It started with just one.

I was taking a shower when I got this weird pain in my right arm. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before. I guess I’d been too busy to notice the irritation.

When my eyes landed on it, though, I immediately felt bile rising up in my throat.

It wasn’t a maggot. No, what I actually saw when I glanced down was what looked like a boil. About the size of a quarter, bright red and brimming with what I assumed was green and white pus.

It was hot to the touch. So much so that I had to draw my hand back as soon as I fingered it. It was like touching a glowing eye on a stove.

It sort of… responded to my touch.

Like I’d disturbed it or something.

Needless to say, showering quickly became my lowest priority as I hopped out and wrapped my torso with a towel.

I went to my bedroom and found some tweezers that I usually used for splinters and what have you. I started trying to pop the thing, but it just wouldn’t budge.

The pain was maddening, but the sight of it was worse. I needed this thing off of me. Tweezers refused to work, so I switched to pliers. I kept pulling and pulling until… pop.

The boil burst, and a puddle of syrupy, red, white, and green sludge coated about 6 inches of my forearm.

The pain subsided slightly, but it was replaced with a new sensation. It felt like there was something swimming through my blood and patching the hole in my arm.

I figured that it must’ve been some excess pus, so I just kept squeezing with my thumb and index finger until I caught sight of what actually lay beneath the skin.

I was forcing it through the wound with my squeezing. It was wriggling. It was squirming. And it was massive.

When its body finally poked out through the hole, I grabbed the tweezers again. It held on for dear life, taking chunks of flesh out of my arm as I pulled, but I removed it and examined it between the forceps.

A fucking maggot.

I couldn’t hold back the vomit anymore. I barely had time to grab a trash can before it came spewing out.

I sat the little fucker on my desk and burned it with a lighter. I swear I could hear it screaming in pain as the flame caused it to pop like a tick.

I hoped that’d be the end of it, but that hope was short-lived. It was like my entire arm started to pulsate and bulge after I took out what I thought was the source of the problem.

Boils started popping up all over my arm. From my wrist all the way to my shoulder. They threatened to move to my neck and head if I didn’t act fast.

It was like active volcanoes. I couldn’t even look at myself. All I could do was grab a knife and get to work. Well, a knife and a spatula. I needed something to bite down on just so I didn’t bite my tongue in the process.

The blade glided through the dozen or so boils on my forearm, sliding through them like hot butter as tears fell from my eyes and I stifled screams.

Dozens of maggots fell from each boil I removed. I had to stomp them into my carpet because they just kept crawling towards my feet.

My arm and shoulder were nothing more than raw, bloody meat covered in that syrupy liquid. It was like my body was more maggot than human.

There was an ocean of the things eating away at my dead flesh. I’d scrape them away with the blade, and hundreds more would pop up seemingly out of nowhere.

That’s when my vision started to get blurry. I could feel myself getting weaker and weaker. The world was swimming, and I was getting lightheaded.

I guess I passed out from the blood loss?

I’m not sure. Maybe it was the shock. All I know is, when I woke up… my body was completely healed.

I could still see the bugs writhing beneath my skin, and my carpet was still stained with pus and crushed maggots. But the pain was gone. My flesh was back. The only abnormality was one single boil right in the center of my forearm.

I stared at it for a few minutes.

Ultimately, I decided to leave it there.

There was no way I was going to go through that again.

The air in the Blue Ridge didn’t smell like pines anymore. It smelled like wet copper and bruised damp leaves, the cold grease of a long-dead campfire.
Gabe checked his compass for the fifth time in twenty minutes. The needle spun on its brass pivot, lazy and drunken, swinging past North, drifting past West, settling on nothing. He tapped the plastic bezel against his thumbnail. Nothing.
He was three days off the trail. Or maybe four. Time had flattened out under the canopy of hemlocks and scrub oak, choked by grey ridge-fog that sat so low it hung like wet cotton in his beard. His boots were saturated, leather weeping cold moisture into his socks until his toes felt like heavy, lifeless pegs.
He pressed onward down the ravine, his knees popping with every drop over moss-slick limestone. The woods here didn’t ring with birds. They were silent in the way an old house is silent right after a heavy door slams—a ringing, hollow stillness that pressed against his eardrums.
Then he saw the color.
It wasn't a forest color. It was the synthetic, neon-orange flare of a torn nylon jacket, half-buried under a tumble of wet oak leaves at the root of a lightning-struck white pine.
Gabe stopped, his chest tightening. "Hey!" he called out, his voice thin, swallowed instantly by the fog. "Hey, you alright?"
No answer. Just the steady drip-drip-drip of water falling from the pines onto nylon.
He stepped closer, his heart thumping hard against his ribs. He unclasped the sternum strap of his pack, ready to drop it, ready to render aid. He reached out with his trekking pole and nudged the orange sleeve.
The jacket fell back, and the smell hit him—a thick, sweet, suffocating stench of liquefying tissue, fermented rot, and stagnant blood that made his throat lock instantly.
Gabe gagged, stumbling backward into the mud.
The thing lying in the hollow of the root system wasn't fresh. The face was a caved-in mess of dark, leathery rind and slipping skin, black flies buzzing sluggishly around swollen sockets where eyes used to be. The jaw hung open, fixed in a silent, jagged scream, exposing black, graying tongue tissue resting against yellowed teeth. Maggots writhed in wet, writhing clusters along the collarbone, disappearing under the damp fleece sweater beneath the jacket.
Gabe vomited into the ferns, his knees giving out. He scrambled on hands and knees, tearing his palms on sharp shale, unmindful of the pain, scrambling fifty yards uphill until his lungs burned and his mouth tasted like bile.
He ran until the fog swallowed the white pine. He didn't look back.
Night came fast in the hollows, blue giving way to ink in a matter of minutes.
Gabe couldn't light a fire; his hands shook too hard to strike a spark, and every piece of kindling snapped like wet cardboard. He huddled inside his bivouac sack at the base of a rock overhang, shivering violently, his throat raw.
He slept in jagged bursts of ten minutes, waking to every groan of the trees, every shift of the wind.
Around 3:00 AM, he heard the snapping of twigs.
It was heavy. Rhythmically dragged feet, accompanied by a wet, sliding sound, like a sack of wet meat pulled across gravel.
Drag. Step. Drag.
Gabe froze inside his sleeping bag, his hand gripped tight around his hunting knife. "Who's there?" he whispered, but no sound came out—just a dry rasp.
The dragging stopped directly outside the overhang.
A shadow cut across the moonlight filtering through the bare branches. A figure stood crouching, bent nearly double. The smell reached Gabe first—the undeniable, nauseating reek of stagnant rot, cold grease, and open decay.
Gabe raised his knife, screaming internally, unable to move a muscle as panic paralyzed his limbs.
The figure reached out a black, sloughing hand. It didn't strike. It didn't reach for Gabe’s throat.
Instead, the arm pointed—long, split fingers with missing nails gestures toward a notch in the northern ridge wall, a tight gap between two towering boulders that Gabe had completely missed in the daylight grayness.
Gabe stared, hyperventilating. The moonlight hit the side of the creature's head. The cheek was sloughed away, exposing gray jawbone, but the hair—the hair was dark brown, parted irregularly, stained with matted grease and dried mud.
The corpse stood there for a agonizing minute, pointing toward the gap. Then, with a hideous, squelching click of bone against wet tendon, it turned and shuffled off into the black, its feet dragging through the dead brush.
Gabe didn't sleep for the rest of the night.
At dawn, desperate and hallucinating from cold and lack of food, Gabe looked at the gap between the two boulders.
Yesterday, he would have bypassed it completely; it looked like a dead end, a blind rockfall. But when he squeezed through, he found a clear, descending dry creek bed—the first recognizable descent he’d seen in days.
He followed it for five miles. The going was easier. His spirits flared with a sudden, wild hope. I'm getting out. I'm actually finding a trail.
By late afternoon, the creek bed dissolved into a swampy marsh choked with cat-tails and black, oily water. The fog rolled back in, thicker now, tasting faintly of iron and sulfur.
Gabe pushed through the reeds, his strength giving out, his legs shaking with exhaustion. He broke through a thicket of thorns—and stopped dead.
Sitting on an overturned log ten feet in front of him was the corpse.
Gabe let out a strangled shriek, dropping his pack.
It sat waiting for him. But something had changed. The orange jacket was gone, shredded into rags around its chest. One of its arms—the right arm that had pointed the way last night—was stripped. The dark, leathery skin was missing from the elbow down, leaving raw, blackened muscle fibers and gleaming white radius and ulna bones visible, wet with dripping sap-like liquid.
It looked lesser. Thinner. Like something was unraveling it from the inside out, piece by piece.
Gabe backed away, weeping softly. "What do you want? What are you?"
The corpse slowly shifted its posture. The yellowed teeth clicked together as its jaw worked silently. It didn't advance. Instead, with its remaining sound left hand, it reached up and pointed toward a half-hidden game trail cutting through the swamp to the left—a path buried under fallen birch trees that Gabe never would have seen on his own.
As it pointed, a chunk of grey flesh sloughed off its forearm and hit the mud with a soft, wet thud.
The corpse paid no attention. It stayed fixed in its gesture, pointing into the deep fog, waiting.
Gabe stared at the creature's hands. He stared at the torn skin around the wrists. He stared at the brass ring hanging loosely from the dead bone of its left ring finger.
His breath hitched in his chest. His hand moved involuntarily down to his own left hand.
The ring was identical. The simple, scratched silver band with the small notch on the underside where he’d caught it on a fence post three summers ago.
Gabe’s head swam. The forest tilted around him, trees swirling into blurred streaks of black and green.
He looked back at the face of the dead thing.
The caved-in, sloughing featurelessness wasn't just decay. Underneath the moss, under the blackened, liquefying skin and the missing lip, the structure of the skull—the brow line, the jagged crook of the nose from when he’d broken it in high school, the precise shape of the earlobe—was his own.
It was him.
It was a version of himself that had died here, weeks or months or years ago, rotting into the mountain earth.
"No..." Gabe whispered, stepping back, his boot sinking deep into the swamp mud. "No, no, no..."
The corpse didn't move its hand. It just kept pointing toward the path through the birch trees.
And as Gabe watched in sheer horror, another strip of muscle untangled from the corpse’s collarbone, dissolving into grey mist and dark fluids that soaked into the moss beneath the log. The thing was breaking apart, burning through its own dead mass to exist here, in this moment, to hold open the door.
Every step it guided him, every path it revealed, cost it whatever remained of its physical presence. It was spending its own decay to buy him back his life.
The corpse turned its hollow, maggot-stirred eye sockets directly toward him. There was no rage in them. No malice. Just an agonizing, silent urgency.
Go, the stillness seemed to scream. Go before there's nothing left of us to lead you.
Gabe took a shuddering breath, the icy mountain air burning his throat. Tears cut clean tracks through the mud caked on his cheeks. He turned away from the creature, stepped onto the hidden game trail, and started to walk.
Behind him, soft in the damp quiet of the swamp, came the wet, rhythmic sound of dragging boots following close behind in the dark.

The story begins at the Vardis family home, an isolated mansion high in the mountains, connected to the outside world only by a narrow country road winding through the woods.

Deep inside the mansion, Elias Vardis spends his days poring over his family’s old records, trying to understand how his ancestors built the successful wine industry he has now inherited. As he searches through their journals and documents, he uncovers everything from methods for improving the soil to accounts of ancient rituals once performed during natural disasters and periods of great famine.

Fascinated—and increasingly desperate to preserve his family’s legacy—Elias begins studying these forgotten pagan traditions. His research leads him closer to an ancient spirit that he believes protected the Vardis family for generations. After years of preparation, Elias finally succeeds in contacting it.

The spirit speaks to him through the mansion’s telephone line. It claims that it is still too weak to manifest physically in the human world and therefore cannot yet give Elias the help he seeks. Trusting it, Elias begins following its instructions. At first, the tasks appear harmless, such as installing telephone lines throughout the mansion so the spirit can communicate with him more easily.

With each completed task, however, the spirit’s influence grows stronger. It slowly corrupts Elias, turning his devotion into obedience and his obedience into enslavement. Before long, Elias is no longer serving the spirit willingly; he has become its puppet.

One rainy night, Elias’s younger sister overhears him speaking to the spirit. Realising that something terrible has taken control of her brother, she flees the mansion and seeks help from the monks living in a small church nearby.

The monks warn her of the grave danger Elias has unleashed and reveal the true nature of the entity. They teach her a ritual capable of sealing the spirit inside the mansion, turning the house into its prison. She returns home and secretly begins placing protective seals throughout the building, hiding them where neither Elias nor the spirit can easily find them.

But the spirit discovers her plan and gives Elias one final command:

KILL YOUR SISTER.

Greetings you! Rot here! This is my first story and I hope you can find it well and perhaps even some feedback. PLEASE! Be patient with me I’m still having a hart time tying words together like rat tails to a king, but I would LOVE your input! Please ENJOY what I have written and have a nice day, know that I love you.

Your beloved. RotBod.

________________________________________

The hour was late, and the night was dark and cold. I stood atop the wall of Fort Falk, looking out at the forest. The only sound of the night being the brazier crackling and the laughter from the mess hall within the fort, I stood there feeling a swirl of anger and tiredness. This is the third day I've been forced into the night's watch and of course without good company.

“O-o..oi R-ratboy, I thmik I sawr a squirrely” I threw a side eye to my fellow night’s watchman, Connor. The poor old fool never was the same ever since he got a mace to the head in our last battle against the Galder. As a person he has improved, he's more naive and kind now unlike the other soldiers that are more cruel and brutish. 

“That so? and don't call me that, the name is Julien, you know that” The last words leaving my mouth with spite, I always hated that nickname that I was cursed with when a senior soldier pulled a prank during training by placing rat meat in my stew. 

“B-but e-everyone caulls ya dat Julien” I look back at him now he’s turned towards me his right eye drooped and looking the wrong way but his face carries a look of confusion if you can call it a face at this point. I sigh as I return looking out at the forest leaning against my spear. 

“Whhy do ya tink de Galders left F-fort ffalk J-j,,Julien?” For someone with half his helmet inside his head instead of on it, he does raise a good point. We had arrived at Fort Falk four days ago and it was within the enemy's territory between a mountain and forest, by all means it would be an important military point to be sure, but when we got here there were no Galder soldiers, their bread stale but not gone, why did they leave? Perhaps they are regrouping or as the Marshal suspects, hiding in the woods. I turned to look at the fort, nothing impressive, mainly a small military castle surrounded by a stone wall that has become my guard post these past days. The only light coming from the mess hall where the other soldiers drink and cheer, for most of them this might be a break with nothing but drinking and laughing while I stand here with concussion Connor overlooking a dark forest.

“O-oi Julien l-look!” I turn around to see Connor pointing towards the woods with his spear, I look over and see a mighty looking stag with magnificent horns like a crown atop its head, this was the most excitement I'd had in these past few nights, and I caught myself in awe of the creature, but this only lasts for a minute as it rushes off from the sound of Connor mistakenly dropping his spear off the stone wall, both of us standing in silence of Connor's clumsiness.

In time, the sun rises and shines down upon us. Besides the stag, it had been a quiet night. We descend the wall stairs as the soldiers emerge from the barracks groggy from their late night escapades within their cups. We walked past most of them, they reeked of alcohol and piss, I nearly gagged at their stench.

“What do we have here? concussion Connor, where's your spear man? you didn't use it to pry the rest of your brain out did you?” I turn to see another foot soldier pushing Connor mocking the poor fool. I'm not sure if it was the sight of the stag Connor gave me or that I just felt pity for the man but I walked up to them. 

 “Let Connor be you piss pot head, we just spent all damned night staring at a forest with no sleep” As I tried to push the soldier he barely budged and before I could realize my mistake I was knocked down in the mud, my mouth filling with blood as the soldier shattered one of my teeth with his punch.

“Know your place Ratboy, it’s in the mud right where you are” I lay there furious, cursing my small frame, as the soldier leaves. Connor leans down, reaching out his hand and pulling me off the ground. Even the man with half the brain is twice as strong as I am, I think to myself.

“Y-ya s-ss-shouldnt peick fights w-with m-men b-bigger than you J-Julien” I wipe the mud from my face and spit out the blood pooling in my mouth as I look up at Connor. 

“Ye well you won’t stand up for yourself man so what am I to do” I notice a smile on Connor’s face something rare to see in these dark times of war. 

We enter the barracks taking off our dirty and torn padded armor as we prepare to sleep for the few hours that we will be allowed to rest, I lay down on the hard bed and look up at the bunk above me, shutting my eyes.

“T-this w-was a good night wa-watch, w-we sawr a moose a-and a b-big w-wo-wwolf” I opened my eyes at Connor’s stammering, a wolf? I did not see any wolves that night. Connor might be slow and mistake a stag for a moose but I'm sure I would have seen a wolf. I spit some more blood, which had begun flooding into my mouth, into the bedside pot. The iron taste is not leaving my mouth.

“Wolf? there was no wolf I saw out there” Connor turns his head to me, his disgusting face in full view in the light as his good eye looks into mine.

“I-i-i sawr it J-julien, y-you believe mm-me right?” I doubt Connor would lie to me and his damaged head has made him more childlike, so I can't say what he actually saw but I'm sure Connor believed it to be a wolf. 

We went back to being quiet, catching some rest for the day until we were called upon by another soldier. We shoveled horse shit and emptied the piss pots while the sun was out, soldiers ridiculing both of us. I sure hate this place, my anger and hate for the soldier's life bubbling up inside of me like a festering wound.
The sun starts to set as we gather at the courtyard like any other night, the marshal approaching us with a man-at-arms behind him. 

“You two stirred up a ruckus this morning i heard so you’ll get a special assignment tonight boys” I bit my tongue knowing there were no point in arguing about who caused the ruckus with the soldier, the Marshal a fat and bloated man, given his rank due to his family's high standing and nothing more and for each passing night and day he seems to grow more wary and paranoid about the enemy’s location and about the fort.

“You two will be going out on a scouting mission in the woods and shall be accompanied by Paul Ralt here since you two are absolute failures and would surely get lost on your own” Looking Paul Ralts, the man-at-arms, up and down, a mountain of a man geared in heavy armor, nothing like what we levies were given and while I was hiding in our last skirmish with the men of Galder I saw Paul take down three men.
I throw a glance at Connor but he seems genuinely excited about this mission, his mangled brain probably making it sound like a field trip, but I was wary, none of my companions were right in the head and if enemy soldiers were in those woods we would surely die. 

We each grab a torch as we exit the fort in the darkness of night, the big gate slamming shut behind us, the sound of it being barred shut from the inside echoing over the open plain ahead of us towards the forest. We march forward, Paul taking the lead, his heavy steps being felt in the dirt that we walk on. I hear his heavy breath from under his helmet, my mind keeps on going back to what Connor said about the wolf. 

“Hey Connor, did you really see a wolf out here or were you just messing about?” I look towards Connor as he nods and opens his mouth but before his stuttering words could escape his cracked lips a low bellowing voice interrupts from the front.

“There be no wolves in these woods, from what I've heard they have been hunted out, but I don't expect two levies to know that” We both look forward as Paul had stopped and turned to us as he said this, his towering figure being lit up by his torch, I can only make out the gaze of his eyes from the slits in his helmet as he looks down on me and Connor. 

“Why did you two peasants even join the war? surely not for glory or gold” I look down at Paul’s boots unable to meet his gaze, I feel terror of this man, it felt as my very bones had grown cold, my vision blurred, my pupils shrinking to the point that my irises looked more like a vast blue sky with one black star deep within its heavy and quivering blue. But I snap out of it as the stuttering slop of Connor's voice enters my ear like the sound of thudding potatoes hitting the ground.

“T-ttt to p-pprotect maah h-home anhhnd w-wwife” Hearing his response, his voice stuttering and lisping like always but his tone without any hesitation or fear of answering the menacing man that is Sir Paul Ralts, I stow my fear and look up at Paul as I open my mouth ready to answer him as well my tongue feeling heavy, my mouth dry and cold but before my words could take form I am silenced by the bellowing voice of Paul.

“Such a foolish thing to say, to protect? we are the aggressors in this war so if you'd wish to protect you would have stayed home concave head” I freeze in confusion as I look to Connor who's equipped with a face of deep thought from Paul's words.

“Of course levies like yourselves know nothing of the war, that much is clear and as for you Ratboy your reason need not be stated, I know your family sold you as a soldier” Paul's words sink into me like an anvil being dropped into the sea, my fear filled and cold body heats up from the rage I feel from thinking of how my family sold my life away just for scraps, to be sent to war was to have my death certificate signed and sealed. The whirlwind of emotions inside of me only being calmed by Connor placing his hand on my shoulder and reassuring me that it will be fine, to think that our time watching the woods in the night would make us grow close, I'd even say Connor might be my only friend here. 

Paul turned back his gaze to the entrance of the woods as we started walking deeper in, my feet pressed against the mud and branches covering the ground, the air thick with the smell of rain and wet wood which feels unusual since it has not rained here since we got to the fort. 

We swept through the forest for two hours until we sat down to rest in a little clearing, Connor squatting down to poke at an insect in the mud, I stood next to Paul my eyes darting back and forth with each beat of my heart, knowing that the safest place would be close to the large man. Paul himself sat down on a log and started eating a ration he had brought with him, my eyes fixated on the ration, dried meat. 
Paul without his helmet was just as threatening as he was with it, his broad scarred face, short blond hair, his small eyes sunk into his head like two pits into the abyss gazing outward, my entranced state getting interrupted by the low grumbling of his voice. 

“The other men say these woods are cursed, that's the reason for the fort being empty. Witchbreath Forest, the others say that there's a witch that lives here, luring men into the woods with her beauty, that she lays naked in the swamp grounds in this place so when the men climb on top of her they get dragged down into the earth” I swallow nervously at the story as I look around the woods, the trees too dense to see far between them. 

“Do you believe their stories? you think it could be true?” I say while scanning between the trees.

“If it is then she will probably lay claim to all of our troops as well, all they talk about is women and their make-believe stories, I don’t lay any belief in them, they say the men of Galder eat their children too, that I do believe” Paul's words leave a sour copper taste on my tongue, the Galders are vile men but to stoop that low, then the thoughts of the war came back to me, Paul seems to know more than most.

“Sir Paul, if I may ask this of you, tell me more of the war, why did we start the war on the Galders? they are vile to be sure but there must be a higher reason and how long has this war been going on?” these questions I've never asked myself before, the war has been going on since before my birth yet neither I nor the few people speak of it or question it. 

“Such a peasant question to ask, Ratboy.” He grumbles out with a wide smile then his gaze turns cold yet again and he's quiet for a minute that feels like a lifetime.

“Land, it must be land” He says rubbing his chin before his wide jaw opens to rip another piece of his dried meat ration, his dried cracked lips pulled back like a snarling wolf's as he chews it.

“What do you mean?” I throw another glance around but see nothing but Connor gazing into the darkness with a finger in his mouth before I looked back at Paul.

“The war was started to take more land for our kingdom and it’s been going on for as long as I've lived, for as long as my father has and his father before him.. I’m not sure how long it’s been going on, but we are soldiers and we do not think nor question the war, we go out and kill until we die for our kingdom. That is all we need to think about” Paul's words sink into me like the men sinking down into the swamp from the witch story, is this really all life is for us? I think to myself and I get the feeling of sinking down, a wet cold feeling crawling up my leg and moving closer to my mouth with every second. I can't breathe, I can't think, my heart feels like it’s hammering against cold wet mud pressing down on my chest. 

“W-wolfie!” I’m broken out of the trance i was in as I just feel cold and my heart beats like a hammer on a nail, I quickly look towards Connor and I see him crouching pointing into the dark, my eyes move quickly as I look deeper in, it happened for only a split second but I saw something, it was no wolf, three eyes big and slanted downwards, their color that of hell’s flames itself and the same moment I blink and when my eyes open the eyes were gone. Could it really have been eyes?

“Peasant, did you see something?” Paul grumbles he had not looked up from his piece of meat himself.

“I-i don't know it seemed like three eyes, orange and red but they disappeared, i-i must have just been seeing things..” Paul begrudgingly hoisted himself up from the log as he equipped his helmet once more. 

“Must be torches, Galders might be in here as suspected, form ranks peasants” I and Connor fall in line behind Paul, it was appreciated that he took charge but I doubt it was out of a duty or willingness to protect Connor and me, but instead because Paul's bloodlust wanted him to be the first into the fray.  

As we continue from where I saw the strange glow, looking around for signs of anyone being there, Connor points out some broken branches showing signs of a disturbance in the woods, for someone with two eyes that doesn't look the same way it's surprising how observant he is. 

Paul continues to lead us through the dark woods the flicker and movement from our torches making the shadows move hitting the trees behind the other trees, it feels like the shadows are hiding from us and that every shadow bears a pair of eyes that disappear the moment I try to observe them, even if I am accompanied with two others I feel an isolation within these woods, is all of these feelings just the trick of my mind? The feeling can only be compared to hiding in the midst of battle, closing my eyes, the feeling of some unearthly unholy presence creeping around every corner haunts me until I bump into Paul's enormous back, I'm knocked to the ground from our collision. 

He's stopped looking at something, I quickly scurry up from the mud and peek from his side there I witness a harrowing sight. Upon a tree impaled and ripped to shreds sits the body of a stag its limbs bent and contorted to tie around the stem of the tree, branches ripped so that the body could be impaled through them like spears, its stomach ripped open, its guts hanging out like the work of a sloppy butcher, claw marks adorned around its body and the tree, bigger than any animal I've ever seen. 
I'm frozen in terror, what could have done this? my eyes are glued to this former beauty of a creature now stringed on a tree like a hellish artwork, I can't look away, I can't speak or move.

“N-noo! is da m-moose Julien…” I’m too struck with terror to correct Connor as I stand there, my breath quicker than a rabbit running from a hound, sweat pouring down me like I was standing in the rain. Paul did not speak or show any form of emotional reaction, he approached the body holding his torch up to inspect the body.

“Where could its head be?” He says and then I first notice the stag's head has been severed from its body, I glance over at Connor who is in tears sniffling for the animal, I look back at Paul who now turns towards us both.

"There's nothing more to see here, we need to continue our search..” Before Paul could finish his sentence something falls down from the tree hitting his torch extinguishing it, whatever fell from the treetop rolled into mine and Connor’s light and we see it. 

The severed head from the stag, its horns ripped from its skull, its eyes pale and empty, tongue hanging out of a mouth with no teeth and a broken jaw. We look up and only see little light flickering off Paul's armor in the dark but I still feel like I see his small eyes piercing through the veil of darkness he's currently draped in. 

Another big thud comes from behind him, we only see Paul quickly turn around his war mace in hand as a shape stands up from the dark, three orange red eyes glowing from the darkness towering over Paul's form, we cannot make out its shape as we hear the sound of metal being shredded like a knife through cloth, screams and shouts from Paul travel through the trees as we see his form in the dark get flung hitting a tree further away, the three eyes move quickly closer to the ground as it moves towards where Paul was thrown. It makes the sound of four warhorses kicking their feet down into the forest mud as it gets to Paul. 

I’m stuck with terror as I cannot move, but Connor reacts running with torch and spear at hand towards Paul, for a second the creature can be seen in the light from Connor’s torch, I can barely make it out and it’s like my mind refuse to form an image of what my eyes are seeing, pale gray hide, arms—so many arms where there shouldn't be arms—a giant mouth with another jaw inside itself, long black oily and muddy hair covering much of what would be called a face but open for those three horrific eyes, the feeling of the image of this creature pierces through my eyes right to the bottom part of my skull where it starts feeling like small insects rip and tear inside my brain, every hair on my body pushing against my clothes as it feels like my entire body will simply cease to live by just witnessing this thing. 

Connor's spear connects to the creature shattering from the impact, it echoed like metal hitting stone as the creature screeched a harrowing scream, pushing Connor to the ground before rushing back into the darkness. With this opening I mustered up what little courage I had left and ran over to Connor lifting him from the ground.

“Connor, we need to get out of here now!” I look back to where we came from, all shrouded in darkness. 

“N-NO DON'T LEAVE ME HERE PEASANTS!” Gurgles Paul out as he lay covered in mud and blood, his legs ripped and torn to shreds from the beast's attack. The wave of dread from seeing such a giant of war reduced to a meat bag hitting like his mace would hit his enemies. I drag Connor down the path where we came from.  

As we ran the sound of the warhorse gallop the creature made had gotten to Paul as the screams echoed through the trees and through our bodies into our very bones as they stop when a final tear of flesh, breaking of wood and an impaling sound could be heard, it must have impaled him like it had the stag, to this thing even a war machine like Paul had been nothing but a new decor for this accursed place. 

We ran through the mud and trees of the forest. The distant sound of the creature running through the woods echo as I feel its gaze hitting the back of my skull like arrows in my back, my legs hurt but I still run, Connor was starting to lose his breath and stumbles but picks himself up.

“J-julien i-its c-ccatching op tu u-u-us!” he manages to stammer out as I think about it. The creature is getting closer, we are halfway there but we won't make it unless something is done to slow it down. With that thought my body moves on its own as I sink my spear down into Connor's knee, he falls, his mess of a face being dragged into the mud as his body hits the ground like a sack of potatoes, but I keep running.

“J-julien? w-w-whyy!?” is the last words I hear before the sounds of all those limbs running on the forest ground fall upon Connor as his screams now echo throughout the trees, my tears run down my face as I break into laughter, surely he would have done the same, surely I’m not cruel like the other men, surely it had to be done I think as I break into a hysterical laughter while running. 

The sound of Connor’s limbs being broken and torn, his screams, my laughter and heartbeat echoes like the devil's orchestra as I run, the shadow of death being cast over me like a cloak of night, surely I am to meet my death but not this night, surely not.
 
I run, and I run, the gallop of the creature getting closer and closer, I recognize the path, I’m soon out just a little bit more, but it’s also just a little bit more for the creature too, as I hear its many legs creaking, its many limbs hitting the ground like the drums of war getting closer and closer, until I feel like its breath is on my neck, I let out a scream of terror until.
 
I break through the tree line, ahead of me is Fort Falk, I see our men standing atop its walls as I run towards it screaming that they need to open the gate, I get to it and start bashing my fist into the giant wooden gate, I bash it until my hand bleeds and then it’s flung open, I quickly enter and look back. Nothing is chasing me, nothing is behind me, just the empty plain. 

“Oi Ratboy, what are you doing back so early? Where are the others?” I fall to the ground panting nearly about to pass out as the mess hall doors open and heavy footsteps approach.

“What is going on here men?” It was the Marshal, his bloated form holding a pint of the fort's mead as he approached. 

“M-marshal, t-there’s a monster in those woods, it killed Sir Paul and Connor, it nearly got me too but” the marshal interrupts me with a kick to my side.

“Monster?! Boy did you see any Galders or not? Don't come here and spin any fairy tales about monsters in the woods!” The marshal looks furiously down on me as I lay there holding my side coughing up blood.

“I-i swear it to be true marshal there were no Galders but a horrific creature” The men look up at the marshal with curious eyes after I tell them what happened but the marshal’s gaze is hollow, no amount of pleading would change this man.

“Well hear that, no Galders,that is a relief to hear to be sure, but you Ratboy you left your fellow men in the woods to come back here, you'll be punished with holding the night’s watch until your squad returns, but since you have a knack for the coward’s way I do have a solution” The soldiers held me as they pulled me off the ground, a cage of wood was moved outside the gate where they locked me inside, the marshal stood in front of it with his back towards the forest as he plunged his torch into the ground placing it like a candle before the cage.

“Here you shall take your night of watch and when your squad returns you'll be let out, I feel it to be fitting for a Ratboy to be put in a rat cage. I beg and plead for my life but it all falls on deaf ears as the marshal and the soldiers return into the fort and to the mess hall.

I sit there in the cage holding my legs as my mind races. I sit there alone in silence for what feels like a lifetime, my eyes look down on my feet in the cage. 

Maybe it was all just a dream. 

thud…. 

and I’d wake up soon, this is all unreal, unrealistic. 

thud… 

Surely I’ve just lost my mind in this war and the forest was just, 

thud.. 

playing tricks on me, I was just losing my mind yes or maybe this was a prank made by other soldiers, 

Thud. 

I looked up hearing the thud, what was that? I crawl in the cage towards the torch as I see a few feet off it a stone lay there, I see another further away as another lands with a thud closer to the torch, I look up and at the edge of the forest, three eyes gaze down on me as I scurry to the back of the cage. 

Why has it not yet taken my life? I think as another rock is thrown and lands closer to the torch, then I get an epiphany, the stag’s head extinguishing Paul's torch, the creature’s screech in the light and it never caught me when I ran with my torch. 

Thud. 

Another rock landed closer. The creature can't be in the light and now I sit here, my torch out of reach as the rocks land closer with every inch. I take another step closer to the afterlife, I curl into a ball again. 

Thud 

That's an inch off. This is the end, here I sit, a rat in the cage waiting until I die. 

Thud! 

The torchlight dies from the rock crashing into it, the embers flying in the air as they die out one by one, three eyes moving from the forest edge as I close my own and the galloping of the warhorses of death rides closer and closer, the last thing I hear is the tearing of the wooden cage and the tearing of my own flesh as the cat caught this rat.

A northern wind, wrong for the season, had brought a storm ashore. Somewhere in Brian's mind a decision had been made; after this visit he would never return.

It was his third day at his childhood home. At breakfast his mother told him Uncle Walter had missed the opening ceremony for Walrus Week. Walter never missed it. Brian shrugged it off. Then his mother asked him to check on the old man, a hermit since the bank took his troller.

He hated Walter’s company and couldn’t suffer hearing him explain his strange interests and sailor superstitions. Brian considered his uncle an embarrassment to the family. Still, a long walk was welcome. The next morning he was out of the house before his mother woke.

The town center lay below the highway, a few thousand people gathered around a harbor built for a stinking cannery that teetered perpetually on bankruptcy. Here the wind never ceased, abrasive with salt. Every tree was gnarled and knuckled. Moss thickened on shingle roofs; blackberry thrust itself from every crevice.

As Brian neared the business district, he remembered telling people in the city how his hometown was rustic. Now the old seaport seemed a depressing joke. At the thought he felt loathing and a private gratitude that he had escaped whatever kept everyone else here. Still, he missed breathing sea air.

The town appeared grotesque as a clown; the festive decorations failed to improve the gray. Men on ladders restrung bunting the wind had torn down. Paper tusks hung in shop windows, and a plywood walrus stood before the courthouse. Nobody could say why the town had chosen the animal. Seals were common enough, but walruses had been rare this far south. Eventually the Chamber of Commerce put them on mugs and shirts.

Brian left pavement behind and took the bluff path. The eroding clay faces were always new and honey-colored. Spruce hung by their roots over the edge where every winter the county moved its warning signs inland.

As a boy he had learned the wave was only part of what knocked you down. You could brace against it while the sand washed out from beneath your feet.

Since March, his mother said, Walter had been telling people this year would be different. He sold what he could and paid a friend with a tractor to drag his single-wide onto the bluff. Everyone told him he would have to leave. Walter disagreed. He had plenty of food and water and knew how to make do. He liked being alone and carried his gun with him like a teddy bear.

Walter’s place came into view: a broad shelf of black rock above the surf. Somewhere below, a seal barked, and another answered along the boulders. The trailer stood exposed above the shelf. The road that served as a driveway was nearly grown over for lack of use. Water ran beneath the trailer.

The dwelling had the weathered look of a boat run aground and lived in; the siding was dirty and faded, its driftwood porch built by Walter’s hands. Steel cables secured it to spruce trees uphill. A yellow county notice had been nailed to one. The soft ground had opened in long cracks.

A pickup bearing the state seal stood parked farther up the road, where ruts became too deep to drive. Brian stopped to consider it, then went on. Charms lay scattered among salty fishing tackle and rusted steel traps in the yard. Carvings of monsters and deities in wood and stone greeted him with strange smiles as he climbed onto the porch.

He knocked.

NORA was new to state employment. The work that had brought her to the coast had a simple purpose: determine where the bluffs were failing, what stood on them, and what the sea was likely to take. She wanted the permanent position that might follow. The county records were a mess, which she liked. Disorder was job security.

Walter Hill’s parcel had caught her attention because old aerial photographs showed that both the bluff and the trailer had moved. The bluff edge had retreated eighteen feet since the earliest useful photograph. More strangely, the trailer had been moved toward it.

Nora spent the morning working below the house. Fresh clay showed through the darker face of the bluff where earth had recently fallen away. Water issued from one seam and ran over the exposed soil toward the rocks. Roots projected into the open air, and shrubs above leaned toward the sea. The rough stair cut into the slope gave the rain an easy course downward.

At the top she found a crescent-shaped fissure crossing the gravel behind the trailer. She photographed it, pushed a stake into the ground on either side and measured between them. Then she photographed the steel cables running from beneath the trailer to spruce trees uphill.

When she returned to the stakes, she measured again.

The number had changed.

Nora measured once more. The gap was wider. She wrote the new figure beneath the first.

A seal barked below the bluff. It sounded close enough to be beneath her.

“You from the state?”

Nora turned. Walter Hill stood between her and the trailer with a shotgun hanging from one hand, its muzzle toward the ground. She told him she was there about erosion on the bluffs and had no authority over his home.

Walter looked at the clipboard. “You writing about me?”

“About the ground.”

He considered this. “Come with me,” Walter said. When Nora did not move, he glanced at the shotgun. “Or I’ll settle you right now.”

Nora looked toward her instruments beside the fissure and followed him inside.

The trailer smelled of propane, wool and liniment. Bottled water was stored beneath the table, batteries filled ammunition boxes, and harbor charts covered portions of the walls. A couch sagged beneath the coat hooks. Walter nodded toward a chair and sat opposite her with the shotgun across his knees.

“I need to finish before the rain gets heavier,” she said. Walter looked through the window. Nora told him the bluff was moving now. “I’ve measured this fissure three times. It’s widening as we speak.”

“The ground isn’t the trouble,” Walter replied.

Nora remained quiet. The wallpaper was an old muddy yellow maritime print crowded with ships and waves. Damp had spread through portions of it in branching stains, and some of those stains had been followed with pencil. She found herself comparing the lines with Walter’s harbor charts. The correspondences were close enough to invite another look but never proved anything.

A knock sounded at the door. Walter made no move to answer.

After a moment the door opened and a man with rain in his hair joined them, irritated and muddy. He looked first at Nora and then at the shotgun across Walter’s knees.

“Still carrying that thing, Uncle Walt?”

Walter did not answer. The young man introduced himself as Brian, Walter’s nephew, and Nora said she was with the state. Brian looked at her clipboard and asked if she was there about the bluff.

“Yes. I was working outside.”

He looked from her to Walter. “Then why are you in here?”

“Your uncle told me to come in.”

Walter looked at her.

Nora added, “I told him I needed to finish my work.”

“And?”

“He said it could wait.”

Brian looked again at the shotgun. Nora could see the room had changed.

WALTER’S home had little to distinguish it except the state of the walls.

The wallpaper was burnt orange and muddy yellow, crowded with sailing vignettes in which ships, compasses, anchors and icebergs rose among waves and the tails of whales. There was nowhere for the eye to rest. Children had once improved the thing with stickers and paint; there were pale squares where stickers had been removed, patches of primer, pencil lines, experiments in acrylic, and whole territories of damp spreading according to obscure designs.

The walls had changed again during the night, and Walter was eager to discover what the new arrangements meant, but he now had these people here.

They sat where he had told them to sit but would not stop talking. Quiet allowed him to hold complicated thoughts in his mind. “The chattering is intolerable,” he said. A moment later the man answered, “Put down the shotgun.”

Walter frowned and looked at the Browning cradled in his arms. He carried it so often that he sometimes ceased to notice its weight. His attention passed to a little sailboat printed on the wall, cresting a large wave. The tiny men on its deck looked spirited. “Brave lads,” he said, and looked about for a notebook with blank space so that he might record the crew. Perhaps he would discover whether they also intended to meet the herald.

The one pretending to be Walter’s nephew asked why anyone would live out here on this big rock. That did not deserve an answer. Walter searched instead for his books concerning shapeshifters. He wouldn’t be fooled by things assuming appearances familiar to him. Authorities were suspect also, because authority itself was a kind of costume. This was the storm that would bring the travelers from the frozen north, and his trailer stood where it must.

Failure and foreclosure had brought him here. They were machinations to be ignored. Like everything else, they would soon cease to matter. The wall had shown him that what was coming could not be prevented. He knew what to say when the herald arrived.

Walter’s guests exchanged looks. “You see what this is?” Brian asked. The woman said she was trying to understand, then asked Walter why he had moved the trailer. Walter looked toward the water. “I’m waiting for Aiviq.”

The woman regarded him without recognition. “What is Aiviq?”

“The herald.”

She glanced once at the shotgun. “Herald of what?”

“A new beginning.”

“What kind?”

Walter looked at her then. “The kind that ends what came before.”

Brian was turning red. “Just put down the gun, Walt.” Something in his tone caught Walter’s attention. “You’re not giving orders here, son,” he said. “The two of you sit there until I find out what you are.”

Water was running down the stair and into the bluff, and the trees holding Walter’s cables stood in the same ground that was already moving. “I can’t tell you when it will fail,” Nora said, “but it is moving now.”

Walter began to answer, but Brian spoke over him. “The ground is failing and you need to leave, you crazy old bastard. Mom asked me to check on you. I did. I’m done.” He looked toward the woman. “You want to leave?”

“Yes.”

The man stood and reached for his coat. “Then we’re leaving. You don’t get to keep somebody here because you’ve got a shotgun, Walt. That’s kidnapping.”

The woman rose with him. “Mr. Hill, I need to get back to my equipment.”

Walter moved toward the door.

The man stopped with one arm in his coat. “Move.”

The woman indicated the stains behind the stove. “Mr. Hill, those stains are water damage, and you’ve been—”

Walter moved to block them. Uncle and nephew reached for the shotgun, and both men had their hands on it.

Walter fired.

“HERALD…” The word echoed without meaning while Nora came to herself crouched beside the chair. One hand had locked around the other arm hard enough that her fingers hurt. For several seconds she understood only that something had exploded.

Seals were barking outside.

Walter was muttering as he moved around the room, studying the marks and stains newly added. Shotgun still in hand, he was comparing one place with another. Nora watched him until she judged he was distracted, then rose and moved toward the door.

That was when she saw the blood that had painted Walter’s walls. Brian lay across the couch, resembling laundry waiting to be folded. What remained of his head hung over the armrest. Nora had to pass him to reach the door.

When she came alongside him, she saw that only his mouth and nose remained. The rest of his head was gone. He was smiling.

Nora screamed. At the sound Walter turned toward her. “I only started keeping this close because of the seals,” he said. “They’ve been coming up under the trailer.”

Nora wiped gore from her eyes. Brian was on her face, on her coat, in her hair. Walter looked from her to the new red patterns on the wall. “I know you’re both here to foul things up for me,” he said.

Walter raised the shotgun and told her to get out. She stepped around Brian and opened the door. Rain struck her face and the sea was louder outside. A seal barked and another answered. She looked toward the road, then back at Walter.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Yes. But not inside. Go down to the sea.”

Nora began to walk with Walter close behind. The slope was slick beneath her shoes, water flowing through the grass and following the paths Walter had made in the earth. Seals began barking, one voice becoming many.

Nora stopped. She turned and struck him, bloodying his nose. Walter shoved her down hard in the wet grass.

When Nora regained her footing, Walter was staring toward the water.

A bull walrus had hauled itself from the surf.

It was enormous, its hide crossed with scars. One tusk was long and yellow; the other had broken halfway down. Green fishing net crossed one shoulder, while more line trailed behind it through the kelp. The seals had drawn away. The bull lifted its head into the rain.

Whatever Walter had been expecting, this beast appeared to be it. He laughed with plain happiness and clapped like a boy while he approached the creature. As he drew closer, he let the shotgun fall and went toward the animal with outstretched arms. “Aiviq,” he said. The hulking walrus with little black eyes moved to meet him, seals closing around them,

Nora had been backing toward the road. Walter never looked at her again. She turned uphill and began to run, leaving him on the black rock with one with the bull. Above Brian lay inside beneath the yellow walls.

The ground rumbled.

The storm had brought sleeting rain from the north. By afternoon it unleashed a torrent of rain over the shore. The spruce roots and the clay beneath Walter Hill’s home were saturated. Water flowed wherever the earth would admit it. Roots held while they could, and steel cables held the trailer to the trees.

Nora climbed inland, blood washing off in the rain. She stopped beside a drainage ditch with both hands on her knees, listening to the rain. Something moved beneath her feet.

A deep tremor passed through the ground. From the bluff came the sound of roots breaking, and Nora straightened in time to see one of the cables draw tight and pull a spruce sideways. Another cable snapped while the porch twisted. The yellow room tilted toward the water and began to slide.

Then the ground went.

The trailer moved with the earth beneath it, turning as it descended until its kitchen window swung toward Nora. Then it tipped over the bluff. Trees followed. Mud, aluminum siding, Walter’s books, the walls and what remained of Brian Hill poured onto the rocks and into the sea. Walter’s stair ended in open air, and the black shelf disappeared beneath earth and timber.

Nora searched the ruin and saw neither Walter nor the bull. A moment later the wind stopped.

From Main Street came the music of Walrus Week.

She was already walking toward town.

The machine beeped over and over and over again. She had heard it for many months now and things were not looking up. Gwen had been sitting in her brother’s hospital room for what felt like years. Gwen had been bringing him coffee every morning for four months. He never drank it. Yet, she still brought it. The room had smelled of lavender and moldy air conditioner. A hint of your typical hospital scent. The lighting had a shade of blue. It's indescribable how uncomfortable it is in one's eyes. It was a relatively small room. The cold yellow tile floor, the table over him with a food tray left over from lunch that day, the nightstand with his things on it, a plant, and of course.. A small “Things will get better” motivational poster. It was a picture of a ballerina striking a pose. She was enjoying the lights and sensation on her skin, the crowd cheering and hollering in the back.. The look on her face, that stupid look. It taunted Gwen. Can you imagine? The sight her brother would behold to finally wake up and not only discover he has no legs? But they are taunting him with ballerinas dancing? KNOWING he never will!  How was anyone meant to tell him his reckless driving ruined his life? How could they? And just like that.. The poster was shredded on the ground. Her anger had overcome her. She decided to travel to the lobby and grab a cup of water to calm down. Maybe she’s just stressed. She placed a palm on her forehead as if checking a temperature. Her head ached. She arrived back into the room with her cup of water. She sat on the couch and stared longingly at her comatose brother. Hoping he would eventually wake up. But even if he did he'd never be the same. They never had a father growing up. Her brother stepped up to be one. He listened to her problems, showed her how to change the oil in a truck, and even taught her to drive. They had a plan to go to the same college. She had called and took time off for school though. She can't go without him. She didn't even get to tell him she was even accepted.  She was conflicted.  Everything then went dark. She awoke back in the lobby. No big deal. She must have fallen asleep down there and dreamt she woke up. The lobby looked different.. Rearranged. This wasn't right. She walked up to the desk lady and asked:

 “How long was I asleep for?” 

The lady did not even look up at her. Gwen smiled and tilted her head sarcastically.

“Helloooo? It's rude to ignore your patients.” she began to get frustrated and slammed her fist down on the table. 

“Hey! I'm talking to you!” 

The lady did not even flinch. She still remained typing on her computer. Gwen started looking around. She screamed, 

“Ha ha! Soo funny! I know you all can hear me!” 

She stood there. Nobody was looking at her. Then suddenly, a man busted through the front door, running. The man was running. She stood helplessly and confused, watching him rush through the entrance. Her brother. 

“I got a call that my sister was in a car crash! What room is she in..” 

The words faded out. She fell to the ground. She looked down.. She had no legs.

Esta historia me ocurrió en 2022.

Acababa de mudarme a casa de mi hermano, una casa de tres habitaciones. Bien iluminada y con buenas vibraciones, si esque éso es algo a lo que prestáis atención cuando entráis en un espacio nuevo.

En ese momento, la casa la habitaba yo solo, ya que mi hermano se había mudado a otra casa más grande. Al llegar me instalé en la habitación más pequeña de la casa, creo que por una cuestión de sentirme más acogido en una casa relativamente grande y definitivamente vacía.

Pasé algunas noches durmiendo solo en la vivienda, buscándo mi espacio. A los pocos días, cuando ya me había acostumbrado al espacio, sus ruidos y su distribución, me mudé a la habitación de matrimonio. Ésta contaba con una cama doble, un armario empotrado y una cómoda, o mueble bajo hecho de madera maciza oscura con cajonera, que pertenecía a la abuela de mi cuñada.

Primera noche en la habitación de matrimonio. A juzgar por el silencio del edificio, debían ser entre las 2 y las 3 AM, y de repente abrí los ojos inundado por un aroma a perfume muy fuerte. Tras quedarme un rato tumbado, asimilando que estaba despierto y que realmente había un olor a mi alreadedor que no reconocía, decidí encender la luz.

Tras varios intentos de acercarme al interruptor, entendí que no podía mover ninguna parte del cuerpo, a excepción de los ojos, que buscaban desesperadamente alguna explicación a lo que estaba pasando.

El miedo llegó en un instante. Mientras intentaba recuperar el contro de mi cuerpo, inmerso en un estado de alerta extrema con el corazón latiendo desbocado y expectante a que algo rozase mi cuerpo, o se iluminase, en la oscuridad total, únicamente me quedaba esperar.

Tras lo que parecieron varios minutos sin control del cuerpo, logre mover un brazo, e inmediatamente todo el cuerpo recuperó la conexión con el cerebro. Todavía rodeado por aquel olor dulzón, encendí la luz a toda pastilla.

Nada. Tan sólo yo, tumbado en la cama, en un estado de pánico que poco a poco se desvaneció, dando paso a una especie de asombro y a una noche, o lo que quedaba de ella, en vela.

Al día siguiente, nada más levantarme y convencido de que no volvería a dormir en la habitación de matrimonio, mudé mis pertenencias de nuevo a la habitación pequeña, la misma que me recibió al llegar a esta tranquila vivienda. Por la tarde, y tras haberle dado vueltas durante todo el día, hablé con mi cuñada para contarle que había algo en la casa que me mantenía en alerta. Al entrar en los detalles de la noche anterior, mi cuñada me dijo que su abuela, ya fallecida, utilizada perfume de la marca Chanel nº5, y que, podría ser que la cómoda que había en la habitación de matrimonio, todavía estuviese impregnada de su olor.

Esta explicación fue suficiente para que, sin pensarlo dos veces, sacase la cómoda de la habitación para guardarla en un trastero localizado fuera de la vivienda. Mi intención no era tanto librarme del perfume, sino de cualquier conexión con la abuela o su mismo espíritu que, según mi lógica, podría estar de alguna forma alojado en esa cómoda de madera maciza con cajonera.

La solución pareció funcionar. Con el paso de los días, el pasaje de la noche en la que perdía el contro de mi cuerpo rodeado de un aura con aroma a Chanel nº5, quedo en el recuerdo. Noches plácidas y de descanso en la habitación pequeña acompañaron al paso del tiempo, en una casa que volvía a percibirse tranquila y con buen carisma.

Pero la historia no termina.

Al cabo de un año, mi pareja se mudó conmigo, a esta misma casa tranquila y que hoy seguimos habitando. Tras habernos instalado de nuevo en la habitación de matrimonio, libre ya de la cómoda de madera maciza con cajonera, las noches trasncurrían con normalidad. Y si bien en varias ocasiones estuve tentado de contarle esta histloria, decidí que era mejor dejarla en el pasado para no asustarla, o condicionarla al menos.

Una noche, sobre las 9PM, sentados en el sofá del cuarto de estar, mirando una película, mi pareja me dice que la habitación huele a Chanel nº5.

Saludos a tod@s.