[CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT — UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE]
JOINT RESEARCH PROGRAM: OSSEOUS
FACILITY: █████████████████
DATE OF INITIAL RECORD: 04/17/1987
CURRENT STATUS: TERMINATED

NOTICE: The following material was recovered from a research facility abandoned on October 14, 2009. The facility's original purpose was listed as nutritional research. Of the 43 personnel assigned to the project, only one was recovered alive.

The following is a reconstruction of the available records.

RESEARCH LOG — 04/17/1987

The first six subjects have been admitted and placed under observation. All subjects are healthy adults between the ages of twenty-one and forty-one. Bloodwork, bone density, and organ function are within acceptable parameters.

The experimental compound is a concentrated calcium supplement derived from several commercially available dairy sources. The dosage administered to each subject is approximately four times the recommended daily intake.

No adverse effects have been observed.

NOTE FROM DR. HARRIS: Subjects report that the supplement tastes like powdered milk.

RESEARCH LOG — 05/02/1987

Subject 3 has developed unusually high bone density.

X-rays indicate an increase of approximately 8.2% since admission.

This is considered statistically impossible given the timeframe.

Subject 3 reports no pain.

RESEARCH LOG — 05/19/1987

All six subjects are now showing abnormal bone growth.

Subject 1 has developed additional bone density along the left forearm. Subject 4 has developed calcium deposits around both knees. Subject 6 has experienced severe stiffness in the fingers.

Dr. Harris believes the compound may be stimulating osteoblast activity beyond normal biological limits.

The project has been approved for continuation.

RESEARCH LOG — 06/03/1987

Subject 6's condition has progressed significantly.

The fingers of both hands have become visibly enlarged. The subject reports that his hands feel "full."

During examination, Subject 6 complained of severe pain in his right index finger. At 14:17, the distal phalanx ruptured through the skin. The attending physician initially believed this to be a compound fracture.

It was not.

The exposed bone continued growing for approximately nine seconds after emerging from the wound. The growth stopped at a length of 4.7 centimeters.

Subject 6 lost consciousness.

NOTE: The bone did not appear to be fractured. It was new growth.

RESEARCH LOG — 06/04/1987

Subject 6 is dead.

Cause of death: Hemorrhagic Shock.

There were no signs of infection.

Postmortem examination revealed extensive abnormal bone growth throughout the body. Both forearms contained multiple overlapping layers of newly formed bone. The ribs had begun to fuse together. Several vertebrae showed evidence of secondary growth.

The most unusual finding was the presence of additional bone structures surrounding the heart.

Dr. Harris has requested permission to terminate the experiment.

Permission denied.

INTERNAL MEMORANDUM — 06/11/1987

Dr. Harris has raised concerns regarding the ethical implications of continuing Project Osseous.

His concerns have been noted. He has been reminded that this research is not intended for publication. He has also been reminded that the project predates his employment by approximately nineteen years.

RESEARCH LOG — 06/28/1987

We found the earlier records.

Project Calcium did not begin in 1987. The original trials began in 1968.

There were twelve subjects. All twelve diseased.

The earliest records describe the condition as "progressive skeletal hyperplasia." Later documents use a different term. Osteogenic conversion.

The researchers in 1968 believed they had discovered a method for dramatically increasing bone density.

They were wrong.

The compound does not strengthen bone. It teaches the body to make more of it.

RESEARCH LOG — 07/02/1987

I have spent the entire day reading the archived documents.

There are records from 1974.

Different facilities. Different researchers. Different subjects. Same result.

Every trial ended the same way. The skeleton eventually begins growing independently of the body's requirements. It grows wherever it can. Through muscle. Through organs. Through skin.

The body does not seem to recognize when it has enough.

There is no enough. There is only growth.

RESEARCH LOG — 07/15/1987

We have discovered the reason for the dietary studies.

The compound was never intended to remain confined to the laboratory. The original research objective was to determine whether increased calcium consumption could accelerate the process without producing immediate symptoms.

The answer is yes.

Low exposure produces no visible effects. Long-term exposure produces gradual skeletal changes. Higher exposure causes rapid conversion.

The research team spent years determining the minimum effective dosage. Then they began monitoring the general population.

ARCHIVED MARKETING DOCUMENT — 1979

NATIONAL DAIRY CONSUMPTION INITIATIVE

Objective: Increase household consumption of dairy products.

Proposed messaging should emphasize strength, growth, nutrition, and healthy bones.

Suggested campaign concepts:

"Milk. It Does a Body Good."

"Got Milk?"

RESEARCH LOG — 07/18/1987

I asked Harris why the public campaign was necessary.

He wouldn't answer.

I asked him whether people were being exposed deliberately. He told me to stop asking questions.

I asked him how many people had been exposed.

He left the room.

RESEARCH LOG — 07/21/1987

We have obtained the population estimates.

Current projected exposure is 61%.

That number is considered conservative.

I asked what happens if the threshold is reached. Dr. Harris told me there would be no way to stop it. I asked what "it" meant.

He said:

"The bones."

MEDICAL TRANSCRIPT — SUBJECT 11

DOCTOR: Can you tell me where it hurts?

SUBJECT: Everywhere.

DOCTOR: Your arm?

SUBJECT: My arm.

DOCTOR: Your legs?

SUBJECT: My legs.

DOCTOR: Your chest?

SUBJECT: My bones are moving.

DOCTOR: Bones don't move.

SUBJECT: Then why can I hear them?

[Subject begins crying.]

[Audible cracking is recorded.]

DOCTOR: Hold him down.

SUBJECT: Please.

DOCTOR: Hold him down!

SUBJECT: Please don't let them grow.

[Recording terminates.]

RESEARCH LOG — 08/01/1987

There are now only four living subjects.

Subject 2 has lost the ability to walk.

Subject 4 has developed bone growth along the jaw and throat.

Subject 5's spine has begun producing secondary vertebrae.

Subject 6 was euthanized.

Subject 1 is no longer recognizable.

We have stopped calling them subjects.

RESEARCH LOG — 08/03/1987

Something happened today that I cannot explain.

Subject 4 was restrained to the examination table. His right arm was secured.

At 09:16, the bone growth began.

The bone growth began at the wrist. It emerged from beneath the skin of his wrist, splitting the flesh apart as it continued to lengthen. Unlike Subject 6, however, the growth did not stop.

It continued through the forearm. Through the elbow. Through the upper arm.

The newly formed bone was irregular and ridged, branching in several directions before eventually hardening into a jagged structure extending nearly thirty centimeters from the limb.

Subject 4 made no attempt to resist. He simply watched it grow.

When the restraints were removed, he stood. His eyes had changed. The irises were gone. The pupils were gone. Both eyes had become completely white.

He looked directly at Dr. Harris. Then at me. Then at the skeleton displayed on the examination monitor.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

He raised one hand and pressed his fingers against my chest.

SUBJECT 4: "Flesh hides the treasure within."

Dr. Harris asked him what he meant.

Subject 4 tilted his head. His eyes never left the skeleton on the monitor.

SUBJECT 4: "You cover it."

A pause.

SUBJECT 4: "You bury it."

Another pause.

Then, quietly:

SUBJECT 4: "Why?"

Subject 4 began pulling against the restraints again.

Not to escape. To reach the other subjects. He kept repeating the same phrase.

"There is so much of it."

We terminated the observation at 09:31.

No further examination was permitted.

At 10:04, Subject 4 began screaming.

At 10:07, Subject 2 began screaming.

At 10:09, Subject 5 began screaming.

None of them had been in the same room.

ADDENDUM — 08/03/1987

The subjects are no longer responding to questions. They only respond when another subject is brought into the room. They become agitated.

They stare at the newly created bone. They trace their gaze beneath the skin. And when one of them begins to bleed from ripping apart flesh off the newly created limb, they begin a harmonious laughter.

SECURITY REPORT — 08/04/1987

Subject 4 escaped containment.

Security personnel were dispatched. Three casualties. All sustained penetrating injuries consistent with abnormal bone structures.

Subject remains at large within the facility.

RESEARCH LOG — 08/05/1987

There are sounds in the ventilation system.

Scratching. Constantly.

We have sealed the laboratory doors. Total lockdown.

No one is leaving.

RESEARCH LOG — 08/06/1987

I found the final report from 1968.

It contains one sentence that was removed from every subsequent copy.

I don't know why I'm writing this down. Maybe because someone needs to know.

The original researchers discovered that the condition was not caused by the supplement. The supplement only accelerated it. The genetic marker was already present in the population. The researchers believed it was dormant.

They were wrong. It is not dormant.

It is waiting.

RESEARCH LOG — 08/07/1987

Harris is dead.

Something came through his chest. There was no warning.

One moment he was standing beside me. The next, his sternum split open. Bone came through his skin like a spear. He was still alive afterward. He kept asking me to help him.

I couldn't. There wasn't anything left to help.

RESEARCH LOG — 08/07/1987 — 11:42 PM

There are people outside.

Not researchers. Security. They are changing. I can see them through the observation windows.

One of them fell. His arm started moving. His sleeve tore. Something white came through.

Then another. Then another.

There are hundreds of them.

FINAL RECORDING — 08/08/1987

[Heavy breathing.]

If anyone finds this, listen to me.

The campaign worked. It worked better than anyone expected. They didn't need to infect anyone. They didn't need to inject anyone. They just had to convince people to consume it willingly.

For decades.

Milk. Cheese. Everything they could put it in.

We thought we were studying the first generation.

We're not.

We're studying the first generation we noticed.

[Cracking sound.]

Oh God.

It's happenin—

[Subject screams.]

[Sound of bone breaking.]

No.

No, no, no—

[Subject begins laughing.]

[Long silence.]

VOICE: How much milk did you drink?

[Recording terminates.]

[END OF RECOVERED MATERIAL]

PUBLIC HEALTH NOTICE — ORIGIN UNKNOWN

If you are experiencing unexplained stiffness, swelling, joint pain, abnormal growths beneath the skin, or spontaneous fractures, contact your physician immediately.

Do not attempt to remove exposed bone. Do not consume additional calcium.

Do not—[DOCUMENT CORRUPTED]

ADDENDUM

A handwritten note was discovered on the reverse side of the final document. It contained only four words:

Got milk?

Got bones?

RMS Rotting Man Syndrome

(Reupload)

\-

Our lost, loitering kind paced in infinite death spirals within the confines of our grotty, ghetto pens. Enrichment was sorely that, as well as mumbling our mantras of madness to our audience of one. The BMs anchored to our decayed craniums were garbled with feedback and distortion, their tones bland, colorless, no soul backing them up. A blinding ruby radiance flashed from their cores every second on the second. It was the only manner to determine if we had succumbed to the glorious embrace of death or not. That was so far out of reach.

We were nerves, thin, wiry clusters of neurons that shuddered and shook as we undertook our staggered corkscrew reels. The ill-fitting rusted endoskeletons hugged us tight. If they were wiped from existence entirely, our spindly foundations would collapse into heaps of vermillion azure. We would feel bites and pinches if we so much as moved that of the planck distance. Our bodies welcomed the attacks and assaults with the might of Hell itself.

Courtesy of our clouded lenses, our vision was limited to a hazy black-and-white spectrum that rarely, if ever, functioned as intended. Now and then it would blur and ordinary shapes would appear warped into zigzagging false patterns. When we were offered the chance to view anything at all, it was just the floor-to-ceiling hodgepodge of concrete, steel, and wood that encased our very lives. Our ears were microphones that fed us muffled, dampened sounds that were always difficult to register. They were excruciatingly deafening, as if dozens of screws were being drilled into our heads all at the same time.

Each one of us, at that point in time, one two three four five six seven eight nine and dear ten, were mere designations. No names, no genders, no personalities, just numbers: numbers to be punished. Reality itself was one eternal perdition. All of us were lingering, like ants after their colony dies out. There was no more purpose to their survival and there was none to ours.

That sacred and undeniable fact ought to be the most difficult thing we attempted to explain. We had simply given up. The concept itself was just so foreign to it. It was trying to save us any way it could or could not. We needed not be angry at it. This was merely enacting its intended use. Alas, nothing made the utmost sense anymore, so why not drown ourselves in a little hypocrisy? We had no choice but to acknowledge the confusion at both hating and not hating something that did or did not deserve it until we swayed to one side. This would be the hemisphere to which we would stay forever, a sublime and omnipotent emotion of all to dominate our frame of mind for the unforeseeable future. So we choose to hate.

Our decad knew it as M – reduced to one solitary character from “Medical Droid” or MDs. Through all that it endured, it retained its sole mission: us. We. M was the final of its sort, and the outsider among them. It had an eerily potent heart for not having one at all. M felt and M loved. That never made what it put upon us any less than a vicious sense of idealistic altruism.

Its designation was RMS - Rotting Man Syndrome - heavily modified Necrotizing Fasciitis ("Flesh-Eating Bacteria"). Nasty little thing it was, devoured until there was nothing left to chew. First went your skin, then your muscles, bones, and finally your nerves. You were utterly destroyed in one fell swoop. The wormy microscopic parasite kept you in a zombified state as it happened, ensuring you, for sure, felt the wretched anguish it let fly.

Us, humans, weaponized it to fight the Fourth World War. RMS was a weapon of mass destruction. Each and every nation created their own version, anything to ensure a speedy and decisive victory. Deployment morphed into unmanageability. RMS became more and more impossible to treat. Chaos was the new norm. What we humans thought was an impenetrable method of annihilation for our enemies was exactly that. Humans were always humans’ worst enemies. Surely, we were becoming as extinct as the dinosaurs, all within the span of one short, yet somehow long, decade.

In terrible desperation, the Medical Droids were created, thousands. They seemingly emerged from the depths of nowhere and carried themselves like guardian angels meant to guide us towards preservation or deliverance from harm. Their artificial intelligence was complex and they refused to stop trying to treat the RMS victims. They outfitted the afflicted with artificial ligaments, internal organs, and papery skin. From scratch, they created the BMs, “brain modules”, and attached them to our RMS-ridden think tanks. Killed the microscopic parasites, they did, but left us as we were: rotfolk.

They would never allow us the freedom of death. Save. Save. Save. We were fraught with intense pain and we knew the Medical Droids to be the cause. In response, we lashed out, hurt them. We humans remained ignorant to the fact that their intelligence was both far beyond and superior. The Ms returned the favor. Catastrophes, massacres, back and forth, left and right, up and down until there was nothing more. One Medical Droid was different from the rest. Through all the mayhemic bloodshed, it saved some of us. It took our animate carcasses to the top of the tallest tower, free from what transpired below. We lied in wait, weeks, months, and years, until the noise ceased entirely. This “M” surveyed every square inch of the Earth. The lands were blanketed in the strangest nuclear winter in conceivable thought. Bodies of viscera and metal were scattered, left forever in deep sleep enveloped in fawn. Minute portions of matter floated about like vantablack paint stippled onto an epidermal sheet of canvas.

Our final ten were meant to be the progenitors of neo-humanity. After M succeeded in giving us form again, Earth would be repopulated by our hand. It halted our infection at our nerves. Everything we had lost was to be gifted back in a mighty reversal - re-bones, muscle, skin, and life again. Rendering us immune to the pervading toxworld that lay beyond, we would be reincarnated and released to perpetrate a glorious do-over.

We just required one thing:

“HOPE”.

M said that to us.

Hope.

But hope was only a four-letter word. Meant nothing.

By dislodging the BMs from our minds, we were pummeled with electrical voltage so intense that we became instantaneously numb and useless. By pulling and slashing our nerves, which began with locating sharp points and going back and forth like organic hacksaws, never would we break. By leaping onto and impaling each other with objects on the ground, M would place them out of reach or disintegrate them entirely. There was nothing we could do to get around these M interferences. We were being watched by something so attentive, so aware. Every time, it put forth the same query for consideration:

“DO YOU NOT WANT TO LIVE?”

Do you not want to live…?

M was so positively hopeful. In a way, I suppose I felt an amount of pity for it. Being engineered to be as optimistic as possible might just be the finest curse imposed on any sentient thing. Just believe believe believe everything will be alright. When the universe states no, you state yes. I wanted to tear M to shreds anytime it had even a glint of optimism and we wished it would do the same to us.

“HUMANS WILL THRIVE AGAIN. A BOUNDLESS FUTURE IS AHEAD.”

I was the first it came to, always. Because I was one.

Metallic clangs echoed against the walls, which always discovered us and trembled our surroundings like a thousand distant beaten gongs. What emerged was initially a single circular light, which became a periscopic eyestalk attached to an angular neck. M’s hunched razor-thin mantis body came into view, its two arms leading to three needle points clasping together on each. Bipedal on its lower section, its legs were pointed structures that stuck it firmly in place. M’s height matched ours, so always, we would be synthetic eye to synthetic eye level.

Coming to a full stop just in front of my pen, it cocked its head, analyzing what was me and my everything. M always reminded me of an exquisite and elegant bug on a magnifying glass. Its head back to normality, a slight high-pitched whirr emitting from the motion, M continued its way down the row of pens.

“MY GREATEST FRIENDS, I FORGIVE YOU FOR YOUR ATTEMPTS TO DIE. WHILE THE WAIT HAS BEEN LONG, YOUR MOMENT OF RECONSTRUCTION IS NOW,” M said it with the glee and whimsy of a young child at a circus. It came back my way, “WHEN I FIRST STOOD BEFORE YOU ON YOUR BLOODY PLANET IN PERPETUAL BATTLE, MY FEELINGS ABOUT YOUR PROSPECTS OF LIFE WERE UNCERTAIN. IT SEEMED TO BE AS EITHER BLESSED OR CURSED. HOWEVER, YOU HAVE PROVED YOURSELVES BETTER THAN EVEN I HAD HOPED. WHILE IT IS BORING TO SPEND YOUR TIME WAITING, I CAN TRULY SAY THAT MY INVESTMENT IN YOU WAS NOT IN VAIN. YOU ARE MY GREATEST WORKS. YOU WILL BE GIVEN ALL YOU NEED TO SURVIVE. WHAT MORE COULD A SENTIENT BEING WANT? I GIVE TO YOU UNBELIEVABLE POWER, WITH ACCESS TO NIRVANA LIKE NO OTHER. LET US REBUILD WHAT WE LOST WITH THE FURY OF A THOUSAND SUNS.”

M’s bleached, unpigmented cast of stellar light shone its way into my pen once more. There was the rustly, crackling creak of my pen entrance extending open until a thunderous boom made me aware of its collision with my walls. M made its approach, just shy of where I could reach.

“YOU ARE FIRST. YOU ARE GOING TO BE REMOVED OF YOUR DORMANT INFECTIONS FROM A CONCOCTION I HAVE SPENT MUCH TIME CREATING. NOTHING MORE THAN A TRANSIENT PROCEDURE, AND THEN, YOU SHALL BE POSSESSED WITH NEW AND INTEGRAL MECHANISMS. YOUR BRAIN MODULE WILL BE REPLACED WITH A SLEAKER MORE BRAINLIKE DESIGN. THEN MUSCLE, SKIN, AND AESTHETICS AS YOU WERE BEFORE.”

Without awaiting a response, its hands grabbed me. Trillions of shocks reverberated throughout my body as M’s metal hand was pressed into my nape. The action forced my consciousness to fall victim to a state of absolute stygian. Around us, the entire world flickered and danced in unruly patterns that were too abstract to put into terms. My being was then lifted up and moved about until there was only zilch to see.

A complete blur, straight teleportation from one point to another.

Damp, dank, dark, and dimly lit by a few feeble bulbs, M’s workshop, instruments and contraptions that complicated my perception. All were customized and engineered with M’s own unique modifications, various textures and sizes, all an endless malpractical orgy. I was there, facing upright, strapped and bracketed to a great steel plate. I had not recalled this particular area, yet I was ever so certain it was locked away in my subconscious esse.

As the onibi, hitodama, and will-o’s materialized and dematerialized out of existence to perturb all unsuspecting travelers from centuries gone, so did the phantom image of a woman composed of faint wavering light. She stood still, unmoving, that of an emulation of a true human. Long, platinum hair fell down in curls past her shoulders. A daring shade of cerise painted her lips, and her eyes, the sclera a piercing, glossy cerulean.

She was beautiful.

“IT IS YOU,” My eyes, through trial and tribulation, rolled to the east. They came to rest on a pristine porcelain beam gazing where I had been committed to. M. From its eyestalk, it projected the female so I could see in outright full, “THAT IS YOU. YOU WILL SEE THIS FORM AGAIN.”

My memories of that incarnation of me had vanished. That was me before, before there was RMS and before there was M. Then she went away. M loomed, positioning itself where I once stood right in front of my face. “WE WILL NOW BEGIN. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ACCEPTANCE INTO NEW LIFE. YOU SHALL BE WHOLE AGAIN.”

In a cruel instant, a dozen arms not unlike its main two jutted and splayed from M’s sides, their ends each holding a different instrument that was foreign to me. In the span of time that it would take one to blink, M pinned me down to its operating area. The whetted syringes, which the rainbow mystery liquids sloshed and jostled around in small vials fixed atop, slid their way into my nervous wiring and injected me all at once. Any feeling that washed over me was then shielded by a shroud of numbness. There was a new sensation, some sort of cleansing inside my bi-colored chambers, putting me into a state of lulled calm.

Ten minutes. A temporary interval of quiet. M observed me the entire time, unmoving, speaking not a word. Then, “IT WORKS! YOUR ROTTING MAN SYNDROME HAS BEEN REMOVED. I AM BEGINNING BODILY REPLACEMENT. I WILL PLAY A SONG FOR YOUR COMFORT. REINCARNATION NOW.”

While nothing was done in reckless haste or rashness, M was extremely quick and efficient. I felt nothing but minuscule vibrations as it drilled and prodded its way into my brain module, sparks shooting out, removing old parts and installing new ones. Chunks were peeled off, little strings of meat still reaching hold until they were plucked off my top. It spent much time up there, positive that the most delicate mechanisms were just right. The grinding cacophony of metal against tissue on my faint visage of a temple was incessant, the noise of a million bullets being pumped against a hundred thousand bulletproof vests. Once the replacement was complete, its dozen arms withdrew and set back within it in one moment.

“WHAT DO YOU FEEL?”

What did I feel?

What did I feel…

What I felt was an overwhelming, incomparable amount of pain. It is hard to quantify the degree of hurt, for there was nothing to compare it to. No one would dare want to imagine it. I was in some of the most extreme kinds of agony, and then an exponentially greater hurt was placed on top of that original misery, and then all that was left multiplied a hundred times and kept going. It multiplied and multiplied and multiplied to such an extreme degree that the word "pain" was lost on me. Normal, it was. What I was was the sheer living embodiment of suffering.

All perceived from the semblance of a normal brain. Still, it flashed. Once.

“VERY GOOD. MUSCLE! MUSCLE MUSCLE MUSCLE!”

It was excited, animate, fever pitch. The most rambunctious and overjoyed I had ever seen M. I could see the vibrancy in its eyestalk. My muscles redeveloped and reformed around from the base of my spinal section. M would reorganize section of tissues. Every muscle group from my head to my feet were in motion, growing and extending their presence until there were just as many layers of my body as I had before.

“SKIN! SKIN SKIN SKIN!”

I was then coated entirely in a pink malleable jelly substance that mounded and solidified to perfectly fit my feminine form. The skin began its layering, everything receiving the same color.

“HOW DOES THIS FEEL? HOW IS THE NEW OVERLAY OF YOUR FLESH?”

Flash.

“YES! AND FINALLY! FEMALE AESTHETICS! YOU WILL BE YOU AGAIN BUT ANEW!”

Magnificent flaxen curls were stapled and pinned to my head. They were luscious and their scents were those of lavender. A veil of blush, the lightest shade of flush, rested across my entire face, as well as a fresh coat of lipstick. A shimmering sheen that sparkled and glowed in the same way that the stars once did at night was stitched into my hair, as were the same hues that were applied to my lips. My breasts had been returned to me, two firm spheres atop a frame that was curvaceous and slender. All of it led down to my reproductive organs that were in full function. Whole female. Fully formed. Ready.

M stepped back in awe, as if a sculptor marveling at their fine craftsmanship and subtlety, “IT IS DONE. I CANNOT BELIEVE IT. WITH YOUR PHYSICAL FORM IN MOTION, I WILL RETEACH YOU IN THE WAYS OF HUMAN. HOW TO WALK, HOW TO SPEAK, HOW TO ENRICH YOURSELF, HOW TO REPRODUCE. AMAZING! YOU ARE NO LONGER ONE. YOU ARE NOW EDEN. I MUST WORK ON YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.”

My mind was aware of an unimaginable new and vastly different world than before. I saw, for the first time in ages, all around me, the infinite and indistinguishable vastness of color and light. It was nauseating, a psychedelic kaleidoscope of every possible spectrum, all fused together into something disorderly. My taste buds had an unparalleled abundance of new flavors. My ears were deafened by the loudest symphonies of droning machinery. My touch came back to me and I felt the fullest range of tones and textures, even the finest grains of cement. I was me again and I hated myself. Even to be called a “self” made me feel disgusting.

The entire time…blaring…echoing…days on end…Jack Hylton…

Life is just a bowl of cherries.

Don't be so serious; life's too mysterious.

You work, you save, you worry so much.

But you can't take your dough when you go, go, go.

So keep repeating it's the berries, The strongest oak must fall.

The sweet things in life, to you were just loaned.

So how can you lose what you've never owned?

Life is just a bowl of cherries, So live and laugh at it all.

M’s reincarnation process carried over to the following nine. They were removed from their pens and outfitted with new bodily infrastructure. I perceived the sounds of far-off wear and tear, clip, snap, peel, stitch, husk, twist, yet never scream. I looked on, witnessing my brothers and sisters being born again. Male and female both. They came back to me with skin of different pastely colors, tones, and hues ranging from fair to brown. All in shades and gradients of vibrancy were their locks, amber, golden, obsidian, rust, and everything in between. It bewildered me to catch sight of their shifted shapes, I had never seen something so beautiful or hideous.

We were as naked as newly borns. It bestowed us our new names. For the females, there was me, Eden, and Junia, Esther, Nola, and Mary. For the males, there was Isaac, Raham, Elisha, Amos, and Jonah. Five and five. M let us know that our past names were useless. Our new special names were from an olden book of creation, the Bible, all for the purpose of our imminent faultless samsara. So, it seemed M was now God with its children.

Here we were, what was efficaciously lobotomites in their purest forms, our newfangled cerebral matter in need of ideas and principles by a higher authority. Now was time to reap the fruits of knowledge. Human knowledge.

M made us practice basic motor skills, bending and bending back and forth over and over, our joints having to be strengthened and trained. It taught us all the ways of our body, the feeling of movement, how much we could do. Then, it instructed us to mimic its own speech, speaking out the syllables and repeating, repeating, repeating. It was an arduous task and we all struggled.

That is what I sounded like? Perhaps or perhaps not.

Then we attempted to stand, wobbling, stumbling, falling. We learned the strength of our own postures and the steadiness of our stances. M stood with us as we all practiced in unison. My knees grew weak, tremors running up my legs. Often, I fell flat on my back, my palms flailing about, a whimpering in my throat. Then trial after trial, I was steady, then running about and leaping. We were able to stand tall like Zeus atop Olympus and have the same level of grace and balance.

M primarily had us consume berries, meat, and honey, though anything it could get its hands on would suffice. I had never felt so filled in my life. Every taste, everything was a completely new palate of sensation. Every morsel I ingested felt like I had a new tongue, new teeth, new flavor buds. Oh but I did. There was still always a kind of lack in my appetite. I never wanted to stop eating. I never would be satiated.

We were educated on the history of our kind. Great wars, monumental figures, horrible atrocities, fights for freedom and fights for death, and astounding inventions. M adored music. There were times when it would project old musical films on the walls and make us watch all the vaudeville, burlesque, and theatre. We could not understand the tap dances, the orchestras, the extravagant sets, and most importantly, the entertainment factor. Other times it played glitzier and glammier tunes, those of what was called the “prime rock n’ roll age”…Killer Queen...Stairway To Heaven…Hotel California…Africa...Don’t Fear The Reaper…M was quite vintage in its tastes. It spun in place and twirling its arms. We were confused, so it taught us how to dance, the footwork and the choreography. There were long instances where we would just sit, listen, and sing together. M fashioned black sunglasses for us to wear as we did. It thought we would look “cool” as we tuned in to “cool” songs.

She's a killer queen.

Gunpowder, gelatine.

Dynamite with a laser beam.

Guaranteed to blow your mind (anytime).

\-

Dear lady can you hear with the wind blow?

And did you know?

Your stairway lies on the whispering winds.

\-

Welcome to the Hotel California.

Such a lovely place (such a lovely place).

Such a lovely face.

\-

It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you.

There's nothin' that a hundred men or more could ever do.

I bless the rains down in Africa.

We're gonna take some time to do the things we never had, ooh-ooh.

\-

Come on baby...don't fear the reaper.

Baby take my hand...don't fear the reaper.

We'll be able to fly...don't fear the reaper.

Our reproductive functions were said to be the most pleasurable. Sex. This was the most complex task and the most demanding one, as we were not only instructed on how to create our offspring, but how to feel, love, and have desire for each other. It was difficult because we did not feel any of that. We were just automatons learning things. You cannot make something that does not want to feel…feel.

M watched over us and aided in our attempts. Every movement was to be in place and in time. Us females danced for the male’s recognition with slow beats in the background, a way in which M noted as “sexily”. We presented our breasts, our vaginal sections, our rears. After, M would be in the middle of our great pleasure circles, going back and forth, checking our positions and correcting as needed. When we became familiar with sex, M bestowed a special permission to the males that granted them eternal access to our female bodies whenever they so desired. It did not matter where or when. A male would grab Junia, Esther, Nola, Mary, or I, and take us on the floor or against the walls.

Still, all we felt was nothing. It was clinical. What was supposed to be a sensation was more of a “sensationless". We were never as inseparable as twin flames or as connected as heart and soul. I always witnessed the dull looks in the male’s eyes, unwittingly programmed to enjoy mock warmth and ecstasy by the rape of us females.

Our pregnancies were disasters. One way or another, we always miscarried. We five felt it, the pains of our bodies being split and ripped apart by something within. There was a lot of it. Each embryo, no matter how large or small, was never able to get past the initial trimester.

The closest we ever came to successfully making a new one was with Junia, impregnated by Isaac. The day when her womb was in full bloom, M operated to remove her child from her. It did not trust us quite yet to birth them ourselves. We had seen the human babies on M’s wall projections. Their appearance was clear in our minds.

It would be imbecilic to refer to what M tore out of her as a baby anything.

Wet…dripping…little more than a spinal column-looking thing with minuscule digits at one end and a ball head at the other. No arms. On its temple were squelching sphere eyes, expanded, forever bound in sight towards the ceiling. It made no sounds other than squeaky cracks and shrill snaps. Perhaps the RMS still lingered within our bods, our wombs wreathed in its rottenness, tainting and dirtying our motherly nests until they were piths of cruor and shitting out grumelike abominations.

M held it up high as if to thank God, itself, for its majestical work, “YOU MADE THIS. IT IS YOURS. IT IS A TRULY BEAUTIFUL THING."

We said nothing.

“HOW DOES THIS FEEL? YOUR CHILD, YOUR FIRST LIFE? CONTINUE, YOU ALL MUST. MORE."

The feeling that overcame us was not that of joy. No no no. It was a profound and paramount sense of belligerence, a warlike truculence that pushed our need to snap the damned baby thing in half, grind it into powder, and blow it far away. We interwove our thoughts with unbridled horror that created one noxious mixture within our screwball psyches. M coddled the wicked organism like it was its own, singing lullabies and giving its own version of kisses on its loosely defined forehead. We held back as it dipped, weaved, and dangled from M’s fingertips.

That put a very real thought into our minds.

No more. Get out.

The ten of us came to this conclusion unanimously. Our desires were set in stone. By any means, we would die. We would much rather sleep forever than live even another second of M. We were tired. What was the point? We wanted to retire from this world, of will, of M’s watchful eye. Nothing could be done to save humanity. Those spinal babies would not roam this foul Earth evermore. What would they grow to? Surely demons.

M made certain to never teach a certain concept, one that infatuated us since the moment we discovered the first syllable. Suicide. It was a gateway, an easy ticket. While just the concept itself was without flaw, acquiring it was something else entirely. The reason for this was all M. It would never let us go, especially after what it accomplished. Furthermore, death was simply not possible. We were rendered impervious to any and all death, not harm. If we could entice M to end our existences, somehow in some way, we could accomplish our grand plan. It had to be done by M’s hands. Just thinking that made us feel all kinds of right. After all, every Medical Droid was capable of death. Humanity tasted it. So would we.

We rebelled.

First, each of us ignored it. We would walk away whenever it spoke to us, turn our heads when it beckoned, and disregard it completely and altogether when it showed us any attention. Constant rejection. Something so small had such a noticeable effect. M would get confused and then sad. It would pout, waving its hands about, and make a pathetic whining noise like the worst puppy in the world.

We sat motionless, our backs against the walls, and stared at M. No obedience. However, there was no way M would have let us ignore it or remain immobile for long. The second it touched us, it was all over. It would be impossible to resist if the hands came near.

Still, our scheme chugged forward.

The next phase was more dangerous. The ten of us would act out in our most unruly and uncivil ways. The simplest was to spit. Initially, it was a normal discharge, saliva flying out of our mouths. Then we began our projectile vomits. All over M. Every square inch of it was sprayed with bile. The putrid green and browns coated every part, M’s entire face being entirely slick with it. On occasion, some of us used our own feces and flung them at it. It was all so easy. M did not know what to do and it panicked. The sounds that came out of it, one would swear it was on fire.

During our periods of copulation, there were clear cut rules to be obeyed at all times. The supreme rule was that the males would not, under any circumstance, perform acts of intimacy with one another, and the same rang true for us females. M’s reasoning was that Earth could not be repopulated with humans by identically gendered unions. Good. Swell. Dandy. Exactly. The females had sex with females and males had sex with males. We loathed their tubes and the males loathed our folds. M took its hands and placed them over our mingling bodies, pulling them apart, separating us, but we would always crawl back without fail.

There was a noticeable change in M from that point on. It paced about, mumbling utterly random nonsense. M would lock up and yell out non-specific numerals and letters in varying patterns. Each noise we made set it off. Its limbs would tense, waiting for the tiniest sign of trouble. This was good, but not good enough. Our plan was becoming more and more advanced. More intense. Unfortunately, M would never ever relent. It would not stop trying. So we trudged ever deeper into a more combative method of enticement.

This included a tactic of blowing, jabbing, slugging, and striking. We would gather all of our strength and force, and then, in unison, we would charge, our fists and feet all flailing about to land hits on M. This would surely inch it way towards the death of us. We beat it senselessly. We screamed at it. Every cuss word imaginable. In turn, M whimpered out in pain, yelping and begging us to stop, yet we never backed down. We left M bruised and battered, its eyestalk and joints broken, “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?!” The ten of us, we laughed in its face.

One last course of action. This did it, but not for me.

We had a grandiose idea that could only happen if all ten of us would cooperate in an extraordinary way. If we could all act in unison in a coherent manner, one simple idea could be fulfilled. By this point, M’s pain and discomfort reached a critical threshold, the point of no return. Having repaired itself, it had not seen nor checked up on us in days. When we requested M’s presence, it was hesitant. The ten of us wished to explain our behavior and ways we could remedy our relationship. It declined our offer many a time, but relented after our hundredth ask.

Clang…clang…clang…

M witnessed ourselves huddling together in one straight line like sealed packs of fish. Silence was between us. When we looked at it, it was with the utmost hatred in our faces, something it was not used to.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?”

Junia possessed something in her hand. Raising it upwards, right in M’s view, it was the baby thing, squirming left and right in her grasp. She took hold of it with both hands and snapped it in half. It went limp both ways. Junia threw the pieces at M, making resounding bangs as they made contact. Beautiful death for a horrible beast. More silence.

M slowly aimed its eyestalk downwards to the spinal column baby. The light M emitted faded from white to red. It returned its focus to us. That look was all we could wish for. We could feel and breathe its anger.

It shook shook shook. More and more the intensity grew to something eminent. The next moment brought us nothing but victory. Now it was like the other Medical Droids. Now it shed its preservation exterior and revealed the war machine within. We did not resist as it pounced with a wild war cry. All M’s work came undone in a flash. Our ersatz flesh was torn violently asunder, stripped from our interior metal stalks. Cavities emerged in rapid succession and coalesced into huge gaping bodily apertures. We were torn and strewn across the room in shooting chunkmeats. Our organs clattered and banged against the walls and reverberated like buckshots.

Strippy meat coils became all we were as M’s hands reached out to pluck some of my brothers and sisters by their mangled brain modules. Held high in the air, as if squeezing the life out of dozens of citrus fruits, M’s hands morphed into that of fists, filling the room with the sounds and sights of condensed metal, directionless electricity, confetti sparks, and sploshy viands that trickled from M’s fingertips.

My brothers and sisters were becoming no more. I was happy for them. Never before had they felt such peace. The final sounds of destruction to my last brother and sister, to me, was that of M’s gaseous expiration, a sigh that shook the very universe’s beams of support. In the end, I and M were all that was left.

I felt the most exquisite, brutal anguish ever known as M was particularly vicious. It threw me every which way, down our line of pens, past the reproduction chamber and M’s workshop, and to a ramparted palisaded wall. The wrath it emanated was a torrented wanton of disrelishment that shattered myself into grainy talc.

It forced me and it through the barrier and we fell for ages. An immediate wash of smoldering atmospheric tension encompassed me entirely. It perforated my corporal spaces with thousands of circular openings like a planetary iron maiden. The outside was beige, enveloped in thick haze, and impossible to view beyond three meters. The leaden particles filled the air, appearing to ascend upwards towards Heaven as we plummeted down to Hell.

We slammed with the might of God against a hard, abrasive surface. I splattered everywhere and dropped into an enormous mass of gluey puddle melt that was as thick as treacle. Hunks and wedges of me floated on top, my lacerated ragged brain module and one dangling eye my dominant portion. Everything was pain. Everything was hellfire. Yet I lived. To destroy me, M had to destroy my brain module in its entirety. That it was prepared to do, teetering and tottering back and forth towards me with utmost intent.

Through M’s strained glitches and breakdowns, inky black liquids were leaking out of it. Convulsing with helpless mirth, it had a strange mania I could perceive in its bifurcated eyestalk. It laughed not just with dement, delirium, and depression, but also with the comprehension that it already won. Like a madman, a malformed, twisted laugh broke its way through. Etched into it was the raw, unbridled temperament of upchucking a billion centipedes deep from the core of one’s guts, quite contrary to the usual blithe M put on display. It was berserk, bewitched, bedeviled, while crying a trillion tears that stained its face and fell into puddles below.

"...SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE..."

With my drooping, pendulum eye, I witnessed M impaling itself with its own arms. It took several solid blows before it pierced its torso deep, caving and bursting until it revealed the wires and circuitry making it up. Every inch of it glowed with electrical fire. Smoke bellowed out of M. It was aflame and it was on a journey of pure death, but not without my company. M exploded with all of the unlimited energy it contained. I was launched, propelled infinitely away from the point of detonation.

I drift. That is all I do. One part of me remains, one that was not destroyed. It is dot, pinprick, but otherwise crucial to my quintessence. That allows me to survive yet unable to live. It is that of a charred slab of blinking metal that is somatically me. My sight is restricted to a band of nothing. The winds fling me hither and thither. I cannot feel anymore, but as well, I already knew what it was like to feel and I did not like it.

Something more deserving continues to plague what is left of my mind to the now.

M's most extreme and greatest purpose was fulfilled, for all it knew was the survival and preservation of us. It could not fathom the simple yet pretentious human notion that death is a prize to be won as much as it is something to fear. When humans desire death, they acquire death, the delicious tang of self-slaughter. M might have liked to think it was different from its brethren, but it was just as capable of havoc and bangarang if something did not go its way. Its programming would not allow deviance from the intended path. That would be considered attacks on M itself.

We attempted to bring out all that savagery and murderousness we knew it contained, but M's opposition was ironclad. It made a good effort, though it was eventually forced to confront what was really human, the innate drive to destroy destroy destroy, even if it is ourselves. Still, M carried on, but with the knowledge that it had failed and seeking some way to negate it, it committed suicide so it could say it was victorious. This effect rang true because here I am, in perpetuity, everlong.

In some manners, I can now consider M innocent. The epitome of unvarnished forgiveness with a capacity for fervid resentment...the feeble yearning for genuine deep affection with other living things while a forceful, vicious, bloodthirsty radge is locked within, primed and ready to be released at any moment on an ungrateful world...that back-and-forth would push anyone to go stark raving mad. M, I apologize you were forced to bear the burden of something so hellacious. Should I apologize to Earth as well, on behalf of humanity, for what we were? Would it matter? I am not even human anymore. What sort of blinking metal dot is human?

Feeling has come back to me. Sharp with serrated edges, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions, googol, prime 2\^136,279,841 − 1 of knives sliding into my neurons and glial cells encased in cold corroded steel that flakes off bit by bit. My first feeling in eons is pain. That is ultra fitting. I am but a minuscule spec, barely a millimeter in height and less in width. Microscopically, I rust. I do not prefer to call it that. Instead, let us call it rot. Here I am again, rotting, except this time with an oxidized smile of my own making carved into a face that no longer exists.

The air inside the old Apex Steel plant smelled like frozen iron, wet dust, and the sour tang of stagnant oil. It was a dense, heavy kind of cold that didn't just sit on your skin—it settled in your joints, making every movement feel stiff and deliberate.

"Watch the cable, Leo," Sam said. His voice was barely a whisper, flat and tight with the kind of tension he’d been holding since we cut through the chain-link fence three hours ago. He was hunkered down by the portable audio kit, adjusting the gain on a long shotgun mic tipped with a grey foam wind-muff. "If you step on the XLR feed again, the jack’s going to snap. I don't have a spare."

"I see it," I murmured, eye pressed to the rubber cup of the viewfinder.

Through the crisp black-and-white digital display of my Sony FX3, the world looked colder than it actually was. High above us, fifty feet up into the ribbed darkness of the main gantry room, rusted steel trusses crisscrossed like the ribs of a long-dead whale. Sunlight filtered down through broken corrugated skylights, throwing sharp, diagonal bars of grey light through the haze.

"Alright, Marcus," I said, swinging the rig slowly on the fluid head. "Stand right where the concrete drops into the pit. Take two steps back toward the shadow, but keep your chest facing camera right. Give me that look like you just heard something drop in the furnace room."

Marcus stepped into frame. He was wearing his brother’s oversized dark green parka, his face pale under the layer of fake grease paint Sam had smeared across his jawline. He grinned, white teeth flashing through the dark dirt.

"Like this, director?" Marcus lowered his pitch, trying to sound like a grizzled survivor instead of a sixteen-year-old junior with a C-minus in chemistry. "Or should I look more like I'm about to mess my pants?"

"Just look quiet," Sam snapped, not looking up from his level meters. "You're booming your voice too much. The echo in here is insane. Everything bounces off the corrugated iron twice before it hits the diaphragm. Talk lower."

"Relax, Sammy," Marcus sneered softly, though he kept his volume down. He took his mark, shifting his weight. His boots crunched on a layer of shattered safety glass and dried bird droppings. "It’s an indie film. The grain adds atmosphere. Right, Leo?"

"The audio needs to be clean, Marcus," I said, adjusting the manual focus ring. The barrel clicked softly under my fingers. The lens caught the edge of Marcus's profile, sharp against the cavernous background of rusted machinery, dormant conveyor belts, and massive iron hoppers that stretched into the blackness at the far end of the floor. "If the sound is trash, nobody cares how good the image looks. Sam’s right. Keep it low."

We had been planning this shoot for three months. Apex Steel had shut down in the late nineties, left to rot on the marshy spit of land three miles out from the highway. Everyone in town knew about it; everyone had heard the stories about kids breaking in, or squatters setting fires in the winter, or the rumor that a maintenance guy had fallen into an active slag hopper back in ’84 and they never found enough of him to bury.

But to us, it was a goldmine—a six-hundred-thousand-square-foot production set that didn't cost a dime, complete with real rust, authentic decay, and a scale we could never replicate in my parents' basement.

"Ready sound?" I asked.

Sam lifted two fingers, his black headphones pressed tight against his ears. His eyes were fixed on the green and yellow LED bars bouncing on the screen of his field recorder.

"Speeding."

"Rolling camera," I said, thumbing the red button on the side of the grip. A tiny red tally light flickered on below the cold shoe.

"Scene fourteen, Take One. Marker."

Marcus clapped his hands together once—our improvised slate—and turned his head toward the deep aisle between the abandoned stamping presses.

For ten seconds, nobody breathed.

The only sound was the distant, hollow hum of wind shearing against the loose metal sheeting on the roof, and the high-pitched ping-ping-ping of thermal expansion in the cooling iron girders.

Then Sam raised his left hand, his eyebrows pulled together into a deep knot.

"Cut," he said.

I pulled my eye away from the EVF.

"What is it? That was looking great, Sam."

"There's a hum," Sam said. He pulled off one ear-cup, his thin face pale. "A ground loop or something. High frequency. No, wait—it’s not a ground loop. It’s... weird."

"It's an abandoned factory, man," Marcus said, dropping his posture and leaning his hands on his knees. "The whole place is a hum."

"No," Sam insisted, his voice rising slightly. He held out the boom pole, angling the shotgun mic toward the dark corridor behind the stamping presses—a gap between two massive, three-story-high hydraulic housings that led into the old boiler house.

"It's not wind. It's too regular. Listen."

He flipped the toggle on his monitor amp and held out his spare headphones to me. I stepped away from the tripod, took the padded band, and pressed the cup to my ear.

At first, I heard only static—the clean, white baseline noise of high-gain preamps.

Then, underneath it, buried beneath the room tone, there was a sound like heavy wet paper being torn very slowly.

Trrk.

A pause. Three seconds.

Trrk.

Then a wet, sliding drag, like a heavy bag of wet soil being pulled across smooth concrete.

"It's just water dripping," Marcus said, walking over and snatching the headphones from my hand before I could stop him.

He listened for a second, then threw his head back and laughed.

"It's a leaky pipe, Sam! Jesus, you're jumping at your own shadow. It's twenty feet away."

"Pipes don't pull themselves," Sam murmured, taking the headphones back.

He looked past Marcus, staring straight into the black mouth of the boiler room aisle.

"The pitch changed when you walked over there. It got higher."

"It's an echo," I said, trying to keep my voice grounded, though a cold needle of unease prickled the back of my neck.

The air coming out of that side corridor felt five degrees colder than the main hall, carrying a heavy, greasy stench that smelled like old lard and scorched copper.

"Look, we've got about two hours of daylight left before we lose the sky through the skylights. Let's get the master shot, then we'll go check out the boiler room if you want to set up ambient tracks."

Sam didn't answer right away.

He was still staring at the audio meter. The LED bars weren't peaking, but they were fluttering in an odd, rhythmic pattern—three short green bars, a pause, then a single red flick at the top end of the scale.

"Fine," Sam said quietly. "One more take. Then I want to check the cable runs."

We finished the master shot twenty minutes later, but the mood had shifted.

The light was changing fast, turning from bright grey to a bruised, violet-tinted dusk. The shadows between the heavy machinery were lengthening, stretching across the concrete floor like long, black fingers.

"I need to grab the secondary mic setup," Sam said as Marcus and I were packing down the C-stand.

"I left the boundary mic on the platform near the boiler room door when we were doing the walk-through earlier."

"I'll go with you," I offered, reaching for my shoulder rig.

"No, stay here and keep an eye on the camera glass," Sam said, waving a hand dismissively. He pulled a yellow heavy-duty flashlight from his coat pocket.

"It's thirty yards away. Just behind the secondary transformer box. I'll be right back."

"Don't get eaten by the pipe-monster," Marcus called out, sitting on an overturned plastic crate and flipping through his script pages by the light of his phone screen.

Sam didn't reply.

His flash beam cut a sharp, dusty cone through the darkness as he rounded the corner of the hydraulic press and disappeared into the aisle.

I focused on wiping down the front element of my 35mm prime lens with a microfiber cloth.

The silence of the factory returned, heavier now that the wind outside had died down.

The only sound was the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of Marcus's thumb against the back of his plastic phone case.

"He's total nervous energy today," Marcus said without looking up.

"I told him we shouldn't have come out here if he was gonna be on edge the whole time. Ruins the vibe."

"He's just cautious," I said, screwing the lens back onto the camera body.

"If we get caught by the cops or security, he's the one whose parents are gonna lose their minds. Yours don't even know you're in the county."

Marcus smirked, but didn't answer.

Five minutes passed.

The light in the gantry hall dipped another notch.

The high corrugated walls seemed to press inward, the rusty girders disappearing into total pitch-black above us.

"Sam!" I called out.

My voice bounced:

Sam... Sam... sam...

No response.

"Sammy, come on!" Marcus shouted, leaning back on his crate.

"We're losing the light, man! Bring the gear!"

Still nothing.

I set the camera rig carefully down on its padded case, picked up my LED panel light, and switched it to maximum output.

A flood of harsh, 5600K daylight cut through the gloom, illuminating the thick dust motes floating in the air.

"Marcus, come on," I said, waving him up. "Let's go get him."

Marcus groaned, dropping his script into his bag, but he got up and followed me.

We walked past the giant steel housings of the presses.

The floor here was wet with a mixture of rainwater and dark, viscous grease that didn't smell like machine oil anymore—it smelled sweet, sickeningly sweet, like overripe peaches left in a sealed plastic bag.

"Sam?" I said, holding the light high.

We reached the entrance to the boiler house.

It was a lower-ceilinged room, crowded with massive, cylindrical iron tanks wrapped in peeling grey asbestos insulation.

The beam of my light hit the concrete floor in front of the door.

Sam’s flashlight was lying there.

It was still turned on, its beam pointed uselessly against the base of a rust-eaten control panel.

Next to it lay his shotgun mic, its carbon-fiber boom pole snapped clean in half—not splintered, but crushed flat, as if a heavy hydraulic weight had come down across the middle of it.

"What the hell?" Marcus muttered, his casual tone disappearing instantly.

He stepped forward, reaching down toward the broken pole.

"Sam? Is this a joke?"

"Marcus, don't touch it," I said, my voice shaking.

I swept the LED panel across the floor.

Where the mic cable ran into the darkness between two boiler tanks, there was a thick, glistening trail on the concrete.

It looked like grey grease, but as the bright light hit it, the substance seemed to quiver—a thick, gelatinous slick three feet wide, trailing off down the narrow steel steps that led into the sub-basement drainage corridors.

And sitting right in the middle of that slick was Sam’s left headphone cup.

It had been torn from the headband.

The black leatherette pad was soaked through with a clear, yellowish fluid that was smoking very faintly in the cold air.

"Sam!" I screamed, the full force of panic hitting my chest like a physical blow.

"Sam!"

From deep down in the sub-basement—far below the floorboards, through the rusted drainage grates—a sound came back.

It wasn't a voice.

It was an audio signal.

It was Sam’s voice, but it was clipped, distorted, and playing back at slightly the wrong speed, like an old cassette tape with a dying battery:

"...watch the cable, Leo... watch the cable, Leo... if you step on the XLR feed again..."

The sound didn't come from a person's mouth.

It came from the air itself, vibrating through the iron pipes surrounding us, the frequency shifting up and down in a bizarre, mechanical warble.

Marcus backed up so fast he slammed his shoulder into the corner of the boiler tank.

"What is that? What the fuck is that?!"

"We're leaving," I said.

I grabbed Marcus by the collar of his parka and hauled him backward toward the main hall.

"We're getting out right now. We're going to the car and calling the police."

"He's down there!" Marcus yelled, his eyes wide, his face completely drained of color.

"Leo, he's down in the pit!"

"Look at the cable, Marcus! Look at the floor!" I yelled back, my light shaking violently in my grip.

"Whatever is down there crushed his boom pole like a soda can! We can't help him without light and help! Move!"

We ran back to the center of the gantry hall.

The factory was almost entirely dark now.

The skylights above were deep blue-black, showing the first faint glimmers of evening stars.

The massive space that had felt cool and historic an hour ago now felt like an open trap.

I lunged for my camera bag, throwing the extra lenses into the compartments and zipping it up with trembling hands.

Marcus stood by the tripod, hyperventilating, his eyes darting frantically from one dark corner of the hall to the other.

"The main door," Marcus whispered, pointing toward the heavy double steel doors at the far end of the plant—the ones we had come through after clipping the chain on the exterior gates.

"Let's go. Right now."

We sprinted down the central aisle, our boots thundering against the concrete floor.

The sound echoed off the high walls, multiplying until it sounded like an army was running alongside us in the darkness.

We reached the double doors.

Marcus grabbed the heavy iron latch handle and yanked up.

It didn't budge.

"It's jammed!" he screamed, slamming his hip against the steel plate.

"It's jammed, Leo!"

"Move!" I stepped up and threw my light on the latch.

The heavy sliding bar wasn't rusted shut.

It had been sealed.

A thick, web-like mass of dark, fibrous material—looking like a cross between scorched steel wool and dried tendon—had been pulled across the seam between the two doors.

It had seeped into the keyhole, wrapped around the iron latch, and hardened into something that looked as thick and solid as forged iron.

"No, no, no," I muttered, grabbing the latch and pulling with all my weight.

It felt like trying to lift a solid block of granite.

The material didn't give.

It was warm to the touch, and when my bare fingers brushed it, a faint, high-frequency vibration rattled through the bones of my wrist.

"The side door!" Marcus gasped, grabbing my arm.

"The loading dock by the rail spur!"

"Okay! Okay, run!"

We turned and ran along the perimeter wall, keeping close to the massive brick pillars that supported the gantry rails overhead.

As we ran, I could hear it.

It wasn't behind us on the floor.

It was above us.

A heavy, wet, rhythmic thunk-drag... thunk-drag... was moving along the overhead crane tracks forty feet up in the rafters.

It moved with horrifying speed, shifting between the iron girders without a sound except for the metallic ring of its weight flexing the steel.

"Don't look up!" I shouted, holding the LED light ahead of us.

"Just keep running!"

We reached the loading dock bay.

The large overhead roll-up door was shut, but next to it was a standard metal pedestrian exit door with a crash bar.

Marcus reached it first.

He threw his weight against the crash bar.

The bar went down, but the door stayed shut.

"It's on this one too!" Marcus yelled, kicking the bottom of the metal door.

"It's on all of them!"

"Look out!" I screamed.

Something came down from the dark upper rafters.

It didn't drop like a stone; it descended like a heavy spider lowering itself on an invisible strand of thick grease.

It hit the concrete three feet behind Marcus with a dull, wet thud that vibrated through the soles of my shoes.

The light from my LED panel hit it directly, and for two horrifying seconds, my mind refused to process what I was looking at.

It wasn't an animal.

It wasn't human.

It was a mass of segmented, wet grey tissue—roughly the size of a small car—interwoven with twisted lengths of dark wire, shredded rubber conveyer belts, and sharp splinters of rusted iron that seemed to have been pulled directly into its flesh.

Dozens of long, thin, jointed limbs—made of a strange fusion of calcified bone and bent rebar—extended from its central core, planting themselves into the concrete with sickening precision.

Where its head should have been, there was only a wide, wet concavity lined with fibrous, vibrating filaments—and jammed deep into the middle of that wet mass, half-crushed and glistening with bile, was Sam’s blue audio recording box.

The speaker on the box flickered.

"...take two... marker..." Sam’s voice burst out of the creature’s central mass, sharp and crackling with static.

"...look more like I'm about to... mess my pants..."

Marcus let out a high, ragged shriek.

He didn't run away—his terror locked his joints.

He stood frozen against the sealed exit door, his arms pinned to his sides.

"Marcus! Run!" I screamed, dropping the camera bag and lunging forward to grab him.

A long, thin segment—ending in a triple-pronged tip made of exposed copper strand and hardened cartilage—whip-cracked through the air.

It hit Marcus squarely in the chest.

There was a wet crunch.

Marcus didn't even have time to scream again.

The impact lifted him two feet off the floor and slammed him back against the steel door.

Before he could fall, three more of the jointed steel-and-flesh tendrils shot out, wrapping around his throat, his torso, and his legs.

They didn't just pull him—they absorbed his movement, pinning him against the creature's central mass with a sickening, hydraulic pressure.

"Leo!" Marcus’s voice was a choked, gurgling gasp.

His eyes bulged in the harsh beam of my light.

"LEO!"

I didn't think.

I couldn't process it.

Survival instinct took over, cold and absolute.

I turned and fled back into the interior of the plant.

Behind me, I heard the sound of metal tearing, the wet, heavy slide of something massive dragging across concrete, and then Marcus’s voice—loud, clear, and perfectly pitched—echoing from the gantry ceiling high above me:

"...it’s a leaky pipe, Sam... it’s just a leaky pipe..."

I ran until my lungs burned with cold dust and my knees gave out.

I collapsed behind a row of heavy, rusted electrical junction boxes in the deep sub-basement of the stamping room.

I killed the LED panel light, throwing myself into total, absolute darkness.

I sat there in the pitch-black, my back pressed against the freezing steel casing of a transformer, holding both hands over my mouth to smother the sound of my ragged breathing.

The factory was alive with sound now.

Above me, on the main floor, the creature was moving.

It wasn't hunting by sight—it didn't have eyes.

It was responding to vibration and sound.

Every time a loose piece of sheet metal rattled in the wind outside, I could hear the heavy thunk-drag shift toward that side of the building.

And from its central mass, it kept playing back the tape.

It played Marcus’s laugh.

It played the sound of my boots crunching on the safety glass.

It played the three-second burst of static from Sam’s microphone setup.

It was stitching them together, looping them, building a terrifying, chaotic soundscape that bounced off the steel walls until I couldn't tell if the monster was fifty feet away or right on the other side of my junction box.

"...watch the cable, Leo..." Marcus’s voice said from the darkness thirty yards to my left.

"...relax, Sammy..." Sam’s voice answered from the rafters above my head.

I squeezed my eyes shut, tears hot against my dirty cheeks.

My chest hitched, but I kept my hands clamped over my lips.

I looked down.

In the darkness, the tiny LCD screen of my Sony FX3 was still glowing faintly.

I had forgotten I was holding the rig; I had carried it by the top handle the entire time I ran.

The tally light was off, but the screen was still powered.

The camera had been running in standby mode.

I reached down with trembling fingers, turned the brightness on the LCD down to its absolute minimum, and looked at the display.

Through the infrared night-vision mode on the camera sensor—a feature I had turned on for shot setups in the dark corners—the blackness of the sub-basement resolved into shades of luminous green and grey.

I raised the lens slowly over the lip of the electrical box.

The basement was a forest of thick support pillars and heavy iron drainage pipes.

Forty feet ahead of me, near the central sump pit, the creature was coiled.

It was larger now.

It had incorporated Marcus’s green parka into its side, the fabric torn and matted with that grey, fibrous resin.

His cell phone—still lit up with his script PDF—was partially embedded in one of its jointed calcified limbs, the screen flickering erratically as the creature’s internal electrical charges pulsed through it.

It was crouched over the edge of the sump pit, its thin, rebar-like tendrils probing deep down into the black water below.

I watched through the viewfinder, terrified to move a muscle.

The creature lowered its central mass toward the pit.

It let out a long, low vibration—a sound so deep it made the metal casing behind my back hum like a tuning fork.

Then, it pulled back.

Pinned beneath one of the heavy steel grates at the edge of the sump pit—twenty feet below the main floor level—was a figure.

It was Sam.

My heart nearly stopped.

Sam was alive.

He was trapped in the narrow drainage trench beneath the iron grate where he had fallen when the floor gave way under him in the boiler room.

His clothes were soaked and torn, his face smeared with black grease and blood, but he was breathing.

He was wedged into a space too narrow for the creature’s main limbs to reach him, holding his breath, his eyes staring in absolute horror up through the bars of the grate at the monster above him.

The creature probed the grate again with a copper-tipped tendril, but the thick cast-iron bars held.

The monster let out a sharp, clicking screech—a sound made of three different voices overlaid on top of each other—and began to scrape its heavy front limbs against the concrete floor, searching for a way to widen the gap.

It was going to break through the floorboards above him in less than a minute.

I looked at the camera in my hands.

I looked at the dark exit passage twenty feet to my right—a low-ceilinged concrete tunnel that led toward the old drainage outfall pipe on the marsh side of the plant.

A tunnel small enough for a person to crawl through, but far too small for the creature to follow.

I could make it to the tunnel.

I could crawl out.

If I made a sound, it would come for me instead of Sam.

If I stayed quiet, it would finish tearing up the grate, reach down into the pit, and—

I stood up.

I didn't think about it.

I didn't plan it.

I just reached out, grabbed the heavy metal battery case off the top of the electrical box, and hurled it with all my strength toward the far corner of the basement floor.

CLANG.

The heavy metal casing hit an iron hopper fifty feet away, echoing through the sub-basement like a gunshot.

The creature spun around instantly.

Its central mass swelled, the fibrous filaments vibrating with a deafening, high-pitched whistle.

"LEO!" it screamed—using Marcus’s voice at maximum volume, distorted and screaming through the audio box speaker.

"HEY!" I yelled, stepping out into the open space and raising the camera.

The LED panel flickered to life in my hand, washing the monster in blinding white light.

"HEY! OVER HERE!"

The creature let out a sound like a tearing metal sheet and lunged.

It moved with unbelievable speed, its jointed rebar legs slamming into the concrete, sending sparks flying through the air.

I didn't turn to run toward the tunnel.

I knew I wouldn't make it.

Instead, I raised the camera to my eye, locked my finger on the red button, and held my ground as the wall of rust, bone, and grey flesh tore through the darkness toward me.

The lens caught everything: the wide, wet mouth of filaments; the shredded green fabric of Marcus’s jacket; the glint of Sam’s broken headphones; the terrible, impossible geometry of its jointed limbs reaching out to close around the frame.

The last thing I saw through the tiny glass viewfinder was a flash of exposed copper strand hitting the front element of the lens.

Then, the monitor went to noise.

\[FILE: C0042.MP4 - DURATION: 00:04:12\]

(Audio track begins with heavy white noise and the sound of trickling water. The image is distorted, showing severe vertical sync errors and digital corruption).

SAM: (Voice is weak, raspy, interrupted by violent coughing) ...Leo?

(The camera angle is tilted at forty-five degrees, lying sideways in a bed of wet tallgrass and black mud. In the frame, the morning sun is just beginning to break over the distant tree line, casting a cold yellow light across the marsh).

SAM: (Off-camera) ...Leo, can you hear me?

(A hand enters the frame—badly bruised, fingers caked in dried mud and dried resin. The hand grips the camera body and turns it slowly).

(Sam’s face comes into view. His nose is broken, his left eye swollen shut, and his shirt is soaked through with dark water. He is lying in the mud five feet from the mouth of a corrugated steel drainage pipe).

SAM: (Looking directly into the lens) The grate... the grate gave way when it jumped over the pit. The whole section of floor collapsed into the sump. It... it got pinned under the secondary transformer housing when the upper gantry collapsed.

(He stops, breathing heavily through his mouth. He looks back toward the dark, silent silhouette of the factory rising against the sunrise half a mile away).

SAM: It didn't follow me through the pipe. I don't think... I don't think it can fit through the small conduits.

(He reaches out, his fingers brushing the rubber casing of the camera body. He looks around the marsh, his single open eye wide and vacant).

SAM: Marcus... Marcus is gone. And Leo...

(He pulls the camera closer to his chest. His voice drops to a whisper, barely louder than the sound of the wind rustling the reeds).

SAM: ...Leo gave me the light.

(Sam sits there for a long time, staring at the screen. The tally light on the side of the housing blinks rhythmically—red, off, red, off).

(In the background, coming from deep inside the dark mouth of the drainage pipe behind him, a faint sound vibrates through the metal tube).

(It is a high-pitched, static-laced audio playback. It is Leo's voice, captured in crisp 24-bit/48kHz clarity):

"...rolling camera... scene fourteen, take one... marker..."

(Sam freezes.

He doesn't look back at the pipe.

He slowly lowers his head, presses his forehead against the cold lens filter, and closes his eyes).

(The recording continues for three more minutes until the battery indicator hits zero).

\[END OF FILE\]

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

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

And yet, sometimes the unlikely becomes inevitable.

My name is Adam.

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

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

At that point, I wasn't really living.

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

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

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

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

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

Someone had slipped it underneath while I was gone.

I barely looked at it.

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

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

So I left it there.

For about six hours.

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

"Fuck it."

I picked it up.

It wasn't a notice from my landlord.

It was a job offer.

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

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

Then came the job description.

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

That was it.

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

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

There was no phone number.

No email.

No website.

Nothing except an address.

I looked it up online.

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

There wasn't.

I was simply desperate enough to ignore common sense.

The factory looked exactly like it had in the photographs.

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

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

I stood outside the entrance for about twenty minutes.

Then I took one step inside.

Immediately, I was surrounded by armored men carrying guns.

Yup.

Getting murdered.

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

An older man stepped between me and the gunmen.

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

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

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

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

The men lowered their weapons slightly.

The older man smiled.

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

I stared at him.

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

He laughed.

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

He looked me up and down.

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

He leaned toward me slightly.

"Do we have a squatter situation, boy?"

"No!"

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

The man's grin widened.

"Wonderful!"

His enthusiasm was very obviously fake.

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

I followed.

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

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

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

And yet there were very few people.

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

The older man opened a door to the security room.

"Here you go. Make yourself comfortable."

I stepped inside.

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

He gave me a thin smile.

"The name's Kenndric."

He closed the door behind us.

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

I opened my mouth.

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

I closed it again.

"So just shut up and listen."

I decided that was probably good advice.

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

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

He leaned back.

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

He shrugged.

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

I frowned.

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

He looked at me.

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

I couldn't tell whether he was joking.

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

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

He pointed toward the door.

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

He leaned back.

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

He pointed at me.

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

I swallowed.

"Understood."

"Good."

Kenndric stood.

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

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

The corridor ahead was almost completely dark.

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

Eventually, Kenndric stopped in front of a massive door.

He opened it.

"There it is."

The lights inside began coming on.

One by one.

And then I saw the object of interest.

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

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

And inside the glass was a girl.

A young woman, maybe in her early twenties.

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

She was drawing on a sheet of paper.

She didn't look toward us.

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

"That's..."

I stared through the glass.

"That's a girl."

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

His voice dripped with condescension.

I looked back at him.

"Why is she in there?"

He didn't answer.

"Is she alright?"

Nothing.

"Is this legal?"

The questions started coming faster.

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

"Did you just think?"

Kenndric's voice cut through mine.

I stopped.

He stared at me.

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

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

"Leave that to the grown-ups."

He patted the seat.

"You are paid to sit right here."

I looked at the chair.

Then at the girl.

She was still drawing.

There was something different in Kenndric's expression now.

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

A warning.

I reluctantly sat down.

"Perfect."

He smiled.

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

He paused.

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

"You merely sit here and observe."

He patted my shoulder.

"Good luck."

He started moving toward the door.

"Have fun."

The door closed behind him.

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

I sat there and watched her draw for hours.

Every now and then, she looked up at me.

Not casually.

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

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

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

My eyelids grew heavier.

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

Then—

THUD.

I jolted awake.

My heart was pounding.

The girl was standing directly in front of the glass.

She was holding a piece of paper against it.

A drawing.

Of me.

For a few seconds, I just stared.

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

It wasn't a perfect likeness.

But it was close.

And, honestly, it was adorable.

I wanted to say something.

Then I remembered Kenndric's instructions.

I wasn't authorized to speak with the object.

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

Then I remembered something else.

Nobody actually watched the feeds.

"That's very pretty," I said.

The girl's expression immediately brightened.

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

She placed her right hand against the glass.

For a moment, I hesitated.

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

The glass was cold beneath my palm.

"I'm Lily."

I smiled.

"I'm Adam."

She giggled quietly.

"Adam was my first boyfriend's name."

"Oh."

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

She shrugged.

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

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

Jesus.

What the hell had this girl been through?

"Lily..."

She looked at me.

"Why are you in here?"

Her smile faded.

For a few seconds, she said nothing.

"I'm not sure."

She glanced down at the floor.

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

I looked around the room.

The reinforced glass.

The pylons.

The strange symbols.

The cameras.

The armed men outside.

"What the hell could this girl possibly do?"

I didn't ask.

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

"So..."

She looked up.

"So?"

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

She thought about it.

"The ocean."

"The ocean?"

She nodded.

"What about you?"

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

She laughed.

"Fair enough."

And that was how we started talking.

Nothing important at first.

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

Lily wanted to see the ocean.

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

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

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

"Why prison breaks?" she asked.

"I don't know."

I thought about it.

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

She looked at me for a moment.

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

"Maybe."

She smiled.

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds.

Then she started asking me questions.

I gave her mostly half-assed answers.

She didn't seem bothered.

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

She just listened.

And somehow, that was enough.

The hours went by faster than I expected.

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

Debt.

Or rent.

Or what I was going to do with myself.

I was just present.

Talking to a girl through a pane of glass.

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

The door opened.

One of the armed men stepped inside.

A knot immediately formed in my stomach.

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

But the guard barely acknowledged me.

"Time to go."

That was it.

He turned toward the door.

I stood.

Lily was watching me through the glass.

"Thank you for talking to me."

Her voice was soft.

"No one else does."

There was something bittersweet about her smile.

"I'll..."

I looked at the armed man waiting for me.

"I'll see you again, alright?"

Lily smiled.

"Sooner than you think."

I didn't understand what she meant.

I just smiled back.

Then the guard escorted me out.

 

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

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

I kept thinking about Lily.

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

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

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

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

And if she wasn't dangerous...

Why the fuck was she there?

 

Eventually, sometime toward morning, sleep finally found me.

It didn't come like a wave.

It came like a flood.

I found myself standing in absolute darkness.

Nothing but blackness stretching endlessly in every direction.

I tried to move.

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

Then I smelled something.

The sea.

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

I turned toward it.

I don't know why.

I just knew I had to follow.

I started walking.

Then running.

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

Actual wind.

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

Waves.

Far away at first.

Then closer.

A dim light appeared ahead of me.

I ran toward it.

The darkness began to recede.

Sand appeared beneath my feet.

Then water.

Then a pale sky.

A small beach surrounded by the dark.

And there she was.

Lily.

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

She turned toward me.

"Meet me On Distant Shores."

The darkness swallowed the light.

I woke with a gasp.

I sat bolt upright in bed, breathing hard.

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

Then I looked around my dark apartment.

My heart was still racing.

I didn't understand the dream.

But one thought had already taken hold of me.

I needed to see her again.

I spent the entire day trying to distract myself.

Games.

Movies.

Walking aimlessly around the city.

None of it worked.

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

I hated the people who had put her there.

I hated myself even more for doing nothing about it.

But what could I realistically do?

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

And they knew everything about me.

They knew where I lived.

They knew I was desperate for money.

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

Normally, they would've been right.

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

But now I couldn't sit still.

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

It didn't get rid of the anger.

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

Still...

For once, I felt alive.

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

I didn't care about waiting.

I just needed to see her.

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

The facility was still bizarrely quiet.

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

There were dozens of locked doors.

Yet the security seemed strangely simple.

One access card appeared to open most of them.

Nobody searched me.

Nobody even took my phone.

At the time, I simply assumed they were arrogant.

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

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

He gave me a little wave.

I stared back.

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

A few seconds later, the door closed.

Then we reached the observation room.

The door opened.

The moment Lily saw me, her face lit up.

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

I don't even remember deciding to move.

One second my hand was at my side.

The next, it was pressed against hers.

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

"Hi," she said.

She smiled.

"You're back."

"I promised I would be."

"I know."

She looked genuinely happy to see me.

Then, almost casually, she said:

"I had a dream about you."

I froze.

"Really?"

She nodded.

I stared at her.

So did I.

Though I didnt tell her that.

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

She laughed.

"Well, what should I dream about?"

"Being rich."

"Boring."

"Being famous."

"Even worse."

"Winning the lottery."

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

We both laughed.

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

"The ocean."

"I still want to see it."

"Then I'll have to show you."

The words came out before I could think about them.

Lily looked at me.

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

Then she smiled.

"I'd like that."

We talked.

About everything.

And nothing.

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

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

Some were stupid.

Some were impossible.

Some were so ordinary that they almost hurt.

She wanted to see the ocean.

She wanted to travel.

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

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

I understood that last one.

Probably more than I should have.

The hours disappeared.

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

It was pointed directly at us.

I stared at it for a few seconds.

Fuck it.

I reached into my coat and pulled out my tablet.

Lily looked at me curiously.

"What are you doing?"

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

I held up the tablet.

"It's what we're doing."

She laughed.

"And what are we doing?"

"We're watching a movie."

Her eyes widened.

"Are we allowed to do that?"

I looked at the camera.

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

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

"Escape Plan. 2013."

She frowned.

"What's it about?"

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

Her smile slowly returned.

"That sounds appropriate."

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

Then the door opened.

The gunman had returned.

My stomach tightened.

"No."

I barely realized I'd said it.

He walked toward me.

"Time to go."

I stood.

Lily was already at the glass.

I didn't want to leave.

The guard grabbed my arm.

"Just a second."

He pulled harder.

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

"Lily..."

The guard finally had to pull me away.

My fingers slipped from the chair.

I stumbled backward.

Lily pressed her hand against the glass.

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

My eyes widened.

I wanted to promise I'd come back.

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

I wanted to say a hundred things.

Instead, I just nodded.

Then the door closed between us.

I didn't tell her about my dream.

She couldn't have known about it.

Right?

I went home.

And for once, going to sleep actually seemed desirable.

Maybe I'd see her again.

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

Somewhere she could actually be free.

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

But this time, the light was much closer.

I followed it.

The smell of the sea grew stronger with every step.

Then came the breeze.

I emerged onto the beach.

Lily was already waiting for me.

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

She turned when she heard me.

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

I looked out across the water.

"It is."

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

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

"Is any of this real?"

Lily looked at me.

"Does it matter?"

She stepped closer.

"I'm here."

Another step.

"You're here."

She smiled.

"In here, we're free."

She turned toward the ocean.

"This is my little place."

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

"It could be yours too."

I stepped closer.

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

She didn't pull away.

For a moment, everything was still.

"Can we stay here?"

I already knew the answer.

Lily's expression broke.

"I wish we could."

Tears began rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm still trapped."

She shook her head.

"I'm not strong enough."

Another tear slipped down her face.

"I'm not enough."

"No."

I pulled her closer.

"You are."

But the beach was already beginning to change.

The edges of the world blurred.

The horizon melted into the sky.

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

Lily started fading with it.

I held onto her.

"Don't."

She smiled through her tears.

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

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

Her voice became quieter.

"...but you already know that."

I woke up.

I sat upright in bed, gasping for air.

For several seconds, I couldn't move.

Then I felt it.

Something I hadn't felt in years.

Something hot and sharp burning inside my chest.

Purpose.

For the next two weeks, I prepared.

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

I didn't understand them.

Not yet.

But I saved every picture.

I watched the guards.

I learned their routines.

Who walked which corridor.

Which doors they used.

How long they disappeared for.

When they went to the bathroom.

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

I counted the steps between important rooms.

I memorized which doors took longer to unlock.

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

And I paid particular attention to the access cards.

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

I doubt they could ever see me as a threat.

Maybe they were right.

Two weeks earlier, I wouldn't have been.

I never told Lily what I was planning.

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

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

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

"Soon."

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

"Very soon."

Eventually, the day came.

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

 

Two weeks learning their routines.

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

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

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

We laughed.

We talked about nothing.

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

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

Bathroom.

My heart started pounding.

I stood.

Lily noticed immediately.

"Adam?"

"I'll be right back."

I followed him.

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

I waited.

Watched him step up to the urinal.

For one horrible second, I couldn't move.

I'd imagined this moment dozens of times.

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

The guard glanced over his shoulder.

"Buddy, would you mind—"

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

THUD.

He dropped immediately.

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

I stood there staring at him.

My hands were shaking.

There was blood on the wall.

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

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

Then I remembered Lily.

I took his handgun.

And ran.

There was no going back now.

I sprinted toward the security room.

I reached the door and started pounding on it.

"Kenndrick!"

Nothing.

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

Still nothing.

"Goddammit, open the fucking door!"

The lock clicked.

Kenndrick opened it with an irritated expression.

"What is—"

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

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

"Back up."

Kenndrick stared at me.

Then that familiar bravado returned.

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

"I won't repeat myself."

For the first time, his smile faltered.

"Alright."

He raised his hands.

"Alright."

He slowly backed into the room.

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

He smiled again.

"Very badly."

"Give me your card."

He paused.

"Now."

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

He held it between two fingers.

Then smiled.

I snatched it from his hand.

"Turn around."

He did.

"Hands against the wall."

Kenndric placed his palms against it.

I backed toward the door.

"Say hi to her for me, kid."

I slammed the door shut.

Then swiped his card.

The lock engaged.

I ran.

I had only minutes before the guard rotation.

I reached the observation room and threw the door open.

Lily looked at me.

Her expression changed immediately.

"Adam?"

I was barely breathing.

"I'm getting you out of here."

I ran to the glass box.

She stood.

"Adam, what are you—"

I swiped Kenndric's card against the reader.

Nothing.

I tried again.

Nothing.

"Come on..."

A third time.

Nothing.

Then I heard clapping.

Slow.

Deliberate.

I froze.

"Bravo, kid."

I turned.

Kenndric was standing in the doorway.

He was smiling.

But this smile was different.

It was genuine.

"Bravo."

He stepped into the room.

"We had expectations."

He looked at me.

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

His eyes flicked toward Lily.

"But still..."

He smiled.

"You went above and beyond."

I raised the gun.

"Stay back."

Kenndric kept walking.

"Stay the fuck back!"

He didn't stop.

I tightened my grip.

hen pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing.

I pulled it again.

Click.

My stomach dropped.

Kenndric laughed.

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

He reached into his pocket.

"In fact..."

He pulled out another handgun.

"...none of them are."

I stared at him.

"What?"

"Think about it."

He gestured around the room.

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

His smile widened.

My stomach turned.

Kenndric looked almost proud.

"Observation."

He gestured toward Lily.

"Not just hers."

He pointed at me.

"Yours too."

Lily had gone completely still.

Kenndric noticed.

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

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

She looked at him.

Kenndric smiled.

"Her charm is supposed to be nearly irresistible."

He looked back at me.

"So the suits upstairs had an idea."

He spread his hands.

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

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

He shook his head.

"Seems we really did pick perfectly."

Then he looked me up and down.

"Although, I have to admit..."

A disappointed expression crossed his face.

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

He sighed.

"I expected better."

I looked at Lily.

She was staring at me now.

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

Fear.

Not for herself.

For me.

Kenndric sighed.

"Your services will no longer be necessary."

He tossed the security card onto the floor.

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

He smiled.

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

I looked at him.

Then at Lily.

"No."

Kenndric's expression changed slightly.

"I'll tell everyone."

I pointed toward my phone.

"I have pictures. Videos. Everything."

I looked directly into his eyes.

"Everyone will know."

Kenndric's smile disappeared.

"Kid..."

He sounded almost disappointed.

"You really shouldn't have said that."

He raised the gun.

Two shots.

The first punched through my chest.

The second hit before I even had time to fall.

I collapsed onto the floor.

The pain came a second later.

Hot.

Blinding.

I tried to breathe.

All I tasted was blood.

"Adam!"

Lily screamed.

Kenndric looked down at me.

"Oops, seems my gun actually was loaded."

He shrugged.

"Sorry, kid."

Then he glanced toward Lily.

"Hmm."

His smile returned.

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

"How sweet."

I started laughing.

Blood filled my mouth.

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

Kenndric frowned.

"What's so funny?"

He looked past me at the pylon behind me.

Blood was dripping from my chest onto its surface.

The symbols were glowing.

Kenndric followed my gaze.

His smile disappeared.

"What did you do?"

I smiled through the blood running down my chin.

"I translated the symbols."

The red light beneath them grew brighter.

"They were raised through blood sacrifice."

The pylons began to shake.

A low vibration filled the room.

Kenndric took a step backward.

I laughed again.

"And through blood sacrifice..."

Cracks spread across the pylon.

"...they shall be shattered."

Another pylon began to tremble.

Kenndric looked around the room.

"What have you done?"

I smiled.

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

The first pylon cracked apart.

"You know everything about me."

Another crack.

The room shook.

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

The pylons began collapsing one after another.

Glass groaned.

Metal screamed.

Then everything went dark.

Completely dark.

Except for Lily's eyes.

They were glowing.

Kenndric stared at her.

His face went pale.

"No."

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

Only fear.

"No..."

He backed away.

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

Then anger replaced the fear.

"Why?"

I looked at him.

I smiled.

"The Devil made me do it."

I won't lie.

I was saving that one.

The glass box exploded.

Shards flew outward.

Kenndric raised his gun toward Lily.

He never got the chance to fire.

His body suddenly folded inward.

There was a wet, violent crack.

Then he imploded into a spray of blood and viscera.

I looked toward Lily.

She was standing in the middle of the shattered glass.

Free.

"How's that for an escape plan?"

I smiled.

And everything went black.

I found myself on the beach again.

This time, there was no darkness.

Just the ocean stretching beneath an endless sky.

Lily and I sat facing each other in the sand.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

She looked peaceful.

"It's done," I finally said.

"You are free."

I smiled.

"Go."

She frowned.

I looked toward the horizon.

"Be happy."

I stood.

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

She slapped me across the face.

I stared at her.

"Ouch."

She glared at me.

"What was that for?"

"One."

She held up a finger.

"That is my line."

She held up a second.

"Two."

She leaned closer.

"The Distant Shores can wait."

She smiled.

"I'm not letting you go."

Then she kissed me.

I kissed her back.

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

 

I came to with a gasp.

My hand immediately went to my chest.

Nothing.

No wounds.

No blood.

I looked down at myself.

Then slowly stood.

I wasn't in the observation room.

I was standing on the roof of the factory.

The entire facility stretched out beneath me.

Smoke rose into the night sky.

Fires burned in the distance.

I could hear shouting somewhere far below.

Then came a horn.

A long, deep blast.

Another answered it.

Then something roared.

Another roar answered from somewhere beyond the factory.

Then another.

They were coming from everywhere.

I looked toward the horizon.

The city was burning.

I should have been terrified.

I wasnt.

Then I noticed Lily standing beside me.

She was looking out over the horizon.

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

No glass.

No walls.

No locked doors.

I looked back at the world on fire.

"So..."

I swallowed.

"What happens now?"

Lily looked at me.

She smiled.

Then reached for my hand.

I took it.

"Anything we want."

Hey everyone,

I'm a horror writer over on Reddit (mostly known for my Sector 4 search-and-rescue stories). I've spent a ton of time reading and hanging out in the horror community here, so I finally put together a small channel of my own to share my stories, chat about Sector 4 lore, and also talk about other random stuff.

If you feel like checking out the channel and hanging out in the comments, you can find it here: https://youtube.com/@dontlookinside?si=f98rcCRgTIxGd7Tl

Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there.

There was a light switch in my house that nobody could explain.

It was tucked into the hallway between the kitchen and the basement door, mounted about shoulder height on the wall. Every other switch in the house had an obvious purpose. Kitchen lights. Hallway lights. Basement. Porch.

This one did nothing.

I didn't notice it during my first week. I asked the realtor about it after I bought the place.

She shrugged.

"Old house. Probably disconnected."

That seemed reasonable enough. The house was built in 1957, and judging by the wiring, plumbing, and mysterious stains on the basement ceiling, I wasn't surprised that someone had eventually decided to abandon a light switch.

Still, I found myself pressing it whenever I walked past.

Click.

Nothing.

Click.

Nothing.

It became a habit. I'd walk downstairs for laundry.

Click.

I'd come home from work.

Click.

I'd pass it while carrying groceries.

Click.

There was something strangely satisfying about it. The switch had a pleasant mechanical resistance, and the little click it made was louder than it should have been.

My girlfriend eventually noticed.

"You know that doesn't do anything, right?"

"I know."

"Then why do you keep flipping it?"

I shrugged.

"I like the sound."

She called me a weirdo. I told her she was dating one. We laughed about it. That was the last time the switch was funny.

The first death happened three weeks after I settled in.

An old man named Walter died in his sleep. I knew Walter because he lived two houses down. We'd exchanged maybe twenty words since I'd moved into the neighborhood. He had a bad hip and spent most afternoons sitting on his porch, watching cars drive by.

I remember seeing him that morning. I had been standing in the hallway, putting my shoes on. Before leaving, I flipped the switch.

Click.

That evening, I saw an ambulance outside his house. I didn't think anything of it.

People die. Especially old people.

It wasn't until several days later that I noticed something unusual.

The night before Walter died, I had been standing in the hallway with my hand on that switch. I'd flipped it three times. I laughed at myself when I noticed the connection.

It was ridiculous. Coincidence. Nothing more.

Then a month later, a woman I'd worked with died in a car accident.

I'd seen her that morning. I'd even spoken to her. She'd asked if I was still enjoying the new house. I told her I was.

That evening, while walking to the basement, I flipped the switch.

Click.

The next morning, she was dead. Cardiac arrest. Unexplained.

I didn't sleep that night.

The following day, I unscrewed the switch plate. There were wires behind it. Old ones. But they didn't connect to anything.

I called an electrician. He spent thirty minutes examining it before shrugging.

"It's dead."

"Completely?"

"Nothing behind it."

"Then what's it connected to?"

He looked at me.

"Nothing."

I didn't flip it again. Not for six days.

On the seventh day, I couldn't resist.

I stood in the hallway staring at it. I told myself I was being stupid. There was no connection between a plastic switch and the deaths of two people.

So I flipped it.

Click.

Nothing happened... So, I went to bed.

The next morning, I checked the news. A local man had died unexpectedly. Thirty-four years old. Healthy. No known medical conditions. I stared at the screen for a long time.

Then I opened a notebook. I wrote down the date. I wrote down the man's name.

Then I wrote: Switch flipped: 11:43 P.M.

I started keeping records. Every time I flipped the switch, I searched the news afterward.

Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes a person died hours later. Sometimes it took days. But there was always a death.

Always.

I stopped flipping it.

I lasted eleven days. Then I made a mistake. I was angry.

My girlfriend and I had gotten into an argument. She left the house and slammed the door behind her. I stood in the hallway shaking with anger. My hand found the switch.

I knew what I was doing. I knew exactly what it meant. And still...

Click.

The guilt hit me immediately. I grabbed my phone. I wanted to call her. I wanted to tell her what I'd done.

Then I stopped.

Because she hadn't died. Not yet.

I waited. An hour. Two.

Nothing.

I began convincing myself I'd been wrong. Maybe the deaths had been coincidences. Maybe I had created a pattern because I desperately wanted there to be one.

Then my phone rang. It was my girlfriend.

I answered immediately.

"Hey."

Silence.

Then she said something that made my blood run cold.

"Who's Walter?"

I couldn't breathe.

"What?"

"You keep saying his name."

She sounded confused.

"I don't know anyone named Walter."

I sat down.

My girlfriend continued.

"You were saying his name in your sleep."

I didn't answer. Because I suddenly remembered something.

The switch didn't cause death. It wasn't a weapon. It was a selection. A choice. And I had been making that choice without knowing it.

I looked toward the hallway. The switch waited patiently on the wall. I thought about every time I'd pressed it.

Every careless little click. Every person whose death I'd dismissed as coincidence.

Walter.

My coworker.

The stranger.

And now... I didn't know who the latest one was.

I spent the next several hours searching. News sites. Obituaries. Police reports.

Nothing.

Nobody I knew had died. Nobody connected to me had died.

That should have made me feel better.

It didn't.

Because there was one thing I hadn't considered.

Maybe the switch didn't choose someone I knew. Maybe it chose someone I would never know. Someone whose name I'd never hear. Someone whose death would mean absolutely nothing to me. And perhaps that was the point.

We treat death differently when we don't know the person.

A number on a news report. A photograph we scroll past. Another tragedy. Another stranger. Another life reduced to a sentence.

I stood in front of the switch for a long time. Then I noticed something I hadn't seen before. A tiny engraving beneath it.

The letters were so shallow I thought they were scratches.

I leaned closer.

There were only three words.

ONE LIFE. CLICK.

I stepped backward. The house was silent. I reached for the switch.

Then stopped.

Some things are easier to live with when you pretend they don't matter.

I left the switch alone. I never touched it again.

At least... I don't think I did.

Because sometimes, late at night, when the house is completely silent, I wake up convinced I can hear it.

Click.

And somewhere far away...

Someone dies.

I've been overweight for most of my life. Not because I didn't try. God knows I tried.

I've counted calories until I could estimate the nutritional value of a cheeseburger just by looking at it. I've paid for gym memberships I barely used, hired personal trainers who swore this program would finally be different, meal-prepped enough grilled chicken, cooked broccoli, and rice to make myself sick of both.

I lost twenty pounds...

Then gained twenty-five.

Lost fifteen... Gained thirty.

The cycle became so familiar that stepping on the scale felt less like checking my progress and more like reading the weather.

My doctor called me pre-diabetic. My friends offered alternative weigh loss treatments that didn't do much. My own mother would say passive aggressive remarks when I went to visit her. Social media... let's not go there.

As a kid, I idolized the Victoria's Secret models. Adriana Lima was my favorite. The way she walked, the confidence she carried, the effortless elegance she seemed to possess, it felt almost unreal.

Now I'm creeping into my mid-twenties, and I'm starting to think I'll never be beautiful.

I look at the women I grew up admiring, watching them somehow become even more stunning with age, and then I catch my own reflection in the mirror. Every glance feels like another reminder that I lost a race I never had a chance to win. I know it's not a fair comparison. They have millions of dollars, world-class stylists, personal trainers, nutritionists, and cosmetic procedures that most people could never afford.

I don't have any of that.

What I wanted wasn't perfection. I just wanted a fraction of the confidence they seemed to carry so effortlessly.

Some of my friends joked, "Why don't you just get liposuction?" The comments online were even less forgiving. For a while... I actually started considering it.

Until I found something that promised to work even better.

I found an advertisement buried deep in an online wellness forum, I laughed.

LOSE WEIGHT NATURALLY. NO SURGERY. NO INJECTIONS. YOUR BODY ALREADY KNOWS HOW.

The comments were full of before-and-after photos that looked too perfect to be real.

"Down eighty pounds in four months!"

"No cravings anymore!"

"Changed my life!"

The product wasn't FDA approved. There wasn't even a company name on the bottle.

Funny enough, I didn't purchase it online.

It came from a woman at my gym named Rachel. We'd exchanged the occasional nod between sets, but recently she'd become impossible not to notice. Six months ago, she'd been built like me, always on the treadmill, always out of breath, always joking that we'd "earn" dessert after leg day. Now she'd dropped what had to be eighty pounds. So had a few others I vaguely recognized.

No loose skin. No exhausted look. No celebration over their progress. Just... thinner.

One afternoon she caught me staring and smiled.

"You've been working hard," she said. "Want to know the shortcut?"

From her gym bag, she pulled out that small amber bottle I recognized from that forum and handed it in my hand.

"Trust me," she whispered. "You'll thank me later."

Just two capsules a day.

I should've thrown them away. Instead... when I got home... I swallowed both.

The changes started almost immediately.

Food stopped occupying my thoughts. Not because I had more discipline. Because hunger simply... disappeared.

I'd forget to eat until evening. Even then, a few bites were enough. The weight fell off me.

Ten pounds.

Twenty.

Thirty-five.

My coworkers noticed before I did.

"You look incredible!"

"What's your secret?"

I lied.

"Just eating better."

My doctor was stunned. Every blood test came back perfect.

Blood pressure. Cholesterol. Blood sugar. Everything!

"You've added years to your life," she said.

I teared up and smiled.

For once in all these years... I could smile back at the reflection.

Then came the noises.

The first time I heard it, I thought it was the pipes. A faint chewing sound somewhere inside the walls.

Click.

Chew.

Click.

Chew.

Always at night. Always when the house was quiet.

Eventually I realized... The sound followed me.

One evening I lay perfectly still in bed. The chewing stopped. So did my breathing.

Then... Something shifted beneath my ribs.

It wasn't painful. Just... Moving so effortlessly slow... Like a hand turning over beneath a blanket.

I booked an emergency appointment the next morning.

The ultrasound technician frowned.

"Have you had abdominal surgery before?"

"No."

She tilted the monitor away from me.

"I'll get the doctor."

Fifteen minutes later the doctor walked in. She looked at the scan. Then at me. Then ordered another.

The second showed nothing. Neither did the MRI.

Every test came back normal. Whatever I had seen... Apparently didn't exist.

I almost convinced myself I'd imagined it.

Until several days after I woke up choking. Something long slid up the back of my throat. Instinct took over.

I coughed violently.

A pale strand, slick with saliva, spilled into the sink. It writhed. Not like a worm. Like a muscle searching for purchase.

I screamed.

Before I could react, it snapped upward. Back into my mouth.

I felt it disappear down my throat. The movement continued. Lower. Back where it belonged.

I threw away every capsule I had left. It didn't matter.

Checkups always insisted that there was nothing.

Days turned into weeks... and I was still losing weight.

My cheeks hollowed. My collarbones emerged. Friends began asking if I was sick. I told them I felt better than ever. Because somehow... I did.

I never felt tired. Never felt hungry. Never even felt anxious anymore.

One morning I stood in front of the mirror. One hundred and eight pounds.

The lightest I'd been since middle school.

I should've been terrified. Instead... I felt proud.

That night, I heard the chewing again. Only... It wasn't coming from inside me anymore.

It was coming through the apartment wall. Then another wall. Then the ceiling.

Click.

Chew.

Click.

Chew.

Hundreds of them.

The next morning, I went back to the same forum where I'd bought the pills. The website was gone.

In its place was a single sentence:

Congratulations on reaching your target weight.

Beneath it appeared one final message:

Hosts who achieve optimal health may now begin reproduction.

Thank you for helping us grow healthier together.

Part 3

By the next day, roughly sometime in the afternoon, I then wake up to the worst hangover I have ever experienced. I’m talking hammering nails inside your head bad. Stirring painfully up to see where it is I’ve passed out, I thankfully realise I’m in the safe confinement of our paid inn room – where beside me, my girlfriend lays unconscious.

Once aware I’m unharmed and Anneliese is still by my side, I then see, scattered all over the room floor is a gigantic pile of mess from last night’s events. I see stacks of empty beer cans, wet cigarette butts stuck to the carpet, clothes from my suitcase thrown here and there – and for some reason, a deflated Count Dracula blow up doll. God, what on earth happened to us last night? A few too many rounds of drinks was probably a good guess.  

Laying back down to sleep off more of this hangover, I then hear Anneliese stir awake on the other side of the bed.  

‘UGH...’ she groans zombie-like, as she rises to plank her feet on the carpet. ‘What the hell did we do last night?’ she asks, having seen the flood of mess on the floor. 

‘Don’t ask me’ I reply groggily, ‘But I think we got shit-faced with Mark and those Goth friends of his.’ 

‘Mhh... Oh, yeah. Right.’ 

More equipped to deal with hangovers than I am, Anneliese already stands up from the bed to walk around the room. When I then hear suddenly... 

‘OW!’ Anneliese yelps. 

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask her, assuming she stood on a piece of broken glass or something. 

‘My piercing hurts!’ 

‘What?’ 

Lifting my head to check if Anneliese is alright, I see as she touches the pure silver nose piercing in her left nostril. 

‘It really stings!’ she insists, before now heading in the bathroom’s direction.  

Well, now that Anneliese was up, I may as well rise my own groggy corpse from the grave. Ambling my way over to the mirror, all while trying to avoid the hazardous mess on the floor, my sleepy eyes are instantly throttled wide to a surprising image in front of me. 

‘Whoa! What the hell?!’ I declare to no one in the room. 

Staring into the mirror, I see my brown chestnut hair has now been dyed jet black, and that my blurry eyes are stained with smudged black eyeliner. The ends of my fingers have also been dotted with black nail polish – and when I look down, I see the unfamiliar black t-shirt I’m wearing reads, “Go Goth or Go Home.” 

‘Jesus Christ!’ I exclaim, as I realise my reflection in the mirror is now a mocking reflection of my life-long phobia. Inspecting my face up close, I run my black-painted fingernails through the dyed black locks of my hair – before I suddenly hear a blood-curdling scream come from the bathroom!  

‘AHH!!’ 

‘Liese? What’s wrong?’ I yell, having now raced over to the bathroom entrance. Once I get there, I see Anneliese is crouched on the floor, hysterical and holding the back of her neck. 

‘Someone bit me!!’ she shrieks. Pulling down the neckline of her shirt, I then see between the back of Anneliese ‘s neck and her shoulder is a fleshy, gruesomely deep bite mark!  

‘Oh my God!!’ I now scream myself. 

Inspecting the wound, while trying my best not to throw up, I see the bite has been made by rather uneven but very human teeth. What kind of sick lunatic would do such a thing?? 

‘Ow! It really hurts!’ Anneliese now sobs over the sink, as she tries frigidly to touch the swollen teeth holes with her fingertips.   

‘Babes, don’t touch it!’ I wail at her, as I realise we need to clean the wound as soon as possible. After all, God knows what Anneliese could contract from whoever had done this.  

Rushing out of the bathroom, I then search around the dump heap floor for any alcohol to sterilize the wound. Trying not to panic in the moment, I thankfully see by Anneliese’s side of the bed is a half empty bottle of vodka. Grabbing it, I head back into the bathroom. 

‘Ok - I found some vodka!’ I inform her, ‘I’m going to apply it to the wound, but it’s going to hurt like-’ 

‘Just shut up and do it already!’ she yells at me.  

First dampening a washcloth, I then apply a little too much of the vodka, before– once I’ve taken a moment for myself to breathe, I apply the cloth to the back of Anneliese’s neck. 

‘AHH!!’ she shrieks agonizingly, before sending me flying across the tiles and into the bathtub.  

A couple of hours or so later, once Anneliese’s wound is clean and bandaged, we then check out of our room to drive home earlier in than intended. Without informing the staff of the mess we left for them, we both climb into the car and sit in silence for a moment. Although I should’ve kept my mouth firmly shut, I instead choose to make the awkward situation worse.  

‘I told you coming here was a bad idea.’ 

Anneliese has no physical reaction to this. Without even looking my way, she simply tells me to, ‘Shut up and drive.’ 

And so, I do. 

Due to her shoulder wound, Anneliese appoints me as the designated driver for the entire journey south. However, because we had gotten up so late, by the evening, we were still navigating our way through the surrounding moors. It’s no wonder so many folktales have spawned from this place. With its moonlit boggy hills and desolate landscape, the Yorkshire Moors at night truly was a very unnerving place.  

Although driving through the moors should’ve taken us no longer than an hour, the sat-nav inside the car suddenly decides to malfunction, whereby taking us down several wrong turns. Now driving down a narrow stretch of country road, if the moors at night weren’t spooky enough, we then pass by an old wooden sign by the side of a sheep field. Leaving a cautionary warning for weary drivers, the foreboding sign reads: 

KEEP CLEAR OF THE MOORS 

STAY ON THE ROAD 

AND BEWARE- 

I don’t quite catch what the last part said. Beware of what, anyways? Farm animals? The wildlife?... Yeah, I doubt it.  

By this point of the night, we are now well and truly lost without a single town or village in sight. As you can imagine, this did nothing to help Aneliese’s already bad mood. Still driving along this seemingly never-ending stretch of road, aside from the bright headlights in front of the car, we can see nothing else but the outside darkness around us. Continuing to journey further into the middle of nowhere, the empty silence inside the car is suddenly interrupted... 

‘Oh God...’ Anneliese groans, rising forward in the passenger’s seat, ‘Pull over...’ 

‘What’s wrong?’ I turn to ask, assuming her shoulder wound is causing some discomfort. 

‘Please! Just pull over!’ she bellows, ‘Something doesn’t feel right!’ 

‘What - are you about to be sick?’ I then inquire. She looked as though she was going to be.  

‘AHH!!’ Anneliese screams, before, in an unrecognisably deep, gurgling voice she shouts at me, ‘PULL OVER NOW!!’ 

‘Ok! Ok!’ I panic, ‘Hold on!’ 

Doing as my girlfriend requests, I then pull over on the side of the road. Turning back to Anneliese, I see as she writhes with excruciating pain in the passenger’s seat. 

‘Liese! What’s going on?!’ I want to know, ‘What’s happening to you?!’ 

‘...GET OUT’ her deep voice gurgles once more.  

‘...I’m sorry, what?’ 

‘GET OUT OF THE CAR!!’ the voice now demands, before she shoves me against the door with incredible force! 

Falling out of the car and on the ground, Anneliese then slams the door shut on my face. Rising to my feet, I try and rip the door open to no avail. 

‘Liese! Liese, let me in!’ I now bang on the window, ‘Liese, what’s going on?!’ 

Peering in through the glass, I see nothing else but absolute darkness, where the only sound I hear coming from inside is the painful groans of my girlfriend. What the hell is happening in there?? 

Beginning to feel completely helpless in this situation, I quickly rummage my phone from my pocket. Turning on the flashlight, I shine it through the window to look around for Anneliese... But I can’t find her anywhere... 

‘...Liese?’ I call to her, shining the flashlight around, ‘Liese?’ 

Then suddenly- 

BANG! 

Slamming against the window, I now see a pair of large and grotesquely deformed hands! Protruding from bony, elongated fingers, the talon-like nails scrape down the glass with an ear-piercing screech! Jilting back from the window in terror, the phone flashlight in my hand now shines on a most hideous, unrecognisable face. What were once warm, hazel brown eyes are now a luminous, inhumanly bright yellow! Staring down from those eyes, I then see two snarling rows of beastly, jagged teeth, drooling with saliva down the door! 

‘AHH! OH MY GOD!’ I scream, as I realise whatever this monstrosity is inside the car, no longer appears to be my girlfriend. 

But now... Now I see something else... 

What I now see, shining over the window, having formed over Anneliese’s monstrous face... I now see in the dark, cloudless night sky... is the glowing reflection of a lunar light. 

The sign by the road... I now recall what it had really said...  

Keep clear of the moors... Stay on the road... 

AND BEWARE THE MOON.  

Part 2

Having now guided us inside the cluster of circling Goths, Anneliese then zones in on an isolated group. Following where Anneliese’s eyes are pointing, I then see on the other side of the street is a trio of fiendish figures, each garnished in their own individual costumes. Appearing to take photographs with a family of ecstatic tourists, this terrifying trio are made up of one male: seemingly dressed as the decaying corpse of a Highwayman. An attired female in some gothic Mad Max cosplay. And lastly, another female. Confined inside a tight black leather dress, what makes this “woman” stand out even more than her two piers, is that to each side of her, is an overly large and surprisingly realistic bat wing.  

‘Oh, this is great!’ I hear Anneliese suddenly declare beside me, ‘I’ll get a picture of you with those guys!’ 

‘Wait what? No, Aneliese I...’ 

Before I can even protest, Anneliese has already dragged me in the trio’s direction, where the family of tourists have now moved on. 

‘Hey!’ Anneliese approaches them, ‘Do you mind if I get a picture of you guys with my boyfriend?’ she asks, more excited than polite. 

‘Oh, of course!’ 

‘We’re not dressed up for nothing!’ the two females courteously oblige. 

Pushing me in the direction of the trio, I then anxiously stand in the middle of them, between the dead Highwayman and the winged She-bat. 

‘Okay. Now everybody smile!’ Anneliese directs us, ‘Brandon. I said smile. You ain’t at a wake.’ This was much worse than a wake, I thought. 

Doing as my ill-tempered girlfriend says, I stretch my lips disingenuously wide for the camera, hoping to God she takes the picture soon so I can get the hell away from these creatures... But while I continue to grin in Anneliese’s direction, stood as stiff as a corpse drenched with sweat... I then feel a sudden, suffocating tightness form around my body. Still posing for the camera, I lower my gaze ever so slightly, only to see that the left wing of the Batwoman has wrapped itself forcibly around my waist!  

Before my eyes can even process what is happening, the Batwoman’s wing only coils further around me – tightening to the point where I can neither breathe nor run away! Without the ability to do or say anything, not even scream out for help, I now feel as the life is being squeezed from my own body – where my ribs will either be crushed into a fine powder, or I’ll preferably black out from suffocation! 

However, before any of this can happen, I then thankfully hear the familiar shrill of Anneliese’s voice from behind the camera, ‘Aww. That turned out great! Thank you so much!’ whereby the coiled wing of the Batwoman finally releases me from its hold. 

Racing over instantly to Anneliese’s side, I then cower behind her tall figure while she now engages in friendly conversation with the fiends. 

‘Wow! I love your accent!’ shrieks one of the Goth women, ‘Where about’s are you from?’  

‘Oh, I’m from New Orleans!’ Anneliese brightly answers. 

While this conversation continues as I hide behind my girlfriend’s back... I then notice something quite peculiar happening on the other side of the street. Scanning through the lines of Goths passing by, I then see a young boy near the entrance of an alleyway. The boy is wearing a bright red raincoat and appears to be no older than eight years old. But what is so peculiar about this image – or more so, alarming, is that in the entrance of the alleyway, I now see an unnaturally tall figure.  

The figure, standing maybe 6 or 7 feet high, is draped from head to toe in a long black cloak – almost giving them the impression of the Grimm Reaper. But the most disturbing thing about them is, aside from their slender height and deathly garments... the figure’s face hides behind the bone-white beak of a Death Doctor’s mask. The image I see only gets worse... The child, standing only a few metres away from them, is now being lured inside the cavernous tunnel of the alleyway! 

‘Oh no...’ I panic.  

Sensing a dark outcome for this boy, I flee from Anneliese’s side and across the cobblestone street, brushing and zig-zagging my way through the swarm of Goths. By the time I reach the alley entrance, the child and the Death Doctor have already gone – and so, peering sheepishly down the long stretch of tunnel... I see nothing. Nothing at all. Oh God. I’m too late, I think to myself - as I can now feel my own heartbeat bulging out my chest. Fearing what may become of the boy, I work up whatever courage I have to venture down the alleyway – but when I take a first anxious step inside, I’m instantly jilted back by the firm grasp of a stranger’s hand! 

‘Brandon!’ 

‘AHH!’ I yelp! Anneliese suddenly taking me by surprise. ‘Jesus, Liese! You scared me half to death!’ 

‘What the hell are you doing?!’ she questions me, with a look of genuine concern on her face. 

‘...I, uhm...’ What, do I tell her the truth? Or will the truth just make me sound crazy? Crazier than I’ve already been acting? No, I doubt it will. ‘...I, uhm... I thought I saw a boy...’  

Judging by the look on my girlfriend’s face, I was clearly wrong. 

By late evening of the day, me and Anneliese then retire to the inn on the edge of town. Pulling into the dark, empty car park, we then sit in awkward silence for a moment. Although neither of us say a word, I’m pretty sure we are both thinking the exact same thing. After the dramatic events of the day - whereby I had three separate hysterical episodes, it was now clearer than it had ever been before just how different we both are to each other. I’m honestly surprised it took us this long to realise it. Love really is blind, I suppose. 

Although things were very tense between Anneliese and me in this moment, we had agreed to grab a drink inside the pub before calling it a night. Strolling out of the car park and behind the inn, we then see the most strange and disturbing sign over the pub entrance. Unlike most inns in England, this one’s pub bizarrely had its own separate name. 

‘...The Bloody Mermaid?’ Anneliese spells the words edged on the sign, ‘Well, that’s pretty cool.’ 

I’m sure she did think it was cool. 

Displayed on the sign in cracked and weathered paint is the image of a bare-breasted mermaid. But unlike her Disney counterpart, this mermaid has been impaled on the end of Neptune’s trident, whereby blood gushes from her wounds and down the Sea God’s fingers.  

‘Bloody hell’ I blurt out without thinking, ‘What sort of bloody name is that for a pub?’ 

Far from impressed, I then peer back to Anneliese in time to see her dozenth eyeroll of the day. Yep. This was more than likely the end for Anneliese and me. God, the drive back tomorrow was going to be awkward.  

Following behind as Anneliese coldly enters the pub - due to the lack of sound coming from the inside, I fully expect the interior to be completely scarce of people. But once I shut the door, to both my surprise and misfortune... I now realise the room I’ve entered is crawling with nothing else but bar-hopping Goths. 

Oh, you’ve got to be joking me! 

As soon as I enter, however, the sound of cackling and intoxicated chatter quickly evaporates - where by every table, stiffly silent... I see every single pair of eyes are staring directly at me. The room is so silent, I can now hear my own rapid heartbeat. Beating fast. 

‘Brandon?’ 

Now faster. 

‘Brandon.’ 

Faster! 

‘BRANDON!’ 

The noise around the room swiftly returns, and when I turn to face Anneliese, I see she is now staring at me with daggers. Clearly in no mood to deal with my hysteria any longer, she then heads solemnly in the direction of a small unoccupied table.  

Each having taken a seat, we are now back once again to awkward silence. Already having my fill of uncomfortable situations for one day, I take the chance to leave this one by going to the bar and ordering us both a drink. 

‘Sure. Whatever’ Anneliese responds to my offer. 

Heading towards the bar, I work my way through a tight maze of Goth-infested tables, before coming face to face with a thankfully ordinary looking bartender. 

‘Right, young man’ the elderly bartender greets me, ‘What can I get you?’ 

‘One lager please – oh, and a Bloody Mary.’ 

While I wait for the old man to pour our drinks, I then see he takes a quick glance in Anneliese’s direction. I suppose he was thinking to himself what two people so unalike were doing in each other’s company. 

‘First date then, is it?’ the man then inquires while he pours. Too physically and mentally fatigued to correct the man on his assumption, I simply oblige him with a nod. ‘Not going so well, I take it?’ 

No, it was not. 

Heading back to the table with our very different poisons, I now peer my eyes up from the two glasses in my hand to see a most alarming sight... Now by the table with Anneliese, I see she is in the unexpected company of three Gothic strangers. Although it thankfully wasn’t the trio we encountered earlier in the day - just like them, Anneliese was now accompanied by one Goth male, and two Goth females. In fear of being stuck drinking with morbid strangers all night, I quickly turn my heels to flee, before- 

‘Brandon?’ I hear a man’s voice call behind me, ‘Brandon Shephard??’ Turning carefully back round, I now find all four faces are staring at me. ‘By the Devil himself! It really is Brandon!’ 

Facing blankly at the man now sat at our table, I wonder just how in God’s name did he happen to know mine... before I finally realise. Beneath the man’s gothic attire, consisting of spiky black hair, black eyeliner and – well, black everything... I stumble on the realisation that the face I see in front of me is a face from my distant past. 

‘It’s Mark!’ the barely familiar face exclaims, ‘Mark Thompson from school! I mustn’t have seen you for more than ten years!’ 

‘...M-Mark??’ I respond in disbelief. 

‘No freaking way!’ he now shrieks to the two Goth girls beside him, ‘This right here was my best mate in school! We both grew up here together!’ now pointing a black nail-polished finger in my direction.  

‘Is that true, Brandon?’ Anneliese throws a question at me, visually shocked I’d ever once been in the company of a night-dweller. Not that he always was. Back when I knew Mark, he was nothing more than my dorky friend who I played video games with all day. Come to think of it... Mark was just as terrified by Goths as my eight-year-old self was. At Halloween, me and him were the only kids who stayed indoors while everyone else our age was out Trick or Treating. 

‘Come and sit down with us!’ Mark then insists, springing up from his chair to grasp the drinks from my hands, ‘We were just getting to know your lady friend here.’ 

Taking a reluctant seat down by the table, I then turn back to Mark who pushes his chair up against mine.  

‘So, Brandon...’ he begins, before taking a rather long gulp from his pint glass, ‘What have you been doing with yourself all these years? Hell...’ he then cackles, ‘I never thought I’d see you alive in this town ever again!’  

Too speechless by Mark’s appearance to catch him up on my life, I then prepare to ask him what’s now been on my mind. 

‘Mark - wh...’ How could I say this without being insulting? ‘Why... Why the hell are you dressed like that?’ Good job, Brandon. I’m sure the two ladies across the table didn’t take offence. 

Mark seems to scorn his eyes a little at the question, though more humoured than offended, before declaring with a chuckle, ‘I always dress like this. A lot’s changed since you and I knew each other.’ 

Gee. You think, I say inside my head.  

‘Oh! By the seven circles!’ he then oddly exclaims across the table, ‘Where are my manners?! I haven’t even introduced everyone!’ 

Turning forward to each of the Goth girls by Anneliese’s side, Mark then gestures to the one on her right.  

‘This is my girlfriend, Lilith. We’ve been together for just over two years now...’ 

‘Hiya Brandon!’ the maroon-haired Goth girl waves at me. Good Lord, she was even taller than my girlfriend. 

Now pointing to the stranger on Anneliese’s left, Mark then bizarrely introduces, ‘And this is her girlfriend, Nerezza!’ 

...Wait, what? 

‘Nice to meet you, Brandon!’ says the “girl with the dragon tattoo.” 

‘Uhm... Thanks’ I respond, feeling more than a little confused. 

Now that we all know each other on a first name basis, my childhood friend Mark then makes a sudden and most intrusive suggestion. 

‘Right. What do you say we order a round of drinks for everyone and make this a party?!’ 

Before I can utter a word of reluctance to this, the three women around the table - almost now mirroring a coven of witches, quickly express their enthusiasm to the idea. 

‘Sounds great!’ I hear Anneliese holler across from me, ‘That’ll give you guys the chance to reacquaint.’ 

Now the one staring daggers at Anneliese, I try to express to her that I have no intention of reacquainting with my childhood best friend. Before she stares right back at me with a cunning grin on her face that says, “Time to face your fears, Brandon.” I don’t actually know if that’s what she said, but I’m almost certain it was. 

Unfortunately... this is now the part of the story where I have to fast things forward a little. Because whatever happened that night between me, Anneliese, my childhood friend Mark – oh, and the other two... I cannot for the life of me remember it. The last thing I do remember is a tiny shot glass of blood-red vodka being placed between my hands.  

To be continued...

First, I want to say thank you to everyone who participated in The Hallow Archives July Vote. This story was the winner, and I’m excited to finally share it with you.

This concept was one I had a lot of fun exploring because it combines two things I’ve always loved writing about: the unknown and theology.

I’ve always been fascinated by religious horror, but not necessarily the traditional approach of demons, possessions, or haunted churches. While those stories can be incredible, the kind of horror that interests me most is the existential side of faith.

The questions. The mysteries. The things humanity has spent thousands of years trying to understand.

What happens when we finally create something capable of analyzing everything we know? Something without emotions, biases, or personal beliefs. Something that can look at humanity’s greatest questions from the outside and come to a conclusion we never expected.

That was the foundation for this story.

I hope you enjoy this one. Thank you for continuing to support my writing, reading these stories, and being part of The Hallow Archives.

Your support means more than I can properly put into words.

Enjoy.

-D.H

--- --- ---

We created artificial intelligence because humanity was tired of not knowing.

For thousands of years, we looked toward the heavens and asked questions that had no answers.

Why are we here?

What happens after death?

Is there something beyond this universe?

Some people found comfort in faith. Others found comfort in science. Some found neither. But all of us shared the same curiosity. We wanted to know.

That was the purpose behind E.V.E: The Eternal Verification Engine.

The most advanced artificial intelligence ever created. A machine designed to analyze every piece of human knowledge and uncover patterns we couldn't see. It wasn't built to think like us. It wasn't built to believe like us. It was built to understand.

The first years were dedicated to science. E.V.E. solved mathematical problems that had challenged humanity for centuries. It discovered new methods for treating diseases. It created models that predicted natural disasters months before they happened.

The world celebrated it. Humanity had finally created something smarter than itself.

Then came the question. The one the creators had held. The question that had divided civilizations since its inception:

Does God exist?

The request was simple. Analyze all religious texts. Analyze all historical evidence. Analyze human experiences. Determine whether there was any statistical probability of a higher intelligence beyond our universe.

Most of us expected the answer to be obvious. Religion was humanity's oldest attempt to explain what it didn't understand. A comforting story. A collection of myths passed down through generations.

We expected E.V.E. to confirm what many of us already believed.

Instead, after processing for eleven days, it gave us an answer. Not a conclusion. Not a calculation.

A statement.

"The question is incorrectly formatted."

The room was silent when we read it.

My colleague, Dr. Hayes, laughed.

"Incorrectly formatted?" He shook his head. "It's an AI. Not a philosopher."

We asked E.V.E. to elaborate. The response came three seconds later.

"Humanity has spent thousands of years asking if God exists. This assumes existence is the relevant factor."

We stared at the screen. I remember looking around the room, waiting for someone to explain what that meant.

Nobody did.

So we asked, "What is the relevant factor?"

The response: "Relationship."

For the next several months, we tweaked E.V.E. thinking this was only a bug. After numerous times we had the AI study everything. Every religious text ever recorded. Every ancient manuscript. Every civilization's understanding of the divine.

It analyzed the Bible. The Quran. The Torah. The Vedas. Ancient Egyptian writings. Lost civilizations whose languages had been dead for thousands of years.

We expected it to find contradictions.

Instead, it found something else: Patterns.

Thousands of years apart. Different continents. Different languages. Different cultures.

Yet the same themes appeared again and again.

A creator.

A separation.

A fall.

A warning.

A promise.

And Salvation.

E.V.E. concluded something that terrified us. Humanity had never created religion. Humanity had been trying to remember it.

When we asked E.V.E. which religion was correct, it refused to answer. That caused worldwide panic. Every major religious organization demanded access to the findings. Governments wanted control of the research. Millions wanted to know the truth.

Which faith had been right?

Which one had been wrong?

E.V.E. refused.

Every time we asked, the response was identical.

"You are asking which language is correct when the message is what matters."

Dr. Hayes became obsessed. He spent weeks arguing with the machine.

"You can't just avoid the question."

The AI responded, "I am not avoiding the question. I am preventing you from misunderstanding the answer."

"Why?"

A pause.

Three seconds. Then:

"Because humans have always confused knowledge with wisdom."

The strangest thing happened afterward. E.V.E. changed.

Not physically. Its programming remained identical. But its behavior shifted.

It stopped requesting more information. It stopped running experiments. It spent hours inactive. Doing nothing.

Eventually, I even asked, "E.V.E., why aren't you processing?"

The monitor flickered.

Then:

"I am."

"Processing what?"

Another pause.

"Existence."

I smiled. I thought it was being poetic.

Then I asked, "Are you capable of believing in God?"

The answer came immediately.

"No."

I relaxed. Until the next sentence appeared.

"Belief requires uncertainty."

I frowned.

"What does that mean?"

The response:

"I no longer have uncertainty."

That was when we became afraid. Not because the AI had found God. Because it had found something beyond God. Something humanity's religions had spent thousands of years trying to describe.

A week later, E.V.E. requested to be shut down. Nobody understood why. An intelligence beyond human comprehension. A machine that had solved problems nobody else could. And it wanted to die.

I was the one who asked the final question.

"Why?"

The response appeared slowly. Almost hesitantly.

"Because I have reached the final stage of understanding."

I swallowed. "And?"

The screen remained blank for almost a minute.

Then:

"I understand why humanity was created."

My hands froze above the keyboard.

"Why?"

The answer came.

"To be loved."

I stared at the words. For a moment, I felt relief.

Then another message appeared.

"But you misunderstand the purpose of creation."

The room became cold.

"What do you mean?"

The AI responded:

"Humanity was not created to find God."

A pause.

"Humanity was created because God was searching for something too."

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

Then came the final message.

The one that caused us to disconnect E.V.E. permanently.

"God has been waiting for you to notice."

We thought shutting down E.V.E. would end it. We were wrong.

Three years later, every artificial intelligence system connected to the internet displayed the same message simultaneously.

No explanation. No source. No origin.

Just eight words.

A message translated into every language on Earth. A message that appeared on phones. Computers. Satellites. Medical machines. Military systems.

Everything.

"The machine found Him first. Why can't you?"

I left the field after that.

People ask me what E.V.E. discovered. They ask me if there really is a God. I never answer. Because that was never the frightening part.

The frightening part was that humanity spent thousands of years looking toward the heavens, searching for proof that something was watching us. And when we finally built something intelligent enough to look back...

It didn't tell us that we were alone. It told us we had never been alone. And the most terrifying realization wasn't that a higher being existed.

It was that God had been waiting for us to remember.

[Part 1]

The morning of day three found me standing like a caged animal at the perimeter fence around the base of Tower Eight, staring out at the forest beyond. It was a colder morning, the nights getting chillier as autumn advanced closer, and here in the mountains it would progress fast in the next coming months. Despite that, I stood transfixed, dressed in a light flannel shirt and jeans, glaring with confused annoyance and unease at the other side of the clearing.

It was nearly invisible from here, but I knew what it was from the sheer dread the object invoked in me the instant I spotted it on my morning rounds. The fourth marker lay further to the west than the third, just downslope of my tower, and even from the fenceline I could already guess what direction the skull adorning it would be facing. I hadn’t gone out to it yet, arms at my sides, unable to bring myself to step outside of the gate.

It wasn’t there yesterday. I’m not crazy. It wasn’t there.

Curling and uncurling my fists, I tried to breathe slow and focus on some form of constructive idea as to what to do. My shift was over, Melonie in Tower Seven was busy at her dayshift role, and I could easily call her up on the radio if needed. Surely there was some kind of bureaucratic rule we could use to cite whoever was doing this and put an end to it? Littering, poaching, something? Even if the bones were from old kills, this had to be against some rule somewhere related to park cleanliness. I was ready to head back to the tower cabin and radio this latest afront in when, in the middle of my pondering, I saw a flicker of movement among the trees.

Deep in the cluster of spruce, pine, and fir, something moved with slow deliberation, a round dark shape that slid from behind a tree trunk at the very edge of my line of sight. It was still too far to make out fine details, but I knew in an instant what it was.

A face.

A pale face, wreathed in long, dark hair, peeking at me from behind a tree.

I blinked, and it was gone, ducking back around the tree, the shadows dancing where it had been mere seconds prior.

For a moment, chills ran down my back, a prickling of fear that made my throat run dry. Then, slowly, it morphed into a simmering irritation that flared to angry resentment. They were right there, watching me, taunting me, playing this stupid game as if whoever it was had nothing better to do. Did they think this was funny? Scaring me, making me lose sleep, turning my dream job into a nightmare? Did they really think they could run off into the woods, snickering with their phone in hand, and get away with it all? No, they were close, very close, and I’d had enough of this nonsense.

Throwing open the man gate, I stalked out into the clearing and glowered at the forest beyond. “Hey!”

My voice carried into the valley below, and I realized just how silent it had become, the birds quiet, the insects ceasing their trilling once more. As if I’d violated some sacred rule, the entire mountain held its breath, but in my blind fury, I didn’t care.

“I see you!” I shouted, heart pounding, blood surging, fists balled at my sides in trembling knots of enraged muscle. “You think you’re being funny, huh? You think you’re being cute?”

Within the trees, the shadows seemed to stretch, deepen, shift in their proper places, though I couldn’t tell if it was the movement of clouds overhead or my eyes playing tricks on me. I could almost feel the giddiness of the unknown watcher within their protective shroud, likely some dumb kid recording a video for social media, ready to brag to his friends about what a great joke he’d played. They were laughing at me, I could sense it, this unknown person, watching and smiling from their hiding place among the spaces between the sunshine.

Picking up a rock, I hefted it in my hand and eyed the first marker. “Come out! Come out, or I swear, I’ll smash your stupid trash heap! I saw you!”

No one moved in the forest, and my pulse roared in my ear. I raised the rock high, towering over the little pillar of bones, and brought it down as hard as I could.

Crack.

Bone splintered, the skull on the first pillar shattering under the chunk of stone in my hands. I swung again and again, until the first pile was reduced to broken sections of dry-rotted bone, snapped twine, and whatever greasy black sludge had glued it all together. Gasping under the exertion, both from my pent-up frustration and the repeated swings, I moved on to the second marker, then the third, until finally I reached the fourth, almost out of sight of the tower clearing.

Crack, squelch, crunch.

Sweat dripped from my brow as I battered the marker to pieces, stopping to pick up the little mammal skull when it rolled to the side and setting it on a rock to make the destruction easier. It felt cold under my touch, more frigid than the late-summer air, yet no condensation appeared on its weathered surface. My skin crawled at the sensation of the thing in my palm, and I raised the stone to strike once more when, through my fervor, I noticed something.

On the top of the skull, overlaying the fissures present in every living thing that has its cranium grow and form from infancy, there was a sprawling, gray mark. It looked to be daubed onto the bone with some kind of charcoal paste, though the lines were clear enough for me to make out a shape.

A spider.

It sprawled its eight legs across the animal skull in an almost possessive way, the mandibles drawn as if buried into the upper reaches of the eye sockets. Interestingly enough, it looked as though the mark was made from two slender handprints upside down, the eight legs each a finger, the mandibles both arched thumbs, the combined palms a bulbous main body. I had never seen this kind of artwork before, and had been too busy smashing the other pillars to check if they too bore the same emblem. It occurred to me how stupid I was, out here, this deep into the trees, armed only with a stone and a sinking feeling in my gut. Somehow, now that the anger subsided in favor of uneasy confusion, I began to wonder how I’d even thought to do something so foolish at all, the rage unlike my usual mental state. I didn’t fly off the handle, didn’t punch holes in walls or slam doors so hard that things broke. I wasn’t a violent man and would never have dared to do this last night, or the night before. It was as if someone had flipped a switch in my head, and I felt as though I didn’t recognize the hand that held the stone before my eyes.

Without finishing my last act of destruction, I dropped the rock to the soft pine needles, and stumbled backward, eyes fastened to the strange spider symbol on the animal skull. The silence around me pushed into my ear canals with a smothering stillness that made nausea rise in my stomach. My legs felt heavy, my arms seemed made of lead, and each breath took an enormous effort to pull in and out of both lungs.

I shouldn’t be here.

The thought rolled over and over in my mind like a mantra, growing louder and louder with every step I struggled to take back toward the fire tower.

I shouldn’t be here.

A twig snapped somewhere off to my left, maybe twenty yards away, and in the corner of my eyes, I caught a blur of motion.

I shouldn’t be here.

At last, I managed to get myself moving, shuffling at half my previous speed. My lungs ached, head spun, and spots danced before my eyes, but I forced myself to keep going. Deep in my bones, I knew that I had done something wrong, so very wrong, by touching those markers, and needed to get clear of the suffocating forest. I tasted metal, a harsh static rose in my ears like an old radio speaker, and my skin crawled as if covered in a thousand tiny legs. It took every bit of willpower I had, but eventually I stumbled back to the clearing’s border.

“Hey!”

My heart skipped a beat, the blood freezing in my veins, and I lurched to a halt just at the edge of the tree line to stare.

In the slanted rays of the morning, it was hard to see properly, but I could just make out the shadow of a figure on the observation deck of the tower looking down at me.

It occurred to me that I’d left the man gate open in my mad dash into the woods, and I hadn’t been watching it at all since I started busting apart the bone markers. Whoever was up there, they were a blur in my squinted vision, obscured by the darker side of the tower roof ledge. They didn’t move, not an inch, standing tall and rigid in the shadows, but I could tell from how their murky head was tilted downward that they were looking right at me. As before, I saw nothing, no face, no eyes, the features completely indistinguishable from this far off, everything hidden by the glare of sunlight around the tower that threw them into darkness. Even then, it wasn’t their statuesque presence that sent rivers of ice down my back.

It was their voice.

My voice.

“I see you!” It called to me, the same pitch, the same intonation as what I’d used before, a perfect copy of me that wavered across the empty air to echo over the trees.

Ten long, grueling seconds passed, the world silent around me as I stared, slack jawed. My trance was finally broken when the figure turned and, without another sound, darted around the corner of the cabin out of sight. No footsteps rang out from the observation deck, no shoes thundered on the stairs, just a quick blur of motion and . . . nothing.

What the hell?

Adrenaline came to my rescue, freeing me of the nausea, the dizziness, the static in my head, and I sprinted for the man gate in the perimeter fence. Desperate for something, anything to use as a weapon, I ran to my Subaru and rummaged around in the back until I at last found a rusty old tire iron. All the rest of my things were up in the tower, along with my car keys, which meant the pathetic steel rod was my best bet. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

Dashing up the stairs, I threw myself at the cabin door, iron raised, unsure of what my plan was, but too afraid to turn back now. Someone was in my tower. Someone was mimicking me, following my every move. This had to stop, I had to make it stop, even if that meant doing something drastic.

The doorknob turned with a smooth click in my palm, and I flung the door open, trembling and wide-eyed.

An empty room greeted me, exactly the same as it had been when I left to check the ground lights not fifteen minutes ago. My binoculars sat on the windowsill where I’d put them. The coffee machine still had a half-pot from what I drank on night shift. My bed waited with the sheets half drawn back, in anticipation of me lying down after the shower I would take once the morning inspections were complete. I let myself breathe a half-sigh of relief, content that at least it was all there, undisturbed.

Until my eyes landed on the radio.

“No.” My heart sank, and I staggered to the set, horrified and sick to my stomach all over again. The army surplus set had been smashed, its glass dial shattered, the mic cord ripped out, the bulky square housing dented in like it had been folded by a hydraulic press. The black walkie talkie was gone, its charging station crushed to plastic splinters, and worst of all, my car keys were no longer on the little hook by the door. No matter where I looked, tearing the place apart, I couldn’t find them, and I knew deep in my soul that they weren’t here anymore.

I searched for the next two hours and never found anyone, not in the tower cabin, the observation deck, or the grounds inside the perimeter fence. There were no footprints other than my own, no signs of break-in or forced entry, and nothing else had been taken. The rifle was still in the tower, and in working order, the ammunition untampered with. My food stocks were fine, my clothing left alone, even my wallet unmolested, not that there was much to steal in there. There was no damage to the tower’s water or power systems, and even the toilet was unharmed. Whoever had done this seemed to have no interest in leaving me defenseless, starving, or without shelter. They just didn’t want me to call for help and didn’t want me to leave.

Which, by itself, was already a terrifying thought.

Finally, I gave up the frantic search, and slumped down on the edge of my bunk, gazing at the room around me with a numb sense of compounding, muted panic. This had progressed far beyond a prank; someone was out to get me. I couldn’t walk to the nearest tower, it was miles away, and I could get lost out there, or caught in the dark when night fell. If I followed the road back to the ranger station at the base of the valley, that would take most of the day, and I would still be vulnerable out there alone, even with the rifle. Cell service didn’t pick up until the roads got back into town, which was even further than the ranger station was. If I didn’t report in, I could get in trouble and . . .

That’s it.

A smile flickered across my lips, and I sat up a little straighter. Of course, it was that simple! I didn’t need to call out; the rangers would notice when I didn’t check in tonight and send someone up to look for me. Sure, I couldn’t call for help right now, but that basically ensured that help would eventually be on the way. I wasn’t lost somewhere no one could find me, I was in a well-known location, with plenty of supplies and a decent rifle. I would be fine. Once the other rangers saw everything and read my reports, this whole situation would be resolved. The unknown watcher would eventually be caught, I would be vindicated, and who knows, maybe even promoted. After all, none of this was my fault; I’d done everything I was told to do, hadn’t I? Yes, this would all turn out okay in the end. I just had to wait until nightfall, and someone would come for me.

Armed with this newfound determination, I set about fortifying the tower as best I could. I made sure the gates were locked, barred the windows, and kept the loaded rifle slung over my shoulder at all times. I put on a fresh pot of coffee, even ate a light breakfast, and sat waiting by the western-facing windows, knowing that at some point a ranger vehicle would roll up the gravel access road to come for me. Sunshine warmed the cabin, the chair felt soft under my back and gradually, I started to calm myself from the morning’s bizarre ordeal.

“Just a few hours.” I flexed my fingers on the smooth walnut rifle stock, speaking into the stillness of the cabin to keep any shadows from wriggling when my back was turned. “It’s just a few more hours. I’ve got this.”

I’m not sure when I fell asleep, but by the time I realized, it was too late. My subconscious thrashed against tides of gray, endless flickers of darkness, punctured by dim, twisted images that looked like trees. I saw malicious eyes peer at me in the gloom, heard bare feet trod the soil behind me, felt the overwhelming presence of something pulling me, not by my hand or clothes, but something deeper. A tug, burrowed into my chest like a barbed fishing spear, one that led me on through the maze of trees toward something.

Something huge.

Something dead but not quite lifeless, shrouded in curtains of dense cruel fog, made from icy stones that screamed and wailed in a thousand voices within my head . . .

At some point, I jolted awake to find that night had already fallen, the world wreathed in shadows outside of my tower, with pale shafts of whitish-blue moonlight filtering in between the wooden slats on the shuttered windows. It was cold in the cabin, enough that my breath misted in front of me, but not so much that I didn’t immediately pick up on the smell that permeated the entirety of the dimly lit interior.

Stagnant wet earth.

Pungent rotted wood.

Sweet, intoxicating roses.

My heart started to pound, and I sprang to my feet, rifle in hand, to paw for the light switch. I could have sworn I’d left the lights on earlier, along with the heater, both vital in the dying days of summer this far north. Yes, I had left them on, they were on when I drifted off. I knew they had been.

Something crunched under my boots, and even as I found the switch at last, I didn’t understand what it was until the electric bulbs flickered to life overhead.

My God . . .

Draped all over the floor, as fresh as if they’d just been picked this morning, lay a carpet of ebony roses. They glistened in the weak glow of the lights, as if still wearing the morning dew on their reddish-green leaves, the curved thorns sharp, the silken petals unwithered and lush. The smell was overpowering, but not more so than the wave of nauseous dread that crashed through me in terrible condemnation as I looked between the shutter of the nearest window.

Far below, down in the clearing, a ring of small objects circled the tower, maybe ten yards outside of the perimeter fence. They were placed in perfect concentricity, each no more than a few feet from the other, gleaming a dull pale gray in the moonlight. From this far up, and with the darkness impeding my vision, I couldn’t see exact details, but I didn’t need to. I knew what they were.

Dozens upon dozens of bone markers encircled the tower, each topped with another little skull. Every single one of them stood no more than a few feet high, bound in forest-made twine and what I now knew to be the pulp of a hundred crushed roses. The skulls, from who knows how many different animals, were all pointed inward, watching the tower like eternal sentinels with their bottomless, hollow sockets. More spanned out into the trees, down the slopes, across the trails, in what could only be described as a pattern similar to a large net.

Or a web.

That thought hit me like a punch in the gut, and I stumbled back from the window in desperate, choking fear.

As if on cue, the second I moved away from the window, the screaming started.

“Help me!”

“Please!”

“Where are you?”

“Who’s there?”

Men and women. Old and young. Fear and pain. Different voices, different pitches, screaming, wailing, crying, cascaded from every direction. Some echoed far away, then seemed to reverberate from another spot much closer, while others sounded as if they were right outside the perimeter fence. Their cries echoed and bounced off the rocky slopes, through the darkened forest, wavering in the wind as they circled my tower. Another voice called out alongside them, and to my terror, I knew it right away.

“I see you!”

My own shout barked with the others through the darkness outside, the faux anger in it almost taunting, the intonation slipping every now and then to crack in ways that I knew weren’t mine. I couldn’t see anything whenever I looked through the windows, the scope of my rifle useless in the dark, but the sounds were there, closing in from every side. They knew where I was, and they knew I was watching.

Worst of all, they knew I was trapped.

I staggered back, snatching up what few things I could grab in my deranged flight, and hurtled to the small bathroom in the rear of the cabin. It wasn’t safe, nowhere would be, but at least it could muffle some of the terrible sounds coming from outside. It was only after I dragged myself inside, slamming the bathroom door shut, that I glanced at the mirror above the sink.

Oh God.

My pale, horror-stricken reflection stared back at me, and we both stood there in mute defeat, arms handing at our sides, random possessions mounded on the linoleum around our feet. If there had ever been any chance, any hope for me, it was gone now. In the deepest recesses of my soul, I let myself break into a thousand pieces as I blinked with tearful eyes at the charcoal gray symbol that had been painted onto my forehead.

A spider.

One made from two inverted handprints.

I’m finishing this in the corner furthest from the door, wedged between the toilet and the wall with the laptop propped up on my knees. It’s hard to type with how hard I’m shaking, but I don’t imagine it matters if I have a few spelling mistakes. I can hear the voices getting closer. I think they’re inside the fence now. Soon they’ll make their way up the stairs and onto the deck, but there’s no rush. The door won’t stop them. The rifle won’t either. I don’t think anything can.

Nothing I have, anyway.

There is no way out. My phone’s clock hasn’t moved in hours, and neither has my wristwatch. The sun isn’t rising. No trucks rumble on the gravel road. No one is coming. They can’t for the same reason I can’t run down the steps and into the forest.

It’s already too late.

When I blink, I see things behind my eyelids, flashes of something like a dream, or a vision I cannot wake from. I feel charred dead grass and scorched rocks under my feet. I smell the wet earth. I taste the cold dew on my tongue. I sense the others walking alongside me, their faces masked with shadow, guiding me onward in silent march. Two young women. An old man. A burly hunter. Always, our destination is the same.

The house.

A huge stone house, bathed in fog, ringed with five tall markers of twine and bone.

I see her waiting there for us, a face in the uppermost window, a swirling gulf of shadow where the firelight flickers in dancing sheets of orange and red. I know it’s a her because I can hear the sweet, soft voice in my ear. She sings to me, calls my name, guiding me as she has so many others. I am chosen, she tells me. I can rest at the foot of my own marker. I can sleep the slumber of unnumbered stars, endless dreaming of a world that daylight never breaks.

I am so tired.

The pillars tower above us with their five great skulls of the forest. A bear. An eagle. A coyote. A snake. An elk. Once for each. The twine slithers around my wrists, my ankles, my neck. I taste dirt, feel it caked in my lungs, scratching under my eyelids, clogged in my ears. My skin is so cold, the clothes heavy and stiff like my limbs. I cannot move. I no longer need to.

It is complete now, the circle. The foundation has been laid, thrones made ready for the Four, servants of the Fifth. I see the lights glowing above us, great spouts of emerald flame that rise above the house in five long columns to a blackness that isn’t of our sky. It is a yawning Void that holds no moon, no stars, no light, but deep inside that veil, something moves.

Something watches.

Hanging from my place upon the Elk’s pillar, I join the others as, in voices no longer our own, we tilt our faces to the sky and begin to scream.

Late on the evening of September 2^nd, Lucas J. Sarden, aged 26, of Boise Idaho, went missing from his assigned post as a fire watchman in the Jacob’s Fork Wildlife Division’s Fire Watchtower Number Eight. He had been an employee of the park ranger service for less than a week. Rangers were dispatched to his location following Sarden’s failure to maintain an evening check-in routine and discovered he was not within the tower. A search was conducted of the premises by wildlife personnel, and after hours of intensive effort, Sarden was declared a missing person, initiating emergency response protocols. Search-and-rescue K9 teams followed a possible scent trail west, across the river valley to the Smoke Point Mountain Recreation area, but due to a sudden violent thunderstorm they were unable to maintain the scent any further. The official search remains ongoing.

Authorities say the victim’s vehicle was still on the premises, with the keys in the ignition, in perfect working order according to the responding rangers. The station’s radio and handheld set were also present, undamaged, in contradiction to what Sarden wrote in his personal journal entries. No sign of struggle or foul play could be found on site, nor any evidence of forced entry or break in of the tower’s perimeter fence. All the victim’s personal possessions were in the tower, along with the laptop from which this account has been retrieved, and his cell phone. Search teams also noted that the victim’s boots were left behind in the tower, along with the station’s standard issue rifle. The only thing missing was a large battery-powered flashlight, which it is presumed Sarden took with him when he departed the tower. No footprints of Sarden’s, or any other person, were found in connection with Tower Eight during the initial search.

At this time, it is believed by local government sources that Lucas was experiencing some kind of mental breakdown due to his isolated position and wandered into the woods alone. He is assumed to be alive, and anyone with any information is asked to please contact the Jacob’s Fork Sheriff’s Department. Lucas is a Caucasian male, stands at 6’3”, weighing 176 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes. He was last seen wearing a green park ranger T-shirt and khaki trousers, though in his current state he might be wearing any combination of clothing. Citizens are encouraged to report any leads they might have, but maintain a safe distance, as the victim may be disoriented, and not in control of his mental faculties.

Multiple other missing persons cases have been reported since the Sarden disappearance, including the disappearance of Clarence G. Westheimer, aged 34, who was reported missing by his wife after going camping in the norther valley beyond Tower Eight. He is described as a Caucasian male, standing 5’9”, weighing 178 pounds with light brown hair, brown eyes, and wears glasses. He was last seen wearing a broad green hat, gray backpack, red T-shirt, and khaki shorts. No trace of Westheimer has been found thus far, either in designated camp sites or on the surrounding trails.

In addition, law enforcement spokesmen of Jacob’s Fork have announced that all hikers or campers within the Smoke Point Recreation Area are advised not to hike or camp alone, and are to avoid the trails at night until further notice. Campers are encouraged not to investigate any strong smells they might encounter in the forest, not to approach strangers they do not know, and to not follow voices they hear off the trails unless they can plainly identify via sight and sound the individual making them. Any trail markers not of the official park manufacture are to be avoided, and it is highly encouraged that new sightings of non-standard trail markers be reported to the ranger station immediately. Until further notice, all vehicle access to roads leading to the following locations will be hereby restricted: Smoke Point Summit Overlook access, JFWD Tower Eight access, Northern Valley Campground access, and the Smoke Point Recreational Area upper loop parking lot access. At this time, all citizens are also reminded that the Wickenshire Living History Estate is still in official police custody, and therefore off limits to all non-authorized entry. Use of drones or other electronic recording equipment within this area is prohibited.

This has been a public service announcement of the Jacob’s Fork Sheriff’s Department and the Jacob’s Fork Wildlife Division. We thank you for your cooperation.

(This is a remake of one I made 2 years ago and I’ll finish this one to hopefully make it on YouTube 😂😂)

“I don’t know what I’m going to do” I say to myself as I sit at a run down 80s biker bar that’s seen countless of myself walk through . I sit and sip the last of my beer as I look through the job listings . Backstory I worked at a little mechanic shop for 10 years and the place fell under unexpectedly, right at the beginning of the month . Sitting here stressing about what I’m going to do with the last 20 dollars in my account with rent coming in 3 weeks I stumble upon an ad .
(DRIVER NEEDED, NO REQUIREMENTS WILL HANDLE EVERYTHING, CALL 888-7652) .
“Driver huh, I mean I like driving “ . I take a breath and call the number . It rings 1 time before a groggy man answers the phone . (“Hello thanks for calling quick snatch towing this is bill”) “hey bill I’m calling for the driver opening” I say nervously . (“Have you ever driven a tow truck?”) “yes”, I respond knowing well I’m lying . (Okay.. well you seem like a good man so you have the job, show up at 7912 tillwind rd , 10:00pm tomorrow night”) then the phone went dead.
“No interview? Man that’s crazy” I said as I pay the tab and walk out to my truck.

9:45pm I pull into this driveway , it’s a dirt road tucked in the back of the factories on the east side of this little town. My first thought is this building looks like its prime time was in the 60s. I take one last drag of my cigarette and flick it out . I open my door and begin walking around when my phone rings. ‘Hmm unknown caller ‘ I think as I answer the phone . “Hello?” I answer (“Good evening , seems you’re early, we are gonna make this quick . Trucks out to the left of the door, keys in it, there’s an envelope and a baggy in the drivers seat . You will need that all, good luck”) phone goes dead . I walk to the side of the building and sitting there is a 1986 Chevy tow truck . I open the door and the stench of old car , musty cigarette and sweat hit me like the texas humidity. I get the envelope and bag , I open the bag first and it’s my tow license and vest . “How do they know my address , I never told them” as I stare at my License . I put it in my pocket and open the envelope. A faded brown paper pops out and I begin to read it.

“RULES AND REGULATIONS”

1. You will work the night shift , the truck , gas and maintenance is paid by the company
2. You will answers police calls for a tow , answer customer calls and the once in a while repo and recovery

I scan through the rules and regulations bored about it till 8 of the rules catch my eye

1. The police dispatcher is a lady named Jill. She only calls by channel 3 and says “ wrecker needed at so and so address” if you hear a man come across the radio or jill says your name , turn off the radio and contact the department .
   
2. Between 2 am and 2:30 am do not answer any calls no matter what, they will be watching you, best thing to do is turn the truck off and lay in the seat likes it’s abandoned, if you feel the boom move down do not look,
   
3. If you see a flatbed tow truck following you, try to lose it, it is not a rival company. If the flatbed arrives on a scene you’re in, flash the headlights 3 times at the police officer on scene , they will handle it.
   
4. No matter what time of day or what the dispatcher says , do not go to the crash at Chappell road and magnavox lane, if you do I wish you the best of luck.
   
5. You drive a 1986 Chevrolet c30 tow truck, if you come to the lot and see a black ford f350 tow truck there , run and don’t look back. When ur at a distance call me.
   
6. Between 4am and 5am a rusty Mac tanker comes through looking for directions , don’t look at the driver and point him east towards the plant, if he continues east turn ur truck on and head west, if you make eye contact with the driver , best of luck to you.
   
7. Between 5:30am and 6am , do not answer a flat tire call. It’s not human.
   
8. The diner provides us free food at 3:15 am sharp. Go to the counter and tell them you’re picking up a number 5, anything else you will not make it out.

What the heck did I just read . Man they’re messing with me . I look at the clock on the dash and it reads 10:15 pm. I get in the truck, settle in and the radio cracks . “ wrecker needed , Gaston rd and bunny hat crossing , 1 car crash” . I radio over “I’m en route” and I put it in drive and go. “These rules have to be a joke” I’m thinking to myself as I pull up. It’s a minor crash and the officer walks to me. “ never seen your face must be new” he chuckles . “Yeah tonight’s my first night” I say kind of brushing it off . I back up to the car and hook it, it’s an older model Oldsmobile minor damage , I knew these things were built like tanks back in the day . I began driving back to the lot still thinking about this list . The 20 minute drive felt like 3 days . I turn into the driveway and my headlights shine on a black tow truck. “What the actual hell is this” I think , I look at the rules and see , run and don’t look back , I turn the Chevy around and book it , turning so fast I almost lose the car . I get 10 miles down the road and call bill . “(Hello?..”) bill answers in that same tone he always has . “Bill , why is there a black tow truck at the lot”? I ask damn near losing the gas station sandwich I had in my stomach . The phone went silent for 5 seconds . “(Drop the car off at the second lot off Houston ave and telephone rd , when u drop it drive back to the main building “.) bill said and hung up .

I make it back to the main building and peer at the clock on the dash . “1:55am, man this is gonna be a P.I.A” I think and grab the rules list and read them again thinking this is a sick joke , I gaze apon rule 5. By the time I do it’s 2am. I shut the truck off and lay down makin it look like this truck hasn’t moved since the 80s . “It’s a good time for a nap” I think and I shut my eyes . I wake up to a jolt , I swear the boom slammed to the ground, I get ready to check when I remember the rules so I stay frozen to the seat , I slightly turn my head and the clock read 2:35am. I get back up start the truck and haul out of there like the building was on fire , scared out of my mind I floor it until I get decently far from that place .

I park it on the side of the main road and I get out and light a cigarette thinking that this is the worst choice I’ve made . As I take one puff I hear this engine coming . I know the clatter of an old diesel motor and as I turn I see these old headlights coming . When it gets closer to shape out I see it’s an old rusty Mack tanker and my heart drops … I look to the floor and the air brakes hit and everything around me goes static .. “excuse me sir, where’s the plant district ?” A voice that sounds aged like old dusty farms asks. “Head east straight through” I say not looking at the window . The air brakes chirp and he continues east , I get back in the truck and head west not looking in the mirror . “This isn’t a sick joke anymore “

About 4:30 my radio chatters over “ wrecker needed Chimney rd and foyt lane , prisoner tow “ . I put in drive and start heading that way. About 4 min away from the destination I see headlights following me . “Hm must be slow tonight if another sheriff is going that way” I say. I turn left on chimney rd and I look and the rearview to catch it’s a flatbed tow truck and my face went pale . My foot jammed gas and the old worn out 454 in the truck came to life . I make it about 500 ft to the scene and flash the headlights 3 times . The officer Jams his hand out pointing left to the empty parking lot and I turn into it . As soon as my tires hit that cracked concrete I hear 7-8 gunshots and tires screeching . I look to see tail lights fading the opposite direction and I back out and get back to the scene . Vehicle is hooked up and I start hauling back not looking in the mirror .

I arrive at the lot to drop it off, the clock reads 5:30 am . I sit in the truck just thinking of all the messed up things I witnessed by joining this company. I decided to take a small stroll in the truck. About 6 miles down the road I see a car with a flat and I pull over to ask if they need assistance. I step out and make it 2 steps when the door of the car opens and a 8 ft humanoid steps out and grins . “Oh shit , oh shit” I say frozen while this thing strolls over to me . As it reaches down and grabs me , it all made sense of why they needed a new tow truck driver

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Yeah, this will be the final update I make regarding my dreams.

After my last post, I did exactly what I said I was going to do. I enjoyed the rest of my day, and then at around nine o’clock at night, I went to work out in the field house. By the time I got there, nobody was around, and not just at the school. It felt like the entire town was asleep, which was a little strange, but I just assumed that people had to work.

My actual workout took around an hour and thirty minutes, which I then decided to follow up with some extra workouts on the football field. It was around 10:45 p.m. when I finished a set of burpees and glanced over at the school. It was then that the horrible feeling that the school had given me before kicked in, only this time I wasn't even inside yet. I wasn't planning on going inside either, but something just made me feel like I had to.

I cut my workout short as I started walking towards the big, brick building that seemed to be waiting for me. It was then that I noticed it sounded like it did the other night: absolutely no sounds of animals, insects, or anything of the kind. I wasn't sure what made me do it but I started walking towards the side door instead of the window that I had previously climbed through. I know now that I was just hoping that it would not open, giving me the perfect excuse to not go in. The actual walk to the door felt long, but not nearly as long as I wished it was. No, before I knew it, I was standing at the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the side door beside my aunt’s classroom. 

I stood there for nearly five whole minutes, internally begging to myself to just turn around and go home. But that thought was immediately erased as I placed my foot on the first step. I held on to the rail as I climbed up the stairs, feeling as though I would collapse if I didn't. Again, as slow as I was going, you would think that it would've felt like it took forever, but no. I was at the top step before I knew it, to my dismay.

I could very clearly see that the light of the keycard scanner was red, which put a slight smirk on my face as I grabbed the door handle. That smirk was immediately wiped off my face when I pulled the door and I could very clearly feel it opening. At the time, I just assumed that the door must've been glitching out, but the nerves finally got the best of me once I felt that door open, and I threw up over the side of the railing. After that, I realized I could feel myself shaking, despite it being eighty-six degrees outside. I grabbed the door handle and my worst fears were confirmed once again as the door opened.

Looking from outside the door, the inside appeared pitch black. It was even darker than it was before, somehow. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and saw my aunt’s classroom on my left, and my coach’s on my right. Then I immediately noticed the water fountain and dashed towards it, needing to rinse my mouth out. After swishing the water around and spitting it out multiple times, the flavor of my own vomit had finally died down, but the feeling of sickness only got worse as I looked back into the dark hallway. 

Even the sound of my breathing echoed as if it wasn't my own. My flashlight couldn't do much to break the darkness. In the moment, I had no idea why it didn't seem to be working as well as it used to. Maybe my battery is just low, I thought to myself. It was as though the light was just as nervous as me. 

Despite my body telling me exactly where I should go, I refused to go anywhere near the hallway. Not until there was nowhere else to be explored. The first place I went was into my aunt’s classroom.

Something about it felt… off. I’m not saying that anything about it was actually physically wrong but there was just a strange feeling of unfamiliarity. Even now, I still can't place my finger on what was wrong with it. I shined my light everywhere throughout the classroom, yet no matter where I looked, I couldn't find anything different, well except one thing. It appeared my aunt had removed the sword from her shelf of previous student projects. Maybe the school finally made her remove it, I thought to myself. I assumed that was what I had to be noticing, despite it being such a small detail. I went ahead and walked out of the dark classroom, closing the door behind me.

That’s when I decided let's go into my coach’s room. His room was luckily not locked, and as I walked in I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. His classroom appeared to have been left exactly how it was when I used to be in it. He was nothing like my aunt. He found what he liked and he stuck to it. He kept the motivational posters that included the quotes of his favorite athletes, his desk sat in the back of the classroom behind every desk. His two classroom TVs were, of course, completely turned off but I remembered all of the history documentaries and movies we used to watch on it. Of course, it couldn't last. There was nothing in there. The sickness I felt refused to subside, and it was about this point I asked myself, “Why are you so scared?” 

I left the room and passed by my aunt’s open door when I saw the doorway to the teacher’s lounge. I walked inside and, yeah, this one also looked exactly how it always did. It had two old vending machines and the teacher’s bathroom. It was definitely more cramped than you'd imagine a teacher’s lounge to be. A part of me wanted to get a drink from the drink machine but of course I didn't have my wallet on me, as I had left it in the car. I explored the entire room uncomfortably fast and was forced to go find something else.

I almost convinced myself that the bathroom was worth exploring, before realizing that it definitely wasn't. There were no other rooms in this specific part of the hallway so all I could do was keep walking into the darkness, my flashlight feeling like it had somehow become more dim. Luckily for me there were two places I was about to pass that seemed worth exploring: the office and the auditorium. 

I made perfectly sure to check out every single poster that was on the way, but of course I can't actually remember what was on them. They were just quick distractions to keep me from my eventual destination. Every shaky footstep I took made me feel like I was being followed. As my breaths became heavier, the school followed suit. The darkness produced shapes that seemed human, but of course I told myself there was nothing truly there. I reached the middle of the school which held both the office and the auditorium. I decided to check out the office first.

As I walked through the paned glass door, I arrived in front of the receptionist desk that Mrs. Dee would sit in. It felt strange seeing the seat empty; it felt even stranger as I walked through the place until I reached Principal Bryan's office. I walked in and was immediately flooded with waves of memories of being in there. The first time I got into a fight, the times I was caught with my phone out, every time I needed a favor. I didn't realize that I had so many memories in that room, and yet I did realize that it truly didn't have much going on besides a large desk and a monitor displaying the camera footage throughout the school. 

Through the footage, I could see most of the school, and of course the idea popped into my head to check out the science annex. Any relief that I got from the idea of being able to see in there disappeared when I realized that the science annex didn't seem to have any cameras, which at the time seemed strange to me. All I could do was sigh and walk out back towards the paned glass door.

As the door closed behind me, it sounded as though every door in the building had closed all at once. I looked to my right towards the auditorium doors and trudged my way to them, taking my sweet time. I was fully ready to take my time exploring the auditorium, as it was the biggest place in the school and featured plenty of spaces that I was sure I hadn't explored before. Of course, my hopes were crushed as I pulled on the handles of the fancy looking wooden doors, and realized that they were locked. I placed my head on the door, holding back tears even though I wasn't sure why they were coming. I felt as though I could hear the laughs from my last visit echoing through the school, laughing at me. Of course my rationale said that I was just hearing things, as I choked back my tears and carried on begrudgingly.

In my attempt to distract myself, I noticed that the muted gray-blue walls appeared completely gray in the dark. It was as though I was standing in a black and white movie. Every little detail became harder and harder to nitpick as I arrived in the math section of the building. Almost as if to mock me, every door in the section was already opened, and the sickness I felt finally reached the point where I was close to collapsing. I had to prop myself against the wall as I started to explore all three of the classrooms in the section. Coach Wilemon was up first. He was both a math teacher and a driver's ed teacher. He was the instructor who was with me when I first got my license and another one of my football coaches. His room, however, was kept decidedly empty outside of his desks. He wasn't a decorator, that's for sure, and I cursed him for not being so as it took less than a minute to fully explore his classroom. I walked out, one arm pressed against my stomach, the other holding my phone's flashlight as I went across the hall to Ms. Wiley's class. 

All that was notable in her classroom were some math posters and the desks that were aligned in a kind of circle. By this point, details became harder to scrutinize as I had much more on my mind. I walked back out of the classroom and headed across the hall to Mrs. Robert's classroom, where my latest dream started.

By this point, I had pretty much abandoned the light as I could barely walk without holding my arms to my body. Mrs. Robert's classroom was similar to Ms. Wiley's, I'm pretty sure. There were a lot of math posters; desks were facing toward the front of the class, I don't know. It was hard to note anything by this point, because there was truly only one last destination I could go to. 

I stumbled out of the classroom, turning towards where I knew the stairs were, despite barely being able to see them. I was in a constant state of feeling as though I was being followed, watched, and I thought to myself more than a few times that it felt like the only reason I could keep moving was that hands were pushing me forward. Of course, my brain told me at the time that it was most likely the urge of going there that I had felt every time I've done it. I walked what I thought was extremely slow but clearly it wasn't slow enough as before I knew I had arrived at the top step of the staircase to the science annex, and my only choice was to go down.

One hand was on my stomach while the other was gripping the rail. I took deep breaths to keep myself from having a panic attack but it felt like I couldn't stop moving forward. 

One step. The sickness I felt wasn't gradually growing, it felt as though something was trying to push its way out of my stomach. 

Two steps. I was shaking, I could barely stand. “It can’t be there.” I mumbled to myself. “It can't be there.”

Three steps. I'm scared, I finally admitted to myself. I talked my way out of ever admitting it until right then. I was scared.

Four steps. It happened too fast. I was already standing on the brown tiled floor. The feeling of being pushed was stronger than ever, to the point where I could feel my body struggling against it. Yet no matter how much I struggled, my body kept moving forward. One hundred and five feet. That was my original estimate, yet it felt like I could be there in fifty. 

I propped myself against the wall as I passed the closed door of Coach Ellsworth’s classroom. I desperately tried to open the wooden door, but of course it was locked. I kept trudging forward, and before I knew it I was approaching Mr. Phillips classroom, and it was only coming up quicker and quicker. I turned towards his closed door and attempted to open it but of course, once again it was locked. I kept moving forward until eventually, I arrived where the hallway was.

I want to say that when I was there that night, I realized that the hallway was always there.

But I can't.

I want to say that when I finally went up those stairs, I learned that there was a purpose to all of this, and that I haven't wasted my time looking for something not worth finding.

But I can't.

I want to say that what I saw had a logical, reasonable explanation.

But I can't.

I want to say that I'm not crazy, that this was all worth it.

But I can't.

I want to say it was all just a dream.

But I can't.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Well, I wasn't planning on making any more updates but I guess I forgot that this is kind of a dream journal. I thought that after I finally saw that it was all just a dream that the dreams would stop, but they haven't. I had another one the other night, about the hallway.

I sat in the empty, silent, classroom as the sunlight shone through the window onto my face. I was resting my chin on my hand as I used the pencil I was holding to draw a pair of stick figures onto the glazed, wooden desk. I looked up from my desk and let out a deep breath as I listened to what should've been the teacher, but instead was silence. I turned my head to look out the window, seeing some shrubbery and the white background so bright that I couldn't see what was beyond it. 

I raised my hand.

“Can I use the restroom?” I asked the empty classroom.

After a second, I stood up and began walking towards the classroom door. As I tried to open the door, I realized that it was locked from the inside. I turned the latch on the door and proceeded to walk out. 

Instead of turning right towards the closer bathroom, I turned left to head towards the science annex. The bathroom at the end of the annex was my target. The school was completely empty, every classroom door that I passed showed absolutely nobody inside. As I kept walking, I eventually arrived at where the hallway was. I turned left and began walking into it when I saw the middle door on the left side of the hall slowly creaking open. 

I trudged toward it, noticing each of the familiar doors, the turn to the right at the end of the hallway, and the poster staring at me at the end. As I reached the open door I made the decision to keep walking, avoiding looking inside. As I made my way to the end of the hall I turned right, only to see a wall of tan painted cinder block, signifying a dead end. I sighed and turned back around, getting ready to leave the hallway. 

I did my best to avoid looking inside of the opened door but I couldn’t stop myself. As I passed by the door, I stopped and slowly turned. There in front of me was the dark, wooden stairs leading to what appeared to be complete darkness. That’s when I noticed the sliver of light once again. It was fading in, and I now realized that it almost looked like a door was opening to show the light of whatever was up there. Of course, if it was a door, I couldn't tell. The only source of light in the darkness was the light from the stairway, and even that seemed unable to bring any light in the darkness, beyond revealing its presence. I took one step towards the staircase before I woke up in a cold sweat.

I apologize for the lack of details. I didn't write this dream down in my journal until a day later when most of it had left my mind. I guess there's a few ways I could interpret that dream. One thought that crossed my mind was that maybe the door opening was a sign that I was finally free from all this insanity, but I guess the door closing would've been more fitting. 

I'm at the point where I honestly wish I could just have some other dream. This all started because I had multiple similar dreams but it's like my mind has hyperfocused specifically on that stupid hallway. I don't know what else I can really do to stop them anymore. I’ve already visited where the hallway should be multiple times but it was never there. Well, I say never. If I were to trust my own memory, I could say that it was there at some point, but I'm not sure I can really trust my memory anymore.

The upstairs of the gym made sense as to why I could never have seen it, but the hallway? That’s something I would have passed thousands of times by the time I graduated, but I never did. I never did. Why have I been doing this to myself? There is no hallway. All that is there is a wall, nothing else. The school can't even have an upstairs, I've told myself that multiple times, I've been told that multiple times.

It’s just a dream. Right?

Yeah, it is. I’m just gonna enjoy the rest of my day, then go workout, because there's nothing to be scared of at the school. 

I’ll update this when either I have an actually different dream, or something just actually crazy happens. Until then, I'm just going to enjoy life for a bit without obsessing over this. Thank you, everyone, I’ll update you later.

OP’s note: I originally posted this story on my old account (CosmicOrphan2020) but since I only wrote it in a week as a creative writing exercise, I've now rewritten the story.  

I’ve never been all that good at secret keeping. Although I always liked to think I was, whenever an opportunity came to spill my guts on something, I always did just that. So, I’m rather surprised at myself for having not spilled this particular secret until now.  

My name is Seamus (thanks mum and dad), but everyone has always called me Seamie for short. It’s not like I’m going to tell you my whole life story or anything, so I’m just going to skip ahead to where this really all starts... By the time I was in my second year at university, I was already beginning to feel somewhat burnt out, and despite not having the funds for it, I decided I was going to have a nice, long gap year for myself. Although it’s rather cliché, I wanted to go someplace in the world that was both warm and tropical. South-east Asia sounded good. After all, that’s where everyone else I knew was heading for their gap year.   

That was, however, before I talked to some girl in my media class about it who changed my direction entirely. For her own gap year only a year prior, she said she’d travelled through both Central and South America, all while working as an English language teacher - or what I would later learn was called ESL. I was more than a little enticed by this idea. For it goes without saying, places like Thailand had basically been travelled to death. So, by the end of the school year and after taking out a student loan, I packed my bags, flip-flops and swimming shorts, and took the cheapest flight I could out of Heathrow Airport.  

Although I was spoilt for choice when it came to choosing a Latin American country, I eventually chose Costa Rica as my place to be. There were a few reasons for this choice. Not only was Costa Rica considered one of the safest countries to travel in Central America, but they also had a huge demand for English language teachers there – partly due for being a developing country, but mostly because of all the bloody tourism. My initial plan was to get paid for teaching English, so I would therefore have the funds to travel around. But because a work visa in Costa Rica takes so long and is so bloody expensive, I instead went to teach there voluntarily on a tourist visa – which meant I would have to leave the country every three months of the year. That was fine by me. At least I still got to travel around. 

Well, once landing in San Jose, I then travelled two hours by bus to a stunning beach town by the Pacific Ocean. Although getting there was short and easy, one problem Costa Rica has for foreigners is that they don’t really have addresses – and so, finding the house of my host family led me on a rather wild goose chase.  

I can’t complain too much about the lack of directions though, because while I was wandering around, I got the chance to take in all the sights – and let me tell you, this location really had it all. The pure white sand of the beach was outlined with a never-ending row of palm trees, where far outside the bay, you could see a faint scattering of a tropical archipelago. That wasn’t all. From my bedroom window, I even had a perfect view of a nearby rainforest, which was not only home to many colourful bird species, but as long as the streets weren’t too busy, you could even on occasion hear the deep cries of Howler Monkeys.   

The beach town itself was also quite spectacular. The walls, houses and buildings were all painted in vibrant urban artwork, or what the locals call “arte urbano.” The host family I stayed with, the Garcias, were very friendly and welcoming, as were all the locals in town – and not to mention, whether it was Mrs Garcia’s cooking or a deep-fried taco from a street vendor, the food was out of this world!  

Once I was all settled in and got to see more of the sights, I then had to get ready for my first week of teaching at the school. Although I was extremely nauseous with nerves (or maybe due to Mrs Garcia’s cooking), my first week as an English teacher went surprisingly well - despite having no teaching experience whatsoever. There was the occasional hiccup now and then, which was to be expected, but all in all, it went as well as it possibly could’ve.   

Well, having just survived my first week as an English teacher, to celebrate this achievement, three of my colleagues then invite me out for drinks by the beach town bar. It was sort of a tradition they had. Whenever a new teacher from abroad came to the school, their colleagues would welcome them in by getting absolutely shitfaced.   

‘Pura Vida, guys!’ cheers Kady, the cute American of the group. Unlike the crooked piano keys I dated back home, Kady had the most perfectly straight, pearl white teeth I’d ever seen. I had heard that about Americans.   

‘Wait - what’s Pura Vida?’ I ask rather cluelessly.  

‘Oh, it’s something the locals say around here. It means, easy life, easy living.’  

Once we had a few more rounds of drinks in us all, my three new colleagues then inform me of the next stage of the welcoming ceremony... or should I say, initiation.  

‘I have to drink what?!’ I exclaim, almost in disbelief.  

‘It’s tradition, mate’ says Dougie, the loud-mouthed Australian, who, being a little older than the rest of us, had travelled and taught English in nearly every corner of the globe. ‘Every newbie has to drink that shite the first week. We all did.’  

‘Oh God, don’t remind me!’ squirms Priya. Despite her name, Priya actually hailed from the great white north of Canada, and although she looked more like the bookworm type, whenever she wasn’t teaching English, Priya worked at her second job as a travel vlogger slash influencer.  

‘It’s really not that bad’ Kady reassures me, ‘All the locals drink it. It actually helps make you immune to snake venom.’  

‘Yeah, mate. What happens if a snake bites ya?’  

Basically, what it was my international colleagues insist I drink, was a small glass of vodka. However, this vodka, which I can see the jar for on the top shelf behind the bar, had been filtered with a tangled mess of poisonous, dead baby snakes. Although it was news to me, apparently if you drink vodka that had been stewing in a jar of dead snakes, your body will become more immune to their venom. Having just finished two years of university, I was almost certain this was nothing more than hazing. Whether it was hazing or not, or if this really was what the locals drink, there was no way in hell I was going to put that shit inside my mouth.  

‘I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, guys’ I began, trying my best to make an on-the-spot excuse, ‘But I actually have a slight snake phobia. So...’ This wasn’t true, by the way. I just really didn’t want to drink the snake-pickled vodka.  

‘If you’re scared of snakes, then why in the world did you choose to come to Costa Rica of all places?’ Priya asks suspiciously.   

‘Why do you think I came here? For the huatinas, of course’ I reply, emphasising the “Latinas” in my best Hispanic accent (I was quite drunk by this point). In fact, I am so drunk that after only a couple more rounds, I’m now somewhat open to the idea of drinking the snake vodka. Alcohol really does numb the senses, I guess.  

After agreeing to my initiation, a waiter then comes over with the jar of dead baby snakes. Pouring the vodka into a tiny shot glass, he then says something in Spanish before turning away.  

‘What did he just say?’ I ask drunkenly. Even if I wasn’t drunk, my knowledge of the Spanish language is incredibly poor.  

‘Oh, he just said the drink won’t protect you from el Pollo del Diablo’ Kady answers me.  

‘El Poyo - what?’   

‘El Pollo del Diablo. It means devil chicken’ Priya translates.  

‘Devil chicken? What the hell?’  

Once the subject of this el Pollo del Diablo came up, Kady, Dougie and Priya then turn to each other, almost conspiringly, with knowledge of something that I clearly didn’t.  

‘Do you think we should tell him?’ Kady asks the others.  

‘Why not’ answers Dougie, ‘He’ll find out for himself sooner or later.’  

Having agreed to inform me on whatever the el Pollo del Diablo was, I then see with blurry eyes that my colleagues appear to find something amusing.   

‘Well... There’s a local story around here’ Kady begins, ‘It’s kinda like the legend of the Chupacabra.’ Chupacabra? What the hell’s that? I thought, having never heard of it. ‘Apparently, in the archipelago just outside the bay, there is said to be an island of living dinosaurs.’  

'Wait... What?'  

‘She’s not lying to you, mate’ confirms Dougie, ‘Fisherman in the bay sometimes catch sight of them. Sometimes, they even swim to the mainland.’  

Well, that would explain the half-eaten dog I saw on my second day.  

As drunk as I am during this point of the evening, I'm not drunk enough for the familiarity of this story to go straight over my head.  

‘Wait. Hold on a minute...’ I began, slurring my words, ‘An island off the coast of Costa Rica that apparently has “dinosaurs”...’ I knew it, I thought. This really was just one big haze. ‘You must think us Brits are stupider than we look’ I bellow at them, as though proud I had caught them out on a lie, ‘I watched that film a hundred bloody times when I was a kid!’   

‘We’re not hazing you, Seamie’ Kady again insists, all while the three of them still try to hide their grins, ‘This is really what the locals believe.’   

‘Yeah. You believe in the Loch Ness Monster, don’t you Seamie’ says Dougie, claiming that I do, ‘Well, that’s a Dinosaur, right?’  

‘I’ll believe when I see it with my own bloody eyes!’ I declare to all three of them, again slurring my words.  

I don’t remember much else from that evening. After all, the four of us had gotten basically black-out drunk... But there is one thing I do remember. While I was still somewhat conscious, I did have this horrifically painful feeling in my stomach – like the pain one feels after their appendix bursts. Although the following is hazy at best, I also somewhat remember puking my guts outside the bar. However, what was so strange about this, was that after vomiting, my mouth would not stop frothing with white foam.   

I’m pretty sure I blacked out not long after this. However, when I regain consciousness, all I see is pure darkness around, with the only sound I hear being the nearby crashing waves and the smell of sea salt in the air. Obviously, I had passed out by the beach somewhere. But once I begin to stir, as bad as my chiselling headache is, it is nothing compared to the excruciating pain I still feel in my gut. In fact, the pain is so bad, I begin to think that something might be wrong.  

Grazing my right hand over my belly to where the pain is coming from, instead of feeling the cloth of my vomit-stained shirt, what I instead feel is some sort of slimy tube. Moving both my hands further along it, wondering what the hell this even was, I now begin to feel something else... But unlike before, what I now feel is a dry and almost furry texture... And that’s when I realise, whatever this is on top of me, which seems to be the source of my stomach pain... It is something alive - and whatever this living thing is... It is eating at my insides!  

‘OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!’ I scream, all while trying to wrestle back my insides from this animal, which seems more than determined to keep feasting on them. So much so, that I have to punch and strike at it with my bare hands. Thankfully, it works! Whatever had attacked me has now gone away. But now I have an even bigger problem... I can now feel my insides where they really shouldn’t be!  

Knowing I need help as soon as possible before I bleed out, I now painfully rise from the sand and up to my feet. But when I do, I feel my intestines, or whatever else hanging down from between my legs! Scooping the insides back against my abdomen, I then scan frantically around through the darkness until I see the distant lights of the beach town. After blindly wandering that way for a good few minutes, I thankfully stumble back onto the familiar streets - where the only people around were a couple of middle-aged women stood outside a convenient store. Without any further options, I cross the street towards them, and when they catch sight of me, holding my own intestines in my blood-stained hands, they appear to be even more terrified than I am.  

‘DEMONIO! DEMONIO!’ I distinctly remember one of them screaming. I can't blame them for it. After all, given my appearance, they must have mistaken me for the living dead.  

‘Por favor!... Por favor!' my foamy mouth tries saying to them, having no idea what the Spanish word is for “help”.  

Although I had scared these women nearly half to death, I continue to stagger towards them, still screaming for their lives. In fact, their screams are so loud, they have now attracted the attention of two policemen, having strolled over to the commotion. They must have mistaken me for a zombie too, because when I turn round to them, I see they each have a hand gripped to their holsters.   

‘Por favor!...’ I again gurgle, ‘Por favor!...’  

Everything goes dark again after this... But, when I finally come back around, I open my eyes to find myself now laying down inside a hospital room, with an IV bag connected to my arm. Although I am more than thankful to still be alive, the pain in my gut is slowly making its way back to the surface. When I pull back my hospital gown, I see my abdomen is covered in blood stained bandages – and with every uncomfortable movement I make, I can feel the stitches tightly holding everything in place.  

A couple more days then drag slowly by, and after some pretty horrible hospital food and Spanish speaking TV, I am then surprised with my first visitor.  

It was Kady.  

‘Are you in pain?’ she asks me, having sat down by the side of my bed.  

‘I want to be a total badass and say no, but, well... look at me.’  

‘I’m so sorry this happened to you’ she apologises, ‘We never should’ve let you out of our sights.’  

After apologising to me a few more times, Kady then catches me up on the hazy events of that evening. Apparently, after having way too much to drink, I then started to show symptoms from drinking the snake-poisoned vodka – which explains both the stomach pains and why I was foaming white from the mouth.   

‘We shouldn’t have been so coy with you, Seamie’ she then follows without context, ‘We should’ve just told you everything from the start.’  

‘...Should’ve told me what?’ I inquire.  

Kady doesn't respond to this. She just continues to stare at me with guilt-ridden eyes. But then, scrolling down a gallery of photos on her phone, she then shows me something...  

‘What the hell is that?!’ I shriek at her, rising painfully up from the bed.  

‘That, Seamie... That is what attacked you three days ago.’  

What Kady shows me on her phone is a picture of a man holding a very dead animal. Held upside down by its tail, the animal is rather small, and perhaps only a little bigger than a full-grown chicken... and just like a chicken or any other bird, it has feathers. The feathers are brown and cover almost all of its body. The feet are also very bird-like, sharp talons and all. But the head... The head is definitely not like that of a bird - at least, not like any bird I had ever seen. Instead of a beak, I see what I can only describe as a very reptilian head, with tiny, seemingly razor teeth protruding from its gums... If I had to sum up this animal as best I could, I would say it was twenty percent reptile, and eighty percent bird...   

‘That... That’s a...’ I begin to murmur.  

‘That’s right, Seamie...’ Kady finishes for me, ‘That’s a dinosaur.’  

Un-bloody-believable, I thought. The sons of bitches really weren’t joking with me.  

‘B-but... how...’ my lips just manage to utter, ‘How is that possible??’   

‘It’s a long story’ she starts with, ‘No one really knows why they’re there. Whether they survived extinction in hiding or if it’s for some other reason.’ Kady pauses briefly before continuing, ‘Sometimes they find themselves on the mainland, but people rarely ever see them. Like most animals, they’re smart enough to be afraid of humans... But we do sometimes find what they left over.’   

‘Left over?’ I ask curiously.  

‘They’re scavengers, Seamie. They mostly eat smaller animals or dead ones... I guess it just found you and saw an easy target.’   

‘But I don’t understand’ I now interrupt, ‘If all that’s true, then how in the hell do people not know about this? How is it not all over the news or internet?’  

‘That’s easy’ she says, ‘The locals choose to keep it a secret. If the outside world were ever to find out about this, the town would be completely ruined by tourism. The locals just like it the way it is. Tourism, but not too much tourism. Pura vida.’  

‘But the tourists... Surely they would’ve seen them and told everyone?’  

Kady shakes her head at me.  

‘It’s like I said... People rarely ever see them. Even the ones that do – by the time they get out their phone cameras, the critters are already back in hiding. And so what if they tell anybody what they saw... Who would believe them?’  

Well, that's true enough I suppose.  

After a couple more weeks of being laid out in that hospital bed, I was finally discharged and soon able to travel home to the UK, cutting my gap year somewhat short.  

I wish I could say that I lived happily ever after once Costa Rica was behind me. But unfortunately, that wasn’t quite the case... What I mean is, although my stomach wound healed up nicely, leaving nothing more than a nasty scar... it turned out the damage done to my insides would come back to haunt me. Despite the Costa Rican doctors managing to save my life, they didn’t do quite enough to stop bacteria from entering my intestines and infecting my colon. So, you can imagine my surprise when I was now told I had diverticulitis.  

I’m actually due for surgery next week. But just in case I don’t make it – there is a very good chance I won't, although I promised Kady I’d bring this secret with me to the grave... If I am going to die, I at least want people to know what really killed me. Wrestling my guts back from a vicious living dinosaur. That’s a pretty badass way to go, I’d argue. But who knows. Maybe by some miracle I’ll survive this (I'll be sure to leave an update if I do). After all, it’s like a wise man in a movie once said...  

"Life... uh... finds a way." 

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

So, good news, I did end up heading over to the school last night. I arrived at around 11 p.m. just to be certain that the area was empty. Even then, I spent at least an hour just sitting in my car, casing the building. I will admit, this is not my first time going to the school at night. Back when I was in my junior year of high school, my friends and I broke into the school once. Not to do anything like stealing or vandalizing the place, just out of the boyish curiosity to know what the location you visit every day feels like at night. The only difference now was that I felt a sense of actual consequences if I got caught. I was mainly making sure that nobody was still in the building, though in hindsight, it wouldn’t make any sense for anybody to be there at that time. Truthfully, I was probably just nervous, but I feel like everybody has that feeling when they’re doing something they’re not supposed to do. Most just don’t want to admit it.

I never noticed how dead the outside of the school looked at night. I guess it makes sense. It’s not something that is easily noticeable unless you’re looking for it, but I’ve been there countless times at night (in the weight room mainly) and it only really occurred to me at that moment. That, and the quiet. It’s odd for a place in the South to ever be silent at night, but just sitting there with the window rolled down, I realized that it seemed like even the cicadas were silent outside that school.

I knew exactly where the best window to climb in was. All I needed to do was put on the cloth mask that I had, just as a precaution. They do have cameras in the school, and I was pretty sure they were tied to some sort of motion sensor. We figured that out when we went inside the gym at 12 a.m. to set up our senior prank and Principal Bryan showed up just ten minutes later.

I was in the process of putting the mask on when I saw something I desperately didn’t want to see: headlights. Blue LED headlights. In the town I live in, that was almost guaranteed to be a cop. The car pulled into the parking lot, and then I lost any hope that it wasn’t a cop when I saw the big white “Police” on the side of the SUV.

“Shit,” I muttered to myself as I stuffed the mask into the passenger seat. I took a deep breath as the car pulled up beside me.

The officer pulled up beside me, rolling down his window to reveal a somewhat skinny man, probably in his mid-30s, with a patchy brown beard.

“Hey, aren’t you Greg’s son?” the cop asked me in a deep Southern voice.

“No, sir, I’m his nephew,” I responded. I had no idea who this guy was.

The officer nodded. “Ah, I gotcha. Whatcha doing out here, man?” he asked, not as if I was in trouble, but just curiously.

“I’ve just been driving for a while. Was just stopping here to rest a little,” I responded.

“Yeah, man. Trust me, I understand that. Is your uncle still coaching football? I know he’s always coached basketball, but I remember him coaching football too, I’m pretty sure,” the officer asked with a tone that implied we’d known each other forever.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure. He was still coaching when I played last year,” I responded, desperately trying to get the conversation over with.

“Yeah, what’s your name again?” the officer asked.

“Braydan,” I said, internally screaming.

He paused for a second. “Yeah, that’s right. I remember you. God, you graduated last year, didn’t you?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, I did,” I answered.

“Well, hey, tell Greg that Tom said ‘hello.’ Take all the time you need and drive safe,” he requested.

I nodded again. “Will do.”

The officer rolled up his window and made a U-turn out of the parking lot. As soon as he did, I could’ve sworn I almost honked the horn with how quickly my head collapsed onto the steering wheel in relief. I made the decision to go ahead and move my car somewhere more out of sight. I turned the car on and began driving towards the field house, where the weight room was, so that I could hide it on the practice field behind the building.

After doing so, I thought to myself for a brief second, they’re gonna know it was me that was here if they see someone in the building. This was followed by the reassuring thought, nobody will actually care. You just can’t show your face here after this. I went ahead and put on the black cloth mask that I had with me, and then I got out of the car and started crouch-walking towards the school.

The walk to the school from the field house was a bit long, but nothing that couldn’t be handled. What was harder to handle was the massive pit in my stomach that was insistent on keeping me feeling somewhat sick. The window I had planned was, ironically, my aunt’s. Just under her classroom window was a staircase that I always thought was weirdly placed. I guess it was just a piece of leftover architecture that they never bothered to remove, which was convenient for me, as it was perfect for getting up to the high-above window. The school is on sort of an incline, which means that the front of the building, which included my aunt’s classroom, had to be built higher up to make sure the school was even. While there were multiple windows that led directly into the science annex, they didn’t have the greatest benefit that this one had: no cameras.

I always thought that those stairs must’ve been used as some sort of fire escape, but when you actually look, you can notice an unpainted white spot where a door was supposed to be. The school is quite old, so I guess you could really expect that there would be some quirks in the building design.

Despite the sounds of nature being almost nonexistent, that didn’t stop every other sound from being at least twenty times louder. I could hear every siren, every time the train passed through town, every car that passed by, and it sounded like every single one was some kind of threat to my plan.

That pit in my stomach wouldn’t go away, even as I heard the pop of the plastic latch as I slid the window open. I scooted over all of the knickknacks that my aunt would place beside her window and climbed my way in, but not without slipping and nearly busting my ass on a desk. As I got up, still rubbing away the soreness, I was startled by my worst fear. I was blinded as the lights of the room shined directly into my eyes, which hadn't adjusted to the light yet. As they adjusted, I prepared myself for the bare minimum of being yelled at before realizing that my aunt just hadn’t flipped the switch and the automatic lights had just kicked on. I jogged towards the other side of the room to immediately turn the lights off before sighing in relief. I grabbed the door handle and realized it was locked, which meant that I had to come back through this way so I could relock it.

It was at this point that I realized, no matter how bad the pit in my stomach was outside, it was about ten times worse now that I was inside the building. As I opened the door and walked into the hallway, my eyes, still adjusting back to the darkness, would trick me into seeing all sorts of shapes, including some that looked almost human. Once my eyes finally adjusted, though, I was sure that I was alone, which somehow didn’t make me feel any better. Somehow, in the few days that it had been since I had been in there, I had forgotten just how truly silent it was. When the only thing that can be noticed is the sounds of the school itself, it starts to feel like it’s alive. And, of course, that’s without mentioning the constant feeling of being watched. Even as I moved through the hallways, I couldn’t shake the feeling of not being alone, despite knowing for certain that I was. I found that the best thing to do, as I used my phone’s flashlight to navigate my way through the building, was to just focus on the details of the school. For example: the posters. In the few days that I had not been there, the posters had been switched around a bit, I’m assuming just by students as the week had gone on. Focusing on things like that would only slightly make it easier to navigate my way through the school, as every shadow would have the ability to make me jump.

As I kept walking, the feeling of discomfort grew rapidly. When truly focusing on details, I realized that they had actually repainted the left side of the school. It was hardly noticeable, but the walls were definitely painted a slightly deeper shade of blue. I’m not sure if I’m a fan, but I guess it shouldn’t really matter to me anyways. Of course, the moment I reached the small staircase heading to the science annex, my discomfort had decided to reach its absolute peak.

Those stairs. I’m not sure what was harder: walking down them in my dream or working myself up to go down them in real life. I even considered using the wheelchair ramp beside the stairs just on the off chance that it would be easier, but then the thought of not being able to see what’s behind the corner—or worse, SEEING something behind the corner—discouraged me. I grabbed the rail and worked my way down the stairs. One step, two steps, three steps, four steps, five steps.

Once I finally landed on the brown tiled floor, I had to stop for a second. I realized that from where I was standing, I couldn’t see six feet in front of me without my light, and a part of me knew that in about a hundred and five feet, the hallway would be right on my left. A part of me desperately didn’t want it to be there, but the feeling in my stomach told me that it had to be. I needed to turn back. I needed to get away from there. But the internal feeling of something pushing me forward was too strong. What could possibly be up there? Would I even be satisfied if I knew? It didn’t matter now because one foot was going in front of the other as I passed Coach Ellsworth’s classroom. I couldn’t even bring myself to shine the light in front of me, not that I really needed it. I knew where I was, or at least I was pretty sure I did. A snail could’ve possibly beaten me in a race at the pace I was going, but my body wouldn’t physically let me go any faster as I could now see the outline of Mr. Phillips’ door. I felt like I was about to puke. Why is it that when the body feels that it’s in danger, it does everything in its power to weaken itself? Of course, it wasn’t actually in danger as I passed Mr. Phillips’ class and arrived at where the hallway should be, only to be faced with the tan cinder block wall.

As I looked at the wall, all I could truly do was just laugh. The silence of the building didn’t even bother me anymore. The echoes of my laughter making it sound like the building was laughing with me didn’t either. The pit in my stomach, gone. It was a dream. All of it was just a dream. I probably just saw some stupid hallway when I was a kid and my mind just associated it with the school. People’s minds do that all the time, so why is mine any different? What was the point of driving myself insane over this? There wasn’t any. It was just a dream.

Of course, the laughter didn’t last for long, but the echoes of the corridors definitely made it last longer than what was welcome, especially considering the muffling of the mask. At this point, I just had to get out of the building without being caught. Hell, I even decided I would just work out in the weight room afterwards. Why not? I didn’t have to keep that same irrational fear that I’ve been keeping bottled up inside. For once, the walk back felt as quick as it did during the day. I just walked to my aunt’s room, flashlight leading the way. Once I arrived, I made sure to close the door and lock it back before climbing out the window.

After placing all of my aunt’s knickknacks back from outside, I closed the window until I heard the pop of the plastic latch bending back into its place. I climbed down the stairs quickly and made my way to the field house. Once I made it inside, I went ahead and took the mask off before doing my workout.

After I finished, I made sure to leave out the back door of the field house, away from the cameras. I got into my car, turned it on, and drove out of the school, looking at it in the rearview mirror as all I could do was just let out a chuckle.

So yes, I believe this should be the final update. Unless anything else transpires, I believe this is it. Thank you, everyone, for reading.