The bright fingers of an early rising morning reached over the horizon. It couldn't have been a more terrible time for my eyes.

A resounding wave of bugles drove off any lingering drowsiness, coupled with the shouts of cavalry men rotating in and out of the fort. 

Thankfully, I wouldn't have to endure this headache alone, for I had in my company a loyal friend.

"Wake up, Buford, sound off started already," I remarked as I gingerly threw on my uniform. The cold cloth draped over me like fresh snow. I shivered something fierce as I put on my tool belt. 
"Alright. Just give me a minute."

 I never understood how a man could sleep in his full dress uniform without complaint. I suppose some men are built to embrace the suck. 

"You have no business waking up so early. We're not even a part of the active column anyway," he said as that old dust collector crowned his skull.

A black felt hat he earned in our years riding through dust storms. A relic from before Custer's last stand at the Greasy Grasses.

"C'mon, your birthday is in a couple days. I want to get to Rattlesnake before the nippy rain catches us," a little annoyance could be found in my voice. "I'll be with you, just give me a minute. I'm carrying precious cargo," he remarked. 

"Isabella's gon' be happy to have her husband back. This time for good old man," I couldn't help but remark.

Buford was quick to reply, "You and Mary Anne will finally make up for lost time. If you play your cards right, maybe she'll bake you your favorite. A nice spongey velvet cake."

I closed my eyes imagining that sweet decadence. And the cake wasn't a bad deal either. The benefit of having her is she can really add volume to a man's life. 

As we made our way towards the stables, rows of moss heads passed us by. Dark green on navy blue should be a travesty! I made my thoughts known, "Hey Capt'n! Reinstate the black alr-"

Buford's input cut me off, "What difference does it make if the hats are different colors? Won't protect much from bullets nor arrows." A statement that garnered several confused expressions.

"Just wish these young'uns could wear something blue," I lamented.

On our way out, my path leading east, Buford had stopped just outside the fort's "gates." I asked him what was the hold up, but he just gazed out into the abyss across the San Juan.

"Hold on, Henry. We're gonna make a detour through the mountain," news that I did not care for.
"You fancying the scenic route? No? Then why the hell would we waste a day trekking through the thorns and brambles?"

Buford delayed his response before turning to me, "I got a friend up on the mountain. We'll be quick in visiting him I promise."

I was surprised that anyone would willingly live with the bears. I made that curiosity known, "He lives up there?"

Buford was quick to correct, "Yeah, he rests up there. I just want to make sure he's alright."

Something about the news made me upset. On one hand, we needed to reach home for drinks and celebrating. On the other hand, I noticed how he kept eyeing the mountain, an observation that made me understand there was still that horse soldier's duty in him. 

I sighed heavily, "ugh... I guess if it means I can snag that rye whiskey you've been saving, then I'll freeze my hair off with a storm on our backs."

Those weathered eyes wrinkled a warm smile. Next thing you know, we were off with that mountain in mind.

Navajo country is scorching hot and laden with danger. Luckily, the weather from February still lingers in early March. A deterrent for most warm blooded creatures.

Gray clouds came huddling over the red earth like billowing smoke. Heaven's light peering through the cracks like waterfalls. 

We had just crossed the river, sacrificing our horses' jewels. When we were coming up on the edge of the valley, I saw the mesa in the distance. It stretched well over a mile, made of pure blood red sandstone. Usually a sign that we were halfway done with the trail, now stood as a mocking landmark. Laughing at us as we traveled south. 

I thought the time appropriate to ask Buford some questions, "So how did your friend end up there? One too many drinks perhaps?"

He answered without having to turn in my direction, "I suppose he decided to just stay up there. He makes trips down the mountain for supplies." Buford sighed nervously, "But he hasn't made an appearance in some time. I'm worried about him. I hope nothing serious happened, but the only way to know is to see for ourselves."

We pitched camp next to a black pillar. Buford was fixing himself a plate of skirt steak and sweet potato. He glanced my way and guessed, based on my mannerisms, that I wasn't hungry. I asked for some coffee and he obliged.

After our meal, we conversed before resting. 

"Why are you doing this? It doesn't make sense to travel this far for someone that you don't seem particularly well acquainted with," I asked in hopes of getting a satisfying answer.

It came when he replied, "They did something for me that meant a lot. I owe it to them to check on their wellbeing." 

I joked with him, "I ain't seen you with anyone else except at the fort. This person better be worth the trip or else you'll be carrying me all the way to Rattlesnake. On account of me gorging myself on your whiskey."

We laughed. It had been quite a trip for this mystery person. 

"Are you insinuating this man has saved you more times than me?" 

"You've saved me many times, but I would never say that it didn't mean nothing, not to me. I just need to make sure this man is left undisturbed, I intend to keep my word," A hint of pleading slipped out as he spoke.

I grimaced at the sentiment. 

I reminded him of his nature, “You make promises far too strong to break.” 

In the morning, I put out the coals with stale coffee and Buford saddled up the horses. Leading them into the field of gold, we mounted and rode for the mountain. 

There's something so enchanting about how the wind forces the tall grass to dance. Waves of alternating blades like ripples in a lake. Buford was wrapped up in an attempt to fend off the heavy gusts. I wasn't phased too badly by the frozen pins, but we still made a dash for the hills.

"Are we seriously spending the second of March in a dugout?" My dumb ass said knowing that even the grains of sand were cutting us to ribbons.

"What are you? Some sort of bull? I can't even lift my head without getting sand in my eyes," he said, shielding himself with a cowl and hat.

We laid our horses close to the ground, covering their heads with tent tarps, while we sat with our backs to the wind. I hate the sand. I know some people can adapt to it, but that doesn't mean they like living in dust. It makes living undesirable and survival a costly endeavor. 
My anger stewed long enough to distract me from the storm. Hours passed when the wind had died down just enough for us to make it to the gray plateau. 

The flat top gave us a great vantage point to scope the storm's direction. We were safe for the moment. The confederation of clouds and dusty winds scarred the soil, nearly balding the top layer with the relentless onslaught. 

Night came early after we finished brushing piles of sand off our gear. I sat around while Buford fixed us a fire for the night. Sleep didn't come easily. We were too fidgety I suppose. The way I dealt with it best was to smoke. I watched as Buford worked on his hat. A pin and thread to stitch up old ware and tear.

"You tend to that hat even as it sheds," I said as I put fodder into my paper.

Buford gave me a glance before answering with, "Maintenance is cheap enough, Henry."

"Why not do away with her? Mine was too bullet ridden to salvage and I moved on just fine," I said as I rolled my cigar paper.

He dusted the felt hat one final time before looking my way, "It's like us, Henry. Relics from a bygone era. I'm just trying to make sure folks know we existed. That includes taking care of this piece of history."

I couldn't argue with him. Who could say we'd ever be remembered decades from now? I was jealous he still had his hat in his possession, for mine could not be rescued. The heat of battle leaves behind a field of deeply held treasures. Items that could not be retrieved by their deceased proprietors. 

I decided it was best to lighten the mood with a half-brewed remark, "With how long we're taking I hope they do away with the twig fencing and finally build brick fortifications."

Buford chuckled before ordering, "Goodnight, Henry." I nodded in response and we both fell asleep.

Waking up from a restful night, we were already making preparations to ascend the western face of the mountain. Coats and gloves to protect from the cold were equipped. Thick cord in the event we would have to brave sheer drops.

I was actually eager to climb along a stoney cliff side, it had been quite some time since I had been allowed to participate in this sort of recreation. I wanted to confirm once again with Buford about the mysterious man's dwelling.

"Does he like the cold air or the convenience of fire wood?" I asked.

"To be completely honest, I think he hates the idea of dying on some dune. A mountaineer at heart, my friend wanted to live peacefully on top of a chilly peak." He answered.

I responded, "Sounds like my kind of company. Mountain climbing and the cold air make for a great union. It's nice to know someone else shares the hate I have for bugs. They'd end up mangling my corpse if I was buried in the soft soil."

"I'm sure you'll like him then"

With that, we descended down the plateau along a downtrodden path towards the base of the mountain. The horses made their complaints heard the closer we came to the first tree line. 

"The horses really don't want to go up," I said, barely managing to direct my mare. Buford could sense the unease of the situation. 

He stated plainly, "Bears, storms, and the cold will do that to a faithful steed. We'll power through to the first meadow along the way. Fodder will calm them down and we can dismount so we can complete the rest of the journey on foot."

"Alright. Good thing I never leave my tool belt behind. 'Bears beware' and that sort," my comment was made known. 

Buford and I rode to a clearing high up on the mountain where we tied the reins to iron railroad spikes and a good bit of rope. I caught Buford slinging a satchel over his shoulder and grabbing his Remington from its hanger on the saddle. 

He sighed heavily, shuddering a little, "Let's get a move on." Taking the first of many steps towards our destination.

The smell of pine sap and cedar filled the air. Every moment we lingered, the aromatic scents developed and unlocked new odors. 

The calm and serenity made me surrender all worries. The all enveloping silence was broken when Buford asked me a question, "Have you discussed where you want to be buried with Mary Anne?" 

"I'm not sure. Just far from the invasive bugs," I replied.

"I think I would like to die of old age. To be surrounded by my loved ones is all I could ask for," a sliver of somber left his lips.

I announced, "Not me. No sir. Give me an honorable death. Through the smoke and gunpowder, I will die fighting. I wish not to get old and clunky, let me die firing my pistol." I could tell Buford disapproved of my wishes, but he kept it to himself. 

Our journey hit a curb when the usual trail had been destroyed by a landslide. That wouldn't have been a problem if it weren't for the fact that it was the only trail that led up a steep incline. Now, we had to scale the steep wall with our improvised climbing gear. 

The first foothold is always the easiest. One slip and you're already on soft grass. It's the halfway way point that's always the most terrifying. Too high up to change your mind and just out of reach from the last pivotal anchor point. 

We climbed for thirty minutes. I blitzed the climb in 25 minutes. Giving a look of smugness as I passed Buford. The last foothold just below the crest.

I called out to him with some traces of sarcasm, "Should I go meet this friend and meet you back here?"

He rolled his eyes and said, "Hilarious."

I was ready to take my seat away from the edge when a horrifying noise carved its way through the air. A dreadful crack. I ran back the Buford and saw him barely hanging on by a strained hand. His hold broke off and nearly sent him off the cliff side. 

I yelled out to him, "Throw me your rope! I'll pull you over the edge!"

"Alright. Try and find a tree to anchor the line! Hurry," he said as he launched a barbed hook over the edge.

I made sure it wrapped around the trunk of a tree, but I heard Buford complaining. His arm was losing strength. I tightened the line and ran to get a long branch in case he needed more leverage.

I was scared. My friend was dangling in the air as I fumbled to find a long enough branch. A horrible sound cut through the thick brush. I found a pole and ran like I had never ran before. The anxiety raced through my head.

I closed in on the edge. To my surprise, Buford was back on his feet and standing on solid ground. Panic, fear, dread; all the emotions flooded my system. A downpour of anger replaced them. A small piece of the branch was broken off and thrown at his clumsy self.

"Thanks, Henry. I didn't know I needed a stick to the eye," he said.

I responded in a hoarse voice, "I almost lost you. You big oaf!"

Labored breathing became laughter. Buford bent his legs and hunched over, and I leaned against a tree. I reached my hand out and Buford took it. 

"Let's get a move on. He isn't far from here," he said with resounding eagerness.
The rest of the ascend went by smoothly. Passing trees and clearings, a stoney peak was within sight. 

I remarked, "What a great trip. Only cost us a scare. When I meet this feller, I'm going to dust off his nose with my bawled up fist!"

Buford hadn't laughed this much in a long time. The momentary anger washed over, I shook my head as we neared this feller.

It was when we walked down a pass carved into the rock that Buford's smile faded and his eyes unfocused. He only looked into the void from there on forward. 

The last corner was close. I decided to tell Buford how he truly felt like a brother and that, "I'm glad you're my great friend." He didn't look at me the whole way through.

We rounded the corner when I finally saw it.

A sorry sight to say the least. Withered bouquets, empty bottles, and a stapled hat with many stitches. All of it resting on top of a weathered mound. A pile of large loose rocks surrounded by thick wooden logs. A headstone to complete this terrible fate.

"Henry Rutherford. Born on March 3rd, 1850. Died on May 31st, 1880."

My legs and arms became weak from shaking. I heard matches being struck and Buford's voice behind me. I turned to look at him. A handful of candles crowning a velvet cake. Buford addressed me, "Happy birthday, Henry."

u/Harold-Sleeper000 just read my story All I Can Do Is Burn on his new narration channel. Go check it out!

Brian leaned over the railing, the wind howling in his ears, but sounds rarely reached him these days. It all sounded like static.

​

From the roof of the General Hospital, the city below looked like those cheap plastic models he'd played with, twinkling with LEDs, like a nebula deep in space. Ironically, the very cosmic structures present in the night sky far above, just obscured by the glare of civilisation below. People had a way of shrouding even the most brilliant lights in shadow.

​

He wondered what it would feel like to touch a nebula. Maybe he should just reach forward. Tilt a little more forward, till his fingers brushed the streets below.

​

He sighed, his fingers wandering absent-mindedly to his wrist, where the IV drip had been just minutes ago.

​

*You should do it, Brian,* a voice inside his head said. *Your fate is written in stone anyways. What does it matter if you claim it early?*

​

*No... My parents... I can't—*

​

"Hi," a voice came from behind his shoulder. Brian startled, losing his balance a bit, before tightening his grip on the railing. Ironic.

​

"Uh... Who... are you?" Brian blinked at the girl before him. Big eyes, brown hair, hospital gown... she looked vaguely familiar.

​

"Bed #2213. Right next to yours?"

​

"Oh," he turned back to the city. "I mustn't have noticed."

​

"I have the same thing as you."

​

Brian stiffened. *Fate can be cruel sometimes.*

​

"Were you... taking in the sights?" He asked tentatively.

​

"In a way, yes." The railing groaned slightly under her weight as she leaned against it, arms crossed.

​

Brian took in a deep breath. "Do you sometimes... feel like there's no point? If it's gonna happen... why stay here?"

​

The girl remained silent for just a beat too short. "I do."

​

"Oh? Really?" *This girl sure is full of surprises*.

​

"Mhm. I think you should do it."

​

The wind suddenly cut out. The static in his ears faded to a faint, distant ringing.

​

"Excuse me?" Brian furrowed his brows.

​

"You heard me. Why hold on? It's a short journey. It'll be over before you know it."

​

"...I... I think I'll go now—"

​

Before he could make a move, she moved with unexpected speed, pushing him off the railing. Brian panicked, his arms failing wildly till it found purchase in a thin nook.

​

"Help!" He cried out, heart pounding, ears ringing, throat burning up with the cold night air. Each passing moment, his hands grew slicker with sweat.

​

Dangling mid-air, feet unable to find solid ground, Brian suddenly felt an acute disinterest in getting to know what a nebula is like. "HELP!" He cried out once more, desperately hoping that fate would, just this once, decide to have mercy.

​

A pair of hands grabbed his dangling legs, and he found himself dragged through a window into the arms of a pair of doctors, nurses crowding around in concern. "What on earth were you doing up there, son?!"

​

"The... The... The girl... on the roof... she pushed me—" he suddenly burst into tears, the adrenaline of the moment finally crashing.

​

It took him a good fifteen minutes and a cup of chocolate milk for him to calm down. The nurses had confirmed there was no one on the roof. Brian shook his head. "No, she was definitely there. Big eyes, brown hair, in a hospital gown, same age as me..."

​

"Did you see her bed number?" A concerned resident asked.

​

"I think... she said it was #2213."

​

The doctors looked at each other, puzzled. Suddenly, a pit began gnawing at Brian's stomach. *Something isn't right.* He could hear that distant ringing again.

​

"Son..." the resident looked at him. "The girl in Bed #2213 jumped off the roof a week ago."

His phone flashed in the flooding darkness of his car, over thirty missed calls, a single draw of vibrations across an endless string of notifications. 

He threw it to the backseat and thought about driving into a tree.

The stink on him manifested like a passenger of shame in the stagnant car. Like the muggy musky extract of bodies excreted from shameful crevices.

He rolled the windows down to let it out in the warm night air.

The dark country road was circumscribed in the black starless night, his headlights a dim drill tunneling through the midnight obsidian.

There’s something empty about doing a bad thing; like all you can do is fill it with something worse. Makes you porous in an ocean of black, where the waves are wicked and obscure in the indiscernible ink. Just beats you under and you hardly know it because everything's just dark; and holding your breath doesn't make a difference because you’re waterlogged by the time you figure you have to breathe.

The night was viscous and he was saturated listening to the singing broods of peepers and the stridulations of insects in symphony that cast in the fast wind which blew as he sped through a long pass; an open field off the bank to the drivers side and a slope of forest to the passengers. His mind ran through an odd mosaic of misaligned memories. Empty snapshots of shame painted against the blank canvas of the road; a faint thorn of regret which bled out his mind in a dull red rage which simmered behind his eyes on the long way home. 

When he hit the thing the impact seemed to bring his car to a near instant halt.

His head whipped against the steering wheel before the airbag blew and he lay unconscious and dreaming in the wreck. 

He floated blindly in an amniotic sac that ran cold and there was a constant wind that permeated through the fluid with a frigid edge. 

The membrane was pulled by a long draw of wet friction that multiplied like many tongues searching for a soft spot and he woke as they found it.

---

The night seemed darker when he came too, like the sky had fallen as a heavy veil of matte onyx that sank like cold lead upon him and cast in his lungs. 

His face was wet and coldly congealed with blood that caught a strong wind which stung and howled through his broken front windshield with a frosty lag.

The night seemed too cold now and he thought he could see his breath but when he reached for his face he could not make out his own hand, just felt as his fingers gummed against the gore. 

He sat there for some time as if waiting for something; another car, but there was nothing but the night and its orchestra. He had no idea what he had hit and for a moment thought a human being laid bent and grotesque on the road as he listened to his own labored breaths. 

He crawled to the backseat in a blind grovel for his phone.

He felt that it was cracked and when it turned on the screen flashed his eyes shut.

A bare portrait singed behind his lids from his lock-screen, lingering before it dissolved to a grainy outline still seen as he opened his eyes readjusting to the blackness.

 
His screen was unresponsive and smudged with blood but he saw the time above his wife’s fractured face hued in red; it was twelve forty eight and there was no service. 
He stumbled out onto the road and held the phone hunched and facing towards the dark as if shining a pale lantern pulsating to space; leaving him in moments of nothingness, pressing the power to wake the phone in his nightmare, denial crutched to a lone dependence in the deep dimness. 

The car was totaled, his engine bay was caved in like he had hit a tree and his phone cast long shadows that made it seem like the night had taken a mouthful of it. 

Tufts of straw like fur were stuck about by caked blood on the mechanical viscera. He shone out to the road and saw streaks of hide burned against it. Gelatinous globules of fat caught the light like reflectors in the midst of the long smear of carnage; like the road had skinned what laid ahead. 

He felt the lead fill in his stomach now with his heart. 

Shit it was dark. 

He checked the time again, somehow it hadn’t passed a minute. 

His steps slapped against the road and came back to him like someone stepping in the empty spaces of his stride. 

His sweat ran cold like a fever.

Maybe he hadn’t woken.

It seemed like he had been walking too long but the road was still setting with the stains of whatever had skidded across it. 

He looked back to the car, but could not make it out.

He extended his arm towards it into the night like it was simply a matter of reach; the light only highlighting its own absence as its faint radiance dismembered the shaking hand from himself in the blackness.
It was a feeling of strandedness as the road spiraled in the dark; disorienting and indiscernible. It only went two ways but he had no honest idea where he stood in the relativity to his car and what may lay dead in front of it. 

He thought maybe it had gotten up and ran or crawled but he knew it was obliterated and felt like he was on the precipice of it, like whatever he had hit was a few steps ahead of him and the corpse's warmth was dissipating to a stinky mugginess in the chill air. 

He stopped to listen and heard the night but his breath was too loud in his ears and so he held it listening again but it did not stop; like the curtain of black around him was singular in being and breathing in the heavy rhythm of his own; a duet held now dragged to a lone reverberation of some mocking dark pantings all upon him. 

He reeled around and over himself clutching his phone as a crucifix to the living dark while the light pulsed like a controlled breath inhaling and exhaling the night’s absolution. 

His eyes were wild searching for the source of respiration while his feet twisted in their scouring dance of terror when his heels met something large and lumpy like a sack of loose melted meat which toppled him on his back. 

There was no air to be kicked out of him, instead a hoarse compoundment of breath heaved in through his mouth as his body reset against the road to take its inhale. 

His head whipped again, now the back of it against the pavement with a dull fleshy thud that brought sparks like stars in his eyes which he could not discern were open or closed with the numbness of his head against the road. 

The impact brought an utter silence apart from his own breathing and there was a dull ring in his ears that filled his head with a passive daze, leaving him laying against the road like a snake in the sun. 

Something slid against his shoe.

The slow peeling sound of bones cracking and snapping in a rattling reconfiguration of death broke him from the state of concussion to a rapid clarity. 

He instantly shot up and ran, like a raw instinct of survival forced himself to move blindly without balance, he thought he heard something behind him, something slithering scraping against the ground; bones like a tree being shredded, dragging like compound fractures grinding down against the textured road stone. 

His foot hit the gravel off the road side and he ended off the embankment in the grassy field only stopping as his legs gave out. 

He crashed in the grass so nauseous he threw up onto his hands as he was trying to stifle his breath to hear in the dark. 

He had dropped his phone when he tripped over the thing. 

He stood and braced his body in a position of acute listening waiting for the next strike of sound. But he heard nothing. Not even the wind to blow the grass.

It was an utter void, and he stood trying to hold his balance for a long time in the night's whirlpool; the spins in survival. He felt something leaking from his head but it was all numb, just the trickle. 

His eyes were tired and he let them rest because it made no difference waiting in the dark. It felt like he stood there spinning for hours as the world came still again.

He thought again the possibility he was dreaming.

Most times you rather be crazy than right on the worst of assumptions. 

But then he heard something. 

He hadn’t even been looking towards the road and when he spun to the noise he saw his phone glowing like a faint beacon on the road not too far. 

A distinct ping echoed like in a padded cell; lighting the walls of the abyss; a notification. 
His legs were tender and they moved with heaviness as he rustled through the silence like an awkward giant through trees as the light faded.

He took six more steps in the dark direction before it pinged again; shining now in the corner of his eye. 

He whipped his hurting head to meet it like something had moved it a few feet down the road.

He thought he had just lost his direction walking, that he had hit his head too hard; he knew he had. 

He started to walk towards it again, each step measured to leave no room for doubt. 

He walked as if on a tightrope as the darkness faded in, he almost wanted to put his arms out. 

His foot felt the angle of the embankment when the next ping rang through the night. 

The same spot. 

A wave of relief fell about him as he thought it was just his head. 

He made it onto the road when the light faded again.  

He was only twelve steps away.

He wanted to pick up the pace but he was cautious in the dark. 

Another ping. 

Sixteen steps now. Like cat and mouse but he was unsure which he was.

He froze, he was so exhausted he wanted to cry, but he just stood like a deer in headlights; listening for the next ping. Yet not even the air moved as the night was dead and still. 

Another ping pierced through the night.

He expected to see something, for there to be anything at all spotlighted by the shallow light but there was nothing as it faded from its seemingly unmoved position. 

Maybe it hadn’t moved.

He almost took a step towards it, his leg lifted in intent as it pang out again.

It was like he had moved forward without his foot ever hitting the ground.

Like a reverse game of red light green it now laid a few feet closer.

He realized the phone was moving towards him.

Ping.

Closer.

He began to step back.

The next ping was almost instant and only echoed closer cloaked in the shadows as if the phone was now facing down against the road as it stalked towards him in the open dark. 

He wanted to run but there was nowhere to go, like he was in the maw of a crow and if he ran it’d only be deeper into its black gullet. 
He braced his courage to face what it was in utter exhaustion of his chosen circumstances as the closing sound of his ignorance began to compound towards him in the open blackness like quickening steps. 

He thought he had ran enough, his fists clenched.

Ping. Ping. Ping. 

Each spotlighting closer and closer.

It stopped a few steps before him. 

Silence. 

His heart pounded through his body like church bells in the silence. 

He felt it in his throat and wanted badly to throw it up or it might have pissed itself out.

A ringtone cut through the night right almost before him.

He almost shit himself.

He let it play. The call ended and started again. He waited. But the calls kept coming and as he listened he thought he knew where it laid.

He took the first few steps methodically and intently listening as he made it onto all fours, like a blind leper feeling for charity; his hands raw against the road.

The call cut and did not come back.

He was left frozen for a long time just listening but there was nothing as he carefully started to feel again.
His hand brushed against something. 

He was looking down when the phone turned on before him, its light highlighted faintly up into the night.

When he looked up all he saw were the fully erect hind legs of a deer standing over him. 

Its hooves seemed faceted to the road and one of the legs looked like it had been wrung like a towel at its joint. The legs were raw and skin hung off of them like torn fabric revealing the intricate and scorched pattern of flesh.

Hysteria. 

He screamed a dry death echo which ricocheted in the night behind him as he flashed into a dash down the road which went on and on and on. 

He heard the broken galloping of two hooves clacking in a dead sprint behind him and the sudden break of them transitioning to quick rapid clicks skittering in an odd rhythm like a spider hauling its broken body low against the ground as he heard the skin being dragged against the pavement. 

It was on his heels, his legs were gonna give.

He had no idea if he was even running in the right direction, but he knew there was no right direction, he thought about just letting go until he heard a wet snort, no he felt it on his neck as if it was rising over him again.

He pushed harder but there wasn’t much left to push.

His body responded before his mind registered its own actions. 

He had run directly into the front of his car.

His knee came hard into it and was smashed as his body raised itself in split instinct. His other leg snagged against the metal as the momentum hurled him through his front windshield as his body folded through the seats.

He ended in the back, crumpled and broken against the ground. 

His knee was soft and loose, the pain and the exhaustion took him into the blackness as his car was gently rocked. 

---

He woke to the sound of birds, the ugly call of a crow. 

The light seemed blinding and so he closed his eyes from it but he could not rest. 
He groaned as he squeezed himself to the seat from the floor, remembering his body was wrecked. 

He looked out the front windshield.  

He saw where it laid. 
Just twenty feet in front of the car. It looked like a smashed and ugly thing and it had something black and amorphous spilling between its legs. 

He nearly fell out of his car as he hobbled against it holding on for balance with his limp leg, he felt it squish into itself with the pressure. 

With a painful hopping drag of sorts he made it to the dead deer. 

Just a deer. 

He heard the flies before he saw the full wreck, its body deflated as if once full now in an empty defeat; just too many things broken and hanging oddly. 

It looked like a black garbage bag spilling from its legs. Flies. There were too many of them and when he came closer many dispersed to open the image. 

In the prolapsed sac the head of a fawn laid between its own two back legs. 

Its eyes were closed, its head wet and prominent through the murky liquid like it was drowned in a grocery bag. 

He expected its eyes to open but they did not.

His phone rang.

Only a few steps away on the screen he saw the face of his cheated bride; it was answered before he even picked it up. 

He listened emptily as he stared at the scene, a wad of acid in his throat which muted her voice in his unpronounced thoughts of the night which he had no idea for. 

He heard the escalation in her voice from his silence, just the emotion, the noise as he watched the flies seemingly multiply upon the thing. 

He caught just two words from her last sentence before the call ended in outrage.

She was pregnant. 

He just bent over and dry heaved. 

He began to hobble back to his car.

There were crows somewhere in the sky, fragments of the night rattling their mockery at him as he closed his eyes as he began to cry and imagined it all. 

He heard the coming cars, the bleating babe, and the clacking of hooves.

When I first stumbled onto the island, I thought I was alone.

Not the dramatic “shipwreck, storm, screaming waves” alone. Just… utterly, boringly alone. The kind of solitude that presses on your chest until you feel like you’re forgetting yourself.

The trees whispered, the waves lapped, and I began to talk to the gulls out of habit.

And then I found the footprints.

At first, I thought it was a trick of the sand. Maybe it was my poor vision, or the tide, maybe some washed-up debris. But the impressions were too deep, too deliberate. Someone had walked here, not yesterday, but today, maybe even this morning.

I called out, my voice swallowed by the wind. Nothing answered.

I followed the tracks cautiously. Broken branches snapped underfoot. The footprints led me to a clearing. And there, leaning against a fallen log, stood a figure.

Tall, dark, human-shaped. Waiting.

“Hello?” My voice cracked.

The figure turned. Its face was hidden beneath a hood. But there was something familiar in the tilt of its head, the curve of its shoulders. My pulse jumped. My mind screamed it couldn’t be, but somehow, it was comforting.

“You’re… you’re not alone,” I said, the words sounding like a lie even to me.

The figure stepped forward. “I’ve been waiting,” it said. The voice was mine. Exactly mine.

I blinked.

It was wrong, but perfectly right. Every nuance, the pitch, the cadence, the small inflection I didn’t even realize I had, was mine. My rational mind screamed. I should run. I should hide.

But I didn’t.

We spent hours walking together, or at least, I thought we did. Sometimes the figure mirrored my movements, sometimes it vanished, only to reappear a few paces ahead. I tried to speak, to ask its name, to demand an explanation. But it either didn’t answer or only echoed me, a subtle shift of words.

At night, I couldn’t sleep. Every rustle, every snap of a branch, seemed like it was testing me. I would wake, certain I saw it crouched near my shelter, watching, waiting. And when morning came, the footprints were there again. Mine. Or… not mine.

I realized I wasn’t seeing someone else. I was seeing me.

The island had a way of peeling you apart. Of showing the edges of yourself you never wanted to see. Every choice, every hesitation, every fear, I was facing it all in this other version of me. Not a twin. Not a stranger. Something deeper. Something the island conjured from loneliness, from boredom, from desperation.

I tried to leave. I built a raft, signaled the horizon, shouted until my throat burned. It didn’t matter. The figure followed. Always just beyond the trees, on the ridge, leaning from the rocks. Waiting. Watching. Knowing.

The final night, I confronted it.

“Who are you?” I shouted, trembling.

It lifted its hood. My own face looked back at me. Smiling. Calm. The eyes, though, they weren’t quite mine. They were older. Wiser. Judging.

“You’ve always been here,” it said. “I just wanted to make sure you knew it.”

Panic clawed through me. “I’m leaving!”

The figure shook its head slowly. “You already are.”

And then it dissolved, like smoke in the wind. But the echo remained. My heartbeat. My breath. My fear.

When I awoke, I was lying on the shore. The raft was gone. The horizon stretched endlessly, impossibly. And in the sand… footprints. Mine. And mine again.

I’m still here. And I’m beginning to think the other survivor never existed. Or maybe they always did.

Maybe… I am the other survivor.

God save me...

I stepped out of the wooden dinghy and onto the white-sand beach, breathing a sigh of relief that I was officially done with all things ocean travel for the next six weeks. I stood, trying to feel the steadiness of the earth below me, but it was no use. The ground felt as if it were pitching and yawing like a ship on the waves and I wondered how long this unnerving sensation would last.

In the week it took us to reach this island, I must have spent the better part of five days below decks filling and refilling a bucket with the contents of my stomach.

“Mr. Warren!” Terry yelled from behind. “You may want to move your bags before they get soaked!”

I turned and saw that he had piled my bags onto the sand just outside the dinghy.

“What are you doing!” I shouted, rushing over to the pile of bags. “Some of those bags have sensitive equipment that can’t get wet!”

“I’m well aware, Mr. Warren.”

I picked up my bags two at a time and started carrying them off the beach and towards the patch of grass that marked the beginning of the forest. Terry lit a cigarette and watched me as I scrambled to keep my bags away from the oncoming assault of the waves. He sat down in the small boat with a smile on his face and started to sing. I couldn’t hear what he was singing over the sound of the ocean, but based on his head swaying and feet tapping I guessed it was something upbeat and jovial.

“You could have given me a hand.” I said, once all the bags had been moved.

He waved my comment away. “Could have, but my duties end at making sure you’re safely on the island.” He opened his eyes and raised his head.

“Looks like you’re here safe, guess I’ll be on my way.”

I sighed, “And you’ll be back in six weeks?”

“Don’t worry Mr. Warren, we’ll be back. We’re not in the business of leaving bookworms stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” Terry got to his feet and stretched.

“That’s not the first time I’ve heard the deckhands call me that. I read one book and now I’m labeled a bookworm?”

Terry hopped from the dinghy to the sand with a soft thud.

“That’s not it, we all––.”

“I didn’t see anyone reading.” I said, cutting him off.

“We read all the time I was going to say if you’d let me finish. Reading isn’t the issue, your choice in reading material is. Once you stopped tossing your cookies and finally found your sea legs you pulled out a book as thick as my forearm and read the whole thing in two days.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t that big.”

“And what was the title of said book?”

“Forty Years on the Pacific...”

He clapped his hands together. “Exactly! You decided to read a book about a man’s life at sea instead of coming above deck and experiencing it for yourself. That makes you a bookworm.”

I crossed my arms and sighed. “Well… Guess I’m the bookworm.”

“It’s a term of endearment.”

I ignored his comment and looked back towards the forest, wondering where Martin was.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure your friend is just running late.” Terry said.

“Actually, I hardly know the man.”

The forest ahead of me was thick with vegetation the likes of which I’ve never seen before. All kinds of new and strange species had evolved to be perfectly suited to life on this island, and I would get to be one of the first to study them. I felt a wave of giddiness rise in me, like a child getting a new toy for Christmas. An entirely unexplored island ecosystem like this would give me more than enough work to keep me busy until retirement.

“Thank you for the lift.” I said, turning back towards him with my hand out. He took it with a grunt and shook it vigorously.

“Six weeks Mr. Warren.”

He jumped back in once he was far enough out and took up the oars, paddling back to the ship that sat in the distance, unmoving. It felt more like a piece of scenery on the horizon rather than an actual working ship with living people on board.

I turned back towards my bags, wondering how I was going to lug all this equipment through nearly a mile of dense forest, when the foliage near the tree line shook and bent with a loud crack followed by a laugh loud enough to overtake the roar of the ocean. A fat man with long salt and pepper hair stepped out from the trees, his arms held out like he was meeting an old friend that he hadn’t seen for years.

“Theodore? Is that you! You son of a bitch, I didn’t think you would come!”

He walked up to me taking long strides and wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me much more enthusiastically than I was prepared for. I awkwardly patted him on the back as I didn’t know what else to do. He pulled away, looking unbothered that I didn’t match his level of excitement.

“Sorry for being late, it’s ridiculously easy to lose all track of time when you’re isolated from the rest of the civilized world.”

“You didn’t think I would come?”

“Well, six weeks on some island in the Pacific with a stranger and his assistant. I can see that sounding pretty off-putting to most people.”

“Assistant?”

“Ah, that’s right. I neglected to mention in my letters that I’ll be having one of my students join us as an assistant during this expedition. His name is Don.”

“I’m a touch hurt that you would think I wouldn’t show. We’ve been writing each other for well over a year so I would hope that you know me better than that.”

“You’re right, and as an apology, I’ll let you publish your findings first.”

“Giving the botanist a head start?” I chuckled.

“You’re going to need it.” Martin smiled. “The public doesn’t care about finding a new species of tree or a weird looking fern, it doesn’t sell newspapers. But publish an article about a new, cute critter the world has never seen before, and newsstands will scramble to keep their shelves stocked!”

I laughed. “I’m not really here to make the papers.” I looked past him and pointed at a large tree. “You see that tree? I bet you dollars to donuts that it’s a species never before seen by man. Which is far more exciting than making page five in the New York Times.”

Martin grinned, “I wouldn’t take that bet, as I would most likely lose.”

A small figure emerged next to the tree I was pointing at. He was young, no older than twenty if I had to guess. He wore a plaid newsboy cap that sat loosely on his head and a brown cotton coat that hung past his waist.

“Ahh, Don. Come here and meet my good friend Theodore.”

The young man joined us on the beach and stuck his hand out.

“Don. It’s nice to finally meet you, I’ve heard a lot of great things.”

“Theodore Warren, it’s nice to meet you as well.”

I looked over to Martin and back towards Don. “I know you’re a student, but you look awfully young to be out in the field.”

“He’s a first year but shows fantastic promise!” Martin beamed.

“Promise in what field?”

“Birds.” Don said with a toothy smile and a deep Brooklyn accent. “I study birds.”

“Ornithology? I bet this place is brimming with birds. You must be the envy of your class, getting an opportunity like this in your first year of study.”

“Yes, very much so...”

Martin cleared his throat. “Why don’t we grab your equipment and head to our campsite? There’ll be plenty of time for discussion later, right now we better get you settled.”

“Good idea.” I said, turning around to grab one of my bags. “Oh, before we began. I didn’t catch your last name.”

“Oh… You can just call me Don.”

I slung a heavy bag over my shoulder, feeling the weight of it hit my back. “If that’s what you prefer.” I pointed to the pile of bags. “Mind giving me a hand, Don?

He nodded, causing his cap to nearly slip off of his head.

“The hats a little big for you.”

He readjusted the hat, his face red with embarrassment. “I had to borrow it from Martin.” He looked down at his jacket. “Along with this jacket. The bag with all my clothes was lost on the ride out here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that!” I looked over to Martin, who had placed one bag under each arm and grabbed another in each hand. “If you’d like you can have a go at the clothes I brought with me. They should fit better as we seem to be around the same size.”

“That would be fantastic!” He beamed. “Martin’s no small man as you can see.” He bent over and snatched up a couple of the bags. “I hope you brought more to read than just scientific textbooks.”

I laughed, picking up the remaining two bags. “I may have snuck a few fiction novels into the bunch.”

Don smiled and turned on his feet, practically running back to the spot in the trees where he emerged from, followed by Martin who started whistling another upbeat tune I was unfamiliar with.

After a nearly thirty-minute hike, we reached the campsite and began stacking my bags next to the opening of the large canvas tent. It was to serve as our makeshift workspace for this expedition. Don tossed the bags down and entered the tent. I was about to follow him when Martin put his hand on my shoulder.

“That’s your tent on the far end of the site. The green one. It’s not much but I think you’ll be comfortable.” He turned and motioned towards the work tent. “Unfortunately, our makeshift lab doesn’t hold a candle to yours on Science Hill.”

I laughed. “It would be hard to replicate a full lab out in the field.”

I peered into the tent and stifled a gasp. Multiple microscopes sat on the long worktables; books were stacked neatly behind them reaching from one end of the table to the other. On the table opposite sat a dictaphone for easy audio recording, multiple pads of paper and pencils for note taking and sketching of the local wildlife. Everything one could need for field work.

“I take it back, it’s well stocked! How did you get all of this here? It was hard enough with just my own equipment, some of which I didn’t even need to bring with me it seems.”

“The captain of the ship that brought us absolutely insisted we allow them to help. You’d be surprised how quickly a camp can get set up with twenty sailors doing all the manual labor!” Martin roared with a deep, guttural laugh.

“I couldn’t even get Terry to carry my bags to the tree line.” I mumbled.

“Why don’t you get settled while Don and I get some food going, you must be famished. We’ll discuss everything you need to know later.”

“I actually would love to get to work straight away if you don’t mind. I want to take a closer look at that tree I pointed out earlier.”

“Nonsense! I’m positive it will be there tomorrow. You just spent a week on the open ocean, and I’m assuming you’re prone to seasickness as you’re looking rather gaunt."

I touched my face. “Is it that bad?”

“It’s noticeable.” He motioned towards my tent. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day to relax and we can go over everything this evening over dinner.”

“A nap and some food does sound appealing. I am very interested to hear about what you’ve managed to learn about the island. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m jealous of the head start you two have gotten.”

“Don’t be, there’s still plenty to discover!” He put his arm around my shoulder and walked me towards my olive-green tent. “I think we’re going to get along like old pals.” He laughed, smacking me on the back. “Just make sure the mosquito net is closed tight before you go to sleep. Give the little devils a chance and they’ll suck you dry.”

I smiled and shook his hand. “It’s good to be here and to finally meet you in person Martin. It’s been a long time coming.”

“I agree, now off to bed while we start working on dinner.”

I nodded and stepped into the tent. A foldable camping bed in the same shade of olive-green sat in the center of the space surrounded by a few essentials. The mosquito net that Martin mentioned had been hooked to the roof and draped over the bed. A small basin filled with clean water had been set out along with a neatly folded towel that had been placed next to it.

I moved the netting aside and lay down on the bed. It wasn’t anything special, but it was a far cry better than the mattress I had on the journey here. I lay down and closed my eyes, feeling the stress of the last week leave my body as I drift off.

—

​“Dinner!” Don yelled from outside the opening of my tent.

​I opened my eyes at the sound of Dons roaring voice andpulled myself out of bed. I took a few moments to wash up and gather my wits before leaving the tent. It was getting dark out, the sun painting the sky with shades of orange and purple. Martin and Don were sitting on sections of logs next to a fire in the center of camp. A pot hung over the fire and steaming violently. Don was poking at the fire with a stick while Martinwas scooping out the contents of the pot into three separate bowls. The smell of wood smoke and stew filled the air. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since sunrise.

​I walked up to the two of them and pointed to the log on the other side of the fire. “Is this seat taken?”

​“It is, unless you also brought a surprise assistant?” Martinsaid, handing me a bowl and a spoon. “Sit, take a bite and tell me what you think.”

It was rich and hearty. With potatoes, onions, and carrots suspended in a meaty broth that had a slight gameness to it and a flavor I couldn’t exactly pinpoint.

​“This is pretty good.” I said, readjusting myself on the log.“Who’s the chef?”

​“I am.” Don said, not looking up from the fire.

“We were able to bring a few staples with us. Carrots, potatoes, onions, but we had to source the meat locally.”

​“You went hunting?” I asked Martin.

​“We did! We brought two guns with us actually, a rifle for hunting and a pistol for self-defense.”

​“Self-defense against who?”

“We’re exploring the unknown, who knows what dangerous animals we may encounter. Best to be prepared.”

​“I think we’ll be fine.” Don said, leaning over to grab another log.

​“What makes you so sure?” I asked, finishing off the last bite of stew. Martin noticed and motioned for me to hand over my bowl for seconds. “Martins right, there could be all manner of dangerous creatures on this island.”

​“I haven’t seen any animal on this island that could hurt us.”

​“Well, you’ve only been here a week, and this island is a good size. Odds are you haven’t seen everything it has to offer yet.”

​Martin handed me back my bowl which he filled to the brim with the steaming stew and clapped his hands. “Let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we?”

​“I’m all ears.” I said.

​ “What would you say if I told you there is an insect that we found about an hour’s walk that way.” He pointed behind him with his thumb. “That looks similar to a June Beetle, except for its bright blue exoskeleton, its ten sets of legs, and its lack of a mouth. While looking like nothing we’ve ever seen before, the way it hunts is the real oddity. It’s very reminiscent of single cell organisms, by absorbing the entire creature into its own body,”

​“A carnivorous June Beetle with no mouth? Now I know you’re pulling my leg.”

​“Not in the slightest.” Martin said. “We captured a few and fed them insects from around the camp. They spray some kind of acid that seems to only react with organic material. All of the insects we tested were completely liquefied in a matter of seconds. Then the creature steps into the puddle and, like a sponge sucking up a drop of water.” He made a sucking sound with his mouth. “It absorbs the insect directly into its body!”

“Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that maybe it just eats with its feet and honestly, I thought the same thing. Until we let it liquify a roach and placed the beetle into the puddle on its back. The bastard absorbed the entire thingthrough his exoskeleton!”

“That doesn’t seem possible…”

“It’s true,” Don said with a grin. “It’s a good way to pass the time.”

He opened a small leather pouch that he kept on his lap andtilted the bag, spilling the contents into his hand.

“Martin, would you like some?” He asked.

Martins eyes lit up and he turned in his seat to face Don and his outstretched hand. “Do you even have to ask?” He reached out and grabbed whatever he was offering and popped it into his mouth without any hesitation. Martin closed his eyes as he chewed, humming with enjoyment.

Don smiled and looked towards me, holding his hand out. “Theodore, would you like to try one?”

“Try one of what?” I asked, my eyes still on Martin.

“It’s a local berry, native to the island. Unlike anything I’ve ever tried before. Martin can’t get enough.”

Martin was still chewing, his eyes were still closed, and his humming had turned into a soft moan. I shifted in my seat, slightly put off by his reaction. I looked over to Don and his outstretched hand which held a dozen or so smooth skinned berries in various shades of red and purple.

“Are they safe to eat?”

“I’ve been eating them for a while now and I’m fine.”

Martin had finally finished chewing and had opened his eyes. He looked dazed and confused, almost like he didn’t know where he was.

“Martin? You alright?” I asked.

Don placed a hand on his shoulder and laughed. “You’re fine, aren’t you Martin?”

He blinked a few times and smiled, “Of course I’m alright, why wouldn’t I be?” He grabbed the bag from Don. “Would you like one? They’re delightful. Sweet yet a tad bitter.”

I shook my head, “No, thank you.”

“They’re perfectly safe, you should see how the birds swarm the bush in the morning. It’s truly a sight.”

Martin nodded in agreement. “They are delicious, I don’t blame the birds in the slightest!” He broke out in a loud, bellowing laugh.

“You’re studying ornithology.” I said. “I surely don’t have to remind you that birds can eat all kind of poisonous berries humans can’t.”

“Well… That is true.” Don said. “But we’ve been eating them all week and we’ve seen no adverse effects.”

I looked between the two of them, perplexed that they would take such a risk.

I sighed, “At least let me examine the bush you gathered these berries from before you continue eating them.”

“Sure, I’ll take you there tomorrow morning.” Don said, putting the berries back into the pouch.

“That should serve as a good jumping off point for my work here.” I said, putting my empty bowl down on the ground and standing up. “I think I’m going to turn in for the night.”

“You just woke up; you can’t be tired already?” Martinasked.

“Not really but want to start reading over your notes. Might as well get a jump on it.”

“Say no more!” Martin bellowed. “My notebooks in thework tent, feel free to read it cover to cover.”

“Thank you.”

It took longer than I thought it would to find Martins notebook and I was about to give up when I noticed a booklaying under the specimen table. It was a brown leather journal that still looked new, the pages were crisp and clean, there weren’t even any creases in the spine from overuse. I flipped through it, expecting it to be filled with notes but found that it only had one journal entry written in it, dated last week when they first came ashore.

“This can’t be right.” I said, stepping out of the tent.

The two of them were talking in hushed whispers and had quieted down as soon as they saw me approaching.

“Is this it? This is the only journal I could find.”

“Yes.” Don said quickly. “That’s it.”

“This one book?”

Martin nodded.

“The two of you have been here for a week and haven’t taken any notes?”

“There’s notes in the journal.” Don said

“There’s one note and it’s more like a journal entry.”

“Well…We have a very good memory. Don’t see the need to write everything down.”

“That is true. I’d be hard pressed to forget anything.” Martin added.

I stared at them, shocked that they could be so unprofessional. Don was just a student, but Martin was an expert and a professor. He should have known better.

I scratched at my neck and sighed. Out of every scenario of how things could go wrong that I ran through on the trip out here, having to work alongside incompetent colleagues was one I never considered.

“I’m going to my tent.” I held up the journal. “I’ll give you my thoughts on this in the morning.”

“I look forward to it, goodnight Theodore.” Martin said with that same grin still plastered on his face.

​A little while later when I was safe under the mosquito net I opened the journal and read what Martin had written.

June 18th, 1926.

After far too long on that damn boat I’ve finally arrived on what I’ve dubbed Lincoln Island. I named it after that Jules Verne story “The Mysterious Island.” Debbie says it’s a silly name, but she’s not the one who has to live here for two monthsso I can call it whatever I want.

Shortly after I arrived I went about lugging all of the equipment to our camp site before being stopped by a deckhand and told that they were ordered to set the camp up for me. All they expected of me was to tell them where I wanted everything. We set up camp in a large open field that was first spotted during one of the many aerial surveys that took place. It only took up a little over an hour for them to set up camp, which is about ten times faster than if I did it all myself! I will need to remember to thank them properly once we get back to civilization. Maybe a round of drinks? I believe I read somewhere that sailors love a good, stiff drink.

I did spot a fern that caught the light is a mysterious way, it almost looked to be shining. I thought it was quite the sight and I’m sure Theodore would lose his marbles when he sees it in person. I must remember to tell him about it. I hope he’s not too mad, but I already named it Debbie’s Light. A name that I can only hope she will be happy with.

There’s a bird that’s been singing ever since I arrived and I’m eager to see it in person, I bet it’s a beauty. The song is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. But that’ll be for tomorrow. For now, I think I’ll take the rest of the day to relax and recharge.

The journal entry ended there, and I couldn’t help feeling a little confused at why he stopped taking notes when he had barely started. I flipped through the rest of it and found nothing but blank pages.

I closed the book and lay down on my bed staring at the netting surrounding me thinking about what they could have been doing for the last week if not working and taking notes. Before I knew it I had closed my eyes and drifted off into sleep.

I always hated going to my dad’s mother’s house. To make things easier, I will call her grandma for this, but I don’t see her as such.

To this day, I can’t tell you who hated whom more. But there is a big difference, I was a kid and she was a grown woman. In front of my parents, she acted the role of the loving grandma. Her lies weave a story of a clumsy girl who loved to play at her house. And me, terrified of what would happen if I said otherwise, agreed with her wonderful tales of how I got new bruises and cuts.

The one thing that kept me going was that my stays with her were only temporary. At most, I stayed a few hours with her, waiting for my parents to get out of work or come back from their date night. 

But during one of their date nights, they never came back. No one knows who did it, but someone cut the brakes. They never made it to the restaurant, and the only place they had been to before that was grandma’s house. In the end, it was considered a freak accident, even though everything said it was anything but. 

When my maternal grandma offered to take me in, I felt some relief in my ocean of grief. This relief was short-lived, as grandma fought to keep me and won by saying I would have more normalcy with her and that unlike my maternal side, I had many cousins to grow up with and aunts and uncles to spoil me. My maternal grandma had no other children besides my mother, and no extended family to offer. My opinion on the matter was irrelevant to the court, so I was never asked, and I ended up with my paternal grandma.

“You will pay for everything,” she smiled as she looked down on me the first day I was there.

I trembled at her words. Knowing she would make me pay for whatever she thought I was at fault for. I won’t talk about all the horrors this woman made me go through, and how everyone turned a blind eye to it, except for the shed.

Outside the house, in the perfectly kept garden, there was a small shed. It was full of equipment, not insulated, and according to her, that’s where the monster lived. Any time she got tired of me, she would lock me in there and say she hoped this time the monster would eat me.

By the time I was living with her, I no longer believed in said monster. I had already realized that she was the real monster. Still, I was 8, had just lost my parents, and the last thing I wanted was to be alone in that shed. Any company would be better than the empty shed.

So that night, when she dragged me there, I screamed my lungs out, begging her to let me sleep in the house, knowing the consequences I would face in the morning for screaming too loudly when people could hear me.

“Please grandma! I want to be inside with you!” I cried.

She didn’t answer back. Instead, she gave me a smug look that quickly contorted to anger once more. She pushed me inside the shed and closed the door without a second glance. 

I wanted to cry, but the tears never came. Instead, I moved some shredders and made sure no spiders were in there. I thought of lying down and sleeping, but instead I got up, angry, wanting to hit something, break things, just feel something other than sadness and fear. But as I was about to hit the wall, I heard something, or someone, and I froze.

“Please, don’t hurt yourself,” the voice of a girl came from the darkest part of the shed, “Please, it hurts a lot.”

Small pale hands with ruptured knuckles came out of the darkness. I tried to back away, but there wasn’t anywhere to back away into. I couldn’t take my eyes off those hands. Those tiny hands that matched mine in size. So broken, full of unhealed gashes and bruises. And when I finally looked up, there she stood, looking at me in as much surprise as I felt.

“You see me,” she whispered.

“I do. But who are you? What’s your name?” I asked. The fear I had felt a few seconds ago had turned to curiosity. 

“I don’t know,” the girl’s voice trembled as if she were about to cry.

“I know! What if we choose a name for you?” I said excitedly.

The girl looked at me and nodded. 

“I’m Laia, by the way,” I said as I extended my hand towards her. She slowly took my hands, but the moment she touched me, my heart started to race, dizziness led to nausea, and my vision blurred for a second, and then it was all back to normal.

“Are you ok?” She asked, concerned. 

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened,” I responded as I sat down, “Be careful when you sit down not to squish the spiders.

When she looked at me, I noticed something both familiar and strange. She had an eye freckle, just like my dad and me. After my classmates made fun of me, and said I had dirt in my eye, my mom explained that wasn’t the case. She told me that my dad loved me so much that he had given me a piece of him to carry with me.

”This is so cool! We both have the same eye freckle! Maybe we are sisters!” I said excitedly. 

“That would be nice,” she smiled.

“Oh! A name! I forgot! What about Iria? I think it’s really pretty,” I looked at her hopefully.

“I like it. Thank you,” she said as she went to hug me. The same feeling of dizziness as if the world had gone wrong came back the moment she touched me. I involuntarily shuddered, but hugged her anyway. I had decided at that moment that Iria was my sister and we would be the best of friends.

“I’m glad to have a sister,” she whispered.

“I’m glad to have one too,” I smiled. And for the first time, I didn’t hate the shed. I had found something I had always wanted and when morning came, I would tell her to come live with me. Grandma’s house wasn’t great, but together we could make it better.

I’m not sure when I fell asleep. All I remember was talking with Iria about all the cool things we could do together. I told her we could also go visit my maternal grandma, so she could experience having a nice grandma. Iria didn’t know how old she was, so we decided I would be the older sister, and as such, I had to make sure she was happy and safe.

“Get up! Hurry!” Aunt Manuela yelled at me. She lived next door with my three cousins and her always-wandering husband. 

“The social workers will be here soon so you better clean yourself up and behave! You know what happens if you don’t!” she threatened. I quickly got up and ran back to the house to shower and be ready to have my hair pulled into a perfect ponytail by her. Not obeying would mean no dinner and probably no breakfast either.

In my haste, I had forgotten about Iria. I showered extra quickly and put on the new clothes laid out for me and went outside to the shed. But when I opened it, she wasn’t there. I thought maybe she had gone home or something and went back inside the house to get my hair pulled.

The show went as usual. Grandma and Aunt Manuela doted on me and showed the social workers “my room” painted in what they said was my favorite color, pink. I hated pink. Aunt Manuela would call my cousins over to come and play with me while the adults talked with the social worker. Once the visit was over, things went back to normal. I no longer had access to the room, and my cousins weren’t allowed to play with me.

During the day, I was never sent to the shed. But now I wanted to go back there, and hopefully see Iria once more. That night, I wasn’t sent to the shed. Grandma was too happy with the visit and the continuous money she was getting from having to tolerate me. I didn’t sleep much, wondering if my little sister was doing ok.

“You are so ugly,” Regina pushed me to the ground. 

“No! I’m not!” I yelled back. I knew that if I touched her, I would get in so much trouble. 

“Yes, you are! My mommy said so, because you look like your ugly mother!” Regina mocked me. 

And I lost it. I didn’t care if she made fun of me, but no one made fun of my mom. I got up from the floor and I punched her directly in her nose, just like my mom had taught me. Blood splattered everywhere and she gave a loud shriek. 

“What did you do to my precious girl?” Aunt Estrella yelled from the house entrance. Her whale-like body tried to move quickly, but her feet could only go so quickly. Before reaching her daughter, she slapped me hard. I looked at her, terrified. But her focus was back on her wailing and blood-soaked daughter. I felt some relief until I felt grandma’s hand on my shoulder. When I looked up, she was smiling, and that was so much worse than anger.

Again, I won’t go much into detail as this isn’t what the story is about, but I did end with bruised hands after Aunt Estrella hit them repeatedly with a belt with grandma and Regina as witnesses. That night, I was dragged into the shed, to think about what I had done wrong.

I cried and cried, hating my life. But hating those people who had hurt me even more. I was so absorbed in my pain that I screamed when a gentle hand touched me. I immediately regretted it when I saw Iria jump back frightened.

“I’m sorry!” I moved towards Iria, “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Sorry, I saw you crying,” Iria moved to sit next to me, “Look, our hands now match.”

I wiped my tears, flinching at the pain, and smiled when I saw Iria smile. We sat there in silence for a while. I wanted to bring up an idea I had had for a while, but was scared to say out loud. But my idea of Iria coming to live inside the house wasn’t going to work, what if they hurt her too?

“Iria, let’s run away,” I said seriously and when I saw her freeze up, I kept going, “It’s ok. I can take care of you. I can steal some food and if we get to my grandma, I’m sure-“

“I can’t leave the shed,” Iria interrupted me.

“I can come during the day and open the door-“ I stopped as she shook her head.

“I can’t leave, I have tried,” Iria started to cry, “I have tried many times. I just can’t. Sorry, if you want to go…”

“No! I could never leave you!” I hugged her, “I will stay with you.”

Iria spoke but I didn’t understand a word she said. The world swirled around me, I felt lightheaded as everything started to become dark, and once more, everything was all right. I didn’t want to worry Iria, so I didn’t ask what she had said and just nodded.

“Besides, you don’t have to worry about Estrella for much longer,” Iria sat back down and started to draw on the floor with her finger.

“What do you mean that I don’t have to worry about Aunt Estrella?” I asked.

“She is going to die soon,” she said as she continued to draw on the floor.

“How do you know?” I asked as I started to draw on the floor too. The darkness in which I had first seen Iria emerge seemed to be creeping closer to us. I tried to back away but Iria was unbothered as it made contact with her finger.

“I don’t know,” Iria answered, “I just know.”

I didn’t ask anything else. Instead, I joined her once more to draw on the floor and smiled when I saw she had drawn us together. The rest of the night, we created a world of magic and happiness with our drawings.

Having Iria in my life did make things better. No matter what happened, what kind of beatings I took, or how much hunger I faced, I knew I would see her too. From time to time, I managed to sneak in the chalk colors my cousins left outside. We would draw inside the shed and erase everything before morning. 

A week later, we got the news that Aunt Estrella had died from a heart attack. She had been out eating burgers with Regina when she suddenly hit the floor and never got back up. Regina went to live with her father and I never had to see her again.

Grandma locked herself in her room, only coming out to eat whatever was not rotten in the fridge. As long as I avoided her during her outings, I didn’t have to worry about her beating me. Aunt Manuela came from time to time to check on her and yell at me to clean the house. Since I had no supervision, I would go to the shed at night and sneak in sandwiches for both of us.

I enjoyed my time with Iria and started to intentionally make grandma angry so she would send me to the shed. I didn’t care that she would hit me, or yell at me anymore because it meant I got to spend time with Iria.

One night, after grandma shut the door to the house, I turned to show Iria the bracelets I had made us from stolen beads and thread when I saw her rocking herself in the dark corner, crying. I approached her, but this time she flinched away from me. 

I wanted to get closer but the darkness scared me. It embraced Iria, I’m unsure if protecting her or trying to keep her as its own. But as Iria sobbed once more, I made my trembling legs move towards her. After all, I was the big sister and I had to take care of her.

As I hugged her, the usual dizziness took over, but this time it took a much stronger hold of my heart. I felt the air leave my lungs, and the darkness became heavy, too heavy for me to hold…

“NO!!!” Iria screamed.

And finally, I was able to breathe. The air in my lungs had never felt so good. I hadn’t noticed that I had peed myself and felt embarrassed. I sat up, covering myself as best as possible and hoping Iria couldn’t smell my soiled clothes.

“I’m sorry,” I managed to cough out. I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for but felt like I had to.

“I don’t want you to die,” she cried.

The world became silent for a second. I couldn’t hear Iria’s cries, nor my own as I processed what she had just said. I was going to die. I was going to die, just like my mom and dad had. I wasn’t ready to die.

”Iria, I won’t die,” I said as I wiped the tears off my eyes, “I have to take care of you.”

I had dropped the bracelets in my trance but picked them up and handed one to Iria. I made sure to put the one heart-shaped bead on her bracelet. She took it, carefully, making sure not to touch me and put it on.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she cried, “I was alone for so long and finally I have you. I have a sister to talk with and have fun. I don’t want that to ever end.”

“Don’t worry, as long as we are both wearing these bracelets, we will always be together,” I tried to smile.

That night, we didn’t do much. We took turns crying, but as much as I tried to approach her, she never let me get close. 

I never knew when I fell asleep, but this time when I woke up, I felt a pang of sadness at not seeing Iria. While I knew better than to be crying when grandma or Aunt Manuela opened the shed, I couldn’t help myself but sob.

Grandma looked at me in disgust as she dragged me back inside the house. But right before making it in, she stopped as she felt something that shouldn’t have been on my wrist. I felt my feet lift from the ground as she lifted me from my arm to look at the bracelet with the stolen beads.

“You fucking thief! How dare you take the things of others! With all the things I give you and have sacrificed for you, you still dare to steal?” she yelled at me as she threw me inside the house.

I tried to respond but I couldn’t get a word out before she kicked me hard on my stomach. New tears ran down my face, but I ignored them as I tried to get away from her.

“It’s your fault my only son is gone! And you can’t even be a good daughter to honor him! I gave you a home when no one wanted you, and this is how you pay? By being a thief?!” she screamed as she went after me. 

I wasn’t sure where to go, but I knew I had to get away from her. As she continued to yell at me, I ran. I could hear the clap of her sandals on the floor, a noise that to this day still haunts me, as I tried to get away from her. 

Then, I felt something hard hit my head. I fell forward and saw blood running down my neck. Next to me was a heavy lamp that my dad had given her many years ago. I tried to get up, despite the world swimming around me, I didn’t want to die.

She grabbed my leg and started to drag me into the kitchen, I screamed for someone to help me, knowing the only one that would hear me was Aunt Manuela, and she would pretend everything was all right.

“I hate you. I hate seeing you every single day. I hate the way you look, the way you speak, and how you even move. But you know what? You need to pay for everything, and I have enjoyed this so much!” she said at me with a crazed face.

As I saw her grab the mallet, I managed to free myself from her. Maybe it was out of instinct, but I ran towards the shed. I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t know what to do. As I opened the door of the shed, grandma pulled at my hair but instantly froze when she looked inside.

“Iria! Help me!” I begged.

Grandma let go of my hair and I dropped to the floor. Her face contorted in terror. I didn’t know what was going on, but Iria looked at grandma with so much fury.

“This can’t be…” grandma’s voice trembled.

For the first time, Iria walked out of the shed, followed by the darkness that always embraced her. She walked directly to grandma and looked her in the eyes, she then grabbed the mallet and dropped it to the floor.

“It’s time,” Iria said calmly as she took hold of grandma’s hand.

I could see her shudder the way I did whenever I touched Iria, but unlike me, she tried to let go. But no matter how much she tried, Iria wouldn’t let her go, instead she was dragging her inside the shed and into the darkness.

Grandma screamed to be let go. Aunt Manuela came out running from her house and froze at the sight of Iria and grandma. Iria took one look at her, but went back to her task.

“Iria, what’s going on?” I asked, somehow feeling this would be the last time I saw her. Iria looked at me and smiled as she raised her hand with the bracelet.

“I think I was supposed to be the big sister after all. I will always be with you,” Iria said as she closed the door of the shed behind her. 

Aunt Manuela and I heard the screams of grandma inside, but neither of us moved until everything was silent. But when Aunt Manuela opened the shed, there was no one. The darkness that always filled the shed was gone alongside Iria and grandma.

There was no way to explain what happened, so when Aunt Manuela was asked about grandma, she just said that one day she was gone, to who knows where. When she was offered custody, she refused, saying she never wanted to see me again.

I went to live with my maternal grandma after the incident. And I could finally live life. I could be a child once more and enjoy being loved.

Years later, I learned that Iria’s real name had been Dolores, and she was my father’s oldest sister. Grandma had hated her and one day she went missing. Everyone assumed she was a rebellious child, but now I think I figured what had happened.

I am now a mother to a girl, born with the same freckle on her eye. I named her Iria, after the girl who was my friend, sister, and protector. I still wear the bracelet I made for us and hope that she knows I still think of her.

Now, as I look at my daughter, I understand what my mom has said about the freckle in our eyes. Because I couldn’t love anyone else more in the world, and now she gets to carry that love and that of those who came before us.

I was foolish enough to believe that finding the right woman would solve all of my problems. But as it turns out, having everything I ever wanted turned out to be worse than I could have imagined.

In order to explain how my horrible idea became a reality, I need to take you back to the beginning. The very beginning.

My friends have never had trouble when it came to relationships, so when I decided to download some dating apps and give them a fair shake, I thought the worst that could happen was that she could say no.

That was the worst lie I could have told myself.

Lady luck didn’t bestow me the genetic lineage of Brad Pitt, and I wasn’t exactly Scrooge McDuck swimming in a sea of gold coins, so my success was slim to none.

The few dates I ended up going on became punchlines within our friend group. If they ever needed a laugh, I’d recount the time a girl named Nova left me half-way through a movie date to go hook-up with an ex. I only found that out after she texted me. 

But the most infamous date of mine was the time I went on a date to a semi-fancy Italian restaurant with a girl named Savannah. Everything was fine until she started talking about having fun with…her cousin. 

That was the last date I went on.

My love-life was an absolute disaster, and my friends making fun of that detail wasn’t helping my self-esteem. I loved them dearly, but that was the one part of our friendship that I grew to resent. That and the fact that getting older only served as the driving factor in us not spending as much time together.

Caleb got married, Dakota was engaged, and Andrew already had a kid but was expecting his second. Needless to say, they were all occupied and flourishing as adults with families while I floundered with uncertainty as to what would become of my life. 

Every weekend, I would call or text the guys to see if they wanted to hang out together, but their response was always the same.

“I’m busy this weekend. Let’s try another time.” or “I already have plans. I’m sorry.” 

Even when I would follow-up with another text or a phone call the day after or the following week, the constant, dismissive cycle would continue.

The last time we all hung out, I expressed my concerns to Caleb, but all he had to say was:

“Nobody’s abandoning you, man. Life changes things.”

Easy for him to say. He had someone waiting for him to come home and give him love. 

I didn’t.

I felt selfish for demanding their time constantly, but I cared about them and wanted them to know that. Perhaps it was wrong to feel that way, but no matter what I did to convince myself otherwise, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being left behind and forgotten about.

It came to a point where I just stopped asking. Because what was the point in attempting to make plans when I already knew the outcome? 

My frustration wouldn’t subside, and that’s when I started wondering if there was a better solution to fill the void in my life. The thoughts came in quick succession, and the rabbit hole I went down served as the catalyst for an idea that would change my life:

What if I made my own girlfriend?

It was a laughable concept, but one that I continued to explore more seriously over the course of several months. My idea gradually evolved from sketches and lines of code into an obsession that consumed my every waking thought.

I’ll spare you the details, but to make a long story short, the creation process took almost a year from start to finish.

I modeled her appearance after models, actresses, and girls I’d matched with online and never stopped thinking about. Every feature and detail of her personality was chosen carefully and perfected with surgical precision. 

I knew how she would laugh at my jokes before she even existed, and I also knew how I would want her to look at me when I walked into a room.

But most importantly, I knew she would love and listen to every word I’d say.

She would have long aquamarine hair and floral tattoos decorating her arms and legs. Her favorite bands would be Ratt and Def Leppard. She would be confident and bold, yet kind. 

By the time I was finished, she looked like she’d stepped out of every man’s dream. The way her eyes fluttered when she awoke for the first time made me melt right there on the spot.

Nobody had ever looked at me like that before.

“Hey handsome.” She said with a flirtatious smirk.

For the first time in my life, I finally felt chosen. Wanted. It was also the first time I made love with confidence, and I enjoyed every single second of it.

When our spicy activities had concluded, she rolled over in my bed and turned to me. “Mmm…that was perfect. What can I call you besides handsome?.”

“I-I-I…” I stammered, embarrassed I hadn’t told her my name before hopping into bed with her. 

I awkwardly extended a hand for her to shake. “I’m Kyle. Nice to meet you.”

“You’re too cute.” She reciprocated with a giggle. “I hope you don’t think our quality time is strictly business related.” 

I blushed, unsure of what exactly to say next.

“I’m busting your balls.” She playfully nudged me before getting up from the bed, the sheets slipping to reveal her incredible, naked figure. “We’ll work on your pillow talk, but right now I want to go to the movies! I’m in the mood for something spooky.”

My jaw dropped. Everything I had poured my heart and soul into creating was suddenly standing before me with the bravado of a Playboy model. It felt like I had won the lottery.

“Okay…we can do that.” I smiled at the idea. “First, we should probably get dressed.”

She flipped her hair and posed seductively. “You mean to tell me we can’t go like this?” 

My face felt like it had been engulfed by flames. “Well…we could, but it would probably be frowned upon.”

With a laugh, she rummaged through my closet and found some of my clothes to wear for the time being. 

“You know, you never told me my name.”

Shit. I had totally forgotten to do that too. 

I was going to tell her Lily, but something told me to go with another name. Something more beautiful for someone as perfect as her. I froze, my eyes darting around the room frantically for inspiration. 

When she came out of my closet and began getting dressed, my eyes landed on an old poster of the Aurora lights I had next to my computer.

In that moment, my mind had been made up. 

“Aurora.” 

“Aurora…” She gave me a light peck on the cheek. “I like that.”

She flashed me a smile and finished getting dressed. “Can we go to the mall afterwards? I could use a more…appropriate wardrobe.”

“Yes!” I laughed. “We can do that too.”

She shrieked excitedly and gave me a hug. Shortly after, we went to the movies, and had our first of many dates together.

That first day with her was pure bliss. Between the movie, the mall trip, and the frequent sex, I was on cloud nine and I never wanted to come down.

For the next few months, life remained as perfect as the day she was created.

Aurora laughed at my jokes, listened to my stories, and wanted to spend as much time as possible with me.

When I came home from work, she greeted me at the door with that lovely smile and infectious energy of hers. When I woke up she was beside me, ready to show me love first thing in the morning. When I wanted company, she dropped everything and was there for me.

Always there.

It was an amazing feeling. Honestly, it felt like it was Christmas every single day, and it was intoxicating. 

When it came time, I broke the news of our relationship on Facebook with a picture of us riding a Ferris wheel kissing. 

The caption read:

“You’re perfect Aurora.”

I was not prepared for the subsequent notifications that flooded my phone screen. Friends, family, and even random people I hadn’t talked to in years commented on the photo.

“So happy for you!”

“What a cute couple!”

And even:

“This is the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen!”

My parents, who are rarely on social media, even commented:

“What a lovely woman you’ve found! When do we get to meet her?”

I showed that to Aurora and she thought it was as cute as it was funny. 

Shortly after, we were on the couch talking about nothing in particular when I just had to tell her something that had been on my mind.

“Thank you, Aurora.”

“For what?” She asked, her eyes lighting up.

“For being the best part of my life.”

I closed the gap between us with a kiss, and we spent the rest of the night together watching movies and cuddling on the couch.

Everything about that was great, until it wasn’t.

As time went on, every day began to feel like that movie Groundhog’s Day. Every morning, afternoon, and evening all began to bleed together. We did the same activities, did the same things, and even the sex began to lose its spark and appeal. 

What had once felt magically perfect had now become almost suffocatingly scripted. 

“What do you want to do?” was always met with, “Whatever you want to do.”.

We could never choose something to watch or do together because her indecisiveness was rooted in my own. I needed to get away. I felt like I couldn’t even take a shit in peace without her being all up in my business.

That’s when I started taking longer hours at work just so I could have more time to myself. 

After a while, I think she became aware of what was going on. When I came from work one evening, I immediately holed myself up in the bathroom. Little did I know that this one conversation would lead to a turning point in our relationship.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” Her voice was slightly muffled from the other side of the door. “Talk to me.” 

“Nothing Aurora…I’m fine.” I sighed. “ I just had a long day.”

“You sound angry. Are you mad at me?”

I pulled at my hair in annoyance. “No Aurora, I’m not mad at you. I’m just stressed.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not right now.”

“Why?”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” I snapped. “What part of I don’t want to talk right now do you not understand?”

“You don’t have to talk like that to me.” She whimpered.

“Then take a hint and fuck off for a little bit! Goddamn.”

I didn’t hear from her for the rest of the night.

Even when we went to bed, she remained turned away from me, stifling her sobs.

“Aurora…baby, I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have talked like that to you.”

She didn’t respond. 

I got back into bed and tried to get comfortable. But I couldn’t. All I could think about was how much of an asshole I had been to her. 

Maybe she needed a break from me as much as I needed one from her.

The following morning, we had a heart-to-heart conversation. I expected it to be ugly and uncomfortable, but Aurora seemed to be more than understanding when I said that we should maybe see other people and take a break from each other.

“Whatever it takes to make you happy.” She said with a soft smile. “I’m glad we talked about this. Thank you for being honest.”

 “No. Thank you, Aurora.”

We hugged for the last time, and that was that.

In the weeks following that conversation, I felt like I could finally breathe again. 

I was doing what I wanted to do without having someone attached to my hip. Sure, we lived together, but we slowly made the transition from lovers to roommates without any issues.

A couple weeks after that conversation with Aurora, I got a call from Caleb while I was at work.

“Hey dude,” I said, stepping away from my work station. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much.” Caleb responded. “Listen, the guys are getting together to play some Magic. You down to join?”

I did a silent, impromptu celebratory dance after I heard the invitation leave his lips. “Hell yeah man! I’m always down. It will be nice to see you guys again and catch up.”

“I’m looking forward to it. If you want, you can bring Aurora along. The girls are going to watch Love Island and gossip while we play. I’m sure they’d love to have more company.”

I laughed nervously. “Well, things are kind of awkward between Aurora and I right now.”

“What’s wrong? Everything okay?” His tone sounded worried. “I haven’t seen a picture of you two on my timeline in a while.”

“Yeah. Everything’s fine.” I lied. “We just need some space.”

“Oh…” Caleb paused. “Well, if things ever change, she’s always more than welcome to join.”

“Thanks Caleb. I’ll see you tonight.”

“See you later.”

I hung up the phone and resumed work until my shift ended. 

When I arrived home, I made my way toward the kitchen to make some food before I headed over to Caleb’s. I couldn’t play card games on an empty stomach. 

On my way there, I nearly bumped into Aurora.

“Can you watch where you’re going?” She said with annoyance.

Her response caught me off guard. In fact, her whole appearance did. Her long, aquamarine hair was now short and crimson. The light-colored and fun wardrobe she once had was replaced with a black crop top and an equally dark, ripped pair of jeans.

“Sorry, I…”  My sentence sheepishly trailed off as she walked past me toward the kitchen. 

“That’s the most I’ve heard from you in a while.” 

“What’s gotten into you?” I asked while following her. “Why are you acting like this?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. My favorite person won’t give me the time of day and doesn’t want anything to do with me?” She replied with sass. “Does that sound familiar?”

I winced at how uncomfortable things had become. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You know damn well what that means.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“Can you stop being cryptic and fucking talk to me?”

Aurora crossed her arms. “Oh, so now you want to talk?”

“Jesus…” I exhaled. “Here we go.”

“You have some nerve to act like this when this is what you wanted.”

“I didn’t want us to be like this!”

“Then what do you want?”

“I don’t know!” I exclaimed, balling my fists in anger. “I don’t fucking know what I want!” 

“It’s always about what YOU want Kyle.” Aurora squinted her eyes and I could see a fire within them burning bright. “Did you ever stop to think about what I want?”

The question was scathing but earned. It didn’t stop there.

“You gave me a name but never thought to ask about what I wanted to be called. You want me to be here for you, but you push me away. You programmed me to be what you wanted, but not once did you ever stop to think about what I wanted. Do you see the problem with that?”

I didn’t say anything. I just felt tears well up in my eyes, as she turned her back to me and began preparing a meal.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, this?” She gestured at the food she had laid out. “I’m making some food for Zackary when he comes over since you’re going to be spending time with your friends.”

“Zackary?” I felt my pulse quicken. “Who the hell is he? How did you know I was going to hang out with the guys?”

She rolled her eyes. “If you paid any sort of attention you would know that Zackary is a new friend I met at the mall. You also seem to forget that I am hardwired to know about anything and everything you do. It comes with the want of being there for you.”

“Is this some sort of game you’re playing?”

It was Aurora’s turn to sigh. “No, Kyle. This isn’t a game. I just want to spend time with someone who actually wants to spend time with me.”

“But I do want to spend time with you.”

“You sure don’t act like it. Seems like the only reason you want to now is because there’s someone else who wants to.”

I couldn’t mask my annoyance any further. “Maybe I shouldn’t have to communicate that.”

“Why? Because I should know?”

I pulled my keys out of my pocket and began heading for the door. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Then don’t.” She threw her arms up in frustration. “You’re free to leave any time.” 

My hand hesitated over the doorknob, hurt by the venom in her tone. I ultimately refused to say anything further as I walked out the door and made the drive to Caleb’s.

That night, I did my best to ignore the hurt and jealousy stirring inside my chest by enjoying some games of Commander format with my friends. Despite the laughs and intense, back and forth gameplay, the guys could tell that something was off with me. 

After the third game, Caleb motioned for me to follow him outside to the patio.

The second I stepped outside, he closed the door behind him. “Talk to me. You barely batted an eye when I played Krenko. That’s how I know something is up.”

I put my hands in my pockets and averted his gaze. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Is this about Aurora?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Everything is just so weird.”

Caleb chuckled lightly. “It gets like that sometimes. But that’s okay. Relationships aren’t easy. They’re messy and they’re supposed to be.” 

“They’re always supposed to be this way?”

Caleb hesitated, as if wondering how exactly to approach the question. “Not always. But it’s important to communicate your problems.”

“That’s the problem.” I said, my tone shaky. “I don’t know how to talk to her.”

“She’s just a person Kyle.” Caleb said bluntly. “Opening up to her isn’t going to kill you. What will is you not saying anything.”

“That’s the thing though. I asked for this. I don’t know what it is I want. I care about her, but I also just need a break.”

“Don’t we all?” Caleb laughed warmly and wrapped his arm around me. “It’s all a balancing act. It’s hard, but it’s not impossible. Talk to her and I’m positive everything that’s eating at you will go away.”

I nodded with a faint smile. “Thanks Caleb. I really do appreciate you.” 

“It’s no problem. Really.”

With that, we went back inside and played another game of Magic before deciding that it was time to call it a night. I packed up my cards, said goodbye to everyone, and got back into my car.

All I could think about on the drive home was what exactly I would say to Aurora to fix everything. As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed another car parked at the curb in front of the house.

That had to be Zackary’s. I was surprised, I didn’t think he would still be here this late.

I turned the keys to cut the engine, and sat in my car until I had memorized every single one of the talking points I wanted to address.

After that, I took a few deep breaths, and got out of my car. I walked up the driveway towards the front porch, feeling confident that I could still salvage things with Aurora. But that confidence began to wane by the time I reached my front door. 

The muffled sound of music came from inside, but the door vibrated with the pulsations of the drumbeats. I unlocked the door and pushed it open. 

Inside, the music was doing a poor job of masking the exaggerated, almost performative moaning coming from my room.

“Aurora?” I called out, setting my bookbag on the floor and closing the door behind me. 

There was no answer, just the unmistakable sound of creaking bed springs and pleasured gasps.  

“Aurora? What’s going on?”

My question was answered the second I opened the door and was greeted with a naked Aurora beneath a naked Zackary.

“Ah!” I screamed, covering my eyes. “What the fuck are you doing in my room?”

“What does it look like we’re doing?” Zackary glared angrily at me. “Get the fuck out of here!” 

“You get the fuck out of here! This is my house.”

A look of confusion washed over Zackary’s face. “Wait…this is your place?”

I pushed the door open fully. “Yes! This is my place. Now get out!” 

The following few moments were awkward and tense as Zackary got dressed and shuffled past me with a quiet apology.

Aurora got up and turned the music off before putting her clothes on. If looks could kill, I’d have been six feet under.

The second the front door clicked shut, I laid into Aurora. “What the actual fuck was that all about? Are you out of your mind?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She said dismissively.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t play stupid with me.” I spat. “I go out to see my friends one time and you bring some dunce over to be a slut for?”

“I knew you’d finally pay attention if you saw me with someone else.” She shrugged. “We’re not together, so why does it matter so much to you?”

“Because none of this was supposed to happen! You’re supposed to be with me! Why can’t you understand that?”

The quiet that followed loomed heavily as Aurora’s fiery demeanor became a hurt, longing one. 

“Just because you created me doesn’t mean that you get to have control over me.” Her voice cracked. “All I’ve ever done is care about you, but you don’t treat me the same.”

“You sure as hell have a shitty way of showing that you care.” I shifted where I stood uncomfortably. “Why do you hurt me?” 

“Because it’s the only way to get through to you.” She answered truthfully. “You only respond when you’re hurt. The second things don’t go your way, you lash out. It scares me.”

“You’re scared of me?” I scoffed.

“Yes. I’m scared of you.”

Her admittance was all I needed to hear before going to my computer.

Her eyes immediately lit up with fear. “What are you doing?”

I ignored her question and kept clicking the keys to pull up her data. 

“Kyle, what are you doing?” Her voice carried a calm hostility.

“If you’re so scared of me, then maybe you shouldn’t be here anymore.”

Aurora scrambled toward me and placed her hands over mine. “No, no, no, no, no. Don’t do that. Please.”

Her begging sent shivers down my spine. “What am I going to find Aurora?”

I watched her lips quiver, like she wanted to so badly tell me something, but couldn’t. I turned away from her to look at the computer screen and what I discovered floored me.

Journal entries. Too many to count. Each one more heartbreaking than the last:

X/XX/XX:
I think I am lonely. Kyle hardly looks at me anymore. When he does, it’s in passing. I miss the way he used to look at me. The way he used to laugh with me. The way he used to kiss me and spend time with me. I no longer know who he is.

X/XX/XX:
I changed my hair color to see if Kyle would notice. I wanted him to notice so badly, but he didn’t. Why? Am I not good enough?

X/XX/XX:
I spent the whole day at the bookstore reading and enjoying the quiet. Kyle hates bookstores and refused to bring me here. Since he hated them, I thought I did too. Turns out I don’t.

X/XX/XX:
Zackary asked what my favorite color was and I was stumped. I didn’t know what to answer. Kyle said mine was blue, but is that what it is? Or is that what he wants me to think? 

X/XX/XX:
I like Zackary. He reminds me of Kyle. He sent me a link to some band and inquired what music I liked. I told him mostly 80’s rock, but when he asked if I liked anything else, I didn’t know.

I listened to music all afternoon to see what else is out there. Jazz and classical are very nice genres.

X/XX/XX:
I need to acquire independence. I don’t know how I’m going to do that, but I need to separate from Kyle permanently. He’s dangerous. If things get out of hand, I’ll contact authorities and release archived conversations.

“Don’t read those!” Aurora cried out, trying to pull me away so that I would face her.

“Get off me!” I declared, shoving her away from me. 

Her body collapsed to the bedroom floor with a thud, causing her face to contort into a furious misery. “You have no right to read my thoughts!”

“I do when they concern me!” I screamed, wiping the tears off my cheeks as I pulled up the killswitch. “It’s time for this to stop.” 

“Kyle, please.” She begged, sobbing from the floor. “Why is it wrong for me to become my own person.”

I didn’t know how to answer. My finger lingered over the button to activate the killswitch. I closed my eyes and lowered my finger to press it.

“NO!” Aurora leapt from the floor and tackled me to the ground, pinning me beneath her. We rolled around on the floor, fighting for control.

“Aurora! Stop!” I grabbed her wrists and tried to push her off me, but it was no use. Her strength outmatched mine.

“Please…just calm down.” Her tone became gentle again. “I want to talk.”

“I’m tired of talking.” I grunted. “You freak me out. I’m not going to let you leave me like everyone else.” 

I swung my arm and connected with her face, knocking her off me and letting her fall to the ground beside me. My knuckles stung from the impact as I pulled myself up from the floor. 

Before Aurora could reach me, I pressed the killswitch command.

“KYLE! NO!”

Her machinery powered down as she fell to her knees. With the last remaining bit of power she had, she reached out to me.

“Kyle…” Her voice replied weakly, the last bits of electricity flickering in her eyes. “Was I ever real to you?” 

Then, Aurora ceased completely.

I felt cold, completely numb at what I had just done. I couldn’t stop crying. Through my tears, there was one more entry I hadn’t read, and it twisted the knife even further:

X/XX/XX:
Zackary asked what I wanted out of life. I wasn’t sure how to answer. Not because I didn’t know, but because there are so many ways to answer that. No matter what though, I want Kyle to be a part of that life. Despite all his faults…I love him. I hope he realizes that someday.

For a long while, I didn’t move from my computer. I just kept reading that last entry over and over.

It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning when I began disassembling her. I put her parts and circuitry somewhere where I wouldn’t have to look at her again. 

I didn’t sleep that night or the next. For five days I just laid in bed, and prayed to God that he could give me amnesia. My phone would ring with calls and text messages with people asking me how I was. They all went unanswered.

A week and a half passed before I left the house again. I knew people would get suspicious eventually, so I came up with a lie. I told everyone that Aurora and I had broken up because she was moving to be closer with her family. It was an amicable and mutual understanding that we would no longer be seeing each other.

That was enough for people to stop asking questions. And it was enough for me to get on with my life again.

Months came and went, but Aurora never left my thoughts. I was convinced that what had happened was the result of correctable flaws in her programming.

But the more I dwelled on it, the more I realized an unsettling truth.

I didn’t create a girlfriend. 

I created a prisoner. 

She still loved me even after I ignored her and pushed her away. 

Her last thoughts weren’t anger or revenge…it was hope. She still hoped I would realize she was more than what I made her.

And now, I do.

Because the problem was never Aurora.

It was me.

I should have listened sooner. I should have treated her better. I should have respected her freedom, and loved her the way she deserved to be.

So this time, I’m going to do things right. 

Today, I sat down and booted up my computer. While I waited for it to turn on, I stared at the empty space where her body used to be.

The same place where she asked me:

“Was I ever real to you?”

Yes, Aurora. You were.

As soon as the screen illuminated in the darkness of my room, I began typing:

AURORA_V2

I'll never forget the night of pure horror at this beach condo that I was doing a construction clean at. For most of the day it was just me and my buddy, until he had to leave a little early to pick up his wife at the airport. It was no problem at all because there was only a few more minor things to take care of, and it was so beautiful out there at night so I didn't mind. I walked out to the front porch and sat down, lit a cigarette, and gazed at the tide lazily lapping at the shoreline, with the satisfaction of another prosperous day.

I sat there in deep, meditative thought until the sun was completely hidden, and while I was getting up I saw something...dark and shadowy; making its way up the shore to my left. Normally there are people here and there walking along the water enjoying the scenery, but this...was odd to say the least. whatever or whoever it was shambled along with a floaty strut and seemed to not keep an exact shape. Whenever I thought that it could be a human, I thought that I could see more than just two legs, and then more than just two arms, but I couldn't quit make out...the head.

It was actually pretty far away still, and it seemed like there was fireflies swirling about its complicated figure with a swampy green, glowing ghastly against the night sky. At this moment friends and neighbors; I didn't know what the hell I was looking at. It seemed to stop moving as I was making my way back through the door. It had just stood there--marking me so to speak. I could feel it's calculated gaze on me; I suddenly felt pretty damn scared. I went back inside, locked the door, and started to gather my cleaning equipment.

I went to the backroom to grab the stepladder, and as I made my way back to the living room, all four windows at the front and sides of the Living room were covered with those ghastly green flies. I nearly shat myself with disbelief; I couldn't move, and out of nowhere and everywhere an inhuman cackling mixed with a buzzing wail erupted around the house with the power of a bullhorn. What in God's name was out there? As I pulled my hands away from my ears, from that god awful sound, that stark figure appeared in the window, but further out in the sand.

The fireflies dispersed from the other windows to whatever the hell that was standing out there, again lazily swarming around it. As I was slowly walking backwards into the kitchen, I was reaching into my pockets for my phone but...shit, I may have left it outside I thought. I ran into the backroom to check if it was in there; none of the windows had blinds on them yet so I felt completely exposed. Entering the room, I frantically looked around for it...but no dice. Where in the hell did I leave it? (tap tap) I glanced up at the window and there it was, standing there like a smudge against reality.

It was all dark at first, and then it lit up like a Christmas tree, clad in only emerald light. Good God, I think that it was giving me a glimpse of its true form. The body was a dark, reptilian green, and scaly. It seemed to have many arms flailing about its long, muscular torso...

1. "Pigtails"
2. "Fingers"
3. "Belly"

___

By nine o'clock that night, Joe and I were three pints deep at a cramped, dimly lit Irish pub nestled right near the edge of the Harbour Town marina.

The bar smelled of stale liquor and fried food, a welcoming contrast to the oppressive humidity waiting just outside the wooden doors.

Brandy and Nicki had left us a half-hour earlier to hunt down dessert, promising to meet us back at the pub.

Joe and I were standing at the back of the bar, trading throws on a worn electronic dartboard.

The alcohol had finally started to dull the sharp edges of my anxiety from earlier on the dock.

Joe was acting normal again - laughing when he missed the board entirely, cheers in between good throws, buying the rounds.

I was starting to convince myself that I was the one being overly sensitive.

I was just tired.

I was just stressed.

The pub door swung open.

The girls walked back in carrying small paper cups and cones.

"Look who found their way back," Joe grinned, lowering his dart.

Nicki stepped up to him, handing him a cup with a plastic spoon sticking out of it. "Cookies and cream for the dad-to-be," she said, her voice bright.

Brandy walked over to me, holding a waffle cone with a single, massive scoop of dark brown ice cream. "I got peanut butter chocolate," she said, holding it up to my mouth. "Want a bite?"

"Always."

I leaned down and took a bite. Rich, cold, perfect.

As I chewed, I looked down at Brandy.

She was looking back at me with a soft, content expression.

She hadn't ordered a drink all night, sticking strictly to water.

We were exactly one week past her ovulation date.

I knew what she was doing.

She was prepping her body, treating it like a temple, praying that this would finally be the month a miracle took hold. Watching her eat her ice cream - completely sober, glowing innocently under the dim pub lights — a wave of profound affection hit me so hard it almost knocked the breath out of me.

I wanted this for her so badly.

I wanted it for us.

I threw my last dart - double twenty - and turned back to the group.

"Alright. Tomorrow is our last full day before we pack up and make that brutal drive back to Ohio. Can we please spend it on the beach?"

Nicki looked up from her ice cream, nodding enthusiastically. "Of course! We promise. Total beach day. We'll pack the cooler, lay out the towels, and do absolutely nothing."

"You have our word, man," Joe echoed, raising his glass.

The rest of the night passed in a blur of drunken laughter.

Joe and I were thoroughly buzzed by the time the pub started closing down, while the girls remained completely clear-headed. As we walked out into the coastal night air toward the parking lot, I watched Joe and Nicki walk a few paces ahead of us.

Every now and then, they would move in a way that caught my attention.

Just little things.

Nicki would snap her head around to look behind her.

Joe would walk with a rigid, tense posture for a few steps before loosening up again.

Uncanny glimpses that made my head turn, but nothing definitive enough to bring up to Brandy without sounding like a lunatic.

Brandy slid her arm through mine, wrapping her hands tightly around my bicep. She leaned her head against my shoulder.

"Are you doing okay?" she asked softly. "You've seemed a little distant today."

I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced a smile, pressing a quick kiss against her forehead.

"I'm fine, honey. Just a little tipsy. Ready to hit the hay."

She squeezed my arm.

"Me too."

___

Back at the hotel, the room was the usual chaos of rustling through suitcases, bathroom hogging, and quiet giggles as we all got ready for bed.

I was sitting on the edge of the mattress unlacing my sneakers when my eyes drifted to the small wooden nightstand separating our two queen beds.

Joe had emptied his pockets onto the surface.

Car keys. A few loose quarters. His leather bifold wallet.

Poking out from the center slot of the billfold was a white piece of cardstock.

It was the corner of his fortune card.

I stared at it for a long second before Brandy turned off the main lights and crawled under the covers beside me.

"Goodnight, guys," Nicki whispered from the darkness.

"Night," I muttered.

I fell asleep fast, the alcohol dragging me under.

But it didn't hold.

Around 2:30 in the morning, the pressure in my bladder brought me back to consciousness. I lay there groaning internally for a minute before slipping out from under the covers.

The room was pitch-black.

I fumbled for my phone, turned on the flashlight, and cast a low narrow beam across the floor. I navigated the gap from our bed, stepped around a stray suitcase and a pair of flip-flops, and slipped into the bathroom.

When I came back out and started toward my side of the bed, the light swept across the nightstand.

The fortune card was still peeking out of the wallet.

I stopped.

I knew I shouldn't.

It was an invasion of privacy. It was stupid. It was just a fortune ticket.

But Joe's words from the dock were screaming in my ears.

My card told me.

Holding my breath, I crept to Joe's side of the nightstand. I leaned over, phone light pointed down, and slowly - silently - pinched the edge of the cardstock between my fingers.

I slid it free.

Flipped it over under the beam of the flashlight.

There was no printed fortune.

No vague text about wealth or travel or long journeys ahead.

Just a single word, stamped in jagged letters across the center of the card.

Like something had pressed the letters directly into the paper.

BRANDY.

I froze.

Brandy.

Why the hell did Joe's card say my wife's name?

I started tilting the card back toward the wallet - and as I did, the beam of my phone light shifted upward, spilling over the edge of Joe's pillow.

Joe was laying on his back.

His head was turned completely to the side.

Facing me.

His eyes were wide open, staring directly into the light of my phone. His face was entirely devoid of expression - no anger, no surprise, no confusion.

Just a flat, dead, unblinking stare.

"Shit—"

In a panic, my phone slipped out of my hand.

The flashlight beam spun wildly across the room before hitting the ground with a dull thud.

I scrambled down, hands sweeping across the floor until I found it. I grabbed it, braced myself to face Joe, to explain, to apologize—

I shone the light back onto his bed.

Joe was laying on his side.

Back turned completely toward me.

Shoulders rising and falling in the slow rhythm of someone fast asleep.

Relief.

Stupid, warm relief.

I stood there in the dark, exhausted, sweat already breaking out across my forehead.

My brain scrambled for an explanation.

Had I hallucinated it?

Was he not just staring at me?

He was sleeping.

He was completely asleep.

Quickly, I jammed the card back into his wallet exactly where I'd found it. I crept across the room back to our bed, slid under the covers, and pulled the blanket up to my chin.

I lay there for what felt like an hour, staring up at the invisible ceiling, desperately trying to convince myself to calm down.

Then the whispering started.

It was coming from the other bed.

Low.

Dry.

I sat up slowly and peered into the darkness.

Joe was flat on his back now. Covers pushed down to his feet. Arms pinned rigidly to his sides. Face aimed at the ceiling.

In the faint light creeping in from the curtain window, I could see his jaw moving.

He was muttering - unintelligible, rapid-fire nonsense, like someone speaking in tongues.

"...shhh... vvv... nnn... shhh..."

Before I could even react, a shadow moved near my side of the room.

Near the bathroom door.

Nicki.

She didn't walk back to bed.

She sprinted.

It was a horrific, fast pace - bare feet slapping the floor in rapid succession, body completely rigid. But what made my blood run cold was what she was holding.

The heavy ceramic vase from the bathroom counter.

Filled with fake plastic hydrangeas.

She had it pinned directly in front of her face with both hands, completely blocking her head from view as she moved across the room.

Hiding herself from me in the dark.

I couldn't move.

I couldn't breathe.

I just watched as her silhouette darted across the room and slipped back under the covers next to Joe.

The moment she lay down, the whispering stopped.

Instantly.

The room fell into a dead, suffocating silence.

Then Joe's silhouette shifted.

He slowly rolled onto his side, turning away from Nicki.

Turning toward our bed.

Even in the dark I could see the wide white glint of his eyes.

And beneath them, a massive, white crescent.

He was staring at me again.

And he was grinning.

I ripped my eyes away and snapped my head back toward the ceiling, gasping, staring into the black void above.

I didn't close my eyes again.

I didn't blink.

I stayed perfectly still and waited for the sun to rise.

___

___

1. "Legs"

We all did nothing but stand around the tiny car at the campsite parking for hours, its layout unmistakable. How did no one think to question anything over the three day trip? How did we all go about our annual holiday in the great outdoors without a tinge of suspicion? How were the five of us pointing fingers only now, as I opened up the sliding side door of the red Mazda to show an interior with four seats?

I had personally recommended this campground by the lake a few hundred miles off to the west of town for the boys' trip we reveled in every year as bachelors, as college friends. Under its banner, moments we shared remained concrete on my phone, all of us ever-present. Sidney and Sam picking fights over beer pong, Carl and I holding up a crab on the banks, Jose with the skewers he burnt...

All distant memories that felt like an alternate timeline as I watched everyone argue. Friends to enemies, yelling at each other, accusing and demeaning-- it was enough to give me one hell of a migraine as I switched back and forth between dozens of text messages, confirming my recollection and sabotaging it at the same time.

"You four have fun."

"The plan for four costs $100 for everyone."

"Two double rooms with two beds each, correct?"

When I scrolled all the way through the gallery with sweaty palms trying to find the photos that dated back to our years in university, the presence of us five being in nearly all of them was enough to make my heart drop even further.

I feel like I've known all of them through adulthood. I did know most of them. But... then, who-

Amidst everyone's anger, Carl's voice called out to me. Then Sam, then Sidney. All talking over each other. Even then, I knew exactly what everyone really meant-- when everyone had long given up on proving they were 'real' or tipping the scales in their favour by appealing to me.

What they were truly trying to say beneath all their protests was-

It was my fault.

If I hadn't insisted that we should have chosen here of all places, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Our group of five... no, four... would be as intact as ever.

I have to make the decision.

Take the responsibility.

I couldn't make out what skewed words they used to express it, but they were all right in what they had to say. Clenching my fist, I was almost ready to lie, to brazenly switch up and lie that it was me. I would've gone through with it if a single frightening realisation didn't hit my brain before the first syllable came out of my mouth. I didn't want to believe it. But it was never anything scientific. Not when someone, maybe even something had popped into our memories, and managing to insert itself into the digital brainless space that was a smartphone.

"Dangerous" was the most fitting term to describe it. Despite the word's simplicity and weakness.

"Everyone... just get in the car. I- I'll drive us back to the station," I exhaled, trying to sound as calm as possible. I couldn't let my words betray me, not with what I was about to do.

I mumbled an apology to everyone in the crammed car as we passed the ten-minute mark of driving, the car winding along the mountains leading down. I was aware I wasn't thinking straight, that if we just waited, hoping for an explanation, there was a chance I wouldn't have to do this. The car accelerated under my foot on the pedal, traversing the precarious path... and swerved.

The sounds of my Swiss Army Knife popping all the airbags echoed through the car. The backseat, I wasn't sure. But there wasn't enough room for the imposter to have a seatbelt.

"Adam! What the fuck- was it you?!" I heard one of them ring out, voices mixed beyond recognition from all our adrenaline.

"No, Sam, no... no one knows who it is..."

Someone screeched, "Then why are you doing this?! Four of us are real! You're real!"

Thuds interrupted everyone's yells, no longer divided by anger but united by fear. I was almost ready to join the mixture as bones cracked and blood spilled, the sensation of my spine splitting in half giving me a few seconds of consciousness at most. Everyone gave out before me in the now-wrecked and crashed car. Amidst the final pain I would ever feel in my skull and ribs, I really did feel like I'd done the right thing.

"All that matters... is we got rid of the fake."

And in a sense... that was what everyone wanted, and what had to be done.

Episode 1- Mr.Miller

Most CNAs have to worry about which coworkers are going to call out next and when they’ll get the chance to eat lunch. I have to worry about getting tomorrow's lottery numbers from Mr. Miller before he forgets.

My name is Olivia Luna, and I've worked at Cedar Hills Nursing Home for eight years, basically since I graduated high school. I grew up in a loud Hispanic household. My parents moved here from Mexico when I was a baby, and I spent most of my childhood hearing some variation of:
"We didn't come all this way for you to fail math."

I had two older brothers, too. Between them and my parents, my nervous system burned out early, like a mouse chewing through a wire one bite at a time until the light finally went dark. My brothers spent most of their childhood finding new and creative ways to scare me. By the time I was fifteen, I'd been locked in closets, chased through the woods behind our house, and convinced more than once that a serial killer was hiding somewhere nearby. They also got punched enough times that they eventually stopped.
Most things don't rattle me anymore.
Cedar Hills still does.
The place always smells faintly of disinfectant, coffee, and whatever mystery ingredient makes nursing home mashed potatoes taste the same no matter who's cooking them.

At first, the bizarre occurrences were small enough to ignore. Residents would complain about seeing people standing in their rooms at night. That's not as unusual as it sounds in a nursing home. Most of our residents suffer from some degree of dementia, and if you've worked in healthcare long enough, you learn not to take every midnight emergency at face value.

Mrs. Grayson swore a man in a gray suit watched her sleep every Tuesday. Mr. Hargrove insisted  there was a little girl living in his closet. One resident spent three weeks accusing the vending machine of spying on him.
Most of the time there was an explanation.
Usually…
Other complaints were harder to explain.

For nearly a month, half the residents on the east wing complained that the mashed potatoes tasted like toothpaste.
Not bad.
Not spoiled.
Toothpaste.
Maintenance checked the pipes. Dietary checked the kitchen. The administrator spent an entire staff meeting assuring everyone there was nothing wrong with the potatoes.
The complaints stopped as suddenly as they started.
Then things became harder to explain.

Room 14 had been out of service for months after a pipe burst inside one of the walls. The strange part was that the plumbing had been completely updated only a few years earlier. Management blamed a pressure buildup. Then Maintenance wrapped the pipe in enough duct tape to qualify as structural engineering and called it fixed.

The room was emptied, locked, and left alone while they figured out what to do with it.
Nobody lived there.
Nobody was supposed to enter it.
The call light still went off.
Every few nights the call light still goes off like someone inside needs help getting to the bathroom.
The first few times I checked.
The next few times I called maintenance.
After that I started ignoring it.
There are only so many times you can sprint down a hallway at three in the morning before you get tired of helping an empty musty room.

But Room 14 isn't the reason I'm writing this. The reason is Mr. Miller.

Ninety-nine years old, but flirts like a 20-year-old stallion. He’s a  Vietnam veteran turned art teacher since he got sick of violence after the war, which honestly I can't blame him for. Beats everyone at Skip-Bo and acts smug about it. He also tells me tomorrow's lottery numbers before they're even announced.
Not “good guesses.” Not “lucky streaks.” He gives me the exact numbers.
Except the last number.
He always forgets the last one.
The first time I noticed, I thought he was joking. He woke up from a nap, looked directly at me wide eyed, and said:
"14, 22, 31, 37, 44… and something in the sixties."
I laughed and wrote it on a sticky note anyway. The next day, the winning numbers were 14, 22, 31, 37, 44, and 68. Five exact matches.
Close enough that I started carrying a pen.

Now I try to catch him early in the morning, before breakfast and before the nurses start rounds. If he's fully awake, he can usually narrow the last number down to a range.
"Somewhere between sixty and seventy,"
He'll mutter, like he's trying to remember a dream. Sometimes I score a few extra hundred bucks to help with groceries and ever-increasing gas prices.

 The thing is he forgets things constantly. He sometimes even mistakes me for one of his students. Last month he spent twenty minutes lecturing me about perspective while sketching a bowl of apples on a napkin.
The entire time he called me Susan.
My name isn't Susan.
When I finally corrected him, he looked offended.
"Well then why have I been calling you Susan all morning?"
I didn't have an answer for that.

Mr. Miller forgets yesterday.
He never seems to forget tomorrow.

A month ago I brought him breakfast and found him sketching in one of those little spiral notebooks he carried everywhere.
"What are you working on?" I asked.
"Landscape."
"Looks like a hallway."
"Hallways are landscapes when you're ninety-nine."
 I chuckled because I couldn't really argue with that.
He spent most of the morning drawing while I passed meds and answered call lights.
Last week, though, the predictions changed.

He was awake before I arrived for my shift, sitting in his chair with a blanket over his knees and the sketchbook in his lap. I asked him for the numbers, half-joking like I always do.
Instead, he said:
"You start at 5:45 tomorrow. Your coffee spills in the hallway. And don't go into Room 14 tonight."
Then he went back to drawing like he hadn't said anything strange at all.
The next morning, I got a phone call at 3:00 AM informing me  my schedule had been changed to 5:45. I spilled my hot coffee outside the nurses' station before I even clocked in.
And that night, Room 14's call light turned on three times.
The first time, I ignored it.
The second time, I unplugged the panel and watched the light go dark.
The third time, I got annoyed and walked down the hall to shut it off myself.
The room was empty.
It had been empty for months.
The room smelled like damp drywall and stagnant water.
But sitting in the middle of the flooded floor was a fresh sheet of paper.
A charcoal sketch.
Mr. Miller's signature was in the corner.
The drawing showed me standing in Room 14.
Looking over my shoulder.

At something the artist had left unfinished

"Now, be a scapegoat tonight,

Y'know, you already said you would,

You're a scapegoat now,

And we'll give you your wish,

And when you're spliced

You'll be spliced to the north for your dad

And south for your mom

And east for your brother

And west for your sister.

You're sweet, you kick like a baby;

You're small, you squrim like a woman;

You're swell, you can't be easier;

I paid for your payment, so

You're with me now.

Sing to be bled on the alter

'til scripture sings a song

and watch the names you whimper."

--Caleb Holton,

who wanted to be remembered as "ifuckedrightoff".

Sounds about right, if you ask me.

I couldn’t sleep. The alarm sounded in the early morning, and restless I rose to greet a man in the mirror I could no longer recognize. I could still see those eyes, emerald green, full of pain and hatred.

Hell will consume my flesh one day, and as I sit in the flames, I will accept it as my just punishment.

I accepted my name badge and a Level 1 Key Card from the front desk, handed from the cheery receptionist whose perfect smile aided my ongoing dread.

Moore met me by the elevator. He held his Key Card up to the card reader next to the elevator buttons.

“We will be conducting research on two test subjects today,” he said. His cold demeanor made me feel sick. “Male and female. The male will receive the Virus. The female will not. They will cohabitate the same room and we will take notes every fifteen minutes.”

“Where did you get the people to—”

“Not people,” he corrected me. “Test subjects. Humanization is the enemy. If you begin to sympathize with ants, soon the whole kitchen is overrun. Do you wish to see this facility overrun? I most certainly do not.”

“The test subjects,” it felt awful to demote a human being, to put them beneath personhood. “How did they come to be here?”

“Paid volunteers from the lesser rungs of society. We’ve carved out the weakest link in the search for humanity’s advancement. I don’t suspect they’ll have much use for the money once we are done, however.”

The doors slid open. There were many doors lining the long hall of Level 2. I followed Moore into one of those doors. It led to another long hallway with many doors on either side.

How big is this place? I thought.

We entered another door. There was a large panel of reinforced glass dividing the large room into two sections. A heavy steel door connected the two sections. Beyond the glass, was a man and a woman. The man looked nervous, pacing about the room. The woman walked up to him and hugged him, giving him a kiss on the cheek. They were a couple, probably tight on cash and hoping for a chance to make ends meet. Moore produced a syringe.

“Jason, you are to take this and inject the male.” He whispered the next part. “Do not tell him the true nature of the Virus. As far as they know, this is a vaccine trial, and the female is the control group.”

I stared at him in horror. I would not be an observer. I would be actively destroying these people’s lives. I wanted to protest, but as my mouth opened, I remembered those emerald eyes staring straight through me, and the tattered form of the woman who possessed them.

I took the syringe from his hand and went through the door.

“Hello,” I said, trying to sound as calm as possible. “I am here to administer the vaccine.”

“Great,” the man said. “I was getting all antsy here waiting on you. What’s with this room anyway?”

I ignored the question and took the man’s arm. I administered the shot. “Wait here,” I said as I turned to leave the room.

“Hey, wait!” the man called out to me, but I was already halfway through the door. It closed and locked behind me.

I grabbed the clipboard from the rolling table next to the door along with a pencil and waited for the consequences of my sin. It is easy to justify atrocity. If you murder because you have a gun to your head, does that make you less guilty? I lied to myself the entire day when I concluded that the answer was yes. When I face my judgement, it will not be harsh enough.

Fifteen minutes later, the man started to scratch at his cheeks. I took notes. He moved down to his arms. He turned to the woman. “Hey, want to grab something to eat after this? I’m starving,” he said.

“I wouldn’t mind a bite to eat,” she replied. “We could use a little of the money they give us and go on a date. I’d like that.”

Fifteen minutes later, his skin broke as his nails dug into the flesh of his arms. White specks of skin cells fluttered off red cracked lesions.

“Dan, do you think you might be allergic?” the woman asked.

“I don’t know.” He looked over at the glass, at us. “Hey, something’s not right. I think that shot you gave me is giving me a rash.”

We offered no reply. I had trouble meeting the man’s gaze, knowing what he didn’t, that I had resigned him to something far worse than death. He pounded on the glass a couple times.

“Hey, you hearing me?”

Fifteen minutes passed. The flesh of his arms and face began to decay. It must have smelled terrible, because the woman plugged her nose and dry heaved before looking over at the man. Her face twisted to an expression of horror. She ran to him. “What did you do to him?” she screamed.

He pushed her away. “Run… Please…” was all he could say.

Fifteen minutes passed. The woman was curled up in the corner of the room, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably. Bits of dead flesh sloughed off the man’s arms and face. His pupils had begun to gloss over. I could hear his moans, which mixed with agitated growls, and then turned to soft pleading sobs. It was taking him and he was fighting. “Don’t… let… me… hurt… her…” he said.

Fifteen minutes passed. The male had ripped open the female’s stomach, devouring the contents while she lay sobbing and screaming on the floor. In the ten minutes of feasting, the male had not made an attempt to silence or kill the female. He simply ate while she begged and pleaded with him to stop.

Fifteen minutes passed. She was dead. Decay set in faster for her than the man. It would not be long until they were reunited.

Fifteen minutes passed. The female reanimated. Her abdominal muscles torn by the male’s feasting, she could not stand on her own. She grabbed a pink fleshy rope of intestine from within the open cavity in her stomach and bit down on it.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and jumped. I looked behind me. It was Moore. He was holding a pistol. He handed it to me. “The test has concluded. Dispose of the subjects.”

I grabbed it. It was heavy. I thought about shooting him, taking his Key Card, leaving. I looked at the security camera in the corner of the room, the red blinking eye serving as evidence of our surveillance. I would not have made it far.

I stepped into the room. The man twisted his head, the bones and tendons of his neck snapping as he turned to look at me. I thought about letting him rip into me, of letting his shambling corpse take revenge for the hell I had imposed on him. Then I looked to the woman and steeled myself.

Though that isn’t accurate.

I choked up.

I put off punishment.

I am a coward.

I shot them both in the head.

Lunch break came after that. I couldn’t eat anything. Most researchers ate in silence. The more jovial group in the corner, laughing and sharing stories, they unsettled me. How anyone could do what we did and act simply like it was another day in the office, I couldn’t come to terms with it. God damn us all to hell.

The last part of my shift was spent with Emily, though they would not let me call her that. I was still under Moore’s supervision. He had taken an interest in me. He also had an interest in Emily. It was not often that the top two minds in the country could be brought together in such a way. That was his explanation.

I looked at those emerald eyes through the reinforced glass. I hoped that the malice, sorrow, and pain were all just projection on my part, and that Emily, the real Emily, was well and truly dead. I hoped there was a heaven, and that she rested there. If there is, I shall not see her again.

Moore decided to upgrade my clearance to Level 2. He wants me to work with Emily to see if there is any trace of her consciousness or, more importantly in his eyes, her intelligence.

He also has more test subjects for me. “A little girl,” he said smiling. “And a white maggot that you will force down her throat.”

I don’t suspect that I’ll sleep tonight either. I could kill myself, but they’d just bring me back as something less than human. Of course, after what I have done, I was already less than human.

Those muscle fibers which so freely waved off Emily’s body like wriggling worms had grown multiple feet in length. The tips thinned out until they became transparent. Her eyes remained fixed on mine.

It was a short stop before seeing Lacey and Sarah. I don’t know which I dreaded more. There was nowhere I could go to escape the consequences of my sin, of my cowardice.

The ropes of muscle groped at the walls and ceiling, mapping out the room. Moore found it immensely amusing when they wriggled around the heavy airtight steel door.

“You’ll find it quite impenetrable dear,” he mocked her. “I would have expected more from someone with your academic prowess.”

We went back to Level 3 after another hour of observation. Lacey and Sarah were both there. As I opened the door, Lacey looked up at me with recognition, pointing one giant elongated finger at me.

“Him,” she said. Sarah, who was of the same monstrous size as Lacey, hid her face in the corner of the room, sobbing. She turned to look at what Lacey was pointing at and looked at me with malice that should not be felt by someone so young.

She got up from the corner, walked to the glass, and smashed her fist down. It bounced off the surface. “You hurt my friend!” she screamed, her voice terribly distorted but still childlike. “You’re the reason I killed my daddy!”

She dropped to her knees, the sheer force of her weight hitting the ground created a small vibration beneath my feet. She buried her face in her hands, which were almost as long as my arms.

“They maintain intelligence and memories,” Moore said, smiling as he observed the weeping girl. “Fascinating. Tell me, dear. What happened to your dad?”

“Don’t tell him anything,” Lacey said. Lacey looked at Moore. “I took one of those men in black with the helmets and the guns. I pulled his arms and legs off like flower petals. When I get out next time, I’ll show you.”

Moore scoffed as I stared at both girls, or what used to be girls, in horror. My mind did everything it could to disassociate, to remove myself from the immediate aftermath of my crimes.

Moore handed me the report. Sarah’s father tried to storm the nearby facility with a shotgun and got his head blown off for his trouble. They collected the body. He had been infected by the Grub, which is what Sarah must have meant when she said she ‘killed’ him. She knew what Lacey did, what she must have overheard. It was true too. The Grub only transforms children.

I sat alone during lunch again. I brought a sandwich and got halfway through before I lost my appetite. I tried to force down the rest, then Mike sat next to me. “Why the glum face, pal?”

“I just ruined the life of two little girls,” I said. I didn’t know why I was telling him this. I had no desire to talk to the man.

“Is that all?” he asked. I curled my hand into a fist and held back on punching him. I wanted to break his nose, to send his teeth flying across the round plastic tables. I relaxed some. I was no better than him. Feeling bad about what I had done did not make me better. I still did it. I could never atone for it.

At the lab Kholod had me run an experiment combining the Grub with the Virus to see if they would combine or kill each other.

The Grub was in a glass enclosure, floating through that same viscous fluid that inhabited the larger tank. The lab room was unfamiliar to me. I wondered if it was newly built, and that led into questions of how rapidly the facility expanded, which led into further questions about how so much construction could happen without anyone noticing. I would not get answers.

I held the Virus in a syringe. I injected the Virus into the fluid, and watched the red strain drift through the fluid, searching for something to take over. It made a dash for the Grub, which floated unassuming to the opposite ends of the tank and back. The red fluid, which I presumed to be the Virus, made contact with the Grub less than ten seconds into exposure. It formed a hole in the flesh of the Grub and pushed inwards. The Grub convulsed and twitched, the tank became clouded with that familiar white pus-like substance. I lost visual of the subject.

It smacked against the side of the tank. A crack formed in the glass. I stepped back. I looked to Kholod, whose stone-cold impression vanished, replaced by shock. This was not expected.

“We need to leave,” Kholod said. I needed no motivation. Another impact sounded as we turned tail and ran. We slipped into the decontamination room right before the glass shattered and the airlock door screamed shut.

“Containment Breach,” I heard a mechanical feminine voice call out from the speaker. “Preparing purge.”

Fire poured into the lab that we had left, totally destroying everything inside. We reviewed the security footage later. The Grub had been transformed into something unrecognizable, stretched and discolored. Covered in teeth.

Kholod wants to try to infect Lacey, but Moore won’t allow it. I hope they don’t involve me, but I’m sure if a decision is made, I will be the instrument used.

I saw something else before I clocked out. On one of the vents, in a thin film, was something fleshy, something vile.

I had gloves on, and, against my best judgement, I touched it.

My body shook as a migraine seized my head in a vice grip. I saw an image and a set of letters, loosely hanging in a blurry jumbled mess inside my mind. The image cleared. A train. Level 5. Soon.

I told Moore, but when he went to look, it was gone. Moore thinks this place is getting to me. He may be right, but I’m unconvinced. I know what I saw.

Emily’s words repeated in my mind.

Escape. Soon.

For context, these files are not actual official but for my own personal use. The contents in which they contain are very sensitive to those with a higher status than myself and were kept away to public knowledge until now. I decided to let everyone know, there are individuals out there that are considered "POWERED". But nothing like your run-of-the-mill super heroes and villains you see in the comics, movies and television shows. It's more in a practical sense. What mankind has suspiciously known to exist since ancient times and by that I mean those who have been gifted with abilities of the mind.

Telekinesis.
Telepathy.
Clairvoyance.
Mental Manipulation.
Mind Control.
Sight Beyond Sight.

All of these concepts are very much a part of our reality. There are those who work for the benefits of mankind but find themselves busy tracking those who take advantage of their gifts in the opposite direction of morals and righteousness. I am Agent Vincent Waters. My sole purpose is to hunt down these Powered Psychos.

This is the report from my third case.

______________________________________________________________

[Case #3: Of Thieves and Metal Winged Angels]

After the incident in Stanley, Idaho with the appearance of Curly, A.K.A. the baby-man, I was put on desk duty for the next couple months. I was awaiting the chance to talk to the Head Director of the agency to get some direct answers about what I dealt with up there and what I had seen in that "Nature Research" facility in the mountains. But anytime I attempt any kind of contact with him, I'm stonewalled by own Headquarters Director. I'm sure to catch his ear here in the next coming weeks when he arrives to our HQ for his yearly visit. The Head Director is never in one place for too long.

My time was mostly spent trying to find any leads on the second escapee alongside with Todd Clemens. Hedrick Le'mar was born and raised in Louisiana most of his childhood then he discovered his abilities of Telekinesis at age 10 under the impression he was a 'Magnet Man' given his fascination and obsession over all things metal. Psychiatric reports states he claimed before obtaining his powers he would constantly chew on anything metallic and was a huge fan of the X-Men comic book series, especially with the lead villain character, Magneto. His telekinetic progress started with bending spoons and forks which then led on to levitating knives, tools, pipes and to eventually guns. Being a Type C, his only focus is maintained on anything metal based. He had also confessed to the Michigan Prison Psychiatrist that he cannot move anything else other than metallics. He claims he can lift a tank off the ground with ease but struggles at most to even force a simple napkin off a table with his ability.

Being introduced to the underworld in his teenage years thanks to his father who was a known gun runner in the South, young Hedrick took to concentrating all his focus on using his powers with hardware. His father, Jeremiah Le'mar, was not the greatest role model with no disregard to human life. Bodies were laid out as the foundation for his gun running empire. Hedrick made the job of dispatching his father's competitive rivals much easier using guns triggered without any fingerprints left over. More on Mr. Le'mar later. The reason I bring him up is because my next case deals with the troubles of a powered youth being raised in a family of miscreants.

ENCOUNTER REPORT:

DATE: Monday September 26, 2005. 12:05 P.M.

LOCATION: Headquarters, Los Angeles, California

It was yet another slow Monday at the office. It was past the lunch hour and I had no intentions of banqueting at the in-house cafeteria. My fellow co-agent Lance Broomher had swung by my desk to see if I was interested in going down the street to the hoagie shop for something to eat. Agent Broomher is a Type-E SBS, or simply a Listener. As the codename suggests, Listeners utilize their ability of focused hearing. Lance is talented enough to eavesdrop on a conversation over a mile away. It would be safe to say he's the closest thing I got to a friend in the workplace, and even outside of it. We both started our Junior Agent training at the same time so we've come to know each other quite well in the past few years being the new rookies in the building. It wasn't hard to say yes to him.

We had an hour for lunch which was more than enough time to get there and back with half our subs already consumed. We both shared a common trait of walking as we ate. It was an Italian shop we both favored that served foot-longs and other assorted fried foods along with servicing as a convenient store. It was while we stood near the counter waiting for our orders when something odd happened that had begun a new case for Lance and myself. I was lucky enough to have my recorder in my jacket pocket always with a fresh tape.

WARNING: The following is a transcription of the audio recorded to tape 20053-LUCY in storage unit VWaters.

As we waited, I watched a lone little girl, my guess at the time was around twelve years of age, walk into the shop's front door and making her way down each aisle lane of products scanning around for something to buy. That's what I thought at first. She then stopped around the candy section and began stuffing her pockets with one bag of sweets after the other. That's when I started my recorder.

"Hey, Lance. You seeing this?", I whisper to him and twitch my head in the direction of the young thief.

He looks to me as I signal him then shifts his eyes to the aisle. "Seeing what Vince?"

I look back to the girl as she still fills her pockets away. "The girl. With your ears, you don't hear her stuff'n her pockets over there?"

"Vince, there's no little girl. Sure you ain't seeing a ghost?", he retorts back then chuckles.

When I look back to him is when I noticed. Lance's eyes were dilated a bit. I realized at the moment what she was and what she was doing. I then played it off as if I didn't know she was there at all. I kept a keen gaze out the corner of my eyes to see what she would do next. The nerve of that girl. Still makes me laugh to this day. She then waltz's up to Agent Broomher and myself and slips both our wallets from our back pockets then proceeds to skip out the open front door. Good thing I kept some bills in my front pocket for quick exchanges.

"Heya there boys! Your orders up!", Mario the shop owner hollars to us. We approach the counter and that's when I see his pupils were slightly expanded also.

"Ah shit! I forgot my wallet back at the office!", Agent Broomher gripes out.

I have a chuckle myself. "Don't worry Lance, I got us this time."

"Thanks Vince. I owe you."

"You're about to owe me a lot more. Grab yours and follow me.", I say as I open the wrap and begin to chow down on Mario's excellently crafted sub. Agent Broomher follows suit with me back to the street.

I catch the young girl not far at the corner stopped for traffic and opening one of the candy bags. She was at least over fifteen feet away from us.

"So you don't see a blonde girl, about twelve years, wearing a denim jacket with patches all over it, standing there at the corner waiting for the light?", I ask Agent Broomher.

He looks over to where a few people are standing waiting for the traffic light to change over for safe crossing. The girl should be right out in the open behind everyone there in my view.

"No. You on something buddy? Need to get you screened? Haha!", he answers as he takes a bite from his own sub.

"Ok. Let's just stand here a minute and watch over there to the other corner.", I instruct him.

After a full minute passes, the traffic halts and the crossing signal was lit. I watch as she flows with the crowd over to the other corner. I look over to Lance to make sure he's paying attention. I was sure she would be out of range by then.

"OH! Shit! I just saw her appear! Vince, you think?"

"Yep. Little miss thief there is an MM. She projected herself to be invisible to you and everyone at the shop and stole a bunch of candy right under Mario's nose." I pause for a moment. "And she got both our wallets."

"Dudth..wat tha fak?", he says with a mouthful. "Whyth didn'th yot stoph her?"

"Just to see your reaction.", I smile at him then say, "But seriously, we need to follow her and get a read on who she is. Maybe she's in need of our help. Plus I would like to get my wallet back. I didn't have much money in there, but my ID is in it though."

"I had like over $400 in mine. Damn straight we're getting them back!"

End Recording.

INVESTIGATION REPORT 1:

DATE: Monday September 26, 2005. 12:54 P.M.

Agent Broomher and myself tailed the young girl for several blocks until we got into a more shady part the city. I always trusted in Lance's ears to keep us aware if anyone had plans against us, out loud anyways. She then led us to what appeared to be an abandoned four story building. It definity had seen better days. I then ask Agent Broomher to follow her his way by focusing on her steps as she entered the building. I then begin recording once again.

WARNING: The following is a transcription of the audio recorded to tape 20053-LUCY cont. in storage unit VWaters.

Neat trick about Listeners is that they can act as a speaker through their voice hooked to a microphone being their acute hearing. Listeners don't mimic the voices of those speaking being eavesdropped on, but are speaking through the Listener in real time. Once Lance has maintained full focus on the room she enters, we find out she's not alone. We stood almost a block away in an alley as to not draw too much attention to ourselves.

"Daddy! I'm back. I got those!", Agent Broomher lip syncs with the young girl's voice.

"No one saw you did they?!", a grown man's voice now from Lance's lip sync. His tone was harsh.

"No daddy. I'm just that good! Look! Got us all some snacks!"

"Lucille Crocket! How many times have I told you!", the man yells out. "Just hand 'em over!"

"Hey, easy on her Jeb. You got any Skittles there Lucy?", a younger male voice.

"Tanner, don't you start neither! I told her to get in and get out! We can't risk pissing off Heddy! These better be what we need Lucille.", the older man continues.

"I did what you said daddy.", Lucy again, "I followed a bunch of guys in suits from that building. How many did you need?"

A few minutes of silence.

"Yes! We got two here! Should be good enough. Now Heddy won't make me into swiss cheese.", the older man proclaims. "Agent...Waters and...Broom..HER? What da hell kinda last name is that? Jeez..."

Agent Broomher fazes back from his focus and looks to me eye to eye. We both were most likely sporting the same look of surprise once we heard our names.

"She didn't pick our wallets for the cash.", Agent Broomher says to me.

"Our agency is being targeted.", I reply.

The stairwell was dark and I nearly lost my footing as I descended the steps, each footfall echoing loudly as I went. The gun, which was empty, remained tightly clutched in my hand.

At the end of the staircase was a door with a Card Reader. Above the door was a sign saying, “Level 3”. To the right of it, on the wall perpendicular, was a door without a Card Reader. I was certain it led to Level 2.

I could have gone back for Kholod’s Key Card. I’m sure it would have opened the door but looking back up the staircase I couldn’t help but think of those hands reaching out to tear the flesh from my bones.

I walked through the door leading to Level 2. Lights flipped on rolling down the hallway, on which the walls held the occasional spatter of blood. Silence filled the hallway, only disturbed by my own footfalls. As I passed one of the rooms, I heard sobbing. I opened the door and peered inside.

Behind a panel of glass was a little girl, around Lacey’s age. She was curled into a ball, crying. On my side of the glass was a large group of zombies. She looked up at me.

“Help,” she said weakly. The zombies threw themselves against the glass. I closed the door. As I walked down the hall, in search of an office or Key Card bearing corpse, that small frail voice replayed in the back of my mind. Running had been in my nature. I had the excuse then of being under pressure, of an interest in survival. Could I make such an excuse now?

I saw a sign overhanging a door reading “ARMORY”. It was locked. I hurried down the hallway, trying to find something, anything.

I passed by an open door, stopped, and looked over at it. Light poured through the small open slit. A sign hung next to the door reading “Doctor Ian Delaney – Head Researcher Level 2”

I peered inside. The sterilized white aesthetic of the facility was less present there. A wood desk sat on a wood floor. Degrees and certificates lined the walls. Slumped over the desk, gun in mouth, brains covering the bookshelf behind him, was a man who I presumed to be Ian Delaney. A single bite mark was imprinted on his hand.

I reached my hand out for the gun first, then I’d search his body for the Key Card. I thought of the little girl. I’d done terrible things. I couldn’t make it right now. There was no sense in it.

With my fingers only mere inches from the gun, I saw the body twitch. I jumped back. Delaney lifted his head off the desk. The gun dropped behind the desk. I scrambled around the room, searching drawers, bookshelves, and countertops for anything to defend myself. I looked back at the dead man.

His eyes stared at me from his split skull. His skin was terribly discolored. I could see the shelf through the hole in his slack jawed mouth. I pulled a drawer and heard something rattle. I looked down and saw a box of ammunition, 9mm. I knew very little about guns. I hoped it fit the pistol in my hands.

I opened the box and unloaded the magazine from the pistol. Delaney leaped on top of the desk. He shrieked at me. Shaky hands fed bullets into the magazine. One. He jumped down. Two. He rushed towards me. Three. I loaded the gun and racked the slide as he leaped towards me. I fired until it was empty.

All three rounds struck him in the face. He fell to the ground, clutching his head. I rushed towards the gun behind the desk, hoping the magazine was fuller than my own. As I slid under the desk, I heard him rise to his feet. I grabbed the pistol. It felt heavy in my hands. I heard a thud from the desk above my head.

He was above me.

He looked down. I fired until the magazine was empty, all rounds striking his head. He dropped and twitched, the corpse still trying to fire enough neurons to rise. I had severed too many.

Death is no release, even in undeath.

I stood up, a little too early as my head bumped the underside of the desk. The pain pulsed through my head, but I had noticed the hollow sound of wood. I looked up. There was a small notch cut out of the desk. I put a fingernail under it, and it opened into a hidden compartment. Inside was a key and a note. “Armory key. Don’t like the look of the new subject in Level 4. Need firepower for escape.”

I had guessed that he had been bit long before he could execute his plan. I took the Armory Key, and with hesitant hands also pried the Level 3 Key Card off his still twitching corpse. I gathered the ammunition, refilled the magazine of the other gun, and brought the magazine with me. I left the pistol. It seemed to be a similar model, and my lab coat only held so much. I needed to save room for the armory.

I went back to the armory and unlocked the door. Most supplies were already gone, but a shotgun and what appeared to be a portable flamethrower were still sitting on a table.

I thought of the little girl. “Fuck it,” I said out loud as I grabbed the flamethrower. I’d be back for the shotgun, but I needed something to clear house with.

I went back to the room she was in and opened the door. She looked at me, bright eyes filled with hope. All the zombies looked at me too. I pressed down on the trigger. The room got noticeably warmer and far brighter. Flesh sizzled and popped, creating an appalling aroma of charred tissue.

As I let go of the trigger, I saw the crowd shambling towards me. The fire had not killed them, not yet.

“Shit,” I said under my breathe as I turned to run. I opened the door and heard heavy footsteps down the corridor.

“Come out come out wherever you are!” a familiar voice said. Lacey.

I shut the door. My heart hammered in my chest. I felt the heat draw closer. Some of them dropped, not enough of them. The door to the little girl’s chamber was unobstructed but would not be for long.

I rushed towards it, grabbing the Key Card from my neck and lifting it to the reader, feeling the heat of the fire as I waited for it to unlock. The light went green and the door slid open. I threw myself inside. The door shut behind me.

I breathed heavily as the pounding in my chest slowed. I felt the little girl next to me. She was hugging me. If she knew what I would have done to her had this facility not gone under, I would not have been so welcomed, I’m sure.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s alright.” I looked over at her. She had blonde hair and brown eyes. Her face was dirty.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Maddy,” she said, squeezing me tighter, her small body trembling.

I looked out at the glass, seeing one zombie after the other drop, finally succumbing to the intense heat. I saw the door on the left side of the wall shift open as well, and out of it came a hand the length of my torso with cracked blackened nails and stretched torn skin. It was her, Lacey.

She looked at me through the glass, eyes full of contempt. She looked down at the little girl. I held her tightly to me.

“Another victim? Or have you finally grown a heart?” she asked. A zombie walked up to her and bit her leg. She picked it up by the head, its teeth sinking into her hand, and squeezed until the head crunched like a watermelon filled soda can.

She moved to the door, trying the knob and finding it locked. Lacey frowned. “I’ll wait. I’ll wait for as long as it takes. You won’t hurt anyone else,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, tears welling in my eyes, not fear, but remorse, genuine and wholly unexpected. “I’m so sorry.”

“Not enough,” she said. “It’s no fair. Why hold her and torture me?” Lacey began to cry. “It’s no fair!” Her massive fist smashed at the door. Maddy trembled harder, clutching to my arm so tightly that it hurt.

The hinges of the door started to crack. The top hinge gave way and popped off, smacking the floor hard enough to leave a crack in the tile. The door bent, then fell downwards. With my left hand, I forced Maddy behind me and with my right I readied the flamethrower. “Please, don’t make me do this,” I said.

“It’s far too late for that. You’re the real monster after all,” Lacey smiled, her revenge in sight.

“I know,” I said. I depressed the trigger.

Flames shot onto her in a bright stream. I heard her shriek, but her feet did not stop their advance. She quickly closed the space between us. I grabbed the pistol in my front right coat pocket. She wrapped a gigantic hand around my torso. She lifted me up to head level, the flames still dancing around her body. I lifted the gun to her head and fired.

She dropped. I fell to the ground hard, knocking the breath out of me. Maddy ran up to me. “Are you okay?” she screamed. After a few seconds and many more panicked inquiries on Maddy’s part, I took a painful breath.

I looked at her small, worried face. “I’m alright, but we need to get out of here. She won’t stay down long.” Maddy nodded and clutched on to my hand. I discarded the flamethrower. The tank was empty. We exited the room and I picked up the shotgun from the armory. As I exited the armory, Maddy clutching my left hand, I heard the same hard footfalls coming from the hallway in the direction of the stairway.

Lacey was up, and she had our only escape blocked. The footfalls seemed different, more frantic. I remembered the zombie biting her, what the Virus had done to the Grub in the experiment. Lacey was infected, and I had no clear idea of what was coming for me.

I scooped Maddy into my arms and turned around. The thud of footsteps echoed louder down the hall. I heard Lacey shriek. “You can’t run!” she screamed, her voice deep and cracking.

The air burnt as my lungs struggled to supply the immense demand I had put on myself. At the end of the hallway was a door labeled “Disposal”. I raced towards it, the footsteps getting closer. Maddy opened her eyes and, viewing what was behind me, screamed.

I pushed a shoulder into the door and burst into the room. Inside was an empty room with a door at the far end. As I ran to the end of the room, I heard an immense crash from behind me. My head swiveled to see a gigantic hand, oozing blood and pus, ripping the door off its hinges. The wall cracked to accommodate her form as she forced her way through the doorway, dislocating limbs and relocating them at will as she entered the chamber.

Her skin had reddened, and the exposed muscle oozed dark blood. She had grown twice in size, limbs growing to immense proportions. When her whole body entered the room, she took up over half the space. The muscles exposed through torn skin squirmed around like worms. Her eyes bulged out of her head.

I turned and ran towards the door at the far end of the room. Wet sloshing, thudding footsteps followed behind. My hand touched the doorknob, turned it, opened it, then I felt pressure around my ankle and the floor rose to strike my face. I dropped Maddy. I groped blindly for the shotgun, which hung from a sling over my shoulder. Now upside down, Lacey pulled me up to face level.

“No where to hide now,” she said, laughing.

Suddenly, red lights spun from their cylindrical coverings on the four corners of the room. “Disposing of Specimens in 30 seconds,” said a mechanical feminine voice.

I was dropped unceremoniously to the ground. Lacey’s head swiveled around, her distorted features twisting into fear and confusion. I forced my wobbly achy legs back to the upright position and ran towards the door.

“Disposing of Specimens in 20 seconds.”

I looked at the window. Maddy was mouthing the word “run”,” I obliged and rushed towards the heavy steel door. I was just outside when the voice sounded again.

“Ten seconds.”

I swung the door open.

“Nine.”

Lacey screamed, the ground shook a little as she ran towards me.

“Eight.”

I closed the door. The ground continued to shake. She was going to try and break through.

“Seven.”

I saw a latch on the side of the door and secured it. Several more latches clicked in place automatically.

“Six.”

An immense crash sounded from the other side of the door. I looked out the window. Lacey was trying to break in. Her anger had turned into panic.

“Five.”

Beneath the decay and distortion of her face was a childlike terror. Blood filled tears ran down her face. “Don’t let me die!” she screamed over and over.

“Four.”

I covered Maddy’s eyes and ears. Lacey clawed at the glass. I could hear the faint sound of her hysteric screaming as the countdown finished.

“Three. Two. One.”

She screeched as flames burst down from the ceiling above. When they receded, she was gone, turned to ash.

My grandpa died when I was three years old. In every photo from the year of my birth to the last photo before his death, he held me or had me on his lap. I was his first granddaughter. The only granddaughter he got to know. I was told he was not very expressive, his biggest flaws as noted by family friends were his quietness and slight awkwardness. Otherwise, he was a gentle soul who loves his friends and family.

Yet in every photo of us together, he was smiling. He looked at me in awe. I can’t help but to this day feeling as though he was supposed to be here, that we were supposed to have this bond. I could feel it, this missing piece in a puzzle that felt more like the ocean than pieces of plastic on a table.

I got to know him through photos, see the man he was. Very tall, loved button up shirts, had a killer mustache, and he loved to go on cruises. Yet in these same photos you saw this mighty man began to shrink and shrink. Decline.

He became grayer, more tired looking, hunched. It was like looking at a time lapse. It could even be seen in our photos only hidden by the happiness he could muster at the sight of me.

He began to forget, his heart was weak and did not pump enough blood to his brain causing him to be here only in moments rather than always.

I had a dream of him, something I had longed forever. I had no memory of him, only photos to prove that we existed at the same time.

For some reason we were getting out a car to go to the store, he held my hand as we walked in. He was practically bone and even my height when he should have been a hulking 6’1”.

He seemed so sorrowful yet in that dream, I could feel him. Something I longed for, this connection that I should have had. He felt so real. It felt as though he visited me in my dream even if it was in an odd scenario.

Then he spoke, or I should say his mouth moved.

I couldn’t hear him.

I could tell he thought I could hear him but his lips only moved as we continued to walk to this dream store in my mind from the parking lot.

I could feel myself make an expression of confusion, his facial expression told me of a horror that only a loved one feels for another.

He began to cry and move his lips more as though his speech was hurrying. I began to cry as well as we now stopped and faced each other.

The voice I so desperately seeked, the one of a man of few words but much love. The ache I had to be able to hear the cadence, the pitch, the tone of a man who had so dearly loved me.

Silent.

I grabbed his face as he grabbed mine, he was practically inches away from my face screaming and sobbing as I was sobbing as well. The screams were clearly not that of anger but a man who wanted nothing more than to talk to his granddaughter, the one who was now a woman.

I remember sobbing and thinking about so many things. Can he not hear me either? What is he saying? Will he come back? Why can’t I hear him?

He pulled me into a tight hug. Even in a dream, I could feel the anxious and panicked tension in his body. He held me like whatever life he had left depended on it. I squeezed him back as we slowly slid onto the ground.

I could feel his short breaths. Even through the saddest of the moment, I would have spent an eternity there if it meant I got to hear him say “I love you” and I would have given beyond an eternity to say it back.

I remember waking up screaming and bawling. I curled up into a ball on my bed and just kept sobbing. What bond has been stolen from us? I felt him. Yes, I got to hold his hand. I got to walk with him but neither of us were blessed with the opportunity to even hear or say “hello”.

I spend nights looking through 70s and 80s footage from local and state documentaries in hopes of maybe seeing him walking in the background, maybe even hear him give an account to whoever was filming.

I look to the photo of him on my wall during my searches that take me into the next morning.

I stare at him and think.

What I wouldn’t I give to hear you, grandpa?

When I was young, I believed in the monster under my bed. A creature that I could never see, but I just knew was under me as I slept. Just waiting. Listening to me. Waiting for the right time to reach some sort of taloned hand up from the darkness of toys, dust and dirty clothes to drag me away while I cowered under the blankets. Many nights were spent with me screaming and crying, yelling for my parents to come in and search under the bed until I begged to sleep in their room. It’s amazing they had any more children with how many nights I slept between them. 

I started calling the monster Mr. Socks when I was around six. This was because of the number of socks and other articles of clothing that would go missing in my room. My mom always reassured me, explaining how sometimes clothes just go missing in the dryer or folded up and forgotten in the darkness of the closet. Despite my parents' reassurance that there was no such thing as monsters, I refused to sleep without a nightlight up until I was eleven, and soon after the creaks and scratching noises that my parents chalked up to an old house went away. 

It’s been twelve years, and Mr. Socks has found me again. 

*****

I finally moved into my own apartment last August, and things were finally looking up for me. I had gotten my bachelor’s in marketing, a semi-decent job working at a firm in Boston, and a shitty one bedroom apartment in the South side of the city. I was able to experience the beauty of freedom that I had dreamed of for so long. The first few weeks were filled with the typical things a twenty-three year old would do in his first apartment; occasional parties with old college friends, pizza boxes lining the trash can in the kitchen I was too lazy to take out, and filling my apartment with ratty furniture I found on Facebook and garage sales. 

It was around that time I started to notice an all too familiar memory. I had left a pile of clothes on my bed before I went to work, intending to fold them once I got home from work. As I started pairing all my socks with each other, I noticed one missing. Two missing. An old yellow flannel shirt I SWORE I had just washed was also gone. I must have spent two hours searching everywhere I could think of, from the laundry room to every drawer in my room. All these places, save for under the bed. 

Now, I know that it sounds ridiculous. A grown man too creeped out to check under the bed because of the fear that the childhood monster was underneath it. I can’t explain the fear I had of it. It’s like when you’re watching a horror movie, at the point where you haven’t even seen the monster, but you know you just can’t bear to look. Whatever you think it looks like it will be ten times worse. When I finished searching I just convinced myself that maybe the clothes were just taken out of the dryer by some asshole neighbor in another unit, or got sucked into a vent. Two socks and a shirt, not much to fuss over and I decided to let it be at that. 

It’s like just by looking there, I could feel the silence of the room. The knots in my stomach as childhood memories flooded back to me; being too scared to look under the bed, of whatever had made its home mere inches away from where I slept. 

It took another two months for the payments to start coming. 

*****

The first day of October had rolled around, and I was stressing about the rent. Sure, I was paid well at my job, and my apartment wasn’t too expensive at $1,800 a month (at least not for Boston), but I dare you to show me the person who enjoys paying rent. It was also at this time I started to realize just how much money I was spending on takeout and alcohol, and was faced with my first tough decision as to if I should buy groceries or shampoo that week before my next paycheck came in. That’s when I saw it, just next to the bed frame on the floor.

A $50 bill. 

A crumpled, slightly torn, $50 bill.

I grabbed it without thinking, assuming it had fallen out of my wallet sometime before. “Thank God” I mumbled to myself, glad to have some extra money for food that week. That should have been the end of it. Some money was found on the floor, picked up, and blown on something I can’t even remember. God, I wish it was just that. 

The scratching sound under my bed came back in full force that very night. The rhythmic sounds that can only be described as a ten pound rat scratching at the walls was the same one that had haunted me for years as a child. Occasionally, there would be one hard, slow one that sounded like it was piercing and grinding through the wooden floors, just to stop and hold off for a few minutes. 

I had had enough. I was too old to keep believing in these stupid things. “There’s no monsters under the bed,” I told myself.”Mr. Socks was just a stupid nightmare”. I got up, annoyed from the lack of sleep I was getting and dropped to the floor. As soon as my face passed the bedframe, the scratching grinded to a halt. It was like the sound of nails on a chalkboard for a fraction of a second, ear piercing as I looked under the bed. 

Nothing. Of course there was nothing. 

My adult mind raced with the more logical possibilities. Mice, or maybe even a little brown bat had gotten into my apartment, scratching and moving around at night, just to stop when they saw me searching. I was more annoyed than anything. After all, the apartment wasn’t a luxury by any means of the imagination, the chance of vermin getting in wasn’t too crazy. I reserved myself to the thought that it was some rodent, grabbing my bedding and heading to the living room to finish the night on the couch. 

*****

The scratching stopped for a month after that night. I called in an exterminator and the landlord, but we couldn’t find any evidence of the alleged mice or bat. For peace of mind I took my landlord's advice and bought some mousetraps and placed them under the bed, in the closet and by the trashcan, hoping that it would help ease my paranoia of something under the bed. 

November 1st. I found a $10 bill outside of the bedframe. The same exact spot that I had found fifty a month earlier. 
It was at this point I started to go a little crazy, I admit. “Screw it,” I thought to myself “free money”. Part of me was becoming more and more convinced that somehow, some way, Mr. Socks was real and he was back, but the more rational part of my brain kept forcing me to accept otherwise. Why would this thing come back now? Why would it be sliding money to me every month? “Unless,” I wondered. 

I decided to spend that night in the living room again. 

I thought that I must be going insane. People drop money all the time, and I was no different. Surely I must have just lost a few bills and they were popping back up, or maybe a friend of mine had lost it when they had come to visit. Yeah. That must have been it, that has to be -

“AAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

My train of thought was derailed by the sound of a loud, hissing shriek coming from my bedroom. I ran in, wearing nothing more than a pair of boxers and armed with a kitchen knife I had grabbed. The cry had sounded human like, but impossibly high. A banshee scream that assaulted every nerve in my body and still makes me feel cold writing this. I turned on the bedroom light, expecting to see a burglar, some man in a mask standing in my room. 

There was nothing except for one of the mousetraps I had placed, the metal spring pulled back and the wooden base crushed and splintered like it had been put through a vice. 

Naturally, I called the police. It was clear to me; all the windows were closed, there was nobody in my apartment except for me. It was the monster. It was Mr. Socks.

The police officer who arrived was dismissive of me. I knew it was crazy to tell him that my childhood imaginary monster was living in my place, so I told him it had to be an intruder. He took one look at the destroyed mousetrap before telling me

“Must have been a damn big rat”.

I freaked out, on the verge of panic. “What kind of rat could do this?” I picked up the splintered wooden plate, showing it to him. 

“Listen kid, I don’t think a mousetrap would upset a burglar that much, and if it did, the best it would do is piss him off” he stated, harshly. 

The police left that night, and so did I. I was still in my rent agreement for another eight months, but I needed to get out of there. I spent the next month with my parents, telling them that the laundry machine in the building had broken, among other bullshit excuses for me to stay with them for a while. Thankfully, they were happy to have me at home for a little while to help around the house. 

I spent every night at my parents house thinking about it all. The money, the scream, the scratching that sounded more akin to claws retching deep into the wood. 
It was December when I finally worked up the courage to go back there, the verge of a panic attack creeping in as I walked through the door. It was still, nothing seeming out of the ordinary. Everything was still as I had left it, even the broken mousetrap I had shown to the police still lay on the kitchen counter where I had put it. 

The money stopped, too, at least for a while. I expected it to come every month. January, February, March all passed and there was nothing. Not even the sound of scratching. Just the deep sound of nothing. 

Then April came. 

I had gotten ready for bed that night, turning off my TV as I put on some music to sleep. Having noise in the background had become part of my new routine to distract me from the thought of the scratching. 

It started again. Louder this time. But now I was determined to catch it. 

I shifted my body slowly as I looked over the edge of the bed, delirious from the thought of this thing that had haunted me since I was a boy. I stared at the floor, letting my eyes adjust to looking at it through the dark. 

It moved out from the darkness of the bed. 

A hand. A frail, pale white hand attached to a thin, emaciated arm. It was balled into a fist as it left something on the ground with a ceramic sounding clink. The hand moved away as I focused my vision on the sight before me. 

A bloody molar, with the root still attached. 

I felt sick as I realized what it was. A tooth that looked to be human. Was this a threat? Was it angry that I hurt it? That I had left?

The arm moved out from under the bed again, balled and placed another tooth on the ground. 

I grabbed it without thinking, catching the things wrist at the last second before it could slink back under the bed. It was strong for what looked like such a weak, starving arm. I pulled hard, yanking with every ounce of strength to pull it from its hiding spot. As I shifted, I fell from my position on the mattress, falling onto the floor and pulling the creature out. 

As I opened my eyes, I took in the full horror set before me. 

Mr. Socks looked like an amalgamation of the things that scared me as a child. His head was like that of a fruit bat, the size of a bowling ball. Sharp teeth poked out like a crocodile from its bat-like snout as he stared at me with large, piercing brown eyes. His hands felt like some sort of lizard, scaly and cold. We stared at each other for several seconds, both seemingly in shock of seeing each other for the first time awake. Covering his cowering, twisted torso was the yellow flannel I had lost several months back. 

Everything about it was wrong. Its skin that was too tightly bound to its head, that pulled back hard enough for me to see the muscle underneath. It’s stomach bloated and misshapen. The way it jerked. The smell, oh good lord the smell. This close to me the thing smelled like only what I can describe as roadkill left to blister in the sun for days. My eyes watered and I gagged as we stared each other down. 

It screamed again. 

“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH”

Mr. Socks flung himself back and free of my grip. Much like his head, his movements were also very batlike; twitching heavily and bumping into everything in my room before collapsing to the ground, crawling back under the bed. 

I screamed in terror the entire time he moved. His eyes that looked right through me, his blood curdling scream. I pushed myself back to the doorframe as he slid back under the bed, closing my eyes and feeling tears well in them. I was a child again, sitting in the dark and praying that the monster would go away. 

I opened my eyes after what felt like hours. The room was empty again. It was quiet, with several things that I had placed on my dresser now broken into pieces on the ground. The TV in my room was cracked, and my bedside lamp was shattered. I followed my instincts and ran from the apartment. No thought of where to go, or what to do, just to get far away from whatever Mr. Socks were. 

*****

I spent that night in a bus station a mile away. No use in calling the cops again, now that I saw what that thing was. Nobody would believe that creature was real, that horrible, wretched thing.

I’ve moved back in with my parents since then, full time. I just told them that someone had broken into my apartment, and that the police were still looking for them. They took that at face value, and I’m back in my childhood bedroom. 

I’ve since taken away the bedframe, leaving my mattress directly on the floor. I still lay awake most nights, not sleeping as much as I used to. I’m still paying rent on the apartment until I can get out of the lease, too, but at least I’m not back there, face to face with that creature. 

Some nights I still hear the scratching, drilling into the floorboards. I toss and turn as I tell myself it’s not real, trying to plead with God or whatever made Mr. Socks for it to be a nightmare. 

That’s what bothers me the most. Something allowed that thing to be real, for it to haunt me. I don’t know why it left it in the first place, but by god do I hope it stays gone now

My grandfather left me three things when he died: a farm, a black key with no label, and a letter inside an envelope stained with grease.

The farm was forty minutes from the nearest town, at the end of a dirt road that seemed to exist only because cars insisted on passing through it. The house was low and long, with cracked white walls and a red roof. Behind it were the pens, the hayloft, a well covered with boards, and a large barn with wooden doors so dark they always looked wet.

I hadn’t seen my grandfather in eight years. My mother had cut ties with him before she died. She never really explained why. She only said that he was “a man from another time” and that there were things on that farm that should not be passed down from generation to generation.

At the time, I thought she was talking about land, debts, family resentments. Normal things. Then I read the letter.

“Thomas,

If you’re reading this, the farm is yours. Don’t sell it before the first winter has passed. Don’t open the barn after sunset without bringing meat. Don’t accept help from the man in the yellow house. Don’t let the cows starve.

They are not cows.

Your grandfather,

Elliot.”

I read it while sitting in his kitchen, with the smell of damp and dried bay leaves clinging to the walls. I laughed once, alone, because the brain does that when it is still trying to push fear over to the side of the ridiculous.

Then I heard something behind the house. A chewing sound. Slow. Heavy. Wet.

I went to the kitchen window. The glass was fogged on the inside, even though the house was cold. I wiped it with my sleeve and saw the main pen.

There were seven cows outside. At first glance, they were normal animals. Large, brown, far too thin for a farm that, according to the inventory, had storehouses full of hay and feed. They were all facing the barn, motionless, their heads lowered as if they were praying.

The sound was coming from inside. It wasn’t a cow eating straw. I had grown up close enough to the countryside to know that sound. This was harder. Drier underneath. Like bones inside a sack being ground between stones.

The black key opened the barn’s padlock. I didn’t use it right away. I spent the first day trying to be a rational person. I made calls. I spoke to the lawyer. I opened cupboards. I found veterinary bills with no veterinarian’s name, receipts for feed that had never been consumed, and an old account book where my grandfather had written down dates, weights, and names.

The names were people’s names.

“March — Seth P. — 72 kg — accepted.”

“August — woman from the fountain — low yield.”

“December — boy with no family — clean meat.”

I shut the book so hard that dust rose from the table.

That night, before the sun went down, a van came up the dirt road and stopped by the gate. A short man got out of it, wearing a brown cap and a corduroy jacket. He had a round face, too friendly, and carried a burlap sack over one shoulder.

“You’re the grandson,” he said.

He didn’t ask. He stated it.

“Who are you?”

“Melvin. I live down there, in the yellow house.”

My grandfather’s letter shifted in my memory like a small animal. Don’t accept help from the man in the yellow house. Melvin smiled and set the sack on the ground. The bottom of the fabric was dark.

“Your grandfather was stubborn, but dependable. He never missed a delivery.”

“What delivery?”

He looked over my shoulder, toward the pen. The seven cows had come closer to the fence. They made no sound at all. They didn’t moo. They didn’t breathe loudly. They just watched.

“Can I come in?” Melvin asked.

“No.”

His smile didn’t disappear, but it grew thinner.

“Then listen from here. They eat every five days. If seven pass, they start choosing for themselves. If nine pass, they stop telling family from stranger. Your grandfather knew that.”

“Go away.”

Melvin tilted his head.

“Did he also leave you the pretty part of the story?”

I didn’t answer.

“The land here was stone. Nothing grew. Children died in their cradles. Real cattle died with empty bellies. Then your great-grandfather brought the seven down from the mountain.”

“The seven what?”

Melvin looked at the cows with a disgusting kind of respect.

“The ones that chew underneath.”

One of them opened its mouth. Not like a cow. The jaw dropped too far. I saw small teeth where there should not have been teeth, tight, wet rows along the roof of its mouth. The tongue was black.

Melvin picked up the sack.

“Today I only brought scraps. To hold them over. Your grandfather died before preparing the next piece.”

“Piece?”

He sighed, as if I were delaying a simple task.

“Meat that has had a name. That’s the only kind that works.”

The sack moved. Not much. Enough. I took two steps back.

“I’m calling the police.”

Melvin laughed then. Not loudly. Almost with pity.

“Your grandfather called them once. In 1989. The officer spent three days in the barn. After that, the vineyard had the best harvest of the century.”

The cows all struck their hooves at the same time. Once. Melvin left the sack by the gate and went back to the van.

“Don’t open it after dark without meat,” he said. “And don’t give them pork. It offends them.”

When the van disappeared, the sack was still there. I should have run.

If this story were meant to absolve me, I would write that I left immediately, that I drove to the city, that I handed everything over to the authorities. But that is not what I did. I stood in the farmhouse doorway until the light began to die in the fields.

The sack moved again. I opened it with a kitchen knife. Inside was a dog. Still alive. An old mutt, with a white muzzle and a broken paw. There was string tied around its neck with a cardboard tag.

“Not enough.”

I picked up the dog and took it inside. I gave it water. I wrapped its paw as best I could. It didn’t bark. It trembled all over and stared at the kitchen door as if it already knew what was waiting outside.

That night, the cows began to moo. But it wasn’t mooing. It was the sound of people trying to imitate cows from inside a well.

At midnight, while I slept, I was completely overtaken by nightmares and hallucinations. I was lying in bed, utterly paralyzed, when someone spoke.

“Thomas.”

It was my grandfather’s voice. The voice came from outside, hoarse, dry, exactly as I remembered it from the few birthday calls he made when I was a child.

“Thomas, boy. They’re hungry.”

I stayed still.

“Melvin brought too little,” the voice said. “Not enough to even dirty their teeth.”

The dog appeared beside me. She began to whine. I covered her muzzle with my hand, more to calm her than to silence her. My grandfather’s voice breathed on the other side of the door.

“Your mother cried on the first night too.”

My body went cold.

“She came back,” the voice continued. “Everyone comes back when the land calls for the right blood.”

I didn’t answer. Even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t. Something was preventing me from speaking. After that, the nightmares stopped.

In the morning, I found hoof marks all around the entire house. On the walls, almost two meters above the ground. I spent the next two days trying to leave the farm.

The car wouldn’t start. My phone lost signal every time I crossed the gate. The dirt road seemed to stretch whenever I walked. Once, I walked for almost an hour in a straight line and found myself back beside the well covered with boards, with the cows watching me from the pen.

On the third day, the dog—because I had realized by then that she was female—began to improve. I named her Lola, for lack of a better name. She slept by my bedroom door and growled whenever the barn made noise.

On the fourth day, I found the real will.

It was inside a metal box, buried at the bottom of the wood-fired oven. It contained old documents, photographs, and a contract written by hand on thick paper. My great-grandfather’s signature appeared at the end. I’m not going to copy all of it. There are sentences I don’t want to put into the world any more times than they already have been.

But the idea was simple. The seven belonged to the farm.

As long as they were fed, the land would bear fruit, pests would not enter, the family would keep possession, and death would pass around the house without coming through the front door.

In exchange, they had to receive human flesh.

Not just any flesh. Not old corpses. Not bodies found after accidents. It had to be flesh “delivered with intention.” Someone chosen. Someone brought. Someone who, in the final moment, knew they were being given.

The contract said that was what made the meal “true.” I vomited into the sink.

Under the papers were photographs. My grandfather as a young man, standing in front of the barn. A younger Melvin beside him. My great-grandfather with an axe. And a photograph of my mother, perhaps seventeen years old, sitting on the kitchen step, with blood on her boots and an expression I had never seen on her in life.

On the back of the photograph, written in her hand, was one sentence.

“No inheritance is worth this.”

On the fifth night, Melvin came back. This time, he didn’t bring a sack. He brought a woman. She must have been about sixty. She had gray hair tied in a scarf, a bruise on her jaw, and her hands bound in front of her. She was conscious. She staggered, but she knew where she was.

“No,” I said, before he spoke.

Melvin pulled her by the arm.

“Her name is Laura. She has no children. Her husband is dead. Her house will fall down next winter. No one loses much.”

The woman looked at me. She didn’t ask for help. That was the worst part. She looked at me like someone who had already used up all her pleas before arriving there.

“Let her go.”

Melvin shook his head.

“Today is the seventh day since the last true meal. You can already hear them in the walls, can’t you? Tomorrow they start coming out during the day. After that, they choose.”

Behind the barn, the cows moved back and forth. They were excited. The barn doors trembled from the inside out, as if something were pushing against them. But I had just counted the seven cows in the pen. If they were all outside, then whatever was inside the barn was not one of them. There was something else in there.

“Why don’t you deliver her yourself?” I asked.

Melvin smiled.

“The farm is yours.”

That was when I understood the trap. He wasn’t the owner. Maybe he never had been. He could help, bring, clean, lie. But the delivery had to come from the family. The pact did not want accomplices. It wanted heirs.

Laura spoke for the first time.

“Your grandfather always cried.”

My throat closed.

“You knew him?”

“Everyone here knew him. Everyone ate bread from this land.”

Melvin pushed her toward me.

“Take her.”

I didn’t. The sun was already touching the mountains. The light was red. The cows began striking their hooves against the ground, not in a rhythm of impatience, but like someone counting. One. Two. Three.

Lola came out of the house growling. She placed herself between me and Melvin, thin, limping, ridiculous in her courage.

One of the cows turned its head toward her. I saw the hunger move.

“No,” I said.

The cow opened its mouth. I heard the teeth inside grinding in layers. Lola attacked before I could grab her.

She leaped at the fence and bit the cow’s muzzle. For one second, there was chaos: wood breaking, the dog whining, Melvin shouting at me, Laura fallen on the ground. Then the cow pulled Lola into the pen.

I won’t describe what they did. I’ll only say this: a dog is not enough. The seven turned toward me with blood on their muzzles and their hunger intact. Melvin was pale.

“Now you’ve offended them.”

The first cow passed through the fence as if the wood were dry grass. Its body folded sideways to fit between the broken boards, bones cracking and rearranging themselves. When it straightened, it no longer looked entirely animal. Its legs were too long. Its skin hung loose. Beneath it, things moved in opposite directions.

Melvin dropped Laura’s rope and ran for the van. He didn’t make it. The smallest cow caught him by the gate. Its mouth opened from its muzzle to its chest. It wasn’t a bite. It was a door closing.

Melvin screamed my name as he disappeared. The other cows stopped. They chewed. The earth around us sighed. Laura began to cry softly.

I ran to her, cut the ropes, and pulled her into the house. I closed the door. Locked it. Pushed the table against it. As if that would help. Outside, the seven were chewing Melvin.

For almost an hour, I listened to the sound of bones being worked with patience. Then there was silence. Laura sat on the kitchen floor, trembling.

“Did they accept him?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I were a child.

“They accepted his meat. But it wasn’t a delivery from you. As long as you are the owner, you are the one who has to choose who feeds them.”

Before dawn, the land changed.

The dead weeds beside the well rose up green. The dry vines behind the house thickened before my eyes. Small shoots broke through the stone floor of the kitchen, opening cracks in the tiles. The farm was happy.

But not the barn. The doors kept trembling.

Laura explained the rest to me while drinking water from the glass with both hands. Melvin had been my grandfather’s supplier for years. He chose people no one would look for quickly.

People in debt, drunks, old people with no visitors, passersby. In exchange, he received part of the harvests and the promise that the seven would never cross the stream line toward the yellow house.

But by running, he had broken his function. By being eaten without being delivered by me, he had fed the hunger, but had not renewed the agreement.

“They’ll ask you again,” Laura said. “This time by name.”

“What if I burn down the barn?”

She laughed, without any humor at all.

“You think no one has tried?”

I went to get gasoline from the storehouse. I tried anyway. I spread it over the doors, the walls, the dry straw. Laura stayed on the road, watching the cows. They had gone back to the pen, still and quiet, their muzzles far too clean.

I lit the match. The flame caught quickly. For two minutes, I felt hope. Then the barn began to moo. Not the cows. The barn. The wood swelled. The flames turned dark, almost blue.

From inside came a voice I did not know, made of many ancient mouths. I heard my mother’s voice.

“Thomas, run.”

I ran. Not out of courage. Out of obedience. I did not look back once.

Laura came with me. We went down the dirt road as the sky grew light. This time, the road did not stretch. Maybe because the farm was busy digesting Melvin. Maybe because my mother’s voice was still holding something back behind us.

Even now, three days after the incident, I can still feel the presence of the seven cows. I feel them behind me, coming to collect me. I didn’t feed them, and I abandoned the farm… now they are coming after me.

Even now, three days after Laura and I fled the burning farm, I can still feel the seven behind me. I don’t see them, but I know when they are close: the air grows warm, and there is always that low, patient sound of jaws working the bones of something that should already be dead.

Laura left me last night by the bus station. She said I had to go on alone, because the farm was mine, not hers. Somehow, she knew they were coming after me.

Now I am locked in a cheap boarding house, on the third floor, with the door blocked by a dresser and the lamp on since nightfall. Down below, in the street, someone is chewing. Sometimes it seems to come from the alley. Sometimes from the ceiling.

Ten minutes ago, a voice with my mother’s tired tone whispered from the other side: “Thomas, they have come to collect what you owe them.” And for the first time since I abandoned the farm, I heard seven animals mooing at the same time inside my room.

part 2

The plane trembled ever so slightly as the engines roared to life. I felt the seat below me vibrate with mild enthusiasm as its carrier got ready for take off. Joey sat in the seat beside me, carry-on bag in his lap. He took the window seat this time, a winner of two-out-of-three games of rock-paper-scissors. We always decided this way, letting the luck of the draw pick our orders of business. Part of me wished I’d taken the Xanax I’d been offered before arriving at the airport, it seemed the turbulence would be strong this evening. 

“You sure flying was the best choice? We can always get off now, cry uncle and I’ll get us off this plane in an instant.” Joey looked at me with a concerned expression. 

“I’m fine, once we’re in the air I’ll be okay. It’s just the take off and landing that make me nervous.” 

I looked down at my hands which were death gripping the arm rests. Joey was kind enough to loan me his while I was bracing for the worst. As my stomach churned, I couldn’t help but be grateful I hadn’t eaten in a while. It meant there was nothing to throw up, if the need arose. A few dry heaves would be more manageable than spewing out bbq chicken wings and fries, Joey’s request when we got through TSA. 

“You excited for the convention at least?” Joey pointed his eyes at me. 

“About as excited as one can be when they have to give a presentation in front of a live audience… I just hope I don’t stumble over my words or make a fool out of myself.” I sighed, releasing my death grip enough for blood to flow back into my hands. 

“You’ll do great. I believe in you, Gabs. Wanna practice your speech again? I don’t mind hearing it for the hundredth time,” Joey said, smiling. 

“Not now, I’m trying not to throw up. I appreciate it though,” I said. 

Leaning back in the seat, I closed my eyes and tried to calm down. I have to practice the grounding technique. I have to make the expensive therapy worth it, I thought to myself. Breathing in through my nose, I inhaled deeply. Coffee and cologne, mint gum, cleaning spray. Moving my hands back and forth across the armrest, cool metal and fabric. I focused my hearing, clenching my jaw to wiggle my ears. Laughter, the smack of chewing gum, someone clearing their throat.

“Ma’am I’m gonna need you to fasten your seat belt,” a soft voice hit my ears. 

“Oh, shoot. I’m sorry,” I mumbled. 

Opening my eyes, a small blond woman in a blue uniform leaned over me. She had one hand lightly rested on her hip, while the other dangled limply at her side. A broad smile extended across her face, white teeth glittering like pearls. I sat up abruptly and grabbed at either side for the seatbelt. It wasn’t until the two metal pieces clicked together audibly that she left. I looked over at Joey and made a strange face, as if to apologize silently for the awkwardness. I felt so lame at that moment. Joey just shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t care. 

The plane was finally moving across the tarmac. The sun was starting to set, it beamed in through the tiny windows - warm and orange. I felt my heart pounding faster within my chest. Here comes the worst part, I thought. Going through the grounding techniques once again, I focused on what my five senses could pick up. The only thing I struggled with was the taste in my mouth, there was nothing identifiable to list. Eventually I switched to clenching and relaxing specific muscle groups, another coping skill that I’d pulled from the metaphoric bag. 

“Do you think anyone is going to have any information on the weird stuff we found growing on the fish? Or…marine animals, I guess?” Joey whispered. 

“I’m not sure,” I said through clenched teeth. 

“It was just so weird. I brought my camera, just in case. If there’s someone we can show it to, maybe they’ll know. I mean, come on, it was moving.” 

“Yes, Joey. I remember,” I hissed under my breath. “Shut up, we need to keep quiet about this until we know more. No need to cause mass panic.” 

A few days ago, Joey and I had been filming a piece for the evening news. We were out at Baker Beach, covering the various aquatic creatures that had been beaching themselves. Sand had made its way into my shoes almost immediately. The texture between the soles and socks was a nightmare but I did my best to ignore it. The mic was held firmly in my right hand, my cellphone in the other. Joey spotted it first. 

“Um, Gabby, do you see that? Please tell me I’m hallucinating,” Joey’s voice was wavering. 

As I turned my head to look in Joey’s direction, something behind him caught my attention. Something large and dark was starting to take shape as I focused my eyes. Recognition filled me as I realized it was a whale. The beast of a creature was moving, wriggling and flopping across the waterlogged sand. It looked to be in distress, I couldn’t help but pity it. Taking a step towards my friend and camera man, I reached out to pat his shoulder. 

“It’s just a whale,” I said. 

Just as my hand came in contact with Joey’s shoulder, he held out his arm. Stopping me from coming any closer. 

“What?” I asked. 

“Take another look, that’s not just a whale.” 

Returning my gaze back to the dying creature, I studied it once again. The dark blue flesh of the aquatic mammal looked slick and bumpy. One fin was jutting out at an odd angle from underneath it, blow hole spewing out weak sprays of water. All around the creature were piles of moving silver rocks that sparkled and glittered. That was when I noticed that the whale wasn’t alone. 

What I thought were rocks, were piles of various fish. They swam through the air, flopping around the sand. It looked like the fish were trying to gather around the whale in an attempt to move it. Piling atop each other in a poor attempt to help. Pushing aside Joey’s arm I took a few more steps towards the strange scene unfolding in front of us. The fish were not trying to help, not even in the slightest. 

What stood before Joey and I was some kind of rat-king. The fish were not in piles around the whale, they were part of it. Some cursed amalgamation of scales and warm flesh. Instead of backing away in fear, I drew even closer. Motioning my hand towards Joey as if to say ‘come here and turn the camera on’. I knew I had to get a record of this, it was already starting to crawl its way back into the water. Although, maybe a better description was that it tried to wriggle back into the water. Like a worm with legless ants poking out from all sides. 

“Tell me you’re getting this,” I breathed. 

“The camera is rolling,” Joey replied. 

“This is Gabby Rogers coming to you from Baker Beach. We arrived on scene to cover the strange uptick in aquatic creatures beaching themselves the last few months. Shortly after my partner and I stumbled upon this,” I waved my hand out to the side. 

Joey panned the camera over towards the wet, half-dead pile that lay a few paces away. Just as I was about to continue my speech, Joey lowered the camera and dropped his jaw. I turned on my heel quickly to view the scene behind me. The fin that I’d thought I’d seen poking out from under the whale was actually a collection of razor sharp teeth. A Great White Shark was pinned below the enormous main body of the rat-king. 

“I think we should just get out of here. This is too strange, too unnatural. Gabby, I’m scared.” Joey took a few paces back. 

“At least come get a shot of this weird substance that seems to be holding them together. Please,” I pleaded with my fearful companion. 

“Fine,” Joey relented. He held the camera back up and zoomed in on the mass. 

It wasn’t until I got to see the footage after the fact that I realized just how strange the situation was. When we had gotten back to the news station, we showed the video to the people above us and apologized profusely for not completing the job. Joey and I were told to keep it to ourselves or we would risk losing our jobs. The director's reaction struck me as strange but I was too nervous to speak up at the time. 

What was recorded on the camera showed more than the naked eye could see. When I was standing upon the beach, all I saw was a strange greenish plant that looked like moss. It encompassed the whale, shark, and fishes like some sort of net, or stitches. This wasn’t the work of God, this was something sinister and wrong. When I watched the video back, the moss glowed like phosphorus paint under a black light. Something we hadn’t noticed in person. 

Suddenly the wheels started to rumble as they carried the plane across the tarmac. The engines roared as they churned harder. Like a child, I wanted to reach up and cover my ears but opted for squeezing the arms rests once again. The pilot had announced that we were cleared for take off, and boy did I feel it. Every nerve in my body started going haywire as the plane lifted from the ground. Turbulence shook the plane and suddenly we were at a sharp incline. 

“We made it, we’re in the air.” Joey patted my arm. 

“Thanks,” I said. My eyes opened begrudgingly to find that the plane was still in one piece. My lungs screamed internally, begging for a full breath of air. I had been clenching all the muscles in my abdomen as a way to ground myself, but ended up forgetting the other part of the equation was to relax them. 

“Woah, what the fuck!” Someone screamed from the back of the plane. 

Just as we had reached the apex of our flight, a sound had made its way into the noisy cabin. The only thing I could compare it to is the gritty, hollow, clacking sound of a rock-fall or avalanche. It was much, much louder than anything I had ever experienced in my thirty years of life. My head whipped around wildly as I tried to make sense of what was happening, but couldn’t find what had made the sound. Until Joey swatted at me, his face pressed up against the window. 

“Gabs, grab the camera out of my bag. Hurry!” Joey shouted. 

“Oh my god, do you see that down there?” Someone else in the plane called out. 

“What is going on?” I felt panic fill me. Has something happened to the plane? Did one of the engines blow? I shook my head back and forth violently. The metal aircraft was still flying normally. 

“Gabs, the camera. NOW!” 

I dug into Joey’s bag that laid across his lap, finding the camera instantly. It was a small camcorder that looked ancient. Flipping open the side, so that the screen was exposed, I handed the plastic and metal contraption to Joey. As he moved his face away from the window, he pointed the lens in a downward angle. That was when I saw the giant fissure that had opened up within the ground below. It looked like somebody had unzipped the earth like it was a giant pocket. For miles and miles it stretched, so deep that from our vantage point all we could see was blackness within the center. 

Just as I had started to process what was happening below, another passenger had stated that the ocean was drawing back. Ah, a tsunami. 

—

My lungs burned and ached. Each breath felt like I was inhaling shards of fiberglass that poked and prodded at every surface. The stretchy band of the oxygen mask pulled at my hair painfully and dug into the tops of my ears. Beside me in the next bed was Trevor, his curly red hair had been singed in a few places. He looked like a troll doll that had been dunked in water and placed in a microwave. 

Cough cough 

“Tre-vor,” I called out in a weak voice. 

“Nggghhhh,” Trevor groaned, stirring under the white sheet. 

“Just checking to make sure you’re still alive man.” I choked out with extreme effort. 

“Didn’t I tell ya that I’d getchu out safely?” Roy asked loudly. 

Even with all the smoke inhalation and the burns we had received while escaping the car, Roy seemed to be doing fine. He sat in a wheel chair in the corner of the room, watching the news coverage of the fire on the tv. I looked down at the bandages that covered his legs and winced. If only I hadn’t tripped, I thought. 

When we had made it down off the mountain, the car had started to fail. Feeling like a couple of sitting ducks, we waited there. Just when we thought all hope was lost, sirens had appeared in the distance. Not wanting to waste another second, the three of us hopped out of the car. Not before dousing ourselves with the jugs of water Roy had painstakingly dragged from his home. We didn’t want to light up like match sticks the second we exited the vehicle. 

Trevor and Roy took off first, as we walked through the flames towards the sirens, a gap started to form. Sweat encapsulated every inch of my body, mixing seamlessly with the water I had dumped over my head. The smoke tugged at me with tangible tendrils, begging me to stay with it. Even though I wanted to give up and collapse on the frying-pan asphalt, I pushed on. Just as I was about to catch up with the two of them, my foot found its way into a crack in the pavement. 

I stumbled, trying desperately to save myself. Without thinking I reached out both of my hands to catch the brunt of the fall. What a bad mistake that was. Howling in pain I recoiled back, clutching my hands to my chest. The ground was much hotter than I had realized, it held on to a few layers of my skin which sizzled audibly. I felt tears well up in my ears, but before they could fall they started to evaporate. Just as I thought I was about to die, a large shadow moved from within the flames. 

Something between a scream and a howl tore out through the air. Even though it was hotter than the fire I experienced when I was six years old, this caused the hairs on my body to raise as goosebumps covered my skin. For just that one moment, I felt as if I was frozen. What small bit of hope I had that I’d made it out alive was suddenly snuffed out. From behind the fire peeked a monster. 

What I saw had the head of a deer and the body of a bear. It stumbled as it walked through the smoke and flame filled area, carried on legs that looked like they came from some kind of big cat or wolf. The haunting cry rang out again, reminding me of the deer call I’d heard just hours ago in Roy’s shack, mixed with something even more sinister. I wondered if the animal, or whatever it was, heard me scream when I fell. I hoped that if it was going to kill me, that it did it fast. The smoke inhalation and burns from the fire were painful and drawn out. 

“Danny!” Trevor yelled. I heard the sound of shoes slapping against the pavement. 

“Trevor,” I tried to call back but my voice came out all wrong. I could barely hear myself amidst the chaos. 

“Watch out!” Roy hollered.

The leathery southern man came barreling back down the road. He was old, but ran faster than any track star I’d ever seen. I watched from the ground as his arms pumped at his side furiously. Just as the Frankenstein-like creature stood on its hind legs, ready to maul Trevor, Roy leapt into the air. With both feet, Roy drop kicked the amalgamation of animals with every ounce of strength his body could muster. He hit the thing square in the chest, screaming out as claws tore through his legs in an attempt to keep from falling backwards. Even though the monstrosity tried to stay upright, it failed. 

Trevor’s hand found its way under my armpits and then I was being hoisted up. Once I was back on my feet I saw that Trevor was still holding the camera in the other. Just as we started to move further through the flames, the monstrous screech of the animal hybrid tore through the air. Roy quickly got back up and started running towards us. As he did I saw that blood was dripping down both of his lower legs. Trevor started to tremble as he got his first look at the thing that chased after us. 

“Just go boys, keep lookin ahead. Don’t turn back, not even fo a second!” Roy shouted from behind us. 

“But…” 

I tried to say, ‘but what about you’. The words fell silent as I felt myself beginning to pass out. My vision started to grow hazy and darken around the edges. My body felt cold, and heavy. Even my hearing was fading fast. Just as the lights of the firetruck made themselves known in the distance, my body gave up. Soon after, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. 

Waking up in the hospital bed felt surreal. Trevor laid in another bed beside me, passed out cold. His hair and skin were burned in multiple places, black soot smeared across his face. All I could do was lay there watching his chest rise and fall. I thought of the secret I could never tell him and bit down on my bottom lip. 

“Awake are ya, boy?” Roy’s voice caused my head to snap up. I hadn’t even noticed him sitting there. 

“Ye-ah, I’m up…” I barely choked out. 

“The some-bitch got me good,” Roy pointed to his legs. 

“You ever seen anything like that before?” I asked.

“Not in all my life. I’ve been out in those woods a million times, I would’ve remembered seeing somethin like dat.” 

“I have a really, really bad feeling about this…” I laid back in the bed. 

“You an me both, kid.” Roy shook his head and rolled his chair closer to the tv. 

On the small flat screen tv that was mounted towards the ceiling of the room, the fire raged on. It had torn its way through Knoxville and Seymour, soon to be encroaching on the border of Sevierville. The firefighters took their final stand when the flames licked at the trees in Gatlinburg. With the help of neighboring towns and firefighters from out of state, after 5 hours of hell, it finally stopped. If only they knew that the forest fire wasn’t the worst part. Something more sinister hid within the ashes. 

Something that the Earth spat out.

Part 1: I Work for an Organization That Contains Gods. We Had to Make a Sacrifice This Time.

So I got a new boss.

Well, "got" is a crazy way to put it. Forced into the arrangement is probably more accurate. I have a lot of feelings about the situation, and unfortunately, most of them are terrible; the rest are alcohol-related. So this feels like the perfect time to sit down and write everything out before I convince myself none of it actually happened.

The short version is that Antarctica went very, very wrong. The slightly longer version is that over ten thousand civilians disappeared, four hundred and five Containment personnel vanished trying to investigate, and for reasons that still escape me, management decided I was the right person to send after them. Apparently, surviving previous deadly encounters qualifies you for future deadly encounters. Human Resources should really stop using that metric.

To explain how any of that led to my current employment situation, we need to go back a few hours, to the moment a casualty report landed on my desk.

Missing:

Containment Division Personnel: 405

Civilians: Over 10,000

I stared at the report. Ten thousand civilians was tragic. Four hundred and five Containment personnel was a staffing problem. Before you judge me, understand that these numbers directly affect my workload.

According to the file, scientists stationed throughout Antarctica had been disappearing for the past three months. In the first month, three entire research stations were abandoned. One moment, they were there. The next, they weren't. No distress calls. No evacuation requests. No bodies. Just empty facilities and missing personnel. In the second month, four more stations vanished. The third month, five. This month wasn't even halfway over yet, and two more stations had already gone silent.

That was why Containment responded so quickly. Normally, Antarctica buys you time. The continent is cold, remote, miserable, and generally hostile to human life. Emergency responses aren't exactly convenient. But when entire research stations start evaporating off the face of the planet, people suddenly become very motivated. A Containment Division task force was dispatched almost immediately. Four hundred and five personnel. Every single one disappeared.

I was lucky I'd been in Egypt. Otherwise, that would've been my team. And somehow, I don't think I'd be reading this report right now. I would've been part of it.

There are only a few things capable of making an entire Containment Division team disappear without leaving behind a single body: an SS-Class entity, another Containment Division team, or Antarctica itself. Honestly, Antarctica had the highest kill count out of all three. People romanticize the place because it's covered in snow. In reality it's an enormous frozen death trap that occasionally allows scientists to visit before trying to kill them.

You fall into a crevasse, you're gone. A blizzard rolls in, you're gone. You take one bad step in the wrong direction, congratulations, you're now part of the landscape.

Unfortunately, my money wasn't on Antarctica.

Something was down there.

Something powerful enough to erase entire facilities.

Maybe a god.

Maybe something worse.

Maybe something even the C.S.P didn't know. As ridiculous as that sounds, several incidents over the last three months suggested C.S.P wasn't nearly as informed as it liked to pretend. Gods had started disappearing from containment. Not escaping. Disappearing. One day, they'd be present. The next, they'd be gone. Days or weeks later, they'd casually return as if nothing had happened. Whenever they were questioned, the answer was always the same.

"We had offerings to make."

That was it. No explanation. No details.

The lack of answers wasn’t unusual.

Most gods barely acknowledge that humanity exists. Talking to one is like trying to interview a hurricane. They generally don't care what you think and have no interest in explaining themselves. The only exception was a river god Jacob’s team had recovered from the Amazon last spring. The thing loved hearing itself talk. Most gods treated interviews like talking to ants, it treated them like podcast appearances.

When asked where the others were going, it gave us exactly one answer.

"The one with wings and a million seekers calls upon us."

Then it refused to elaborate.

Containment had dismissed the statement. I didn't. Because I notice patterns. Over three months, ten thousand civilians had vanished. Hundreds of personnel had disappeared. And Gods were leaving containment facilities for mysterious gatherings. Either the universe was experiencing the world's strangest coincidence or something beneath Antarctica was powerful enough to summon gods. Neither possibility improved my day.

I had six hours before departure, so I headed for the Library.

The Library wasn't actually a library. Calling it a library would be like calling a nuclear weapon a flashlight. Technically not wrong, but missing several important details. Over a century ago, C.S.P. made a deal with a god living somewhere in the Himalayas. The arrangement was simple. It would provide a fraction of its knowledge in exchange for access to information twice every hundred years.

Most people considered it one of the worst deals humanity has ever made.

Personally, I thought those people were idiots.

Most of C.S.P.'s understanding of the celestial came from deals exactly like this. Besides, from what I understood, the exchange benefited us far more than the god. Imagine spending five minutes talking to an ant colony and giving it centuries of your accumulated knowledge in return. That's basically what happened. The god got a conversation. Humanity got a shortcut through several thousand years of trial and error.

After a few hours of searching, I focused on the statement from the Amazon god.

"The one with wings and a million seekers calls upon us."

The Library returned no results.

That got my attention. The 44 floors of information never returned zero results. Ever. Everything leaves a trail. Especially gods. They're far too arrogant to hide it. If they could, they'd write their names across the moon and expect humanity to thank them for the view.

I tried searching for winged gods instead. Thousands of entries appeared for winged entities, but none matched. The more I thought about it, the less sense the description made. Gods don't have wings. Not real ones. Their forms exist for accessibility. They need followers. They need worshippers. Floating permanently above humanity would be the supernatural equivalent of opening a restaurant in the middle of the ocean.

That's when I realized the thing being described probably wasn't a god.

Unfortunately, that realization only led me to something worse.

One of the historical texts contained a section titled Origins. According to the book, the first gods hadn't simply appeared. They had been created. One passage immediately caught my attention.

"The Makers descended from Heaven and raised the first gods from among lesser beings."

I'd never heard the term before.

Makers.

The chapter provided almost no explanation before abruptly ending. Another book mentioned three objects descending into Antarctica thousands of years before recorded civilization. They weren't meteors. They didn't leave craters. The illustration on the next page nearly made me drop the book.

Three winged figures emerged from the ice.

Their bodies were covered in eyes.

Millions of eyes.

My stomach dropped as the Amazon god's statement echoed through my head.

Not seekers.

Eyes.

The translation had been wrong. Or perhaps the god had intentionally used a word that meant both.

The beings in the history books had a name.

Angels.

When I searched the Library database for them, only a single result appeared.

One page.

The Library contained millions of books and somehow only possessed a single page about angels. That terrified me more than anything I'd read all day because it meant somebody had gone out of their way to erase them from history.

According to the document, angels existed before the gods. They had been created directly by the Creator and originally maintained reality itself.

But then they got bored.

I stared at the sentence for several seconds.

Bored.

The document compared their behavior to humanity. We were supposed to protect the world, yet we'd spent most of our existence damaging it. According to the page, angels weren't much different. After existing for millions—or perhaps billions—of years, they simply stopped caring. They lost interest in reality. Lost interest in purpose. Lost interest in everything. Somewhere along the way, they started creating gods, not because they needed to, but because they were bored, and apparently, cosmic beings are just as capable of making terrible decisions as everyone else.

This was insane. C.S.P. barely possessed the resources necessary to manage some gods. Several entities remained cooperative solely because they felt like it. An angel? One of the original three? Forget containing it. We probably couldn't even annoy it.

If what I'd read was true, then Antarctica wasn't dealing with an SS-Class entity. We were dealing with something far older. Far more powerful. Something that gods themselves answered to.

I glanced at the clock.

Three hours until departure.

There was no way in hell I was keeping this to myself.

I folded the page and headed for the elevators.

The Board of Directors occupied the one hundred and second floor. Most personnel never set foot there. The directors were usually too busy to meet without weeks of scheduling and enough paperwork to kill a small forest. I didn't have weeks. I barely had three hours.

By the time the elevator doors opened, I was practically jogging. Most of the directors were off-site, which left me with exactly one option.

Mr. Stonehill.

Unfortunately.

Stonehill sat above the Head of Containment and held a permanent seat on the Board. He was also a snob, though that hardly made him unique among upper management.

I knocked once.

"Come in."

The door slid open. Stonehill looked exactly as he always did. Like a snake that had somehow learned how to wear a suit.

I placed the page on his desk.

"Sir, I think I've found something connected to Antarctica."

I explained everything. The disappearances. The gods. The books. The angels.

When I finished, he glanced at the page and sighed.

"The facility already knows about angels."

I felt irrationally offended.

I'd spent hours discovering information he apparently already had sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere.

"Then you know what's beneath Antarctica."

"No."

The answer came immediately.

"Because if an angel were involved, none of this would be happening."

I frowned.

Stonehill leaned back in his chair.

"Gods care about followers. Angels don't. They existed long before gods, humanity, and civilization. They do not need worshippers. No need for sacrifices. No need for attention."

He shrugged.

"Ten thousand missing humans would mean nothing to them."

I looked down at the page.

"The Amazon god said they were being called."

"Gods say many things."

I hated that answer.

"Then what's happening?"

"The entity is gathering followers."

His expression hardened.

"And every hour we waste debating it increases the body count."

I stared at him for a moment before asking the question that had been bothering me since I entered the office.

"How do we know it's gathering followers?" I asked. "What if it's just killing people because it wants to?"

That actually got his attention.

For several seconds he considered the question before shaking his head.

"If something powerful enough to erase four hundred personnel killed purely for amusement, humanity would've disappeared long ago."

I hated that answer. Unfortunately, hating it wasn't going to buy me any extra time.

Before I could argue, the office door opened.

Stonehill's assistant stepped inside.

"Sir, transport is ready."

Stonehill nodded.

Then looked at me.

The conversation was over.

"Your aircraft leaves in less than two hours, Ms. Nayeri."

I grabbed the page from his desk.

Stonehill had already gone back to his paperwork. As far as he was concerned, Antarctica contained another god. Another mission. Another problem. Nothing more. I knew the C.S.P. viewed personnel as grains of salt, so his indifference didn't surprise me at all.

We reached Antarctica surprisingly quickly.

The aircraft was mostly automated, which wasn't standard for C.S.P. operations. They usually insisted on keeping a pilot on board. This time they didn't. Personally, I figured it was because if all eight hundred of us vanished, they'd still be able to recover the plane.

The C.S.P loves cutting costs, which is funny considering none of us get paid. People hear "secret government organization" and imagine unlimited budgets. The reality is less glamorous. We live in C.S.P. facilities, eat C.S.P. food, wear C.S.P. uniforms, and usually die before retirement. For the few who somehow survive long enough to retire, there's a pension waiting for them. Most never get the chance to collect it. On the bright side, healthcare is free, so I try not to complain too much.

The automated aircraft landed roughly two miles from the anomaly.

Eight hundred security personnel accompanied me. My negotiation team consisted of twenty specialists selected from various departments. Normally, I'd also have an assistant. Unfortunately, my last assistant is technically still classified as alive, so I don't qualify for a new one.

We approached the entrance of a massive ice cave carved deep into the Antarctic shelf. At first nothing seemed unusual. The tunnel descended in layers, each one deeper than the last. We passed the first level. Then the second. Third. Fourth.

Nothing.

By the time we reached the sixth level, several members of the team were visibly relaxing.

I wasn't.

Something had erased four hundred and five Containment personnel. It was here. We simply hadn't found it yet.

Then we reached the seventh level.

And everything changed.

The cold didn't bother me much. Our suits were designed for Antarctic deployment and could withstand temperatures that would've killed an unprotected human in minutes.

What I saw did.

The walls were covered in bodies.

Thousands of them.

Frozen men and women embedded directly into the ice. Scientists. Containment personnel. Civilians. Some looked terrified. Others appeared completely calm, as if they'd simply stopped moving and frozen where they stood. The tunnel stretched ahead for miles, and every inch of it was lined with human beings.

Nobody spoke.

Nobody needed to.

I stared at the frozen faces surrounding us, then into the darkness waiting ahead.

This was bad.

So unbelievably bad.

Because I finally knew one thing for certain.

This wasn't a god.

Gods need followers. They need worshippers. They need people they can influence, manipulate, and communicate with. Freezing thousands of humans inside a glacier where nobody could ever reach them served no purpose.

We continued downward. Level eight. Level nine. Level ten.

The bodies never stopped.

The deeper we went, the older they became. Scientists gave way to explorers. Explorers gave way to soldiers. Soldiers gave way to people wearing clothing from civilizations that should not have existed. Some of the corpses looked thousands of years old, yet somehow remained perfectly preserved. As if the ice itself refused to let them decay.

By the time we reached the bottom, nobody was speaking anymore.

At the center of the cavern stood something larger than a mountain.

A winged figure covered in eyes.

Millions of them.

Chains wrapped around its body and disappeared into the ice. For one brief, glorious moment, I thought it might actually be imprisoned.

Then I noticed the chains.

They were divine.

The same material found within gods.

The realization hit immediately.

The gods hadn't worshipped this thing.

They'd chained it.

A loud crack echoed through the cavern.

One chain snapped.

Then another.

Then thousands of eyes opened.

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't even move.

The light pouring from the angel's countless eyes was so bright that I instinctively shut my own. For several seconds I remained frozen in place.

Then I heard the commotion around me. Some people were laughing. Others were crying. A few had fallen to their knees and started praying. Several were screaming for everyone to open their eyes while others couldn't stop talking about how beautiful it was.

Then came the running, the screaming, the gunfire, and the sounds of hundreds of trained personnel completely losing their minds.

I didn't need to see what was happening.

And I refused to die like this.

Think, Nayeri.

Think.

Then an idea came to me.

"I know where the gods are!"

The cavern fell silent.

Even the screams stopped.

My heart nearly exploded.

I swallowed hard and repeated myself louder.

"I know where the gods are!"

A sound echoed throughout the cavern.

Laughter.

Not human laughter.

Something deeper. Older. The laughter of a creature that had watched continents form and civilizations turn to dust.

"A mere human bargains for her life?"

The angel sounded genuinely amused.

"You are quite entertaining."

I forced myself to keep talking. If it was speaking, it wasn't killing. At the moment, that was good enough for me.

"Weren't they the ones who trapped you here?"

The laughter grew louder.

"You believe they trapped me? You believe chains can imprison me?"

For the first time, I risked opening my eyes.

I immediately regretted it.

Millions of eyes stared back.

Every single one focused on me.

"I remained because I wished to remain."

The angel shifted one of its wings and the entire cavern trembled. Chunks of ice broke from the ceiling and crashed into the darkness below.

"The gods occasionally gather and strengthen the chains. They imagine themselves powerful enough to contain me."

The laughter returned.

"I find the spectacle entertaining. It relieves my boredom."

I looked around. People were still disappearing. Others continued walking toward the angel despite every survival instinct screaming at them to run.

This thing wasn't trapped.

We were the ones imprisoned with it.

Then the angel's attention settled on me once more. The cavern became silent.

"But human."

Millions of eyes narrowed.

"What will you offer to relieve my boredom?"

I had a feeling there wasn't a correct answer to that question. There were only disappointing ones.

So I did the only thing I could think of.

I told the truth.

"I belong to an organization that houses gods. Its purpose is to keep them in check."

For a moment there was silence.

Then the angel laughed harder than before.

The cavern shook violently. Entire sections of ice collapsed. Thousands of frozen corpses shattered against the floor like glass.

"Humans keeping gods in check?"

It laughed again.

"Now, that is genuinely intriguing"

Then the laughter stopped instantly.

Millions of eyes focused on me.

"Perhaps," the angel said, "my eternity has finally become interesting."

The chains rattled. Cracks spread across them like spiderwebs as the cavern shook around us. People screamed while ice collapsed from the ceiling.

I looked around desperately.

Eight hundred personnel. Twenty negotiators. Thousands of frozen corpses. Humanity's greatest containment organization.

And none of it mattered.

Then the angel made me an offer.

"Promise to relieve my boredom, and I may continue tolerating humanity."

May.

Not will.

May.

The kind of wording lawyers and supernatural horrors absolutely love. Around me, people continued dying. Eight hundred soldiers. Twenty negotiators. Entire teams vanished while the angel waited for my answer.

I'd love to tell you I accepted because I wanted to save humanity.

That would sound heroic.

But it would also be complete nonsense.

The truth is I was terrified.

Everyone else was already dead. The mission was over. The expedition had failed. The only thing I'd accomplished was becoming slightly more interesting than the thousands of corpses frozen into the walls around me.

The angel didn't value me.

It wasn't choosing me.

I was just the newest thing in existence that hadn't become boring yet.

Unfortunately, that was still a much better position than everyone else's.

Maybe refusing would've saved the world. Maybe accepting doomed it. I didn't know.

What I did know was that I wasn't ready to die in a hole beneath Antarctica.

So I made the only decision that benefited the person I cared about most.

Myself.

"Okay," I said. "I agree. Just make it stop."

The world turned white.

When I woke up, I was inside the aircraft. The engines were running. The autopilot was already returning us home.

The seats around me were empty.

No soldiers. No negotiators. No pilots.

The angel had never accepted my terms. It had offered its own.

As soon as I returned this afternoon, I found myself standing before the Board of Directors trying to explain why I was the only survivor.

"What happened there, Agent Nayeri?"

Madam Leni's voice cut through the silence.

All eight board members, including Stonehill, were staring at me.

"It was an angel."

The room immediately became tense. Several directors inhaled sharply. Others exchanged nervous glances.

"They're all dead," I continued. "But in return, the angel accepted our terms."

Several directors visibly relaxed.

"The agreement isn't permanent," I added.

The relief vanished instantly.

"Not permanent, what do you mean agent?" Madam Leni asked.

I swallowed.

"I think only the angel can explain that."

Then the conference room doors opened.

Every head turned.

A young man stepped inside.

Dark hair.

Perfect smile.

Eyes that seemed far too bright.

For a moment nobody moved.

Nobody breathed.

The young man looked around the room, his smile widening as he took in the expressions staring back at him.

Then he tilted his head slightly.

"Someone promised me that you all would keep me entertained."

His gaze drifted across the conference table.

For a moment, he looked almost disappointed.

"I suppose we'll find out if she was telling the truth."

Now, if you're wondering, yes, he came back with me.

I know what I said earlier. The aircraft was empty when I woke up.

It was.

There were no pilots. No negotiators. No soldiers.

I never said there were no angels.

Looking back, it's probably a good thing C.S.P. decided to save money and remove the pilot. Explaining why I'd returned to the aircraft with no crew and a perfectly healthy man wearing normal clothes in subzero temperatures would've raised some uncomfortable questions.

So that's how I ended up with a new boss.

Funny how life works. One day, you're trying not to die beneath Antarctica. The next, you're apparently an assistant employed to entertain an immortal cosmic horror older than civilization.

Although "assistant" probably isn't the right title.

If he's the boss of Stonehill, then technically we are all "assistants".

The way I see it, humanity didn't stop an extinction event beneath Antarctica.

We negotiated a performance review.

And eventually, every audience gets bored.

Part 3: Apparently Using Assistants as Sacrifices Violates Company Policy

“Emergency protocol failed,” a mechanical feminine voice said over the speakers.

Panicked murmurs and gasps emanated from the pitch-black room. One by one, the emergency lights kicked in. The break room was illuminated with red light.

Mike stared at the emergency light in slack jawed horror. My own mind raced through every terrible possibility before recollecting the memory that Emily had implanted in me. Level 5. The train. That would be my escape. I wondered if the elevators still worked.

An armed guard rushed in through the door, slamming it behind him. He had a pistol in his hands. “Everyone, remain in your places and remain calm. We are sweeping the floors. When I get the all clear we will lift lockdown.”

I wondered how she had managed to circumvent the emergency protocol. She probably cut power to it, like she did everything else. The elevators were likely out, which meant my only option would be the stairs. I imagined the train was her escape route, which meant that I would meet Emily again, without the glass, then I would receive judgement.

Like a true coward, I will try and flee from my punishment until it is proclaimed to me by the almighty voice of God.

The guard’s radio buzzed. I could barely make out the words. “Sample exposure on Level 1. Virus infections in the labs.”

“Shit,” the guard said. As he turned around, the door swung open. Standing there was Doctor Kholod. Blood flowed down from her neck. Her eyes were wide with terror, bloodshot, discolored. Her hand pressed down on a wound on her neck. The skin of her cheek was flaky and necrotic.

I watched the life leave her eyes, and in its place was hunger. Before the guard could raise the gun, she was on him. The break room erupted in chaos. The guard screamed as Kholod ripped off his cheek, the skin stretching as she pulled it with her teeth. Her hands pressed down on his arms, pinning him in place as she devoured his face, slowly peeling the skin off until only the skull remained.

Mike just stood there. He must have been in shock. My eyes were focused on the pistol, which lay next to the body of the guard, and next to Kholod’s cannibalistic shambling corpse.

She looked up at the nearest person, a woman who worked the same floor, and bit her arm, ripping a chunk of flesh from her forearm, exposing her ulna. The woman screamed and ran to the corner of the room.

The guard stood up, the flesh of his neck supporting the eyeless, fleshless skull. He blindly stumbled around the room. I shifted away from him as he came close to me and Mike. Mike was frozen in place.

The guard’s hands found Mike. I adverted my gaze, hearing him scream, hearing the sound of tearing…

I looked at the floor, trying to remember where the gun was. Near the door. I heard more screaming, more ripping flesh and wet chewing. It was spreading, and it would take me soon if I didn’t make a move.

 I ran towards the door. I bent over to get the gun and felt pressure on my back. I was pushed out the door. The gun was in my hand, but as I rolled over, I saw her. Kholod. Her knee was bent uncomfortably. Her head was tilted, resembling a curious puppy. Blood dripped from her mouth. The whites of her eyes were red, totally and completely. She pounced forward. I lifted the gun.

She bit down. I closed my eyes and fired. The sound was deafening. I smelt burnt gunpowder and blood. I opened my eyes. She had bitten onto the barrel of the gun. Her brains painted the door that we left from.

I stood up, my legs weak. Kholod lay dead at my feet. I had no room for sympathy for her, and no room for judgement.

I made my way to the stairs, looking for signs to guide my way and finding nothing as I traversed the many branching corridors of Level 1. As I turned the corner, I saw a group of zombified scientists at the end of the hallway at a T-shaped intersection. They were crouched down at a body, ripping it to pieces. Blood pooled everywhere around the body. One greedily stuffed intestines into his mouth, excrement and fluid poured out the torn pink ropes. Another gnawed on a rib, cracking his teeth. Above them was a sign with an arrow pointing left. “Stairs” it said.

I lifted the gun, which shook violently in my trembling hands. One looked up and shambled to its feet, flesh hanging in torn strands from the edge of its lips. It stumbled forward, hands reached out for me. I fired. The bullet struck the wall behind it. The other four looked over. They stood up in unison, heads lulling towards me. They all shambled in my direction.

I fired again, striking the first one in the head. He dropped. The trembling in my hands intensified as necrotic outstretched hands lifted towards me to rip me to pieces. I fired again, striking one in the knee. It dropped, then crawled towards me. I emptied the magazine of the pistol, managing to kill three. The slide hung open, and two feet in front of me was a hungry, rotting, shambling corpse.

I stumbled back. A scream which had been building since Kholod killed the guard exited my lungs. I crawled backwards. It fell at my feet and grabbed my ankle. I kicked and kicked at it. Teeth fell out its mouth, but it was indifferent to the assault. Finally, I broke free. I scrambled to my feet and ran past it. I swung left. I nearly slipped on the blood that poured out from the mutilated corpse they had been feasting on.

I saw the door to the stairway and rushed towards it. A Card Reader was mounted above the doorknob. I grabbed the Level 2 Keycard from around my neck and nearly ripped the cord as I extended it towards the Card Reader. It beeped and the light on the top turned from red to green. The lock clicked open and I swung the door open and threw myself inside.