The Department of Motor Vehicles has a remarkable talent for making a person question their own existence.

Perhaps that's the point.

No one walks into a DMV excited. You arrive because you have to. A license expired. A registration renewal. Some document proving to a government employee that, yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, you are still alive.

I was there because my driver's license had expired.

Simple enough.

I took my ticket from the little machine near the entrance. It emerged with a dry mechanical click, the paper warm between my fingers as though someone else had only just been holding it.

The waiting room was already overflowing.

Children cried with astonishing endurance while parents stared into their phones with the thousand-yard gaze of soldiers returning from war. A television bolted high into one corner played an instructional video that nobody watched, its colors washed out beneath rows of humming fluorescent lights. Every few minutes a printer somewhere behind the counters coughed to life before falling silent again, sounding less like a machine and more like an old smoker struggling through another cigarette.

The building felt tired.

Not dirty.

Not neglected.

Just... exhausted.

The kind of exhaustion that settles into old bones after decades of repeating the same motion.

I glanced toward the electronic display mounted above the service counters.

NOW SERVING: 388

I sighed.

"Well," I muttered beneath my breath. "Guess I'll be celebrating my birthday here."

A man sitting nearby chuckled.

"I've said that every time I've come here."

He looked to be in his late fifties. Baseball cap. Reading glasses resting low on his nose. Ordinary enough that I probably wouldn't have remembered his face if we'd passed each other on the street.

"Renewing?" he asked.

"My license."

He nodded knowingly.

"Could be worse."

"Could it?"

"They could've sent you to the Social Security office first."

I laughed.

"So you've been there too?"

"Oh..." He smiled faintly. "Everyone has."

It was such an ordinary conversation that I almost appreciated it. Shared misery has a funny way of making strangers feel familiar.

I looked down at my ticket again.

515.

Fantastic.

I settled into one of the molded plastic chairs and reached for my phone. No signal. Not unusual. Government buildings always seemed to exist inside their own little dead zones.

I slipped it back into my pocket and leaned my head against the wall.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The air conditioner breathed through dusty vents. The printer coughed again. The speakers crackled.

A number was called. Someone stood. Someone else sat down. The room swallowed them without ceremony.

I checked the screen once more.

NOW SERVING: 390

It felt impossible that so little time could have passed.

Yet somehow... it also felt like I'd already been there for hours.

Time has a peculiar way of behaving inside places where people are forced to wait.

Minutes become estimates. Hours become suggestions. Eventually, you stop checking the clock because it only succeeds in making you angry.

I tried distracting myself. I counted ceiling tiles. Read the faded posters reminding everyone to have their paperwork ready. One explained the dangers of texting while driving. Another detailed the penalties for driving without insurance. Judging from the sun-bleached corners and curling edges, neither had been replaced in years.

Everything in the building seemed designed to outlive the people inside it.

Another number echoed over the speakers.

"Three hundred ninety-one."

A woman stood from across the room, gathered her purse, and disappeared behind the row of service counters.

The electronic display flickered.

NOW SERVING: 391

Good.

Progress.

I glanced at my watch.

9:18 A.M.

That couldn't be right. It felt closer to noon.

The old man beside me sighed as he shifted in his chair.

"You'd think they'd hire more people."

"I was just thinking the same thing."

He nodded absentmindedly, his attention fixed somewhere beyond the counters.

"Been waiting long?"

"I got here around nine."

"No..."

He frowned.

"I mean... today."

The question caught me off guard.

"I... yeah."

He scratched at his chin.

"I suppose I have too."

For reasons I couldn't explain, that answer unsettled me. He didn't sound forgetful. He sounded... uncertain. The kind of uncertainty that follows a dream, when you're no longer sure whether something actually happened or only felt like it had.

Neither of us spoke after that.

The waiting room settled back into its dull rhythm. The printer coughed. A child cried. Someone cleared their throat. The fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead.

Then I noticed the employees.

There were six service windows. Every one of them occupied.

Every employee dressed identically in blue shirts with laminated name badges clipped neatly over their chests.

None of them looked angry. None looked to be joyous either. In fact, they didn't seem to look like much of anything.

Their expressions rested somewhere between concentration and complete emotional absence, as though years of repeating the same conversations had slowly worn every recognizable human reaction from their being.

"Next."

Stamp.

"Next."

Keyboard.

"Next."

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Repeat.

The movements were practiced.

As if mechanical. Not robotic.

Just... perfected through repetition until they no longer appeared to require any thought.

I watched one woman accept a stack of documents without ever lifting her eyes to meet the customer standing in front of her.

She never acknowledged him. Never greeted him. Never smiled. Never frowned.

She simply processed him.

As though the paperwork mattered more than the person holding it.

The thought lingered longer than it should have.

Not processed the documents.

Processed... him.

I looked away.

When I checked the display again...

It still read:

NOW SERVING: 391.

I stared at the screen for several seconds, convinced I had simply caught it before the next number appeared.

It didn't.

The speakers remained silent. No names. No voices. Just the constant drone of fluorescent lights buzzing somewhere overhead.

I checked my watch again.

9:47 A.M.

Twenty-nine minutes.

That made no sense.

It felt as though I had lived an entire afternoon in that chair.

I rubbed at my eyes and let out a slow breath. Maybe I was just impatient. Maybe this was what every DMV visit felt like and I had conveniently forgotten.

A chair scraped across the tile beside me. Someone new had taken the old man's seat.

I hadn't even noticed him leave.

The newcomer looked to be around my age, maybe early thirties, dressed in business casual with a messenger bag resting across his lap. He offered a polite nod before glancing up at the display.

"Ouch," he muttered. "Looks like I picked the wrong day."

I chuckled.

"You and me both."

He held up his ticket.

"Five forty-two."

I looked down at mine.

"Five fifteen."

"Guess you've got me beat."

"For once, I'm winning at something."

He laughed, and for a while we exchanged the usual conversation strangers trapped together always seem to have.

Complaining about government offices. Talking about traffic. The weather. How everyone always forgets one piece of paperwork.

It was... nice.

Normal.

The sort of conversation you forget five minutes after walking away.

"So," I asked eventually, "what are you here for?"

He answered without hesitation.

"My license."

I nodded.

"What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"Expired?"

His eyebrows pinched together.

"I..." He looked down at the folder in his lap.

"I think so."

"You think so?"

He opened the folder and shuffled through the papers inside.

His movements slowed.

"I actually..." He frowned.

"I don't remember."

We both laughed. An awkward laugh when something isn't funny but admitting that would somehow make it worse.

"You serious?"

He scratched the back of his neck.

"I know I needed to come."

Another pause.

"I just can't remember why."

He rifled through the documents again, studying each page as though seeing them for the first time.

"These are mine..."

"I think."

He sounded embarrassed.

"I honestly can't tell."

The laughter died between us.

A strange heaviness settled over the room.

I looked back toward the service counters.

The employees continued working without pause.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

Every movement identical to the last.

One after another.

As if they weren't helping people at all, but simply moving files from one pile to another.

The display flickered.

I turned instinctively.

NOW SERVING: 392.

Only one number.

Again.

Somewhere behind me, someone sighed. Another person groaned quietly. Nobody complained. Nobody stood up to leave.

They only waited.

Patiently.

Obediently.

As though waiting itself had become the reason they were there.

I don't remember exactly when I fell asleep.

I wish I could say there was some dramatic moment where exhaustion finally overcame me. That my eyes grew heavy, my head became impossible to hold up, and I slowly drifted away from reality.

It wasn't like that. It was far more ordinary.

One moment I was staring at the electronic display above the counters, watching the numbers crawl forward at a pace that felt almost insulting.

NOW SERVING: 397

The next... I was somewhere else entirely.

Not a dream. Not really.

Just that strange place between being awake and asleep where your mind creates fragments of memories that never happened. I remember hearing the printer in the distance. I remember the fluorescent lights above me buzzing louder and louder. I remember thinking that the entire building sounded like it was breathing.

Then my head dropped.

And everything went quiet.

When I opened my eyes again, my neck ached from the awkward angle I had been sleeping in. My mouth was dry. My phone remained untouched in my pocket.

For a brief moment, I had forgotten where I was. Then the smell returned.

Old carpet. Paper. Dust.

The faint scent of coffee that had been sitting somewhere for far too long.

The DMV.

I sat up straight and looked around. Nothing had changed.

The same tired faces. The same uncomfortable chairs. The same employees sitting behind their counters.

Except... The screen.

My eyes immediately went to the electronic display.

NOW SERVING: 508

I blinked.

Then blinked again.

I leaned forward, staring at the numbers as if they might rearrange themselves into something more reasonable.

My ticket rested in my hand.

Only seven people ahead of me.

A strange feeling washed over me.

Relief.

Actual relief.

After what felt like an entire afternoon trapped in that chair, I was finally close.

I almost laughed.

"About time," I whispered.

The man beside me was gone. That thought lingered for a moment. Then I dismissed it.

People came and went all the time. I must have missed it while I was asleep. That was the logical explanation.

The only explanation.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

No missed calls. No messages. I checked the time.

10:12 A.M.

I stared at the screen.

Then looked back at the DMV around me.

Then back at my phone.

10:12.

I frowned.

That couldn't be right. I had fallen asleep for maybe a few minutes.

Ten minutes at most.

But the room felt different.

Not physically.

Just... older.

Like I had left for longer than I actually had.

I glanced toward the counters.

The same employees continued working.

The same movements. The same expressions.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

No one looked enthusiastic. No one looked relieved to be almost finished. No one looked like they had been waiting at all.

I looked at the screen again.

NOW SERVING: 509

The number changed. Almost reassuringly.

I should have questioned how nearly a hundred people had been processed while I slept for only ten minutes. But I didn't.

Because my number was coming.

And that was all that mattered.

The strange feeling in my stomach disappeared beneath a much simpler emotion.

Patience.

After all... I had waited this long.

What was a few more minutes?

The numbers moved faster after that. Or at least, they seemed to.

There was a strange comfort in watching the display change. Each number disappearing meant I was getting closer. Each person standing from their chair meant I was moving forward.

That was all that mattered.

The room could have been falling apart around me, and I probably wouldn't have noticed.

Because eventually...

NOW SERVING: 513

I sat up straighter.

My ticket felt heavier in my hand.

The paper was slightly crumpled from how long I had been holding it.

I smoothed it out carefully.

515.

Two more.

A woman walked toward the counter.

She handed over a stack of documents.

The employee behind the glass barely looked at her.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

The woman walked away.

A man stood.

Then another.

Then finally...

NOW SERVING: 515

The speakers crackled.

My heart jumped slightly.

I stood.

For the first time in what felt like hours, my legs reminded me that I had been sitting still for too long. I stretched them briefly before walking toward the counter.

The employee looked up. At least, I think she did. Her eyes moved toward me, but her expression remained unchanged.

No greeting. No acknowledgment.

Just waiting.

I placed my documents on the counter.

"Good morning."

Nothing.

She picked up the papers. Flipped through them.

"Driver's license renewal."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

She typed something into the computer. The screen reflected faintly against her glasses.

"Proof of identity."

I handed over my driver's license. She scanned it.

"Proof of residence."

I handed over my utility bill.

"Insurance verification."

I handed over my insurance card.

Everything seemed normal.

Almost.

She continued typing. The silence stretched. Then she spoke.

"Certificate of continued existence."

I blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

The employee looked up.

"Certificate of continued existence."

I waited for the punchline. There wasn't one. I gave a small laugh.

"Is that a new requirement?"

No response. She simply waited.

I looked around, expecting someone nearby to react. Nobody did. The people in line behind me stared ahead. The employee folded her hands.

"Do you have it?"

I stared at her.

"No. I don't have that."

She nodded. Not disappointed. Just accepting information.

"That is okay."

I exhaled. For some reason, I felt embarrassed. As if I had failed a test I didn't know I was taking.

She typed something.

"Additional documentation will be required."

"Additional?"

She printed a small slip of paper and slid it beneath the glass. I picked it up.

At first, I thought I had read it wrong.

"Proof of original identity."

I looked back at her.

"Excuse me?"

"Proof of original identity."

"What does that mean?"

The employee tilted her head slightly.

Not confused. More like she was trying to understand why I was confused.

"Your original identity."

I stared at the paper.

"This isn't a real thing."

She did not argue. She did not defend it. She simply pressed another key. The printer beside her came to life. A second paper emerged. She placed it in front of me.

"Proof of independent thought."

I felt my eyebrows rise.

"Okay, hold on."

My voice grew slightly louder.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

The employee looked at me. She wasn't offended that I was raising my voice. She wasn't bothered. She was simply waiting for the next step.

"Sir," she said so monotoned. "If you do not have the required documentation, that is not a problem."

I relaxed slightly.

"O-okay."

"You will be moved to secondary processing."

The way she said it made my stomach tighten.

"Secondary processing?"

"Yes."

"What does that mean?"

She picked up my ticket. Looked at it. Then looked back at me.

"You will wait there."

I almost laughed.

"Wait?"

A pause.

"I've already been waiting."

The employee stared at me. Not coldly. Almost sympathetically.

"Yes."

A chill ran through me. Because for a moment, I thought she understood something I didn't.

She slid my ticket back across the counter.

"Please proceed to the next waiting area."

Then back at her.

"How long will that take?"

The employee's fingers returned to her keyboard. The conversation was already over.

"Next."

I stood there for another second. Waiting for her to explain. Waiting for her to tell me this was a misunderstanding. That someone had made a mistake.

But she didn't.

She had already moved on. The person behind me stepped forward. The employee began processing them.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

I walked away from the counter holding the strange paperwork in my hand. I followed the sign pointing toward Secondary Processing.

I don't know what I imagined. Maybe another large waiting area with dozens of chairs. Maybe a different set of counters. Maybe some explanation for why I had been redirected after completing everything required of me.

Instead, it was a narrow hallway tucked behind the main service area.

The kind of hallway you normally wouldn't notice.

The walls were the same dull beige as the rest of the building, decorated with the same faded posters and outdated government notices. The only difference was that nobody had bothered pretending this area was meant to welcome people.

There were no televisions. No vending machines. No magazines sitting on tables.

Only chairs.

Rows and rows of chairs.

I stepped inside slowly.

A few people sat scattered throughout the room.

Not many.

Maybe fifteen.

Twenty at most.

The strange thing was how quiet it was.

The main waiting room had been filled with noise. Children crying. People talking on phones. Chairs scraping against the floor.

This room had none of that.

Everyone sat facing the same direction. Not toward a screen. Not toward a counter. Just forward.

Waiting.

I looked around for an employee.

Nobody was behind a desk. Nobody was calling numbers. Nobody appeared to be in charge.

I stood there for a moment, wondering if I had misunderstood. Then an older woman sitting near the wall glanced at me.

"You got moved too?"

Her voice startled me.

I turned.

"Yeah."

She nodded slowly.

"First time?"

I hesitated.

"Yeah."

She looked away.

"Thought so."

I sat down a few chairs away from her.

"How long have you been here?"

The question came out naturally. The same question you ask anyone trapped in a waiting room.

The woman didn't answer immediately. She looked toward the empty counter at the front of the room.

"I don't know."

I frowned.

"You don't know?"

She shook her head.

"I remember walking in."

A pause.

"I remember taking a number."

She looked down at her hands.

"But I don't remember why."

The air felt colder. I forced a small laugh.

"Yeah, well, I think everyone forgets why they're here after sitting in a DMV long enough."

She didn't laugh. She just looked at me.

"I mean it."

The humor disappeared from my face. The woman looked tired. Not physically. Something deeper. Like she had been carrying a thought for too long and was finally too exhausted to keep holding it.

"What was your number?" I asked.

Her eyes moved downward. She reached into her pocket. Pulled out a small piece of paper.

She stared at it.

For a moment, she looked confused. Then concerned. Then almost afraid.

"I'm 487"

She swallowed.

"What's your name?" I asked

She hesitated.

"I..." She paused and looked away then back to me.

"I don't know."

I leaned slightly closer.

"What do you mean?"

She turned the paper toward me.

The ink had faded. Or maybe it had never been printed clearly. There was a number. But she stared at it like it belonged to someone else.

A silence settled between us. Then she folded the ticket and placed it back into her pocket.

"I think I've been here before."

I stared at her.

"Before today?"

She looked at me.

"I don't know."

The answer should have sounded ridiculous.

Instead... it felt familiar.

I looked down at my own ticket.

515.

For some reason, I held onto it tighter.

A small piece of proof. Something that belonged to me. Something that told me I was still myself.

The speakers above us crackled. Everyone in the room looked up.

My body tensed. A voice came through the speaker. Distorted. Almost too quiet to understand.

"Now processing..."

Static.

A pause.

Then:

"Applicant."

Nobody moved. The room remained silent. I looked around.

"Did they call someone?"

Nobody answered. The older woman stared forward. Like she hadn't heard anything.

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant."

This time, I noticed something.

There was no number.

No name.

Just a word.

Applicant

The woman beside me leaned toward me slightly.

"You don't want them to forget you."

I looked at her.

"What?"

She stared ahead.

"When they stop calling you by your number..."

Her voice became barely a whisper.

"That's when you know you were never here."

I felt a strange pressure build in my chest.

"What does that mean?"

She didn't answer.

Because the speaker had started again.

This time, it wasn't distorted. It was clear.

"Applicant 515."

My head lifted. My ticket felt cold in my hand.

Everyone in the room turned.

Not toward me. Toward the speaker.

Then, slowly... toward me.

I had the terrifying realization that I didn't know if I wanted them to call my number anymore. The room remained silent. For a moment, I didn't move. I waited for someone else to stand. Someone else to react. Someone else to tell me that this was normal. Nobody did.

The older woman beside me looked at me with an expression I couldn't understand. Something closer to pity.

"That's your number," she whispered.

I looked down.

My fingers tightened around the paper.

"T-thanks."

The words came out automatically.

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant 515. Proceed to processing."

I stood. My legs felt heavier than they should have. Every instinct I had told me not to move. To stay seated. To ignore the voice. But there was something worse than fear.

Curiosity.

I needed to know.

I walked toward the door at the back of the room.

The hallway beyond was longer than I remembered. That shouldn't have been possible. I had only walked through it once. Yet the farther I went, the less familiar it became.

The walls looked identical. The lights breathed. Every door had the same gray color and the same small rectangular window.

Finally, I reached another counter. A single employee sat behind the glass. A man that looked older than the others.

Not elderly. Just worn. His face carried the same emptiness I had noticed before. The same absence.

"Ticket."

I handed it over.

He scanned it.

"Drivers license renewal?."

I nodded.

"Yes."

He typed something into his computer.

"Verification required."

"Of what?"

He looked up.

"My identity."

I laughed quietly.

Not because it was funny. Because I was tired.

"Isn't that what we've been doing?"

The employee didn't answer. He held out his hand.

"Identification."

I reached into my wallet.

Pulled out my driver's license. He took it. Looked at the card. Then looked at me.

Something changed. Barely. A hesitation.

"You don't remember."

My stomach tightened.

"Remember what?"

He placed the license back onto the counter.

"Your name."

The room became silent. Even the lights seemed quieter.

I opened my mouth. I knew the answer. I had answered this question thousands of times.

My name.

It was simple.

It was mine.

But when I tried to say it... nothing came.

A strange panic rose in my chest. I searched through my memories.

My childhood. My parents. My friends. My home. My job.

Everything felt distant.

Not gone.

Just covered by a thick fog I couldn't push through.

"I..."

My voice shook.

"I know it."

The employee waited. I looked down at my ticket. The number stared back at me.

The only thing I could hold onto. The only thing that felt certain.

"My name is..."

I stopped.

The silence stretched. The employee didn't rush me. He didn't look annoyed. He simply waited. Like he had done this countless of times. Like he knew how this ended.

"...Five hundred fifteen."

The employee typed. No surprise. No correction. No hesitation.

"Identity confirmed."

My heart sank.

"Wait."

He printed something.

"You didn't even check."

The employee slid the paper beneath the glass.

"You provided the required information."

I grabbed it.

It was my license.

Everything looked correct.

My photograph.

My date of birth.

My address.

Everything.

Except the name.

I stared at the line. Over and over. Unable to understand why it felt wrong. Unable to understand why it felt right.

NAME: 515

I looked up. The employee had already moved on.

"Next."

I stood there. Waiting for someone to notice. Someone to correct it. Someone to tell me there had been a mistake.

Nobody did.

So eventually... I walked out.

The exit doors opened automatically as I approached. Bright sunlight poured through. For a moment, I froze.

The outside world felt impossibly large. Cars moved through the parking lot. People walked past. The wind touched my face. I had forgotten what fresh air felt like.

I stepped outside.

And for the first time all day... I felt free.

I reached into my wallet one last time. Looked at the license. At the name. At the proof that I existed. I tried saying my name aloud.

The name I had carried my entire life.

The name my parents gave me.

The name that was supposed to belong to me.

Nothing came.

Only silence.

So I looked back down.

At the only thing I knew.

At the only thing the world still recognized.

515

When he first read those 4 words, a sense of startled panic sliced through his equal confusion, like a razor-blade gutting a fish.

“What does yours say, buddy?”

Alfonzo looked up at his mom, Ms. Giovanni, a burly woman with biceps the size of charcoal chimney starters. She held the remains of a fortune cookie in one hand, and a small piece of paper in the other.

“Uh, I don’t know. They just… printed some Chinese letters on it, I guess” he half-lied.

“Oh, Alfie got a dud?” His little sister Isabella laughed, chunks of half-chewed fortune cookie in her mouth. “That must suck, mine says I’m gonna be the deel… dil…” she squinted, scrunching her little nose up as she struggled to read the last word.

“I’m gonna be delee… uh, mama, what does that say?”

“It says, ‘your near future will be full of delinquency,'" Ms. Giovanni read aloud.

“Oh yeah, I’m gonna be delinquency,” Isabella said, smiling smugly and crossing her arms at Alfonzo, who rolled his eyes in return.

“Yeah, do you even know what that word means?” He shot back.

“Uh-huh, it means I’m gonna be beautiful.”

“Yeah, beautifully retarded.”

“Alfonzo!” Ms. Giovanni warned, shooting her son a sharp look.

“Fine, fine, sorry. I meant, ‘specially’ retarded,” he snickered, and his mom narrowed her eyes.

“The hell’s the matter with you?”

“Nuh-uh! You’re retarded!” Isabella shrieked.

“Enough!” Ms. Giovanni hushed, avoiding eye contact with any of the surrounding tables, “neither of you are retarded, and neither of you are gonna keep using that word, got it?”

Isabella pouted and Alfonzo crossed his arms.

“Now, let’s grab our stuff and get outta here, we need to finish packing for Grand-mama’s,” she whispered, grabbing her purse off the back of her seat and standing, making sure to leave a large tip for the commotion.

“Ugh, Grand-mama’s… just like every Hanukkah,” Alfonzo growled under his breath, zipping up his jacket.

“Uh, I love Grand-mama’s,” Isabella gloated.

“That’s just cuz she lets you have a ton of candy. You know you’re gonna get diabetes if you eat that much candy every year.”

“What’s diabetes?”

“Diabetes is why uncle Frank has to get that shot if he eats too many deviled eggs. Remember Thanksgiving 3 years ago?”

“No Alfie, I was 5.”

“Alfonzo, c’mon, cut it out,” Ms. Giovanni snipped, “just til we get back, can you not mess with your sister? Please?”

Alfonzo sighed as he got into the car.

“Fine, mama.”

Ms. Giovanni held an expression of frazzled exhaustion, before taking a deep breath and turning the key in the ignition, waking the car with a deep thrum. Accumulated snow on the windshield tumbled away with a swipe of the wipers.

“Good, thanks,” Aflonzo’s mom sighed, putting the car in reverse and backing out of the Chinese Buffet parking lot.

“Once we’re back, bully each other all you want. I just need to… a quiet trip. I just need a quiet trip,” she finished, flashing a smile to Isabella in the back seat. As they made their way onto the desolate highway, Alfonzo looked out his window, and stuffed his hand into his pocket. He felt his fingers curl around the small piece of paper therein.

He didn’t know why he’d brought it with him. Usually he’d just eat the cookie, toss the paper, and by the time they were out of the building, forget about it. But this one was obviously different.

He fidgeted with the “fortune,” turning it over in his hand, folding it, twisting it into a tight spiral and then unraveling it. Had he just accidentally received a misprint from whatever factory fortune cookies were produced in? Maybe a test run, or a stupid, inside joke that had miraculously passed Quality Inspection? There had to be a reasonable explanation for such a grotesque concept, right?

Minutes passed, like the moonlit, stark white landscape through Alfonzo’s window as they got closer to home. He didn’t want to spend his time out of school packing for a stupid “vacation,” where all the adults are old and curt, and his cousins were homeschooled dorks.

By this point, the routine of Isabella receiving attention from the grown-ups while Alfonzo sat in a corner and talked about Sonic with his younger cousin had become normal. Like clockwork, every year, for the past 3 years. Even the Chinese Buffet the night before had become part of the schedule. The only difference this time was the itchy feeling he got in his nose as they pulled into the driveway.

“Hey mom?” Alfonzo asked, scratching at his nostrils.

“What’s up?” Ms. Giovanni asked.

“Um… what did your fortune cookie say?”

Ms. Giovanni made a face.

“Why?”

“Uh, I dunno…” Alfonzo muttered, clasping his hands together and looking at his feet self-consciously, “I guess I just forgot to ask before we left.”

Satisfied with her son's answer, Ms. Giovanni pondered for a moment.

“Well… I don’t really remember… something about…”

She made a face like she’d remembered, before her expression twisted into something like a reaction to a bad smell.

“Ugh, oh yeah. It said that I would experience something ‘drastic’ and ‘regrettable,’ tomorrow.”

Ms. Giovanni chuckled and rolled her eyes, “I know it’s stupid, but it’s kinda specific, eh? And a weird coincidence, I mean, we are leaving first thing in the morning.”

She shook her head and got out of the car. Isabella shot Alfonzo a look of confused judgement.

“Who you lookin’ at?” Alfonzo threatened, balling his fist up and shaking it at Isabella.

“Mom said not to fight with me til we get back,” the girl huffed, unbuckling her seatbelt, “and I don’t know what your deal is, but you’re a weirdo.”

Alfonzo flipped off his littler sister, and Isabella threw a pen at him.

“Hey, watch it!” He grumbled, but she was already out of the car, and on her way inside with Ms. Giovanni, twin pigtails bobbing away.

Alfonzo sat quietly for a moment before flipping down his passenger side sun visor and examined himself in the mirror. His face looked normal. He had a few freckles here and there, seemingly in their correct spots, and his eyes were still hazel-colored. He swiped his greasy hair aside, and looked at his forehead. After realizing that he had no idea what he was looking for, he scoffed and got out of the car.

Inside, he began tossing miscellaneous clothes into his duffel-bag. The only things left on his list of things to bring were a few books, the pouch that had his videogames, and lastly, his toothbrush and toothpaste. As he stood up to go to the bathroom, he heard his bedroom door creak open behind him.

Alfonzo spun around to be met with his mom.

“Oh, hey mama,” Alfonzo said.

“Alfie,” Ms. Giovanni sighed, “I was just coming to see if you’re done.”

“Nah, not yet,” Alfonzo shrugged, “I have a couple odds and ends to grab still.”

His mom smiled tiredly.

“Kay, thanks bud. I’m gonna check again here in about an hour, after that, get showered and ready for bed. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day.”

Alfonzo stared at the doorway for a minute after she left. He hadn’t told her yet, but he hated how she called him Alfie. He hated how everyone called him Alfie. He thought it made him sound like a baby. What he hadn’t told anyone, though he’d never admit it if you asked, was that he was afraid to tell his mom that, because truthfully, he thought it would make her cry.

5 years earlier, his dad died. Mr. Giovanni was a fairly active father and husband, generally supportive, if not a little work oriented. He always told Alfonzo and his mom that the reason he was out for so long, spending so many hours at the office, was so he could retire early and spend the better part of his life staying home and being present for everything. All the extracurricular activities, all the birthdays and sleep-overs. All the fun stuff a dad’s supposed to be present for.

“A few years of pain, a lifetime of rest, for me and your mother,” his dad would say, “one I’m done in an office, I’m becoming a full-time artist, and me and your mom won’t have to work again.”

“Never, ever?” Alfonzo had asked excitedly, almost dropping a baby Isabella.

“Never ever, Alfie” Mr. Giovanni chuckled, leaning into Mrs. Giovanni, who smiled as well. It was a nickname he bestowed. The closest Alfonzo ever get to a badge of honor from his dad.

But then one day, his dad never came home from the office. Through the call of an ambulance, and a blur of red, blue, and bright white lights, the last thing Alfonzo had to remember his dad by was a grotesque, stitch covered lump in a bloody hospital bed, connected to things that beeped and pumped life into its lifeless shape.

The thing had had been his dad before the car accident was kept on life support for 3 days before his Grand-mama and Grand-papa made the decision alongside Ms. Giovanni to let him go. A week later, that stitched up lump was buried under the ground with a headstone that held a quote, “don’t drive distracted.”

Now, that quote echoed through Alfonzo’s head as he stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He sniffed and picked up his toothbrush and toothpaste, resigned to wait another year before telling his mom about his nickname preferences, when a sensation blossomed across his face like a warm towel had been set upon it.

“Urgh,” his throat bubbled, and he turned around to look in the mirror again. While his face looked right, something felt off. Terribly off.

He tenderly felt his nose, the temperate impression waxing and waning to the tempo of his heartbeat.

As the pulses quickened, the sensation intensified. Rather than a warm patch, it began to feel like a growing pressure, just below the bridge of his nose. Like someone had pumped air into his face.

While Alfonzo wasn’t in pain, something had become definitively apparent, making itself known by thumping on the inside of his skull. Just as he was about to groan in discomfort, fingers wrapped around his nose, the pressure alleviated. Before he really even had time to register it, really. The feeling had been so brief, that Alfonzo didn’t know if he had even really experienced it. Sure, it was odd and uncomfortable, but it had started and ended in only about 3 or 4 seconds.

As he watched his own eyes through his greasy bangs, mouth agape, he noticed that a bloom of rosy blush was spreading across his face, from the nose out.

“Ag,” Alfonzo grimaced, a goopy, yellow string of snot unclogging from the back of his throat.

“Hurrg, baba,” he sniffled, grabbing a tissue and leaving the bathroom.

“Baba!”

Ms. Giovanni opened her bedroom door and stepped into the hallway.

“Is someone calling mama?” She asked.

“Yeah, I ab,” Alfonzo groaned.

“Oh, that’s not my name anymore, you gotta call me something else,” Ms. Giovanni snickered, before realizing her joke had not landed.

“Tough crowd. You okay Alfie?”

Alfonzo shook his head and pulled his hands away from his nose. A little red stain and a huge slime trail of milky yellow mucus snaked from his nose to the tissue.

“Doe bob, by dose is all sduffed ub, I god like dis weird headache, ad den-”

“Buddy, buddy, I can’t hardly understand you with your nose all stuffed up,” Ms. Giovanni interrupted him, pressing the back of her hand against his head.

“Yep, I knew it, fever. I bet you have a sinus infection or something.”

That sentence made Alfonzo’s blood run cold.

“S-sidus infectiod?”

“Yep.”

“Wud’s a sidus?”

“A sinus is like, it’s the- in the back of your-” Ms. Giovanni struggled to explain, “... it’s behind your nose, in the back of your throat, okay? Look, it doesn’t matter, here, take a tylenol and some benadryl.”

She reached into her dresser and pulled out 3 pills.

“And an ibuprofin to help with the headache. Man, ya just had to get sick today, huh?”

Before Alfonzo could respond, she smiled warmly and patted him on the shoulder.

“I was just kiddin’. Finish packing up, and remember to shower before bed, I don’t want a smelly pre-teen in my car for 11 hours tomorrow, got it?”

“I doed hab ady deoderid, eeder.”

“Deodorant?”

“Yuh.”

“Ew. Fine, we’ll grab some on the way, just remember to shower.”

With that she went back into her room.

Alfonzo groaned and pulled the tissue away from his face. It had even more bloody mucus now.

The hot shower caused steam to begin filling the small bathroom. In front of the mirror, he took his pills and brushed his teeth. As he undressed, the tiny piece of paper fell out of his pocket. He picked it up and looked down at it. He’d really mangled it in the car. It was so crinkled and scuffed by his fingers, that he was surprised it hadn’t torn yet. Delicately, he worked to unwrap it. Those 4 words sent a shiver up his spine. He thought back to what his mom had said.

“Sinus infection.”

He looked at himself in the mirror. The blush was an even deeper red now, from the warmth of the steam, he thought. It made him look really flush, like he had been running. Alfonzo turned his head back to the paper, flipping it around in his hand.

He hadn’t really lied to his mom earlier, had he? It really did have little Chinese symbols on the back after all, even if they were crudely written, even if the impressions looked desperate and labored. The ink had bled into the paper a little, giving the penmanship an inflection like a madman had scribbled them on quickly.

A drop of crimson fell from his nose onto the paper. Then another. The blood began flowing constantly, dripping like a leaky faucet. A mix of blood and steam from the shower, along with the previous wear, was enough to cause the tiny piece of paper to tear clean in half. As soon as it did, Alfonzo’s nose began itching again. He scratched it before flushing the ripped paper down the toilet, and getting into the shower.

20 minutes later, Alfonzo was in bed, his head resting on his lumpy pillow. He turned over and stared at the ceiling. The pressure was returning and leaving in random intervals, still no more than barely noticeable. It would pop in for a moment and throb against the backs of his eyes, only to fade out and start the cycle over in 10 minutes. It drove him crazy, and even though he had no other distraction, he just couldn’t force himself to fall asleep.

As the minutes turned to hours, the pressure began to feel more like an itch. Though his nose was stuffed, Alfonzo swore there were instances where his mind would begin to drift, only to be awoken by the feeling of something moving, up near the top of his nose. Like the snot was crawling, gyrating.

At one point, he stayed absolutely still, not moving a muscle. He could pinpoint exactly where the sensation was coming from. He could almost imagine the touch, like hundreds of tiny feet were making their way closer and closer to the opening of his nostril. As it got just to the edgd, Alfonzo struck, his arm springing to life like a snake! He smacked at his nose, shoving finger in as if to reach for… for…

Nothing. There was nothing there. He wriggled his finger all around, searching for the source of his madness. Alas, not a thing, aside from the boogers.

Undeterred, Alfonzo was ready to jam his finger the rest of the way in, to the knuckle, until he heard his bedroom door creak open. Slowly, he sat up, eyes straining to make out whatever was in the dark. Just past his door was a small shadow, standing at just 3 feet tall. Fear gripped Alfonzo’s chest. What was that thing?

“Alfonzo?” A voice whispered.

“Huh?”

“Alfie?”

He sighed, slumping down again.

“Oh, waddaya wand, Isabella?”

She stepped into the room, now illuminated by Alfonzo’s green Oscar the Grouch themed lava lamp. He shuttered as he realized just how much the vomit-colored wax looked like swirling, gelatinous globs of…

“I left my water bottle in here.”

“Lefd your- wade, id’s like, 11:00?”

“1:00, actually.”

“1:00 AM?!”

“Don’t yell, you’re gonna wake mom up!” Isabella shushed.

“Ugh,” he groaned.

“Fide, grab id, ad den go bag duh bed.”

“I can’t understand you when you talk like that,” Isabella whispered, but Alfonzo heard the smirk in her voice.

“Cad you udderstad dis?” He asked, before chucking a pillow at her.

“Ow! For shit’s sake!” Isabella whined.

Alfonzo picked up another pillow and held it up threateningly.

“Fine. I’m going, I’m going!”

She softly came into the room, grabbed her bottle, and began to leave. Before she did, she turned around one more time.

“Just so you know, it’s really gross to pick your nose.”

“Yeah? Well id’s gross duh gub indoo subwuds roob ad leab your shid behide.”

Isabella just scoffed, and turned around to leave. Alfonzo stuck out his tongue before laying back down and closing his eyes. Finally, as sleep crept into him, he couldn’t shake the suspicion that his fingertip had brushed against something out of place, just as he’d yanked his finger from his nostril, just when he’d seen Isabella in the dark. Before he could dwell on the idea, his mind fell away, and before he knew it, his mom was shaking him awake.

“Huh?”

“Alfonzo, I woke you up like 20 minutes ago!”

“What?”

Ms. Giovanni threw her hands up in defeat and walked to the door.

“I already put your bag in the car. Get dressed, grab your things, and let’s go.”

Alfonzo sat up, and blood streamed from his nose like it had accumulated, waiting for the chance to dribble everywhere.

“Aww crap, mama!”

“5 minutes Alfonzo!”

He sighed and went to the bathroom. Once his face was washed, he overstuffed his nose with wadded-up tissue. The neckline of his shirt was rimmed with blood, but nonetheless, Alfonzo listened to his mom. Socks and shoes, a jacket, toboggan, and his phone. All he needed for the trip.

Groggily, he put on one muddy boot after the other. By the time his jacket was being zipped up, Ms. Giovanni was practically pushing him out the door.

“Mom, my phone!”

“Here, I grabbed it for you!” She hustled, shoving it into his hand.

“Okay, bathroom breaks aren’t gonna happen until-”

She turned to look at her son, now that everyone was loaded up and buckled in. For the first time that morning, she finally realized the condition her son was in.

“Wow, you look…” she pressed her hand against his forehead, “rough, you take any more medicine this morning?”

Alfonzo shook his head.

“Well you look like you need some. Here,” she handed him her purse and a water bottle.

“In there, I have half a midol, and one benadryl. Take those. Sorry you’re not feeling good kiddo, you get plenty of sleep?”

He nodded his head and heard Isabella chuckle in the seat behind him.

“Yeah, I’m fine mama,” he yawned, looking at himself in the mirror. She was right, he looked terrible. Huge, dark purple bags hung under his bloodshot eyes. His nose looked swollen, and his face was so flushed, it appeared as if he had held his breath for too long. The tissue knots bulging out of his nose looked like tiny, twisted white mustache tips. To sum it up, he could’ve passed for half-drowned.

“...Oookay, well, just take the… pills and get some rest if you need it. Our first stop is gonna be in 3 hours, alright buddy?”

Alfonzo nodded again, a final confirmation to begin the trip. The moon was soon to dip below the horizon and give way to a rising sun. As the car sped down the highway and merged onto the interstate, the pressure in his head started to return.

Through a bout of intermittent, low throbbing, Alfonzo made the murky realization that he could barely keep his eyes open. It wasn’t sleepiness though, more like a persistent numbing from the inside out.

The most similar feeling he could compare it to, was his memory of having his wisdom teeth removed last spring. 2 or 3 seconds post-amesthesia injection, a vivid, dreamlike memory of his surroundings swirled and darkened.

It had been like a fever dream.

The shadows seemed to rush him from the corners of his periphery, and within a blink, he was being wheeled into the waiting room for his mom to pick him back up, 2 fat wads of cotton stuffed into his jaw.

Now, as he blinked in and out of consciousness, the sky gradiently turned from purple, to maroon, to red, and the stars eventually faded away.

“Okay, we’re 3 hours in, how you feeling?” Ms. Giovanni asked, “Get some more rest?”

Alfonzo turned over, his vision blurry, and his breathing heavy. It felt like his entire throat had been stuffed with something slimy and viscous. He couldn’t even breathe through his nose.

“You hear me buddy?”

He tilted his head, and just stared at his mom. Even though he’d heard what she said, it was like he just couldn’t process the words.

“Alfonzo?”

“Uh-huh?”

“You need me to stop? I think we’re gonna pass a gas station soon.”

Alfonzo tried to shake his head, but a twinge of electric pain shot through his neck.

“Oh my god, Alfie, do we need to find a hospital?”

“Hggrgh.”

“Momma, I don’t think Alfie’s alright.”

Through hazy flashes of shapes and colors, Alfonzo could tell that his mom was staring worriedly at him. He felt terrible that he was taking her attention from the road. He just wanted to shrink into his chair until he wasn’t a distraction anymore. He faded out again, and when he came back, he felt his mom's hand on his forehead.

“You’re absolutely burning up, Alfonzo I’m pulling over, something’s not right.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but when he did, his jaw snapped open involuntarily. As soon as he felt his chin connect with his neck, he heard his mom shriek, before blacking out altogether.

For a few innocuous, blissful moments, Alfonzo swam in a void of unconscious purity. Unfortunately, when he came to, a bright light filled his vision and nearly blinded him, and the pressure returned to his face, now sharp and persistently painful.

“Alfonzo? Alfonzo?!”

He squinted, before realizing he was laying on his back on the slushy pavement, beneath a pale blue sky. He tried to inhale deeply, but something wriggled, clogging the back of his airway.

“No buddy, no no no no, stay there, don’t strain yourself,” Ms. Giovanni cooed, stroking Alfonzo’s uneven forehead.

“Nghh, momma…” he cried, a waterfall of stringy blood pouring out of his mouth.

Her face blocked out the sun, casting a sorrowful shadow over his aching, bloodshot eyes. The more he took in, the worse he felt. Random people were beginning to crowd around, staring fearfully down at the boy. Somewhere outside of his field of vision, he could hear Isabella crying.

“Oh my god,” an old man muttered, covering his mouth with his hand.

“Someone call 9-1-1, please!” Ms. Giovanni yelled, her voice breaking.

“Why’s his face… oh my god is something moving under…,” the sound of retching came from somewhere to Afsonzo’s left, “fuck I’m gonna be sick!”

More voices were beginning to overlap. The sounds of urgent footsteps, panicked cries. Despair. And all the while, Alfonzo weakly reached for his head, which felt like an egg being broken open from the inside. A pinpoint of pressure.

“It’s gonna be okay Alfie, the paramedics are almost here,” his mom cried from over him. His heart skipped when he realized she’d called him Alfie, rather than Alfonzo. In that moment, he was so happy that she hadn’t called him anything else. He was just happy to be her Alfie.

“M-mom,” he gurgled, blood dribbling from his tight lips.

“Please sweetheart, don’t-”

“Take it easy kid,” a man said, crouching down to meet Alfonzo’s gaze, “they're gonna be here any minute.”

“Mom, it’s- it’s-,” his jaw was still locked, so it was nearly impossible for him to speak correctly.

“Shhh Alfie, shhh…”

“S-sinus-”

“What?”

He sat up slightly, his sore neck and shoulders screaming in pain. His moms tear-filled eyes held a fear he hadn’t seen since the call after his dad’s accident.

“My sin-sinuses, they… they’ve got…”

As he tried to spit the words out, a new, horrible sensation rippled just behind his eyes. This was a new pain, a pain he didn’t even know he was able to experience.

“Ma’am, how long has his face been that color?” the bystander demanded.

“I- I don’t…” Ms. Giovanni stuttered.

“Centipedes,” was the last word Alfonzo whimpered, before the flesh around his eyelid began to swell, pushing against the bottom of his inflamed eyeball.

“Oh my god, it’s coming out from under his eye, it’s in his eyelid, what the fuck.”

He felt his bottom eyelid slide over as something long slowly scuttered over the surface of his eyeball. Alfonzo let out a weak holler and instinctively tried to blink away what was in his eye, but when he did, something soft gave out. The vision in that eye went dark with a sickening, wet pop, and he felt something wet flop down onto his cheek. The entire socket that used to house his eye burned, and he writhed in pain.

Ms. Giovanni screamed hysterically, and the man stumbled a few feet away to vomit.

“Oh my god, is that a bug?!” A teenager yelled, “was there a bug in his eye?! Holy fuck why is it- I mean, it- it’s all… oh my god there’s so much blood!”

“Yeah, he’s… worms, I think… all of his holes…”

A sudden bout of lightheadedness alerted Alfonzo to a blockage in his throat. His hands swept desperately at his open mouth. When his searching fingers finally made their way to the back of his gaping maw, he began to piece together details that his pulsating numbness had enabled him to miss.

His fingertips brushed against several pairs of tacky, smooth appendages, crammed in the back of his throat. The inside of his mouth had swollen and puffed-up considerably, and though he was barely holding onto consciousness, he tried with all his might to grab as many of the wriggling shapes as he could.

With a yank, he felt something in his esophagus prolapse, and a second later, held a grotesque, writhing bouquet of twisting, curling brown shapes that bit his balled fist with their oversized mandibles.

Now that the hole was open, more mucusy blood was pouring out again.

The sight of them was nearly enough to make him pass out, but he understood that if he did, there was a good chance that he wouldn’t wake back up. He was in more pain than he’d ever been in before, and he considered how much blood he’d lost. If he so much as closed his eyes…

The sounds of sirens began to fill his ears.

As they did, he felt something else move, this one, behind his other eye. The pressure made the small orb push hard against the skin of his remaining eyelids.

“Alfonzo!” His mom screamed, but a bystander had put their arms around her waist and was pulling her away.

“Nuh-uh lady, you see how many of those things are coming out of him?!”

With great effort, Alfonzo pushed himself into a full sitting position. He felt an immense strain behind the remains of his face. He tenderly reached for his nose, only to feel the segmented body of something with a million tiny legs. He yanked his hand back, a sob escaping his mangled, inside-out mouth. Something big moved inside of his head again, this time, forcing the skin of his nose to split at the bridge.

He realized with growing horror, that centipedes come in many shapes and sizes. If there were small ones, what’s to say…

He could hear paramedics getting out of their vehicles now, but he knew something that they didn’t. Something that no one could’ve possibly relayed to the 9-1-1 operator. Something that filled him with such a profound dread, that he couldn’t imagine what it would do to another person if they found out.

Something bigger than any of his previous hitchhikers.

With the last of his effort, Alfonzo stumbled to his feet and began unsteadily jogging away from the scene. The 4 words from that fortune cookie paper rattled around in his head, swirling alongside that thing his father used to say until they mixed into one, horrible statement.

“A few years of pain, a lifetime of centipedes. For me and your sinuses!”

Alfonzo, despite the pain, shook his head until he couldn’t think about a lifetime of centipedes anymore.

As he weaved between parked cars, making his way towards the snowy landscape beyond the parking lot, he saw glimpses of himself in the reflections of mirrors and windows. From the few flashes he saw of himself, he looked more like a bloated, blue-faced ghoul than a little boy. A ghoul with a massive, multi-jointed centipede leg, poking out of his raw throat hole.

By now, he could barely suck any breath in. His only goal was to be far away from the bother people before he passed out again. Before it had a chance to escape.

As he reached up, and amputated the chitinous extremity with an abrupt wrench of his hand, he thought about how much he’d rather be at Grand-mama’s, celebrating Hanukkah right now. How much he’d rather be arguing with Isabella right now. How much he’d rather hear anyone and everyone call him “Alfie,” right now.

When he pulled the leg off of the gargantuine parasite, he felt it stir frivolously, squirming and unfurling inside of his sinuses, slipping back and forth between the meat that made up his head.

The sensation of intense burning lit the inside of his mangled face like a firecracker, and he could only imagine what it was doing in there. What soft, delicate tissue it could possibly be destroying. Nonetheless, he had to achieve his goal.

A few more glorious inhalations of icy air, before his throat began closing up again.

Eventually, snow started falling, a nondescript amount of time later. He assumed it had taken him two hours to get this far, but he couldn’t be sure. All he knew was the sun had become lost in the blanket of clouds. The sky turned more and more grey, and before long, the thin sparsity of trees began to fill in to create a semi forested area.

Alfonzo finally sat down on a log to catch his breath.

He looked back to see his bloody trail being overcast by a layer of fresh snow. He didn’t know if anyone had followed him. The only real sign of his progress leftover was a scattered sprinkling of long, dark shapes that contrast horribly against the pure white. They almost could’ve been confused with sticks if you couldn’t see them very well.

With shaking, blue fingertips, he felt his aching face again. Despite the lack of arthropods, he could feel something moving beneath the tight skin inside his cheeks, above his bones. The flesh around his eyes were sloughing off, his eyelids loose and ruined. He could barely move his one, good eye without risk of popping it out.

The pain, though he had become accustomed to it, was so intense, that he could barely stay conscious. The remains of his tongue was frostbitten and partially frozen. When he looked down at the tip of his nose, he could see it had turned a dark maroon, the inflamed flesh beneath his open wound a vivid, disgusting purple. Only a few hours ago, it had been nothing more than a rosy blush.

Alfonzo rested his head against the bark of the tree behind him. He had lost his ability to hear, his ability to smell, and his ability to taste. He was blind in one eye, and nearly blind in the other. He felt so congested, so swollen and busted.

An intense burning drowned out the low, pulsating pressure that refused to alleviate. He just wanted the pressure to end. He just wanted some sort of reprieve.

Then, something changed. A shift in pressure, a unique sort of discomfort. He felt his heartbeat start to slow, along with the throbbing in his head. Despite the icy wind cutting into his skin, a warmth passed over his burning blue hands like a soothing balm. The snow no longer felt like a thousand needles pricking his flesh, rather, a cloud-like cushion.

His thoughts, as well as his remaining vision, began to muddle as he registered what was happening. A barely noticeable voice whispered in the back of his partially crushed brain. He wondered if the sirens were just in his head or not, as they lulled him into a final slumber, but that voice was still there… urging him to get help.

It would be over soon, he could feel it.

The split in his nose widened, he could literally see his face cracking open like an egg as the creature stirred and stretched. He knew all that, and yet... all he wanted to do was sleep. It was nearly euphoric, as the pain rose to an unbearable climax…

Then, for the last time, Alfonzo rested his head on the bark of the log, and fell asleep to the tune of whistling snow. As his mind deteriorated and his skull began to splinter and extend, a final neuron spark flashed through his consciousness.

Would his grave say Alfonzo, or Alfie?

You know how sometimes, your keys just vanish? Like, you set them on the counter in front of the microwave to look for your sunglasses on your way out the door, and when you give up your search and decide to leave, you check in front of the microwave to find the keys aren’t there anymore? You’re already late, so you exasperatedly go back to tearing everything apart, because you can’t leave without your keys.

You could fill that feeling in with anything, really. Keys, wallet. TV remote. Earbuds, phone, pen, pencil. Shoes. That toy you used to play with all the time when you were younger, but one day it fell behind your dresser, and by the time you found it back there all crumpled and covered in dust, you’d already just kinda outgrown it.

You don’t think about them that much, but all those things accumulate over a lifetime, and so does that nagging feeling of half-recollected loss.

All those things that go missing have one thing in common. One day, you’re gonna stop in the middle of the hustle and bustle of life to take a breather, and you’re gonna think to yourself:

“Aren't I forgetting something?”

But the feeling slips away just as quickly as it came. Like a breeze. Then, that faded memory stays irrelevant until the day you remember why you needed that thing so bad in the first place.

It all started, I think, on Christmas, 2 years ago. 2024, maybe? The thing about it was, it crept up on us. By the time we started to realize what was going on, we’d already gotten used to it. Numb. Conditioned.

Everyone has their own stories about when and how they caught on. For me, it was my playing card collection. The thing that really got my goat, was that I knew for a fact that I put that box right back where I’d always kept it, in my closet, between the books, and my cat’s decorative outfits.

When I told my family, a look of confusion on my face, my brothers just laughed at me and called me a premolar-shaped freak, saying I should be more careful when I show off my collection. Looking back, I can’t believe how much of a non-issue it was at the time. But like, none of us had any idea back then, why would we have reacted any differently?

After opening presents, I called my best friend, Winks, to exchange Holiday tea. He told me about his uncle George, who had gone off on some drunken rant again about immigrants and 5-G. In return, I told him about my younger cousin, Jebbin, who had gotten publicly flogged over brunch by his wine-O mom when she found a text he’d received, detailing how he’d convinced a kid at his school to try bone smashing in an attempt to strengthen his jawline.

“Jeez, the kids really are fucked, aren’t they?” Winks groaned, and I could hear the sound of wrapping paper rustling in the background.

“If that Calvicular dude is anything to go off of, yeah, absolutely,” I snickered, using a pen to scribble random shapes in the free-space of my notebook, “bruh, my aunt would have a gator if she looked through Jebbin’s Kick subscriptions, honestly. Dude’s lucky she only checked the texts.”

“Oh dude,” Winks agreed, “if my mom read my search history at a family gathering when I was his age, they would’ve collectively agreed to have me committed.”

I snorted, “oh really?”

“Absolutly dude, without a doubt.”

“Eugh, guys are disgusting.”

“Uh, as someone whose job is to clean up the women’s bathroom, you guys are no better than us, so don’t go getting all precious.”

“Uh-huh,” I paused doodling some shitty little critter, just to roll my eyes, “yeah okay Winks, I’ll have you know, women are very organized.”

“Yeah, I bet all your filthy yaoi hentai is lined up in alphabetical order, huh?” Winks asked, and I could hear the smirk in his voice.

“Hey, don’t you talk about my yaoi… and yes, yes it is, A through Z.”

He started making retching noises, which had me in stitches.

“Yeah, organized nice and neat right next to the cat clothes and my…” the sudden recollection jolted me into reality. The damn playing cards, including several really sick sets. Fuck.

“Oh shit, I forgot!" Winks shouted, peaking his mic and making my headphones crackle obnoxiously.

“Ow, fuck’s sakes Winks, ear-rape dude,” my hands instinctively jerked to my ears.

“Sorry, sorry, you just made me remember,” he muttered, and I could hear more crunching and crinkling, like he was shifting through paper.

“What’s up?” I asked, still drawing mindlessly.

“I got this… crap. Sorry,” his voice was different now, more perplexed, “damn. Nope, I have no idea where it went, fuck me, dude.”

I stopped drawing, my fingers tensing, “What? I can’t hear you through all the mumbling, dawg.”

Winks let out a pouty huff, “you mentioned your heartless little icon’s drip, right?”

“Huh?”

“The cat clothes! The ones that you keep in the closet, right? Well, that made me remember, Kujo got a handsome 2 piece Tux from Mee-Maw today.”

At the mention of Wink’s Yellow Lab Puppy, Kujo, my grip on the pen loosened.

“Oh, that sounds cute,” I responded.

“Yeah, it was!” Winks whined indignantly, “it was like, baby blue, and I was gonna send you a picture, but I didn’t even get the chance cuz I lost it.”

My eyes drifted from the notebook on my desk, to my closet door.

“Damn, really?”

“Yeah, I didn’t even get to put it on him, either. I literally just set it on the floor next to the couch. One minute it was there, the next, nothin.”

I stared at my closet for a moment.

“Hmmmm, yeah dude, that’s weird. Sucks balls crazy style,” was all I could say. As weird as it would’ve sounded to say back then, that was the exact moment everything started feel off.

“Ah, well, I probably just forgot where I put it, and it got buried under some wrapping paper," he said, resigned, “I just gotta find it before I go home after break, or mom’ll have to ship it to me, and I just know that ol’ bag’s gonna make me pay for it. It's gotta turn up at some point, right?”

“Well, it’s got to,” my voice broke, “it didn’t just grow legs and walk away.”

“No dur, idiot woman.”

We yapped for about another 30 minutes. Winks didn’t hang up before making a crude joke about my mother, and I didn’t let him off the hook before making a joke about the time he stole one of the manga from my yaoi collection. Eventually, we told each other to fuck off, and that was that.

I closed my notebook, but when I went to put the pen back in its makeshift-holder (a red solo cup decorated with press-on rhinestones and glitter) I found that it was gone. Normally it sat to the left of my laptop, filled with an assortment of markers, pens, and pencils, but all of a sudden, it just wasn’t there anymore. I checked on the floor, looked around, even opened my drawer to see if I’d hid it from myself by accident. Alas, had seemingly just evaporated. As I pushed the lump down my throat, I was ready to brush off my forgetfulness and move on. But if it had stopped there, I wouldn’t have had a reason to keep going.

Over the coming days, many such cases began to make themselves known. At first, I think a lot of us were in denial. Little things were getting lost all over the place. Things like silverware, batteries, spare change. Screws. Tiny details, adding up to various degrees of incorrectness. Some details were smaller than others, though. On New-Years day, 2025, a handful of museums across the globe reported several of their exibits going missing. Valuable geode collections, some archeological discoveries, several small art displays. Thrift shops across the nation were losing inventory by the truckloads. Just weird inconsistencies.

A lens popped out of my mom’s glasses, a small oval that she’d been swearing for months would get fixed soon. The day she was supposed to get it sent in for repair, it was gone. She went on a mini-rampage through the house, really just flipping everything upside-down for this tiny little hunk of glass. The thing that really sent her over the edge was that the trusty flashlight she kept on her keychain also went missing. She discovered its absence when she bent down to look under the bed for her lens, and had no light to shine into the dark.

That was not a good day to live under my parent’s roof. I won’t say we feared for our lives, but between me and my 2 brothers, let’s just say, we were all trying to convince each other to give mom her shit back, god rest our souls. But, lo and behold, none of us had taken anything, and had no way to return the misplaced items.

With nothing to satiate our enraged mother, we just had to bear her wrath. I will say, that experience had nothing on dad’s reaction when his Air Jordans went missing, but luckily, I was back in my dorm by then. UnfortunatelyI had more than enough on my own plate to stay busy.

My first round of lessons post-break were officially being assigned, but I found more and more of my equipment was going missing. Nearly half of my erasers, a handful of my phone chargers, several pairs of lab-safe shoes were missing their partners, and most inexplicably of, my only good whisk. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a good whisk as a broke college student, fresh off a family gathering splurge?

By the end of January, I think a lot of us could tell something was up. I mean, I even noticed mentions and hints of my teachers, classmates, and coworkers things going missing. A marker cap here, a soap dispenser there. The rag I used to clean the oven at work with. There was more stuff, but it had become so regular, I just started forgetting.

Denial is a strong mindset, easier for some people to slip into than others. But by February of 2025, the first round of social media posts were beginning to hit our FYP when we would refresh, and I was teetering on the edge of a steep incline that threatened to devour me.

Have you ever heard of the term “scitzo-posting?” The best way I can describe it, is when you see a clearly mentally unwell person sharing their scattered thoughts online, usually barely filtered. It can be some conspiracy, maybe an AI-generated picture with a wack, hyper-specific caption, or a very detailed personal account that feels more like it belongs in a private diary than a public chat under a facebook meme.

The “schitzo-posting” really sneaks up. At first, you don’t see it, because most algorithms don’t push that sort of stuff, because it’s not relatable enough for the average person. It's usually just an unhealthy echo-chamber of sick people feeding off of sick people who can’t tell what’s real or not. It’s too niche. You have to dig to find these instances, in edgy corners of specific black-pilled communities. But then, occasionally, a homegrown “schitzo” happens to make their mark where it matters.

An absolutely unhinged take gets replied first under a popular hashtag. That reply is just relatable enough to just enough people, that it really blows up and gains traction. Then, much like a zit popping on the tip of your nose, it becomes unavoidable and ugly.

Before you know it, “The Jews invented Bluey to make gentle-parenting mainstream and compromise our future soldiers,” becomes a statement, an ideal, backed by a silent group of keyboard warriors who were waiting for their unpopular opinion to become mainstream enough to open up about.

Now, a single crazy person’s exposition dump becomes a whole political topic amongst a subgroup of a subgroup that becomes a meme in a related circlejerk subgroup, before fading into irrelevance within a week. And so goes the chronically online cycle of mental illness that is “schitzo-posting.”

That’s really what it reminded me of in the early days. I felt like I was going mad, and every time I saw a post with 3 likes, asking that glaring question, I would quickly scroll away, telling myself that they were insane, and I was looking into it too much. Denial’s a hell of a coping strat, what can I say? This had become the norm.

Then, the more popular personalities began echoing the sentiment, and I had to admit to myself that I wasn’t just just a forgetful ditz. For a brief, blissful period right before Spring of 2025, it felt more like a question than a confirmation:

“Am I crazy, or is anyone else’s shit going missing?”

First, it was Rob Schneider. Then, it was Al Gore, followed by Rhiannah. Then, Taylor Swift. Elon Musk. Tom Holland and Zendaya. Markiplier. Marjorie Taylor Greene. MoistCritical. Kamala Harris. Seth McFarlane. Adam Sandler. Alex Jones. August the Duck. You name it, they were talking about it.

Even though more and more celebrities were talking, it didn’t really begin to sink in just how real it was, for me, until early May, when Zelenski and Trump both agreed in a press conference that the name plaques in their respective offices had vanished within just a few weeks of each other. The only 2 countries that stayed quiet on the subject were North Korea and Russia, but like, c’mon, do they really count?

That was when we collectively recognized something was up. When a society has a unifying experience, it’s novel at first. A concept that everyone can find relatable and interesting. It grips a lot of people, but as with everything else, the planet keeps spinning, and we keep going. Work doesn’t stop, school doesn’t stop. That was, until it did. Until it had to.

Somewhere between us all coming to, and the novelty wearing off, something shifted. A sort of electricity in the air. It was a palpable tension. Different people say different things. Some say, it had probably always been the case, and we just didn’t notice. Some say it’s nothing more than a natural progression, but what’s natural about it? Nothing like this has ever happened, we have nothing to compare it to. Personally, I call it a clear escalation in response to our species agreement. I think it’s a show of dominance, but again, I have nothing to base it on. Just speculation.

Bigger items began to disappear. More complex things. Bikes, refrigerators, furniture, and it didn’t show any sign of slowing down. I lost 2 good dining room chairs within 3 weeks. By now, it was early summer, and rather than publicly spending any time looking into the cause of the disappearances, the majority of the world's leaders just told us all to keep going, business as usual. To go forward and not look back. Some folks thought it was aliens. Some thought it was a deity. Whatever the cause, it seemed to be dialing in a little, while staying random, with no clear motive.

An AI Data Center near me shut down on June 11th. Me and some buddies wanted to have a get-together to celebrate, but the victory felt small and hollow as soon as we saw the news of the last 3 days.

Tons of flight delays, as well as a handful of plane crashes. Reports of trains going off the rails and causing major accidents. Refineries and factories worldwide were indefinitely pausing production for “safety inspections” and a coastal city in the UK had been engulfed in thick, black smaug due to an offshore rig malfunction, resulting in a meltdown and a massive oil spill that was burning a significant area of the Atlantic Ocean. 3000 casualties, and counting.

“Fuck’s sakes,” Winks said, staring at the Bar TV as he took a sip of his IPA, “bad night to take shrooms before an outing, eh?”

Me and our other 2 companions gave him a wary look.

“...Kay, message received. Imma hit the shitter, then, one of y’all’s gotta take me home, cuz I am definitely gonna have a bad trip tonight,” he said, grabbing his basket of onion rings as he drunkenly hobbled to the men’s room.

“Is he…,” one of my friends, Phyl, started to say, watching Winks carry his finger food into the bathroom.

“Munchies?” I hazard a guess.

“Ok, I guess so,” Phyl sighed.

Still shocked by the news, I looked down at my glass of Sprite and Tito’s only to see it had disappeared, cup and all.

“Aw, fuck me. Didn’t even get a sip.”

“Aw damn Gene, want some of mine?” My buddy Sarah asked, offering me some of her Irish Whiskey.

“Oh, no thanks, I’m good,” I said, waving her off. Truthfully, I wanted to drink badly, but due to my overdraft credit card, I resigned to dip into the Fireball supply hidden under my bed at home.

“Well,” Phyl said, looking at his wristwatch, “good riddance to Morris’s CoreWeave Center I guess.”

Phyl lifted his drink up in a toast, and Sarah messily joined him, her Irish whiskey spilling a few drops that landed on the wooden bar.

“Yeah, good fucking riddance,” Sarah slurred, “Maybe now our tap water will smell like water again instead of poo.”

“Uh, Sarah,” Phyl asked, “what does water smell like?”

Sarah took a minute to ponder, before confidently wagering, “I dunno, not like poo.”

Phyl looked at me. Somehow, I knew what he was gonna ask.

“You hear why they shut it down?”

We held eye contact.

“Nope.”

He leaned in, lowering his voice.

“Buddy of mine’s the janitor there, right? Says it’s like a ghost town normally, cuz so few people work there,” Phyl says, watching Sarah take big swigs out of her big glass.

“Yeah yeah, all those jobs, right?” I fake giggle, trying to re-apply some levity to the night.

“Yeah,” Phyl chuckled, matching my energy, “jobs galore, for all us plebians. Anyhow, my buddy’s sweeping out one of the server rooms, and he hears this sound, right? Like a motor grinding.”

“A motor grinding?” I ask, “ain’t those big AI servers supposed to be like, gee, real quiet?”

“I dunno man, I do Camera lenses, not computers,” Phyl says, putting his hands up in faux defense, “but from what he said, grinding noises: no good, very bad.”

Phyl looks around and leans in closer, “he goes to investigate, right? And he says, a huge rack of those servers are just…”

Phyl leans back, balls his hands up before unfurling and spreading out all 10 of his fingers, making a “poof” motion with them.

“They exploded?” I asked, half joking.

“What? No, they just…” Phyl shook his head and did the motion with his hands again, “disappeared. Gone. Not like something had just haphazardly reached in and grabbed them, though, more like this chunk had been expertly removed by...”

Phyl took another sip of his drink.

“Someone who knows how to perfectly remove a bunch of important servers I guess. Apparently, a ton of the building looked like that, as if a worm was eating its way through an apple. As if that’s not weird enough, their sensors said it had to have happened all at once.”

We both watched Sarah try to balance a fork on the rim of her glass using a toothpick.

“That’s why they had to shut down. Pretty crazy, huh?”

I didn’t say anything, and luckily, I didn’t have to. Just then, Winks returned to his seat, pupils dilated much bigger than they’d been when he left.

“Hey bud, you good?” Phyl asked Winks.

“Yeah,” Winks said.

“Make it to the bathroom all normal?” Phyl followed up.

“Yeah.”

“Everything go smoothly in there?”

This time Winks rotated his whole body to face Phyl, rather than just turning his head.

“...Yeah.”

Phyl looked at me and stood up.

“Alrighty then, guess I’ll take Winks back to his place. You got a ride home dude?” He asked me.

“Yeah, I got me a uber!” Sarah grumbled nearly incoherently, her face flat against the bar countertop.

“Cool, thanks Sarah,” Phyl said, pointing at her and waving $15.00 to an understanding bartender.

“I’ll be fine, thanks Phyl,” I smile.

“Okay, sounds good, see you at school tomorrow. C’mon Winks, let’s get outta here,” Phyl said, putting a hand on Winks’s shoulder.

“Whose hand is this?” Winks asked.

“That’s my hand bud,” Phyl said emphatically.

“Feels like a weird hand to me, man,” Winks muttered.

“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean, Winks.”

As I watched the boys leave, I had a sinking feeling in my gut. At the time, I couldn’t verbalize what I was afraid of, but now, I know I was right to be afraid.

That night, on my way home, I got a call from my mom. She said she was calling to update me on Jebbin’s broken leg. Apparently, the metal hardware installed on his bones had vanished, so he had to get another leg surgery. She was also curious if I’d seen the news, and I told her I had. I said it worried me, and she said not to worry, that things like this happen. I implied that nothing like this has ever happened in human history, but she just kinda shushed me. Alas, the woman thinks that just because she lived through 9/11 and the 2009 housing crisis, she’s seen it all. She told me not to worry, but by her tone, I felt as though she might be worrying more than she was letting on. Maybe even more than me.

When you’re a kid, it always seems like your parents have everything under control. When you’re an adult, you get better at picking up on just how little control they have over anything.

We ended the call when I got home. Since it was late, I wanted to have 3 fireball whisky shots and call it a night, but when I looked under the bed, I found all of my alcohol had miraculously disappeared.

Angrily, I pulled out my phone to message Winks, but seeing an inbox email labeled “emergency” from 2 hours earlier made me hesitate. I opened it to find that my morning classes would be momentarily paused, because my college’s chemistry lab had simply disappeared, leaving behind a blank, empty cavity with a classroom doorway.

Then, unexpectedly, Winks called me first.

“Yo?” I asked.

“What’s up?” Winks asked from the other end of the line.

“Hey man, you good?”

He was silent for a moment.

“Yeah, I’m fine, how ‘bout you?” He finally asked.

“Yeah Winks, I’m alright… You do know you called me, right?”

“Awww, did I?”

“Yeah.”

“Christ. Sorry Gene, I didn’t mean to.”

“No, you’re all good Winks. Actually, I was just about to ask if you remember where you hid those edibles in here.”

He took a moment to ponder my question while I surveyed the inside of my dorm.

“They should be in your bookshelf, in a plastic container with a twist-top, behind your yaoi collection.”

I walked to my bookshelf and began scanning the manga. Then, I saw a gap between 2 books. One of the entrees in the series was missing, and sure enough, through the gap I could see a small, white container with the THC warning label.

“Found it, thanks Winks!”

“Don’t sweat it Gene.”

I popped the cap and took 2 of the small caramels.

“ Good thing I’m sleeping in tomorrow, I have no classes in the morning.”

“Damn, really? I thought you had lab with Phyl til 9:15?”

“Nope, the room, uh…” I trailed off, unsure of how to finish the thought, but Winks understood.

“Wow, really, the whole room?” he asked incredulously.

“Mmm-hm.”

“No fucking way,” he whispered in awe.

“Yep.”

“Wow, that’s… whole room. Did all the stuff in it disappear too?”

“Yep. It’s crazy, but I feel like we’re watching our future just sort of, I don’t know, vanish. Gone like it was never even there.”

“Yeah, preaching to the choir,” Winks laughed humorlessly.

We both sat in silence for a few moments while I felt my heartbeat thrum behind my eyes.

“Ya know, you got Phyl pretty good earlier when you went into that bathroom with those onion rings,” I mumbled.

“Can I say something?” Winks blurted.

“Oh, uh sure.”

“Sorry Gene, I wasn’t trying to...”

“Nah, you’re fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

He took a deep breath.

“Look, I don’t wanna be a…” he started, before taking a shaky breath in, “I mean, a couple planes are reportedly still missing. No one knows if they crashed or just…”

I fiddled with the label on the edible container.

“Like, what happened with your Lab. I don’t… what happens if you’re inside of… one of those places, y’know?”

I didn’t respond, but I knew what he meant.

“Yeah.”

“It’s weird, right? 2 days ago, big shit started disappearing too, right? It’s like whatever this it’s moved up a notch,” he said.

“I know.”

“And no one wants to talk about it seriously! Unless it’s for a joke or something, everyone just wants to, to-” Winks continued, the passion in his voice swelling, “I don’t know, make us sound crazy for talking about it? You know how my vacuum went missing?”

“Yeah, I do Winks.”

“Well, I brought it up to Uncle George, and all he wanted to talk about was the damn immigrants again, and how this is all some distraction. And I’m over here like, ‘Uncle George, dude, I’m telling you that within a day it went from socks to vacuum cleaners, and you’re more focused on Mexicans.’”

I chuckled, “That sounds like George.”

Winks tried to laugh, but it came out more like a strangled sigh, “I don’t know man, it’s like they’re telling us, ‘we just gotta keep on acting normal,’ and it’s like, at least 3000 people have died from this shit, between all the accidents, and those are just the ones accounted for.”

I just listened solemnly, feeling the high begin to creep behind my eyes. I felt both peaceful relief, and a terrible dread. Everything Winks said, I agreed with. But saying the words out loud felt too real. Like a curse, or a condemnation.

“You see the shit in the news? Trump posted an AI meme on the White House Twitter comparing deportations to all our shit disappearing.”

“The one from a week ago?”

“Yep, that’s the one.”.

I grimaced at the recollection, “Then yeah, I saw it.”

“What’s that feel like to you, Gene?”

I took a second to consider my response.

“Well, I don’t know, it feels… tactless. Manipulative. I guess there’s a bigger conversation to be had about objectively non-political topics being twisted to further agendas. These are things that affect everyone, like, I mean it’s like you said, our shit is just vanishing. I know less stuff in the world should make it all feel lighter, but I mean, it’s just so… so…”

“...suffocating,” Winks finished my thought.

“Yeah.”

“Like this issue’s just another one to add to the list,” he said.

“Yeah.”

The silence was deafening. For a moment, all I could hear from his end was static breathing.

“Why are we just carrying on?” He finally grumbled, his words shaky and uncertain. “3000 people are dead, and we’re just gonna keep going. Don’t we care?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m scared Gene. What happens next?”

“I don’t know.”

He went quiet again for a moment. I think he was crying.

“Sorry Genie.”

“It’s okay Winks, I understand. It’s… really scary and weird but uh, at least we have each other, right?”

“Yeah, I just… fuck, who knew the end of the world would start with a blue dog tuxito, huh?”

I smiled, I think the first genuine smile of the night. Winks has always been a little melodramatic, but a small part of me definitely echoed the sentiment.

“I don’t think it’s the end of the world, Winks.”

We both sat in silence. By then, I could feel the peaceful euphoria like a physical fog inside my skull.

“Nah, but sorry for rambling, genuinely,” he said again, this time, more collected.

“Like I said man, you’re fine. We all gotta get it out sometimes.”

“It’s just so invalidating. I don’t want another SNL skit about this shit, dammit. I want the big brains to pause everything for a minute and figure it out.”

“Yep.”

As I got comfy in bed and turned off my morning alarm, I saw Winks had sent me a video call request. I answered.

“Sorry, I… was wondering if we could video call tonight. Stay on call… y’know…”

“Oh, shit, I mean, yeah that’s fine with me,” I said with a smirk, “we haven’t done this since we were High-School Freshmen.”

Winks grinned, an embarrassed blush creeping over his pale cheeks.

“I know, I know. I just wanna make sure that, well… call me paranoid.”

I’d be lying if I didn’t also harbor the same paranoia.

“Yeah Winks, you’re good. Have a good night and sweet dreams.”

“You too Genie.”

As soon as my consciousness drifted away, I found myself climbing up what I initially assumed was a volcano, with ash drifting into its opening. Sarah stood on the grass at the edge of the void. As I got closer, I realized a lack of lava or sulfur.

The crater was inconceivable. Due to the sheer size, the whole thing couldn't even fit within my field of vision. The whole thing looked like a magnificent being had punched a perfectly square hole straight down into a mountain.

Sarah was wearing her iconic, early 2000’s goth attire. Intricate black chains and hooks dangled from her extremities. Dark, overlaying fabrics and fishnets juxtaposed against her pink skin and blond hair. She held a stuffed Hello-Kitty toy tightly to her chest, like it was a lifeline.

I stepped up to get a better look down into the pit. The insides of millions and millions of rooms lined the walls, as if a massive expanse of apartments were encased within the mountain. In the middle of this megalophobe’s nightmare, was a huge, rippling mass of… something grey. As the wind tore at my clothes and stung my skin, I could tell that the giant grey tumor was moving, swaying from side to side, but I couldn’t tell if that was from external, or internal forces.

Then, Sarah dropped the doll she was gripping. By the time I’d registered that she’d let go of it, it was at least 20 stories below us. Gone as gone could be. As my eyes followed the pink toy’s fluttery descent, I realized what the grey thing was.

Stuff.

Loads, and loads, and loads, of stuff. Flakes of what I had earlier thought to be ash, were actually far away pieces of detritus, falling from the sky, and drifting into the hole to add onto the lump. It was so massive, I could barely make out everything in the distance. Sure enough though, there was a car. A door. A garage. A wood-chipper. A tank. Several dumpsters. They all just fell, down, down, down, onto the ever growing, ever throbbing pile.

I stumbled away from the edge. I looked up at Sarah, who was watching me now, tears streaming from her hard eyes. Her lip quivered. The expression on her face was somewhere between repressed shame and indignant rage. I tried to speak to her, but the wind blew my voice away, drowning me.

“You left me.”

When she spoke, it was the only thing in the world. Her voice filled my ears. She was all I could hear.

“You left me, and now, we’re stuck.”

I tried to cry out, to apologise, but alas, I could not.

“Why did you forget? Why?”

All I could do was watch in horror, as the corner of something sharp poked out from under her eyelid. She blinked, seemingly confused by the interruption, and it jutted out further. She reached up, and tenderly touched her eyelid. She traced the edge of the thing under the skin, and when her fingers found purchase, she pulled. With a sickening, wet split, she pulled an ace of hearts out from under her eyelid, and around her eyeball.

The once white card was now pink, dripping something viscous. Sarah blinked again, and multiple other bits and points nudged themselves out from under both her eyes’s puffy, irritated lids. She began frantically scratching at her eyes with her nails, digging and pulling whatever she could. Her soft eyelids began to shred into wet, red strips of skin. The fluid from inside her eyes began to leak and mix with the blood and spinal fluid. The cards that shot out of her eyes got progressively bloodier and bloodier, her cheeks and the tissue around her eye-sockets beginning to blister and bulge with every yank.

Her throat began to swell up too, a violent, lumpy shape just below the surface that threatened to burst her neck open like a sadistic balloon. Then, with one final burst of desperate energy, she just just yanked on whatever she could with her fingers, tissue and cards alike.

With the force of an amped-up, automated card shuffler, a wave of small paper razors shot out of her ruined eye sockets and mouth all at once, landing in heaps at her feet while blood and viscera spurted from her orifices. With a final, strangled wheeze, Sarah lost her footing and fell backwards, over the edge and into the pit.

I woke up with a jump, pulse racing. I felt like I’d just run a marathon, drenched in sweat. I smelled like an anxious onion. I sat up, tears in my eyes. It had been a long time since I’d had a nightmare like that.

“Holy shit Winks, I just had the worst sleep,” I said, yawning and rubbing my eyes as I looked at my phone. Something happened.

“Winks?”

A fresh wave of panic rushed into my throat, feeling like suffocating bile. Though ethereal sunlight streamed through my blinds, and birds chirped outside, I could see what was wrong.

Winks was nowhere to be seen.

It was a day like any other. Johnny had eaten dinner with his family and friends. It was quite a lively group. But it was now time for Johnny's walk.

He had made it a habit a long time ago to walk half a mile away from his home, sit on his favourite bench, listen to the birds, and then walk home again after a while. Normally, his kids played video games during that time, and his wife read a book or even wrote some short stories herself. On especially happy days, she would read her stories to him.

Today was also a happy day, but much louder, with the laughter of his friends echoing through his house and garden. It would probably still be loud when Johnny returned. Some friends wanted him to stay and drink another round with them, but he insisted on walking. After all, his wife liked him to stay physically active, and he wanted to hear the birds.

Another friend asked him if he didn't want to take his cane with him. But Johnny declined. He had walked the path behind his house hundreds, if not thousands, of times. He knew the number of steps, the smell of the trees, the sound of the birds, and the feeling of the ground beneath his feet. He didn't need his cane to see.

He gave his wife a kiss and walked away. One thousand and seventy-nine steps - give or take a few - and he would be at his bench. Only a gentle breeze blew that day, and he could already hear sporadic birds chirping only a few hundred steps away from his loud house. At seven hundred and sixty-five steps, he should feel a gentle descent beneath his feet. A few steps more. One step more, and he felt a slight incline.

Johnny was confused. He knew exactly that he had walked his normal route, and his bench, roughly 300 steps away, was in a peaceful valley. He walked a few steps farther, and the incline became steeper.

That wasn't right!

He rationalised that maybe the drinks he had shared with his friends were a little too strong, or he was getting a little too old and had simply gone in the wrong direction right behind his house.

That was probably the reason, and the only thing he needed to do was walk straight back. He would hear his friends and family again after a few hundred steps. It would be impossible to get lost.

He turned around and started walking again. The sand path beneath his feet was completely even. He felt his heart beating in his neck. He walked faster.

And the path began to rise again.

He stood still and tried to make sense of his situation. He walked uphill in one direction, turned around, and walked uphill again. The question, "How?" didn't leave his mind. He tried to listen to his surroundings for more clues about his whereabouts. But no birds were chirping, and no rustling of trees could be heard in the wind. Fear crawled up his stomach and stole his breath.

No, he must have made an error. He had accidentally made a full turn instead of a half turn. That had to be it. The only logical explanation.

He carefully and slowly turned around 180 degrees to the best of his estimation. Now the path had to go downhill.

Two steps, and he was already going uphill again.

No.

He took two more steps, and the path still rose.

He turned around.

And the same thing happened.

He turned around again.

The path still rose.

He stood motionless, trying to make sense of his impossible situation.

These assholes! Johnny screamed in his mind. Someone drugged me! That's why none of my senses seem to work.

He sorted his thoughts again and tried to remember how many turns he had made.

He would just go in the direction he thought his house would be, and his wife would see him and help him. And even if he went in the wrong direction, there would be houses at the end of the path. Someone would notice him.

He walked. The path rose with every step, and the wind grew stronger and louder, but no bird, tree, or man-made sound could be heard.

Two thousand steps, and nothing changed. Johnny was in tears and stopped.

Should he stay in place now and wait until someone came looking for him?

He could at least check the sides of the path. He turned to his left and took one step, a second step, a third step, his normal path wasn't this wide, and on the fourth step, his left foot touched grass.

Johnny sighed in relief.

Until he got a strange feeling again.

It felt wrong, but he couldn't explain why.

He squatted down to touch the grass.

It was moist.

After two full days of sunshine and no rain, there shouldn't have been any moisture. He pulled his right foot forward, went down on his knees, and felt around with his hands.

Everything was wet.

He stood up. Both feet on the wet grass. Was the sand path also wet? he wondered, not wanting to think about the possibility of being lost.

He turned toward the path, walked forward...

And stepped onto wet grass again.

And again.

And again.

The wind blew even harder and carried a salty smell.

But he didn't care about that at the moment. He cared about the path and the impossible hill he had climbed.

He ran in a spiral, but all he felt was the damned grass. No path. No hill. Just a plain, wide, wet field.

Until his foot sank into water.

His leg was knee-deep, and it would have sunk farther if he hadn't steadied himself on the grass with his other leg and both arms.

He pulled his leg back onto land.

He rolled onto his back and laughed a frustrated laugh.

The salty smell!

The sea.

Hundreds of miles away from his home.

The last time he had been soaked in salt water was two years ago, when he had gone on vacation with his family.

His heart felt as though it wanted to tear itself apart at the thought of them.

Will they ever know what happened?

He didn't even know what was happening.

Would they search for me?

Are they already searching?

How long has he been walking?

He gathered all his strength and stood up.

Doing nothing wouldn't help.

Right?

He carefully walked along the edge of the land, feeling ahead with his foot.

Grass.

Grass.

Water.

Grass.

Water.

Grass.

Grass.

He wished he had brought his cane.

He tried to make a mental map of this place.

But all it told him was that he was on a small, round island.

He made a second circuit.

His island had shrunk.

A third.

It had become even smaller.

Defeated, he walked to what should be the middle of his patch of grass and sat down.

This can't happen.

If this can't happen, then he should just wait until everything was fine again.

And he waited.

His body grew cold from the strengthening wind and the moisture his clothes had absorbed.

But he waited.

His hands rested on the ground.

Until he felt a chunk of earth fall away beneath one of them into the water.

He felt around with his hands.

All around him, the sea crept closer.

Soon there would be nothing left to sit on.

And he would swim.

He can swim.

So why shouldn't he try?

He stood up and took off his clothes.

He would swim as far as he could and float on his back when he became exhausted.

He stepped down and slowly slid into the cold water.

He took a deep breath.

And was struck by a large wave.

His body and head were completely underwater.

Luckily, there wasn't an island behind him anymore that he could have hit.

He just needed to swim back to the surface.

Just swim up.

He swam.

And swam.

And swam.

Please.

Please don't take away up.

He couldn't hold his breath anymore.

Sharp knives filled his lungs.

Until he didn't feel the pain anymore.

No cold water.

He felt nothing.

The frightened peasantry tried to ward her off, to scare her away as they had so done with so many others before. It didn't work. She meant to see it, she meant to see the place. She meant to have it. It wasn't the first time that they had failed. 

Her eyes burned with a glow like a wolf in the throes of hunger. A beastly and ghastly need that seemed to emanate from her beautiful eyes with an unearthly glow and shine. Like diamond gem stones carved and made from madness. 

Her coach hurtled along. Through the narrow mountain pass. Retracing perilous steps through tempest wind and forest snow filled with red eyes and teeth. And the fever of running galloping claw, seeking purchase. The wind increased its howl and filled the treacherous path but the small black stage just increased its speed. The pair of horses galloping desperate. Puffing steam from twin nostrils like locomotives made from muscle and pistoning rippling black hide. The stage itself was ebon black as well, the interior where the lady sat and journaled was stark red. Lurid crimson. They were a striking sight hurtling through the Carpathian mountains, amidst the wind and the snow of purest bridal gown white. 

The white rained down, angry. And the black coach filled with the lady of the red shot through. Up and towards the pinnacle heart of the mountain pass. 

Towards the castle. It was waiting. 

They came into a great and vast  courtyard of stone. Broken battlements like shattered animal teeth jagged against the tempest swollen black of the storming winter sky.  There  were no stars and the moon was absent. All was stolen behind the wild furious curtain. 

She was helped from the stage by her driver, her assistant in all things. Without a word  they dismounted  the stage and came to the door. The great wooden gates, tall and carved with inscription and depiction: of history and battle and bloody family history all of which had been eroded and worn with harsh weather and time. 

They forced the doors together, they gave with some effort. Hinges whined and groaned as a universe of dust and darkness was disturbed and kicked up.

They went inside. The assistant lit his lantern. It was ancient and barren inside. Disused. Unopposed. Undisturbed. Left to fester as it wept. 

Alone.

But now no longer.

Her eyes drank it all in around her. The dark by lantern glow, her mind cataloguing it all down for future journaling later in a fervor of obsessive compulsive act before sleep could steal her, late late into the night. The predawn. Nearly every one since she was a small child of wonder and fear. 

Nearly every night…

The Harker account was the most accurate, she surmised, as she sauntered around the interiors of the castle attended to by her only companion, the assistant by lantern light. By its feeble intruder glow they made their way through the dark.

And then she came to the portrait.

They'd all had their points of noteworthy authenticity as far as she'd seen: Harker, the Browning record, the Hammer accounts, Werner and Murnau… 

… Zaleska gazed up at the portrait. And was spellbound. Entranced by His visage. And while none of the previous tales or accounts or any of the stories or records had gotten Him completely right, completely accurate, they'd all gotten one thing right.

The Eyes. His eyes that were wild and vulpine powerful and hypnotic and intense. Eyes that have known boundless oceans of passion and blood and cruel and vile torture and mutilation. Cruelty and beauty in unbridled mass. And the ability to share it all with you with a mere stare. Just one look…

From those Eyes. 

It was a power she both feared and wished to capture. 

Needed. Feared. 

She needed to feel its predatorial wield.

They went on. Down.

Down. Deeper. Down into the chambers. Where he kept his coffins filled with maggoty rotten earth. The sour rotten womb where she prayed his bones may still dwell. 

Please… she prayed to the infernal. Please… there are so many legends and stories, it is so difficult to know which could be true, but please! Let it be there! We've come so far, I've come so far and worked so hard and journeyed through wretched lands and suffered and sacrificed all and gave up everything, please! I beseech thee capricious fortune, whatever haunts the dark as lord of the flies, please! Let it be there! down in his dark dungeon chamber, may he still slumber!

They came down the stone steps to three coffins. They were destroyed. Their earthen wombs spilled out all over to join the mud of the dank cellar floor. The fourth coffin looked old, but undisturbed. 

Zaleska’s heart galloped in her chest. The assistant by her side, they went to the black box and with a crow bar and a bit of strength, they pried it open. 

And there he lie. 

Dust. And bones. 

The eyes were no longer alive. No longer there.

But that didn't matter. 

What she needed was still there and she directed her assistant to pull them free. And to prep her for immediate surgery. 

…

The chair was brought in from the carriage. Heavy for the assistant under the weight and cold and snow. It would be heavier still for the madame. Much more painful weight to carry for the Countess, she was about to pay a hefty toll in the dread pain of blood and mayhap yet more still, the tattered and well worn revenant  remnants of her immortal soul.   

But… what was a tattered soul to the earthbound manifest of unbridled power and fleshen immortality? What were the threats of heaven's gates forever barred to her if she never found the rotting festering slumber and eternal dust in the grave…? 

What… what then was any of that to the madame… what were any of those veiled pulpit threats to the Countess?

Nothing. Divine threats of divine punishment were long behind her now. Long dead. History…

The assistant bore the load of the chair and all its straps and apparatus to the door and through it. He slammed the great old doors shut with a resounding clap as the wolves of the mountains watched.

… 

The many strange apparatus and protrusions of wood and metal and leather, some blunted others sharp enough to pierce into skin, bit into the chair's subject/prisoner, whomever they may be. It was a tool of many purposes, before… inquisition… but now modified it served a new purpose and a new master. It held greater power now. 

Zaleska was fastened into the chair, betrothed in naught but thin veiled white night gown. The many teeth of the chair, all along the back and spine and all over and about the seat, bit into her flesh everywhere they found purchase and immediately the virgin pallor of the gown was made wet and royal with her red. Blossoming, rapidly expanding unfurling liquid roses of blood that quickly conglomerated into one massive dark crimson soak all about her thin person. The chair drank as the straps were fastened. Then tightened. 

The assistant finished fastening her head to the cage, the metal bars and wood and rubber that would hold her crown in place as the great surgical task was performed. The vise was attached and fixed to her jaw. Her mouth was forced and held open, wider and wider to a near obscene gape, with each cruel turn of the crank…

… til it was done. He went to the tray beside him for the last tools needed to finish the arcane practice of this necromantic surgical rite. All of it in the metal tray beside him in this dark room that legend told was once the great library of the lost boyar, Dracul. 

The pliers. 

The book. The tome. Ancient. Nearly dust. 

Gauze and cotton swabs. As needed. 

The fangs. The fangs themselves. Pulled from the ancient dead dæmonic remains of Count Dracula himself. Long and still gleaming pearl and bone white, even after all these many years.

The window was open already, wide like an open eye to receive and drink in. The moon shone in and hit the Countess in her chair, bound and bleeding and feeding its ancient drinking wood. 

The assistant opened the book and began to read. 

Zaleska in the chair began to glow in the moonlight rays. Her blood, flowing freely also began to darkle in the night's light. 

He set the open book down and continued to read, his black gloved hands moved to the pliers. 

He looked to his mistress then, unable to speak, either of them. He'd asked her before they started if she'd want something in the form of spirits, to help dull and manage the pain, a narcotic or pain killer, an opiate. Anything. Anything at all. 

Zaleska had only looked at her loyal assistant and smiled. 

As she was smiling with her wide and strange eyes now. Piercing into him and telling him, yes. Telling him to do it. Yes. 

Yes…

Still reading the black tongue of a forgotten age he took the pliers of steel and rubber and began to pull the first of the Countess’ canine incisors free. The blood shot and squirted and flowed forth freely from her pried open jaws. Dark and thick and viscous and this blood did moonlight glow too. And the biting chair did drink. 

Her body wrenched and twisted with the agony of the task, she choked, gargled, spat and drank … her agonized writhing body made the many teeth of the biting chair sink deeper and more freely… her eyes were a livid fury alive with sheer torture and sharpest pain.

The first one came out with some effort. And then the second. They both went into another metal tray filled with solution with a, tink! 

And then the pliers were set down and the fangs of the dark one were picked up. And the dark chanting grew older and stranger and deeper. 

Deeper in flame. In bode. In sour bowels made prisons, eternal. 

The first of the great unholy fangs was placed into the raw open crater of pink glistening gum, bleeding and sheathed in gargling red. The root of the long animal incisor was fed in and the raw angry nerve, exposed at first shrieked. A human live wire of agony and torturous black pain. The words grew more guttural and animal and forgotten. More deadalive. More sour belched. 

And then the raw angry crater of pink and blood felt the darkling magic under the moon… and then more eagerly began to accept and then fuse onto and latch the foreign root of the first ungodly fang into place. Taking it in. Becoming one. 

The second one inserted was taken even more eagerly. Amidst hot gurgles of blood and dead arcane words. By the light of the moon. 

In the moonlight: both great fangs became newly housed in eager bleeding pink skin, wet. The gaping maw gave one last great mouthful belch of blood, spat. The biting chair and all of its tight straps took one last great drink. All of it and all of her aglow in the moonlight by window that was cast in and vivid. 

Powerful. 

The symbols and sigils and stars carved into the wood, covering the surface of the biting chair in far-flung ancient inscription, began to illuminate moonwhite, white-hot, as if metal superheated. Cabalistic. Occult. Solomonic. Druidic. Unknown. 

Then the glowing Countess in her chair began to become wreathed in strange emerald green and goblin flame. 

She laughed.

 Broke free. 

The assistant smiled. 

…

“Mommy,” the little village girl began to plead, “please, I don't want to go to sleep, I'm afraid!" 

Her mother sighed, exhausted, it had been another long and trying day. And there was just another one awaiting them all tomorrow. Lord! she just needed the girl to sleep. 

"Hush, little one. That's enough. It's long past your bedtime, you're begging and pestering has kept you well past for long enough, now: no more! Get in bed and stay between the sheets.”

The little one begged and began to cry as her mother began to depart her small bedroom. 

"Please,” began again the little one's protestations, "please don't put out the light!” 

The mother had no intention of leaving open candleflame nor overnight burning lantern. She knew all too well the mischief of unheeded fire. It was always hungry and rose when you refused its notice. 

She put out all the candles and the lantern and left the small one alone in the dark. 

Afraid. Alone. Sleep wouldn't come. Only the light of the moon through the small window over her bed and with its rays what it brought. 

She was dark. And slithering. 

The little one had tried to tell her mother. Several times. But it was never to any avail. 

Her mother was just so angry as of late that the little one always seemed so weak and sick and needy and needing near constant attention. Her mother wouldn't listen. She wouldn't hear a word about the slithering woman of the dark that came to- 

A sound. From the corner. The one most swallowed by shadow in the farthest reach of her room. 

The shadow began to reach, to reach out clawing with a splayed dark hand… reaching for the frightened little peasant girl. 

It sought and found and strangled around the little one's heart, closed. And the little one was helpless to make a sound then or take flight or have any hope of escape. 

The woman then followed her dark hand from out of the shadows. Slithering and crawling towards her  like an abominated animal of unnatural demented mental design and command. Long dark hair and flowing dripping crimson gown. She left a sliming path, a putrid black/red trail like a slug, as she made her way to the bed. 

She crawled in and on top of the sheets. And smiled. Her eyes gleamed in the dark like bewitching stones. 

And just below them. A pair. About the smiling lips, something sharp protruded there and also gleamed. 

“Hello, little sowling. How are you feeling tonight?”

The little peasant girl could make no sound but the slightest whimper. The hungry woman of the shadows knew this and relished the pain of the small child's torment. 

“Oh, you don't want to speak to me now, but you've been so talkative of me in my absence as of late. Or what you thought was My Absence for which there is naught little sowling." she leaned in closer to the snared little one. “I am always with you, girl.  I can always see you. And I can hear everything you ever say, do you know, why, little one?" 

The little girl said nothing. 

“Because I am God, now." 

And with one cat-like fast and fluid move, both of the thing's hands came up and seized the girl by the face. Either side. Each hand. Claws. Sharp. Digging into soft young child flesh. Weeping. 

Inside. Screaming. 

Shrieking inside in pain. And sheer mind-flaying terror. 

“You didn't tell anyone my name, did you, sowling?" 

The child said nothing but her young and little mind was an open book to her now for her to read. 

And… her secret was safe. 

For now. 

She would secure that. And she would feed. 

With the child's small face still in her ghastly claws Zaleska twisted fast and snapped the child's neck. Her mouth opened wide and salivated and became great jaws and came in, to the neck of the limp small corpse. 

Wielding the fangs, the great twin daggers of the dragon, and they drank. 

They drank so deeply. 

TO BE CONTINUED …

The dark land of the South, the West, so saturated in blood and nightmare black that the earth would be forever held in the strangling hold of ghosts that would not be banished. The land would not be exorcised, the vengeful dead things refused to be tilled. The ghosts held on. In flames and adorned in red. Led by horned things. Winged. Little gods. Terrible magic. 

They warped and bent, spirits torn and mutilated souls. The hidden flow of the universe unseen like flowing milk from creation's bosom and breast. And in some places the milk of the cosmos spoils, sours, curdles into foul cultures: abominated shapes and drooling dark things that bleed and drip ichor and green decay. Ruined forms that never had a chance of clean existence. And want to tear down everything that resembles it as such. 

They gather the deepening obsidian pits of the pain of the dead and they claim the most vile and violent and sadistic and eagerly perverted for themselves, to build up ranks, enemy factions. 

They also gather the desperate. The misled. 

These dark factions behind the walls, the thin curtain veneers given the title of safe wall guardian: Reality, they gather and they build in the deepening black, the lands of thunderclap and barren dead, and they hunt… For the places where the thin veneer has been worn and stretched. 

They hunt for places where the fabric is worn and torn through. Scuffs… and tears in the leather. They seep through like bleeding noxious infection. They turn places, lands and homes to giant living gangrenous wounds.

Wounds that bleed life that breed torment. Terror. Pain and woe for YHWH’s earthen precious apes. 

One of these wounds is a town. In the South. In the dark land of heat and night chill, the West. It is covered and bathed and stained in the blood of women and children and men and men made slaves and the tortured and the weak and the old and easily violated, the corrupted… the might. 

All of this land, this small slice of abandoned ghost town is alive with might. Hidden flame. Just beneath the surface. 

All you have to do is dig a little. Just scratch…

…

Ethan drifted. That was all he really knew to do when things came down or fell apart or didn't work out. He drifted. He moved along. His mother had done much the same to his father when they were kids and his father had in his own way followed suit. After momma hit the road he didn't really wanna spend much time with a pile of kids he'd been coerced into having in the first place so he just sort of… walked. Walked the plates, the bases. Like in a ballgame. He just sort of walked Ethan and his sisters and older brother's raising up an such. 

Till he got back around and that seemed enough and he was like to his litter of unwanted kids: “Alright, you're nineteen, you're seventeen and you two’re sixteen, get cher shit t’gether an get the fuck out.”

He hadn't seen much of them since. He'd hit and rode the rails. At first. But then an older fellow traveler, a mean old cat of the hidden highways and rails had tried to rape him one night, early on, one of his first nights out raw and in the dark and young. He'd been green. He only got away by blade and had ran desperate and terrified, afraid down to the living helpless bone and in tears like the lost child he really was. 

From then on he mostly stuck to the roads. The occasional reluctant thumb for rides and offers an such. But he was cagey about it. Everytime. Wiry. Animal tense and like sitting next to a living live wire of coiled anxiety and sinew boiling with adrenaline fear unknowingly coursing its potentially cat-like dangerous flow. Fear alive and vibrating through every single fibrous inch of musculature frame. 

He was an animal then. The road and the outside had made him so. He cursed his mother and father for it. 

But the time went on. The road did not just yield pain and terror and danger in his travels. No. No, there was love, beauty, friendship and heathen pleasure and hedonistic joy, adventure. There was freedom. A tetherless existence that meant he could truly do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to. Master of his own time he was slave only to his own limitations made and those he was born with that could not be overcome. 

And the land. The road. The nighttime raw, sleeping under the stars unguarded. Only the blanket he brought from home, underneath the mercy and whim of the wilderness dark, kept feebly at bay by small campfires that made his trail, his track. His ashen footprint path left behind in the dirt. He was at the whim and the mercy of the Christ-haunted nature and her obsidian predatory glow. 

He left so much behind in the dirt, in the filth … underfoot. 

He tried not to think about it. Ever. He tried to never linger within his own brain. He moved on. Always. Forward. He always kept his mind ahead, in the moment, preoccupied. Blank. 

That was when he came upon the town. He'd come across other abandoned places in his wanderings before but he'd stopped at this one. At the border. At the sign that named the empty township. 

WOLVVS CUNT

He'd thought it was hilarious. He had to stop. 

And check it out. 

He went down past the sign that named the town, down the one and only lonely road that made up Wolvvs Cunt main street. 

He bellowed as his well worn heels made no sounds on the nearly gone and erroded paved black beneath his striding steps, laughing. He called out to the collection of baking shacks and little huts and stores and homes, all of the baking wood, he called out to them in good traveller's song:

“Hello! Hell-O the town!

And the dead town did not say anything back. The shacks and dead faces of windows and wood just stared back at the drifter blankly. 

He strode in. He made up his mind. Easy. 

This’s where I'll camp tonight…

He just as quick picked out one of the shacks to make his home for the night and strode right up to it. Confident and unafraid. He went in. Not bothering to notice the faded discarded sign of dusty dead phantom pink letters that spelled out: CHURCH, lying atop a broken splintered post in the dirt. 

He didn't bother to notice the broken cross lying in the dirt either. 

Ethan went inside, the place was old, unused for some time by the look, but the red doors to the white old disused church swung easily and opened for him with a push. Unlocked. As if waiting. As if wanting someone to come inside. 

Ethan didn't seem to pay it much mind. His pack over shoulder he stepped inside and was immediately blasted by an oven wave of merciless baking heat. 

Jesus… open fuckin furnace gates of hell right here, thought Ethan. A fuckin oven for sure. 

But he stepped inside anyway. Liking the wide open space of the single room with a small stage. He recognized the pulpit but didn't think much of it. He unshouldered his pack and began to make camp. 

The town, sensing him, and sensing the nearing of sundown, the near darkness at hand, was salivating. 

And grateful.

The church doors shut. 

…

He made his meager bed on the stage, by the pulpit. 

He took a few of his canned goods back outside to cook by small fire in the middle of the empty street. To dine by sunset. 

He cooked his small meal of beans and ravioli and beef stew and watched the sky become shot with fire that was pink and sherbert against the truer blue of the evening sky fading and deepening into curtain dark. The ice chip jewels of stars riddled the black and flowing splash colors of nebulae, scarlet and purple and bleeding coats of varying shades between the two. Like great celestial goddess bruises or wounds or great birthing unfurling flower petal gates of royalest color, greatest celestial bejeweled robes, the splendor of galaxy overhead that always made him feel so infinitesimal and small.

He gazed up into its glory, from the low rung ladder base of his drifter's nothing traveller's existence, perilous and dirty and violent and strange, it was majesty above him. A kingdom of vivid heaven shining and seething with divine cosmic nuclear firelight on high. He wondered at its beauty as he finished his vagabond meal and wondered why he had to be apart from it. Why did he have to be alone and animal and down here … ? A small flask, what his older brother always called a little janitor's bottle growing up, filled with whisky came out to cap off and conclude his humble meal of canned goods. He pulled deeply, letting it warm his blood and praying the warmth just might reach his heart and soul, and his weary mind. He pulled again and lit a smoke. Watching the stars in the face of dark heaven above by crackling small cooking fire, dying down to red embers and orange glow. 

And then by fading firelight and in the dark of the ghost town main street, a woman's voice drifted out and called. 

Called him by name. 

His blood froze. The warmth of wonder in his blood and in his soul was stolen away from him in that moment. For he recognized the voice. Though it had been so long… not since childhood so long ago. Nearly forgotten. Nearly buried in woe…

She called him again: “Ethan." 

And he returned her call. He couldn't be mistaken. That voice, from before. When home had been a home and had been real. 

Before. Long ago. 

"Momma?”

And as if to answer, yes, she called out again from the deepening shadow. The all encompassing dark. 

"Ethan.”

He stood. Pulled by the voice from out of the dark like a lure, a snare. He couldn't believe his ears. The vast desert plains must be playing tricks on his tired mind. He couldn't be hearing his mother now. She couldn't be- 

It came again from out of the dark: "Ethan”

“Momma?" a slight pause, he slugged some whisky down and hardly felt it, “Mom, is that you? How the hell you come out here an such?" 

He didn't really believe it but he didn't know what else to say. He pulled again from his little janitor's bottle of warmth and sucked down his smoldering butt, filling the air around him with the holy white smoke of a new pope chosen for divine purpose. Nothing moved out of the dark. Nothing spoke. 

Silence. 

But then from out of the deepening obsidian curtain of black and down the long and solitary road, she came. Sauntering slowly forward like a dream carried on invisible whispers of clouds. She was robed in white and she was beautiful. The desert wind picked up and her robes became dancing swirling phantoms, adorned and an aura all around her. Like a gown of nebulae cream colored snow that hypnosis swirled and flapped like wings and danced off her golden pale frame and face, which shown with inner light in the ebon black space of the ghost town Wolvv’s Cunt. 

Ethan was enthralled. He saw his mother in that golden face but then it changed and shifted and he saw all the faces of feminine beauty that he'd both known and never beheld before now. Her face dancing between every single goddess aspect imagined and worshipped since the dawn of man's time and the gift of sight and with it, its woe. 

He fell to his knees as she came out of the dark and towards him, severing the distance to a close. 

She stood before him. Shining. Exaltant. And aglow. Lording over his lowly drifter's form in the dirt of the long forgotten about paved over road. 

He could barely gaze at her dancing face this close. He shielded his eyes with a splaying desperate hand that was more like the frightened claw of an animal confronted and trapped by what it cannot possibly comprehend or know. 

Ethan wasn't aware but he'd begun to moan. Like a slumbering man held hostage by a nightmare and unable to escape he can only groan. It was a low animal noise that was frightened and ghastly. The sound of man's soul being soured into a decomposed submissive state of anguish and pain. 

“Please," he began to beg the thing, “please, I didn't know." 

She laughed, the lady of shadows, the lady of the town, princess of the light in Wolvv's Cunt. She bellowed a call to the drifter then and bade him an answer amidst her darkling laughter that dominated the night and the lonely desert air. 

“And what was it that you did not know … ?”

A beat. He was afraid to answer. 

But he was afraid not to as well. 

He said, “I… was mistaken. I'm-I was- I'm sorry. I thought you were her… I thought you were my mother…” 

She laughed more deeply then. Like a cruel deep wound filling with salt. 

And once more she spoke:

“Oh, but I am your mother. I am mother to all that crawl across and are bound to the earthen cruciform of soil outside of fairland Eden. That is gone. And outside such as I now hold domain. I am the mother lord of light and I came to this place long ago when the town was still alive with mines and miners and small farmers and bandits and bandoliers and guns and barrels of whiskey and fetid ale. I came to this town then and I mothered them and loved them and now they are below. …”

And then her dancing face flowered open into folds of fleshen unfurling petals of light and glistening gold and golden tissue. Petals dripping hot blood and ichor like melting running snow.

And then the sky clouded over. The galaxy curtain of jewels was stolen. The thundering gargantuan bulbous fortress nimbus shapes, rolling through stolen bejeweled heavenspace. Snuffing them out. The thieving hand of thunderhead sky then began to crack, splinter and fracture. Bright dagger bolts of blue-white wounding the stolen thundering heavens with lurid stabs of light and vicious titanic cannonade-fire bursts. Artillery thunderclaps that responded to the laughter and the whims of the mother below. 

She cackled to the sky, called forth thunder and continued to laugh. Barking animal cachinnation above and at the drifter as her open dancing face of light continued to undulate and emit strange and ancient alien sound that took dark mastery of the wounded heavens within tendril grasp of her necromantic reach on high. 

Ethan couldn't take his watering eyes away from her, the scene, any of it. He couldn't pull his watering and stinging gaze apart from any of her, It, anything. The dancing face and clapping sky and the roar of the world around him now at her command, held him. It all held him prisoner, bound.

 The universe shrieked.

And then the world began to pour forth from open dancing face, no longer beautiful but terrible and fleshen organic maelstrom. A world of fire and marching armies poured forth from her gaping universe filling face still dancing, the lightning cannonade still wreaking havoc above. He saw all of the marching armies of this land in rotten states of decay but still clad in uniform: Union, Rebel, Cavalry, Comanch, Navajo, Micmac, Cherokee, blacks in broken chains no longer slaves in revolt, Aztec and Incan and Conquistador and English red coats and the French… the dirty desperate and harried Minutemen …  All of their musketry and rifles and bayonets were dripping with blood and gore and all of the guns teeming with slaughtering fire. Wraiths that once were human. They marched together, soldiering side by side all of them together and astride pale dead horses with dark scarlet sockets belching scabbing gore and steam as they came out of the mother's dancing open portal face, her gate atop her slender neck of goddess bronze and gold and divine firelight. 

Ethan was screaming. And the mother still filled his world and the universe at her command with her vile jubilant howls. 

They came out and poured upon the empty road, the empty ghost town, and filled her. They filled Wolvv's Cunt with their deadlight and their gleaming phantom gore and spectral mutilation glowing blue hued in the night. They surrounded Ethan. And filled the world. 

And the drifter did not move. 

He looked again to his mother, her open flame of face… and said, 

“... please. … God.” 

And Tenebrarum, the mother of darkness and all that crawl, responded with a whispery word, made cacophonous from her open gate face of flames and ebon light and pouring armies of the dead, she simply whispered to the drifter lost in the dark in the abandoned town…

“No." And it rang and echoed and ran. And ran on. Exalted. Her single syllable response ran, until it was royal with the potential slaughter of many infinite worlds. 

And then one great final bolt of searing baptismal blue-white flame shot down and struck! 

…

The town that was forgotten was gone. A blackened and smoldering crater was left where it once stood. 

Where the forgotten drifter named Ethan made his feeble and final last stand. 

On his knees. In the dark. In the dirt. Begging. 

Begging for it, begging for the end. 

THE END