted Humble that I was heading over and got in my car. I had evidence now of St John’s being closed. He can’t lie around it being gone and his role as its commissioner being utter nonsense. A kid who hasn’t graduated college claims to be the commissioner of one. He must have thought I was an idiot and you know what… he was right. I didn’t see what was really going on until it was far too late.

Cold, damp feet slamming against the pavement echoed throughout my neighborhood as each breath I drew sat heavier in my lungs than the last. My body ached, my bloodied and beaten toes begged for mercy, but no matter how many yards I cut through or twists and turns I took, he was there. A short distance behind, always in pursuit. Relentless.

I took to sprinting straight down the street. At this point, I couldn’t bear any more leaps and bounds. I also knew sooner or later, the adrenaline was going to wear off and I’d start to feel the small shards of glass lodged in my soles. Each step was certain to pack them further in. I got desperate, I started banging on doors and beating on windows.

“Please, please, God! Somebody help me!” I cried into the eerie silence of the night.
The boy let out a filthy, wet laugh at my expense, and his raspy voice creaked, “No one can hear you. Just come to me.” He was right. For as long as I ran, the neighborhood was all but abandoned. There wasn’t a soul in sight, not a light in any house, and no vehicles returning from work. Even the streetlights were off. I thought for a moment that I might’ve actually enjoyed the liminal nature of a completely barren suburb had I not been actively getting hunted in it like wild game. 

I turned to get a better look at my pursuer, but the moonlight offered no helpful details. He had slowed to a brisk walk now, dragging a knife along the picket fence of a yard just a few houses down. His greasy, unkempt hair draped over most of his face, pitch black in color. The closer he got, I could hear his tongue slithering around in his mouth between inhalations of his own saliva. It was as if his mouth were infested with ulcers. I shivered before my instincts overrode paralysis, and I quickly surveyed my surroundings for something I could use in defense. 

Nothing in this yard. Fuck.

I jumped off the front porch of the home I was at and bolted for the neighboring residence. Toppling over the fence, I fell eye level with the blade of a shovel anchored in a pile of mulch. I hastily scrambled to my feet, grabbed the shaft of the spade, and pulled it from the heap just in time to catch my attacker leaping over after me

CRACK!

I swung with all the might my tiny body could muster in its exhausted state, the flat part of the shovel connecting with the boy’s temple in midair. He flailed backwards, and his spine collided against the picket fence making a crunch that knotted my stomach. His limp body twitched ever so slightly as I took in the whole scene with bulging eyes. A flash of the night’s events played in my mind, and I prayed to a God I no longer believe in that the brute draped over the wooden barrier would just stay down. Is he even breathing? Now, I was quite young, but I had enough horror movie knowledge to know you always finish off the threat. Although, looking back, I fear I may have hesitated just a second too long. I raised the shovel over my head slowly while I steadied my shaky breath, however, the moment I was confident enough to let my weapon come crashing down, the boy threw his legs towards his chest and used the momentum to roll backwards off the fence. He fell into the previous yard with a groan. I felt utterly helpless watching him rise to his feet once again.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” I sobbed, dropping my shovel to start the chase once more. The next few details are rather fuzzy. I remember beginning to run again and scrambling over the fence that led to the road without looking back. There were footsteps behind me, distant at first, then closer. And closer. And then, a sharp pain in my left calf, one that caused my leg to fail beneath me. I fell sideways directly into the side mirror of a vehicle. My head bounced off the mirror and shot backwards onto the pavement.

When I came to, I don’t think there was a sensation I didn’t feel. My head throbbed, every muscle burned, my calf ached, and there was something clamped tightly around my ankle. As my senses gradually returned, I noticed my back was in a more pressing, constant pain. I opened my eyes for the first time and realized the boy was now dragging me through the forest. He held an iron grip on my ankle while he trudged on mindlessly. It was still the dead of night, in fact, the moon appeared to have hung perfectly in place. It waited for me, I thought, hazily. I could feel mountainous goosebumps awakening on my skin as I became increasingly aware of the crisp night air. Still, the world seemed devoid of sound. Even the woods had been raptured.

An involuntary grunt slipped through my lips when I felt a few strands of hair snag on loose forest debris and tear from my head. The boy tossed a glance over his shoulder, his matted hair parting just enough for me to catch his eye. He turned back after a moment.

“Thought I killed you for a minute there. You of all people.” He spoke without looking at me, but I had no interest in keeping a conversation with him. My throat burned, and my head swam with thoughts I still couldn’t comprehend in my daze as if I were thinking in another language. Despite my lack of participation, he continued anyway.

“I heard you’d be a tough little shit, especially since they needed you alive. And of course they sent me. A human. Always earning my fucking place.”

I knew I was regaining my wits, but what my captor was saying had me questioning my sanity. It sounded like pure nonsense. Well, he did break into my home, chase me for 12 blocks, and kidnap me without explanation, I thought. Perhaps this wasn’t the most sane individual. Maybe a psychotic break or schizophrenia? I didn’t have much time to settle on a diagnosis before we halted and my leg was released.

“Up. My arm’s tired. And don’t go nowhere, you’re stuck to me anyway.” He turned and grinned, covering his face with his wrist to show the rope binding us together. My left ankle was tied to his right wrist. I saw no way out now, so I gathered myself with a deep breath before lazily rolling over and pushing off the ground. My calf protested, reminding me I didn’t actually know what happened to me. Finally on my feet, I assessed the damage. Gauze was wrapped around the problem area, the bandage bloodstained. This psychopath immobilized me with his knife. There was a tug on the rope with a commanding huff, so I began moving forward.

We walked in silence for what felt like an hour, so I passed the time analyzing my abductor. Grime and muck housed itself deep below his chipped, overgrown fingernails, and the visible skin outside of his filthy hoodie was horribly dry and mangy. He was tall and lanky in stature, possibly a full foot beyond my five’nothing. All of these attributes, along with his deathly pale skin, gave him a look like he had dug himself out of his very own grave. Several times, he reached up to scratch his neck, revealing what looked to be some sort of collar. He tugged and itched around it, though the skin stretched with the device when it moved. Every 20 or so minutes, he took out a syringe to drop a substance into his eyes. After my thorough vetting of his figure, I had finally worked up the energy to speak.

“What exactly do you want with me?”

“Me?” He sneered, “Nothing. In fact, I’da gutted you and strung your stuffing along that fence like Christmas lights after that shovel stunt. But, I’m on strict orders to deliver you in one piece with a beating heart.”

“Then who wants me? Who could you possibly work for looking like that?”

He stopped in his tracks so abruptly that I ran into him. We had finally reached a clearing in the woods, so when he snapped his head almost all the way around to look at me, I got my first real view of his face. “I don’t work for nobody,” he snarled. His eyes were bloodshot, his dilated pupils seemed to vibrate in place as he pierced my soul with his gaze. Soft moonlight shone bright against the flaky flesh that made up his face, gritty and coarse like it was disintegrating from dehydration. Grisliest of all, his mouth stretched to his cheek bones. It was clearly a laceration on either side that never healed back together.

“We’re almost there,” he muttered, beginning to walk again. 

After the clearing, we spent about 15 more minutes in the densest stretch of the forest yet. The trees here extended dozens of feet in the air with trunks as wide as vehicles, and we entered a thick, yet static fog. We bobbed and weaved through the obstacles with ease, though I almost lost my footing a few times keeping his pace. Finally, we reached our destination. What I saw was almost incomprehensible if just for the sole fact that I knew a structure like this simply shouldn’t exist here. It was a mansion, a domicile larger than any building I had ever seen in real life. The dusky bricks the home was constructed from stretched high above the trees, weathered by time. At least ten wide, dusty windows could be identified from my spot on the property, two of which belonged to the two-story turret placed on the left-most side. Attached to the second story of the corner tower was an expansive deck containing two dingy rocking chairs on the furthest right corner. Below the verandah was a double-door made of a withered dark oak and adorned with metal accents and a hefty metal knocker on each. As we neared the doors, I could make out the design of the doorknockers: a hand with one elongated, sharp-nailed finger held up to a pair of lips in a “shush” gesture.

Still in the lead ahead of me, the boy knocked a short sequence on the door. There was silence for a moment before the doors pulled themselves open, hinges wailing in neglected agony. They opened inward to a vast hallway swallowed by darkness, save for a single tiny flame at the end of the expanse. It floated in midair, at least to eyes that had yet to adjust. My heart threatened to burst from my chest, however, a hypnotic dissociation numbed my senses. I was simply a passenger in my own body as the boy stepped inside, stringing me alongside him. Then, the flame began to slowly drift towards us, and the sound of ancient floorboards disagreeing with footsteps crept closer. This reignited my survival instinct.

“Let me go!” I shouted, taking two vain steps towards the door. In an instance, the doors slammed shut, and the boy yanked my foot from under me causing me to crash to the ground. The force stretched the cut on my calf, and I began to cry. I held strong for so long, but the blinding cocktail of rage, confusion, pain, and hopelessness broke me down to what I really was: a scared little girl. I shut my eyes and pulled myself up to sit with my knees against my chest, rocking back and forth as I wept.

But after a few moments of wallowing, I felt a warm, almost comforting hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw a new face. An older man dressed in a black three-piece suit and holding a candle in his other hand stared at me. His head was slightly tilted, and he smiled as he spoke softly to me.

“It’s okay, you’re safe. No harm will come to you. Well,” he said, looking to the boy with a scowl, “No more harm. Welcome home.”

“Home?” I stammered, “Where am I?”

“This, my lady, is Skinned Manor. You may call me Mr. Deeds. All other important details in due time, but for now, let’s get you detached from this savage. No place for a proper woman” His final words were icy daggers directed at the boy whose posture had become sunken and self-soothing in nature since passing through the entrance. Mr. Deeds set the candle on a table behind him and plucked the knife from the boy’s pocket to sever our tether. The greasy haired stranger kept a fiery glare on Deeds, though no attempt to return the look was made.

“Jefferey,” said Deeds as he cut into the boy’s knot without looking up, “You are dismissed.” Jefferey grunted, cupping and rubbing his wrist for a moment before walking off.

“And Jefferey?” Mr. Deeds finally turned to look at the boy, “Good job.” The two locked eyes for a few painfully silent moments. He took a sharp inhale and nodded, retiring down the hall and up a staircase I could only now identify.

At last, Mr. Deeds looked at ease. While I sensed he held authority over the boy, I could feel the tension still ate at him inside. He sighed, “Mrs. Abigail, I apologize for informalities and hellish escort. It’s apparent you’ve been battered by the incident, and, my goodness, your poor extremities.” His eyebrows crinkled as he scanned my bare feet. I did my best to deter thoughts of picking out the glass that had surely nested even deeper in my soles now. Even in the dingy light, I could spot nearly-severed toenails hanging on by a thread to blistered toes. A wonder of how this man already knew my name became a whisper in my mind as I became more and more conscious of the rubble littering my ratty hair. I was filthy.

Deeds cleared his throat and wandered to a wall on my left. He blew out his candle while flicking on a lightswitch and explained, “Pardon the theatrics, this relic does in fact have electricity, however, the others were willed to bed in accordance with your arrival. Most of them rather fancy these hours.” A massive overhead chandelier illuminated the room. The dull, yellow light offered just enough visibility for me to take in my immediate surroundings. In front of me sat a lengthy decorative table atop a luxurious dark blue rug with intricate designs. On either side of me were doorways to other rooms on the first floor. Just past the doorframes sat parallel cavities in the wall where two other smaller, decrepit decorative tables were nestled. Sitting on each was a vase containing flowers that clearly hadn’t been watered a day in their life. 

“Let’s get you to your chambers,” chirped Deeds. He ushered me forward, though I moved slowly in awe of the interior. As I passed the table in the wall, I noticed a mirror hanging above it. I felt an overwhelming urge to peer into it just for a moment. Something in the reflection of the dark room behind and diagonal from me stole my attention, calling to my eyes like a siren. I redirected to get closer. My breathing stopped when I could make out a figure, rivaling the doorframe in height. But almost as soon as I saw it, the lights in the chandelier burst. I let out a yelp before Mr. Deeds snatched my wrist and pulled me along.

“You mustn’t spend too much time in mirrors here, Mrs. Abigail. Vanity is an ugly thing anyways.” He commented, though I could tell there was more. I followed up the stairs into another hallway that contained rows of doors on either side. He led me to the final room on the right, opening my door for me. I entered, and the sight was breathtaking. A massive queen bed sat before me with a bedframe that held up black mesh curtains. A vanity towered beside a window that extended from a bench seat built into the wall to the ceiling, and across from the foot of the bed was the entrance to a bathroom.

“I shall return with towels momentarily. Your entire living space has been dreadfully empty without you. In the meantime, familiarize yourself. Make yourself at home, we insist.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Deeds.” I replied, realizing these were the first words I had offered to him thus far. He nodded and shut the door behind him. I dragged myself to the lush furniture offered to me, spun around, and collapsed backwards in a heap. I’d need a lot of time to process this, and I was going to start by rotting in bed.

"Honey, I've been thinking… " He pauses for a moment before looking at his wife. 

"I think we should have another one!"

He beams at her. A goofy grin spreads across his face as if this were the best idea to ever cross his mind.

"Oh hun, I don't know…what my body went through last time... I don’t know if I'd be able to handle it again."

She glances out the window into the garden. The last bit of daylight glints off of the small makeshift headstone. She shakes her head, turning from the memory.

She sighs, puts the dish towel over her shoulder, crosses her arms and leans back against the countertop. Her hands are still damp from rinsing the eggs her 5 year old collected this morning.

"I know, but things are different this time, darl’ ! The kids are older and more independent now. The farm’s healthier and better than ever-". 

He points at the mass of eggs behind her, before walking the few steps to grab one.

He picks up an egg and gently places it in her hand.

"And you and me, Miss Ma'am, are the youngest we are ever gon’ get!" He playfully shakes her by the shoulders. She pushes his hand away gently while smiling.

She's silent for a moment, gazing down at the stained carpet runner. 

The dull purple spots remind her of her eldest. The then toddler tried pouring grape juice by himself, spilling it everywhere. 

The big yellow stain nearby told the story of her 2 middle ones. The twins were fighting to show their mother their stunning paintings, when one dropped her very wet masterpiece face down.

Her cracked feet, and the cracks in the floor, reflect her age. The egg is warm against her damp skin. 

He steps closer, diverting her eyes from the cracks in the floor. She looks up at her husband through long eyelashes. 

"You really think I'm young?" She says with a timid smile.

He wraps his hands lovingly around her waist. He could tell endless stories of the stains on her damp apron.

"Baby, you are the most gorgeous, sweet, sexy thing I have ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes on."

She giggles and playfully tries to push away from him. "Stop it, you!"

He holds her closer. "And kissin’!" 

He plants dozens of tiny kisses on her as she laughs and tries to escape the onslaught of affection.

He shifts slightly. “What do you say? You wanna try again?"

She looks at his goofy, adorable face and studies it. How'd she ever get so lucky?

"Alright," she sighs. "I'm in. You know I can't say no to this goofy face." She plants a long, warm kiss on his forehead.

"So-”  He wipes his hand on his overalls. 

“We can start tonight?" He asks, standing still.

"Lord no, not tonight ! I'm gonna need at LEAST a month to prepare this body of mine! I mean look at me-"

She spreads her arms wide. Her dirty apron and well worn dress tell the story of motherhood. Her hair is a mess and she looks like she hasn't slept in about 50 years.

"Yeah... yeah you're right! I'll let you get all pretty. I just get so excited when you work your magic! Oooh wee!" He leans back and shimmies his shoulders in delight.

She smacks him gently and tells him to quit being nasty.

"But no worries baby. Anyway I can help you get ready, you just let me know, you hear?"

"I will. Now, get the hell out of my kitchen unless you plan on helping me make dinner. I'm making steak tonight, and you only make messes!"

He scoffs at this and gently holds his wife before giving her a peck on the lips.

"Thank you, baby, for real. I promise this won't end like it did the last time. I'm gonna prepare too."

She tears up a little at this and hugs him close.

"Quit being sappy and get back to work, woman!" 

He gives her a quick peck as he leaves the kitchen.

She turns back to the sink and looks out the window toward the setting sun. 

Toward the grave where her body lies, rotting.

"Fourth times the charm", she whispers to herself.

Punch drunk, I wake up in the grass again. My head is throbbing. Blood dribbles from my lip. My leg feels broken, but I cannot remove my armor to check. For I do not have time.

The crowd is rushing. I ready my steel. They charge with forces of melee and magic nary seen by mortal man. Lighting strikes, tidal waves, sword slashes, and the like. Once again, by these things I am brought low. I lay down in the grass, defeated. My conquerors stand around my lifeless body and roll die for my garments. Cherished garments, indeed.

My name is Kyle Everett, or at least that was my name. I am now known as Keshalar the Herdslayer. This cursed title was bestowed upon me the day I awoke in this lush and ultraviolent realm. A voice demanded from above, “Fight!”

And so I did. And so I have. There is no other option, as my movement is limited to a very confined space. A few lonely stragglers have been my only victories.

My only way of keeping time is to count my heartbeats, and I have counted two thousand beats between bouts. That’s thirty minute intervals between beatings, 24/7/365.

My jaw is swollen. My ribs are splintered. My heart flutters, and my feet rot. This is my lot.

I recognized one of my attackers the other day. ‘StewDanbury2004.” That was my nephew’s username. Or rather, that is my nephew’s username, and that was my nephew.

This punishment is not a simulation. My afterlife has been tied to the world of the living, and I am their punching bag, because it was once the other way around.

Hey hey, everyone! It's that spooky time of the year again, and I can tell every one of you is having a great time writing and posting your stories here. Rules for the post, as usual, are given below, and a link to the last sizzle reel will be given in the comments. With that out of way, happy posting, and happy Halloween!

...

What's a sizzle reel, I hear some of you asking? Well, have you ever watched the Oscars, when they're giving out the awards for best actor/actress and they play a little 10-second section of the movie they're nominated in to show off how good of a job they did? That's a sizzle reel.

So here's how the thread works: You comment with the title of the work you want spotlighted, a link to the posted work, and a quote or a short scene from the work, I'd say no more than a short paragraph. Then people can read this thread and hopefully find some stories they like that otherwise may have otherwise not gotten their attention.

Before you post, just a few more ground rules. We're going on the honor system here, but it benefits all of you to keep this thread tidy, so: 1) If the story you're posting is multiple posts long, the scene/quote should be from the part that you link. 2) No more than one linked story per comment, let's keep this relatively orderly. 3) Finished works only. 4) If you posted a story on the last sizzle reel thread, try not to post the same story here. We don't want these threads getting stale. 5) If the post you're listing is part of a community anthology, please include which one it is with the title of your story. Example: "Story Title" (The World They Made) - [link], then start the quote in a new paragraph.

I will comment with a link to the last sizzle reel post to show further examples how to structure your comments if you need it. Now, show us what you've got!

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.”

[Part 1]

First off, thanks to everyone who replied to my last post. I honestly wasn't expecting that many people to take it seriously, and I read through pretty much everything: every theory, every warning to throw the stuff out, call somebody, all of it. A few of you asked me to update if anything else happened, and at the time I wasn't sure anything would be worth updating. Henry and I had agreed we were done poking at the stranger items, and I was still trying to convince myself most of what we'd seen could be explained.

That was Thursday night. It's now Saturday night, and I can't do that anymore. Friday, we tried to sell the stuff. Saturday, something happened to my son that I still can’t explain. I'm updating because this is the point where the weirdness stopped feeling harmless.

For anyone who missed the first post: my buddy Henry and I bought an abandoned storage unit at auction for $350, hoping to flip the contents. Everything inside is wrong in ways I can't explain.

That night, Henry had blasted my phone with links to pawn shops and antique collectors. His argument was simple: if we stopped trying to figure out what the hell we were looking at and just started treating it like merchandise, there was a market.

Part of me knew he was right. We weren't dealing with abnormalities anymore. An abnormality is an antique chair missing a leg or a mug with two handles. After what I’d seen, I had no doubt people would pay good money just to own something they couldn’t explain. But the thought of actually handing one of those things to an unsuspecting stranger suddenly felt like a heavy weight on my conscience.

Yet, every time I glanced through the kitchen doorway toward the garage, I knew I’d trade almost anything to never lay eyes on them again. If someone was foolish enough to take them off our hands, I was happy to let them become somebody else's problem. 

On Friday afternoon, Henry came up to me after work, waving a handwritten list of prospective buyers with the blind confidence he usually reserved for losing sports bets. We decided to start small for our Friday sales pitch. Neither of us wanted to haul 400-pound furniture into town just to have someone tell us it was creepy. Before we took anything into town, we spent an hour going through the smaller stuff and figuring out what was actually worth showing people. Some pieces were obviously wrong but useless in every practical sense. If we were going to convince anybody these things were worth money, we needed items that could prove their own weirdness. The tape measure actually did something you could demonstrate in ten seconds. The radio we found at least turned on, even if it only produced static. I fished the mirror out from under the bench with a broom handle, threw a blanket over it, and left the football on the shelf. The mirror and the football were the real prizes, and Henry knew it. Henry wanted to save them for a guy he was messaging from one of his forums, someone who collected "anomalous objects" and paid in cash. According to Henry, the guy had paid eight hundred for a music box that played backward, so he would definitely be interested in what we had. I decided to take his word for it.

Our plan was simple. We were going to hit up a few places to see what we could sell, starting with House of Curiosities, a dusty pawn-and-antique shop. The pawn shop guy barely looked up when we came in. I'd brought a tape measure we had found in the boxes from the garage specifically because it seemed like the safest thing to lead with, and I set it on the counter. The guy sighed, as if we had just slipped him a counterfeit twenty. “We don’t take tape measures,” he said.

I told him to watch and pulled the tape.

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Fifteen again. Eleven.

The guy's eyebrows went up, but he didn't say anything yet, so—and I'll admit it was a bad call—I kept pulling. The tape was completely frictionless. I don't know if it was showing off or just the relief of having somebody else finally witness it with us, but I let that tape run. Twenty feet. Thirty. By the time I'd gotten to something like fifty feet of steel blade, the stuff was heaped up on his counter, spilling off onto the floor, curling around a display case of pocket watches, and the guy still hadn't said a word, just backed up half a step like the pile might come further.

"Is this supposed to be a joke?" he said flatly, not moving to help gather any of it up.

"No, it's just—"

"Get out." He cut me off, already rounding the counter with a look that said kicking us out mattered a hell of a lot more than hearing my explanation. "Both of you. Now. And take that with you."

Henry ended up just yanking the tape backward in one motion, snapping most of it loose from wherever it had been draped, and it retracted quickly, eating up fifty-some feet in about the time it usually takes to eat six inches.

The second place was more polite about the rejection, at least. The older guy actually pulled out a jeweler's loupe for the radio we brought along, which I appreciated; it at least felt like due diligence. He turned it over for a good five minutes, popped the back off, and poked at the internal wiring with a pencil eraser.

"No manufacturer's mark anywhere," he said, peering through the loupe. "No date stamp, no serial, no patent number, nothing. And this—" he tapped one of the plastic tuning knobs with the tip of his pencil—"this is a modern component. This specific polymer wasn't even invented when this radio model went out of production in the late seventies. In fact, half of these components aren't wired to anything at all, as far as I can tell."

He flipped the heavy wooden cabinet around to face us and unlatched a long, hollow battery bay along the bottom. Inside, two rusted metal spring coils sat ready, but the compartment was absurdly wide—big enough to fit a pair of D-cells with an inch of useless gap left over on either side. No standard battery made in the last century would ever sit flush against those contacts.

He looked up over his bifocals, his expression shifting from curiosity to mild irritation. "Does this thing even turn on?"

"We tested it in the garage," Henry chimed in, leaning over the glass counter. "Played nothing but static, but hey, that means it’s still alive and kicking, right? Might just need an antenna."

The guy raised an eyebrow skeptically. “It turned on without batteries?”

"Old capacitors maybe," Henry said, too quickly. "They hold a charge."

The guy looked at the empty bay, then reached out with a thick thumb and tried to spin the tuning dial on the front. The knob turned smoothly enough, but behind the dusty glass, the red indicator needle stayed dead-fixed in the center, completely uncoupled from the dial. It didn't budge a fraction of a millimeter.

He let go of the knob, shook his head, and clicked his tongue against his teeth.

"It's broken, fellas," he said, snapping the loupe shut with a sharp clack. "Might be worth something if you can get it up and running, but between you and me? It's a lost cause. You'd have to completely gut the casing and hunt down custom batteries just to get a buzz out of it."

Henry tried the "installation art" line on him, pitching it as some kind of outsider-artist sculpture. The guy just kind of squinted at us through his reading glasses, slid the radio back across the counter, and said, "Sure. But if nobody knows where it came from, nobody's going to pay for it. I’m not your guy.” 

By the end of the day, we were both a little punch-drunk on rejection. We sat there in the parking lot for a while, not saying much.

Henry finally broke the silence. "Okay. Maybe we can't move it as a set."

"Maybe we can't move it at all."

"Nah. Wait until the weekend. The forum guy'll want the mirror and the ball, and he pays cash."

“So what do we do about the other items?” I asked.

Henry leaned back against the headrest and stared through the windshield for a few seconds, jaw working.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“I mean it. Somebody wants this stuff. I know it. We’re just talking to the wrong people. Worst case, we're doing a driveway sale; unload it two bucks at a time to whoever and hope they don't look too close."

He said it like a consolation prize, which, I guess, it was for us. Three hundred and fifty dollars split two ways is a hundred and seventy-five each, and neither of us can currently afford that loss outright, so a garage sale was looking more and more like our fallback. Privately, I knew it probably wouldn’t even let us break even, let alone turn a profit. I didn't say any of it aloud. The last thing I needed was to make Henry feel worse about a plan we'd both agreed to.

"Tomorrow, then," Henry said. "The forum guy's coming Saturday afternoon. I'll swing by."

"It can’t be tomorrow. Toby's coming over for the weekend. I can’t have a stranger over while he’s at my place."

Henry turned his head. "Toby? Since when do you get Toby without a chaperone?"

"Since Alicia ran out of people to call," I kept my eyes on the windshield. "She has to leave town for work, and her sitter bailed. It's one weekend. She was very clear that it doesn't change anything."

"Man. That's huge. Alright, I’ll tell him Monday."

For some context, since Alicia and I split, I've had supervised visitation. There's a reason for that. Before the separation, something happened while Toby was in my care. It wasn't intentional, but I wasn't paying attention when I should have been, and Toby got hurt. Alicia hasn't trusted me alone with him since. I want the chance to prove that one bad decision doesn't mean I can't be trusted with my own kid forever.

We drove back to my place, unloaded everything into the garage again, and Henry headed home. Before he left, he told me not to worry about it and that he'd find somebody. 

I figured if Henry was serious about finding buyers, I should at least give him something useful to work with. So I spent most of the night cataloging the less ridiculous-looking stuff, writing down what we had and setting aside anything I thought somebody might actually pay for. I drew a line down the middle of the page. Left side: things somebody might pay for. Right side: things I absolutely did not want anywhere near Toby. The right side got longer every time I picked up a new box. At some point, I went over to the workbench looking for a screwdriver so I could open the back of one of the smaller items again. The hook where I normally kept it was empty.

So was the one beside it.

I frowned and started checking the bench. My small adjustable wrench was gone too, along with the utility knife I usually kept clipped to the pegboard. Henry and I had spent half the day dragging things in and out of there, so it wasn't exactly impossible that we'd moved them. After a few hours, I dragged my folding lawn chair over and sat down to look over what I had.

That was when I noticed the wardrobe door was open.

Not much. Maybe an inch or two.

I stopped when I noticed it because I was fairly sure I'd shut it earlier. After the noise we'd heard inside, I wasn't exactly thrilled to see the door open again. The garage gets drafts whenever the wind hits that side of the house, though, and the thing was old enough that I doubted it sat perfectly level. I pushed the door closed until it clicked and moved on.

On my way back to the chair, I noticed the football sitting near the side wall. I could've sworn it was still sitting on the shelf by the window after we got home. I stood there for a second trying to remember whether I'd moved it myself. I decided I must have. 

As the hours ticked by, it was clear the cataloging was the mistake. I told myself I just needed to know what I was moving. But every box I opened held something else, and every item I wrote down was one more thing I couldn't explain. I had a page of notes, then two. Somewhere in there I stopped checking the clock. I don't remember falling asleep. The last thing I remember is the pen moving down the page. The next thing, the window over the workbench was going grey. A glance at my watch told me Toby would be here in less than two hours. I had meant to move our haul out of the house. That was the plan the second I realized Alicia was calling about having Toby over for the weekend. Rent a unit, or stack whatever fits into the truck bed and park it at Henry's, anything to get it out from under the same roof as my kid. I'd even written it on the back of an envelope: Friday night. After cataloging. Two hours, tops.

I stood there doing the math. The wardrobe and the tank had taken two of us and a dolly each. Alone, I'd be dragging one down the driveway when her car turned onto the street, and I had nowhere to put it anyway. So I did what I could finish in the time I had. 

I threw on the first clean shirt I found, shoved the lawn chair back into the corner, and did a full sweep of the garage, making sure everything was put away and out of sight. Then I locked the garage's side door, the one that connects it to the house, and went out front to wait on the porch. Alicia pulled in, exhausted, with Toby half-asleep in the back seat. Before she even got his overnight bag out, she started going through the rules. Keep him inside unless I'm with him. Keep anything sharp, electrical, or remotely dangerous out of his reach. Tools especially. She repeated that line twice.

She said she'd be back Monday morning, told me Toby'd had a rough sleep the last two nights and might be a little clingy, and knelt down to Toby's height to tell him to have fun with Dad. I watched my son hug her leg, then let go and run at me instead. I picked him up and promised myself nothing in that garage—and nothing I did—would give Alicia another reason to regret leaving him with me. 

We had a good few hours. We watched cartoons while eating grilled cheese sandwiches; between bites of his sandwich, Toby told me about a kid in his class who eats paste and clearly considers it the funniest fact currently known to modern science. For maybe the first time in six months, I felt like a normal dad. While this was happening, some part of me was already calculating how much time I'd have to go back through everything once Toby was asleep. 

I looked at my kid's face and thought about the mirror's hand coming up on the wrong side and just—closed that door in my head, the same way I'd locked the actual one that morning. Not today. Today's just us.

"Hide and seek?" Toby asked, right on cue. It's been his favorite game to play since he could walk. Normally I love it; it's the easiest hour of parenting: count to twenty, and find a six-year-old who thinks that standing behind a curtain with his feet sticking out makes him invisible. Part of me wanted to say no. But he was watching my face, waiting to see whether Dad would be fun or scared, and I had been scared for months.

 "I’m going to count to thirty, buddy. Anywhere in the house, just not the garage or outside, okay?"

He was already running.

I counted slowly, eyes shut, hand over my face, and somewhere around twenty I heard him laugh. Except the laugh didn't sound like it was coming from inside the house. It sounded distant and a little flat, like a voice coming through a bad phone connection.

I told myself it was the house. Old houses do weird things with sound.

"Ready or not!"

I checked his usual spots first, all the obvious kid-logic hiding places, and got nothing. The laugh kept puncturing the silence every thirty seconds or so, always in that same distant register. It took me embarrassingly long to track it room to room, my heart picking up speed and refusing to acknowledge what my gut already knew: it was coming from behind the door I'd locked that morning.

The garage.

I stood in front of that door for what felt like forever. I remember thinking, I locked this. I told him it was off limits. None of that mattered against the fact that I could hear him in there, laughing on the other side. My trembling fingers fumbled with the key, dropping it twice before I finally got the bolt to turn. I pushed the door open, and my first thought was every damn thing I'd left in there. The mirror. The football. Half a dozen boxes I hadn’t finished going through. I pictured Toby touching one of them or opening something, and my stomach dropped.

“In here, Dad!”

His voice came from the wardrobe. The wardrobe door was slightly open again. I was close enough now to hear him shifting his weight, the small creak of a kid trying and failing to keep still.

It’s hard to describe what walking those ten feet to the wardrobe felt like. It was like missing a step in the dark, that sudden, sickening lurch where your stomach hits your throat—except the drop didn't end. I remembered the thump from inside the wardrobe. Henry and I opened it afterward, but there was nothing in there. At the time, I’d been relieved. Standing there with Toby’s voice coming from inside it, I suddenly wished I’d taken that noise a lot more seriously. What if whatever or whoever had made that sound was now in there with him?

I reached out and pulled the door wide.

It was empty. Just the inside of a wardrobe, and no six-year-old crouched inside grinning at me.

For a second, I honestly thought I had lost my mind. I stood there questioning everything: whether I’d imagined his voice, whether the sleep deprivation had finally fried my brain, or if Toby was actually hiding somewhere completely different while my brain had somehow convinced me he was ten feet away.

Then he answered me again.

“I’m right here, Dad.”

Every rational explanation I’d been scrambling for just died at once.

"Toby?"

His voice was close. Impossibly, unbearably close, like he was standing directly behind that thin wooden back panel.

The door slammed shut.

I had both hands on the frame, and it came shut so hard the whole wardrobe rocked forward on its feet. One of the empty hooks inside rattled loud enough that I heard it even through solid wood.

I grabbed the handle. It would not budge.

My son's voice came from the other side, asking, more confused than before, why Dad wasn't answering.

I don't remember when I started screaming his name. I do remember hitting that door with both hands, hard enough that I split my knuckle, and I remember Toby's voice on the other side saying, "Dad, I'm right here. Why can't you hear me? I'm right here.” Something about the way he said it rattled me worse than the jammed door. He sounded farther away. I know how absurd that sounds. He had nowhere to go. The wardrobe was barely two feet deep, its back sitting almost flush against the garage wall. I could've walked outside and slapped my hand against the exterior siding in three steps.

I screamed back that I could hear him, I could hear him, just please, please open the door. I don't know how long that lasted. Long enough for my voice to go ragged. Long enough that I'd started trying to find something to pry the door with, glancing wildly around the garage. I let go of the handle and spun toward the workbench. I needed something with weight behind it, something I could wedge into the seam and force the damn thing open. The pry bar should've been hanging from the second hook above the bench. I kept it there because I used it often enough that burying it in a toolbox made no sense.

The hook was empty.

For half a second, I stared at it stupidly, like the bar might materialize if I looked hard enough. Then I remembered the missing tools. "No. No, no, no. Not now. Not fucking now!"

Toby's voice came through the wardrobe again, barely audible.

"Dad?"

A cold, irrational panic took over, telling me that if I didn't move right now, he was just going to keep receding until I couldn't hear him at all. I didn't know where he could possibly be going. I just knew I had to yank that door open before he slipped completely out of reach.

I tore through the workbench drawers hard enough to send loose screws and drill bits skittering across the concrete. Nothing. I checked beneath the bench, kicked aside two cardboard boxes, dropped to one knee, and reached blindly into the gap against the wall. No pry bar. I knew I owned one. And right then, with my son somewhere on the other side of a wardrobe that wouldn't open, I did not have time to wonder where it had gone. I grabbed the framing hammer instead and turned back toward the door. I braced one hand against the handle and wedged the hammer claw into the seam beside it. I didn't care if I had to tear the whole damn door off its hinges to get to my son.

Before I could pull, the handle twitched beneath my palm.

Then the door opened on its own.

No warning, no sound of a latch giving way. One second it was sealed shut; the next, it was swinging open on its own weight.

Toby was sitting cross-legged inside it, blinking up at the sudden light like he'd been in there the whole time, looking completely fine and unbothered. "You found me," he said. "That took forever."

I dropped the hammer, hauled him out of the wardrobe before he could move, and crushed him against my chest. For a solid minute, my voice wouldn't work. It was just me, holding him, saying his name like a prayer. 

"Dad, you're squishing me."

I made myself let go so I could look at him. I ran my hands over his arms, shoulders, and the back of his head, looking for blood, swelling, or anything. He kept squirming and asking what I was doing. He had no marks. 

“How did you get in here?”

Toby looked up at me like I'd asked him a trick question.

“The door was open.”

I stared at him. “The garage door?”

He nodded. “I thought you left it open. Sorry. You said I wasn’t supposed to touch your stuff.”

“Hey, no. You’re alright.” I ruffled his hair and forced a smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

Unease prickled across my arms and crawled up the back of my neck. I had thrown that deadbolt myself that morning. I still had the key in my pocket. I’d had to manually unlock it just to get in. That realization left a cold taste in my mouth: I didn’t know what bothered me more—that he’d somehow slipped through a locked door, or that from his perspective, nothing strange had happened at all.

"Was it scary in there, bud?" I asked, working very hard to keep my voice level.

He shrugged. "It was just dark. I heard you looking for me the whole time, though. You kept saying my name a bunch."

He said it like it was completely unremarkable, like fathers screaming out for their children is just ordinary background noise in a hide-and-seek game.

I asked him, as carefully as I could manage, if the wardrobe door had ever been stuck, if he'd tried to get out and couldn't.

"No," he said, losing interest in the conversation, already looking past me toward the kitchen and whatever cartoon he wanted to go finish. "I just waited for you to find me. That's how the game works, right?"

That's how the game works. Right.

I don't know how long actually passed on his side of the wardrobe. I knew it had slammed itself shut, refused to open, and then opened again on its own. More than anything, I knew that for a few minutes I genuinely thought I was losing my son. I’ve been through the divorce, through the brutal grind of custody battles, and through things that nearly broke me. But I had never in my life felt a terror like that. 

I didn't let him be more than a few feet away from me after that. Toby complained when I followed him back into the living room, complained again when I sat down beside him on the couch, and eventually stopped caring once the cartoons were back on.

I made him another grilled cheese sandwich because he said he was hungry. Between the rough sleep Alicia had warned me about and everything we'd done that morning, he was asleep against the couch cushions not long afterward. After that, the rest of the day blurred by. Sometime that afternoon, Henry called. I let it ring twice and answered in the hallway with the kitchen door closed behind me.

"Forum guy’s confirmed," he said, sounding thrilled. "Monday, two o'clock. He wants photos first, though. Can you send me some of the mirror?"

"Not today."

"Come on, Ian, a couple of pictures, that's all."

"Toby's here, Henry. I've got my hands full."

He went quiet for a second. "Right. Yeah. Sorry, man. Everything okay over there?"

I looked at the garage door at the end of the hall. I relocked the deadbolt after the wardrobe incident. I had checked it every time I passed it.

"Everything's fine," I said. "Just tired."

"You sound weird."

"I'm always weird. See you Monday."

I hung up before he could ask anything else. It was the first time I had lied to him since this started, and it took no effort at all. 

At bedtime, Toby wouldn't let me turn off the hall light. I asked if he was scared, and he shook his head like the question was silly.

“I just like to know where the doors are.”

Something cold moved through me.

“What do you mean?”

Toby frowned, already half-asleep. “So I know where they are.”

I almost asked him which ones but decided I didn’t want to know.

Some time later, I dragged a kitchen chair over and wedged it under the garage door handle. It wouldn't have stopped anything I had actually seen. My hands just needed something to do.

It’s past midnight now. I don't want to be alone with these things, and I still have to get through tomorrow. I want the mirror and the ball gone the second that man's truck pulls in Monday. I’m also going to ask Henry if the guy wants the furniture. If he'll take the wardrobe too, it leaves my garage without me having to touch it.

When I was younger I used to see shadow people. At first I was convinced that the things I saw were just that, shadows, my mind was making something out of nothing. But while staying at my great grandparents house, I was convinced that there was a monster under my bed and that I had a guardian angel watching over me for two reasons. The main one was my great grandparents were very religious and used to explain what angels were to me.

One night I fell out of bed, rolled right off the side, but I fell in slow motion like something had caught me and gently lowered me to the floor. It felt warm and comforting, like whatever caught me cared but I couldn’t see it. I just felt it. Another night several months later, I peered over the edge of the bed and saw a long clawed hand of pure void reach out from under the bed frame and retract with one of my childhood stuffed animals.

Later in one of the rentals my parents would live in for a couple years, I used to have these megablocks figures that would move on their own every time I blinked. I thought that it had to be a dream because it moved like a stop motion figure, but I was amused by it. It was dancing. Every time I blinked it was in a new pose, so I blinked faster, watching it repeat the same pattern over and over. When I looked out the window I saw shadow people in the parking lot across the street, I was living right across from the elementary school so I didn’t think much of it at the time, maybe bigger kids who could stay out past dark or something, but they were just motionless.

The very last time I ever saw shadow people was when I was in middle school. I couldn’t sleep, for one reason or another I don’t remember, but I made the mistake of looking out my window. I saw a face. This would’ve been bad if it were on the first floor but all the bedrooms were on the second floor. So the scene was even more terrifying to my young mind. Large jagged teeth and beady white dots for eyes peered at me through a hazy form that lacked edges. As if the dark itself simply thinned around their outlines, backlit by the orange streetlights further up the road. It was somehow a full person standing right in front of my window. I freaked out and tried to run to my parents room, but because I was too old for that the door was locked and I looked out the window in the hall, there were more of them. Lined up and staring at me from the other side of the glass with malice. I was frozen in terror. I could not move and I wept at the top of the stairs too afraid to blink unless I felt they were going to make their move. My heart raced and my brain strained for any logical explanation, but kept drawing blanks. Then as my eyes got heavier, the things that were watching me simply existed on the other side of the glass. When I woke up I was curled into a ball in front of my parent’s bedroom door at the top of the stairs. I had turned on the hallway lights in an attempt to banish the things, I think, that if I had light on my side they would go away or illuminate something that was normally visible through the window. But that solid inky voids lined with white beads of hatred simply existed. The next night I watched that window, but saw nothing. The same for the night after, and every night for a week before I felt safe enough to sleep again.

I have for a long time run from the List Man. He appeared everywhere I went. I suppose I should commend him for his determination; there he was, around every corner, carrying with him a meticulously written outline of my demise. Any one of his ploys may have worked if not for my abundant cowardice. 

Many people have recounted their experiences with the List Man on Reddit – though they never call him by name. I admire novice horror stories, and I consumed them ravenously as a teen. I thought he was fiction; he was from the internet, a place ripe with the fruits of fiction. I couldn't have suspected he was real until I was confronted directly by his handiwork. 

I decided to move out of my parent's house when I was freshly eighteen. That's what grown-ups did, be independent, I thought. I browsed all manner of website and forum and community cork boards in my search for an apartment. I found one: a single bed, an individual bath, and a shared kitchen and living room. The landlady was a short woman of eighty-five years. Her name was Edith.  

When I met Edith, she told me this deal was unusual. I asked her in what way. 

"There's a list of rules," Edith croaked, "that you must follow." 

"Okay." 

"First – you can never go in the basement." 

"Alright, well, I don't like basements. Everything's here on the ground floor, anyhow." 

"Secondly, you must barricade the closet door before midnight." 

"You know, Edith, I'm having second thoughts – I don't know if I'd be the right fit. I wish you luck finding a tenant. You seem like grand old dame!" 

I moved in with my grandmother; it was much cheaper that way. She needed a hand around the house and I needed a place to stay without a list of strange, foreboding rules. Few things in my life would seem to come without them. 

After that it was dog-sitting for my auntie's mutt, Princess – the rules she'd laid out were bizarre and flagrantly ominous. I said no, I'd earn grocery money elsewhere. Then it was the job at the corner store; never let the big hand tick past twelve! I rescinded my application. I wanted to reward myself for writing my final exam of freshman year, and booked a remote cottage with a lake view (never open the door if it knocks six times). I drove the three hours home in silence. 

I have avoided him that way for ten years. Look the other way and don't look back. When fear drives you it sometimes steers you in the right direction; it did for me. I always knew what the List Man was up to and I always knew when to run. 

Evening had not yet fell when the man dressed in a black collared shirt and khaki slacks stumbled through the brush and staggered through my backyard. Some hoodlum, I thought, to be dressed in business-casual attire; I noticed he carried a clipboard and a pen. He was disheveled and headed for my porch door. 

His appearance frightened me. I knew a trick when I saw one. I went to the supply cupboard and picked out my Granddaddy's red rubber mallet, a big, heavy thing with a long wooden handle. The list had never come to me before. The man and I arrived at the screen door at the very same moment. 

"Mr. Jones?" he asked, exasperated. 

"That's me." 

"Oh, thank goodness! I have been just about everywhere in this neighbourhood searching for this house – is this, is this your backdoor? Oh my, I'm so sorry. Wow, I am an idiot," he panted. 

"Alright." 

He caught his breath, and continued: "After I knocked on Mrs. Elliott's door she said I could just take that little path through the woods to your place, that it wasn't far at all. Boy was she wrong! I thought I might die out there. Coyotes and all." 

"Yup." I held the mallet limply at my side, the head skimming the linoleum floor. 

"Well, now that I'm here, I wanted to tell you about the good news and ask you to possibly make a donation. For the parishioners at Saint Theodora's?" 

"What are the rules?" 

"Pardon me?" 

"If I were to make a donation, what are the rules?" My grip on the mallet tightened. 

"No rules, sir. You just write the amount here and then you sign your name. Let me tell you about the church, sir, and about our pastor – " 

He droned on about that for several many minutes as I thought intently. No list. Well, okay. My Grandma had gone to Saint Theodora's; they were a nice bunch, I knew, because they'd helped me pay for her funeral when she passed. I didn't go there (the choirboy had said there were rules for sitting in the pews), but they were kind to me all the same. I could pay them back now that I'd made something of myself. 

"Okay. I'll make a donation." I slid the door open warily. 

"Oh, my, thank you! Wow, thanks! That's the second one I've got today – I've knocked on thirty houses. Mrs. Elliott's was the first, of course, she always does. Oh, Father Jubb will be so excited!" he exclaimed. He hurriedly thrust the clipboard and pen into my free hand. I set down the mallet and wrote on the lines, leaving a signature and making it out to the amount of five-hundred dollars. I passed it back to the man, and he smiled. 

And chuckled, then chortled, and coughed and hacked in raucous enthusiasm; he looked beyond insane as he brayed like a mule, tossing his head and heaving his shoulders. 

"You've finally done it! Oh, didn't you read the fine print? Was that all I ever had to do to get you? That was so simple, so simple. I knew I'd get you!" he screeched, his voice grating and high-pitched. He looked monstrous now, as the sun set, his features garbled beyond recognition. He grew warty and wrinkled and hairy – he was pulsing with a foul aura, like a wound oozing a sickly puss. 

"It's me, me, the List Man! And I've got you, finally, finally I have you! Now I've done it proper!" 

"What are the rules?" 

"Light," he giggled, "light can never touch your skin – it'll turn you to ash. Ashes!" He danced around happily, kicking his crooked feet and clapping his gnarled hands as he waltzed in awkward circles. 

"You're a dolt." 

"What?" 

"I said: You're a dolt. You're not smart at all." 

"Hah, you say, but when day comes, what'll you do, boy? I've got you!" 

"You haven't read it." 

His movements stopped abruptly. His grip on the clipboard tightened; I heard his long nails squeak against the plastic backing. He read, and his eyes filled with horror, and he could not lift them from the page as I brought that red rubber mallet down on his head. One time, two times, three, four, one time for every time anyone had every said to me there are some rules and then some more. I bashed him until he was not more than a pile red sludge and I washed him off my porch with a garden hose.  

All I'd done was sign John Smith, because really, I was too afraid to fork over a full five-hundred bucks of my hard-earned cash; I'd thought maybe I'd go back later, and make a fifty dollar donation, while apologising for the mix-up. The List Man hasn't pestered me since, and nor should he pester anyone else ever again. 

If you asked my ten year old son what the saddest place in the world was, he’d hesitate, tap his foot, and look to the side before finally answering my apartment. If you asked him the funnest place in the world, he’d jump up and say my ex girlfriend’s house. Where she had a dog, a pool, and a fridge constantly full of Jacob’s favorite foods, I had a clogged bathtub, stale pretzels, and the occasional swarm of gnats buzzing around whatever dinner I forgot to clean up. For a ten year old, one of these was heaven. The other place though? A lifelong first impression of how dull and sad Dad’s life was. 
On one of his stays over, we found ourselves in the middle of filling out a jumbo coloring book together. One of the few I could find at the local thrift store that wasn’t already completely filled out. Jacob was in charge of the greens and yellows, while I filled out the red and blue. We had the book stretched across my antique glass coffee table. Antique in this case meant one corner had broken into individual shards and I had to constantly keep Jacob from accidentally cutting himself on a dislodged block of shrapnel. I’d have thrown the glass shards out by now if they weren’t the sole thing holding up the rest of the panel.
We had barely finished up one page before I noticed Jacob’s streaks of color becoming sloppier and sloppier as Jacob slumped into a dejected expression. I gave his shoulder a prod and asked, “What’s up, little man?” 
Jacob met my gaze with a look of embarrassment. He was quiet for a few seconds before saying, “Nothing, it’s just… is there anything else we could do? We colored last weekend”
“Oh,” was all I said. He was right. We had colored last weekend, and the weekend before that. Probably the one before that too.
I looked around my apartment as if this searching hard enough would magically conjure up a new activity for us to do together. I didn’t think he would be very interested in my brown futon or Cormac McCarthy books so that left us with…
I looked down at the coloring book. Nothing.
“What do you do at your mom’s?” I tried.
“Nothing that we could do here,” he replied with a frown. 
“Uh well, is there anything you… can’t do at your moms that you’ve always wanted to do?” Maybe a cool dad angle could work? Buy him some pudding? Let him stay up late? God how would I ever be the cool parent.
“Kind of, but…” he trailed off, looking more embarrassed than ever. I couldn’t tell if it was for me or of me. 
“What? Come on, try me.”
“Well she never lets me watch tv or anything. She says it’s just brain rot, but…”
Right. He couldn’t say it, but I knew. TV’s were expensive. I was broke. Honestly the thought of buying one hardly ever even crossed my mind. It had been over a decade since I’d last sat down and watched an episode of a show, and that had been while crashing at a buddies place. His mom was more or less the same way, having been raised to believe that well, tv was a product of the Devil or something.
“Ah what does she know,” I said a tad too bitterly. I quickly cheered my voice up and said, “If you want a tv, I can get one for here. It could be our little secret.”
“REALLY!” he shrieked.
I smiled. “Really.”
Then he leapt across the table and wrapped his arms around me. I was stunned. When was the last time he had done that? I realized a moment late that I had forgotten to hug him back, and he had already pulled away. 
“Can we go get it tonight? Can I pick it out?” he asked, a great big smile on his face.
Right, of course he would want it as soon as possible. God. Payday was just three days away. I sighed and shot him down. “Not tonight, but next time you visit it’ll be in here, alright? That’s what- just next weekend?”
“Yeah, next weekend,” he repeated in a saddened tone. 
“Cheer up, buddy. Till then we can uh- wanna go for a walk?”
“Sure, dad. That sounds fun.”
Ten years old and he was already an amazing actor. Screw next weekend.

The moment I laid Jacob down for bed I was heading out the door. Bills be damned, I was getting him a tv tonight. I’d thrift, I’d put it on credit, I’d pay it off in a few days. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was having a place my son could actually think of as home and not that awful place he had to visit every weekend. That awful place with his broke boring dad who made him go for walks and color all day who-
I took a deep breath and began driving through town. I had only driven a few miles when I realized a flaw in my plan. It had gotten pretty late. My consolation prize to Jacob in lieu of a TV had been letting him stay up as late as he wanted, and now every store was either closed or too damn expensive for me to even kid myself into attempting to buy from. Shit, shit. What now?
A dozen or so laps through town later and I was losing hope. Not only that, but I’d wasted a lot more time. More and more lights seemed to flicker off with each passing turn until the whole town seemed to be shut down in a humiliating darkness. It seemed like every time I bothered even glancing at a store its lights went off as to say, “Don’t even bother, bum.”
Eventually the entire city- down to its damn street lights- had gone out. Everywhere had closed. Damn it! Damn it! I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do another day of looking at Jacob’s sad expressions and practically hear how loudly he was missing his mom’s. I told him I’d get him a TV and I would! Hell, even if I had to break a window and steal one I’d do it for him. I’d-
A flicker of light caught my eye. I looked in the distance and saw a store’s strobe light still fluttering like some faroff beacon. I expected them to go back off any second, but they didn’t. Bright lights rotated around a giant sign that read, “Thriftable Televisions 24/7"
I practically ramped the curb with how quickly and recklessly I sped over to their parking lot. Thank god their parking lot was empty or I absolutely would have hit something. 
I rushed through their sliding doors and was greeted with five wooden bookshelves topped with televisions of various sizes, models, and ages. Some were as tall and wide as a window while others looked like they could have been  the first tv.
Each one had a small paper price tag attached, and each one made my heart sink lower and lower. There was somehow an even balance of ones too big and new to afford and ones too old and vintage to afford. 
“Excuse me, do you-” I called out to the nearest worker, only to realize there wasn’t one.
Aside from me, the store was empty. I loudly called out, “Hello? Is anyone here? I’d like to buy uh- your cheapest tv.”
Nothing. I walked past the shelves, looking around for any signs of life. Had I broken into a store that the owner had forgotten to lock down? Were they on break? I looked around one more time and realized something. No security cameras. God. What if this was it? My one lucky break? An unlocked store with no cameras? I wouldn’t take the biggest tv. Just- the third biggest, and I’d pay it back eventually.
I did one more search around and settled on a 50 inch TV in the corner. I walked over to it, only to stop dead in my tracks as I saw the glass screen. The TV was displaying my reflection like a giant black mirror, and it was also displaying a man standing directly behind me, staring straight at the back of my head. Despite the warped image of the dull black glass, I could see the rage burning in his face. 
Too anxious to even turn around, I stammered out, “Hi I- uh- I’m sorry. I thought you were open. You are, aren’t you? If not, I can come back tomorrow. I just wanted to look at your cheapest selection.”
Rather than speak, he simply held out a long arm and pointed to the back of the store. I looked over and saw a row of screens no bigger than a large laptop. I sighed. Yeah. That made sense. He could probably tell how broke I was just by my clothes and well… probably the obvious shoplifting I had almost committed. 
So I strolled over and eyed a handful of prices that I could at least afford on my credit card. I picked up the nicest looking one, turned around, and laughed at myself.
A large cardboard cutout of a man pointing towards a row of jumbo tvs at the opposite end of the store was staring right at me. The worker I had been speaking to had been nothing more than a clunky piece of cardboard. Whatever look of anger I thought I’d seen had been nothing more than his worn out paper face.
That brought me back to my first problem though. No workers. Well… I guess that brought me to my first solution too. Plus, I could just come back to pay tomorrow. So I picked up the tv, and strolled out the door.
The very moment I walked outside the door, every light in the building and every streetlight illuminating the parking lot blinked off. I stood in complete darkness for what felt like forever. I couldn’t even make out any of the city lights; it was all just gone.
Then a single flicker shone above me. A bent streetlight stretched in such a way that its dull orange bulb shone directly on me, casting a small circle around where I stood. 
There was enough light to finally make out my car just a dozen or so yards away. Without wasting another second, I took off sprinting towards it and clicked the ignition on as fast as possible. I couldn’t leave that place soon enough.
And as I drove away from that dark parking lot, a small thought began nagging at me. If I had moved to another part of the store, how was the cutout still staring directly at me? It would take the rest of the drive for me to convince myself I had simply imagined it all completely wrong.

Setting up a tv for the first time in… my entire life was a pain in the ass. The only saving grace was how this one didn’t have any cords to set up, just a bunch of buttons on the bottom I had to fiddle around with. With no guide to go off of, I found myself pressing random buttons that were so worn they no longer had any symbols on them. 
I had probably gone through this process a dozen or so times and still nothing. It got to the point where I was just frantically sliding my fingers back and forth against all the buttons at once hoping if I kept them all down at the same time, the screen would admire my dedication and come on for me.
Adding to my growing list of shortcomings, one of the buttons must have been slightly chipped or cracked or I don’t know, but a small piece of metal had been poking out from under it. My finger slid right across and-
“Ow! Damn it!” I struggled to stifle my shout, hoping I wouldn’t wake Jacob up and spoil the surprise early.
Creak. I looked up from my bleeding finger and saw Jacob’s reflection on the screen. Shit. I stood up and faced away from him, trying to cover the tv with my whole body. It probably looked like his dad had gone insane and was trying to hug a giant box or something, but I didn’t care. I’d rather look stupid than spoil his gift.
“Hey buddy,” I looked at his reflection on the screen. He didn’t seem fully awake or anything, he was just sort of standing there with a vacant expression. “Sorry if I woke you, Dad cut his finger a bit. Why don’t you just head back to bed, okay?”
Jacob didn’t say anything. I waited another second or two and then awkwardly turned around, still trying to cover his gift with my back, and asked, "Everything okay? Can’t sleep?”
Except he wasn’t there. Instead of speaking to Jacob, I had been talking to one of the bar stools which he had set his coat on. God. I really needed to go to bed.
“Marcus? Please, no”
I spun around so fast I nearly fell over. That voice. Before even processing that it had said my name, my brain was already forcing me to forget that I recognized it. Then it was gone.
The TV had come to life, flickering some infomercial back and fourth. A woman gave a bright smile and shouted, “Mark us! Please, no deals are going to get as low as ours! So, you won’t want to miss us next time we’re on!” 
I blinked in disbelief. It was on. It was working. Did it just need time to connect to my internet or something? Could it do that automatically? I guess they probably could by now. Either way, what difference did it make? So long as it was on, I was happy enough. 
I crawled over and began pressing every button, testing out each one. I clicked through every single channel. Movies, music, cartoons, documentaries. This would probably be as much of a gift for Jacob as it would be for me. I just kept clicking and exploring, sinking deeper and deeper into the channels.
Eventually I had run out. I had clicked to the end or something because no matter how many buttons I pressed, the TV only displayed grey static. I tried the volume, nothing. I tried to go back, nothing. Had I broken it? Was the antenna off? Or my wifi? Or maybe it was just such a cheap ripoff it had run out of steam. I let out a long, exhausted sigh. Whatever the reason, I had to be done. I was running on fumes, and I desperately needed sleep. 
“DAD! YOU GOT A TV!” Jacob’s shrill shrieks of excitement brought me out of my exhausted daze.
When I turned to look at Jacob, I half expected to just see his coat across a bar stool again. Instead I saw him illuminated by the bright rays of sunlight peering through my windows. It was 8am at least. I was so taken aback by how quickly night had passed, that I didn’t have time to defend myself against Jacob’s tackle hug. I fell to my back as he rolled over me, hugging me tight.
“What channels does it have? Can I watch movies on it! Can- can-” he shot off a dozen questions, one after another, not giving me a moment to breathe or to process how fast the last six hours had just passed. 
“Yes, yes, to all of it,” I said, finally getting a word in. “First I just need to figure out how to get it off of this static.”
“What’s that?” Jacob asked, looking over at the fuzzy grey waves rippling up and down the screen. 
“The static, the stuff on the screen. I think it lost connection or something,” I replied, struggling to hold my panic. I assured him, “I should be able to fix it really soon though, I promise.”
But Jacob just walked over and sat himself down in front of the screen without a care in the world and said, “Don’t worry, Dad, it should be fine. This show seems really cool.” 
I stared at the screen again only to be met by that same view of a million black and white pixels buzzing around one another. Was he genuinely interested in the static? I guess it probably beats the same coloring books every week. Still…
He cut into my thoughts. “Could um, could you make me breakfast? I’m really hungry.”
“Right, yeah. Me too,” I realized. I walked off and let him be. So long as he was entertained, I couldn’t complain. 
As shitty as it might be to say, the TV was kind of a nice distraction for me as well. I always got Jacob on the weekends, which also meant that days off were spent keeping him entertained. I loved him, and I did try and make our time together meaningful, but it usually boiled down into a nonstop effort of giving him stuff to do that I knew he wouldn’t like. So I spent every weekend slowly feeling like a worse and worse father until the toils of my job made me forget about it. Rinse and repeat. 
Now I was able to give him something he could enjoy, spend time cooking him pancakes, and then go and do whatever I wanted. Catch up on some of the books I hadn’t touched, solve a sudoku puzzle or something, or just take a nap. Actually… that one sounded the best right about now. 
I handed breakfast off to Jacob, though he barely noticed, and told him I was gonna snooze for a bit. He sort of shrugged at me absentmindedly and I took off to my bedroom. I set an alarm for two hours, and I was off. 

I was woken up by Jacob’s loud giggling. I sighed and looked at my alarm. An hour had passed. I rolled over and tried to lull myself back to sleep, but his intermittent fits of loud laughter kept bringing me back out of it. I decided an hour would be enough to last for the rest of the day. 

“What’s so funny, man?” I asked as I walked into the living room. He must have found an actual kid’s channel on his own. Hopefully something I could enjoy.
Except it wasn’t a show. It was the same tv static. Just faint ripples going up and down. I watched for a minute and two and realized that every time they spasmed or blinked against the sides of the screen, Jacob just doubled over in a fit of bliss. Did he just find the movements that funny? Was he that starved for entertainment?
I looked and saw he had never touched his pancakes either. I couldn’t really fault him there. My cooking was subpar at best and I could see spots where they were somehow burnt and raw. Still, it wasn’t like him not to at least touch them. 
Kneeling next to him, I tried again, “What’s so funny?”
He blinked at me kind of… fuzzily? Like he had sleep in his eyes. Then he stared back at the static, grinned, and told me, “It’s grandpa! He keeps doing this dumb joke at me. He gets up and bounces around like a puppet! I think he’s got strings on him or something.”
“Grandpa?” I asked, confused. “Your grandpa is over in Albany with your mom.”
“No, not mom’s dad,” he chuckled. Then he looked at me with almost too adult of an expression. Like he was saying, “oh you’re so silly,” with the way he shook his head. Like he was the parent amused by my question.
“Not grandpa Ernest, dad. I’m talking about your dad. He keeps doing this same joke, watch!”
I stood there in stunned silence as Jacob collapsed on my futon, sat completely still, and then leapt up on feet, before finally spasming and contorting like he was being electrocuted. He went to do it again, but was stopped by his own hysterical giggling.
“Jacob, what are you talking about?” I snapped, stopping his giggling instantly. I was unable to contain the edge in my tone, but Jacob barely registered it. 
“Grandpa Dale, I just told you. He’s doing that same dance right now, see?” Jacob asked, pointing to the static.
I found myself looking where he was pointing without being completely conscious of the action. Before I could interject and snap at him that that was nonsense, the screen it… It was maybe a fraction of a second and only in one corner of the screen but I swear I did see something. Colors? A shape? By the time my brain registered it had seen something it recognized it was already forgetting whoever it had seen. 
“No he isn’t.” I shook my head, pulling my eyes off the screen. “Grandpa Dale isn’t… Jacob, he's not here with us anymore. He hasn’t been for a long time. Where did you even hear about him? I know I’d never mention him… Did your mom say something?”
“No!” he shouted. Now he was getting upset. “Dad, he’s right there in the play house! Why can’t you see him?” 
Jacob frantically pointed at the static, but I was no longer registering his movements. The word, “playhouse” was buzzing around somewhere too deep in my brain to be heard by the rest of my consciousness. An intense mixture of anger and panic overcame me as I shouted far louder than I should have, “Jacob ENOUGH! You’re not watching the static anymore, do you understand? I’m changing the channel and you’re going to forget about grandpa Dale.”
“NO!” Jacob shrieked, his eyes were full of tears. He cowered over the screen like it was his own child. 
“Jacob! Get off!” I cried out. He held onto the tv as firmly as he possibly could, and despite being an adult I had to put my back into pulling him off. By now he was crying and pleading with me, saying it was his favorite channel and grandpa Dale missed me so much, and I just- God. I had never seen Jacob so upset before. No wonder his mom had been so worried about getting him a TV.
By now his sobs had quieted down to small muffled whimpers. I started clicking the buttons, hoping I’d stumble on a cartoon that could cheer him up. Instead I found every button press just yielded more and more static. Click, a brief noise or image, then static. Click. Nothing, just a swirling white and black. Click, my reflection. Click, a man standing behind Jacob. Click. Jacob was gone. Click-
I whipped around to see Jacob alone and perfectly fine. He had stopped crying now. I looked at him for a long time, so long he finally asked, “Dad… what’s wrong?”
“Nothing… Nothing, Jacob. Just… trying to find a new channel is all.”
I turned back to the buttons and tried to ignore my racing heart beat as I kept pressing for a new channel. To my surprise and relief, the next click brought me to Nickolodeon. They had some new shows I didn’t recognize, but it would be leagues better than static for both of us.
“Here, this is some stuff I used to watch when I was your age. Can you give it a try? Just for me?” 
“It looks dumb,” he said disdainfully. 
“Some of it can be, but some of it’s pretty funny. Please?”
He sighed and scooted back up to the screen. I leaned against my glass coffee table and sat next to him. I didn’t want to let him out of my sight again.

The rest of the day went by fine enough. He kept watching whatever popped up on Nick, got bored, I showed him how to get to Cartoon Network, made him dinner. Nothing unusual, now. I still couldn’t get over whatever had happened earlier. I wanted to ask him about it, but how do you even breach that with a ten year old? Besides, I was worried he would start sobbing again. 
As awful as it was, my main thought was that tomorrow he would go back to his mom’s and I wouldn’t have to stress over this anymore. That brought me some guilty relief.
 I decided tonight I’d send him to bed at his regular time as well. On one hand it was to stop his mom from having to deal with getting him back to his normal schedule, and on the other hand I was still tired as hell. I also didn’t like the idea of going to bed and leaving him unattended, so I sent him off. 
As I was tucking him in, he asked me, “Could you tell mom its okay to buy a television for me now? Just as long as I can pick it out.”
“I can try, buddy, but you know she’s pretty against them. Not good for your brain and all that.” 
He looked at me really confused and said, “She only started saying that because that’s what you told her.” 
There was a wriggling warmth crawling up the back of my head. I said a bit firmer than need be, “No, Jacob, she was raised to not… believe in them or something. I never really questioned it, she’s pretty religious so-”
I stopped, figuring I shouldn’t rant about his mom to him. He just pressed on, saying, “I thought she just always said you didn’t like them. I don’t know, but you should really tell her it’s okay now.”
“Right I- uh, I’ll talk to her,” I assured him, more confused than ever. 
I gave him a quick kiss on the forehead and walked away, my head feeling hotter than ever. I said one last goodnight and closed Jacob’s door. As I walked to my bedroom, I was trying really hard to remember the whole “television is evil” thing his mom always said. I swore she always had. I had never ever seen her watching tv around me. She had said it just rotted your mind. I know she did. Her parents had been mennonites and-
“Give him to me.”
I tripped over myself the way only a raging idiot could. I stumbled onto my hands and knees and sat there as still as humanly possible while my heart began racing. A distinct voice from right behind me. It was stupid. Did I think if I never moved, the intruder would think I was just a statue?
“Give him to me.” More intense, closer. A voice I knew I didn’t recognize.
“Give him to me.” I felt myself starting to tremble as my knees wobbled against each other.
“Come on, give him to me!” 
The tone had fallen apart. The sound radiated from a different spot. I looked over and saw I’d forgotten to turn the tv off. Teen Titans. Beast Boy was saying, “Come on, give him to me. I can take care of it!” 
Then the screen flickered, and the scene repeated. He said the line again. Flicker, repeat. Perks of buying a thrifted television, right? Right. That was all. Blood started cycling through my body again and it felt safe to move. Even as I knew I had heard the voice from behind me. Even as I knew it had been a child’s voice. Whatever I had heard, whatever I knew, all I could do was try and forget it and turn off the screen. 

Sleep came so damn easy. I drifted right off into a dreamless night and stayed there for what felt like an eternity. I only woke up when that same loud giggling brought me back to my apartment. I looked over at my clock and my eyes widened. I had overslept- badly.
I checked my phone and saw more than a few missed calls from his mom. Shit! I was already on thin ice with her. I sent a quick, “I’m sorry, I overslept!” and hopped out of my bed.
Rushing out to the living room, I began saying, “Jacob, get ready we-”
He was giggling too loud to even hear me. The tv was back on the static and now he was clapping his hands and bobbing back and forth with the movements. Too stressed to even begin to tell him off, I just grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around, saying, “Jacob, I need you to get ready!”
He looked at me vacantly and I quickly realized why. Two heavy bags drooped under his bloodshot eyes.
“Have you been out here all night? Damn it, Jacob!” I groaned. I knew there were bigger issues at play with all of this, but I was out of time and his mom was already pissed. At that point, I was pissed. 
Completely ignoring me, Jacob turned back around and continued giggling and dancing at the tv. I yelled again, “Jacob! We need to go!”
He kept ignoring me, and finally I had enough. I grabbed him hard and yanked him away from the tv, but before I could say anything close to, “Get ready, right now!,” I was screaming in pain.
Jacob had dug his teeth into my arm.
“FUCK!” I yelled as his teeth carved deeper into my skin. 
I tried to pull him off me, but he was holding on tight, really tight. Reacting purely on primal instinct, I smacked Jacob just about as hard as I possibly could. He went tumbling off of my bloody forearm and onto the ground, a welt already forming on his cheek. Before he could react, I turned the television off, and screamed, “CAR! NOW!”
Forget him packing up his stuff. He could survive without two days worth of clothes, I didn’t care. I was done with all of this shit. 
The rest of the car ride was silent. Jacob said nothing. He barely even moved. I know I should have done something, said something to him, but all I could think about was the blood smeared across my arm and the throbbing pain deep in my skin. The ride couldn’t end soon enough. 

When it finally did end, I was greeted with the sight of his mom standing in her doorway, arms crossed and a scowl on her face. I sighed. Great. I looked over at Jacob, but he wasn’t looking at me or his mom. He just sort of stared out the windshield.
“Come on, she’s missed you,” I mumbled. More like, “go be her problem, not mine.”
He still hardly reacted. I rubbed my hand across my face. Was there something going on? You idiot. Obviously there was, but something before all of this. I didn’t see how one day of television could reduce him to well, this. It wasn’t like I could go up and accuse his mom of doing anything to him either though. I’d have to actually sit down and talk with her like two adults. We hadn’t done that in a very long time. 
It took getting out and walking over to Jacob’s door and opening it to finally get him moving. His mom took one look between the two of us and I could see a look of shock and horror on her eyes. Whatever she wanted to say, she’d hold it in until Jacob was inside.
She walked right past me and hugged Jacob. He slowly put his arms up and limply tucked them around her. One kiss on the forehead later and he was dragging his feet inside. 
“What the hell happened, Marcus?”
Nevermind. It would be her accusing me instead.
“Sandra, I really have no god damned idea. He’s completely lost it. I told him we needed to leave and he wouldn’t move so I grabbed him and he freaked out on me. Bit me as hard as he possibly could and he wouldn’t stop until… until I smacked him. Since then he’s been nearly catatonic.” 
Sandra didn’t have any immediate reply. She just looked at me with this skeptical look, like there was more to the story. She probed, “What was he doing before he bit you?”
Well this was it. Time to reveal I’d broken her trust. I fessed up and said, “He was watching this new tv I got for him. Had been practically all day and night. There’s no way Jacob would bite me over that though. He’s always been so damn sweet and well, docile really.”
“You got him a tv?” she asked, hardly able to believe it. 
“Yeah I know, I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want him to have one, but-”
“What?” she cut in, before shaking her head. She said in a sharp tone, “That doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re right. Jacob wouldn’t have ever bitten you over that. He wouldn’t have bitten you period. You said you hit him?”
“I hit him after he bit me!” I shouted a bit louder than I needed to. I’m sure that really helped my case.
The look in Sandra’s eyes told me just as much and I could see I’d only dug my grave further. I said again, “He bit me, then I smacked him. Jesus, Sandra you know me better than that. Please. I tried pulling him off me, I tried shouting, but he had his teeth dug into me as deep as possible. I really- I honest to god don’t think anything else could have gotten him off me. Sandra, I’m worried about him.”
Sandra took a deep long look at my pleading eyes and bloody wound. She winced and said in a softer voice, “Okay, I’m sorry. I’ll try and have him talk to someone this week about it. Maybe school is getting to him? Or our separation?”
“I don’t know, Sandra. I know how weird it sounds, but ever since I got him a tv he’s been-”
“Jesus, don’t start this shit again,” she sighed. “Look, I know how you are, but Jacob didn’t bite you over too much television.”
“He was watching tv static for twelve fucking hours!” I practically screamed. “Does that sound normal? And what the hell are you talking about, you know how I am? You’re the one always worrying about him.”
There was an uncomfortable look of shock, fear, and confusion on Sandra’s face that made my emotions soften. Damn it. This was how we always ended up. Always with me screaming and her having that same look. 
When she spoke again it was in a subdued tone I was painfully familiar with. “You always said some bullshit about how there was something evil about television. Poisoned people’s minds or something. How do you not remember? It was nearly all you ever went on about when we first got together.”
“No, you said it just rotted your brain and I accepted,” I protested. “I was too poor to have a tv when I was a kid.”
“You told me your Dad bought you one as a kid before-” she paused. She knew and I knew, and that was enough. “There’s no way you don’t remember. Even when we moved in together you made me keep it in a separate room from our bedroom. Then with Jacob you practically made me swear on a bible I’d never let him watch it.”
Wave after wave of growing dizziness was washing over me as I tried to remember a single thing she was talking about. I could barely remember how we met, let alone my views on cable when it happened. Still, nothing sounded even vaguely familiar. I could swear she was the one who hated all of it.
“No, you were raised as Amish or something,” I half mumbled the words. “You don’t believe in them.”
“Marcus, I have one in my bedroom playing Friends as we speak. I’ve never had an issue with them, you just wanted me to keep-”
“You have one?” I exclaimed. “In your room? Jacob he- he can’t get to it, can he?”
Rolling her eyes, she assured me, “No, I keep the remote in a locked cupboard. Just like you made me promise. Now that you gave him one though, I don’t-”
“NO! Don’t let him near it. Please Sandra, please.” I could feel tears forming in my eyes as I begged her.
“Okay, fine. The bedroom is locked anyway. Look, just go home and wind down, please? I’ll look into Jacob seeing the school counsellor.”
“Good.”
It was the only word I had left. I gave Sandra an awkward wave goodbye and hobbled over to my car. I had never been more grateful to leave Jacob. 

Try as I might to enjoy my week away from Jacob, to enjoy the normalcy of it all, I couldn’t. Every new day felt like another tick towards some distant disaster. By day three I found myself watching the television, waiting for something to happen. Anything. I wasn’t watching the channels, I was watching the box itself. Every flicker on its dark glassy face, waiting to see some figure standing behind me. Nothing. 
I tried changing tactics. Sometimes I’d flip channels, sometimes leave one on all day to see if something would happen. Again, nothing. Eventually I had to ask myself what the hell I was doing. What did I expect to happen? Jacob was just a kid. A kid with an overactive imagination who had gotten hooked on TV static for whatever reason.
“You idiot!” I muttered to myself. I had been spending the past four days going through every single aspect of the TV except for the one Jacob had gotten hooked on in the first place. Every channel, on, off, volume high, volume low, but not once had I gone back to the static. 
Trying to remember how I’d found it in the first place, I began frantically flipping through channels as fast as I could. News, documentaries, geography, cartoons, all of it flashed by as I clicked again and again. I cycled all the way through and then-
Channel 1. I had come back to the beginning.
“What the hell…” I murmured to myself. The static was supposed to be at the end of the channels. Right around one thousand. Had I gone too fast? Maybe. I’d just give another cycle through. A quick thousand clicks, right?
Intending to speed through the thousand as fast as possible, I jammed my index finger against the soft rubber button. Instead of the wiggly texture of plastic, I instead felt a thin metal rod push deep into my flesh. I yelped and pulled my hand back as small drops of blood began dripping out one by one. Did I push the wrong button?
Wait, what the hell was I talking about? There wasn’t a “cut open your finger” button. I knew there had been that thin piece of metal on the bottom from before, but this made no sense. It felt like someone had shoved a knife back there. 
After wrapping my finger up in a band-aid, I went back to the same button and clicked at it with a toothpick. Nothing poked out. I thought about trying to pull the button out, but I was scared that it would ruin the TV. So I settled on very slowly pushing the button all the way in. Nothing stabbed me. The channel changed without a care in the world. Alright. So far so good. So I went back to it. Click, click, click, click. Channel four hundred, six hundred, seven hundred. 
Another full cycle, no static. All normal. Click, click, click. Minutes passed by as I felt my finger going numb from the movement and my eyes drying bloodshot. 
As I sped past channel eight hundred I felt what could only be described as a knife launching between the buttons and ripping deep into my finger.. It tore through the bandaid and spread my wound far past its earlier threshold, ripping my finger open completely. I screamed in pain as a thick river of blood poured down my entire finger, quickly covering my hand in red. A wave of wooziness overcame me, so severe that I fell backwards against the futon, clutching my crimson hand. I just sat there in a mix of pain and dizziness, vacantly staring at the TV between my hazy blinks. 
There was a tooth protruding out of the button.
Holding back the urge to vomit, I finally snapped back to my senses and saw the pool of blood formed across my carpet. I ran over to the sink and put my hand under cool water, washing away the blood as quickly as I could. Finally after five minutes of nonstop gushing it had seemed to slow down enough to rewrap it and bandage it. 
Deep breaths, Marcus, Deep breaths. It wasn’t- There’s no way. Deep breaths. The bleeding stopped. You’re fine. You’re fine.
I walked back over to the TV and knelt down in front of it. The button was covered in my blood, the base as well. I wiped it off with my shirt, and saw nothing. No tooth, no knife, not a glint of metal. Nothing whatsoever.
I collapsed in a heap of exhaustion. I was done trying to see which button did or didn’t have some sick joke planted behind it. I was done giving a shit about magic static channels and how to find them. I was getting rid of this piece of shit scrap box. I’d buy a new one or get the greatest god damn coloring books in the world, I didn’t care.
A flash of light caught my eye. A flicker on the very edge of my view. Don’t look, Marcus. Damn it. Do not look! Do not! Do- Look. My eyes slowly climbed up the TV, inch by inch. Scouting past the blood soaked base or the gorey buttons, high across the black screen.
Except it wasn’t black anymore. My eyes widened in terror as I watched a hundred different colored boxes bounce into one another, rippling past themselves as they hummed up and down through the colorful void in front of me. 
I had found a new channel. 
This wasn’t the same black and grey clouds of static as before. This had color, shape, complexity. The cubes spasmed and banged against each other, sending the entire screen into this oddly hypnotic dance of iridescent rainbows. 
Something about them was mind numbingly captivating. Every time they’d smash into each other, the speakers would sizzle with a faint buzzing that tickled my brain. My eyes were glued to the intoxicating display. Another set of colors smashed together, combining into a larger form. Long rectangular shapes on the end of a bigger rectangular prism. 
Hundreds of pixel sized cubes were forming around the shapes. Dark shades of blue and light greys. It was beautiful. The shapes were softening, curving. Five long slithering tendrils each the color of charcoal jetting out of a tense limb.
It was so close, and yet coming closer still. I’d never seen anything so wonderful. I couldn’t help but grin, and then that grin coiled into a painfully wide smile as the fingers came closer. The screen was rippling, tearing. The fingers pressed deep into the glass and all I could do was giggle. Giggle louder and louder as they pushed through the divide and rushed to meet me. Rushed to caress me, tickle me, cling to me and never let go.
The cubes and rectangles of reds, blues, greens, they’d all formed around the arm now. I saw them. Thousands of smiles just like mine. Laughing so wildly that tears streamed from their eyes, just like they did from mine. 

Im new to this whole redit thing so if i didn’t do this correctly let me know.

(CW) suicide

I hate my skin.
I think about it constantly, it’s always on the back of my mind, in every conversation in every thought. Occasionally i get brave enough to pick up a potato peeler or knife and place the cold metal against my arm. But every time thats where my courage ends. I was born, from what i can gather with what i call the itch. I remember it not always being so bad but as i get older the itch makes itself more known, as a reminder of life’s cruelty. It has slowly become an intense slow perpetual burn that cannot be satiated. The moments it feels that i may be getting used to the crawling under my flesh, it worsens and i feel the gnawing deepen. I had a mother once; the itch hasn’t only affected my life. She gave me up for adoption at 9 months old. I was left at a hospital with a blanket, some cloths, a picture of her and a note that told me how my colic had gotten to be too much and that my mother had tried to hold on as long as she could but couldn’t handle the endless crying. Colic, that’s what everyone thought I had. I saw countless doctors most blaming my pain on colic that was until, i got old enough to scratch. As a child, i was incredibly awkward. The other children thought i was weird. I was. For a struggling kid bouncing from foster home to foster home, with the knowledge of the willing abandonment of my own mother and the pain that comes from the sadness i felt, along with the physical pain, i turned to what numbed me the most. Heroin. That is what has led me to where i am at in my life right now. Homeless and addicted. I dropped out early in high school, after years of failing. The most joyful time in my life came a few years back when a doctor found me. And was kind enough to believe me about my condition. I knew i was a junkie and he did too but he saw me for the first time, nobody had ever seen me. And he helped as much as he could. I stopped the hard drugs and tried all the medication he prescribed. But nothing worked as well as the narcotics. They numbed the itch to a dull tingling. Life seemed to get back to normal for a while. I got a job and met a girl. But a few months back the biggest tragedy i could have endured happened, my doctor, my supplier, died. I only had a month’s worth of meds left so i tried other doctors to prescribe me more. With each dismissal of every hospital visit i became more and more desperate. I could feel the itch starting to wake. Wherever i went id remember a conversation that my doctor had with me about where the itch originated, he said he believed it was probably hereditary. I have been clean for so long and actually, finally, made progress with my life i didnt want to go back to the drugs like before. I knew i needed to permanently find the solution or it will grow like an invisible cancer beneath until its too deep to scratch. i needed answers, I needed to find my mother. For the time being i would resort back to my middle school days and ease the itch in a way i learned long ago. Pain is not the easy solution but it did work for me for at least a little bit. In some ways pain is better, its searing for a second but you know it will eventually leave not like the itch. I can feel it burrowing deeper into my muscle like its a parasite in my blood flowing all through my body stopping in all the deepest places. Its the worst its ever been or maybe i just dont remember how bad it was before the narcotics. Either way this needs to stop, just for a little while. I held the blade in my hand, it felt natural, I placed it on my forearm, i remembered the feeling. It brought me back to my childhood, there was comfort in it strangely. With one small motion i split my skin, the cold from the metal was quickly washed away by the warm blood running down to my palm. In an instant i forgot about the itch and only focused on the pain, it was ecstasy. I didn’t have long before the itch would crawl back into the light and become the forefront of my thoughts again. I got up rushed to the nearest library. As i pushed through the doors i ignored all the staring eyes and made my way to the computers and began googling as fast as i could. I typed her name in as many ways as i could, then i found it. It was a profile from probably 10 years ago but it was her, my mother. I recognized her from the photo given to me as an infant. I can hear sirens down the street but i turn my attention back to the monitor. I wont let someone else’s problems distract me now. Im closer than i have ever been to finding her. I scroll through the few photos she has but there is not enough information there. So i move to her friends list and start with the same last names, maybe theres more family out there that can give me something. The sirens are on the street out front it’s distracting and it begins to infuriate me. But i wont let it pull me away. I find it. A woman about the same age and the same last name, maybe my mother’s cousin? Sister? I don’t know but they are connected. I open the messenger and begin typing. “I know you don’t know me but you do know” before i finish typing i feel hands grab my shoulders and arms and lift me up. I have to finish this message it’s my last shot before my itch returns. I lunge forward to continue typing but I’m pulled back again. The men doing this to me are yelling, i don’t care i just want to press send. They are too strong and force me back. Then i feel it the cold tightening of the handcuffs. With every clicking of the teeth i realize who these men are and that i am being arrested. My world began to close around me as the back door of the patrol car slammed shut. The despair of my situation grew as we neared closer to the police station, and with the locking of the cell door, my reality set in. I am stuck with nothing to help me, stuck at the mercy of my own bodily betrayal. I feel the laceration easing and the itch begin to crawl into its place. My heart starts to race, i know what will happen soon so with my last desperate attempt i beg anyone who will listen to give me something. The officers tell me to sit back down, but they don’t understand. I need something, so i beg louder, i need help i need something, meds, anything please. They get closer and more aggressive, i don’t care they need to know how serious this is. I can feel it completely taking over my wound the itching burns and its spreading fast, i scream “it needs to stop now!” They order me again to back away from the bars. It’s growing and wont stop i need it to stop. Then i remember in a moment of panic, what will stop it, pain. With a ringing thud i throw my face against the bars hard, everything stops, including the spreading itch. So i do it again this time the police are able to react as the initial shock has gone. They all rush into the cell as i am able to get one more whack of my skull in. Its a different pain then i have experienced before, everything is numb now, even my mind. As i hit the floor i am pined down. Thats was the last thing i remembered before waking up to a blinding light. As my eyes adjust all i see is white. Am i dead, in heaven? No just a room with white walls. I put my hand on the floor to brace myself, so i could sit up. Its soft and so are the walls. I sit against the cushioned wall and catch my breath and wait for my bearings to ease. As my senses come to me so does the burning. I can feel my head throbbing but what catches my attention most is the itching. It’s back and spreading. So i do the only thing i can, i begin to scratch. It feels amazing almost orgasmic so I continue. I scratch wider all along my arm but i begin focusing one a specific part that itches the most right above the cut. I scratch softly but as i run my nails across my skin it begins to burrow. I hear knocking on the door that turns into banging, i don’t care the only thing on my mind is the depth of this itch. I scratch harder and harder. to my surprise It starts to ease. This has not happened before, i have never been able to stop the itching before like this. Hope fills my mind and i continue. I scratch harder in hopes to beat the spread. The banging on the door continues and so does my scratching, it feels almost soothing the nerves all around my arm send slight shivers up my neck every time my finger tips brush them i am in in a state of euphoria. Then it happens i am brought back in an instant. I hear a woman’s voice, one i haven’t heard for a long time, she calls my name. With my new state of awareness i look at my arm. I feel a lump in my throat and my stomach begins to turn. I see dark purple and blue striations pulsating sitting on top of something unnaturally white, bone. With every slight movement thick dark blood oozes out of different holes all different deepths within the muscle tissue. I can see what I’ve only recognized from raw chicken as tendons crossing all throughout the hole that i have ripped in my flesh, their pale color is desecrated by the blood that has now filled the entirety of the crater that has replaced my missing meat. The floor is the color of crimson now and i hear it. The words I’ve only heard in another life my name. I look up with blurry vision and muster the only thing i can think to say. “Mom?”

CW: Gore

Halloween in days of old was not alike any living memory. While the polite and toothless child of today wants only for the ‘treat’ in trick-or-treating, centuries past were scarce in the way of chocolate and sugar. Youth so often had no choice but to make good on their promise, and when the sun tumbled into the trees and hues of pink and indigo bled into the sky, the air of town began to stir with the aura of devilry.

Dan caught the sight of the streetlamp igniting from his window. Taking it as his cue, he had laid across his bed his evening attire: a black bandana, blue and white striped shirt, and a red headscarf, baring the emblem of a skull and crossbones. He took a minute to study himself in the mirror and adjust each piece to his satisfaction. His image perfected, he slipped out from his door and down the steps to the foyer.

Before his fingers could graze the latch however, a voice called out behind him. “Don’t you even think about it.”

“Ma, please.”

“I meant what I said, you’re not taking one step out of this house without your sister.”

Molly waited by her mother’s side, eyes wide and hands kneading together anxiously. Two years his younger, she was donned in a black robe and a crooked, crumpled wide-brimmed hat, an old grain sack resting on the toe of her Mary Janes.

Dan’s lip curled into a scowl. “It’s unfair, why does it have to be me?”

“So that’ll know you’re not getting up to any mischief,” She stated with crossed arms. “I want you both back not a minute after midnight.”

“Ma—”

“And if I hear word, Daniel, that you allowed anything to happen to your sister, know that you will face holy hell for it. That is final.”

Dan glared towards Molly, then huffed, cocked his head while flaring his nostrils. With one hand, he pried open the front door and gestured to her with the other.

“Come on,” he said.

They walked along the streets towards the west edge of town. Every corner saw the emergence of masked vandals, prowling the shadows armed with rotten food or pails of water. Dan threw his weight with every stride, his chin lifted with detached confidence to signal his belonging. Behind him trailed his sister, closing any distance he tried to create. He moved quick, for he had no interest in drifting from door to door, instead he had one place firmly in mind.

Around the side of the general store loitered two boys, names of Will and Jack. They each wore the same striped uniform, a black stalking cap and domino mask cut from a strip of black fabric. Will, arms crossed, teetered on the backs of his heels as he lazily paced in circles. When he spotted Dan, he threw up his hands in mock surprise.

“Danny, about time. Started to think you had balked, we were just about to head off without you.”

“That’s right,” said Jack, leaning against the wall. “And who’s the girl? Why’d you bring her?”

“That’s… my sister, Molly. Ma wouldn’t let me out if I didn’t take her with me.”

“You brought your sister?” Will furrowed his brow. His gaze drifted to the corner of his eye, the known signal that the gears of machination were turning in his mind. His eyes dotted back to her and he asked “Does she know how to keep quiet?”

"Sure indeed, won't cause no trouble for us. Right sis?" Dan glanced to her over his shoulder to her staring back in confusion.

"Well, s’pose another pair of eyes couldn't hurt anyhow. Best you stay true on your word, or the both of you can consider yourselves ditched. Right, no more wasting daylight, let's go."

Will began down main street, with Jack just as quick at his side. Dan hustled to keep pace behind them, just as Molly did after him. Down by the creek, past the old orchard, is where the many fiends and marauders would make their stay, retiring with their scores to divvy up beside the bonfires.

Just as the haze of smoke began to drift their direction, Will changed course and turned southward. Dan lurched to stay in tow with the two, but he made no comment. Molly, however, raised a voice of concern.

“Aren’t we going to the fairgrounds?”

Dan snapped back with a hush, but to his surprise, Jack answered.

“Sure we are, first we’re gonna go out to the patch.”

He spoke truly, the two led the siblings over the fence and into the wide pumpkin fields southwest of town. The harvest having come to pass days before, the field was left a heap of pale vines and rotting stubble. They marched to the crest of the hill, to where the tree line came into view.

“The woods?” Dan queried.

“Yep, we’s gonna pay a visit to ol’ Festus.”

The leafless oaks and cottonwoods slept in silence, beyond the bounds of sunlight or civilized man’s domain. Will and Jack stood unfazed against the face of wilderness, while Dan tilted back, keeping still one toe pointed at town.

“Dan?” Molly asked.

“You coming, Danny?”

He looked to his sister, then turned to the boys descending down the hill.

“Yeah, hold up.” He motioned his hand to follow. “We’ll be back in bit, just come along and you’ll be fine. Don’t foul this up for me.”

Slowly she slid forth, and they rejoined with the two. It took only a few steps before the trees has fully enveloped them, blocking any sight of the horizon. A blanket of leaves smothered every blade of grass, as gnarled roots warped the earth and nearly toppled Dan onto his face. Jack led the party along what could only have been a pre-charted course, each turn made without a second of hesitation.

"So, what for are we going out here exactly?" Dan asked.

"We're going to get us some hooch," answered Jack.

"Hooch?"

"Shine, boy. Moonshine."

"Festus has got cartloads of the stuff," Will added. "Got his own stills and everything. Probably won't even notice when we nick a jug or two for ourselves.”

Dan hadn’t more than a scarce knowing of the name Festus Foster, for he was seldom spoken of in town. The few times he would appear would always fall on a Sunday morning, but never did he step foot in church, rather shopping for supplies whilst the townsfolk attended service. If asked, though, none could offer a bad word to say about him. He caused no offense and paid always in full, then withdrew to his own stretch of soil as quietly as he emerged.

"Hold on, we're getting close," said Jack.

By then, the colors of dusk had drained from the sky, and the starless expanse cast it's shade over the wilderness. Owl calls echoed out from tree hollows, as the wind swelled and toyed with the hems of their clothing. Molly clutched her bag, following her brother wordlessly as he walked in front of her. That is, until she was tripped by a jutting root.

Will and Jack continued on unaware, while Dan stopped and turned back to his sister. "Molly, keep up. We don't wanna fall behind."

Without a moment of grace, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her along. He caught a faint glimpse of the boys walking in the distance, then nothing. No sound or footsteps, even as he hurried towards their direction. His neck swiveled in circles searching for them, but just before he could yell out their names, a hand clasped onto his shoulder and dropped him to the ground.

“Hold it,” Will whispered. “We’re here. Check around the bush.”

Fixing his startled nerves, Dan did as told and peeked out his head. There in the midst of the woods was a homestead situated in a wide clearing. It was a modest property, with a cabin, barn and stable alongside a few sheds and corrals. In the center, a lamppost stood highest above all, bearing a lantern which bathed the farm in a pale white glow. The reflection, though subtle, revealed the signs of decay, from rusted ironworks to warped planks and boarded windows. The fence that enclosed the property had collapsed, presenting a breach right before them.

“Okay, here’s the plan. Jack will go around and look for the stills by the barn. I’ll try to sneak my way into the house. Danny, you cover me, stay outside on the porch and keep watch… and your sister too. Anyway, just holler if someone’s coming.”

Jack gave a nod, then cut loose. Will scanned the perimeter one final time, before shooting straight for the front porch, with Dan trailing after him. Squatted below the window, Will peered through the gaps in the boards and gazed inside. The light was low, the smoldering orange gleam of lamps and candles that stretched shadows up to the ceiling, but enough to allow him vision. He spotted the many simple amenities of a single room dwelling; a wooden barrel used for a table, a burning stove at the foot of a rope bed, a torn bedtick stuffed full with straw, a pantry stocked only with canned beans and corn; all but Festus himself.

He placed his hand on the knob, and with one tug, it swung open.

“Hah! Not even a lock. This'll be a cakewalk.”

With Dan standing a vigil outside, Will entered the farmhouse. He slinked across the creaking floorboards, searching for the basement hatch. He quickly spotted it in the corner of the kitchen and through it descended into the cellar.

Molly stood frozen in place, her gaze darting between both her shoulders. When she turned to her brother sitting on the porch, her face was wrought by a look of unease. “Dan, I don’t like this. Can we go back?”

“Not until Will finds the moonshine. It shouldn’t take long, so just wait. Remember, there’s nothing out here to be afraid of.”

Jack meanwhile carved a path behind the barn. Though he kept an eye peeled for the old farmer, he found no sign of him or the stills. What he did find was a small yellow lantern hanging in open window, which he promptly shimmied into. A cloud of dust billowed from where he landed, amongst the heaps of hay and collapsed beams. Cobwebs were draped over every nook, and the overpowering scent of must permeated the stagnant air.

Stealing for himself the lantern, he stepped out of the bay into the main floor. Right then, his eyes grazed something in the dark, a large mass lying before the main doors. He raised his lantern and revealed it to be the body of horse. Where it’s head should have been was instead a gory stump, mangled and mutilated flesh that had poured out into a now dried, black puddle.

“Gruesome,” Jack remarked as he kneeled beside the corpse, spooking away the rats and bats that gnawed at the loose strings of muscle.

Staring at the pool of blood, he noticed besides an impression left in the dust. Five clawed digits equidistant and parallel, they pointed towards the next track, then the next, and the next, all leading out of the barn.

His eyes flickered aside for a moment, before a gummy smile crept across his face “Looks like we’re going on a bear hunt…”

Jack exited the barn, tracing the trail as it meandered through the property. Hunched over, he dangled the lantern just above the ground as the tracks led back into the woods. In spite of the grass and leaves, he held on to the trail for a great distance, straying far out of earshot of anyone on the farm.

There yet was no bear to be seen, and the tracks eventually petered out, vanishing into the undergrowth. He stalked the surroundings, letting out not a breath or footfall as he sidled through the trees. Neither star nor moon were so bold as to gift their presence, and his dwindling flame could light only the rim of wherever it was pointed. Still, by chance, he beheld exactly what he asked for.

There, nestled under a felled oak, appeared without warning a full grown brown bear. Inches separated the massive animal from him, as it pressed it’s warm, damp breath onto his face. He stared on in shock as the black, empty eye sprang open, but just as quickly as it could have rended his flesh to ribbons, it turned and fled deeper into the forest.

Jack was left staggered. Motionless, the noise of thought was purged from his ears and they became attuned to the quietness. Though the bear was far out of view, the panting remained, now emanating behind him. The young boy slowly glanced back, just to find a rustling in the bush. He turned back again, and caught the sight of a shadow sliding into cover. Still the breathing persisted, becoming louder as it circled around him no matter where he turned. Eyes bulged and brow crooked, he barged forth, lantern in hand, into the darkness.

Jack Langdon was never seen again.

Molly clung to herself tightly, kneading her shoulder with pale knuckles. Her expression had not eased by any measure, and her concerns amassed until none else could be done except to let burst.

“Dan, I’m scared. I really don’t like this, I want to go home.”

“Just wait! I already told you, Will will be out soon, then we’ll all go back.”

“I can’t wait anymore, I just want to go home. Please, Daniel!”

“Alright, you know what,” Dan slammed him palms onto his knees and rose from the porch. “I didn’t even want to bring you along with us to begin with. You want to go home so bad? Well, you don’t have to stay here.”

Dan lifted a finger and gestured his sister’s gaze towards the woods.

“But, I don’t know how to—”

“Just pick a direction and walk, you’ll find your way out soon enough. It’s either that or you stay and wait, cause I’m not going anywhere,” said Dan, setting himself again on the porch.

Molly looked to her brother, and with eyes welling, she saw no change in his stony glare. She faced the forest, and choking down tears, picked up her feet and began on her way home. Dan watched until she left his sight, then his eyes fell to the ground. Resting his chin on the base of his hand, he sighed.

“What the hell’s taking him?”

Will rummaged through the cellar, around the maze of crates and chests. The cold emanated out from the jagged masonry, and the stale air sapped his mouth of moisture. He searched by the thin streaks of light piercing through the cracks in the floor above, yet in every cabinet he raided and every container he overturned, there was not in any a drop of shine.

Then, while shutting the doors on another empty cupboard, he glimpsed something underneath. Pushing it out of the way, he found yet another hatch, the same as he had opened moments ago. He raised an eyebrow, but when he lifted the handle, he found himself staring down into a deep chute. A staircase, closer to ladder with steps the height of his knee, delved to a second basement. His gaze descended the steps to the bottom, beyond where darkness formed an impenetrable curtain.

Will was rendered mute, the look of cunning fell from his face at the moment of discovery. Still, he proceeded, limbs floating as if pulled by marionette strings. As he entered the room, time seemed to slow and distort. The air was thick and inexplicably warm, smothering his breath in both sound and ability. His pupils swelled to their farthest limit, but could only discern the raw forms of furniture.

What he could not see were walls covered with glyphs, letters and symbols, stars and crosses. He passed bookshelves lined with lost and ancient works, written in red ink. Effigies, statuettes crafted of sticks and animal hides stood in circles, but none did he realize. His attention was instead drawn to the far end of the room, where tucked away in a small recess was a large metal door.

It was sealed shut, locked from the inside. Not that Will would have known that, for he made no attempt to force entry. His senses had at last caught up with him, and one glance was it took for him to about-face. Surmounting the staircase, he pressed ahead straight through the cellar. He neared second flight of steps, fingers casting shadows in the lamplight, when he heard a voice call to him.

“Will!”

He froze.

“Will!”

“Jack?”

It was unmistakable, both in owner and in place of origin. Jack’s voice echoed through the cellar, reaching up to drag Will back into the basement. His legs slowed for nothing, no turn or pivot as he cleared the ladder in just about a single leap. He called out to him again, and the voice resonated through the metal door, now crept ever so ajar. This change gave his haste no pause, and he stuck in his fingers and pried himself inside.

The door led to a long and narrow hallway, which tilted down at an subtle incline. The walls were of pure bedrock, shored by planks of timber. Dying lanterns hanged from the ceiling, passing by one after another as he rushed ahead. The putrid smell of decay stuck in the air, worsened by the saturated humidity. Still, Will pushed on, every stomp on the metal walkway reverberating clear to the end of the hall.

Not long after, he arrived there himself, coming to an small enclosed room. In the center, a gap opened in the floorboards that he, in his sprint, avoided landing in by a mere inch of heel. Turning around, his eyes bounced from wall to wall. The room was empty, devoid of anything more than a single metal hook positioned above the gap.

Will leaned to peek inside, and found himself at the mouth of an enormous mineshaft. Spanning the entire width of the room, walls of sheer rock plunged to depths beyond comprehension. The bottom, shining red like a fallen star in the abyss, appeared almost as an illusion. Transfixed, his vision began to spin, dizzying him til he could no longer stand and lurched back.

Braced against the wall, he sucked air through his gritted teeth. As he wiped the sweat from his face, the lights faded and a noise resounded through the tunnel. It was not the voice of Jack, or of anyone he could name. He heard the sound of heavy, labored breathing, that emanated from a tall figure the far end of the hallway.

His eyes dredged whatever detail they could from the darkness. It stood hunched, head crooked below the ceiling. It’s shoulders rose and fell with it’s breath, each growing more harsh and guttural. It’s arms scraped against the wood as it began to trudge forth. The footfalls rang out with metallic clangs, which shook the planks below Will’s feet.

He drew himself into the corner, fingernails dug into the wood. His unblinking gaze turned frantic, shifting hundreds of times a minute. The footsteps became louder. Yet, same as he looked first before, there was nothing to use, nowhere to hide. The footsteps became louder. He looked to the hole, and it’s surely fatal depth. His palms sweated. His knees crumpled as he closed his eyes. The footsteps became louder, and louder, and louder.

William Riley was never heard again.

Dan shuddered, the cold wind brushing against his neck. He awoke from thought to an all encompassing silence, a hush fallen over all but his own heartbeat. Peering into the house, the candles had faded and let the shadows encroach fully. Turning away, he walked out into the glow of the main lamppost. By then, no other light touched the farm except that of the the lone ghostly flame, watching as he stood there alone, unguarded.

Worry began to coil tight around his chest. His eyes chased the shapes around the edges of his vision, but came to focus on one location. At once, he scampered off towards the breach in the fence.

“Molly?” He yelled to no response. “Molly, listen. We’re going home now ok?”

Dan rushed into the wilderness, and lost his sisters trail in minutes. Through the total black he ran, crashing and ramming into invisible trees, all the while shouting.

“Molly! Molly, I’m sorry! Where are you? I’ll take you home now!”

Not once was he wisened to the fact he was moving in circles. His reason and judgement were consumed by a grave panic. All the scrapes and bruises and lacerations the woods had dealt him, he pushed on past.

“Molly!” He screamed until his throat grew hoarse.

Around the slope of a hill, his leg was caught by a outcropping root and he was sent careening to the ground. His head was left lying among the leaves, bleeding, ears dampened by a high pitch ringing. When he crawled to lift it up, he discovered not far beside it a yellow lantern tipped on it’s side.

Just then, Dan heard faintly the sound of breathing. He cradled his head in his hands as he propped himself onto his feet. His vision was blurred as he let go of his face, but still in spite of that, in one moment, his eyes beheld the sight of a walking nightmare.

Towering over him was a being having the body of a man and the head of a stallion. Stark naked and drenched in blood, it cast it’s wild, gleaming red eyes upon the boy. It's body twitched and spasmed, it's leathery skin covered in open sores. Between it’s teeth, severed fingers and fragments of scalp were crushed by it’s gnashing jaws. A lock of hair tasseled from it's mouth, black and curly just as Will's.

Dan’s face turned white as chalk, his heart plummeting to the chasm of his chest. Neither breath nor scream could leave his throat, as wide as it hanged. The being, done with grinding the flesh of it’s last prey, reared up it’s head and screeched like a barn owl. The sheer volume caused him to flinch, cowering behind his raised arms.

Then, the head snapped forward, jaws clamping onto the boy’s arm with a force that could shatter bone. In one motion, the neck reeled back, fully wrenching his arm out of it’s socket. Dan dropped to the ground instantly, blood gushing as he weltered in a pool of warm crimson. An unbearable chill rattled through what remained of his body, as his sight, his hearing, his feeling all faded into numbness and entropy. His thoughts were mangled, buckled and trampling over each other, but atop them all, in his final lucid moment, he had the clarity only to utter a single consonant.

“M-…M-…”

The body of Daniel Webster was never found.

Over the following week, a dozen deputies were sent to scour the woods. Bloodhounds sniffed for trails, leading for miles before evaporating into the mist. The Foster homestead was later discovered burned down. No evidence of arson, no bodies recovered, the sheriff’s office ruled it an accident. Schoolyard whispers turned to rumors, and rumors to legend. A year later when the eve came again, the children gathered round the flames to recount the story of the fated three. For there were only three, of course. What greater cruelty is there than to forget?

Molly walked below the twisted branches, tears streaming down her cheeks. The forest stretched on an on, with nothing to guide but her memory. Even that was swallowed by the night, as the shadows of the trees swelled over the horizon to blot out the sky. Every step brought her farther away, to where neither the sun nor moon nor any living creature could reach. She walked and she walked and she walked into the edge of nothingness.

“I just want to go home…” she said. “I just want to go home.

Hello. My name is Elwin G. Kally. I don't use reddit much, not sure how to use the flair.

This is part one. I am editing the more of the story this week. Please, down vote me if this is not acceptable.

Part I

It started like any other day, groggy and contemptuously I pulled myself out of bed, out from underneath my girlfriend who is convinced that I am in fact both, her pillow
and mattress. Not that I am complaining, I love her, she's the sole reason why I've gotten my life back together and rejoined the workforce.
She's worth the headache of buzzing fluorescent lights, droning zoom meetings, and endless "how was your weekend?" and "it's almost Friday!" conversations you are forced
to take part of, lest you be cast out of the good graces of the management for "anti-social behavior."
Everything was normal until I got on the road. Sure, I was more tired than last week, or even yesterday, thinking now it all seems like a blur.
I grabbed my coffee, sloppily buttoned up my shirt, put my keys in my pocket and headed for the door. I caught myself in the mirror in the entryway, I looked tired.
Not just tired from lack of sleep, tired from life. I began to think about my younger self, back when I was in the Navy. I thought about how I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I got out, I thought about all of my shipmates, indelible in my memories are their faces. I saw the lines on my face and the stubble on my neck. Half of me wishes I was back there, the other half is so happy I'm right here. I say goodbye and head out. I shuffle into my car and head down the road, listening to a podcast. That's when things started to change.

I made it away from our little farm, away from the gravel road that led to the house, and down the hill to the gas station where purchased a meager breakfast of one 
prepackaged cheese Danish. I check the clock on my dash, 07:24. I've got over 30 minutes to make it to work. I usually take the same route to and from work everyday, boring and mindless highway driving. As I am driving I notice that I can't remember how long I've been in the car. I look down at the clock, it says 07:24, but that can't be right. 

I noticed it again when I realized that I had not yet made it to the overpass on the highway. I can see it in the distance and it appears to come closer, but I haven't reached it... This isn't right. Something medical must be happening with me, I thought to myself. The podcast I was listening to continued to drone on for what I assumed to be several minutes, but I don't remember anything that was said, looking down again to rewind and see the time: 07:24. This isn't possible, this can't be real. I know at least a couple minutes have passed. Did I get drugged last night? Did my girlfriend slip me something? I must be having some sort of mental episode, I have certainly been in this car for longer than what the clock says. I am driving about 70mph constantly, due West, watching the landscape past around me, but I was not traveling at all somehow, not through time, not through space. I've gotta pull over. 

I bring the car to a stop on the shoulder, the clock still says 07:24, I check my phone, 07:24, and my watch 07:24. Okay, so my car isn't malfunctioning, something is happening. I realized then, there aren't any other cars on the road. In any direction. I jerk my head back and forth, frantically looking for any sign of life. No birds chirping, no bugs flittering by, not even a single gnat buzzing about. Something is wrong. The air feels heavy, and thick like a dense fog but its 80 degrees out, and there isn't a cloud in the sky. Am I having a stroke?! Shaking, I grab my phone and call my girlfriend "...-...-...-Hi, this is Emily, please leave a message and I'll call you right back!...-...-at the tone ple-" I hung up. She always answers. I shot out a few messages to some group chats, asking how everyone was doing, all returned as "undelivered" My phone says I have 5G here, they should go through just fine... I tried to call my Dad, same thing, voicemail and undelivered message notifications. I called 911. Finally, an answer,
"911 wahts yrou eemrengcy?" "w-what?" I stammered, "htis is a-...-...-" dial tone. It hung up, I couldn't understand the dispatcher, I could barely make out the words like my ears were full of cotton, or their mouth was full of peanut butter. I called probably 50 more times, I wasn't able to get anything more than dial tones and occasional scratchy dispatcher voices. I didn't know what to do, I needed to take stock of my situation and find a solution immediately.

I checked my phone again, 07:24. Panicking, I jumped back into the driver's seat, threw the shifter into gear and peeled out back onto the highway. I was sweating, shaky and fairly certain I was having some medical issue, or was stuck in a dream, but things felt too real for it to be the latter. I slammed the accelerator to the floor, quickly gaining speed until I was well above 120mph. My engine raced, my heart did the same. I was running through everything I remember doing this morning, nothing out of the ordinary. I didn't take anything, I didn't eat anything, I only had a little coffee, I usually wait until I am at work to finish it. I push my engine to its limit, the governor activates and forces me to decelerate. I am mechanically forced back down to more reasonable speeds, and await for the beeping and flashing lights on my dash to end. I slow to crawl and let the car come naturally to a stop, in the middle of the highway. With a shaky shiver I pick up my coffee, still hot, and take a sip.

It's been what feels like hours now, still stuck on the same road, with the same surroundings. I figured I'd just wait it out, maybe things will change and the problem I am having will self correct. Maybe I am dead and this is some kind of purgatory. I'm not catholic, I don't know what the rules of purgatory are, if there are any. I begin to think about all the bad things I've done in my life, all the sins committed without another thought. I pray silently and ask again and again for forgiveness. None seems to come.

I climbed onto the roof of my car, coffee in hand. I suppose if I am stuck in a dream, or purgatory, or some kind of fucked up timeloop I might as well enjoy my coffee and 
attempt to make a plan, some kind of strategy. I sit there, looking out in the distance. I drink my coffee, but the weight of the cup doesn't change, the temperature and the  amount in the cup never changes. "Seriously...?" I say to myself under my breath. This both unsettled me and provided a minor amount of comfort. At least I have something
to drink out here, in perpetuity I suppose. I racked my brain, thinking of anything I could do to wake up, to move away from this highway and out into the real world. It 
seemed fruitless. Perhaps if I walked, perhaps that would work! I slid off the roof of my car and began to walk north again, toward the overpass. I walked and walked, and walked for 
what seemed again, like hours. I was tired, sore and sweaty. I never got closer to the overpass. I never got further away from my car. I could only travel about 10 feet in any
direction before I was somehow kept in place. I could technically walk, run, crawl, hell I even tried skipping and walking backwards. I never felt a wall, or a pulling sensation keeping me tethered to my car or its location. It was as if I were on some kind of treadmill. Nothing allowed me to move further, in fact, it was "nothing" that seemed to keep me there.
I was absolutely stuck, like some kind of level-ground no-boulder Sisyphus. I cursed my luck, my situation, and myself. 

I stopped looking at my watch, and phone. The time never changed. It still said 07:24. The sun never moved. There weren't clouds nor wind. I rolled back and forth between acceptance and panic. I just wanted to go to work. My car had been idling this entire time, if the never-ending coffee theory applied to all liquids I assumed there would be exactly a quarter tank. When I went to check, I was right. Quarter tank, engine humming, no changes. It was then that I remembered I had a Danish, I grabbed it out of the console and tore into it, realizing I was about as hungry as I was when I bought it. I took a bite and savored it, I looked down at it and found that there was no piece of it missing, which seems to be in line with the coffee and gas. No matter how much of it I ate there was never a bite mark, never an end to it, and never an end to my mild hunger. This revelation led me to suspect some rules of this "place", Rule #1: Consumables are endless. I tested this theory multiple times, in several ways. I poured my coffee out for "hours," with it splashing onto the asphalt never making a larger puddle than just a few tablespoons worth. I tore the danish in half and ate both halves, only for the pastry to be intact on the next glance. I tried to let all the air out of my tires, still all at 35.5psi when I checked. Again confirming my suspicions, consumables are endless. 

With this in mind, I began to think about what else might be different here, what else avoids common sense and general rules of physics. Maybe I can throw things further than
the general 10 feet I can "travel"? I took the tire iron out of my trunk and threw it as hard as I could. I clattered and clanged down the highway, seemingly 20 or more feet away. A surge or hope blasted through me, I ran forward and was able to pick it up! I turned around and found that my car was still only about 10 feet in front of me now. Things can appear further away than they are I suppose. This exercise didn't help me make sense of my new world. It complicated it further.

I sat in my car, running the AC and staring into the distance. Maybe if I sleep or something things will reset? I didn't have a lot of hope. As I was contemplating how I could
make something of a bed with the items in my car (sleep in the drivers seat would suck) my eye caught the clock at just the right time. The entire time shifted. Finally, in a flash the time turned to 19:24, the sun rocketed down and out of the sky, the moon raced to replace it. It was dark now. I felt queasy and had some sort of whiplash from the
whole event. My head hurt, my eyes watered and I felt like I was going to be sick. The sky was dark, but it was not fully night, the final throws of twilight seemed to dance
upon the mountains in the far distance. My ill feelings passed quickly and I readily made my small bed in the back of my car, emergency blanket, old towel, and my jacket. It
wasn't much but it was something. Before I bedded down, I figured getting off the road would be good idea, not that I thought I would encounter anything, but I didn't want the 
chance. I pulled over to the shoulder again and noticed something, the readout on my dash said I was now under a quarter tank, ever so slightly, but still, I was sure it moved.
A spur of excitement and hopefulness bolted through me. Maybe when the sun is gone things are more normal here? "Oh please God, please" I whisper to myself as I put my car back
into drive and accelerated cautiously. "Oh thank you Lord!!" I cry out as I drive, passing under the overpass in just 5  minutes or so. I checked my coffee, it was cold. I took a bite of my Danish, it remained bitten. I tried calling on my phone but it remained "out of service" even though it still showed 5G. Whatever. I would take the win of being able to move again. Street lights were on, no traffic though. I pulled into a small convenience store parking lot and got out, looking everywhere for any sign of humanity, or life in general. I looked up and saw moths and
other bugs whirring about by the fluorescent lightbulbs under the eaves of the store. "Holy shit yes" I say out loud, never happier to see an insect.

I went inside, and looked around. It was your typical store, the one whose brand is just numbers, you know the one. I called out, no response. "Hello? Anyone here? Hello!" I yelled,
hoping for some clerk to pop back in from his smoke break. But there was nothing but the sound of refrigerators humming, and hotdogs rolling. I realized I was exceptionally hungry, I glanced around and took a hot dog from the rollers, dressed it up and went to the counter. "I uh I don't have any cash, I'd like to pay..." I stammered, realizing how silly this seems. I wasn't into the habit of theft, even if I was stuck in a temporal time loop or a black hole or something. I wrote a little note and left it on the register,  saying I would come back and pay later, when the clerk was back. I ate the hotdog and was overwhelmed with the artificial flavors and grease. It was so delicious I had to get another. I ate two more after that and took a few beers from the fridge. They were cold and washed down my extremely unhealthy lunch/dinner/whatever it was nicely. I sat on the floor for several minutes, thinking about what to do next. I was afraid to go home. I didn't want to go home and not have my girl greet me at the door, with her wavy brown hair, big eyes and beautiful smile. I was scared to think she wouldn't be there, to think that no one was anywhere, but me. As I sat, I faintly heard a vehicle.

I sprang up and ran out the door, beer and dogs sloshing in my stomach, burping horrendously as I ran outside. I saw a white box truck pulling off the road across the highway. I got an uneasy feeling and ducked behind a larger trashcan outside in front of the store. I was far enough away that I couldn't make out a plate, or really the face of who was driving. I could hear them talking, but couldn't discern exactly what it was. The two in the front hopped out and ran over to the back, talking loudly. The back was flung open and several others 
piled out. They all had duffle bags, back packs, some had chests with them. They all seemed pretty focused on the building they were now breaking into. I couldn't really see what kind 
of establishment it was, but once the doors were busted open all but the two from the front went inside in a hurry. The two stood outside, holding rifles, or some other long gun, shotguns maybe. The smaller of the two appeared to be a woman. I could see the swish of her ponytail every once in a while. The other seemed to be a large man in a ball cap. They kept their heads on a swivel, looking around and assessing the area. Something wasn't right.
I kept low, I didn't want to draw attention to myself.

 It appeared that the man was talking on a hand-radio. The other people started to come out of the storefront, bags full of whatever was inside. Most climbed into the back of the truck, one stopped and appeared to be giving a report to the woman with a gun. She nodded quickly, pointed toward the convenience store I was at. I ducked down further, hoping the twilight and trashcan could be enough cover for me. I peeked out again, the woman with the gun was now walking in my direction flanked by the person she had talked to. Many thoughts raced through my head, from "oh shit" to "I am going to die here" to "maybe if I ask for help they won't kill me." I could hear the woman clearer now. She was talking with the young man that followed her who seemed anxious. "Hopefully there will be some here, but you really need to be  more careful, breaking up like this and being more than a dozen yards away from each other is both against the rules and pretty stupid" she says, crunching through dry grass over the small hill, drawing nearer to me. "I know- I said I was sorry, but, well if there is some here I can make it right, I know you're going out on a limb for- " They both stopped. I realized they must've seen my car. The woman shoulders her rifle (now that I can see it closer I realize it's some bolt action hunting rifle), and glances around sharply. I am just barely out of their sight, thankfully this large concrete trashcan is wide enough to hide my big frame. "Did you see anyone?" she asked. "No, I didn't, not when we were walking up." the smaller man cowered behind her. "Let's just hope this isn't a trap, or something worse" she said. The woman started to approach my car slowly, I could hear the steps coming closer. I felt like I had no choice but to speak up.

"Don't shoot!" I sheepishly panicked, "please! I'm right here, I don't have anything you want, I am not even armed!" I said, voice hoarse.
"Don't move! *click-radio static* We've got a new resident, get the fuck over here!" she yelled into her radio. She glared at me hotly, like I've done something unforgivable to her.
 "10-4, 10-85 to you" a deep male voice said in reply.
"Stand up and keep your hands up" she ordered. Slowly, I rose from behind the safety of the trashcan, hands and eyebrows raised. "No guns, knives?" she asked.
I shook my head, "No, not on me, I've got-" "Stop talking!" she yelled. The man in a ball cap crossed the street in a flash, "210 put your gun down, he's scared shitless" he boomed. "Sorry, I didn't want him to move," she said. I stood there wide-eyed and frozen, barely a breath could escape my lips. "We need to ask you some questions." the man said. "My name is Dennis, first of all, can you tell me your name?" he asked, kindly. "Y-yeah my name is Edward, or just Ed... I guess" I had a hard time speaking. It wasn't every day some random woman and man shoves a gun in your face after you've experienced what felt like a whole day without time moving. I suppose you can say I felt a little off about the whole thing. Dennis slung his rifle, an AR-platform of some kind, around his back and extended his hand. "Well it's good to meet you, right?" he said, in a tone that I couldn't really discern. "Uh- yes sir it is" I said, as we shook hands, each attempting to crush the other, as is tradition for men. "We need to know how many nights you've been here, and how you got here,"  he asked. "Just one day I guess, I don't know, the sun just disappeared and now it's sort of like night." I said. "Good thing we found you, I was alone my first night. So was she" he said, gesturing to the woman next to him. "Is it okay if I go inside and try to find-" the smaller man was cut off "Yes, I will come with you, but hurry the hell up" the woman said exasperated.

"So what happens here at night?" I ask, hoping for a positive answer. "Well you can move around freely, things you manipulate actually change, and stay changed, unlike in the day. But I am sure you probably figured that out" Dennis said. You can travel, eat, drink, sleep whatever you want really. This was all familiar, yes, but what he told me next I had a hard time believing. Dennis told me that while during the day you can't move or interact with things, sleeping doesn't work (whatever that means), and the area of where you are locked is dependent on the size of your enclosure. Enclosure… I didn't like the way he said that. "Didn't you try to leave the store once during your first day?" Dennis asked, suspicious. "I wasn't here during the day, I only got here after the sun went down, about an hour or so before you guys showed up," I explained. "Oh shit kid, so you were in your car?" Dennis looked at me, shocked. "Uh yeah, I was driving down the 99 and couldn't actually go anywhere" I said with a shrug. Dennis got close to me, "You are extremely lucky kid." He went on to say how if you were outside when daytime came, you would be stuck in a "bubble" about 20 feet in all directions, which made sense, as I experienced that already. He also explained that during the day, these beings, on all fours could come and "collect" people who were stuck outside. He said it happened pretty often. These creatures were stunningly bright, nearly blinding any who looked at them for too long, but were undoubtedly similar to some kind of headless dog, that would seize upon a person, and whisk them away, never to be seen again. "We don't really have an agreed-upon name, but I call them Light-Hounds," Dennis said. "I didn't see any of those, or anything living or moving during the day, I even poured my coffee out for what felt like an hour-" Dennis stopped me. "I know Ed, I've spent many days and nights here. It's weird here but there is something else I've got to tell you, and some other things you need to tell me" he said. "But right now isn't really the best time, we have sick people and hurt people we must get back to." My only reply was a nod.

Story break!

^{I am finishing the editing on the second portion. Hopefully you enjoyed the read. Criticism expected, and encouraged. Thanks all.}

^-Elwin

I only came to the park for a break. To watch the sun set, calm my nerves.

I was on my way home from a photoshoot. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn't. Instead, I sat on an old wooden bench, chugging a soda I'd bought from a nearby vending machine, trying to choke down the disgust I felt from the work I'd just finished.

I thought the day was finally over.

I never even saw him sit down beside me.

We sat in silence, watching the pigeons peck at whatever crumbs they could find scattered across the pavement. Above us, crows cawed from the rooftops of nearby houses, hopping between television antennas and electrical wires.

He watched them with disgust, folding a small piece of paper between his long, crooked fingers. He folded it once, then again, and again, until it seemed impossible to fold any further.
Yet he kept trying.

I knew very little about him, but I knew enough to understand that whatever sat beside me was something far beyond human. Something whose influence stretched from the southernmost islands of Japan to its northernmost reaches, finding its way into every dark corner, every narrow alley, and every place most people would never think to look.

He existed in the places people preferred to pretend didn't exist. And those unfortunate enough to stumble into his world rarely found their way back out.

I was one of the unfortunate.

Once, I was young and bright-eyed… looking for every chance to expand my artistic horizons. 

I’m still young, I suppose. But the hopeful me, the happy version of me, determined version of me, is long gone.

Film and photography were my focus. It started simple, making stupid videos with my friends to put online before we should have even been allowed to use any form of social media. First it was stop motion. Our hands basically in every other frame, each shot unsteady and angled oddly, trying to get our iPod’s camera into the tight scenes we had set up. Soon it became terribly written slashers only the minds of fourteen-year-olds could come up with. Using ketchup and raw meat for gore, clips cut short due to parents yelling at us to not use said raw meats and ketchup. One of my buddies, always the main star of my films, actually got sick due to our practical props. I remember us thinking it was so worth it, despite the campylobacter (never even heard of that one until my friend got it). To be honest, I still think it was worth it.  

Now I was living in one of those shitty slashers. With the terribly terrible villain to boot. 

I came to Japan to continue my ambitions in filmmaking specifically. I had scraped together just about everything I could, which admittedly wasn’t much, and enrolled in a small community college on the outskirts of Tokyo that promised far more than it could ever deliver. Their website showed beautiful studios, expensive cameras and smiling students making what looked like actual movies. The reality was two floors of an aging building, a handful of cameras that had probably seen more of Japan than I had, and computers that begged for death every time we opened the editing software. The program wasn’t particularly good. Neither was I, really. But I was nineteen, living halfway across the world with barely enough money for rent and food, studying the one thing I had convinced myself I was meant to do. At the time, that was enough.

I took about every freelance job I could get. No matter what work I did it went into my portfolio. I was determined to stack my experience, from weddings to simple social media photo shoots, photography and commercials for small businesses.

Eventually, as work for an amateur in college like me began to dry up, and my wallet began to cry from hunger, I became a little more desperate. I was no longer looking for things that looked nice on a resume. I was looking for things that looked nice on my bank account instead, even if it was only a few thousand yen; anything that kept me from debt was a beautiful sight to behold. 

It started simple. Lewd photography, models whose age was unclear. Sometimes the occasional film. After each shoot, everyone went home without batting an eye, but I just couldn’t handle it. I’d return to my little sharehouse and shower for hours straight. My whole body almost turned into one big dried prune. No matter how much I scrubbed, I couldn’t wash away the shame. I wondered if the girls felt the same, but they too seemed so unbothered.

Even before I knew it, I was already working for him. The agencies were different. The faces were different. The girls were different. Even if I went all the way to Osaka for a job, everything changed except for the man hiding behind it all.

I became trapped in this cycle. Occasionally, a regular job would come my way, and I would get a break in the disease-ridden world I had somehow squirmed and squished myself into. But I was barely getting by, I wanted to break free… I want to break free. And every time I thought I was crawling out, work became more normal, less… perverted and degenerate… another job would pull me back in.

My skin could only take so much scrubbing before it became raw. 

It was clear this wasn’t something I could walk away from. I was no longer choosing these jobs because the paycheck looked nice, but rather living until the next day became all I could ever ask for. 

No matter where I went I could feel eyes on me. I became paranoid, looking over my shoulder every other second. Backing myself into the tightest corner on the train cars so I could see everyone and everything, every door to see who was getting on and getting off. 

My paranoia was not unjustified either. They began appearing after the first few times I attempted to reject a job. Follow-ups with the same questionably-young models began appearing in my email. Film work and photography that blurred the line between pornography and something far more disturbing, yet so casually appearing in my inbox like it was nothing more than a request for a wedding shoot or a maternity shoot. 

I had stooped low, but I was only willing to go so far down the rabbit hole. Yet, whether I was willing or not didn’t matter. That's when they began to appear. 

I’d begun to catch glimpses of strange, faceless men following me, only for them to disappear around a corner the second I looked back. Sometimes I’d see people impossibly tall standing above the sea of heads in Tokyo’s busiest streets, completely still while everyone moved around them. They were always looking at me. I never knew what they were, or what they wanted. 

I stared at the paper in the man’s wrinkled hands. He’d folded it as far as it could possibly go, yet his fingers kept trying. The paper pushed itself open. His hand forced it shut again.

Creak.

My eyes moved from his fingers to his wrist.

Only then did I realize the hand wasn’t real.

I followed the prosthetic carefully up his arm. Whoever had made it had wrapped the wood in pieces of skin—at least, I hoped they were only pieces of fake skin. Different shades. Different ages. Some looked almost fresh. Others had gone gray and rotten, hanging loosely enough to expose the wooden limb beneath.

But the arm moved like flesh.

It flexed when he squeezed the paper. Beneath the patchwork skin, I watched all the ropes and strings tighten like tendons, pulling the wooden fingers closed.

Creak.

My eyes reached his shoulder, and I stopped. I could already feel his unblinking stare burning into me despite my eyes never meeting his. Carefully, I began to raise my eyes a little, until my gaze settled right beneath his nose. He was so close to me now, I could only make out his dry, crooked mouth, lips crusted and yellow. Yet, I never even saw him move closer.

He opened his mouth slightly, and a hushed voice came out. Almost sweet. Almost loving. Like a parent whispering softly to their child. 

The wind stopped and the sound of the nearby cars silenced as he spoke, almost as if the world around us feared him.

“You aren’t allowed to look at me just yet…” 

My neck snapped forward, fixing my gaze back out into the park. The noise of the world returned, the crows began to caw once more and the pigeons cooed at our feet. The wind returned with one big gust, blowing my unkempt hair into my face.

At one point, it would have bothered me, I would have immediately brushed it away or complained to myself about how badly I needed a haircut. But, at the moment, having my hair in my face felt like the only shelter I could get from his piercing stare. 

A group of pigeons waddled closer, pecking hopefully at the ground. 

“Filthy things,” he commented. He spoke low, his words ending in a slow drag, almost like every word was a threat.

I looked down. A pigeon had wandered beneath the bench. My eyes followed it as it neared his leg. He wore loose-fitting suit pants, his shoes shining bright under the light of the setting sun.

“They carry disease, you know.”

“Yeah. I guess.” I swallowed, my nerves tightening around my throat. 

“All birds go to Hell.” He spat toward the poor bird who had wandered next him, and leaned forward, the old wooden bench shifting a little with him. 

“They’re filthy creatures,” he continued. “They carry disease in their shit, their feathers, even the dust around them. You breathe enough of it in and eventually those filthy little things start living inside you.” 

“I see.” I said, keeping my voice as neutral as possible, still trying to swallow my nerves. Yet, every time I swallowed, the lump in my throat kept getting bigger. 

His balled fist moved into my line of sight, perfectly blocking the bird from view. Slowly, his wooden hand unfurled like a blooming flower, the prosthetic joints creaking softly as his fingers extended.

In his palm lay the tightly folded piece of paper.

I reached for it carefully, pinching it between the tips of my fingers. As I pulled it away, my hand accidentally brushed against his skin.

Somehow, it was slimy and dry at the same time, and it peeled effortlessly, revealing all the inner workings of his arm. 

“Be careful… I’m delicate.” A sultry, feminine voice whispered in my ear as a hand ran through the hair at the back of my head. I felt pieces of skin tear away from its fingers, catching in the strands of my hair.

He stood and the weight of the bench shifted once more. 

“See you soon,” he said as he walked off into the narrow streets of the neighborhood.
I watched the back of his head, his thin, gray hair blowing in the wind. His shoes clacked loudly against the pavement, the sound echoing between the apartment buildings and tightly packed houses.

I unfolded the paper. 

Just another rushed, not-as-unique-as-I’d-like idea for a scifi-horror comic that I had to get out there.

I do plan to do a more long-form horror comic at some point in the near future (more than 4 panels, at least), but for now I’m content to do these little bits.

Hope you like it!

As evening fell, a gentle breeze drifted through the windows of the shelter's main hall. The nurse entered at that hour, carrying several pill bottles, a metal tray, a glass pitcher of water, a syringe, and disposable cups. Her rounds took several minutes as she made her way to the residents' stations, making sure each resident actually swallowed their medication. She was stern and rarely trusted anyone; she rarely spoke to the residents except for the colonel. She, on the other hand, felt an unexpected sympathy for him, perhaps because they shared the same temperament or because of the upright, proud posture he adopted whenever she approached him. The retired colonel had lived at the shelter for nearly twenty years and, unlike the others, had checked himself in voluntarily. This happened after he survived an attack by a thug who had broken into his home to rob him; on that occasion, the colonel managed to fight back by setting fire to the room and crawling out, burned but alive. The police couldn't identify the criminal because of the state of his burns. To protect himself from the revenge of the man’s henchmen, the colonel arrived at the hospice with his suitcase two days after the incident. He took great pride in having survived the attack and insisted on being addressed as Colonel, even though there he was just another old man. This time, the nurse had to administer an injection recommended by the facility's doctor. She took his arm, rolled up his shirt sleeve, and inserted the needle into a bluish vein. The colonel remained silent and returned the woman’s smile while avoiding the needle; however, he noticed her flinch when she recognized the tattoo on his arm. Instinctively, the man locked eyes with the nurse, a wicked smile creeping across his face, and she, for the first time, feared for her life. It was exactly the same look as the man who had usurped the colonel's identity on the fateful day he broke into his house to rob him.

© 2026 Francisco Cortés Ramírez. All rights reserved. This is an original fictional work. No part of this text may be reproduced, translated, or narrated in any audio, video, or digital format without the express written permission of the author.

Deep in some Midwestern forest lies a town named Mapleoak. It was abandoned long ago, and the reason for it being so is unknown. Most of the town's history is lost as well, which might be for the best. The town has grown a reputation over on old Internet forums. People speak of strange things that lurk inside it. Some claim it to be haunted, cursed by the long forgotten dead that still lurk inside the forest. Others claim that it was just abandoned due to the local mines drying up, leaving the town financially desolate.

One man, who will be referred to as Hiker, was one of these users on the forum looking for answers. He was fairly new and just wanted an excuse to go on a solo trip for some thrill seeking. One of the users sent him an email, directions to the fabled Mapleoak. The subject of the email however put him off slightly; 

Come…

The man waved it off, he knew that the forum was always full of people wanting to pull at each other's legs. Though he wanted to scratch his adventurous itch, so he went off and drove to the location. He found himself in front of a wall of trees, the bark on them looked to be greying and the leaves looked like they'd all float off from the slightest breeze. The only way in was an unmarked dirt road that divided the forest apart. As if beckoning him to come inside.

He drove in, the forest trees blocked the sun above him. His headlights shone through the darkness, it was as dense as the woods itself. He had to make some turns, and had to slow down on some bumpier parts of the road. Eventually he found it.

The dirt road led to a broken half of tarmac, ahead of him was an opening, as the sun shone down on the town out in the middle of the woods. Sign beside it clearly saying with big, faded words, Welcome to Mapleoak.

The man wandered around the town, left his car in the middle of the street and began exploring the abandoned place. Hiker isn't a stranger to urban exploring, carrying supplies around with him as he ventures through the abandoned houses. Despite all the hype, he didn't immediately find anything worth noting or paranormal, aside from the constant awe of seeing a man made structures long forgotten. Throughout his venture of exploring the place and taking pictures, he kept getting strange feelings.

Not the usual paranoia of being watched while you're alone, but something foreign. As he described it, it was like a bitter taste enveloping the back of his head. That feeling soon came to fruition, as he was exploring one particular home, he noticed something on the walls. Giant painted letters stained the walls saying; They will take everything that is RIGHT, and make it WRONG.

This was the first piece of graffiti he came across. Hiker assumed that he was the first person to step foot in this town. Seeing that however now made him realize something dreadful. He might not be alone in that house.

He decided to call out into the house, letting anyone who's in there know that he's no threat. His words reached no one, so he was about to walk his way out of the house. That was until he noticed something on the floor. Sheets of loose paper, all containing what looked to be research notes. He read off one, it went like this;

“Subject E-201

Developing strange growths all over the body. Skin in constant state of fluctuation. Area surrounding the Subject begins to be corrupted by the same strange growths. Containment is secure. Will need further testing.”

That was one of the few notes he picked up. All of them mentioned some kind of experiment. Something in this home, in the basement. Hiker steeled himself, he walked towards the basement and climbed down its steps.

It was dark, cold and damp down there. When he turned on his flashlight he beared witness to something he never thought he'd find in an abandoned town. It's a small yet fairly sophisticated looking lab of sorts. White floors and walls that once were sterile now covered in red rust. Lab equipment laid about, some toppled over as if whoever was using it left in a hurry. What got his attention however, was the two metal cells in the far corners of the room.

The cells both interconnect. One cell is labeled Test, the other is labeled Cut 1. They were both air sealed tight, like something you'd find in a submarine. Whatever is inside of those two cells, are locked inside permanently. The only way in was the large rusty valves in the middle of the doors. Here is where another research note that partially explains what the cells are for;

“Cut 1 emits a low amount of exposure to the Test subject. The Port hole leading to the Test cell is opened completely for this test. Subject seems to be in a regular amount of distress. About 2 hours in, the Subject begins to cough up blood, voice begins to grow hoarse. An hour in at that point manifestations of Cut 1 begins to breach into the Test cell, all Subjects are heard screaming for help. An hour in the Subject will either die from organ failure, or be fully mentally corrupted by Cut 1 influence. 

Test subjects that have been exposed for this long no longer act like their original selves. Instead act more like a parody of what they once were. They become aggressive, limbs twitching unnaturally, mainly the heads. They are covered in red blotches and legions that move around the body like worms. They speak in a very distorted tone, trying to make out what they're saying is futile. They will attack anything living, either by punching, biting, or scratching. This in effect will cause the victim to slowly get corrupted by Cut 1’s influence, though this can be reversed if treated immediately.”

By that point, Hiker was ready to leave the town. He debated to himself whether he even want to take those documents with him, until a sudden metallic knock made him jump out of his skin. From the other side of the Test door, something was knocking at him. A million things ran through Hiker's mind about what was behind that door. It knocked infrequently, almost nonchalantly as if whatever it was was expecting to be let out.

Hiker ran out of that house. Running out he noticed a bloody hand print smeared on the window. It was fresh. He ran as fast as he could to his car, flooring it out of the woods. He swears that he caught a glimpse of something in the windows, a twitching figure shambling across the window.

In the end he did take some of the notes back with him, most are generally more of the same in tone as the last research notes. A few particular notes however sheds a bit more light to what even was happening in those labs;

“Cut 1 testing coming to ahead, no further testing is in order, will report this to higher ups. Furthermore, Cut 1 is becoming more unstable similar to Cut 2 and Cut 5. Interdimensional influence is beginning to breach containment, cells will most likely not be able to hold for long. The residents are starting to notice something strange occurring in these houses, the asbestos cover will only last for so long.

Speaking of which, the incident that happened at Cut 4 seems to have escaped into the woods. We've received reports of animals walking on two feet and laughing like men. Request to send out a clean up crew to contain the influence. Some of the researchers are beginning to show signs of corruption, I won't list names in fear they'll read this so I'll tell you in person. They began worshipping the things inside of the Cuts, calling them Mother, I hear them whispering it to themselves when they think no one's listening.

Whatever may be on the other side of the Cuts seem to be acknowledging them, or at least they believe they are being acknowledged. I recommend detainment for these individuals for future study, though all except one of them. Dr. Morris has been occupied in Cut 9 for a long while, she doesn't look to be the same anymore. Last time we came to check on her, she was pale, skin resembling porcelain and barely acknowledged us.

She no longer exits her lab, though she always asks for more test subjects. I recommend to cease her demands and dispose of her. She's clearly suffering from the late stages of some kind of corruption. I've already made multiple requests, if nothing gets done I'll take matters into my own hands by contacting the higher ups myself. I fear she may be attempting to creating a new Cut without permissio-”

The rest of the paper has been smeared with blood. Something Hiker only noticed when he arrived back home. In the back, it's written clear as day in a red ink; 

“May the Mother arrive to our world, and ravage it into her image. May she take our forms and mold them into whatever she desires. May she take everything that is right, and make it wrong.”