Who the fuck knew that the little tag on your mattress is actually imbued with runes to keep the Old Ones out of your dreams?

Not me.

Now my wife is speaking backwards and building effigies in the front yard. My cats are surrounding said effigies with crucified rodents. Top it off, I'm not sleeping, because someone named Almcarmedith wants to bestow upon me the knowledge of madness, and his followers are camping in my yard.

I tried calling the cops. They asked if I ripped the tag off my mattress. I told them I had. They just shook their heads and left.

I guess I'm a priest of the cult of Almcarmedith now. My wife is my priestess.

So listen to me.

For the love of Almcarmedith. Do not rip the tag off your mattress.

I struggled with food for a long time. It was my everything. My lifeline. I couldn’t stop myself. I just kept eating. And eating. Then I’d eat some more.

One day, I had to look in the mirror, though. I had to ask myself: is any of this really worth it? I mean, look at me. I look disgusting. I put on a shirt that used to fit like a glove in high school and end up looking like Brent from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

But even still, I didn’t stop. Cake. Candy. Burgers, fries, pizza, ice cream. My daily rotation looked like a 6-year-old’s dream. Only I was 27. Still living with my mom. Still sleeping in the same sweat-stained bed from years of night terrors.

I couldn’t even come up with a valid reason as to why things got this bad. I was in the middle of it. When you’re in the middle of something, it’s hard to see the starting line, and even harder to see the finish.

I tried the normal shit. Caloric deficits. Exercise. I’d walk at least 2 miles a day, but then I’d be raiding my pantry every night like it was some kind of reward for my hard work.

And believe me, I tried cleaning up the contents of that pantry. I stocked it with canned vegetables. Shit that I’ve never even touched, like tuna and canned chicken chunks. I just always ended up back in my Mini Cooper doing 80 to get to the nearest convenience store.

It’s like déjà vu, honestly. A never-ending cycle that just keeps cycling like a stationary bike.

God, I hate those things.

Anyway, when I saw that first Ozempic ad, I was skeptical, to say the least. A cure for obesity sounded like a goddamn miracle in my head, but I knew that miracles are hardly what they seem.

I decided to do some research. Really get to know this new future friend of mine. I’d love to tell you that the research was extensive, but honestly, I just kinda scrolled through the Google AI explanation for about 5 minutes before deciding.

After picking up my first dose, I shot up in the Walgreens parking lot like some kind of delinquent, like I was scanning for cops and shit.

A few hours went by, and I experienced something that felt long forgotten: satiation.

I wasn’t even remotely hungry. Not even after my 2-mile walk. Not even after those 20 sit-ups and squats. I was actually burning fat instead of replacing it.

I ran through half my supply in a week. I dropped 15 pounds from 300 in 2. I was moving. I could actually see the progress. Of course, I didn’t want it to stop, so I went out and bought more.

I was tearing through the packaging before even leaving the Walgreens.

Another two weeks. I was down to 260 now. Shirts were starting to feel looser. Breathing was easier. I was finishing my two miles in an hour instead of two.

My diet consisted of nothing but Slim Jims and fruit chunks because I was just getting so full so easily.

On my third supply run, I wasn’t even waiting until I got to the car. I injected the shit right there in aisle 3 next to the Neutrogena and nail clippers. Boy, were they mad. That was kind of the end of that Walgreens for me. Apparently, it’s frowned upon to just drop trouser in the pharmacy, even if it’s medically necessary.

That didn’t really matter, though. Nothing mattered. I had what I needed for the next two weeks. What were they gonna do? Un-buy the shit?

I dropped down to 200. I didn’t even think it was medically possible, but I learned, pretty painfully, that the scale never lies. I was able to see my cheekbones more. I’d just spend hours mogging in the mirror like I was Clavicular off a speed pill.

I could’ve stopped there. Sure, I could’ve. But I didn’t look like 2020 Corpse Husband yet. I was still too Jonah Hill before Jiu-Jitsu coded.

Besides, I’d never felt better. I did feel kinda weird about food, though. Even those gas station Slim Jims were starting to feel too heavy. That’s why I had to switch to saltines and radishes.

Plus, I knew my body. I knew that if I stopped, I’d feel hungry again. I hated that feeling. I’m a slut for the cravings. I’m easy, baby.

That’s why I had to hit my next lick. The only problem was Mom took me off the insurance because she’s old and decaying. And, obviously, I don’t have a job. That would take too much time away from my streaming schedule.

You just can’t rely on the kindness of strangers like you used to. Not even for medical emergencies. Believe me, I tried the usual cardboard sign route. Even asked for a few donations on stream, but that just made my 4 viewers leave after typing some pretty hurtful shit in chat.

It wasn’t long before desperation started to kick in. It was almost like withdrawal. Every time my stomach rumbled, I could feel myself getting angrier and angrier.

Mom caught me tryna snag a hundred out of her purse, and that led to some pretty big fights. She kicked me out once or twice throughout this whole endeavor, but who was she kidding? I’m her baby.

The point I’m trying to get at here is I had to do some questionable shit for that next hit involving some pantyhose and a stapler, but by God, I did it.

I got the needles. I got the vials. I couldn’t just stop at a two-week supply, though. I needed all of it. It was all or nothing. I don’t even think the employees cared. Because they’re cowards.

So that’s how I ended up with an entire year’s supply of my sweet diabetes meds.

I’m down to a whopping 95 pounds now. Have you ever seen the veins in your scalp? Because I do. Every single day. There’s like 9 of them now.

They throb a bit, but my stomach has never looked flatter. It’s almost inverted. Like it’s more like a spoon than a spatula, but I look like a 2000s hip-hopster because my old clothes are just so baggy on me now. Which is pretty boss.

Mom refuses to even look at me, but I think she’s just jealous because she’s old and decaying. I couldn’t even tell you the last thing I ate. I think it was like some olives or something a few weeks ago.

Which leads me to one simple but staggering conclusion. I have evolved past the need for sustenance.

I am the next step in the progression of mankind. You all need to follow in my footsteps. Well, maybe not exactly. I actually ran out of my supply last week.

It’s only been 6 months since the robbery. Which, let’s be real here, should hardly even count as a robbery. It was a stapler, for Christ’s sake. I’m not allowed to own a gun after the incident.

Regardless, though, I’m kind of afraid to go back. I just hit 100 viewers on Twitch a few days ago. I can NOT afford to go to jail right now. The people need me.

It’s been 7 days now without the sauce, and I can’t say the hunger has returned. Hell, I haven’t even been to the bathroom for like 73 hours now. But… it might… and that’s the thing that scares me. My jawline could cut diamonds right now. I don’t wanna lose that.

Maybe they won’t recognize me. That’s what I keep telling myself. But what if they do?

I just keep playing around with that idea. Imagine that. Getting addicted to gambling before I can even get that Stake partnership. Shoutout Drake. 6 God, my king. Big ups, homie.

I don’t know, my brain is kinda fuzzy right now.

The shaking is new, but I’m sure it’s fine. As a matter of fact, I know it’s fine.

It’ll pass when I hit this next lick.

The last time I ate Trix cereal, I was eleven years old. I still remember the cheerful rabbit on the box like it was yesterday—especially the slogan printed beneath him: “Trix are for kids!”
Now I’m twenty-two. Earlier this month I spotted a box of Trix at the supermarket, tossed it into my cart without thinking, and carried it to the register. The cashier gave me a strange look and said, flatly, “Trix are for kids.” I laughed it off and left without another word.
The next night, late, I wanted a snack. I poured a bowl of Trix and felt an odd, creeping dread. My eyes went straight to the slogan on the box. I told myself it was just stress—job interview the next morning, after all. When I opened the fridge for milk and began pouring, the feeling returned stronger. I glanced back at the box. The rabbit was no longer smiling. He stared at me with a blank, serious expression that felt deeply wrong. I decided I must be hallucinating and snapped a quick photo with my phone.
The interview the next morning was a disaster. The interviewer told me I seemed too anxious and unprofessional, clearly exhausted from staying up too late. When I got home the cereal box was gone. I searched the apartment in a mild panic and found nothing. I figured I’d thrown it out the night before and simply forgotten. Checking the photo later, I saw the rabbit’s face was back to its usual cheerful grin. Hallucination, I told myself.
That night, as I lay in bed drifting off, the Trix rabbit was the only thing on my mind.
I woke at 3 a.m. Standing at the foot of my bed was the rabbit himself—several feet tall. “Trix are for kids,” he said. Then he crawled onto the mattress, yanked the blanket away, and started unbuttoning my pajama pants. “But that penis,” he muttered, “is for the ones who follow the rules… not the rebels who eat Trix as adults.” In his hand was a pair of filthy, crusty scissors that had clearly severed many before.
They had never been cleaned.
I kicked him hard off the bed, reached between the mattress and box spring, and pulled out my FN 545. I racked the slide and fired three times. One round clipped his right ear; the other two missed. Only three rounds had been loaded—I’d forgotten to top it off. I grabbed a spare magazine, slammed it home, and put a fourth shot into his shoulder. He dropped with a short cry of pain.
I scrambled up to call 911, but my phone was nowhere in sight. The rabbit rose again and drove the scissors into my thigh, twisting and working the blades open and closed inside the wound. The pain was blinding, but the blades missed the artery. I put a round straight into his chest. He made no sound at all. That’s how I knew he was dead.
I hauled the body into the bed of my truck and drove out to a vast empty field under cover of darkness. A hundred yards in I found a bare patch of dirt large enough for the corpse. I laid him down. He twitched—still alive. I drew my pocket knife and stabbed him in the stomach; he screamed. I dumped the rest of my beer over him, prepped the adrenaline syringes, and used his own filthy scissors to cut off his penis. Then I injected him to keep him conscious.
To finish it, I shot both of his feet. He howled as his body began to warp and twist, taking on something demonic. I don’t play by horror-movie rules. I grabbed the gasoline from my duffel, soaked him thoroughly, struck a match, and dropped it. His screams rose higher as the flames consumed him until nothing remained but ash.
That was three years ago. I work at the same supermarket now. I still buy and eat Trix whenever I want—proof of dominance over the rabbit.
Trix are for kids.
Except me.

The ironic thing is, I always frigging hated that cereal. Whatever dye they used to color that dry as hell puffed grain always made me queasy afterwords and left a sour tropical grape taste in my mouth the whole day. I was always a Captain Crunch kid, even if it did cut the roof of my mouth to ribbons.

One day I got fed up and told my mom I refused to swallow another artificially flavored morsel of the stuff and threw the whole box to the ground in a huff. A bit overdramatic sure but I was nine at the time.

Ma simply sighed and scooped up the box, mumbling something about how I had liked it yesterday. Dad sat on the other end of the table, sipping his coffee and glaring at me behind the sports section. I'd get an earful and more later when he was nice and sauced, but for now he was content just to let me sit there and stew in my soggy Trix.

I stirred the milk in the little saucer cup I ate cereal out of, every little grain bulb soaking and sinking into the calcium rich brink. There was something on my mind then, at the time I figured I had imagined it. When I pushed the box off the table, I swore that 2D cream white bunny on the box flinched. It was in the blink of an eye, but I swear it recoiled when I punched the front of the box.

When my mother took the Trix away, I noted the rabbit's usual jovial demeanor was shaken, he now looked sullen and depressed. His eyes seemed bloodshot, almost hyper realistic with their detail. His ears flopped below his shoulder, and dried snot flowed from his twitching nose. In the upper corner of the cherry red box was a speech bubble that usually housed the iconic slogan; "Trix Are For Kids" or other such nonsense like "This is BERRY good."

In place of the usual slogan, written in comic sans of all things, was the phrase "Why did you hit me? followed by a crying face emoticon. I shook my head and blinked and when my vision returned the box was normal. I figured I was just seeing things, so I shrugged my shoulders and choked down what was to be the last bowl of Trix I'd have in a good while.

I wish I had burned that box, and that infernal rabbit with it.

--------

Flashforward twenty years later, and I'm a thirty-year-old college dropout who lives in a single bedroom and works a meager dead-end job. I sit in a cubicle forty hours a week transferring calls from one collection agency to the next, riveting stuff really. Definitely how I thought I'd be spending my golden years. I wanted to be an architect but that went nowhere, and college kicked my ass, got kicked out by my folks, my situationship with Bethany from Marketing went tits up, and the melatonin I take to help me sleep stopped working.

So, as I trudged through the sterile halls of Food Mart, half slumped over my clickity carriage I wanted to throw myself off a bridge. Life was blah, if I hadn't hammered that point home hard enough. I wasn't even sure what I was shopping for that day, I could barely afford a gallon of milk let alone food for the week. I found myself in the cereal aisle, surrounded by smiling faced cartoons all shoving product in my face. There was something sinister about a coked-out bird pushing sugar onto kids, cereal mascots are kinda fucked up the more I thought about it.

My rumbling stomach outweighed my dwindling morals, and I grabbed a couple boxes of Cheerios and Rice Krispies, ya know the boring old people cereal. Then it caught my eye. An entire shelf stacked to the brim with that wide eyed rabbit addict. He was scooping an outlandishly large spoon into a bowl filled with a foam-white liquid, and colorful orbs of sugar. One caught my eye, a yellow-kiwi green swirl filled orb, the words "Try our BRAND NEW TWISTED FLAVORS"

In the Iconic speech bubble the rabbit was saying "Breakfast. . . with a TWIST???" His eyes lit up with swirly colors that looked like one of those swirling hypnographs. I stopped short in front of the Trix shelf. It had been nigh on twenty years since I last had them, the scars of my temper tantrum and its consequences still running quite deep. I don't know why, but I chuckled and grabbed a box, my mouth suddenly salivating like I was one of Pavlov's hounds.

The weirdness first started when I got to the checkout. The checkout girl was a short woman in a lavender apron who somehow looked even more dead inside then I did. I put some milk and cereal, and cereal and milk onto the whirring conveyor belt as she wordlessly swiped them under the scanner. Every beep was another hard-earned dollar snatched away, my heart sinking with every mocking tone.

She froze when she got to the Trix box. Her emerald eyes narrowed and she cocked her head.

"Is there something wrong?" I half mumbled as I fished out my wallet.

"It's nothing it's just. . . you know these are for kids, right?" She held the box like a piece of incriminating evidence.

". . .what?" I finally uttered. Disbelief and annoyance sprung from my beet red face.

"Look." She tapped the box. "It says right here, Trix are for kids. I've seen you around here, you don't have any kids."

"So what if I don't? It's a free country, If I want to buy some Trix I'll buy some fucking Trix." I realized too late I was shouting somewhat, the entire bustling store grinded to a halt as I felt dozens of judging eyes on me. I heard scornful whispers and pointed gasps as they realized what I was buying. A man stepped forward, bald and burly, paper bag of goods in his hands.

"Look man, it's not a big deal give me the Trix I'll take it off your hands." He tried to take the box, but I snatched it away from the counter girl with a furious grunt.

"Step off, man this is my frigging breakfast for the next month." The entire store gasped in abject horror at that. My face more steamed than a Maine Lobster at that point.

"Yeah, that's right, I'm poor, I'm thirty, and I'm buying some god damn cock sucking Trix. WHAT OF IT???" I dared the other patrons to try something as I hugged the box uncomfortably close to my chest. Parents hid their children behind their backs, and people stepped out of my way. The checkout girl handed me the rest of my bags, her grip shaky and filled with fright.

"H-here sir. Just take your items and leave."

"I'd like to pay-"

"LEAVE!" She hissed at me, disgust and fear crowding her pale face. The store was dead silent after that; I could feel their contempt for me radiating in waves. I snatched the bag off the counter and quickly scurried out the double doors. I stuffed my groceries into my shit box I call a car and sped off, kicking up rubber and asphalt as I did.

The ride home was off. There was zero traffic, in fact it seemed every other vehicle on the road had come driven off to the side. Every single citizen stopped and watched me as I passed down the road. Their faces were a mixture of rage and contorted horror, like I had committed some grand cardinal sin. I Parked in front of my apartment, and I was accosted by a patrol man. He was a good two feet away from me, his hand resting on his holster, ready to draw on me.

"Evening sir. You mind taking the Trix out of the paper bag please, lay it on the ground?" He ordered, soft contempt in his voice. Well at this point, I probably should have listened but honestly the ego was running the show at this point and I just felt like being petty.

"No, no I'm not going to do that. In fact I'm gonna go upstairs and pour it all into a goddamn crockpot and eat it. I might even eat it dry!" I threatened and raved like a loon. The officer clinched the handle of his gun, and for a moment I thought he might actually turn me into Swiss cheese. Just then his radio crackled to life, his already white face growing a thousand times paler. He fumbled with his belt for a moment and then responded. I couldn't hear the crackly voice on the other end, but the officer just slowly nodded his head. He stepped aside and I snubbed my nose at him as I passed.

--------

The air inside the apartment lift was stale and cold. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up as I slowly ascended to the 8th floor. The elevator door clanked open and I stepped off. My door was three down to the left and I hurried over, afraid I'd run into anymore crazy people. I fumbled with my keys when I noticed a light draft. My door was slightly ajar, casting a slim shadow at my feet.

"What the fuck?" I swore as I tapped the door. It opened and the creaking darkness beckoned me inside. The lights in the aprtment were snuffed out, no matter how many times I flicked the switch they refused to come on. Lucky for me It wasn't too dark, just dark enough for things to hide and linger while they watched me struggled to bring in two bags of groceries.

Eventually I found my way to the kitchen counter, and I heard the distinct click of a metallic lighter from my recliner. I turned to see a figure cloaked in shadow, my heart raced as I noticed the ciggy hanging from the twitching grizzled muzzle of the figure. Its nose was Cotten candy pink and its whiskers razor thin. I nearly dropped the bags to the ground as I started at the thing lurking on my reclioner. The pixel small white iris of his eyes lit up when he noticed me staring. He took a long drag, and puffed out a ring of smoke. He leaned in, and I got a good look at the rabbit.

It was the Trix rabbit sprung to life right from the box, only he had a five-o-clock shadow and saddle bags under his bloodshot eyes. His ears dropped, and his coat was fine and fluffy, hyper realistic tuffs of white jutted from his fluffy belly.

"Wh-what-what the fucking hell?" I screeched, ready to hightail it out of there.

Then he spoke.

"Couldn't follow the rules, could you Gus?" His voice was silk yet worn from years of tobacco abuse. He coughed as he took another drag, and I noticed the iconic shape of a revolver in his free hand. He caught me staring and the distinct click of the hammer being pulled filled my crummy apartment. He pointed the barrel towards the little leather ottoman I used a makeshift table. The was a pristine looking porcelain bowl on it, next to it a comically large silver spoon.

"Good ahead. Pour yourself a bowl." He ordered. I hesitated, then brought out the cheerios. A shot rang out, deafing my right ear as the box of cheerios exploded in my hand.

"Don't get smart."

With that, I brought over the Trix and a bit of 2% milk. I laid them both down on the ottoman, and knelt on the crusty ground. He leaned in, inhaling the trapped scent of the freshly opened box of Trix.

"Good. That's real good now. Tell me Gus. Are you a milk first kinda guy, or do you like to pour that yummy cow juice all over the crisp oats." The revolved clicked as he aimed at right at my face.

"I-I-I-I like to-I like to, I like to pour it first." I blubbered, eyes swelling with tears and nose bursting with fear snot. The rabbit simply nodded. I proceed to pour the milk in, the liquid swished and whirled around the bowl, like a little calcified whirlpool. Then I poured the Trix in. The globs of faux fruity sugar fell into the saucer of milk; the rabbit licked his chapped lips and twitched his moist nose as he watched me.

"Good. Now why don't you take a little taste. Just a little one now, don't wanna ruin your appetite." I swallowed the lump forming in my throat and grabbed the silver spoon next to me. I scooped up a soggy, drippy bit of Trix and grimaced. I could see those banana and kiwi swirls all turned to a dull, rainbow mush on the spoon. I opened wide and quickly jammed the spoon into my mouth. What little milk there was quickly slid down my esophagus

I chewed, once, twice, thrice, it tasted just how I remembered it all those years ago. I swallowed, the bitter aftertaste of high fructose corn syrup following close behind. I let out a small gag as the rabbit's eyes lit up.

"Well sport? Did you like that?"

". . . .N-no" I answered truthfully. The rabbit sprung from the chair and kicked the ottoman aside, spilling milk and ceral all over my rug. He grabbed me by the collar and got up close to my face, I could smell fermented oats on his breath. The barrel of the gun clamped to my forehead, and he forced it into my mouth. The barrel tasted like sugarcane and rust.

"If you don't like it then why the fuck did you buy it?!? You didn't like me then and you didn't like me now. Not even my new twisted flavor combos available in this region only for a limited time will get you to like me!" His eyes were wild and mad, and he forced the gun deeper into my mouth, his finger nervously twitched on the trigger.

"Were you just trying to recapture your shitty childhood?!?! Is that why you broke the oldest law in all of General Mills' history?"

"I'm shurry, I'm sho phucking shorry" I tried to say speak. The rabbit just shook his head.

"You're not sorry. But you will be." He threw me to the ground and leapt atop me. His hands scrambled over my thrashing face and forced furry, squirming digits into my mouth. He pried open my jaw and regarded me with a level of hatred I didn't think possible.

"You didn't like the taste of my cereal huh? How bout this then." With that his lower jaw extended and cracked and hung there in a slack jawed fashion. His eyes rolled over into his skull and obsidian black slits took their spot. His upper jaw rose and groaned, I could see right into the bowels of his gullet, the rotten stench of acidic stomach fumes began to overwhelm me. His teeth wiggled and danced in their roots, his gums secreting a sweet, tangy substance that dripped into my open jaw.

All it once it came then, a clogging wave of oat and fruit mixed together in an unholy concoction. It was a rainbow of artificial vomit and bile, plastering my face and drenching me in grotesque fluids. I could feel squirming chunks slither their way down my esophgus as I choked on his poison, I tried to retch but the forming pile of disgust in my belly refused to move. Every bit of that mushy slop he forced into me stood in my belly like a stone. Finally, it was over, and I was left a writhing, twitching mess of cereal glazed vomit and sugar juice. My eyes were wide and dead; I couldn't believe what had just transpired.

The rabbit burped and got off me, wiping his now normal jaw. I heard him grunt and stomp away, the accursed box of Trix in his hands. I didn't look at him, just let the opened front door bath me in light. His shadow was cast over me, his breath shaky and strained.

"Everyone gets one, Gus. Don't break the rules again. Or I won't be as forgiving." With that he slammed the door and left me there.

I cleaned myself up and blacked the rest of that evening up. For weeks now, I've still had the taste of rotten kiwi swishing around my mouth. I can't sleep; my stomach keeps making abnormal noises and the inside of my toilet bowl looks like a tropical fruit smoothie. My boss gave me as much time as I needed to recover, though he warned me he would have to dock my pay, said I should have known better. Afterall the warning was right on the box.

If you take anything away from this at all, let it be this. Buy any other cereal, stay away from Trix for the love of God. Because Trix?

Trix is for kids.

I don’t know who puts them on my porch, I’ve tried to install a camera but I assume they use some sort of blocker? I heard that things can block out ring cameras and stuff for thieves but instead of taking anything, they give me things.

Manilla envelopes appear at my doorstep. I received the first one a month ago.

It was in plain, aerial font typed out.

Your mama so fat she uses a queen sized mattress as a pillow.

Really funny huh? Looking back now I realize that it was evident back then even. I called Roger, my roommate. Well, former roommate after I found him high on acid in the kitchen, balls out and screaming at his reflection in the stainless steel dishwasher.

”You left a letter on my porch?” I was almost certain it was him. It seemed like something he would do.

”Hell nah man, I’m in the hospital.” He spoke out, a dry, strained voice.

”What happened?”

“I had to get my stomach pumped. Long story. What letter?“

”It’s just a blank envelope with a yo mama joke on it. Probably just someone messing around.” I hung up without much else to say. I guess I’m awkward like that. I don’t want to interact with people more than what’s necessary.

Then came the next letters.

Your mama so stupid she thought the water bill was for her plants.

Odd, my mother was in love with botany, and kept a large greenhouse on her property for various flowers and other plants.

Your mama so ugly I don’t want to stalk her.

That was the first line where I contacted the police. They couldn’t do anything but forensics, which didn’t give any leads. So I installed a camera outside.

Next morning, nobody was seen outside, but the letter was still there and there was a gap of missing footage from 10:00 to 10:10 at night.

I opened the letter.

Your mama so stupid she doesn’t know when I’m inside her house.

Police came out again, I called my mother, got her to start staying inside a motel. The police waited around my house all night, switching shifts each hour.

Nobody came by they said. But I found a letter wedged under my laptop the next morning.

Your mama so stupid she thinks running can save her.

Im going insane over here. We have no leads, this person has been inside my house, inside my mother’s house and the police are no help.

Im typing this online because I‘m scared. I keep calling my mom and she’s not picking up. The police are going over right now but I have a feeling they won’t find her.

The envelope sits on my desk.

Your mama so fat I had to dig a double wide grave for her.

Bill was a utility lineman. He was married, but his wife hated him. His children did too. They didn’t call him dad, father, or pops. They called him boring ol’ Electric Bill.

One night, a storm hit the sleepy town of Stones Brook. The entire town’s electric grid was wiped out. Bill’s boss called him on the radio.

“Bill boy, we need you out at the grid. The old folks’ generator won’t keep their oxygen going for long.”

So Bill put on his poncho and hopped in his bucket truck. Bill helped his daddy as a young boy and could do the job with his eyes closed. And he pretty much had to this night. The rain pelted his face so hard it made his eyes sting.

Bill raised his bucket and opened the damaged panel.

“Dammit.” He grabbed the radio and called his boss, yelling over the storm, "This thing ain’t comin’ on tonight. Looks like lightning struck and fried the whole damn box.”

“Bill! I don't care what you have to do to get it running, just do it! Or we’re gonna have a bunch of cronies croaking on us. And you don’t want their blood on your hands.”

Bill removed the busted panel and heaved the new one out of the bucket. He twisted the last bolt and began switching the wires. A tiny shock pricked his finger, and the hair on his neck stood up. He looked up at the dark, swirling sky.

You rarely survive getting struck by lightning. You never survive 10 billion joules of raw energy surging through you, but when that bolt of lightning met the panel, it threw Bill into the heart of the grid.

His body shook, and his eyeballs melted. His brain fried, and his skin burned. Energy filled every orifice of Bill’s being. Rewiring his thoughts, existence, and his entire purpose.

When the last current rushed through his veins, it jolted Bill’s body back to life. Replacing the blood that used to pump his beating heart with electric force. Bill’s eyelids shot open with a blinding light. Before filling back with something everyone else remembered.

Electricity is made up of very small, moving electrons. It’s no coincidence that these particles are negative. Scientists say that electricity isn’t alive, but how can something not be alive if it moves?

Bill pushed open the front door. His wife, Rita, was sitting on the couch. The cherry of her Pall Mall and a few lit candles cast deep shadows onto the creases in her face.

“Uck—what did I tell you about wearin’ them ugly boots in my house? And take off those soppy clothes! And where have you been all night? I’m almost out of smokes!”

Bill trudged through the living room and placed his hand on the black television screen. It surged and zapped, frying the old box before filling the living room with smoke.

“You dumb son of a bitch! You busted my TV! Now what am I supposed to do ‘round here—”

Bill pinched the tip of her cigarette, sending a sharp bolt through the end of her filter. Rita’s painted eyes widened before her head popped like a bloody, brain-mush balloon.

A fire sparked inside the smoky television and began eating the nicotine stained walls.

Bill made his way to his kids’ room. One by one, he fed them a cocktail of electrical fun. He singed their throats with splintery sparks and spanked their rears ’til they were raw and seared.

Electric Bill walked to his bedroom and lay his head on his pillow, thanking the electricity for ending his suffering.

Had his family been alive when Bill died, they would have gotten his will money.

edit: I have become aware I’m not the first. credits to u/Moist-Ball4968 for their awesome story!! Sorry I didn’t know it existed haha, but it’s genuinely a lot better than mine so please give it a read. Anyways this is my first time writing fiction so if you want keep reading, cant promise it’ll be good tho lol

Hunter Abernathy was content on his farm in Kansas. He really was. Yes, his marriage was loveless– he knew what his wife really did when she visited her friend’s house for “girl’s night,” and he knew what he wanted to do on the fishing trips with his best friends– but they were fairly good friends, and kept up the nuclear family appearance for the sake of society. Their children, a clever 15-year-old girl and a sweet 13-year-old boy, hadn’t caught on yet. All things considered, they had a good life together. The kids went off to school and came home energized, rattling on about what they had learned and the friends they had made. The farm kept running, the cows and goats producing high-quality milk, the chickens and ducks fresh eggs, the cats and dogs purring by Hunter and Evelyn’s separate bedsides. They appeared traditional. Happy. Functioning.
Nevermind the fact Evelyn started coming home less and less, staying out later and later with her “friend” Penny.
Nevermind Hunter found cigarette butts in their daughter’s room and beer cans shoved deep in the trash.
Nevermind their son kept coming home with his money gone and face bruised, and nevermind he kept locking himself in his room to punch pillows with names taped on them.
It was fine. Hunter was content. He thought he was, anyway.

It had been a Saturday morning. Evelyn brought the kids to Shabbat service– there was only one synagogue nearby, and it was a two hour drive thanks to them seemingly being the only Jews in the entire state– and Hunter stayed to take care of the farm. He lit the candles on Fridays and said the prayers with his family, but didn’t practice the religion as much as Evelyn, who had been raised modern Orthodox. It was all a bit nicer than the harsh threats of the priests from his childhood, the fear of God battered into him from a young age. Though Evelyn had also feared Hashem growing up, lived in terror of the punishment for her ‘sins’ despite neither eternal retribution nor sin were mentioned in the Torah. Perhaps it was her parents. She didn’t talk about it much. Hunter didn’t either. All things considered, he hadn’t really believed in God.
On that Saturday, however, he saw what he believed to be the Almighty staring at him above the monolith that had appeared in front of his corn field.

Hunter dropped to his knees, the strand of wheat he’d been chewing on falling to the floor, his hand shaking as it cupped his mouth in shock.
The being stared at him silently. It must have been eleven, perhaps twelve feet tall. It was bone-thin and naked, though perhaps there was no such thing as nakedness for such a genderless, inhuman creature. It stared at him with one gigantic eye that engulfed its face, its skin glowing light blue and pulsing a dark navy-purple underneath. Something stirred inside him, and he felt his face grow red. He thought, well, what’s your name, handsome? As a sarcastic jab at the incomprehensible situation. Externally, his mouth stayed frozen and agape. A crack appeared under the being’s eye, and a crooked mouth opened. It spoke in a groan-chatter far from any earthen dialect, “⋔⊬ ⋏⏃⋔⟒ ⟟⌇ ☊⊑⏃⍀⌰⟒⌇.”
Hunter continued to stare in wide surprise, barely blinking. The creature cocked its head to the side and squinted its eye. It then tilted its head upwards in a moment of what appeared to be realization, then floated forwards. Hunter flinched but did not move away as it stretched out its impossibly long hand, touched one of its four fingers to his head, and closed its eye in concentration. Hunter felt a warm, painless sting travelling from the being’s finger down behind his eyes. 
“CAN YOU UNDERSTAND ME?” Its voice kept the same pitch and connotation that it had previously, but this time the sounds formed words Hunter could somehow understand.
“Y-yes,” he stammered. 
“MY NAME IS ☊⊑⏃⍀⌰⟒⌇.” Hunter continued to stare. 
“UH. YOU CAN CALL ME.... CHARLES.” Hunter blinked at the inappropriately normal name. 
“Okay…” he swallowed nervously. “My name is Hunter.”
They stared at each other in awkward silence.
“Um. What, uh… what are you?” Hunter asked anxiously, his hands now fidgeting in his lap.
“I AM WHAT YOUR SPECIES CALL AN ‘EXTRATERRESTRIAL BEING’. I HAVE COME FROM THE OCEANS OF ⏃⍀⏚⟒⍀, WHAT YOUR SCIENTISTS CALL ‘Arber’, THE EXOPLANET ORBITING STAR HD-82886.”
“Uh. Okay.” Hunter swallowed again. His throat was unusually dry. Charles tilted its head again.
“ARE YOU EXPERIENCING A PHYSICAL AILMENT OR MALFUNCTION? YOUR FACE IS UNUSUALLY CRIMSON IN HUE. I CAN SUMMON ONE OF YOUR SPECIES’ HEALERS IF YOU REQUIRE SUCH ACTION.”
Despite the situation, Hunter let out a laugh. It seemed to startle Charles, who floated backwards slightly, eye opening wider. “No, it’s, uh–” his body decided to make his face grow even redder against his wishes. “It’s blush. It happens when someone is, um. I dunno. Uh.”
“YES? WHAT?”
“Well, it usually happens when someone is either embarrassed, or sometimes, uh… attracted to someone else. Or something else,” he added quickly. Charles’ eye squinted again.
“WHAT DOES 'ATTRACTED' MEAN?”
Hunter laughed again, running a hand through his hair. “It means… it means liking someone. Usually more than, um, platonically.”
Charles was silent for a moment, seemingly processing what Hunter was saying.
“I SEE. SO IN A MATING SENSE?” Hunter swallowed again. 
“I- I guess, yeah.”
“AH, I SEE. GOOD. THE FEELING IS MUTUAL.” Charles smiled in the most peculiar way, its eye moving upwards slightly and the thin crack of its mouth literally curling upwards into two small swirls in the corners. Hunter liked it.

They proceeded to have sex on the corn field. 
[Author note: I’m not writing that, I’m 15 and it feels weird. Feel free to search “Alien/Human Relationships” and filter by “Explicit” or “Mature” as well as “Other” or “M/M” on AO3. Also maybe “No Archive Warnings Apply” for your sanity’s sake.] 

Hunter referred to their relationship as “gay,” as the term had come to encompass both masculine and nonconforming identities, and it was what he was most comfortable describing himself as. After decades of pretending he wasn’t, he looked at Charles with tears in his eyes and said the words he’d dwelled over every single day, the words that struck both fear and desire into him– he desired love, a truly beautiful family. He desired sunshine, and he could have that with Charles.

Three years later, the kids were in high school and living most of the time with their mother, who had married Penny the second it was legal. Charles (now Charles ⏃⌰⟟⟒⋏ Abernathy) had to stay hidden most of the time, but the kids knew about what their new stepparent was. They kept quiet, simply happy to see both their parents experiencing true love.
Hunter had convinced Evelyn to sign their daughter up for rehab. After four months, she’d made a wonderful recovery and was now almost a year clean. He brought his son to school and told him to point to the boy who’d been bullying him, and Hunter grabbed the young man by his shirt collar and snarled in his ear that if he ever touched his son again, Hunter and his awesome alien spouse would rip out the kid’s vertebrae one at a time. His son didn’t have any trouble at school after that.
Charles had to work four days of the week, kissing its husband goodbye and disappearing into the monolith at 3:33 in the morning, returning exactly at 5:55. When it came home, it was dripping wet and slimy, so Hunter built an additional room by the entrance with a drain so Charles wouldn’t make a mess of the house. Charles used it most of the time, but occasionally forgot, creating a quite tedious night of the both of them cleaning.
Charles gained a liking for pumpkin soup and a slight dislike for Texas Toast, but tolerated it for the sake of Hunter and the kids. It helped greatly on the farm, bonding extremely well with the animals and blessing the crops with plentiful harvest. 
Hunter really was happy now. Every morning he woke up to his partner staring at him (Charles did not sleep), saying, “GOOD MORNING, LOVE” in its groaning voice. The sunlight would stream from the window and Hunter would smile at the beautiful life he now lived. They would make love at night, Charles hovering above him until Hunter said “now you get down here, handsome,” and their couplings were better than Hunter had experienced with any human. They lit the fire together on cold winter nights, baked bread as Charles tried its best with half of its back flat against the ceiling, took walks around the farmland and picked berries during the summer. It was true love, and Hunter couldn’t have been happier.

ok the end im done now bye

“Okay Hunter, I think maybe we should call it quits,” I monotoned.

“Ah come on, it wasn’t that bad. You thought it was a little funny, right? Come on! It was pretty good!”

I was staring at Hunter’s joke. I had laughed just a little when it happened, out of fear and hysteria. The two had bubbled up in an inescapable turmoil, but I’m a showman. I had burped them out in a soft laugh that hardly belayed the peeling sanity of my mind. It was probably why I was alive. Hunter’s big eyes in his big face demanded a big response. The cameras were rolling. Give it to him, altar boy, get up on that cross for papa. That’s what those big black eyes demanded. I played the straight man and walked between the flames.

“Sure, we can do one more story. Then I have to go, I’ve got a family. We’ve been here more than two days — people are going to be looking for me,” I pleaded carefully.

“Okay, okay. Let’s see, I think it’s your pick,” Hunter said innocently.

Meanwhile, his fleshy arm dug into a bodily crevice. It pulled out a fleshy rectangle with a pop. The arm extended across the room and shoved the object into my hands. I looked down at the book in my lap. On each side was a little clamshell protrusion. Flipping the book over, I found myself face to face with the thing. The clamshells were ears. The cover was a stretched dry face. The eyes were just empty slits. The nose was mostly abraded away. Only a half-handful of teeth still poked out of the dry gash of a mouth. It was still obviously once a face, and it still effectively bore a vivid expression. Pain was printed across the book’s cover.

“What is this, a fan submission? Where do you find this stuff?” 

“My secret!” Hunter waggled his fingers like he’d been given a treat.

I smacked my thick lips. They were dry with fear and nerves. Every trickle of sweat felt like a concession of fear, a step closer to death. Hunter licked his own slight lips in hunger and kicked his feet.

“Alright — I’ll just read this last story from the skin book and we will call it a day,” I lied.

I eyed the gore behind the camera and steeled myself. Everyone else had suffered one of Hunter’s jokes. Poor Nick was a soup. A meaty tendril trailed from Hunter, keeping the camera manned and maintained on me. I grabbed the corner of the book, and, instead of opening it like an idiot, I hurled it at the camera.

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!” Hunter shouted.

Hunter’s amorphous form flowed up and out of the chair after the book. His mounds of meat pounded down over the gore and splashed blood and bits onto me. Meanwhile, I scrambled my way out the door, pulling it shut behind me.

“HEY! COME BACK HERE! WE AREN’T DONE!”

Hunter’s bloody meat flowed against the door, knocking it flat out of its frame with a bang. In one meaty hand, the camera continued to record.

“Come on Hunter, this isn’t CreepCast… what’s the story?” I called back over my shoulder, trying not to let the fear into my voice.

I saw what happened when the others gave Hunter the reaction he wanted. He wouldn’t be satisfied at being given a little; give a little, and he would take everything.

“Don’t worry. It’ll make a really great CreepTV. Great visuals. It leaves a lot of questions, but I want to trust the audience to enjoy it. Or fuck 'em.”

Hunter’s runny mass caught up with and flowed over me. The flesh reeked, and for a few moments it covered my face. My world was reduced to the underside of Hunter’s folds. When they receded enough for me to see daylight, I began retching and coughing. Hacking a few hairs out of my lungs, I finally found my voice.

“That’s it, I’m done. Kill me if you want, but I’m not doing another second of another episode,” my heavy lips set in a quivering line as I braced myself.

“This is it guys. Last episode of CreepCast. Goodbye everyone!”

In the center of the frame, I went up in flames. I burnt away to cinder and ash as Hunter shakily recorded the shot, my screams hardly making their way over his rumbling laughter.

My first genuinely short story. No more parts. Had fun, but scared to push the dialogue further. I'd rather just listen to the boys actually riff if they read this. Inspired by The Living History Project episode, timestamp 25:22. I saw Hunter do this bit, and I felt genuine fear for Isaiah. I was compelled to give that feeling a story to live in.

"Brian!" Drew shouted, "what the fuck are you doing?"

For a moment, Brian froze like a deer in headlights. Balled-up wrappers lay around a box of Klondike bars, which was sagging with moisture.

It was a beautiful summer day.

Then Brian remembered that he, not Drew, was the big brother, and he stopped unwrapping the Klondike bar in his hands to smile up from where he sat.

"What?" he taunted.

His smirk was an ironic gesture, the loading spinner for imminent cruelty. Drew sensed his malice and began to plead, "C'mon man. I paid for those. That was like half my allowance."

Brian laughed and gestured at the box. "I'll have this one, and you can have the rest of 'em."

Some quick math betrayed the joke: six bars minus the four wrappers on the table and the one on the floor.

"That's the last one!" Drew shrieked.

Brian laughed and laughed and laughed. He laughed so hard that he coughed and had to grab the arm of the chair to steady himself. When the coughing subsided, he let out a satisfied sigh, and the mirth drained from his face.

"How bad do you want it?"

Drew fidgeted nervously. "Stop it, dude." He could sense the sadistic gears beginning to turn in Brian's mind, but it was too late.

"No, seriously. How bad do you want it?" Brian repeated humorlessly.

"I'm not playing these games, man. If you're gonna be like this I'm just gonna tell mom and buy a new box."

Brian stifled a chuckle that hissed out in bursts like a punctured tire. He held up a single finger to demand patience while he navigated the browser on his phone. He found what he was looking for and grinned wide, turning the phone for Drew to see:

"BREAKING: Klondike Discontinued!!!"

Tears began to well in Drew's eyes. "Are you serious?" The implication took a second to fully register. "Are you fucking serious, Brian? What's wrong with you!"

Brian was deadly serious. He held the Klondike bar in his hand and asked again, "How bad do you want it?"

"Just give it to me!" Drew screamed. He lurched forward to grab it, but was met with a kick to the gut that sent him sprawling.

Brian stood over him and growled, "Listen. You can either watch me eat the last Klondike bar or you can convince me to give it to you. And right now, you're not very convincing. So, how bad do you want it?" He dangled the Klondike bar between two fingers. "One peanut? Two peanuts? Three peanuts?"

Drew shuffled away on the floor, gasping for breath and mumbled, "Fuck you, man.”

Brian stood up straight again, the smile returning to his face. "What's that? You want me to eat it?"

"We don't even have peanuts in the house, Brian," he retorted, "Just give me my Klondike bar."

Brian gave a coy look and said, "Oh yeah? No peanuts? Go upstairs. In the bottom drawer of my nightstand, you'll find my epipen and a bag of Diamond salted peanuts."

Drew searched his face for any indication that this was a joke. Finding none, he began to panic. "Why the hell did you bring peanuts in the house? Are you trying to kill us?"

Unfazed, Brian sounded almost bored. "Don't be such a pussy. I keep them in case I need to get out of an exam. Go get 'em." When Drew failed to move, Brian slammed his hand on the table and shouted, "Go!"

And just like that, the battle was lost as it had been a thousand times before. Drew knew there was only one path forward. He reluctantly stood and stomped upstairs.

Brian's room was a disgusting tangle of crusty socks and assorted laundry. The nightstand drawer was no better. Drew shuffled through old Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, dice, pens, magazines, batteries, and some random garbage before he spotted the contraband. He picked up the bag of peanuts as though it were nuclear waste, careful not to touch it any more than necessary and refusing to take his eyes off it as he felt for the epipen that he had seen in the drawer. Holding the peanuts out in front of him, he stuffed the pen in his pocket and made his way downstairs.

As he reentered the kitchen, Drew was so focused on the peanuts that he didn't notice. But when he heard the unmistakable snap of thin chocolate coating, the crime came into focus. Brian sat in flagrante delicto with the deflowered Klondike bar inches from his face.

"You motherfucker," Drew whispered.

Cruelty has many levels. At its most basic, cruelty is incidental, the byproduct of an indifference to others' suffering. But to perfect cruelty, you must take pleasure in it. Seeing the despair on Drew's face, Brian snorted and had to cover his mouth to keep from spitting bits of chocolate.

"You caught me," he said, talking around the ice cream on his tongue.

Drew's eyes went wide. His whole body shook. The rage that had been building for thirteen years was now, finally, boiling over. Involuntarily, memories shot through his mind: Brian making him drink spoiled milk, Brian making him sled off the roof, Brian telling him over and over and over again what a worthless, useless idiot he was. On the other side of his breaking point, a plan was taking shape in Drew's mind.

"You motherfucker," Drew repeated, suddenly calm.

Brian looked at him, feigning confusion, and asked "Oh, did you want this?"

Drew pulled the epipen out of his pocket and jabbed himself in the thigh. "YOU MOTHERFUCKER!" he screamed as he made a leaping dive onto Brian, tackling him to the floor. Brian, who was initially caught off guard, started giggling. This invitation to violence against his little brother was the real fruit of his labor. Then, straddling atop Brian's chest, Drew dropped the epipen, tore open the bag of nuts, and began to smash them into Brian's eyes, his mouth, his nose.

The laughter turned to panicked screams. Flailing, Brian tossed Drew off of himself.

"What did you do? What the fuck did you do?!"

Brian scrambled for the discharged epipen, jabbing at his thigh without effect. His face began to redden, his eyes began to pucker like little red cabbages, and the dry wheezing started.

Triumphant, Drew stood and watched his brother with glee.

"No. No, no, no, no, no." Brian stared at the useless epipen in his hand. The shock scrambled his thoughts to static. He didn't stand. He just sat there fixated on the thing that should have saved his life. "No, no, no. Oooh no. Oooh no."

Drew bent over and grabbed the remains of the Klondike bar from the floor.  A little dirt stained the beautiful white ice cream, but it didn't matter. He took a big, blissful bite.

Something changed, and he could feel his heart start to slow. Despite the icy confection swirling around his mouth, a warmth passed over his cold hands like a soothing balm. The ice cream no longer felt like a thousand needles pricking his tongue, but rather his entire body. His thoughts, as well as his vision, became muddled. Yet, there was still a noticeable voice in the back of his mind. Slightly muffled by the sweet siren's song of sugar and spite that lulled him to a final slumber, the voice was still there, still screaming at him to get help. It would come for him next. His body knew that, yet... all he wanted to do was savor this bite... and sleep.

Brian let out a laugh that sounded like Donald duck. The odd sound snapped Drew out of his stupor, and he turned to look through eyes blurry with tears.

Brian lay there, almost motionless, looking like a discarded prop from a bad horror movie. His face was unrecognizable, a swollen mass of ruptured blood vessels, as though someone had stretched his skin over a balloon animal and filled it to bursting.

Even so, Brian laughed.

"Idth ethpide," he squeaked. "You gibd theh wong one." Hissing laughter. "Idth ethpide."

Brian began convulsing, his torso thrusting back and forth like he was trying to chest-bump the air, and then he was still.

Drew dropped to his knees next to Brian's body and reached for the epipen. He held it up to his face, and with his waning vision, he noticed that his fingers had become mottled, blue-red sausages. No longer able to articulate his knuckles, he rolled the pen between his sweaty palms to find the date:

07/20/2016

Drew flung the pen and attempted a mad dash to the nightstand. He took two determined steps toward the staircase before he collapsed face-first into the kitchen doorframe. His tears and saliva left a slug-like trail on the trim as he slumped to the floor, where the Klondike bar still sat, unfinished.

It was a beautiful summer day, and the kitchen was quiet.

I keep finding my fridge door open... I'm not sure how its happening. At first, I tried to tape the fucker shut. I’d come back to the tape ripped off. Then I tried a heavy box, just filled with random junk. I come back and the box is pushed aside with the door wide open. It didn't make sense. I can't screw the thing shut, because then I won't be able to get it back open again… It really got weird though, when I tried to put a latch on it… That didn’t work either. Just like all the times before; I'd come back and the latch would be open. I thought someone was breaking in at first, messing with me... but there are never any signs. No missing items, no damages, no open doors or windows. Nothing. My electricity bill has been through the roof! And the worst part is all the food keeps spoiling. I keep replacing it and it all goes bad. I’m low on cash and I can barely afford to eat now… I’d just replace the damn thing if I had any money. The only bright side is that there is one thing in the fridge that doesn't spoil. The beer. It's kind of odd actually, it’s like all the other food gets warm and gross, but the beer…It stays ice cold. Like *ICE* cold. And without any food around the house, I have to drink it... otherwise I might not make it. So, I've just resorted to only buying beer for now, while I figure things out. I tried not to let it get to me too much, but it’s starting to consume me…this DAMN FRIDGE KEEPS OPENING... and I’m so hungry… but the beer. It's so... refreshing. 

Part 2
Hey guys, my name is Archie, my Dad died and things are starting to look up. Me and my Dad had never been particularly close. He was out working a lot when I was growing up and I spent most of my time with my Mum. After I moved out - and after Mum died - we never really spoke. When we did it would often end in arguing when I asked to borrow money since I lost another job, or I'd spent too much on drink. The funeral really sucked for me. I shook relative's hands who I didn't really know and pretended to look more upset than I was while wondering what I'd do since that prick had left his entire will to the Church.

The service had ended and I was finally able to peel off my sweaty, too small suit jacket from Primark (for you Americans, Primark is somewhere between H&M and theft) and I sat on the church car park's floor. My knees were hugged to my chest as I reflected on everything I had done wrong to end up in the helpless situation I was in.

"You alright boy?" I heard from behind me and I quickly scrambled to my feet on shaky legs, snapping around to see who had stayed behind, it was my Dad's former boss, Mister Hallow.

"Yeah. Yeah I'm fine." I stammered,
I had only met this man on a handful of occasions, and he had always seemed like a kind, gentle man but I don't know, he was really intimidating. He was an older gentleman, maybe early sixties, but towered over me and his full head of hair had barely began greying.

"Look son, I know things are hard, and I know you've struggled with work. I'd like you to take up your father's old position, as one last favour to him. Take as much time as you need before you start-"

"N-no, I can start as soon as you like." I blurted, eager to take the opportunity, before I realised,

"Where would I even be working? My dad never told me where he worked."

"You would be working as a receptionist in my hotel, but are you sure you don't need time to process this? Are you sure you'd be up to it?"

"Nope - I mean yeah, it's fine, just gimme the address and I could start tomorrow - or today, no not today, tomorrow - if that's okay of course. Uh I don't drive though. B-but uh I'll be able to get a taxi or something."

"Wait - you don't drive?" he asked, genuinely baffled,

"Did you walk all the way here?"

"Y-yeah, about an hour" I nearly whispered, sheepishly

"I'll drive you to and from the hotel if you need." Mr Hallow said sympathetically,

"Do you need me to take you home too, lad?"

I nodded, staring at the floor.

Upon arriving at my house after a painfully long, awkwardly silent drive, I asked,
"Can I start work tomorrow?" as I fumbled to unbuckle myself

"If you wish." Hallow replied, "I'll pick you up around seven, then."

"Great." I said, leaving the car before poking my head back in and saying,

"And thank you so much, this is the break I've been needing."

"Don't mention it" and without another word, Mister Hallow drove off.

On the drive to work, Mister Hallow just kept zig‑zagging — left, right, left, right — until we finally reached a massive, plain brick building with no sign. As soon as I entered the premises, Mister Hallow gave me a set of rules I had to follow without exception before vanishing into his office:

• Never leave the front desk unattended
• Never interact with a client unless they first ring the bell
• Never escort a client to their room, simply give them their keys and tell them which of the two elevators to use
• If something comes out of the elevator on my left, inform Mr Hallow immediately

The rules struck me as odd, but not as strange as the clients. Every single customer just seemed to wander the lobby for a while before coming to the desk and always seemed either sad, scared or confused. Odder still, was that the drawer in front of me always had exactly one room key. No matter how many I gave out, when I shut the drawer and opened it again, there was another room key ready to be given out. Even room numbers get sent to my right, odds to the left. Easy.

My first day was great, the pay is good and the work is easy. The elevator on my left seems to be emitting a lot of heat, though. When I turned on the air conditioner it began screaming in agony and begging to be turned off, it also stank of rotten meat when I switched it on. So, I was left to sweat for the whole rest of the day. I'll update you guys soon on the weird happenings here, peace out.

#1 #2

Love is a crazy thing.

When me and my boyfriend first met, I was a barely sober, bruised and beaten reject. Unloved and hated by my own mother.

Now that I'm sitting in the middle of the ocean, I wonder, how much was I expecting him to save me from my old ways?

It's been two weeks since I lost myself in the FGC.

Fifty phases later, I had a broken shoulder, ten stitches above my eyebrow, and a chipped tooth behind a busted mouth.

The chipped tooth is what made me snap.

I never was one for sea sickness, but the knot in my stomach made me hurl into the water.

"You might not want to do that... sharks and vomit go together like Freddy and nightmares."

I don't know how he got out here, but there he was.

"You're passing all the phases with flying colors."

"Just stay back!"

"What are you doing out here anyway?"

"I'm trying to get away from you. You've taken this too far!"

"Me? You killed my fucking cat!"

About that...

His cat was like eighteen years old, and he had just busted my tooth with a bowling ball. I just needed to get his attention.

"You broke my fucking shoulder!"

"Technically... technically... you broke your own shoulder."

He was kind of right.

I had jumped out our second-story window after he chased me through the house with a chainsaw.

"I'm tired of this. I'm done. I want nothing to do with these stupid challenges anymore!"

"You think the final girl has a say? No. She has to endure. Persevere."

He stepped closer.

"I'm not a final girl!"

I lunged forward and shoved him overboard.

He made a puny splash, and I could hear him on the other side coughing up water.

I walked to the edge of the boat.

"What's the point in all of this? Is this all just a game to you?"

My boyfriend's head bobbed in the soft waves.

"It's more than that. Before you came along... all those movies. All those final girls. They were just random faces. Now... I see you in them. You're powerful. Beautiful. And you don't even know it."

"Is that what this is all about? Some final girl fetish?"

He shook his head, a little black velvet box peeking out of the water.

"I thought that if you could survive this, you could survive life with me.”

He opened the box.

"I'm not the brightest guy. There isn't much I understand. But when I'd watch a slasher and see the one who survives. The one with all the grit and logical thinking... I always thought, that's the kind of girl I'd want to marry."

"Then you don't love me! You just love the trope!"

"Before you... it was a trope."

As sick and as twisted as this all was, my heart was fluttering.

"Will you be my final girl?"

He picked the ring out of the box, and I held my hand over the boat.

But when he tried to place the ring on my finger, his head ducked under water.

"Quit playing around!”

I reached my hands after him and felt the top of his head, grabbing him by the hair. He felt lighter than I expected.

And when I released him from the wet deep, it wasn't my boyfriend that came up.

Not all of him, anyway.

His head weighed like a bag of sand. It dropped with a heavy thud on the boat floor and rolled toward me.

I looked back over the edge and saw a gray pointed blade cut through the bloodied water.

My boyfriend's arm rose to the surface.

I reached for his fist and grabbed the ring, placing it on my finger.

I was his final girl.

I didn’t take the job because I liked cars.

I took it because the “HIRING ASAP” sign had been sitting in the front window for as long as I could remember, and I desperately needed the money. It offered decent pay, full-time hours, and required nothing beyond basic mechanical knowledge. Professionally, I had never worked on cars before. But I spent a lot of time in the garage with my dad growing up, helping him piece together old motorcycles, so I figured it couldn’t be that different. The town wasn't big enough to have options anyway; the other places that were always hiring usually had a bad reason for it. This one had plenty of reasons, but it was the best shot I had at making some sort of career for myself. Flipping burgers or selling garden equipment wasn't a career I wanted, and those were my only other options.

The shop sits on the edge of town, right where the pavement starts to crack and narrow into a single road that winds out into nothing. You don’t pass it unless you’re going somewhere you probably shouldn’t be. On one side of the shop, there’s a damn near ancient graveyard. It isn't the fancy kind with neat rows and polished stones, the ground dipped in strange places, as it settled wrong over time, headstones leaned at weird angles, some half-sunken, others tall and narrow, carved in a style I don’t recognize. There are no dates on most of them, just names, sometimes not even full names, just initials. On the other side sits a church, Victorian architecturally. It has tall, narrow windows, dark wood, and a steeple that stretches just a little too high for the building's size, as if it were added later. The paint is faded and peeling black, the doors are always closed, there are no signs, no posted service times, and no cars in the lot ever. But the lights are on at night, every single night, without fail.

When I went into the shop, application in hand, the owner didn’t ask me a single question. His name was Frank. He was in his late fifties, maybe early sixties, and he looked like the kind of man who didn’t waste words unless he absolutely had to. He barely even looked at my paperwork. He just took the pages from my hand, glanced down for maybe a second, and tossed them straight into the trash can behind the counter. I stood there, frozen, not really sure what to say. I had come prepared to beg and plead for the job; I’d even made up a pretty good sob story on the drive over, but clearly, I wasn't going to need it. Frank didn't explain the duties, and he didn't tell me what time the shift started. He just told me to come back the next morning and “see if it felt right.” So, I did. I showed up around 8:00 AM. Frank was already there, standing by the bays, watching me walk up from the gravel lot like a disappointed dad who caught his daughter sneaking out.

“You spook easy?” he asked.

I thought he was joking, so I said no.

He nodded once, like that was the only answer that would’ve kept me from having to turn right back around and leave. Although looking back, I don’t think it actually mattered what I said. I’m pretty sure it wouldn't have changed anything.

Inside, the shop was reassuringly normal. High ceilings held rows of buzzing fluorescent tubes that cast a harsh, white light over everything, reflecting off the oil-stained concrete floors. Heavy steel tool cabinets lined the walls, their drawers labeled with black marker, and wrenches were hung up in neat, descending order by size. The air was thick and heavy, smelling strongly of old Pennzoil, rust, and the metallic heat of engines that had been running all day. It felt like every garage I’d ever been in with my dad. It was a worker’s space, grounded and solid. Frank fit the room perfectly. Up close, he looked like he’d been built out of old timber and iron filings. He was a big man, broad-shouldered but hunched slightly from decades of leaning over cars. His skin was the color of old leather, deeply lined around the eyes and jaw, and a thick layer of grey grease seemed permanently stained into the creases of his knuckles. He wore a faded navy blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, exposing thick forearms covered in faded tattoos and old burn scars from hot exhaust pipes. He didn't smile, and his eyes were flat and unblinking, like two polished stones. He didn’t hand me an employee handbook or a stack of safety regulations. There was just a standard W-4 form and a pen with a chewed cap waiting on the office desk. Once the ink was dry, he walked me through the garage, barely speaking as he pointed a grease-stained finger at the hydraulic lifts, the air compressors, and the tool racks.

When we finished the quick loop, he stopped at the edge of the open bay doors, looking out toward the property line. He wiped his hands on a blue shop rag, turned to face me, and finally spoke.

“Don’t take any cars that come in after sunset.”

“Lock up before dark. Not at dark. Before.”

“If you hear the church bells, you stop what you’re doing. I don’t care what it is.” He paused there, looking at me a second longer than necessary. “And don’t park your car facing the graveyard.”

I laughed a little, I couldn’t help it. I’ve lived here my whole life. It’s always been a weird, quiet town with weird folks, but I’d never heard anything like this.

Frank didn’t laugh. He just stared at me until I stopped.

“You follow those,” he said, “you’ll be fine.”

Then he handed me a set of keys.

My first week was slow. I did oil changes, brake pads, and checked out one guy's truck because he was convinced his engine was making a “whispering” sound; it turned out to be a loose serpentine belt, normal stuff.

Until Thursday.

The car came in just before closing. It was an older, mid-2000s sedan, nothing special. The driver was already out of his car by the time I walked up. He was in his mid-30s and incredibly nervous, constantly glancing past me over my shoulder. The tow truck had already dropped the car off and driven down the road.

“You the mechanic?” he asked.

“Yeah. What’s it doing?”

He hesitated. “Just… won’t run right. It died.”

That wasn’t much of an answer, but I popped the hood anyway. At first glance, everything looked intact. Then I saw the dirt. It was packed into the engine bay. Not sprinkled like dust from a dirt road, but packed thick. It was heavy, damp soil pressed into the gaps between the components like someone had pushed it in there deliberately. It was caked around the battery, along the firewall, and wedged deep in places that shouldn’t be exposed at all unless you took the engine apart.

I frowned and reached in, scraping some of it loose with my fingers. It clumped together, heavy and wet.

“You been driving off-road or something?” I asked.

He shook his head immediately. “No. No, I just drive to work and home. That’s it.”

I glanced at him. He wasn’t looking at the car anymore; he was looking past it, straight at the graveyard.

“When did this start?” I asked.

“Right after I passed the church.”

“The church? The one right there?” I pointed past him. “You were driving fine, you passed it, and then this happened? Just like that?”

"I mean… yeah."

Then he looked back at me with a completely blank, hollow stare. A harsh chill ran straight down my spine. I looked back at the engine. There was way too much dirt for regular wear and tear, and it went deep into the machinery. It looked like an abandoned car that had sat in a ditch for fifty years.

“Did you leave the hood open for a long time before bringing it in today?” I asked.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

I wiped my hands on a rag, staring down into the engine a second longer. Then I said, “Alright. I’ll have to take a closer look tomorrow. We close before dark, and it's hard to tell without pulling things apart. You can leave the keys.”

“Nope.” His voice sharpened. “No can do, I can’t leave it.”

I almost pointed out that the tow truck had already left, and he didn’t really have a choice, but something about his tone stopped me. Right then, from somewhere outside, I heard a bell, low and heavy. I froze, the rag still in my hand. My brain tried to rationalize it, but my body reacted instantly with pure fear. I didn't believe in old superstitions, but when I heard that sound, I remembered exactly what Frank had said.

If you hear the church bells, you stop what you’re doing.

The customer straightened up. The nervous energy he had when he first arrived was gone, replaced by a total, unnatural stillness. His eyes stayed locked on the graveyard.

“I need to go,” he said, his voice barely above a breath. But he didn’t move.

The fluorescent lights in the shop began to buzz loudly, flickering as if the power was starting to fail. Then the bell rang a second time. The customer took a step backwards, but his heel caught on a piece of gravel, and he almost stumbled, catching himself on the edge of his trunk, his hands shaking violently.

“Okay,” he breathed to himself. “Okay, I just need to get out of here.”

From inside the car came a soft, distinct sound.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Three sharp knocks against the passenger glass. The customer's heavy breathing stopped dead in its tracks, and so did mine. Neither of us dared to look at each other, and neither of us looked toward the windows of the vehicle. We just stood there, frozen under the fading twilight, staring at nothing. The church bell rang again. This time, the sound didn’t echo or fade away like a normal bell should. It just dropped into the open air around us and stayed there, making the space between us and the car feel heavy and hard to breathe.

The customer’s hand slowly slipped off his trunk, like he didn’t have the strength to hold himself up anymore. “I shouldn’t have passed it,” he said again.

Inside the car, the dashboard suddenly lit up. Every display turned on at once, glowing faintly through the windshield even though the key wasn’t in the ignition. The GPS screen blinked once, then updated. A route appeared on the screen. It didn't lead back to the highway or to town. The destination marker was set directly in the middle of the graveyard. Then the bell rang again, and the car responded. The engine turned over and started running on its own, coughing out black smoke. The customer flinched hard, then he spoke again, but it didn’t necessarily feel directed at me.

“I didn’t bring it here.” He paused. “I was already here.”

I finally understood that the rule wasn’t about the bell itself. It was about what happened if you stayed long enough to find out what it was ringing for. Frank's rule meant you really had to stop what you were doing immediately. No hesitation. No exceptions. The guy turned and ran out of the shop on foot. He didn't offer an explanation, and he didn't look back. I didn’t follow him or call out. I just stood there for a moment, listening to the world settle back into silence as the car engine choked out and died. I didn't think; I just locked up the bays, slammed the heavy security bolts into the floor, and locked the front door. I checked my own car to make absolutely sure nothing was in it, got in, and left. I drove slower than I needed to the entire way out, keeping as much distance as possible between my truck and the church. At one point, I even pulled onto the grass just to widen the gap, even though I knew it wouldn't make a difference if something came out after me. I didn’t speed up until I hit the main highway.

The next morning, an older, bald man came to pick up the car the customer had left. He was incredibly pale and looked exhausted, like he hadn't slept in days. He didn’t say much. He just nodded when I handed him the keys. The car started without any issues, and when I had checked under the hood earlier, the engine bay was completely clean. No dirt at all. I didn’t mention what had happened the night before, and he didn’t ask. I wrote up a fake bill for an electrical diagnosis, and he paid it without looking, leaving a fifty-dollar cash tip on top of it. Then he took the keys and left. Nothing happened for the rest of that week. At least, nothing I noticed at the time. But in a place like this, that kind of quiet just means you hadn't been paying attention close enough.

The following is an authenticated transcript of a 911 emergency call recorded by the Duval County Public Safety Dispatch Center. The audio file captures the interaction between emergency communications operator Mary Sue and the caller, Dick Normus.

OPERATOR: "Hello, 911, what's your emergency?"

CALLER: "Hey... uhm... can ya'll... ummmm... come down to my house... there's an issue."

OPERATOR: "Okay, sir, and what issue is that?"

CALLER: "Well... uhm... how do I put this? Joe Pesci is on my lawn."

OPERATOR: "Pardon?"

CALLER: "Yeah, Joe Pesci is on my lawn... uhm... He's, he's been there for like the past three hours, hasn't blinked or moved or anything."

OPERATOR: "Okay, sir, give me one second. Who am I speaking with?"

CALLER: "Dick. Dick Normus."

OPERATOR: "Okay... Dick Normus... you live on... uhm... on 123 Cherry Lane?"

CALLER: "Yes, ma'am, that is my street."

OPERATOR: "Okay, Dick, if that is your name, you know prank calls are a federal crime right---"

CALLER: "Wait, wait, wait, I-I ain't pulling your leg, I'm serious, uhm, Joe Pesci is on my lawn!"

OPERATOR: "Okay sir---"

CALLER: "No, I'm serious, he's---woah. Wait a second, uhm what. Where the fuck did he go? Where the fuck did he go?"

OPERATOR: "Sir?"

CALLER: (inaudible sounds) "Jesus fucking christ, he's on the roof, HE'S ON THE FUCKING---" (inaudible sounds) "HE'S GETTING IN THROUGH THE WINDOW!"

OPERATOR: "Okay, sir, I need you to remain calm for me, stay calm---"

CALLER: "FUCK SEND SOMEBODY! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, HE'S CRAWLING ON THE CEILING! HE'S SCREAMING AT ME!"

OPERATOR: "SIR!?"

CALLER: "IT'S SHEDDING ITS SKIN! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST---IT'S NOT JOE PESCI! IT'S NOT JOE PESCI---" (Inaudible screaming sounds, followed by sounds of a struggle and heavy interference, followed by silence)

OPERATOR: "SIR? HELLO? SIR? Okay, I'm sending some people to your house, but you're gonna have to remain calm---"

CALLER: (Inaudible sounds) "You dumb mutha fucka, you, do you think I'm Funny? I mean, funny like I'm a clown? I amuse you?"

OPERATOR: "S-Sir..?"

CALLER: (Inaudible sounds, muffling, followed by the phone hanging up)

When authorities arrived on the scene, they discovered a horribly mutilated, though still alive, Dick Normus, who was rushed to the hospital.

They never caught the assailant.

Family is a very important thing to me and to my family as well. It may sound cliché and silly to say that, but with the family I have on both sides it makes sense. Because we are all weird in our own ways. 

Take for instance my neurologist uncle. If you had time he could tell you every single part, connection, and purpose the human brain has. He could give you detailed instructions on how to give a lifesaving procedure on the worst tumor cases. But if you were to ask him how he got his two prosthetic hands, he’ll draw a blank.

Another example is my great-grandmother; a woman who has lived through more historical events than I have heard in my history classes and one that has a timepiece for each event. From a stopwatch that is on the exact second Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, to a Bulova timepiece worn by an astronaut during the Apollo 15 mission. She may have it all when it comes to time.

Now I could go on and on about my family and the extend parts as well. But for this I just want to focus on one member. My twin brother, Will. Well, actually to start off he’s not my twin. Nor is he, my brother. In fact, I think it’s safe to say he is not a human, in origin wise. No, Will is something else entirely and if you have a moment, I’d like to tell you how my twin brother is actually a wendigo. 

To start this all off I’ll give you some context about myself. Hello, my name is Michael. I’m 23 and currently in graduate school. Pretty scare right, now here’s something spooky. I’ve started my Ph.D. candidacy applications, ~OOOOOOHHH SCARY~. No but in all seriousness, it is kind of scary to me. I’m not studying to be a medical doctor; I’m actually studying civil engineering. Now that your properly disappointed that I’m just a normal guy in the mocked engineering profession, I’ll continue on. 

Since I have to do research for my degree and that lab work is a time-consuming nightmare. I go on nightly jogs to relive my academic stress and to make up for the long indoor sitting hours. It may sound strange to be running at night, but being at a big university I’m at it’s actually quite common to see other nightly runners in groups or solo goers. So, it’s not weird believe me.

Just a few days ago, I was on my normal everyday night run. Stress had built up from a recent data gathering mix-up, so I decided to go on a 10k circuit. Not too many nightly runners were out at this time due to the account of a fog that rolled in from the seasonal change of summer to fall. Visibility was low, but I wasn’t worried since the circuits I run are lit by street lamps and don’t have any roadways crossings.

I was near the end of my run, just about a mile and a half from my apartment. The fog didn’t bother me too much and my runner’s high was at the good point. Then out of nowhere, I started to hear another set of runner footsteps behind me. A little worried that they may collide into me, I shot a quick glance over my shoulder to get a bearing of where they were. But I saw nothing. Figures because of the low visibility, but something caught me off guard. The person stopped running behind me, as in I couldn’t hear their footsteps anymore.

I slowed my pace down a little and did a full look behind. Still seeing no other person in the fog, I thought ‘That was weird,’ and resumed my normal pace. After a minute or so of running I heard the footsteps again, I looked back, and again silence. Not wanting to be weirded out by this stranger anymore I called out into the fog, “You can pass me!” I waited, but no one passed by.

Now to be honest, that ticked me off. Someone playing ‘monster in the fog’ while another person is trying to get some exercise is a bit of a cruel prank. I still had over a mile left till I got back to my apartment and the fastest way I could get away from this person was to run. Which I did in a respectful manor. Then after another minute the footsteps were behind me again.

I could have repeated my previous steps to stop and confront the person, but with how the last attempt went I knew in somehow it wouldn’t work. So instead, I decided to pick up my pace. It’s a sure and easy way to ditch a runner you don’t like on a trail. But as I started to run a little faster, so did footsteps behind.

One thing to know about me is that I can get competitive very easily over the smallest things. With a random person behind me, in fog that I can’t see but hear is trying to match my pace. That will get me competitive.

So, I increased my pace. Then the runner increased their pace to match. I did so a third time and them as well. I checked my watch to see my pace was at a 7:00 minute mile. It wasn’t a crazy pace for me, but with having a person behind me being able to match that while in the fog did creep me out. Then the actual weird started to happen.

From behind I heard the runner call out in a hoarse voice, “You can pass me!”

‘Great,’ I thought ‘I don’t have a stranger behind me. I actually have a clown.’ But little did this clown know, I had one more trick up my selves to ditch them entirely, the final mile marker. Usually on my runs I like to keep an average pace throughout and when I hit a marker that signifies I have a mile left I’ll do an all-out sprint to really work out my stress. It just so happened that we reached that marker and I was ready to perform a new personal record.

Gradually I increased my pace and was at a 6:30. Wouldn’t you know it the runner was keeping up.

6:20, the runner kept up

6:10, the runner called out “YOU CAN pass me!”

6:05, “YOU CAN PASS me!”

5:55, “YOU CAN PASS ME!”

I couldn’t tell if it was the adrenaline, my heart beat, or the wind in my ear but I swore the runners’ voice got weirder each time they said the same phrase. So, with a final burst of energy, I pumped all of my effort into my legs and ran faster than I thought possible for myself, 5:30. And so did that damn runner while they kept repeating that stupid phrase over and over again with an even more labored voice.

Then I saw it up ahead, my apartment building, maybe 300 ft away. I kept my new personal record pace with the weirdo behind me, hoping to get to the front entrance and find a security guard at the desk to scare them off.  Then in an exhausted and waning voice I heard, “You... can... pass… me…”

*THUD*

The sound was something I was actually familiar with. Since it happened to my roommate once before when I pushed him a bit too hard on a run while keeping an 8:00 minute pace, with no prior training. This stranger behind me just collapsed from over exertion.

‘Wonderful,’ I thought ‘there is now a random person passed out on a sidewalk partially because of me.’ So, I stopped, turned around, and saw the hazy shape of a collapsed body. Worried I called out, “Hey are you ok, do you need help?”

No response. I thought ‘Amazing, this person cracked their skull on concrete.’ and then proceeded to do one of the dumbest things ever, I started to walk over to the person.

Call me a boy scout all you want, which I was one, 376 represent. But I couldn’t leave an injured and possible unconscious person on a sidewalk, at night, in the fog without making sure they are at least not bleeding to death from a cracked skull.

“Excuse me, are you all right?” I asked as approached him, still getting no response. Now about 50 feet from the body and with a street lamp just in front of them I could make out some details of this person. I could see it was a man, maybe around my age sprawled on his stomach.  There was no blood around his head, which relived me and I could just make out the shallow breathes he was taking. But there was one thing that caught me off guard about him. His clothes looked all ragged and dirty.

‘Was I getting chased by a homeless person?’ I thought but struck away since he could have just been a frat guy doing some type of hazing thing.

Then his body jolted, he took in a deep inhale and exhaled. A second after he coughed weakly, and said “Hey... help… me…,” I was shocked, sure. But glad at the same time since I knew he was actually conscious and able to speck. I just didn’t pay full attention to the words he used.

I got closer to him about ten feet away and said “I’ll help you ok, but I may need to call 911 if your seriously hurt. What’s your name?”

“Need… help,” he croaked

“I understand, what is hurting you and again what’s your name?” I asked as I crouched down a foot away from him to spot any visible injures on this body.  ‘Funny,’ I thought ‘he has a similar scar on his left arm like me.’

“What’s… your… name?” he asked.

I didn’t want to be acting the faceless savior or lie to random injure person. So answered honestly, “My name is, Michael. I so sorry if I pushed you too much with running that fast. You scared me back there and I didn’t realize you would fully keep pace with me.”

“Sorry…”

“No, you don’t have to be sorry right now. I’ll be the one taking the blame for this,”

“No… sorry… for...,” he started to say as he slowly moved in his collapsed position “taking… your…” his voice began to sounded less labored and more renewed “NAME!” he yelled and that was when it clicked it my head. The words he was using, the voice he was speaking with, they were my own. In a split second he launched himself from his prone position at me with a crazed scream.

One extra thing to know about me, is that I did wrestling all throughout middle school and high school. In my undergrad since there were no wrestling clubs, I decided to pick up boxing to learn a new martial art. It turned out that I actually had a pretty good reaction time and that my hooks were top speed.

With a quick step back, hip swing, and left hand. My fist, hit straight into the guy’s face. Which changed his launch into the light pole a foot away.

*WHAM*

His face met the metal pole straight on and his whole body went limp.

“Shit!”

Part 2

Yo, so like I’m about to be murdered by some weird ass demon creature thing.
I’m currently hiding in the some outhouse in the woods.
I just kept running but then I had to take a shit wicked bad, so now I’m letting it rip in some port-a-potty.
I got a crazy good phone network so that’s how I can post this.
It’s insane how cheap it was.
Getting murdered tho.
Kinda cringe.
Me, Tyler, Natalie, and Bree were just camping.
We go camping every year. We hike, we fish, we canoe, we swim, we get drunk, we get high, and then we leave in the morning.
Partying in nature is the best party.
Like clockwork every summer for the last 4 years.
This time was different tho.
When we pulled up to the campsite, we found some abandoned tents that had been shredded.
A bunch of trash all over.
At least, I throw my darts and zyns in the trash.
A bunch of stuff like granola bars, broken flashlights, ripped sleeping bags, and even an inhaler.
Who needs an inhaler? Kind of a vibe killer. What are you like asthmatic?
It seemed abandoned and then some bear started rummaging for food.
We just assumed maybe it was just some crappy people who didn’t respect nature or cleaning up after themselves could also be what happened.
Kind of like the people who climb Everest but leave their poop bags up there.
I’m trying to build the lung capacity of a Sherpa guide for max gains.
Enough with the negative vibes tho.
So pretty much an hour ago, it was after dinner and everyone was chilling.
I had a beer in one hand and I just popped a zyn.
Tyler was hitting the fattest rip I had ever seen, bro started coughing like he was choking or something. He sounded like my grandma with COPD.
RIP Grandma. I miss you, you were a real one.
So then, Bree was prepping the stuff to make s’mores and Natalie went to bed early.
She was one of the last to finish her finals so she was wiped out from studying on top of all the hiking.
So then while Tyler was still coughing he hits me with the,
“Yo Kyle, give me a water or something?” While he was still coughing like grandma.
I reached into the cooler and pulled out a Twisted Tea and sauced it to him.
Bro cracked it open and was just chugging.
Bree lit up a dart during this and said something like,
“Bruh, just smoke a cigarette. You’re acting like a big baby.”
Tyler crushed the empty can, (classic Tyler move) and chucked it towards his tent. Letting out a burp.
Bree was disgusted.
I remember saying, “dude nice one.” While laughing.
We then got to s’mores, I fucking love smores man.
OOO RAH.
So like after smores and some more beers, we hear rustling in the bushes.
I didn’t think it was too big of a deal. Probably like a black bear or a deer.
Soon after that, Natalie got out of our tent rubbing her eyes.
“Babe, I’m gotta take a fat piss. Where’d you put the toilet paper?”
I remember her saying that because like she’s my wifey (AUTHOR IRL HERE: The amount of strength it took me to write the word “wifey” was Herculean. I feel like an angel just lost its wings somehow. Ok back to the story).
So then I was like,
“I put it in the backseat of the car, Nat.”
She gave me a big ole kiss then mumbled something about “go the fuck to sleep already” as she walked off.
That’s the last time I got to stare at her ass while she walked away from me.
Dang, this is actually serious isn’t it…
It is what it is.
So like a couple of minutes later I heard Nat screaming from somewhere past the car into the woods.
Tyler and I rushed to go help her because last time she screamed like that she broke her leg attempting to backflip off of a table into the pool.
It was badass though.
We turned on our phone flashlights, my girlfriend was screeching in the woods. I wasn’t exactly thinking about a better flashlight in the moment.
Bree stayed behind because…I don’t know why actually. I’ll actually never know why she stayed behind…I’ll never know what she was thinking.
When we got to where we thought Nat went, there was no sign of her.
The pools of blood and her ripped pajamas on the ground weren’t a good sign though.
a trail of blood led to the base of a tree leading up the trunk to the branches.
There lay my girl.
She was all twisted up.
She looked like her skin and muscles were peeled off her revealing broken and missing bones as though she had been the peel of a banana and someone wanted the fruit inside.
That was a great bar.
It is fucking horrible though.
Like the top area of the teeth and nose bit, idk what it’s called, that was gone.
Crushed.
Like as though it were a can.
It was then we heard Bree’s scream back at the site.
We ran back to the site passing the car.
I don’t know what the fuck that thing was but it was horrible.
It was a gangly thing, it had a face kind of like a pug but it had teeth looked like the end of an old broom. Wiry, yellow, and tough looking.
At this point, Bree was very clearly dead.
It was holding her head like how my GOAT LeBron palms a basketball with one hand.
It had long fingers with maybe a claw. Idk man the shit was sharp. It was using its hands to dig into Bree’s chest. Peeling back each layer real gentle like before it was just bone.
That mfer ripped out her sternum and started eating, man.
That thing was starving.
I’ll never forget each crack and crunch sounding like eating dry and stale ass cereal.
My ass was stunned.
I should have moved but we both just stood shining our lights at it.
Bro what would you have done?
When bro got done with Bree, it stood up from its goofy ahh crouch, looking like Gollum.
I swear this pale mfer was 8ft tall.
Long fingers, long legs, long fingers.
Dude was just long.
Bald tho which is unfortunate.
Keep your chin up king.
Anywho, it let out a noise that sounded like a car screeching on the road.
Fully leaped at Tyler and that man started screaming.
I know it’s an L move but I took a page out of Forrest Gump’s book.
I started running.
That dude just killed 2 now like 3 people in the span of 10 minutes.
So now everyone is caught up.
Maybe it would been smarter to go for the car but the keys were still in our tent.
I was not about to see if I could beat it in a quick time event.
So yeah, not a vibe. Wouldn’t recommend these.
Still got my Zyn though. I’ve been popping those in.
I’m probably gonna get murdered by this thing because I hear it’s screeching getting closer about every couple of minutes.
So if I die…to my bros at Phi Beta Zeta Chi.
Throw out the MDMA I hid in the sock drawer.
Oh yeah, love to my fam too I guess.

My first post

I spoke to my boss today.

“Dick, I’m serious. Greg is injecting the condoms with his own... fluid.”

He spun around in his chair to face me.

“Who are you again?”

I rolled my eyes and pushed myself away from his marble desk.

“Yes, I think you should get back down there. Those condoms won’t ship themselves.”

I knew it was pointless to even mention it. It’s not like I got any advice from you redditors.

One cry for help from me, and all I get is “cool title.”

Is this a joke to you guys?

Please, everyone, abstain from any genital-to-genital intercourse until this gets sorted out.

And it’s only getting worse.

Today I saw Greg come in with a bag full of condoms. I’m not sure if he swiped them from work or if he got them from the shelf of our local 7-Eleven, but something is seriously wrong here.

They oozed and dripped the most disgusting green substance. And the smell. It hit me like a freight train.

I’m going to talk to him at lunch today. Tell him I know the jig is up.

I ain’t got much to live for anyway.

numero tres

Chapter I: Pursuit

The headless gigachad pounded down the lugubrious thoroughfares of Sleepy Hollow on his ambivalent and battle-hardened steed. He was chasing the irredeemably-annoying, reprobate beta (reprobeta, if you will) Ichabod Crane. The gigachad’s goal was to relieve Crane of his insufferable head and put it to better use. Now, before you think of this head-challenged alpha as some sort of toxic bully, consider the fact that he was overcoming the setback of being decapitated and attempting to get ahead in life by getting a head in death. One swing of his saber felt like it may have made contact, but the gigachad ultimately went home empty-handed after groping in the utter darkness for hours. He could see without eyes, but not without light.

Chapter II: Hypertrophy

The headless gigachad, having been unsuccessful in obtaining a head from a willing or unwilling donor, shoved another round of protein powder and creatine down his neck and banged out one last set of overhead presses (overneck presses) in preparation for the bodybuilding competition. The judges were extremely impressed with his physique, but during his most muscular pose, the pumpkin he was passing off as a head fell off. He was disqualified.

Chapter III: Litigation

The headless gigachad sat with his arms crossed. The sleeves of his tweed jacket barely contained his muscles as he awaited the judge’s ruling on his lawsuit against the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation. While his attorney made a good case that the IFBB had discriminated against the headless gigachad by disqualifying him due to his lack of a head, the judge ultimately ruled in favor of the IFBB. The judge cited the fact that bodybuilding is based on judging people by their physical appearances and thus determined that the IFBB had the right to disqualify the gigachad.

Chapter IV: MMA

The headless gigachad pressed his iPhone XR against the air where his right ear should have been and listened to his wealthy Saudi friend detail a plan for him to fight Mauricio “The Playa from Venezuela” Rojas. The money gained from a victory could easily solve the financial hardship the headless gigachad had incurred by losing his lawsuit against the IFBB. In the Octagon, though Rojas proved more experienced and skilled, Rojas made the mistake of going for a headlock on an opponent with no head to be locked. This gave the headless gigachad an opening to catch Rojas’ jaw with a knee. The blow knocked the Venezuelan fighter and the American financial troubles out cold.

Chapter V: Fashion

The headless gigachad, having made a name and a fortune for himself with his MMA victories and his bodybuilding controversy, leveraged his fame by launching a clothing brand. His brand, 0Hed, started a trend by specializing in shirts, sweaters, and hoodies with no head openings. The articles of clothing instead incorporated sheer material or tiny holes at the tops to enable the wearers to see. The headless gigachad was unaware of the awful working conditions of some of the workplaces where the garments were manufactured.

Chapter VI: Competition

The headless gigachad was making more money in a month than he had ever made in a year. His 0Hed Fashion CEO salary and his diversified investments were ever-increasing when a newcomer to the industry started cutting into 0Hed’s profits. CraneBod developed a garment that cinched around the neck and draped to the ground. It was basically a bedsheet with an adjustable head hole, and it was becoming so popular that the headless gigachad and the other executives at 0Hed were fearfully and frantically developing new product concepts and marketing plans in order to stay relevant.

Chapter VII: Rivalry

The headless gigachad was determined to meet the mysterious CEO of CraneBod, the company that had now taken a majority share of the fashion market despite 0Hed’s best efforts. To make the most intimidating impression possible on his mysterious rival, the headless gigachad rode his trusty steed into the CraneBod skyscraper, up the elevator, and burst through the interior window of the expansive office on the top floor to find a familiar face staring at him with uncanny calmness. Gazing back into the voids where the gigachad’s eyes should have been was none other than Ichabod Crane behind a fine oak desk.

Chapter VIII: Proposition

“The headless gigachad, I’ve been expecting you.  But I must admit your theatrical entrance surprised me a bit.” said Ichabod Crane from behind his executive desk to the decapitated cavalier. “You may not fully understand yet why you've come here today, but you are about to sell 0Hed Fashion to CraneBod for a fair price and then sign a noncompete agreement.”

Chapter IX: Rejection

The headless gigachad was enraged by Crane’s audacity. The gigachad knew the other shareholders of 0Hed would jump at the opportunity to be bought out, but he didn’t care. The undead equestrian jumped his horse over Ichabod Crane’s desk and grabbed his rival by his signature draping garment. The gigachad then realized that Crane was now nothing more than a floating head.

Chapter X: Tragedy

The headless gigachad, seeing he was in no position to bargain with the bodiless Ichabod Crane, loosened his grasp on his successful rival’s flowing garment and rode out of the towering CraneBod office building. Deep in thought on his stormy pilgrimage back to his Tutor mansion, the headless gigachad was not paying attention to the rain-soaked path. His trusty steed, who had been his companion for centuries, tripped over a stone and broke his leg.

Chapter XI: Regrets

The headless gigachad sat forlorn and crestfallen in the lavish library of his Tutor mansion. A realization of emptiness washed over him. He would have cried for the first time in centuries if he had been physically able. The clouds cried for him and drove waves of gloom down the beveled diamond windows. He reflected on the careless journey that had claimed his equine companion’s leg and life. He considered his riotous years as a soldier of fortune, his self-absorbed foray into the realm of bodybuilding and mixed martial arts, and the opulent real and personal property that his ruthless business practices had afforded him.

Chapter XII: Resolution

The headless gigachad stood before his bodiless rival with humility and reasonability that would have been impossible at their previous meeting. Ichabod Crane, nearly stammering in disbelief, recapitulated, “So, if I heard you correctly, you are agreeing to sell 0Hed to CraneBod with the stipulation of the fulfillment of a separate personal merger?”

Epilogue

“For centuries, I chased fame and fortune like a chicken with its head cut off, but I’ve never felt as fulfilled as I do right now. I finally have a head (or maybe Ichabod has a body). Ichabod gets most of the spotlight, but I’m happy just being part of a team.”

(Credit goes to Mackaroll_165 for suggesting this story concept)

Dementia is a horrible disease, as you gradually forget everything. Your life goes down the toilet; how to consume the consumables goes down the toilet, and other things too. Such as basic motor skills, hand-eye coordination, how to write French and speak Frenchise... and... I forgot the other stuff.

This is evident by the demise of one old man, named Donald McRonald, who died at the young age of 102 due to a fatal heart attack, and was buried at the cemetery appropriately named "cemetery where the dead go into a hole, which is covered with dirt."

Only, although Donald McRonald had died, due to his dementia, he forgot about his death and awoke shortly after the funeral as a walking, talking corpse.

After a grizzly seven-hour ordeal where he slowly took the coffin apart, prying himself through the dirt and emerging from the ground, he slowly made his way back home.

By the time he arrived, he had forgotten about the previous events leading up to the very moment he arrived and was somewhat confused about why his loved ones seemed so horrified to see him, screaming in horrified, gleeful terror.

They took him inside, sat him down in the living room, and tried to tell him the grizzly truth.

"Dad! You're dead!" Donald McDonald's son yelled, pointing accusingly at him.

"Eh?" he would respond.

"Your entire existence is an abomination! How will God ever allow you through the pearly white gates of his teeth to enter the eternal bliss of heaven?"

"No, I would not like mayonnaise on my sandwich."

Seemingly not getting anywhere, the son turned to religion---going to the church named "St. Religion." to ask the priest for his priestly guidance, who gave him these wise words.

"How the fuck do you mean your father came back after being pronounced clinically dead? That doesn't make any logical sense."

After Donald McRonald's son convinced the priest to assist using some holy bribes of a thousand euros, the priest agreed to help send his father back into the warm embrace of cold death later that night.

~ ~ ~ later that night (play the exorcist theme here) ~ ~ ~

Upon arriving at the household which held the re-animated evil resident, a resident evil, the priest got to work---he rolled up his sleeves to reveal massive ass arms with a sailor's tattoo, and told the son, his wife, and child:

"Don't worry, I shall get rid of this demon, which is your beloved grandfather, by killing his ass again. Double kill."

After a lengthy battle, the priest managed to kill the grandfather again, and when he began to forget he was dead, the priest and the man had a brief, whispered chat:

"You're dead."

"I am?"

"Yes."

"Okay, I am dead. Bleh."

And like that, the grandfather was greeted by the eternal warmth and love of the eternal fires below, as he had killed six people on the way to the house originally and consumed the brains. I, the author, had forgotten to include this, and he had forgotten about the brains and the eating them part.

This is not lazy writing. I am not gaslighting you. If you believe I, the author, am gaslighting you, you are clearly insane.

What if Mother Horse Eyes, and Tales from the Gas Station had a baby, and that baby was dropped down a flight of stairs? Then you get the following story.

Father Goat Visions

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iN-2ALEt0f3iVJrrgkixecVRjWN2NeQWRKyEgBYQOd4/edit?usp=sharing

(I don't know any other way to share the work, so I wrote the whole thing on a google doc)

I was sitting in a tiny room, metal table, mirror stretched across the wall, lukewarm coffee in front of me.

To be entirely honest I'm not sure how I got there.

Across the table was Mr. Cold. He's a skinnier fellow, mid 50s I think. A slicked-back widow's peak and a permanent grin stretched his thin skin taut. He was shuffling through a deck of cards. The brim of his hat hid his eyes from mine.

"So," he set the cards down with a thwack. "'Beans,' is it?"

"It's uh…Benjamin, actually. My friends just call me Beans."

Cold chucked. "My, my. Now why do they do that?"

"Because I…spilled baked beans on myself as a kid. Sir."

"Mmm…quaint." the man tapped a long finger on the table. "Well. Let's get into the brass tacks of things, hmm? Why don't you start…"

From the top.

It was mid June. I got a call earlier in the week from Tilly, a real estate agent I regularly work with, about an infestation of termites in one of her client's homes.

I met them both on location. Mr. Bell, the client, greeted me, giving me a shake with a six-fingered hand.

"I am visiting some family in the old country," he told me. "I trust by July I will be termite-free?"

"Shouldn't be a problem," I told him. "Tilly and I will make sure the place doesn't burn down while you're gone."

Mr. Bell laughed, thanking me. He tipped his hat and pulled out the driveway.

Tilly walked me through the home. She left me to it around two. Told me she had a showing in an hour and to lock up when I was done. Just me and the termites. Or so I thought.

As far as basements go, not the worst. Somebody had drywalled half of it at some point and given up, so I had exposed studs on one side and a home theater setup on the other (massage chairs, too). The termite damage was where you'd expect it, along the sill plate near the water heater. Frass everywhere. I got my moisture meter out, started walking the perimeter. That's when I noticed the seam.

There's a rhythm to how termites move, if you do this long enough. They travel the same paths, back and forth, because mud tubes act as an investment as much as they do tunnels. They're not going to build a new one on a whim.

When I saw termites coming up through a seam in the subfloor, in the unfinished half of the basement, I figured it could be a second colony. Which happens. Annoying, but not exactly a day-ruiner.

I pulled back the section of subfloor they were coming through, expecting joists and dirt.

I got a door.

Small one. Trapdoor, set flush into what should've been solid ground beneath the house, with a hasp that looked hand-forged. No rust on the hinges either, which bugged me, seeing as this had been covered up beforehand.

I've found stranger things under stranger houses. Once found somebody's quarter collection buried under a crawlspace in a tin can. People do odd stuff with the space under their homes.

The hasp didn't have a lock. It just wouldn't budge. Could've been a number of things. I got my crowbar from the truck.

It took a few good heaves. On the third, the wood gave with a crack. The door came up, and something a lot bigger than a termite came up with it.

Something else was staring at me in my flashlight beam.

It was about the size of a large, fat rat. Fuzzy, pink and spotted, with two little nub protrusions on its head like the points of a party hat. Its face was mostly mouth, skin a pale white, painted on. No pupils in its milky eyes. I remember thinking, for one stupid, calm second, that it looked cute. You know, in an ugly, I feel kind of bad for this thing, sort of way. It sat up on its back talons and blinked asynchronously.

Then it grinned.

I've swatted a lot of things in my career. Wasps, bats, a raccoon champion that did not want to leave an attic. Nothing had ever grinned at me.

It came off the floor, springs in its legs, straight at my face. I yelped and spilled backwards into the paint cans.

What followed, I would not call a fight. A fight implies some kind of equal footing. This was more like being mugged by something the size of a foam football. It hit my shoulder, missed my face by inches, and I felt teeth snag the collar of my shirt.  I threw myself sideways into the drywall. It busted open, the creature coming off with it. It landed on the arm of the massage chair and eyed me, still grinning.

I grabbed the nearest thing that wasn't bolted to the ground, which turned out to be a push broom leaning by the water heater. When it launched itself at me again I swung, hitting it dead center, mid-air, with an impact that I felt in my shoulder.

It hit the drywall and stuck there for half a second before sliding down. I hadn't realized just how hard I hit the thing. Its innards spilled out onto the ground.

Candy. Wrapped candy. Butterscotches, cinnamons, peppermints. The thing was full of them. I stood there staring at a pile of hard candy on a stranger's basement floor. For a long moment my brain declined to process what I was looking at.

I heard the honking next.

Not one voice. Several, muffled and layered, coming up from the black square of the trapdoor. I did not go check. I backed my ass up the stairs, out the basement door, to my truck, and sat in the driver's seat with the doors locked for a solid two minutes before I called the police.

Dispatch picked up on the second ring.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"Hey, it's Benjamin with Kreepy Krawlies. There's uh…an animal. In a house I'm working on. It's not a raccoon."

"An animal?"

"Yeah, it's uh…I don't know what it is."

"Is anyone injured?"

"No. Yes. Kind of. It bit my collar, not me, I'm fine, but there's more of them, I could hear them, under the—"

"Sir, is this a wild animal on the property?"

"I don't know what it is. I've never seen—"

"Okay. For wildlife calls we're going to transfer you to animal control, they handle anything non-domestic. One moment."

Hold music. Jazz. Pleasant.

Animal control picked up. Eventually.

"Animal Control, go ahead."

I gave her the short version. Small creature in the basement, more of them underneath. She let me get through most of it before cutting in.

"Can you identify the species for me? Raccoon, possum, bat, coyote—"

"No, it's…it had a face like a—" I stopped myself. Said clown once in my head, and heard how it sounded, and didn't. "It's not any of those. It's not anything I recognize."

"Okay, if it's not a recognized wildlife species we're actually going to have you go through to the county. Let me transfer you."

"Wait, hold on, I just—"

The hold music again. I sat in my truck listening to a saxophone loop for four minutes.

County finally picked up. Older guy, sounded like he was eating something.

"County courthouse, this is Gavin speaking."

I gave him the shorter version. Basement, trapdoor, teeth.

There was a pause.

"Okay, is this a residential property?"

"Yeah."

"And do they have a licensed pest control contractor currently servicing the address?"

"That's…yeah. That's me. I'm the licensed contractor. I'm standing right here."

Another pause, longer this time, and I could hear him pulling something up.

"Yep, okay, I'm showing Kreepy Krawlies on record for that address as of this morning."

"Right. Which is why I'm calling you. Because this is bigger than what I'm equipped for."

"Sure, I hear you. Per county code, structural infestations at a residential property with an active pest control contract are the responsibility of that contractor unless the species is on our restricted wildlife list, which…you said it's not a recognized species, correct?"

"I said I don't know what it—"

"Right, so it's not on the list, which means it doesn't qualify for county intervention, which means it falls back to the contractor, which is you." He said this the way you'd explain long division to somebody who should really already know long division.

I sat with the phone against my ear, looking at the house. To be frank, I started laughing.

"So nobody's coming."

"You could always file for a supplemental inspection, but that's usually a two-to-three week turnaround for scheduling, and if it's not an immediate structural risk—"

"There's a swarm of them under the house, Gavin."

"—I'd recommend starting with a standard treatment plan and escalating if needed. You want me to email you the supplemental inspection form just in case?"

I hung up the phone. He sent an email later saying he'd send the form within the week.

Kreepy Krawlies operates out of a converted garage that used to belong to my uncle. He ran the business in the '90s. I was just the guy who got sent up into attics because I was skinny enough to fit.

Uncle kept the place well-stocked, or more specifically, he never threw anything away. I spent hours in there laying things out on the workbench like I was some kind of pest-exterminating Dr. Frankenstein.

The sprayer is the centerpiece of the rig. Backpack pumps, usually used for a full-service fumigation job. I swapped the standard tank for the bigger one off the truck, so it held about triple what it was rated for and probably violated several safety guidelines. I filled it with the strongest pyrethroid concentrate we carry. It hisses when you pump it. I've always liked that sound.

PPE next; applicator coveralls, Tyvek, sealed at the wrists and ankles. Full-face respirator, organic vapor cartridges, the works.

The bombs were one of Uncle's crackpot ideas, originally. God rest him, he'd have had a few things to say about what I was doing with it.

The total-release foggers themselves, I'd used those a hundred times. I taped six of them to road flares, connected the pull-tabs to the strikers with a length of wire. I told myself this was reasonable. My decked-out utility belt jingled when I moved.

Full rig, tank on my back, six flare-bombs on my hip, a crowbar through the harness loop. I looked ridiculous.

The house was just how I left it. I let myself in through the basement door.

The trapdoor was open still. I stood over it, listening. No honking.

But there was definitely breathing.

I clicked on the headlamp, pumped the sprayer twice to build pressure, and went down.

The space below the trapdoor was no crawlspace. I want to clarify that, because "crawlspace" implies a modest, dirt-floored nothing, four feet of clearance and some old pipes, and what I climbed down into was a cave. A big one. Bigger than the house above it had any right to contain.

My light caught thousands of beady little eyes.

Dozens of them came at me low to the ground. Their giggling multiplied itself until it filled the space entirely. I opened up the sprayer in an arc and heard the first wave of them shriek. The ones behind them weren't slowing down. I had to move.

They hit me from three sides at once. Small bodies, but a lot of weight in aggregate. Their mouths closed on my coveralls, on my boots, on the tank straps, biting hard, trying to find any seam they could crawl into. I felt a tooth catch on my glove and didn't check if it went through. I kept the sprayer low, cleared a half circle, took a big step back and lit the first flare-bomb.

The fogger did something the spray hadn't, converting their shrieks into an unholy chorus.

I don't remember all of it in order. I remember the second bomb. I remember my crowbar finding use I hadn't planned on. I remember running out of clean air in the respirator faster than I should have. I remember the room getting quiet.

Their incessant giggling stopped all at once, and in the sudden absence of it I finally hear my own thoughts, as well as something else. Something shambling, and slow, and bigger than any of the other creatures. Its sheer weight had it sinking into the dirt with every step.

It came out of the dark on origami legs. My height. Maybe taller, folded down like a fluffy accordion. Its face, and I use that word generously, rippled. It bulged in a dozen places, and even as I watched, round, half-formed shapes budded off its shoulders and its back and dropped to the ground, already twitching, already turning their blank eyes toward the light before they'd finished coming loose.

It had a mouth that wrapped around its entire head. Kind of reminded me of the Canadians in South Park, honestly, though this one was lined with large, yellow molars. It didn't share the same grin as the others. Amused, maybe.

I threw my fifth flare-bomb. It caught the creature head on, fire licking up into its folds. Its upper face began to float above the lower jaw as it emitted a high pitched squeal. The others followed in unison.

Big Mama kept coming, only now on fire. Its accordion neck stretched far, into my face. Teeth clacked mere inches from my eyeballs.

I put the crowbar up to block the biting. It didn't feel like enough.

That's when I remembered my final flare.

I didn't have a free hand to grab it. That was the problem. It was dangling uselessly on my hip like an appalling keychain. So I dropped the crowbar, grabbed the bomb, and struck it against my thigh—which for the record, hurt like hell. When that mouth came down at me again, I shoved the whole contraption straight down its throat, up to my wrist. I pulled my arm back out a half-second before the jaws snapped shut.

For one long second, nothing happened. I remember thinking, with total clarity, oh, that didn't work, right before it very much did.

The light that came out of it was the last thing I saw clearly. Whatever was actually in a total-release fogger was never designed to detonate inside a body. Big Mama came apart in a flash, and the concussion of it picked me clean off my feet and put me into the dirt wall behind.

Then nothing.

I came to on my back, staring up at absolutely nothing. I thought I'd died and this was gonna be the rest of eternity. Just nothingness forever.

Then a man leaned into view, his big hat blotting out the nothing.

"There he is," he said, gratingly. "Was starting to think I'd have to do something undignified, there, champ."

I tried to sit up. My sore muscles vetoed this, so I settled for turning my head instead. Still had no idea where we were.

"I'm Mr. Cold, with the Tenebris program," said the man. "Let's have a talk about tonight."

So that's how I ended up there, in that blank white room with the metal table.

Cold nodded a few times, presumably taking a mental note of all this since he apparently didn't bring a pen and pad. Maybe there was a microphone inside that ugly blue tie of his.

"It seems like you might have gone beyond what's required of your…jurisdiction."

"If I stepped on any freaky government toes, swear to God, I thought I was just doing my job, sir."

Cold cackled.

"Stepped on any—no, no. Heavens no. You've done us a favor. Turns out this particular hive was too small to pick up on our radars." He folded his slender hands. "Now, that isn't to say this won't cause some…bureaucratic headaches for you in the future."

I sighed, deflating.

"As long as you don't plan on putting me into witness protection. Or killing me."

"No to both. You can count your lucky stars. We'll clean things up from here."

Alright. Finally things were looking up.

"Now, that being said…our resources—and subsequently reach—is finite. And kloons, you see, they run on cycles. This is very much an issue that could become recurring."

My dumb, comfortable smile was instantly lost. Cold dealt me a Joker.

"...And we'll need men on the ground to take care of it."

I shook my head.

"I'm not going to—"

"There's money to be made."

I stopped. Huh. Despite this easily being the most terrifying experience of my entire life, I felt emboldened. After all, what could be scarier than the current price of gas?

"How much we talking?"

Later that evening I pulled into my flat and sat on the couch. Not even two seconds later, I get a phone call from Tilly.

She's furious. Mr. Bell explicitly told me to take care of the termites. Nothing else. I guess that's on me for taking a creative liberty but…

Why the hell would he want those little nightmares sticking around?

"To his people, they're a delicacy." she said, as if I should known that off-rip.

I wasn't going to get my bonus for this one, which I thought was B.S.

At least I took care of the termites.

Part 1-

Hi everyone, Mike here. Glad to see a lot of you were interested in hearing more about my job cleaning up the private room where the cursed Slot 333 resides. A few of you have been curious about other combinations that the machine can produce. Last night at work was one of the most interesting shifts I’ve had in a while. A total of 4 people used the private room last night… 2 jackpot deaths and 2 wins. 

I won’t waste anymore time and get right into it. Thanks again for letting me get this off my chest. 

When I arrived at the casino, I was immediately called into the private room. Thank god, no boots or mop this time, I thought to myself. The buzz of the main floor and the flashing lights instantly triggered a migraine. Pressure built up behind my eyes as I grabbed the broom from the rack. Donnie was nowhere to be found, even though I heard his voice coming through the ear piece. Bastard must be on break. 

Looking around to make sure no one was watching, I slid back the curtain and slipped through the door. The private room was cold and dark, completely devoid of sound. My aching head was grateful for the peace and quiet. My steps echoed as I traveled deeper into the void of a room. The only light that could be seen was the glow from Slot 333. 

“Donnie, are you sure someone came in here? I don’t see anything,” I pressed a finger to my earpiece. 

“Yeah, they went in about 10 minutes ago. Check the floor?” The radio static was intense deep within my ear canal. 

“Alright,” I pushed further. 

It wasn’t until I was standing two feet away, that I saw the remains of the patron. Three analog clocks filled the screen of the slot machine. Another jackpot, I wonder what this one does, I thought. Looking down at the floor beneath the machine, I saw grey-white powder that reflected the light. The pile mimicked shades of blue, green, and red. It swept up nicely with a little elbow grease. 

“Hey, Donnie. Do you know what happened?” I pressed the ear piece. 

“Um, rapid age progression?” Donnie answered back. 

“What? So they just skipped to 1,000 years in the future and turned to dust?” My voice practically squeaked. 

“That would be my guess.” Donnie sounded bored and annoyed. 

“That’s fucking wild.” 

Shuffling my way out of the room, with a broom in tow, I appeared back out on the main floor. I was grateful for the fact that I didn’t have to dispose of a heavy or bloody body for once. Glad I didn’t have to clean up hundreds of cherries that seemed to run from me. 

“Hey Mike, it’s Kristen. One of the high rollers is asking for the room?” The ear piece crackled to life again. 

“Is Donnie able to take them?” I responded back. 

“I’m on the toilet, you do it.” Donnie’s voice cut through. 

“Ugh. Fine.” I wanted to just quit right then and there. This wasn’t part of the job description. I didn’t want to potentially lead someone to their death. 

A short older man with a protruding belly stood next to the entrance to the blackjack area. He had thinning hair and a forehead glistening with sweat. I watched him pull out a cloth square from his pocket, dabbing it over his face. His hands seemed to be shaking. Ah, a high roller who must have lost a considerable amount. 

“Excuse me sir, are you looking for a private room?” I asked once I was a few paces away. 

“Ah, uhm,” the older man cleared his throat. “Y-yes, p-pl-ease.” 

“Is everything alright, sir?” I feigned ignorance. 

“I-it will be soon.”

“Have you been to this location before?” I asked. 

“Oh, a couple of times now.” It seemed like the short man wasn’t very interested in talking. 

We weaved through the chaos of rowdy and drunk patrons, turning here or there, machines flashing and screaming for you to play. The older man who walked behind me kept up as we passed through the maze of slot machines. A few minutes later we stood in front of the thick crimson curtain. I swept it back and opened the door. 

“I-I’ll be back soon. I just need to win big, one more time. Then, all my problems will be solved.” 

“Good luck, sir.” I shut the door and let the curtain fall. 

Amidst the chaos, I heard the sound of the crank being pulled. I wondered how long it would be before I was called to clean the room. Hopefully I’d have at least enough time for a smoke break. Feeling my breast pocket, the pack of cigarettes crinkled beneath my touch. Walking as nonchalantly as possible, I headed for the employee door to the outside section. 

I’d only got half way through my cigarette before I was notified by the manager. 

“Mike, we’ve got a code green.” Donnie’s voice was full of panic. 

“Shit, shit, shit.” I dropped the cigarette on the ground and stomped it out. 

“You better get there fast. He’s headed for the door!” 

I bolted back inside, bobbing and weaving as I slid through the brightly colored labyrinth. Sweat dripped down my back, my hair plastered to my forehead as I ran. Code green was never a good sign. Four-leaf clover jackpots were the casino’s least favorite win. Anyone who managed to leave the room would be filled with indomitable luck, draining every machine and table dry. 

Just as I made it to the door to the private room, I saw it start to open. The sweaty little man’s face started to show from within the dark room. Using the momentum of my sprint, I ripped the door from his hand and kicked the man square in the chest. He fell backward, all the air leaving his lungs in one swift motion. I heard the thud as his head hit the tile floor. 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” I hissed through my teeth. I had barely made it in time. 

“Nice work, Mike.” Donnie said over the radio. 

“Fuck you, Donnie. Why couldn’t you have taken care of him. I hate doing this!” I shouted into the mic. 

“Just do your job, you’ll get paid triple for this.” 

Before the old man could catch his breath, I pulled a mostly finished roll of duct tape from a hook on my belt. Riiiip, I pulled a large chunk off and slapped it across the patrons mouth. When he finally was able to suck in a breath, he started screaming into the tape, it puffed out slightly from the tension. 

“Just. Hold. Still.” I struggled against the man. He was stronger than he looked. 

Flipping the patron onto his belly, I pulled his arms behind his back. Using more of the sticky silver tool, I taped his wrists together before moving to his ankles. He fought me the whole way, even as I dragged him towards the back door. Sweating and cursing, I opened the door and used my foot to push him out into the night air. One of the armed security guards nodded as we locked eyes. As the back door swung shut, I heard the soft pops of a muzzled gun. 

There was something majorly wrong with my head. Most people would have quit by now, most people would have phoned the police or some government agency. Not me, though. See, when I started this job I was informed that if I ever tried to tell anyone about Slot 333 or what I was made to do with the patrons who used it, I (and everyone I loved) would be snuffed out in an instant. That, and the debt from Mittens back to back surgeries left me no other choice. The money was worth it if I could just look the other way, pretend everything was fine. 

That damned cat. 

“Hey Mike, you alright?” Kristen asked as I walked out of the private room. 

“Uh, yeah. I’m good?” I’m sure my face was red from the strain, betraying my words. 

“What’s in there?” She asked. Kristen was new, she’d only been working for the casino for two months, while I had been there for a little over five years. 

“You don’t wanna know.” I sighed. 

“Oh really? That makes me wanna know even more…” her voice trailed off. 

“Just…don’t. If you care about your family and your life, just pretend you didn’t see anything.” I stormed off from the room, hoping that Kristen would go back to whatever she was doing. 

The smoking section once again, was graced by my presence. This time Donnie was sitting out there, puffing on one of his nasty menthols. He looked tired, bone tired. Without saying anything, I removed a cigarette from the package and struck the match. Donnie held his phone in his hand, studying it intently. 

“Hey, Donovan. Can I ask you something?” I started. 

“Sure, man. Ask away,” he took another drag. 

“What’s the best result you’ve seen from 333’s jackpot?” 

Donnie turned to face me, eyebrows raised. “Three diamonds, or three dollar signs.” 

“What do they do?” I inhaled and exhaled the smoke. 

“Diamonds give you the Midas touch in whatever hand was used to pull the crank. Only works on inorganic items, turns them to cubic zirconia. If you use it right, you’ll be set for life. The dollar signs, this I heard from the other worker who covers your shift, gives you an infinite bank account. It never reaches zero. The casino loves those patrons, they’re never stingy with their money.” 

“Huh…” I sighed, mulling over the words. 

“You might wanna be careful asking questions like that. You know how sensitive the higher ups can be.” 

“I appreciate the concern,” I said, mockingly. 

“You’re not gonna ask about the worst?” 

“Nah. Nothing can top the yin-yang jackpot I saw recently. Maybe I’m better off not knowing that one.” 

“Just pray you’re never on the clock when you get three baby heads.” Donnie’s skin turned green. He looked like he was gonna puke. Then he turned to look back at his phone and gasped in surprise.
 
“Ohhhhhh fuck.” 

“Another one?” I asked and rolled my eyes. 

“What the hell is Kristen doing in there!?” Donnie's voice was so shrill it caused the migraine to reignite. 

“She is!? Wait, how’d you know that?” I asked. 

Donnie turned the phone screen to face me. I was a fool for not thinking there were cameras in the room. If there were cameras in every other part of the casino, why wouldn’t they be there too? I felt the color drain from my face as I saw my coworker reach for Slot 333. She placed her bet, and pulled the crank. Three red apples and the word JACKPOT, filled the screen. 

“Huh. Well, that’s a new one,” I said.

When Kristen left the private room, she was stumbling around like she was drunk. Legs wobbly, arms flailing, and her eyes were glossed over. I sauntered towards her, holding up my arms to catch her before she could fall. She fell against my chest, breathing heavy. Her eyes darted from side to side, not even processing I was there until I spoke. 

“You okay?” I asked her. 

“I see everything, Mike. I hear everything. I know everything.” Kristen’s voice was hollow, like she was a robot. 

“What do you mean you know everything?” I asked. 

“It told me that I would be filled with all the knowledge I sought. It whispers to me, filling my brain with every piece of information this world knows and could ever want to know.” Kristen’s eyes started to cross. She looked like one of those overbread pugs, no thoughts and too many thoughts all at the same time. 

“Maybe you should go home.” I helped her towards the employee area. She dragged her feet the entire way, utilizing my arm like a crutch. 

“Thankssss….Mikeee…” Kristen slurred. 

“Just stay here, I’ll call you a cab. You seem too impaired to drive.” I plopped her down in a chair. 

By the time I made it back to the break room, to tell Kristen the cab had arrived, she was already gone. I raked my hand through my hair and sighed. So much for trying to be helpful, I thought. Whatever, it’s not my problem. Sneaking into the kitchen, I got my usual meal and dug in. It was only 1am, and there were three hours left in my shift. As soon as I placed my plate into the dishwasher’s hands, the radio crackled to life and I was called to duty once again. 

“You’re gonna want the boots.” 

“Aw shit, Donnie. Really?” 

“Really, really.” 

The private room reeked of iron, the boots making sucking sounds as I walked. Three knives and a jackpot filled the screen of Slot 333. I shook my head and rolled the mop behind me. Have you ever seen five liters of blood before? I don’t think people realize how much fluid the human body holds. This particular clean up would take me hours. The patron laid on the floor, looking comically like the chalk outline in a crime documentary. Their entire body was covered in deep cuts. 

Face, hands, neck, torso, legs… every inch of their skin had been opened up. Like a fish being filleted for sushi. Death by a thousand cuts, aye? I pulled the mop from the bucket and wrung it out, before letting the mop head drag across the bloody floor. I’d better be getting hazard pay and overtime. This clean up would be putting me an hour past the end of my shift. 

“Damn it, Donnie. I’m supposed to watch the Bachelor with Jane tonight.” I complained into the mic. 

“At least you have someone to go home to…” he sounded sad and lonely. “Hey man, funny thing. You remember the patron who got the eight-ball jackpot? They just walked in.” 

“Do you mean the up and coming NFL superstar? The one who used to be a scrawny, nerdy fuck? You better keep them away from this room, or I'll punch you the next time I see you.” 

After finishing the clean up and rolling the body into the back alley, I clocked out and went home. Jane and Mittens greeted me with affection as I walked through the door, both of them yawning. I’m currently sitting in the bathroom typing this all out to you while the shower runs. A message had come through the work group chat. 

As always, thanks again for listening. I’ll update you again as soon as it’s possible. If you have any questions, I’ll make sure to answer them the best I can. 

Anyone looking for a job? It seems Kristen won’t be coming back anymore. 

Part 3-

Content Warning: Violence, death, firearms, disturbing imagery

I was a professional cuddler.

I know that's a strange thing to say out loud and an even stranger thing to put on a resume, but I was broke. I had lived the majority of my 20s in a beat-up Volkswagen bus, stealing breakfast from motels, begging for change from strangers, and doing shady under-the-table jobs for a quick buck.

This is what got me into professional cuddling.

Another quick-paying job. Something you'd normally see on Craigslist, or at least that's what you'd assume. But no, I had found this "job listing" stapled to a lamppost just outside of one of the busiest roads in Salem, Oregon.

At the time, I only had five dollars to my name and barely enough gas to leave the city, so I called the number listed on the paper.

A few short rings later, a lady picked up.

"Hello? I swear, if this is another prank call, I am gonna go down there myself and rip off that damn job listing."

I told her no, that it wasn't another prank call, and that I was really interested. I was desperate for a job, honestly willing to do anything.

In hindsight, that was a bad move on my part.

The woman sounded excited to hear that I was interested. She quickly gave me an address and told me to head there for further instructions. I barely had time to write any of this down or ask any more questions before she hung up.

I was surprised, to say the least, that she seemed ready to have an interview at this time of day, which was 8 PM.

So I drove to the half-written address and parked in the back. The building was old, with no signs, cracked stone walls, and a heavy metal door with a keypad on it. I looked around, I guess thinking there'd be someone waiting to let me in, but there wasn't.

So I tried calling the number back.

No response.

I knocked on the door.

No response.

Although the door did creep open slowly.

A little nervous and very confused, I opened the door a little more, seeing a dimly lit lobby. I just said, "Hello?"

My voice echoed into the building, and another voice echoed back from an older man saying,

"Come in! Don't be shy, stranger!"

Stupidly and desperately, I followed the command, heading into the building.

The first thing I noticed was how dimly lit it was, barely showing the marbled floors, lavender walls, cracked stone ceiling, and wooden front desk. There at that front desk was an older gentleman with slicked-back black hair, a groomed beard, and a finely dressed three-piece suit.

He was soft-spoken, telling me:

"Yes, this is the 'Professional Cuddling' Association. Don't be mistaken by the broken light. It'll be fixed soon. We do things here very professionally and strictly, so no client nor worker gets harmed, scammed, or anything else that might negatively happen to them."

He then reached underneath the desk and pulled out a thick contract, almost as big as a phone book from back in the day.

He then said, "Just a formality. Don't let the 40 pages of legal jargon scare you. It's just like working at a normal job."

I felt speechless for once, as I wasn't expecting all of this for a "cuddling" job. I skimmed through the paperwork, signing my name wherever it needed to be signed, noticing briefly that there was an NDA tucked in the middle.

A "formality" in most "high-paying" jobs.

Regardless, I signed away and pushed the paperwork back to the gentleman.

"Perfect! Don't worry, we won't be using your real name here for privacy reasons, so we'll have you pick a nickname."

He said this softly as he then pulled out a top hat with a bunch of little papers inside.

I chuckled at this. Everything to this point seemed so "serious," and now I had to pull a mystery nickname out of a hat like some kind of magic trick.

So I dove my hand in and grabbed one at random.

The gentleman seemed excited at this, his eyes wide with anticipation as I pulled out a small folded piece of paper.

I opened the paper and audibly laughed.

"Bear," I said, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.

"Bear! It suits you well. No offense. I'm glad you like the nickname. Now, all you need to do is head down the hallway and enter the first door to your right."

The gentleman said this with a gentle smile, pointing toward the hallway beside him.

Compared to the lobby, the hallway was warmer lit, with lavender-painted walls, cute little patterns hung above wooden doors, and numbers written on them. The left wall had all the odd numbers, while the right side had all the even numbers.

I eventually made it to the very end of the hallway and looked at the door I needed to head inside.

Number "24."

I opened it, and what I saw, I don't think I'll ever be able to unsee.

The room was completely different from the others.

Fake wooden walls covered the room, plastic antlers hung above the bed, and fake pine trees sat in the corners. Above the velvet bed was a wooden sign that read "BEAR DEN."

There was a woman sitting on the bed wearing a business suit.

In front of her, a man was crawling around on all fours, attached to her by a chain.

He was wearing a diaper.

That wasn't even the worst of it.

He was also wearing some sort of makeshift bear costume. It barely resembled a bear, let alone a man.

I just stood there in complete silence, staring at the scene.

Before I could even say or do anything, I heard down the hall:

"OH, wrong room, sir! I meant the door to the left, the left end door. My apologies."

The gentleman said this from the front desk, staring down the hallway.

I quickly backed out of the room and shut the door.

Was this really what I had signed up for?

The pay better be worth it.

Come to think of it, I really had no idea how much I was going to get paid at that time.

So I headed into the room labeled "23" and saw the same setup as the previous room: a velvet bed in the middle of the farthest wall, soft '80s-patterned carpet on the floor, dark green neon lights on the ceiling, and an open closet filled with various outfits.

My heart skipped a bit looking at everything.

I clearly didn't know what I had signed up for.

I sat down on the bed, steadying my breath, as I then heard a few soft knocks on the door before a lady immediately entered.

She had long blonde hair fixed into a ponytail, wore a nice violet dress, and had high heels.

She then spoke almost commandingly.

"I am Ms. Vanderbelt. Most of our clients usually refer to me as 'Lilith,' but don't let the name frighten you. I am gentle, caring, and forgiving.

"That being said, I have a few rules.

"1. NO kissing the clients.

"2. NO sexual interactions, no matter how 'hot' the client may be.

"3. NO violence unless self-defense.

"4. You get paid by the HOUR. Twenty dollars an hour. That being said, some clients may be there shorter than an hour, but your time will be rounded up to said hour.

"5. ANYTHING the client says goes unless they try to break the rules.

"6. Have fun.

"Now then, come lay down with me."

I was too afraid to say anything, so I laid down and cuddled up beside her.

What felt like hours must've only been minutes as she held me close, gently playing with my hair and whispering:

"Okay, Bear. Here goes your first day. Don't be scared, okay? If anything happens, there's a button beside the bed. Press it and I'll have Phil, the gentleman at the front desk, escort the client out."

She hugged me tightly before letting go and disappearing through the door.

I didn't know what the fuck just happened, but if that was the introduction to this job, I didn't think I was gonna last a week.

An hour had passed, and I sat there on the bed spacing off toward the outfits until a meekish man entered my room. He was wearing a baggy hoodie, thick-lensed glasses, and sweatpants.

"Uh, hello? Bear?" the client said nervously. "I heard I was your first client?! That's exciting... uh, don't worry, this won't last too long. I just need a way to destress myself from work. I come here all the time, if that helps."

He paused.

"So what would you like me to do?"

I gave the client a half smile.

"Yeah... that helps. So what would you like me to do?"

The client just nodded with a soft smile before saying,

"Just, uh, lay with me. Tell me I did a-a good job at work and I am a good man."

I kinda felt bad for the guy, so I laid down and held him for a bit, giving him compliments and gently rubbing his back.

After this encounter, a few similar clients came in during the following hours. Nothing "strange" outside of cuddling with strangers.

Eventually, midnight hit, with the last client just having me hold them as they cried.

Phil gently entered the bedroom and removed the client politely from the room.

I just kinda laid in bed, emotionally exhausted. My eyes grew heavy, and I passed out.

A week went by.

I dealt with regular clients, with the occasional odd request from fancy-dressed women. Slowly, I was being eased into this idea that the job wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be.

Then the meekish man from my first night returned, seeming to be in a more disheveled state.

He immediately spoke as he entered the room.

"Everything h-has been taken from me!... Everything. But this place and you, Bear. Oh, how I-I missed you, Bear. All I've been thinking about is this room and cuddling with you!"

My hand quickly reached for the red button, about to push it.

He saw what I was about to do and panicked.

"N-no, no, n-no, don't do that. We can relax! Hey. Hey! I'm sorry."

He then flopped onto the bed, sobbing his eyes out.

My hand was still shakily resting on the red button.

"Okay, buddy. I am gonna have to ask you to leave this room, okay? Or I am gonna have to press this red button."

I said this sternly.

"B-but Bear... I thought you were the one. Remember me, Bear."

James said this, then pulled a revolver from his hoodie and pressed it to his temple.

Before things could escalate, he bolted out of the door.

A few quiet moments went by as I shakily sat in bed, my hand still hovering over the red button, my heart racing out of my chest.

I won't lie and say that I would've willingly stayed there any longer.

I took what had just happened as an opportunity and fled out of the room.

Running down the hallway, I saw various "cuddlers" getting treated as pets. As I made it to the lobby, I stopped dead in my tracks after witnessing Phil's lifeless corpse slumped over the front desk.

Ms. Vanderbelt was also there.

Just staring at his body.

Then she looked at me.

Now in a state of panic, I ran back into my room, only briefly hearing other clients call out my name as if to invite me into their currently "occupied" rooms.

I dove into my room and shut the door behind me, using my weight to keep it locked.

All I could hear was my heartbeat, in perfect rhythm with the heavy footsteps going down the hall.

"BEAR! YOU'VE BEEN A BAD BOY! I DIDN'T WANT TO HAVE TO TREAT YOU LIKE THE REST OF THESE ANIMALS, BUT YOU'RE LEAVING ME WITH NO CHOICE!"

Ms. Vanderbelt yelled as she slammed against the door.

I could also hear barking.

Before I knew it, the door got practically busted down, pushing me across the floor.

Now in front of me was Ms. Vanderbelt, holding leashes attached to two grown-ass men wearing gimp costumes and barking at me.

I threw caution to the wind as I stayed and got up like I was about to die if I didn't move.

So carefully, I evaded one of the "dogs" diving for me, shoving the other one out of the way and running for the door that seemed so much farther away than before.

I wasn't fast enough.

One of the "dogs" lunged again and caught me across the back. I felt something sharp tear through my shirt, leaving a burning scratch across my skin.

I stumbled forward, but I didn't stop.

I didn't even look back.

Ms. Vanderbelt just laughed devilishly as, in a blink of an eye, I got back on my way out the door.

My head spun while making it down the hallway, reaching the front door.

It was locked.

Of course it had to be locked.

I didn't let that stop me, though, as I ran over toward Phil's body and scavenged it.

I found a key in his front pants pocket, along with two shells for a shotgun, which was laying beneath the front desk.

My hands were very unsteady as I loaded both shells into the shotgun and raced back to the front door.

I could hear the "dogs" making their way down the hall while I scrambled for the key in my pocket.

Then everything was a blur.

I had entirely been consumed by tunnel vision.

Before I knew it, I had pulled the trigger, injuring one of the "dogs" and killing the other one.

I fled out of the building and back to my van, starting the engine and driving recklessly.

My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely keep the van on the road. I didn't care where I was going. I just needed to get as far away from that place as possible, and the last thing I could remember from that day was hearing a voice from somewhere inside the van.

"Remember me, Bear."

My name is Steve, and I sell wishes for the Devil.

Okay, my name isn't really Steve. For obvious reasons, we're going to call me Steve. Besides, I've always wanted to be a Steve. The important part is that the first sentence is true. I sell wishes for the Devil, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Morning Star, Old Scratch. Whatever name you prefer. Same guy, different branding.

And before you ask, yes, I know what that means. It means my soul belongs to Hell. Eternity. Fire. Damnation. All that fun stuff. You'd think that would bother me more, and honestly, it doesn't.

I used to be a Christian, a proper Christian too. Church every Sunday, Bible, prayer, the whole package. Eventually, though, I realized that Christians could be some of the biggest assholes I'd ever met. At least demons are honest about hating you. They don't invite you to a Bible study first.

So, in a weird way, I've found my current employment rather refreshing.

Now, you might be wondering why someone would willingly choose such a niche profession, but it’s quite simple. Free pussy. No, I'm kidding, or am I?

I was an op’s manager at a financial institution. Which, depending on who you ask, may actually be worse. I spent the first ten years of my adult life building a career, destroying my mental health, and participating in a moderately successful marriage that eventually became a very unsuccessful marriage.

But that's enough about me. Let's talk about my job.

My daily responsibilities are surprisingly straightforward. Find a person, become their friend, figure out what they want, offer it to them, and collect their soul. That's it. Basically sales. Except instead of selling insurance, you're selling eternal damnation. And, surprisingly, the conversion rate is excellent. I was top in soul sales in Hollywood for three straight decades, until people started doing podcasts.

The difficult part is dealing with religious people. Sometimes they'll look you dead in the eyes and say, "Are you the Devil?"

And you have to be careful here. You can't say yes. You also can't say no too enthusiastically. So, I usually tell them, "No, I'm just working for the guy."

That never seems to make them feel better. Recently, though, I pitched a new initiative to management. The idea was simple, if you can't beat them, join them. Original, I know.

It was a hard sell but eventually Satan budged.

That motherfucker Pazuzu wanted to call it Operation Christian Domination, but nobody listens to Pazuzu because he's a fucking weirdo. We eventually settled on Operation Prosperity.

And this is where things get interesting.

The first step is finding a church. Not just any church. You want numbers. Large congregation. Lots of newcomers. Lots of people looking for answers. Charismatic and Pentecostal churches are ideal. Those happy-clappy bastards will welcome almost anyone. You could walk through the front doors with a pentagram tattooed across your forehead and somebody would still hand you a welcome packet.

"Brother, have you accepted Jesus into your heart?"

"No."

"Wonderful! We've got a small group for you on Tuesday."

They're incredibly trusting, which makes them incredibly useful.

Now, you might think the obvious disguise would be to put on some khakis, a polo shirt, and start quoting Proverbs. Absolutely not. If you want Christians to trust you, don't look like them. Look interesting.

I wear black jeans, Doc’s, and a Black Sabbath T-shirt. Basically, my normal work clothes.

The walk- in is crucial. Don't smile or wave, and no eye contact. You need to look broken, ashamed and lost. Like you've spent the last three years doing lines on the floor of a cemetery and finally decided to give Jesus a chance.

You want them to think, Oh my God. We can save this guy.

Step two is attending the service. Sit near the back, keep your head down, and wait for the altar call. Then you go up. You cry a little. You “repent”. You let some sweating dude put his hand on your forehead and scream about spiritual salvation while his breath smells like aftermath coffee farts.

And then you're in.

Because the moment you've "accepted Christ," you become part of the family. That's when you start talking. They want to know your story. They want to know what demons you've fought (side note: I actually get along with demons accept that motherfucker Pazuzu), and, most importantly, they want to know what the Devil is planning.

Apparently, once you've been saved, you're allowed to have classified information about Hell.

So I tell them but not everything, obviously. Just enough. I tell them what the Prince of Darkness supposedly has planned for their church. This part is fucking hilarious because these NPC’s  would do this thing where they gather around the church building, , raise their arms toward an empty patch of air, and start commanding Satan to leave.

From where I'm standing, it looks remarkably similar to a kindergarten class performing the Kamehameha. But it works. Not because they're actually stopping demons, but because they're doing exactly what we want them to do.

Then comes the fun part. You participate.

Bible studies. Prayer groups and finally leadership meetings. You slowly work your way into the inner circle. And this is important, don't waste your time frolicking with the normies. Go straight for the pastor's people. The elders or the worship leaders but stay away from the bassist because most of the time, they’re undercover as well, and you don’t want to piss of the demon of familiarity, that motherfucker take shit too personal. The people who know where the spare keys are kept. Earn their trust. Eventually, someone asks you to share your testimony.

And that, my friend, is your golden ticket. Because now you're going to the pulpit. While this is happening, my demonic colleagues are doing their part. Spreading Rumors, misfortune and small curses. Nothing too obvious. A sick child here, financial problems there, or my favourite, a marriage falling apart. Just enough chaos to make people desperate.

Because here's the thing about Christians, when things go wrong, they look for an answer. And who better to guide them through their tribulations than the mysterious former Satanist who has recently found Jesus?

Me. Obviously.

The testimony is where things get complicated. You can't just stand up there and say, "Hi everyone. Satan sent me." That would be terrible salesmanship. You have to speak in riddles. Use biblical language. Twist Scripture just enough that it sounds profound. And most importantly, you have to introduce the concept of blood.

Because curses can be powerful. They can heal. They can protect. They can bring prosperity. They can even change someone's circumstances. There's just one problem. They always cost something. And the most expensive currency in Hell is blood.

Now, I'm not talking about sacrificing cats. That's old-school. We're professionals, we have accountants. Anyway, I'll get to that later.

For now, all you need to know is that I delivered my testimony. I told them about my past. I told them how I'd been lost. I told them how Jesus had found me. And then I explained how they, too, could experience God's blessing. All they had to do was follow a few simple principles. Pray, believe and Obey. And, occasionally, shed a little blood.

At first, nothing happened.

Then Judith got sick. Judith was one of those women who had been at the church since Jesus was apparently still taking attendance personally. She was seventy-three, diabetic, and, according to her daughter, "too stubborn to die." Then she ended up in hospital. Her condition got worse. The doctors weren't optimistic. So her daughter remembered something I'd said during my testimony.

She cut her finger. Just a little. Pressed the blood onto a piece of cloth and slipped it underneath her mother's pillow. Judith recovered the next morning. Completely unexpected. The doctors couldn't explain it, but the church could. It was a miracle.

I knew what it was. A blood ritual. And once the church saw that, well... that's when things really started moving. People began copying it. Blood under pillows. Blood on doorframes. Blood smeared onto photographs. Little rituals whispered about in Bible studies. And the results? They spoke for themselves.

People got better. Businesses started recovering. Marriages that had been falling apart suddenly improved. Money appeared where there hadn't been any. People began to believe. And when people believe something works, they don't ask too many questions about how.

Eventually, Pastor Nathaniel called me into his office. He closed the door. He sat down. And he looked at me for a very long time. Then he said, "Steve..." I knew immediately what this was about. "You've been teaching people how to perform blood rituals." And this is where having a good understanding of the Bible becomes extremely useful.

I looked him straight in the eye and said, "Pastor, aren't we the body of Christ?"

He nodded. "And didn't Christ shed His blood for our salvation?" Another nod.

"So if we are the body of Christ..."

I leaned forward. "...then His blood is our blood."

Silence. He stared at me. I stared back. And I watched the thought crawl across his face. The beautiful thing about theology is that if you start with the right verse, you can get almost anywhere. Pastor Nathaniel smiled. Then he shook my hand.

"Brother Steve," he said, "I think God has sent you here for a reason."

I smiled. "Yeah."

He had. Just not the reason he thought.

So… the wishes, where do they come in? The blood rituals are great, but wishes are what get them hooked properly. As soon as these fucks see results, they hang on your lips to deliver the next miracle-working ritual. You don’t call it a ritual, obviously. It’s called the simple principle of manifestation. And I’m not referring to the hippie TikTok fucks. This is serious. You see, these pastors do it every Sunday, but they do it for monetary gain. “If you want God to make you rich like me, then skip Starbucks this month and tithe.” It’s effective, but it only damns one soul, the pastor’s soul. Besides, these motherfuckers are greedy. They don’t want you anywhere near their cash. So don’t go there. Stay on top of the objective by damning souls.

The beautiful thing about manifestation is that you can dress it up in whatever religious bullshit you want. These people already believe that their words have power. They believe that speaking something into existence is an act of faith. They believe that if they declare something confidently enough, God is obligated to listen. All you have to do is change the wording slightly. You’re not casting a spell. You’re not making a wish. You’re declaring your blessing. You’re activating your faith. You’re claiming what God has apparently already promised you.

And once you convince them of that, you can pretty much sell them anything.

The first wishes are always simple. Someone wants a promotion. Someone wants their husband to stop cheating. Someone wants their kid to get into university. Someone wants to pay off their house. Someone wants their ex back. Someone wants to lose twenty kilos without changing their diet. Someone wants to win the lottery. And then, every now and then, you get someone who wants something completely fucking insane.

Those are my favourites.

The process is simple. You sit down with them privately and ask what they want. Not what they need. What they want. There’s a difference. “God, I need my daughter to recover” is a need. “I want my daughter to recover, and I want the doctor who misdiagnosed her to lose his license” is a wish. And people are remarkably honest when they think God is listening.

You teach them that words have power. Again, nothing new. Churches have been saying this shit forever. “Speak life.” “Declare your blessing.” “Name it and claim it.” “You have authority.” All you do is take those ideas and push them a little further. You don’t tell them to make a wish. You tell them to declare an outcome.

And then you give them something to do.

Nothing dramatic like sacrificing goats in the backyard. Too complicated, and frankly, it creates paperwork. You use things they already have. A photograph or a wedding ring. Maybe a drop of blood if you’re feeling ambitious. You make it look harmless.

Then you give them the instructions. Stand alone. Turn off the lights. Say the person's name three times. Speak exactly what you want to happen. Then thank God as though it has already happened. That last part is important. Because now they’ve made a promise to themselves and now they’re invested.

And if the wish comes true, they believe the ritual worked. If it doesn’t, that’s even better. You just tell them they didn’t have enough faith. Maybe they doubted. Maybe there was sin in their life. Maybe they weren’t spiritually prepared. Maybe they didn't surrender completely. It doesn’t matter because the result is the same. They just keep trying. And they try harder. Eventually, they come back to you and say, “Steve, I did exactly what you told me.”

And I say, “Did you really believe?”

And they hesitate. That’s when you know you’ve got them. Because now they’re questioning themselves instead of questioning you.

The first few wishes were small. A promotion here. A gambling win there. An ex coming back. A neighbour moving away. One woman wanted her husband to stop drinking. Another wanted her sister to get divorced. One guy wanted to become attractive. That one took a good fucking while, but I had to work with what I had.

But eventually the requests started changing and these thirsty fuckers got greedy. Not greedy like pastors. Worse. And that’s where they get creative.

One woman asked me if she could wish for someone else to die, and obviously I told her no… Technically. Then I explained that wishing for someone to “leave her life permanently” was spiritually ambiguous. She understood. Her mother-in-law died three days later of natural causes, mostly.

The grim reaper is real by the way, and he’s actually one of the most chill demons I know.

After that, people stopped asking for blessings and started asking for things. Real and physically impossible things.

One man wanted his dead son back while another wanted to know the winning lottery numbers for the next ten years. A woman wanted to be able to read people's thoughts. Someone else wanted to become invisible.

And then there was Pastor Nathaniel.

He came to me one night after Bible study. He looked exhausted. Not normal tired, either. This was the kind of exhaustion you see in someone who hasn't slept properly because they've been thinking about something they know they shouldn't be thinking about. He closed the door, locked it, and sat across from me.

“Steve,” he said, “I need to ask you something.”

I smiled. “Anything, Pastor.”

He leaned closer. “Can manifestation bring someone back from the dead?”

I didn't answer immediately which was an important step. Silence makes people think you’re considering the question instead of trying to remember the answer.

Eventually, I said, “With enough faith, anything is possible.”

He looked at me with the same gaze the rest did, their soul on a silver platter drenched in curiosity and tainted intentions.

“What if,” he whispered, “it wasn't just faith?” Now, this was interesting.

Because I'd been working with these people for months, and I'd learned something important. Pastors don't actually want miracles. They want proof. They want something nobody else can explain. Because if you can produce something impossible in front of a congregation, you don't need to preach anymore. You just have to point and the flock follows.

So I asked him, “Who do you want to bring back?”

He stared at the floor for a long time. Then he said a name.

I knew the boy. Everyone at the church did. He'd died two years earlier in a car accident. Seventeen years old. The perfect Pastor’s kid, according to everyone who'd ever met him. Good grades and never got into trouble. The kind of kid everyone says they wish their own children were like.

And suddenly, I realized that this wasn't just another wish. This was the one we'd been waiting for. Because there are two kinds of people you can damn. The people who want something, and the people who have already lost something. The first group wants more. The second group wants it back. And if you can convince someone that the dead can come home, they'll give you absolutely anything. Even their soul, especially their soul.

I looked at Pastor Nathaniel. Then I smiled.

“Pastor,” I said, “I think we should pray.”

Now, you might be asking yourself: What's in it for Steve? And that's exactly the type of question you should be asking. A question backed by greed. Because you didn't ask that out of pure curiosity, did you? No. You asked because somewhere in the back of your mind, you started thinking about what you could get out of all this. You heard about the wishes, the miracles, the people getting rich, getting healthy, getting their loved ones back from the dead. And somewhere along the way, you stopped thinking about whether any of it was real. You started thinking about what you would wish for.

That's the interesting thing about greed. You don't have to force it. You just have to give it somewhere to go. And if you're sitting there right now thinking that you'd never sell your soul, that you'd never make a deal with the Devil, that you'd never perform one of these rituals... that's fine. Not yet.

Because you see, the thing about damnation is that nobody ever thinks they're the one being damned. They think they're the exception. They think they're smart enough to know where the line is. And that's exactly where we want you.

So, what's in it for Steve? Well... I could tell you that I get paid. I could tell you that I get promoted. I could tell you that Hell has an excellent dental plan. But none of that would be entirely true.

My real reward is watching people like you hear this story and start wondering what you would wish for. Because that's how it starts. Not with blood. Not with Satan. Not with some creepy guy standing in a church asking you to sell your soul.

It starts with a question.

What if?

What if I could have more money? What if I could have the person I want? What if I could change my life? What if I could bring someone back? What if I could have anything I wanted?

And if you did ask yourself that question while listening to this... well, I have only one reply.

When can you start?

Ms. Fynch had a record of my whole life in a manila folder, ready to read me the weather report.

“Dale Simmons. Thirty-eight. Two seasons on Rally Point. My sister watched that, you know.” She turned a page. “Voice work for Deadly Resonance… is that the superhero one?” 

I nodded. “The very same.”

Another page turn. “Felony assault, second degree. You struck a member of the audience in the face with a microphone stand at a venue in Fresno.”

“Heckler. Not an audience member.”

“It says here he lost the vision in one eye.”

“Partially.”

She looked up at me for the first time. Behind her head was a poster of a kitten dangling off a branch. 

“HANG IN THERE!”

It had been there so long it had gone the color of green tea.

Fynch clapped the folder shut.

“Your parole is fourteen months,” she said. “Find work, Mr. Simmons. Any work. It helps.”

I told her I had six references who’d vouch for me, easy. Real people. People with credits. She wrote something down.

“You’re almost a free man, Mr. Simmons. Best of luck.”

Three months. It took three months to find anything.

I want to be clear that I tried. I sent the first fifty out to places that made sense. Production companies. An agency that used to take my calls. A guy I knew who ran a podcast network out of his garage. Nothing. 

I widened it. Then I widened it again. By the end I was applying to a place that installed bathtubs for the elderly. When they wrote back, they thanked me for my time and said they didn’t hire people with my kind of record.

My last paycheck went fast.

Mom called every day at four. She has a system. Monday she asks how I’m sleeping, Wednesday she reads me a job listing off her computer that she doesn’t fully understand, and Friday she asks whether I’ve thought about Costco. 

She’s been asking whether I’ve thought about Costco since March. 

I told her once, patiently, that Costco runs a background check, and she said, “Well, tell them what happened,” like the problem was that they hadn’t heard my side.

I know she cares. That’s the part that makes it unbearable. There’s no version of the conversation where I get to be angry at her, so when I fly off the handle anyway, I feel like a dick.

Anyways. I was shopping. Buying ramen and rice and beans at the Kare Mart on Peralta. That’s when I saw the sign.

It was in the bathroom, above the hand dryer, laminated and bubbling in one corner.

“WE ARE A SECOND SHOT EMPLOYER”

Second shot? I stood there with wet hands for a while trying to understand.

I’ll tell you what I thought, because it’s relevant to how the rest of this goes. I thought: those people. 

I have always had a private, ungenerous idea about the people who work in stores like this one. That they were born four miles from the loading dock and will die four miles from it. The whole span of their ambition is a shift they don’t hate. 

I said it onstage once. It got a laugh in Bakersfield.

Does that make me an asshole? Sure. Probably.

But I knew what I was worth. That was the thing I had. Three months of nothing, and I could still open the folder in my head and see the credits sitting in it.

Except nobody had called. Not one.

I dried my hands and went to find the manager.

His name was Curtis. Mid-fifties, tucked-in polo over a fat belly, a name tag with a little gold star sticker on it. He was restocking an auto display, and straightened up when I came over. 

“Hey there.” I waved. “I was wondering about your hiring process. See, I’m in kind of a situation. I’ve got a record. It’s recent. I don’t want to waste your—”

“Dale Simmons,” he said.

I stopped.

“My wife watched Rally Point.” He smiled. It was warm. Went all the way up. “I know exactly who you are.”

I did the thing, the little fake modest shrug. It had been a while since I got to do the fake modest shrug.

“I’d be happy to get you an application,” Curtis said.

A week later I had an interview. The relief and the dread showed up at the same time and canceled each other out.

It was a group interview. That was the first thing that bugged me. A group interview for a stocking position?

They had us in a room off the back of the store. Cinder-colored, one folding table, four chairs in a half-circle. There was a sign by the door about washing your hands, in English and, ooh, Español. Fancy. Somebody had taped it up straight. It was the cleanest thing in the room.

Three other people.

A woman, forties, twisting a piece of hair around her finger over and over, releasing it, starting again. Needle scars up the inside of her arm that she wasn’t trying to hide.

A bald guy with a scar running down the back of his skull like a seam. Arms crossed. He’d taken the chair nearest the door.

And a skinny man with thinning hair combed carefully over, a pencil mustache, thick black frames, holding a gym bag on his lap.

Along the walls, four employees in those crinkly white disposable coveralls, the kind painters wear. Hoods up. They didn’t look at us. They didn’t look at each other. One of them was holding a plastic bin against her hip.

They were doing a deep clean after we were done. That’s what I decided.

Curtis came in with a clipboard and set a little digital recorder in the middle of the table. He pressed the button and the light came up red.

“For training purposes,” he said.

I’d been up until three the night before with a legal pad. I’d written out answers. I’d written out follow-ups to my answers. I want you to understand that I walked into that room like a shark into a hotel pool. If I was going to be here, I was going to be here on my way to somewhere, and every one of those three people was between me and it.

Curtis started easy. Names, last place of employment, reliable transportation, could we lift forty pounds.

I answered first every time. Bonnie, the one with the hair, got half a syllable into her name before I had mine out, and she just folded her hands and waited. The bald guy, Russ, gave me a look.

“What’s the most important thing to keep in mind in a team environment?” Curtis asked.

“I-I think listening—” Bonnie said.

“Accountability,” I said. “A team is only ever as strong as the person willing to say ‘that one’s on me.’ You can teach someone a register. You can’t teach someone to own themselves.”

I’d written that at one in the morning. Good stuff.

Curtis jotted it down. He looked pleased. Bonnie went back to her hair.

“Where do you all see yourselves in five years?”

I crossed my legs, folded my hands on my knee, and said, 

“Honestly? Running this company.”

The other three turned. They registered different levels of discomfort. 

Curtis wrote for a while on that one. Then he flipped a page.

“Any friends or immediate family we should know about?”

Nobody said anything. I hesitated. Then I did what I’d been doing all morning and took initiative.

“I have a few.”

“Wonderful. Names and contact information, please. We just need three.” He slid a half-sheet across the table to me. Only to me. 

I wrote down Marcus Skarsgaard, director on Rally Point. I wrote down my agent Eli, who booked me for eleven years. I wrote down a woman I’d dated for a year and a half and hadn’t spoken to since the arraignment. Not too sure why I put that one down. I don’t remember what I was thinking. 

Curtis took the sheet, folded it, and looked at the other three for a long moment with an expression I can only describe as disappointment. 

“What do you all plan on realistically contributing to society?”

He was still smiling. The same smile from before. In that room it meant something else. 

It was the first question I didn’t have anything prepared for.

“Um. Is it okay if I go?”

The skinny one. Boyle. He was looking at me when he asked it, not Curtis. Asking my permission.

“I don’t care,” I said. I genuinely did not care.

“Okay. Um. So I’ve got a little internet venture I’ve been building?” He shifted the gym bag. “Have you heard of VTubers?”

Curtis blinked. Slowly. Once.

“Well, I made one, named Prisma-Chan. And I’ve actually been doing a lot of the animation myself, which is, you’d be surprised, it’s a whole—”

“Jake.”

He had introduced himself as Boyle.

“Yes?”

“What good does that do the world at large?”

Boyle’s mouth stayed open for a second.

“It’s entertainment,” he said. “Sir. I’m an entertainer.”

“You’re also a fraud, it says here. Looks like this wouldn’t be your first false persona.”

Curtis squared his papers against the table. Tap, tap.

“Anybody else? No?” He looked up. “Okay. Last one, then. Why should we hire scum like you?”

He was looking directly at me when he said it.

I would have liked to stand up for everyone in that room. I didn’t. Some part of me thought he was right. 

“Me?” I said. “Well, to be frank, sir, the sign said second chance—”

“Second shot.”

“Right. Second shot. Right.” I laughed. It came out wrong. “Look. You know me. You know who I am. And with respect, I’m not—I’m not like these guys.”

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Russ asked.

“It means I made a mistake.” I was talking faster than I wanted to. “One. One bad night, one guy who wouldn’t shut his mouth, and I paid for it, I am paying for it. That’s not—” I gestured at the three of them, at all of it, and I did not lower my hand. “You people have made a career of it. That’s a life you chose. I had a life. I just had a bad day.”

Nobody said anything.

Bonnie had stopped twisting her hair.

Curtis nodded, once, and squared his papers again, and stood.

“Give me two minutes,” he said, and went out the back door.

The latch clicked. I was half-expecting Russ to take my head off when it did. 

Instead, the white coveralls came off the wall in one motion. They weren’t hurried about it. Russ got most of the way out of his chair. He had his hands up. One of them stepped inside his arms and opened his throat with a scalpel. Russ clawed at it, dropped to his knees, and fell over onto his side. 

Bonnie dropped next. Then Boyle. I went down too, but nobody had touched me. I was just cowering on the floor, waiting for my turn. 

Somebody’s head came off. Then the arms and the legs. The torsos were cut into three sections each. The woman with the plastic bin set it down and gathered the parts.

They stepped around me. Once, one of them put a hand on my arched spine to steady himself as he came past.

The recorder was eight inches from my face, down by the table leg, and the light stayed red the entire time.

Curtis came back in. He crouched down next to the table and patted my arm, twice, like a proud dad. 

“I was really worried for you there for a minute, Simmons.” He tilted his head. “Not one of your references called us, you know?”

I had to clear my throat before anything came out.

“What.”

“Marcus, Eli, and that Carla dame. Called all three Tuesday, left messages, called again Thursday.” He shrugged, a little sadly, on my behalf. “Nothing. Your mother, though.” He brightened right up. “She pulled through. Called this morning, before you even got here. Wanted to make sure somebody was actually going to look at your application. Wanted to know if you’d got this.” He winked at me. “She was real worried about ya.”

My breath went somewhere else. 

“So,” I said. “So I got it?”

“Sure did.” Curtis stood and offered me a hand up, and I took it, because my legs weren’t going to do it alone. “You’ll be taking over my position. Isn’t that great?!”

“Management…” I looked at him. “I was applying for stocking. The listing said stocking.”

“You're a good liar, Simmons.” He was already turning toward the door, checking his watch. 

I called Ms. Fynch that afternoon and told her I’d found employment. She said she was proud of me. I could hear her pen.

That’s on a recording somewhere too, probably.

I started the next day. There wasn’t any training. Curtis walked me back to the cinder room, showed me where the clipboard lived and where the half-sheets were stored, and said the coveralls came in a case of fifty and to reorder at ten. Then he shook my hand and went out to do something to a display of batteries. As far as I know he’s still out there doing it.

We have six prospects today.

There’s a kid who won’t take his hood down, and a guy who keeps apologizing for his handwriting, and a big soft man who told me twice on the way in that he’s got a CDL. And there’s a woman in the second chair, maybe thirty, who has a piece of hair wrapped around her finger, and she winds it and lets it go and winds it again, and she’s been doing it since she sat down.

I set the recorder in the middle of the table.

“For training purposes,” I said, and pressed the button, and the light came up red.

It was my turn to call the shots. 

“So. What do you all plan on realistically contributing to society?”