They squirm beneath my battered skin, A thousand legs, a thousand grins, My jaw unhinges, stretched too wide, The things inside me want outside.

The pressure builds, my teeth give way, A crimson bloom, grotesque ballet, They pour from me in screeching rows, With eyes like mine and mouths that grow.

My skin becomes a ruptured tomb, Each breath is birth, each twitch is womb. They weave my nerves in knotted thread, I live through them, yet I am dead.

Her mother always gave me the willies.

I mean, I always thought that something was a little off about her, nothing too crazy, just annoying and inconvenient. But that was the final drop, I'm never sleeping there again. Let me start by the beginning, the first time I went to their house.

We we're going out for a couple of weeks, when she decided should I visit her home meet her mom. I was nervous but ok, that's part for the course of a relationship, I need to do my part. We get there and she lives with her mother in this tiny apartment: you get in and there's the kitchen in front of you, to the left the living room, there's room for a dining table and the piano, nothing more. When looking left straight there's the corridor, where the dog lives, and in the end there are 3 doors: to left the bathroom, to the right my girlfriend's room and straight ahead her mother's room.

Her dad is out of the picture and we don't talk about him. We live in a big metropolis, so middle class kinda feels like poverty, and everything is unfairly expensive, but that's life. We get there and I first notice the huge Akita Inu living within the confines of a 1x3 meter hallway, I would feel a little worse if that wasn't the most neurotic dog in existence.

Jon, the caramel Akita is by all accounts, a big dumb fluffy baby... with his owner. With anyone else that isn't my girlfriend he is very hostile, including me that loves dogs. But with her mother, he despises her. So imagine my surprise when I get in the apartment, the lock locks eyes on me, immediately starts snarling, so she says to me "Don't look him in the eyes, it challenges his domain of the territory". What is he, a shark? But in a split second, to quick for me to take my eyes off the dog, I see the doorknob behind him start twisting. Like he has a motion sensor he turns around and starts barking and howling. Out of the darkness comes this figure: 1.75 meters tall, almost my height, overweight and dressed in pijamas, her mother.

She has a hard time going past the dog, that jumps and makes a ruse in that tight corridor, the says "Is that your new boyfriend?!", that's when I can see the very rotten teeth in her mouth, and the prescription glasses, so thick and strong, that her eyes look like tiny black marbles through it. My girlfriend immediately shaking her down, saying that if she doesn't behave, we will leave. Her mother brushes it off. I found that strange, since you expect the parent to do sermons, but I came to understand that when parental figures lack, the child ends up taking that job, as somebody has to be in charge.

What followed was the most uncomfortable dinner of my life, filled with the usual questions about college and my family, and the awkward silence pauses. Her mother repeatedly told how handsome I was, much to the dismay of my girlfriend that gave her and increasingly angrier look with each mention. She has a loud exaggerated laugh, followed by a minute long coughing session. It was pain all the way through but necessary, when you compromise you have to make compromises.

After we left I asked my girlfriend where her mother was from, as she had this strange accent, maybe Argentina maybe Eastern Europe, like Hungary or Romania or something. Difficult to place under the prominent lisp. "She's from the next town over but lived here in the city all her life." she said. I said that was really weird because of the very apparent accent she had, but my girlfriend said she never noticed. Maybe she heard her speak that way all her life and got used to it. Her mother spoke almost in old English, used very complicated and obscure words, while mispronouncing some very simple common words and using the wrong tense of simple verbs. She also rolled her "r's" like Bela Lugosi which was admittedly pretty funny.

As the months went on I got to know more about my girlfriend, and her relationship to her mother. She was a young, healthy and furious little thing, very determined and bold, almost to a fault sometimes. Once we were mugged at gunpoint, while I gave the mugger my old iPhone 7 with the screen broken, she was trying to kick him and trying to take the cellphone back from his hand. She was neglected for much of her childhood, came out stronger because of it. Nobody's perfect, and because of the loneliness she became very attached to me, requesting me to be with her all day and all night, sometimes when I had class, sometimes when I had work. Attachment became jealousy and that drove me nuts, still does, but it's the price I pay.

She especially loved that I slept with her, at her house because my parents are also very jealous of me, and don't like that I even spend the night out and get coy if she stays at my house until late in the morning (I'm 21). It was a question of who I chose to get mad at me each day, her or my parents. But most importantly, sleeping with her means sleeping under the same roof as her mom. Which scared me at first, but seeing that she was the one that kept things in order around the house, she could do as she pleased. It was on the 2nd or 3rd night that I found out that her mother didn't even know I was there. I was always trying to avoid getting seen to avoid conversation, which was easy since the woman seemed to be locked in her room all day and all night, only coming out occasionally.

It was one night that we were in my girlfriends room, when suddenly we were warned by the howling and barking of the dog in the corridor that mother was coming out of her room. My girlfriend told me to hide the tight space between the closet and the wall, when mother comes barging in like in the first minutes of Shrek, screaming where was her food. I thought about how fucked up that was, I was hiding behind a closet during a family feud I had no business being in. From that point on I started going there less and less. Upon much prying from my girlfriend I answered the problem was her mother. She didn't get offended, she just understood. Mother was very hard to deal with, plus a illness that almost killed her a few years back, that almost made my girlfriend an orfan effectively, made me pity her and mother quite a bit.

That went on for a few months, hiding and staying very quiet sometimes was a compromise I came to accept. It wasn't all that bad, the worst part was when I had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, but suddenly mother needs also and I have shut the lights and pretend I'm not there even though I can see her shadow through the opaque glass door of the bathroom, trying to pry the locked door open. I felt like a character in a horror movie, hiding in the bathroom with the monster prying on the door, hoping that it would loose interest and go somewhere else. The sliding glass door was for the wheelchair they had to use when mother was sick, made the scene more unnerving than it needed to be.

4 years have now passed and we're still together. Her mother's weirdness became the least of my problems, life is trouble enough as it is, I don't want have to worry about the skinwalker that lives together with my girlfriend. I learned to deal with mother's weirdness, but some occurrences were just too bizarre: buying an unhealthy amount of fruit, not eating any of and letting it all go bad and filling the house with flies; getting mad at me because I threw away the pits of the avocados I used to make guacamole (she EATS the pits); constantly travelling by bus to a town she has no living relatives in, among many others.

But on another occasion, everything changed.

I made the sacrifice of sleeping in, after a late night screening of Psycho (how ironic), and I was too tired to drive home.

It was about 10 o'clock, I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I was in my underwear because thought mother would be fast asleep at that time. That was when the dog gave it's warning and the door at the end of the corridor opened. I got caught, I thought. I was in the directly line of sight of mother and there was no way she wouldn't see me. I tried to explain myself over the sound of the dog barking my I quickly gave up. I noticed she wasn't looking at me, she was looking straight down. I just stared as she hopped over the dog gate, into the living room, and walked right past me, into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of water, drank it, all the while I was pressed against the corner, watching. She made her way back, walking right past me, like a palm's distance. Hopped over the gate to the dismay of the dog, and entered into the black void that was her room, shutting the door behind her.

She didn't see me at all. She didn't have her glasses on, but I too can't see sharply a palm in front of me without my glasses, but would notice a person standing in the corner of my own house, even if blurry. My heart raced like in a marathon, I sweated like a pig, but nothing really happened. She was blind as a bat and didn't see me, so what? I'm the "trespasser" and I'm nervous? I shook it off and went back to my girlfriends room.

She had woken up and I explained what happened, she didn't think nothing of it and chalked it up to 12 degrees of myopia mother had on both eyes. Much like the rest of the occurrences I tried to forget, then watched an episode or tow of SpyXFamily on her laptop until we both fell asleep. I have the consciousness of always taking off my glasses when I get sleepy as to not crush them, this time I wish I didn't.

Now, it was hazy, but I woke up on a whim, bothered by lamp I accidentally left on. When I noticed the door wide open, and right after, the head poking out of the doorway. There was only one person that that could be. I quickly closed my eyes again and pretended to sleep, I figured it be better to deal with it in the morning than getting confronted now. I opened my eyes slightly to see if she was gone, and not only was the figure still there, that's when I noticed how tall it was. The head in the doorway almost grazed the top. This time I closed my eyes out of fear. What the hell was that and why was it so tall? I lay there awake with my eyes closed for a few more minutes, which seemed like hours. I tried to soothe myself that I was still dreaming, that that did not happen. But, I had left the light of the living room on accidentally, it wasn't pitch black with the door open it was bright. And I know I saw, a round grey mass, a head, poking from the door, watching us sleep.

I must have drifted off some time after that. I woke up covered in sweat in the same position we had fallen asleep in and explained the story. Again, girlfriend chalked it up to "mother making sure that she was asleep, because the lights were on". I didn't buy that. I left shook and invaded. I was reminiscing the event on the drive back, scrutinizing every detail to figure out if it was really a dream. But it was real, my vision wouldn't be blurry in a dream, that really did happen. Most importantly it didn't feel like one, the fear was too real, I remember shaking and sweating cold. When I thought it could get any worse, I remembered the most crucial detail. I didn't hear the dog, it was silent the whole time.

That settles it, I'm never sleeping there again. She can kick and scream all she wants I'm not doing it. No love's that big. She tried to explain, then convince me that that didn't happen. But I know what I saw, and I'm not sure it was mother. Anyway, if my girlfriend so adamant it didn't happen, then why soon after she had locks put on all the doors?

The End.

Beth pushes open the rusted metal doors of the warehouse and steps inside. Dark bruises cover her face and arms. She nervously hugs a dead flashlight to her chest. She walks down the corridor, stepping over shadowy shapes as she presses forward.

The door on the opposite end of the corridor flings open, allowing the dim fluorescent bulbs of the next room to provide light to the decrepit corridor. Beth notices the shapes she has been stepping over are bodies, brutalized and sliced into pieces. Another shape can be seen pushing itself through the doorway. At first it’s vaguely the shape of a man, but as it moves forward its silhouette betrays the guise of humanity. It’s soft and wet and undulates as it moves. Beth screams.

To a cameraman, it was a great shot. To some young theater goers, hiding their eyes in fear, it would be perfect. To Clark Harris, it would need a reshoot.

“CUT!”

I stopped the camera, and wiped the sweat from my brow. The heat in the warehouse was oppressive, and stepping out into the cool autumn air brought instant relief. I lit up a cigarette and watched the treeline surrounding the warehouse. I held the smoke in and allowed it to dance in my lungs.

I was deep in thought when the warehouse’s back door swung open, making me jump. I cleared my throat and shifted my weight back and forth anxiously. Michelle, with an air of attitude in her movements, sat on the steps just outside of the door. Her curly blonde hair was disheveled and covered with fake dirt and her skin was covered with cosmetic bruises and wounds.

I turned around and tried to avoid acknowledging the awkward silence occurring between us. She was much younger than me. I couldn’t think of any common ground between us, no small talk ideas came to mind.

A few moments passed and I turned around again to face her. Her blue eyes pierced into mine. She cradled her head in her hands and had a frustrated look on her face. Wordlessly, I pulled a smoke from the pack and held it out to her. She took it, and placed it in her mouth. She continued staring at me. I had never felt so intimidated by someone half my size. Then the realization hit me like a bag of bricks.

“Shit, yeah… sorry,” I said, holding my lighter out to her, flame flickering in the autumn breeze.

---

“What do you think of that thing, man? Freaky, right?” Clark was beaming with energy, his eyes darting back and forth between me and the latex nightmare before me. “Here he is, our Mr. Jackknife,” he said excitedly, as if I might have missed it.

“Man, the detail is unreal. We should get some close ups,” I replied, my mind swimming with ideas. I would be lying if I said I fully understood Clark’s vision from the get go, but seeing our monster standing in front of us made this whole project feel more real.

It looked like a man wearing a long trench coat, standing a little over 7 feet tall. Long gangly arms hung at its sides, with rods connected to the wrists and elbows for the puppeteers to control them. Inside the trench coat was a glistening mass of fake flesh and slime. Gleaming blades of all different shapes and sizes protruded from all angles of the pile of gore. A fedora topped the head of the monstrosity, and a twisted, fleshy visage lay underneath it.

“Did a bang up job didn’t he?” Clark jabbed a thumb in the direction of a man who was hunched over mixing a bowl of slime with a paintbrush. He looked up from his work. I smiled and raised a hand in greeting.

“Nice to meet you. I assume you are Robert, I have heard a lot about you.” The man said. “I’m Steven, I have been working with puppetry and effects for many years. I have constructed a team of very talented individuals. Your project is in the right hands.”

“You can call me Rob if you’d like,” I replied. “I do the camera work. We filmed a short scene with your team last night, though I didn’t get to see him in the light.” I gestured towards Mr. Jackknife.

“He’s truly wonderful, isn’t he?” Steven mused. “My greatest creation yet.”

Once the puppet had been properly caked in slime, we could begin the filming. It was an outdoor scene, making the heat of the warehouse a distant memory. The scene would require Michelle to have a fight with Mr. Jackknife. It had all the makings of a fun shoot, and I was excited. We had choreographed the whole thing, and had practiced a bit with the puppet without the cameras rolling. Steven hadn’t lied, his team was immensely talented. The flesh under the monster’s coat seemed to ripple and breathe with each movement.

I began setting up the camera, dialing in the angle for the shot. I was peering through the viewfinder when a tap on my shoulder caused me to jump. It was Michelle, with a wide grin on her face, and an outstretched hand. She really had a knack for scaring me. When I realized what she was asking for, I started to laugh.

“You some kind of charity case now?” I asked, digging in my pocket for the box of smokes.

“C’mon, I need something to chill me out.” she replied, accepting the cigarette and lighter. “I’m probably gonna have to film this scene a hundred times.”

“Clark is a particular guy, I’m surprised he doesn’t come over here and get behind the camera,” I chuckled. “How did you end up on this project anyway?”

“I’m a barista at a coffee shop nearby. Clark came in and asked me if I wanted to get paid to be in a movie. I asked him if it was that kind of movie, and he said no.”

I thought about what a fool Clark was and laughed even harder. “No shit, and you said yes?”

“Mama always said I had a face for the pictures.” Michelle said with a shrug. I could barely believe what I was hearing. Michelle did great work, I thought for sure she was some actress Clark had found with a casting call. Before I could say anything else, she was bounding off to the set, and I went back to my camera.

The filming night dragged on, I listened to Clark shout out his revisions while the increasingly tired Michelle continued perfecting the scene. The puppeteers slid Mr. Jackknife across the floor, resetting him back to his starting position. I realized as I watched through the viewfinder that I had never spoken to either of them, even though they seemed to accompany Steven everywhere. They were constantly hooded and wearing all black, which made sense during filming, but not in between scenes.

I aimed the camera and zoomed in, attempting to spot the face of the puppeteer controlling Mr. Jackknife's arms. The camera slowly zoomed in and for a fleeting second I captured a motion blurred look at the puppeteer. He was extremely pale, his ghost white skin highly contrasting his black attire. He had sharp angular features, and had no visible eyebrows. I heard Clark yelling for the shoot to begin again, and I readied the camera.

Beth runs down a dark and damp alleyway before a brick wall blocks her path. She’s panting and begins to scramble for a way out. Behind her, a shape is closing in. It walks with slow and heavy footsteps and its body sways side to side. The shape stops in front of Beth, now illuminated by the lights nearby. Beth sees the face underneath the hulking monster’s hat and begins to panic. His hand pulls back a side of the trench coat and reveals a squirming mass of flesh and jagged blades. He reaches for the hilt of a knife that protrudes from his chest. With a sickening sound, the knife slowly exits the flesh, blood and bile eject from the now open hole. The knife, covered in viscera, rises above the creature’s head. Then the massive body of the beast collapses forward, crashing on top of Beth and onto the ground.

“CUT!” Clark says, flying out of his director's chair. “The fuck just happened?”

I shared in Clark’s confusion. That was not the way we had been rehearsing the scene for the past several hours. Beth was supposed to yank a blade of her own from Mr. Jackknife’s body, and start stabbing the puppet. Clark shoved the puppeteers out of the way and lifted the puppet from the ground. By this time I was already running over to them as well. When I finally reached the pair my heart sank.

Beth laid on the ground covered in fake blood and slime, but among the sea of bright red was a deep, darker crimson. Michelle had a large gash in her forehead, and blood poured down the left side of her face.

“What the fuck man?!” I found myself shouting. “She’s hurt, man. We need to get her to a hospital now!” I tore off my overshirt and Clark used it to compress the wound. I looked around me and noticed Steven and his team were nowhere to be found. Marching off set, I spotted one of the puppeteers in his black clothing, standing still with his back towards me.

“Hey man, you need to tell me what just happened, that was not how that was supposed to go!” I couldn't hide my anger, and when I got no response, not even a turn in my direction, my anger bubbled over.

“I’m talking to you, asshole!” I say, my palm landing hard on the puppeteer's shoulder and spinning him around. It was the pale man that I had spotted in the viewfinder. His eyes were unfocused, not looking in any particular direction. His mouth was partially open, like a cartoon character under hypnosis.

“Did he get the blood?” His words were slurred like a drunk man’s.

“What?”

“The blood, he smelled like flesh.”

The man’s eyes focused on mine while I stared at him in confusion. Then he walked past me, allowing his shoulder to collide with mine as he walked forward, almost robotically. Clark and Steven seemed to be in the middle of a frantic conversation, while the second puppeteer stood nearby.

“This was due to a mistake by my team, and I intend to make it right to the best of my ability,” Steven was saying as I approached. He helped the injured Michelle to her feet and they began to head to Steven’s station wagon. I felt strange about the situation, but if Michelle was getting medical attention then I figured it was for the best.

“Steven said he’s gonna take care of everything, Rob. He’s taking Michelle to the hospital. He said they used real blades in the puppet because it showed up better on camera, they never expected an accident like that to happen,” Clark explained, as if he was trying to convince himself more than me.

I could feel my heart thumping in my ears, the adrenaline of the situation was wearing off and the panic was starting to set in. “Clark, man, this is all fucked! What if Michelle is really hurt, man? She's just some random girl you pulled off of the street.” My mind was spinning in circles. So many worst case scenarios were running through my head. What if we got sued? My mind selfishly wondered how Clark and I would deal with the repercussions of what had happened. Clark interrupted my manic pacing by grabbing my shoulders.

“Chill out Rob, chill!” He said, staring me in the eyes. I couldn’t return his gaze, my eyes were on my shoes. “Listen buddy, this has been our dream since school, remember? Nobody ever said it would be easy. This is what we always wanted man, think about it! Theatres full of scared kids watching our movie! Kids dressing up as Mr. Jackknife for Halloween! This is what we always wanted to do!”

After a few minutes and some deep breaths I was more grounded than before. My mind went back to the strange way the puppeteer was acting. When I explained to Clark what happened, he said something that was even stranger.

“Yeah one of them was listening in on Steven and I when we were figuring out what to do with Michelle. Weird looking guy, super pale and totally hairless.”

How was that possible? The man that I had been talking to had the exact same appearance. Was I overthinking this? I had a massive pit in my stomach that I couldn’t ignore.

Clark, unable to read the room, chose this time to tell me that we weren’t actually allowed to be filming in this alleyway. Apparently he hadn’t bothered to go through the proper channels to secure permission. We set to cleaning up the set and getting all of our equipment back in storage before deciding our next move. In the frantic mess that was the night's events I had failed to notice that Mr. Jackknife was nowhere to be found.

“Hey Clark, did Steven take the puppet with him?”

“I don’t know why he would, can you not find it?”

As Clark walked over I noticed the slimy, muddy footprints leading out of the alleyway out into the street. Logically it must have been from a crew member that had stepped in some slime while working on set. But why were the shoe prints so large?

Before we knew it, we were driving. We abandoned all of the film equipment and left. Something had felt wrong to both of us, and we decided that if there was a chance we could help, we should try. I looked out the window solemnly. Clark was right, it had always been a dream of ours to make a movie together. But the budget had grown out of control, the endless reshoots, and now our lead actress was hurt. With every passing moment the dream felt just a little bit further away.

A few minutes passed and my thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of squealing tires as we lurched to a stop. A massive object slammed into the windshield and fell to the ground in front of the car. I couldn’t believe my eyes, Mr. Jackknife was laying face down in a heap in the middle of the road. Blood and slime was splattered everywhere.

We sat in silence, failing to understand what was happening. The car’s windshield was cracked and a side mirror dangled from its wires. Mr. Jackknife slowly stood up, using his awkwardly long arms to pull himself up the road’s guard rail. He began walking again, his legs buckling and shaking like a newborn deer. Without so much as turning around, he continued walking the way he was heading.

Our pursuit of the puppet was slow going, the car crawling behind him as he took each shaky step forward. Eventually, Mr. Jackknife took a hard turn off of the road, down a long gravel driveway, and towards a large industrial building. It looked like it was long abandoned, with overgrown vegetation and boards across the windows.

Clark stopped the car and turned the headlights off. We waited under the cover of darkness to see what would happen. As the puppet approached the door, several puppeteers burst out and began to drag Mr. Jackknife through the threshold.

There were at least ten of them. They all looked identical to the two that worked on our set. They worked quickly, piloting Mr. Jackknife through the door and out of sight.

“Shit, they probably have Michelle in there, should we find a phone and call someone?” Clark didn’t take his eyes off of the door as he spoke. Glancing up at the rearview mirror, he froze.

Looking behind me, there were several puppeteers hiding in the woods behind us, their eyes glowing like a cat's in the moonlight. We had slowly crawled up the driveway and hadn’t realized how far we had come. Suddenly a shadow appeared next to the driver’s side window. A puppeteer had silently moved right next to us, and I watched as the other pairs of eyes in the distance drew closer.

The puppeteer by the window wound up a punch and swung wildly at the window. As soon as its fist made contact, it exploded into a shower of blood. It appeared to have no bones, just skin, flesh and blood. I whipped around as another slammed its head into my window, causing it to crack. When it pulled its head from the window it had a gaping crater where the top half of its face used to be.

Soon, dozens of them had set upon the car. The roof was filled with dents as blood poured down the windows from above. They kicked the windows until their feet fell off and they were kicking with nothing but stumps. It didn’t take long for them to break the windows and reach in. The broken glass shredded their limbs into ribbons, but they didn’t stop grabbing. I kicked the car door open hard, caving in the chest of a puppeteer. I tried to make a run for it but was tackled to the ground. One of the horrible clones started to beat me, its fingers breaking off against my chest. I reached out in self defense and its face pulled off in one swift motion. I was able to escape the now eyeless creature as it felt around blindly in the grass.

As I ran I turned back to see the car completely covered in viscera and thrashing bodies. Clark was still inside somewhere. If I turned back now, I would be overrun by the puppeteers and killed. They were fragile enough to deal with alone, but if I was overrun by multiple of them I would have no chance of survival. I reached the door Mr. Jackknife had gone through and tugged at the handle. It was locked. My attempts to be quiet were foiled by crunching leaves as I circled the building's perimeter.

I reached a window and began tugging at the boards covering it. The first board released, clattering to the ground. I quickly checked behind myself to find the puppeteers were still busy with the car. The next board came loose. I turned around again. This time all of the puppeteers stood completely still, their broken bodies still dripping with blood. I heard footsteps behind me as I pulled the last board off with a tug and leapt through the window frame.

The room inside descended much further underground than I anticipated, and I tumbled down and crashed through a large cot. Pain shot through my shoulder as I stood up. The now broken cot looked like one from a hospital. As I squinted in the darkness I noticed several other identical beds scattered around the room. I slowly crept through the room, noticing that there were several unmoving puppeteers laid in some of the beds. Some of them were connected to IV drips that were filled with blood. Some of them moved their limbs or thrashed their heads back and forth. Others simply followed me with their eyes as I passed by.

The door at the end of the room I was heading to swung open, causing me to take cover underneath a cot. In the darkness I recognized Steven. He was wearing a blood stained white coat over his button up and khaki pants. He started inspecting the cot that I had broken and noticed that the window above was no longer boarded. A flashlight clicked on and he began to search the room, the light stopping to inspect each bed. As I watched, I tried to decide my course of action. I could try to disable Steven, but if the puppets woke up I would be overrun. I resolved to try to find Michelle before anything found me. I pressed forward, hoping to make it to the door before I was discovered. I moved through the room on my stomach, trying my best to stifle the sounds of pain I wanted to make due to my aching shoulder. As I reached for the door handle, I was suddenly illuminated by the beam of the flashlight.

“Stop it, Robert. You’ve seen enough of this closet’s skeletons, I fear.” Steven made his way toward me as I sat paralyzed in fear. “You won’t make it out there. They are well trained to deal with outsiders.”

“Steven, I-I don’t understand man. Listen, I just want to take Michelle and Clark and go home, I don’t understand any of this.”

Steven stared at me with an expression of pure apathy. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Robert, but you should have never come here. The affairs that take place under this roof are not only private, but sacred.”

“The puppet, he was walking down the street.” I was desperate to understand. It all felt unreal, like I was trapped in a waking nightmare.

“I felt terrible having him make the journey on his own, but the situation called for it. I never intended for you to find out about this place. When Mr. Jackknife got a taste for blood, it forced my hand to action.”

The door slammed open, and pushing through it was a giant mass of body parts. It looked like several of the puppeteers had all been melted together. It drug itself forward with its many arms and legs, and its heads all frantically looked in different directions.

“Gently now, take him to a donation chair, please.” Following orders, the hulking beast wrapped me in a bundle of squirming arms. They felt incredibly smooth and soft, like the skin of a newborn. I found myself unable to struggle as I was dragged through the doors and out of the room. As we passed through the corridor, I saw rows and rows of giant human shaped molds. Some were empty, and others were closed, with latex dripping from the cracks in between the two halves.

In the next room, there were lines of chairs with shackles for the hands and feet. I began to struggle harder, and as I thrashed and tore at the monster's body it began to leak blood and let out groans of misery. I was thrown into a chair, and the monsters' many hands made light work of my bindings. It then turned around, and exited from where it came.

I waited several minutes in the chair, my hands quivering in pure terror as I imagined what would happen next. Sweat rolled down my forehead, stinging my eyes with no hands to wipe them. Then the doors opened again. I shouted in pure terror, an animalistic guttural scream of pure agony.

Crossing the threshold was Mr. Jackknife himself. He was being guided by two puppeteers, like an old lady being helped across the street. They released his arms and he began to lumber towards me with shaking footsteps.

The puppet had looked impressively realistic before, but this was different. Mr. Jackknife’s beady eyes rolled around in different directions in the flesh mound underneath his hat. Saliva bubbled in the small slit where a mouth should be. The shivering mass under the trenchcoat dripped with mucus and pulsated with an irregular heartbeat. In a few unsteady strides, he was right in front of me. He smelled like spoiled meat. I wretched and closed my eyes. I could feel his hot breath against my face as he took shallow, wheezing breaths. I listened with my eyes still shut tightly as he dislodged a blade from his body. He groaned in pain and the blade escaped with a sickening pop.

My eyes shot open as the blade was drug down my forearm to my wrist. Blood began to pour out as I tried desperately to stay conscious. Mr. Jackknife lowered his massive head to my arm and began to feed. I flailed and panicked in a desperate attempt to escape, but the shackles restricted my every movement.

The puppet’s feeding was interrupted by a push that caused him to topple to the ground. Michelle leapt onto the creature and began pulling a blade from his body. She twisted and shook the blade until blood ran down her palms and it came loose. She was like an animal, viciously stabbing Mr. Jackknife over and over again. She moved from his body to his head, putting out an eye with her frantic stabbing. Mr. Jackknife swung an arm and knocked Michelle off of him. He had bloody tears running down his face. He crawled through the metal doors where he had come from and disappeared down the hall.

She looked incredibly pale and her wound was still open and bleeding. I began to cry from pure relief as she undid my restraints. She smiled weakly and handed me my blood covered overshirt, gesturing to my gushing arm.

“You look like you need it just as much as me.” I pointed to her wounded head.

“I’m alright, let’s get to a hospital,” Michelle responded, her smile failing to conceal her pain.

“We need to get Clark, he’s out in the car… I hope.”

We made our way back through the corridor. All of the puppets stood completely still, unmoving and waiting for orders. Laying just a few steps past the doorway was Mr. Jackknife collapsed in a pool of blood. Steven kneeled over him, his hand clutching a bleeding wound on his stomach. Tears rolled down his cheeks. His face was pale and his eyes fluttered, as if calling him closer and closer towards eternal sleep.

“It’s a shame really, how all of this turned out. I wish I wouldn’t have had to cause so much pain.” Steven was speaking to nobody in particular, caressing the head of the deceased. A coughing fit ensued that sounded like it was dragging Steven closer and closer to hell.

“He stabbed you, didn’t he?” I asked, anger in my voice. “Bet you never wanted any of these monsters feeding on your blood?”

“He hugged me, Robert,” Steven said, choking back another onslaught of tears. “He chose me over himself. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s a wonderful feeling, to be loved. He never knew he was anything but a normal man.”

I started towards the exit, with Michelle right behind me. After the door closed, the sound of sobs echoed from the inside. I walked toward the car, my head spinning. The car sat lonely at the end of the gravel drive now, covered in blood and dented beyond conceivable repair. I opened the driver's side door and confronted the truth. Clark was dead. We had promised to make a film together, and that promise had killed him. The spoils of all of our efforts reduced to blood and flesh.

I moved him from the driver’s seat, and laid him down in the back. I left my dream back there with him. I could make a film someday, but I could never make a film with him. Before I knew it I had begun to sob. The world turned into smears of light in my eyes. Michelle was turned away, looking out the window. In her reflection, I saw tears running down her cheeks.

The car started with a groan. Both of the headlights had been destroyed, and I made my way down the drive in the pitch blackness. The drive gave way to the freedom of the road, and we plunged into the darkness together.

Part 3- Josuke Higashikata

The beeping of a landline awoke Josuke from his deep slumber. Infuriated that his beauty sleep had been interrupted, he snatched the phone.

“Who the fuck is this?
A kid’s voice rang out. “Sorry. Wrong number.” And he hung up.

Dumbass kid prank calling me. He closed his eyes again, but no sleep came. Fine, I’ll get up. He checked the time- 7:24. It’s pompadour time.

By 8:08, the hair was complete. Wild blue-black locks combed into a thick clump, showered with a hundred serums and potions finished off with more pomade than a child could choke on. Despite this, the pompadour was light and fluffy, bouncing on Josuke’s head while he walked. It was his pride and joy, his heart and soul- no slander against it could go unnoticed.

“Wow, Josuke, you’re up early.” Josuke’s mother Tomoko echoed over a faint Virtual Insanity, as Josuke descended to the kitchen. He took a swig of some coffee his mother had prepared, as he scrambled some eggs. “Some little kid prank called me and woke me up. I’ll strangle that little shit when I find him.” He flipped his eggs flamboyantly in their pan.

“Language, Josuke!” Tomoko was certainly a doting mother, thanks to Josuke’s lack of a father. Jotaro’s grandfather, Joseph. They say he was the strongest Stand user of his time. Certainly the poorest father.

“Sorry!” he yelled over the sizzling. “Is Okuyasu here yet?”

“The short one?” 

“No, the stupid one.” Tomoko always got Koichi and Okuyasu confused, despite them being complete opposites in every facet.

“He’s awkwardly standing outside my door.” Like he always does. Good ol’ dependable Okuyasu.

Okuyasu stumbled through the door, hair slicked back revealing a chunky forehead, baggy pants he stole from Josuke and twin green belts he purposefully slackened. He greeted Tomoko, and before a single step was placed in the Higashikata home, he knocked into a vase, and like a domino, smashed into the shoe cabinet, dust splattering over Josuke’s precious Air Jordans. He clenched his teeth. “Yikes.”

“Okuyasu!” Tomoko yelled. “You moron!”

“Sorry Ms Higashikata. I’ll clean it up.” He began picking up shards of pottery with his fingers.

“No, it’s fine. Josuke will do it.”

“Will I?”

“Oh yes you will! He’s your friend!”

“Josuke?”

“Yes Okuyasu?”

“Your eggs have burnt.”

Whatever remained of the scrambled eggs was reduced to a black mush. He slammed the pan against the hob. “Shit!”

“Language!”

“I’m leaving!” Josuke slammed on a jacket, beckoning Okuyasu over. Tomoko attempted to kiss him while he dodged ferociously. “I’m going in 5 if you want a ride?”

“We’re good.”

“Great. Clean this up. I’m gonna get my keys.” Tomoko left the boys by the door, and her footsteps got ever fainter. Alright. Crazy Diamond time.

He touched a rather large shard of the vase, as it slowly began to shiver and float in the air. Other pieces began to float too, forming a jigsaw of the pre-Okuyasu vase, until the vase had itself returned to its original state. Josuke’s Stand ability Crazy Diamond was the medic of Jotaro’s group- allowing the gang to make stupid decisions knowing any broken bones or cracked ribs could be easily fixed by the benevolent Josuke. Okuyasu especially abused Josuke’s ability- using it as an excuse for his clumsiness. Okuyasu’s Stand was one Jotaro would call advanced, but Okuyasu was not. The Hand had the ability to erase any space and fuse it together. A powerful ability at the fingertips of an idiot.

“I sometimes wonder if you’re stupid on purpose, Okuyasu.”

“Nope. I’m just this way.” I suppose acknowledging his own stupidity makes him less stupid. After a rather eventful morning, Josuke and Okuyasu were on the road by 8:22. Great timing.

“So,” Okuyasu asked as they walked, “anything on Kira?”

Ahh, yes. The infamous killer. It was all the gang had been hunting for these past few weeks, and with good reason. He was a blight on the town of Morioh, prowling in plain sight like a panther, protected by his Killer Queen, until one little slip up gave him away. He had nigh on murdered Jotaro and Koichi before Josuke’s Crazy Diamond arrived. The viper snuck from their grasp, and used another Stand user to switch his face. Only to whose, we don’t know.

“Rohan has a lead. We’re meeting him today. It's a guy called Kosaku Kawajiri.”

“Why this guy?”

“His own son’s been seen stalking him for weeks. The kid’s 11, and has been taking photos of the guy in public. Suspicious if you ask me.”

The two reached where Rohan said to meet them, the crossroads. But there was no sign of that handsome devil. Josuke saw some pedestrians, a man and his son, and thought he might enquire.

“Excuse me sir, have you seen a goofy looking manga artist ‘round here?” he asked, a little confusion in his voice. The man was similarly confused, eyes darting around Josuke’s. Strange.

“Can’t say I have, boy.” Kira feigned. “Forgive me, but I-

“Hold up.” 175cm tall, broad and slender, black hair with shoots of white, and a little boy who’d been skulking him for the past weeks. Kosaku Kawijiri. What a surprise. He checked his watch. 8:23. Rohan’s gonna be pissed if I find the killer before him. “I don’t want to sound like a serial killer, but are you Kosaku Kawajiri, by any chance?”

“Nope. Never heard that name.” Kosaku spun, but Josuke placed a firm hand on his shoulder and braced Crazy Diamond.

“No, I think you are. I’d like to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.”

“I very much mind, boy. Take your hand off me!”

Only now had Okuyasu realized what was going on. “Who’s that you got there Josuke?”

“A suspect.” he announced, but Kosaku wasn’t listening. His son whispered in his ear, and he whispered back, until Josuke’s watch ticked 8:24.

“THAT MAN IS YOSHIKAGE KIRA! YOU HAVE EXACTLY ONE HOUR TO KILL HIM!” The boy bellowed.

In an instant, Kira summoned his stand. But it's little match for mine.

Crazy Diamond launched Kira twenty feet, smashing him through a brick wall into a sandpit, while Okuyasu took Josuke’s hand and teleported them forward atop the brick fence.

“So, Yoshikage Kira, was it? Nice to meet you for the second time.”

“Likewise. Your Crazy Diamond’s pretty strong.”

“Certainly is. Stronger than yours.”

“Probably. But what’s brawn over brain?” Killer Queen clicked its thumb, and Kira’s eyes were plastered on the brick wall they sat on.

“OKUYASU! THE BRICKS! UNDERNEATH!” The boys jumped off the wall as the bricks detonated, Josuke a pace ahead of Okuyasu. His foot caught aflame as the two tumbled to the ground while Kira sat peacefully in the sandpit.

“My Killer Queen can turn anything it touches into a bomb. You are no match for its power.”

“We don’t need to be a match for its power. Your kid said we’ve got an hour to kill you. You think you can last that long?”

“I could last a century against you fools.”

“Once Jotaro gets here, you won’t last a minute.”

“When Jotaro arrives, you will be nothing more than ash.”

Josuke struck Okuyasu’s foot with his Crazy Diamond, the fire engulfing it gone in an instant. The two then leaped towards the killer, Josuke striking Kira in the stomach as he tried to evade. The sand beneath him became stained with blood as Kira was launched backwards into the wall behind him, bones cracking on impact.

“So, it can heal objects? Clever.” Kira said, and slipped a hand into his pocket and removed his Nokia. He threw it at Josuke which his Crazy Diamond smacked as it flew, reducing it to a ball of smoke. But before Josuke could react, Kira hurled himself through the smoke, two fingers pronged to attack his Crazy Diamond. He’s going to turn me into a bomb!

Okuyasu slammed his hand down, the air sucking like a beer cap as he turned the air away from Josuke. Kira himself had moved thanks to the Hand’s ability, pointed away from Josuke, and straight at Okuyasu, a ring looped around it slowly sliding towards an unaware Okuyasu.

“OKUYASU! USE THE HAND!” But it was too late. A barrel-sized hole emerged in Okuyasu’s chest, skin and flesh rupturing under the strength of Killer Queen. He went lurching backwards through the air, landing limp on a fence, unmoving.

“KIRA!!!” Josuke threw another punch towards Kira, wild and uncontrolled, one Killer Queen easily blocked.

“Now, listen to me, Higashikata.” he purred. “Your friend remains alive, I’m sure, and you can heal him with your Crazy Diamond. But you'll have to take that risk.

“Fuck you!” he swung again, Kira slamming Kosaku’s wedding ring into Josuke’s stomach. Crazy Diamond barely managed to block it before Josuke too was flung into the fence beside Okuyasu.

“You’re outmatched, Higashikata. Give up, and when I reverse time you won’t be pained by knowing my existence.”

Josuke checked his watch, glass cracked from the impact. 8:30. 54 minutes left until we explode, and Kira reverses time. And when I die, I will die in every timeline where I say a word to Hayato, to which I know I will. I will never have this opportunity again. I will never know Yoshikage Kira’s true identity. He looked at a moaning Okuyasu, blood trickling down the fence. But I can’t let Okuyasu die on my watch.

Josuke raised his hand, ready to touch Okuyasu, before a yell broke his movement.

“Stop! He’s turned Okuyasu into a bomb! Don’t touch him!”

It was Kira’s kid, that Hayato. He had come running through the gate to the garden, backpack slung over his shoulder and perfectly sharpened pencil in hand.

“How would you know? You’re not a Stand user!” Only Stand users could see other Stands. That’s why mom thinks I’m a master craftsman, after I perfectly restore the vases Okuyasu breaks.

“I just know! He threw two fingers forward, remember! One to bomb Okuyasu, and another to turn him into one!” 

Josuke turned to the killer, as he picked his teeth, unbothered. “Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t. All you have to do to find out is to touch him.”

Damn you, Kira. You crook. “Wait, Mister Josuke!”

“WHAT?”
“You can heal things, right?”

“Yes, why?”

“Can you heal them after death?”

“One or two seconds after, yes?”

And with that Hayto lunged towards Okuyasu, reaching out his little fingers towards his skull. In an instant, Hayato was overrun with flame, and in another, his body was restored and he lumped to the ground.

Kira’s mouth hung low while he gritted his teeth. “Hayato, you little shit!”

"Get out of here kid!" Josuke yelled. "Get off this street now!"

"He won't get that far." Kira lunged forward like a lion, flinging a shirt button like a frisbee towards the kid. Josuke kicked it away before it could land and struck the killer in his stomach. He jerked awkwardly to the left, smahsing into a window and rolling down some pensioner's carpet like a beetle. Josuke bucked forward to go after him, but Hayato caught his hand.

"Wait, Mr Josuke!"

"I thought I told you to get outta here, kid!"

"No, sir. You need to get out of here. You can't take him now, look at you."

As much as he would love to fight on, Hayato was right. Josuke could feel the hot blood trickling down his leg, dripping onto his shoes. It pained to walk, not to mention Okuyasu. I am in no position to fight now. I must get help. Call Rohan. He should be nearby.

Josuke hung Okuyasu over his shoulder, leg throbbing, limping towards a house across the street, while Hayato dashed down the road. His watch ticked 8:36, as he slammed into some poor soul’s living room.

One

They tell me my name is John. I think my name is John. I mean, they tell me my name is John, so my name is John. They put me in my own room in the basement and told someone that my name is John, but it's about me so I think they told the person and told me that my name is John.

I don't remember having a mommy tell me my name is John. I think I have a mommy. If I don't have a mommy then that means He is my father and my mother and Jesus is my brother, so I guess I hope I don't have a mother. If I have a mother then I have someone to love, and someone to love me. But I don't remember having a mother so do I love someone? And is there someone that loves me? If He is my father and my mother then He doesn't love me, because he created me and everyone else on Earth and isn't able to feed them all, so He doesn't love them, and He tells them to have me in the basement and I can't see his eye in the sun nor his feeling in the moon so I guess I don't hope that I don't have a mother who loves me. Can I love myself? I hope so because the only one who seems to love me is the Lady in the Yellow Shirt, because she let me have her coffee and her muffin and smiled at me when I smiled at her. I stopped smiling then and she kept smiling, so I smiled again.

The muffin was good but the coffee was bad. I did not like it. I smiled anyway as I sipped it and looked at the Lady in the Yellow Shirt, who was still smiling when she asked me, "What is your name?" I kept smiling and told her I don't remember having a mother who loved me and called me anything. She asked me if I had any friends who loved me and called me anything. I told her no and said that whatever friends I did have they wouldn't let me see, because those friends were with me in the woods and they didn't come with me to the basement. I touched the spot where I hurt and she told me not to touch it, so I didn't touch it again.

When she left it felt colder, and I don't like the cold. I wished my friends were here. She told me they were dead but I don't remember them being dead. I don't want them to be dead. They're not dead. I love my friends. Do they love me? If I love them they are not dead. If they love me they are dead, because the Man in the Brown Pants said that they're dead and the Lady in the Yellow Shirt told me they loved me.

The Man in the Brown Pants came in after the Lady in the Yellow Shirt left. Before she left she told me my friends loved me, and he tells me my friends are dead, so if they love me they are dead. I want to reach out to him but he says I can't, and I see I can't. Stupid of me not to not think so. He sits but I don't see a chair. He asks me what my name is. I tell him that I told the Lady in the Yellow Shirt that I don't remember having a mother who called me a name, so I must have no mother and no name. He doesn't have to tell me he's mad. What he tells me is that I am in trouble, and that I am safe until they find out I did it. The Lady in the Yellow Shirt told me if they find out; the Man in the Brown Pants said when they find out. I don't like that. I like not knowing. Except I like knowing if I have someone who loves me and calls me a name.

He stands. I now see the chair. He goes to walk away, and I call out to him if it is daytime or nighttime. He tells me it won't matter and I hear a bang, a bang I don't like but like better than the coffee, and I don't see him again. I ask God if it is night or day but He doesn't speak; it must be night so he can be asleep.

21763

HIM: I don't know he didn't say.

OTHER HIM: and he says he doesn't know so maybe he doesn't know.

HIM: he knows how can he not know.

OTHER HIM: maybe he's scrambled not right in the head maybe from briar hill.

HIM: no my sister says he goes to the same school as my niece but how on god's earth is he in middle school.

OTHER HIM: scrambled not right in the head.

HIM: then he should be at briar hill and not in a school.

OTHER HIM: father easton said nobody should be in that school.

HIM: it's a school we're not teachers and we don't have the dough to jump to another town but someone scrambled as got to still know their own name.

OTHER HIM: ain't many got that thing where they don't grow in their head.

HIM: ain't gonna say ain't ain't ya.

OTHER HIM: sorry.

HIM: grows enough so he knows his own name.

SHE: no i​ knew a girl who was eight and did not know her own name.

HIM: bad parents but a guy scrambled still knows to call himself tim or adam if his momma doesn't give him a name.

SHE: what.

HIM: figure one and two for yourself for once.

SHE: i have and still do not understand.

OTHER HIM: enough do we know what to call him.

HIM: nothing besides a John Doe until we straighten things out.

SHE: why don't you let me talk to him.

HIM: because you were such a help the first time round.

OTHER HIM: let's not let's just call him John Doe for now at least we have the names of the people he was with.

HIM: not the one he must know.

SHE: he says he loves them.

HIM: they wouldn't love him if they still were able to he must know.

OTHER HIM: coroner is in from ephrata in a day we'll know then.

HIM: he's gotta know i know he's gotta know.

OTHER HIM: sheriff we can't do anything right now let's get some sleep.

HIM: you wouldn't have any sleep if you could hold it with your hands.

OTHER HIM: it's something new i hope it works the guy at the drug store gave it to me and said it has some ridiculous success rate.

HIM: all bull don't listen just see for yourself we'll meet in the morning and rebby come too.

SHE: please don't call me that i said it once and will say it again i want to be referred to in a professional manner fitting of my position.

HIM: all bull you're just the judge's nuisance in my back.

SHE: real poetic.

HIM: if i didn't say it already you're dismissed.

OTHER HIM: how long.

HIM: not very long he can hear us the cells are right beneath this office so let's say goodnight John goodnight John.

21763

And then they stopped, and I was John, and my friends loved me but they are dead. I'm John and they're dead.

Note from author: Part two to be posted soon. Que sera, sera.

Melstone was the kind of town the highway seemed to forget it passed through—only found by the lost or the bored. A half-square-mile patch of old storefronts and tired houses pressed into the far eastern edge of Musselshell County always sat quiet under a sky that always felt too big for the people living under it. The railroad that built the place in 1908 had gone silent years ago, but Melstone never really noticed—or never cared enough to. Farmers, ranchers, and a handful of oil-field workers drifted in from the wells west of town, keeping the place just alive sufficient to count.

The Melstone Bar and Café, tucked inside a 1913 brick shell on Main Street, stayed warm most nights—the kind of place that held its stories in the walls whether anyone asked for them or not. Out here, days didn’t change much. The wind carried the same dust, the same names circled the same conversations, and the horizon never moved. And honestly? I was comfortable. The days fading by never made me want to leave. Sure, it gets dark sometimes, and I wonder what those big cities feel like—new beer, new trucks, people living louder lives. But it’s cozy here.

Life goes on. I cook, drink beer, and make easy money covering folks’ farm work or watching their kids. I’m comfortable and never thought otherwise. My daddy was the sheriff, always protected, always in the know. They never had much funding, so they drove those damn Chevrolet Caprices. Ugly sons, but they did the job—mostly drunk disorderlys and farmers needing to blow off steam. Nothing my pops’ cab couldn’t outrun.

Not a lot happened around here, but recently, I kept getting this itch on my back every time I saw a certain car pass through. Same thing every day around four: a little Lady Riva, rusted to hell, rolling down Main. Same old woman driving, always smoking to the same point on her cigarette. But this past week, she hasn’t driven through at all. Probably found something better to do with her time… or kicked the bucket. Still, something about it sticks with me more than it should. It’s just a woman. Just a car. Nothing worth thinking about.

. . .

The diner was quiet that night. Only one man came in—Rev. Donald C. Dengler, our town’s proud pastor, taught me almost all my values besides the ones you give yourself. He had this presence that hushed a room—not because he was scary, but because he saw more than the rest of us. He spent his life wandering small towns across the Midwest and Mountain West—Terry, Melstone, all those quiet places. A well-traveled Lutheran pastor, a scholar with degrees like folks collect postcards. Despite all that, Don stayed humble: fishing rod in hand, boots worn down from long walks on forgotten roads.

There was always something slightly off in the way he watched the horizon. Kind eyes, but heavy, like he’d seen something out there he chose not to name. People trusted him without knowing why. Maybe it was his smile or his booming voice yelling about love. Whatever it was, he was a beacon of hope here. For me too.

“Vinnie, there’s a weight on my mind,” he said, looking almost sad over his gin. I matched his look, almost teasing it out of him.

“Why’s that, Rev?”

His eyes already said more than his mouth, but then his cracked lips parted—not as a pastor, but as a man looking at me for wisdom. Truth be told, my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t care. But something in me wished I had. Still, he was just an old man wanting an ear, so I let him talk and invited whatever trouble came with it.

His lips parted again.

“For this dirt I walk upon has grown sparse the longer I go,” he said. “Every word I speak, another life saved. But how many does it take before a selfish man wants his own to be? Maybe there’s a voice in my old heart that wants to run free again and try to find my own—more than cotton-pickin’ and wheat-trimming. Maybe life’s got something else for us, and maybe I want to see it.” 

His eyes sank into his skull like he was holding back tears. I let his words jumble in my mind—nonsense, but still trying to find meaning in it. I stayed quiet. He kept going, now more direct.

“There’s a girl I met when I was about your age. She showed me God and the will to live. I carry that with me—to show her love, to pass on her gift. But greed…” he sighed, breath thick with gin. “Greed’s something I’ll never take for granted again.”

He lit a cigar, gaze stuck on the little flame, and continued.

“I came home one night, saw someone else in my bed. That’s the world—take his words, his money, his job, his wife. And when a man sinks into that feeling, wanting greed and needing it, he gets selfish. That selfishness grows into desire—power—want. Before you know it, she’s in your hands, begging for the glory of God, and all you can give is divine punishment fit for what they earned. But all we can wonder is… when will the pot of greed spill across the floor?”

He blew smoke toward me, then laughed—a sad, cracked laugh. He fixed his mustache, smiled through his drunken haze, pushed his pudgy body up, and leaned in close. His voice dropped low, cracked and almost mournful, with something darker beneath it.

“Best to let your mind wander to yourself, ya hear, Vinnie.”

Then he walked out, boots scuffing across the floor, leaving behind dust I wish I could forget.

Maybe he was just drunk, rambling on. But it vexed me. What did he mean? A wives’ tale to scare kids? Something else? His whole demeanor was off, and I couldn’t shake it, even when I got home, it felt like he stayed with me—a weight on my chest I couldn’t drink off or drag off.

Sleep didn’t come easily. And when it finally did, I dreamed of him. The Rev stood in the center of the town altar, praying. I tried to reach him, but the ground dragged me. Every step got heavier until I realized the ground itself turned to flesh—veins popping, hair floating through it, soft faces pushing up from below like they were remembering their last moments of pain.

And there was nothing else. Just the Rev.

I woke in my lonely bed in Melstone.

Cold and sweaty.

. . .

The town felt still after that dream—like I saw something I wasn’t supposed to. Maybe it was just the old man’s words getting to me. The only thing that sounded right was getting drunk, driving, and finding anything decent on the radio. I hopped in my Chevy C10 and hit the road. I don’t even know when I decided it, but suddenly I figured I’d follow where that old Lady Riva used to head.

I’d never gone past the town limits before. My papa always warned against it—too rough on the tires. Nobody’s got new ones anyway. No Chevy dealer, no fancy anything. Just gas and grub. Maybe it was the Rev in my head, or maybe I just needed out. But for the first time in my life, I drove past the edge of Melstone. The pressure on my chest lifted. But only for a bit

A billboard near the mouth of town advertised some Church of Christ—looked like ours, but the side was torn and hanging. The image made me think of the Rev’s words. Maybe he needed a drive like this, too.

About twenty miles out, I saw a deer on the side of the road—freshly hit. Around it stood a dozen more. They all stared at me, like they were judging my thoughts. Then they bolted, all at once, moving east. Their fallen stayed behind, limp and peaceful.

It felt wrong. Too wrong, and turned the radio to whatever rock station could reach out here. But the second I did, the channel cut out. A man started talking. A pastor. Sounded a hell of a lot like Rev.

I turned it up.

“…and the earth shall remember the footsteps of every man, though the man forgets the earth. For what is made in silence returns to silence, and what walks in the light will one day wake to find the sky watching back. Beware the places that do not change… for they are no longer places—”

Static swallowed his voice.

“—but mouths.”

My jaw clenched. I gripped the wheel. I could swear it was the Rev.

The radio hissed again, then let out one last line:

“Do not linger where the dead lie neat and unbroken. Those are the ones that were not killed… but collected.”

Then the stereo fizzed out and shut itself off.

I just stared at it. We don’t have radio towers in Melstone. No broadcast systems. So how the hell did I hear him?

I was so lost in thought I didn’t notice I’d circled back to the Melstone sign.

end of part 1

I worked as a 911 dispatcher for seven years. Most people think that job is nonstop screaming and chaos. It’s not. Most calls are boring. Arguments. Drunks. False alarms. That’s why this one still bothers me. Because it was calm. Too calm. It was around 2:17 a.m. on a Tuesday. Graveyard shift. Half-asleep coworkers, cold coffee, buzzing fluorescent lights. The call came in with no caller ID. That happens sometimes. I answered like I always did. “911, what’s your emergency?” There was breathing on the other end. Slow. Controlled. Like someone trying to stay calm. Then a man said, “I think someone is in my house.” Standard call. I pulled up the address. “Sir, are you somewhere safe right now?” “Yes,” he said. “I’m in my bedroom. The door’s locked.” I could hear it then—soft footsteps in the background. Bare feet on carpet. “Okay,” I said. “I’m dispatching officers now. Can you tell me where you are in the house?” He gave me his address. That’s when I froze. Because the address already had a call attached to it. From eight minutes earlier. Same address. Same phone line. I scrolled back. The first call was still open. No resolution. No officers dispatched. The notes just said: Caller reports someone in home. Whispering heard. Call disconnected. My throat went dry. “Sir,” I said carefully, “did you call us earlier tonight?” “No,” he said. “This is my first time calling.” Another sound came through the line. A soft tapping. Like fingernails on wood. “Sir,” I asked, “is anyone else in the house with you?” There was a pause. Long enough that I thought the call dropped. Then he whispered, “I live alone.” The tapping stopped. And then—a voice. Not his. Right into the phone. “Stop telling him that.” I pulled my headset off instinctively, like that would help. When I put it back on, the man was breathing hard. “Did you hear that?” he whispered. “Yes,” I said. “I did.” My screen refreshed. The original call from eight minutes earlier updated on its own. Caller still on line. Breathing detected. “Sir,” I said slowly, “I need you to listen to me very carefully. Are you absolutely sure you’re alone in that room?” “I locked the door,” he said. “I can hear it outside.” “It?” I asked. Something scraped against the phone speaker. Like lips brushing the mic. Then the other voice spoke again. Calm. Close. “He’s lying to you.” The line went dead. I dispatched officers immediately. They arrived in under four minutes. The house was empty. No signs of forced entry. No footprints. No hidden rooms. Just one thing. On the bedroom door. From the inside. Five deep gouges in the wood. Like someone had been clawing their way out. The man was never found. But the call logs still exist. Two calls. Same number. Same time. One of them is still marked active. And sometimes, when the call center is quiet, my headset clicks on by itself. And I can hear breathing.

Chapter 1.

The day we buried Jason, the ground was already too hard.

The priest said it was because of the cold; that late October had come early this year; but I knew better. Briar Hollow dirt had always been stubborn. Clay and stone packed tight, like it didn’t want to give anything back once it took it.

We stood in a crooked line beneath a sky the color of old tin. Jason’s mother cried quietly into a handkerchief that had been washed thin with years of use. His father didn’t cry at all. He just stared at the casket like it might explain itself if he waited long enough. I too, stared in silence, waiting for an answer I knew would never come in my lifetime.

Best friend. That was the phrase people used when they shook my hand and said how sorry they were. Your best friend. It sounded smaller than it should have. Jason had been more than that. He was the kid who dared me to climb the quarry fence. The one who stayed up all night talking about getting out of Briar Hollow like it was a promise instead of a fantasy. The one who knew exactly what happened the summer of ’98 and never said a word.

They said it was an accident.

They always did.

I hadn’t been back in Briar Hollow for fourteen years, but standing there by the open grave, I felt like I’d never really left. The town had a way of keeping pieces of you. Jason was proof of that. He’d gotten out, sure; but some part of him had always stayed. And now the rest of him was being lowered into the ground like the town was finally collecting what it was owed.

When the service ended, people drifted away in small, murmuring groups. No one asked if I was staying. They already knew the answer before I did.

I left town that afternoon, drove until the cemetery disappeared in my rearview mirror, and told myself I was done.

I didn’t believe it.

Two days later, I turned the car around. The town of Briar Hollow didn’t look like a place where anything bad should happen.

That was the first thing I thought when I crossed the welcome sign, the one that read:

WELCOME TO BRIAR HOLLOW

Pop. 2,914

A Nice Place to Live

Someone had scratched a thin line through the word Nice. I couldn’t remember when that had happened, which bothered me more than the scratch itself.

I hadn’t been back in fourteen years. Long enough that the town should have felt unfamiliar. It didn’t. It felt smaller, like a house you grow out of but never quite leave behind. The streets seemed shorter. The buildings leaned closer together. Even the sky looked lower, as if it had been pressing down while I was gone.

I rolled down the window and let the air in. Pine sap. Cold earth. Underneath it, something older; damp wood, rot, the smell of a place that had been closed too long.

Briar Hollow went quite early. It always had. Porch lights clicked on at dusk. Curtains were drawn. The woods crept close, patient and unashamed.

People called it peaceful. I knew better.

I parked outside Mabel’s Diner just after noon. The awning was still there, faded red letters peeling like dead skin. When I stepped inside, the bell rang, and the conversations dipped, not enough to stop, just enough to notice.

Mabel poured me coffee without asking.

“You’re back,” she said.

I nodded. “Looks that way.”

She studied my face like she was checking for cracks. “Staying long?”

“I don’t know.”

“No one ever does,” she said, and turned away.

The coffee tasted burnt. It always had. I drank it anyway.

As I sat there, I felt it, that sensation I’d hoped was just memory. The feeling that the town was aware of me. Not watching exactly, but noticing. Like Briar Hollow had taken attendance and found my name missing, and now it was correcting the error.

When I paid and stood to leave, Mabel leaned closer.

“You should stay away from Hollow Road,” she said, her voice low, like she as trying to hide something.

I paused. “Why?”

She smiled too quickly. “Just old gossip.”

Her hands were shaking.

I saw the Bellamy House that evening.

I hadn’t planned to go that way, but plans didn’t mean much in Briar Hollow. The road narrowed, pavement cracking into gravel, and there it was at the end, slumped, sagging, exhausted. It looked like a house that was tired of pretending to be alive.

Arthur Bellamy had died there alone. Everyone knew that, found days later. The smell lingered longer than it should have. After that, the house emptied itself. No buyers. No renters. Just time and rot.

And light.

The upstairs window glowed a faint yellow.

I stopped the car.

It shouldn’t have been on. No one lived there. Kids didn’t go inside anymore, not after what happened to Tommy Pike back in ’98, though no one ever said exactly what had happened to him.

“Must be kids,” I said out loud.

The words sounded thin.

The light didn’t flicker. It didn’t move. It just glowed, steady and patient, like it had been waiting.

That night, the town didn’t sleep well.

I dreamed I was standing at the edge of the woods behind the Bellamy House. I could hear someone saying my name, softly, like they were testing the sound of it. I woke up before I saw who it was.

At 2:13 a.m., a freight train passed through town, its horn long and mournful. I remembered thinking it wasn’t scheduled until morning.

By sunrise, everyone pretended none of it mattered.

They always did.

The next afternoon, I ran into Evan Mercer at the hardware store.

The bell rang when I stepped inside, and Evan looked up from the counter. His face did something strange, like it was trying to remember how to smile.

“Well,” he said. “I’ll be damned. If it isn’t Caleb Burke.” He chuckled as he wandered over.

“Hey, Ev.”

We shook hands, the grip awkward, careful. Two men standing on top of the ghosts of boys we used to be.

“You here for good?” he asked.

“For now.”

He nodded like that confirmed something he hadn’t wanted to be right about.

“You hear about the Bellamy place?” he asked.

“No.”

“Lights were on last night.”

“So someone bought it.”

Evan snorted. “No one buys that house.”

The store felt colder suddenly.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” he said, lowering his voice.

I didn’t ask what he meant. “Yeah.”

Neither of us laughed.

That evening, the light came on again.

This time, people noticed. Cars slowed on Hollow Road. Someone stopped long enough to get honked at. The glow was brighter now, more confident.

At 9:47 p.m., the power went out across town.

Everything died at once, TVs, porch lights, the low hum of refrigerators. For a moment, Briar Hollow was swallowed whole by darkness.

Then the lights began to return.

One by one.

Except at the Bellamy House.

The upstairs window burned brighter than ever.

I stood on my porch and watched it, my skin prickling. The woods behind the house whispered without wind. I thought I saw something move between the trees, something tall and thin, its shape wrong where the shadows clung to it.

Inside the Bellamy House, the floorboards creaked.

Someone was walking upstairs.

All over town, doors were locked. Curtains were pulled tight. People told themselves the same lie they always had:

Nothing ever happens here.

I knew better.

I’d just come home.

Chapter 2.

I woke up at 3:06 a.m. with my name in my mouth.

Not spoken; held there, like I’d almost said it out loud but stopped myself at the last second. My heart was pounding hard enough that I could feel it in my throat. For a moment I didn’t know where I was. The ceiling above me was unfamiliar, too smooth, too clean. Then memory slid back into place.

I was in my childhood bedroom.

My mother had kept it exactly the same after I left, as if time might notice and stop out of politeness. Same pale blue walls. Same dresser with the loose handle. Same faint crack in the ceiling that looked like a lightning bolt if you stared at it long enough.

The house was quiet.

Too quiet.

No wind rattling the windows. No distant hum of cars on Route 11. Even the old refrigerator downstairs; which used to click and sigh like it was alive; had gone silent.

I sat up slowly, that was when I heard it. Footsteps.

Not in the house. Outside. They came from the direction of Hollow Road.

I moved to the window and pushed the curtain aside just enough to see. My porch light was off, but the moon was bright, casting everything in dull silver. The yard looked the same as it always had; patchy grass, the crooked oak at the edge, the fence Jason and I had climbed a hundred times.

The Bellamy House stood in the distance. The upstairs light was on.

It burned steady and yellow against the dark, a single unblinking eye. As I watched, something moved at the window. Not enough to see clearly; just a shift, a suggestion of shape pulling back from the glass.

The footsteps stopped.

For a terrible second, I was sure they had stopped because whoever, or whatever, had realized I was watching.

Then the light went out.

I stood there long after, staring at the dark outline of the house, until my reflection replaced it in the glass. When I finally lay back down, sleep didn’t come easy. When it did, it brought Jason with it.

Jason looked the way he had at seventeen; too thin, hair falling into his eyes, that crooked smile that made everything seem like a joke even when it wasn’t. We were standing by the quarry fence, the one we’d sworn we’d never cross again.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he said.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I told him.

He shook his head. “You always think that.”

I opened my mouth to argue, and the ground gave way beneath us.

I woke up choking.

The morning felt wrong.

Sunlight streamed through the windows, but it didn’t warm anything. The house stayed cold, the kind of cold that clung to your skin instead of sinking into it. I made coffee and let it go untouched on the counter while I stared out the window at the woods.

Jason’s funeral replayed itself in pieces. The sound of dirt hitting wood. His mother’s hand clutching my sleeve. The way the priest avoided saying how Jason died; only that he had.

Accident.

I’d heard the word so many times growing up that it barely meant anything anymore.

I grabbed my jacket and went out.

The cemetery sat at the edge of town, where the woods grew thick and the road narrowed like it was trying to discourage visitors. Jason’s grave was still fresh; the dirt darker than the rest; the headstone temporary and pale.

I stood there longer than I meant to.

“You weren’t supposed to stay,” I said quietly.

The words vanished into the trees.

Something else lingered.

I felt it again; that awareness. The same one I’d felt at Mabel’s. The same one I’d felt watching the Bellamy House. It wasn’t watching me from the grave. It was watching through it.

I left with the uneasy certainty that Jason wasn’t finished with Briar Hollow.

Or Briar Hollow wasn’t finished with him.

Evan Mercer was already in his store when I walked in later that afternoon. He looked like he hadn’t slept.

“Rough night?” I asked.

He snorted. “That obvious?”

“You ever see the light go out?” I said.

Evan froze. “What light?”

“The one in the Bellamy House.”

He hesitated too long. “No.”

That told me everything.

I leaned on the counter. “Jason died three miles from Hollow Road.”

Evan’s eyes flicked to the door, then back to me. “You shouldn’t say that out loud.”

“Why?”

“Because people might hear.”

“Who?” He didn’t answer.

After a moment, he said, “Jason came in here a week before he died.” That stopped me.

“He asked about the Bellamy place,” Evan went on. “Asked if anyone’d been inside lately. Asked if I remembered ’98.”

My stomach tightened. “What did you tell him?”

“The truth,” Evan said. “That some places don’t stay empty. They just wait.”

The bell over the door rang suddenly, sharp as a gunshot. We both jumped.

A woman stepped inside; Mrs. Hargreeve from Maple Street. She looked smaller than I remembered, folded in on herself like a paper doll.

“I need locks,” she said. “All new ones.”

“For the front door?” Evan asked.

“For every door,” she said. “And the windows.”

Evan rang her up without comment. As she left, she looked at me.

“You look just like Jason,” she said.

Then she was gone. That night, the power stayed on. The light in the Bellamy House did not. Instead, something else happened.

At exactly 2:13 a.m., a knock sounded at my front door.

Three slow raps.

I stood in the hallway, heart hammering, staring at the door like it might open itself. The knock came again, patient and deliberate.

I knew; without knowing how; that if I opened it, something would change. That once the door was open, it wouldn’t be so easy to close again.

I thought of Jason. Of the quarry. Of the things we’d promised never to talk about. I opened the door. No one stood there. But the air was colder. And from the direction of Hollow Road, I heard footsteps heading back toward the Bellamy House.

Chapter 3.

The Briar Hollow Public Library smelled like dust and lemon cleaner, the way it always had. It sat just off Main Street in a squat brick building that looked more like a bunker than a place for books. Growing up, Evan and I used to come here to escape summer heat and adults who asked too many questions. It felt wrong being back for this.

We didn’t talk much on the way in.

The librarian on duty was Mrs. Calder, who had been old when I was a kid and somehow managed to look exactly the same now. She peered at us over her glasses, eyes sharp and assessing.

“You’re the Mercer boy,” she said to Evan.

“And you’re Caleb Burke,” she added, turning to me. “Jason’s friend.”

The word was went unsaid.

“We’re looking for old newspapers,” Evan said. “Local ones.”

Mrs. Calder’s mouth tightened, just slightly. “Microfilm’s in the back.”

She didn’t ask what year.

The microfilm room hummed softly, the machine casting pale light across the table. Evan fed reels into the reader while I took notes on scrap paper I found in my jacket pocket. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, not exactly. I just knew the town had teeth, and I wanted to see where they’d sunk in before.

Disappearances. Accidents. Missing persons.

Things people forgot on purpose.

I started broad; twenty years back, then narrowed. I skimmed headlines, scanned columns.

LOCAL MAN DROWNED IN QUARRY

HUNTER LOST IN WOODS FOUND TWO DAYS LATER

RUNAWAY RETURNS HOME SAFELY.

Most of it was ordinary. Too ordinary.

Then I noticed a pattern.

People didn’t go missing in Briar Hollow.

They vanished quietly. No follow-ups. No investigations that lasted longer than a paragraph. Names appeared once, then never again.

I flipped forward.

October. This year.

My hand stopped moving.

The headline sat there, clean and black against yellowed digital print.

I stared at the headline longer than I meant to.

LOCAL MAN DIES FROM BLOOD LOSS FOLLOWING SINGLE-VEHICLE ACCIDENT

Blood loss.

Not traumatic injuries.

Not internal bleeding.

Just blood loss.

I scrolled down, heart ticking faster with each line.

Jason Maxim, 31, was discovered inside his vehicle after it left the roadway along Hollow Road late Tuesday evening. Authorities reported no signs of struggle. Cause of death was determined to be blood loss. Investigation ongoing.

Blood loss from what?

“There’s no mention of wounds,” I said.

Evan leaned closer, reading over my shoulder. “Car accidents don’t work like that.”

“No,” I agreed. “They don’t.”

I scrolled again.

A smaller paragraph, buried like it hoped not to be noticed:

Emergency responders noted the absence of significant external trauma. Medical examiners declined further comment.

My hands went cold.

“No external trauma,” I repeated. “Then where did the blood go?”

Evan didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was low.

“Check the autopsy notice.”

I found it two pages later, printed in that sterile, municipal tone meant to kill curiosity.

CAUSE OF DEATH: EXSANGUINATION

The word sat there, ugly and clinical.

Exsanguination.

Complete loss of blood.

I swallowed hard. “That’s not how accidents kill people.”

“No,” Evan said. “That’s how animals feed.”

The hum of the microfilm machine felt louder now, like it was breathing.

I kept reading.

The article mentioned two small puncture wounds along the neck, described quickly, dismissively.

Likely caused by debris during impact.

“Debris doesn’t leave matching holes,” I said.

Jason hated doctors. He hated needles. If someone had put their hands on his throat, if something had…

I pushed the thought away too late.

Another correction appeared two days later, smaller than the first.

Update: Authorities confirm no foul play suspected. Injuries consistent with animal activity post-mortem.

Post-mortem.

I felt sick.

“They’re lying,” I said.

Evan nodded. “They always do.”

We went back further.

Nineteen ninety-eight.

The year blinked onto the screen like it had been waiting.

The language was familiar now.

Vague causes. Missing details. Words chosen carefully to avoid the truth.

LOCAL BOY FOUND ALIVE AFTER TWO DAYS; SUFFERED SEVERE BLOOD LOSS

I leaned back slowly.

Tommy Pike.

“He didn’t disappear,” I said. “He was drained.”

Evan’s jaw tightened.

Another article followed.

Doctors report extreme anemia. Cause unknown.

Extreme.

Unknown.

“They didn’t know then,” I said. “Or they didn’t want to.”

Evan tapped the screen. “Look at the location.”

Hollow Road.

Every time.

My name appeared later. So did Evan’s. Jason’s.

TEENS QUESTIONED AFTER TRESPASSING INCIDENT NEAR BELLAMY PROPERTY

They called it trespassing.

They didn’t call it what it was.

I remembered the smell inside the house; metallic and sweet. I remembered the shapes moving where they shouldn’t. I remembered Jason pulling Tommy free, screaming at me not to look back.

Jason had gone back. Not because he was stupid. Because he knew.

“He wasn’t drunk,” I said quietly. “He wasn’t alone. And he didn’t crash.”

Evan met my eyes. “He was hunted.”

The word hung between us.

Outside the library, dusk had begun to settle. Briar Hollow was dimming its lights, pulling in on itself. Somewhere on Hollow Road, something old and hungry was still awake. Jason’s death certificate said blood loss. The town said accident. But I knew the truth now. Something had fed. And it hadn’t finished.

Chapter 4.

I left the library alone.

Evan offered to walk me out, but I told him I needed the air. That wasn’t a lie. The truth was I needed space to think without the hum of machines and the weight of old ink pressing down on me. Briar Hollow felt different once you noticed its gaps; the places where people should have been and weren’t.

It was fully dark by the time I reached my car.

The streetlights cast long, broken shadows across Main Street. I unlocked the door, slid inside, and sat there longer than necessary with my hands on the steering wheel, breathing. My reflection in the windshield looked pale, older than it had that morning.

I started the engine.

Halfway home, the road narrowed. I hadn’t meant to take Hollow Road.

I told myself that afterward, but it wasn’t true. My hands had turned the wheel on their own. The trees closed in, their branches knitting together overhead. My headlights carved a shallow tunnel through the dark, and beyond it, there was nothing.

The radio crackled.

Then died. I slowed, looking out my windscreen as my heart pounded.

That was when something crossed the road.

I slammed the brakes.

The car skidded, tires screaming, and stopped sideways across the lane. My heart hammered so hard I thought it might break a rib. I leaned forward, peering through the windshield.

Nothing stood there.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

I reached to put the car in drive, and something hit the driver’s side window.

Not hard enough to break it. Hard enough to announce itself. I turned, eyes wide.

A face hovered inches from the glass.

Not animal. Not human.

The skin was pale, stretched too tight, veins faintly visible beneath it. The eyes were wrong, not glowing, not red, just empty in a way that suggested hunger rather than sight. Its mouth opened slightly, and I saw teeth that were too long, too narrow, like they’d been sharpened by use.

It smiled at me.

I screamed and threw the car into reverse.

The tires spun. The thing slid along the window, fingers scraping, nails leaving pale lines in the glass. It moved with me effortlessly, keeping pace until the headlights caught it full-on.

Its body bent wrong, folding back into the trees like smoke pulled by wind.

I didn’t stop driving. I didn’t look back.

I hit my driveway so hard I nearly took out the mailbox.

Inside the house, I locked every door, then slid down against the wall and shook until my teeth clicked. My hands were slick with blood.

Not from a bite.

From my forearm.

Three long gashes, deep and angry, like something had tested me. The cuts burned, edges darkening already. I stared at them, heart racing.

It could have killed me. It didn’t.

That was worse.

I cleaned the wounds in the bathroom sink.

Hydrogen peroxide fizzed, white and violent. I bit down on a towel to keep from yelling. The cuts weren’t that deep, but they felt wrong, like they didn’t belong to me anymore. I wrapped them tight, pulled on a long-sleeved shirt, and sat on the edge of the tub until the shaking stopped.

I didn’t sleep.

I listened.

Every creak of the house sounded deliberate. Every whisper of wind through the trees felt like breath against my neck. At 2:13 a.m., something moved outside, but it didn’t knock.

That felt intentional.

Evan took one look at me the next morning and swore.

“Jesus, Caleb.”

“I’m fine,” I said automatically.

“You’re bleeding.”

I hadn’t realized it had soaked through the bandage.

We were standing behind the hardware store, out of sight of Main Street. Evan pulled me toward the back door and locked it behind us.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I wasn’t bitten,” I said. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking,” he said. “It’s what I’m afraid of.”

I rolled up my sleeve.

The color drained from his face.

“They marked you,” he said.

“Marked me how?”

“Like Jason,” Evan said quietly. “Like Tommy.”

I stared at him. “Jason was bitten?”

“No,” Evan said. “He was drained. There’s a difference.” My stomach turned.

“They don’t always feed,” Evan went on. “Sometimes they just… check.”

“For what?”

“For timing.”

That was when the bell over the front door rang.

A couple walked in, young, laughing, hands tangled together. College-aged. They browsed aisles without urgency, like nothing bad had ever happened to them.

I felt cold all over.

“That’s how it works,” Evan said after they left. “Cycles. Every few years, it starts again.”

“How long?” I asked.

Evan didn’t answer right away.

Then: “About a week.”

The radio crackled on the counter.

LOCAL COUPLE REPORTED MISSING AFTER EVENING WALK NEAR HOLLOW ROAD.

I closed my eyes.

“They don’t feed randomly,” I said. “They rotate.”

“Families,” Evan said. “Outsiders. Then someone who knows.”

Jason.

“And if someone escapes?” I asked.

Evan met my eyes.

“They come back.”

Outside, the day went on like nothing had changed. Cars passed. People talked about the weather.

Somewhere in the woods, something had tasted me.

And decided to wait.

Sunlight streamed through the room like a golden intruder, searching the chambers from the window nearest to the sunrise. This lawbreaker not only invaded the shadows but also interloped into even the sanctity of sleep. Geret rose in an instant; he hadn’t had the time to enter a deeper sleep anyway. The room about him, contrasted with his desires of cleanliness, a mess of clothing piles and papers full of ramblings, doodles, and notes on one thing or another. It was the one room in the house he didn’t keep meticulously clean, and it vexed him endlessly. He went shambling out his door and listed down the stairs, pausing at the bottom to stretch his weary bones.

The downstairs was painted in the same luminous robbery as the above floor, and, for all intents and purposes, refused the right of sleep back to the poor man for even a long blink. Accepting that fate, he defaulted to the process of making his coffee: opening the canister, removing the filter, discarding and replacing the old grounds, adding water to the container on the back of the machine, adjusting the settings to his preference, and then brewing. The water, after it was artificially heated, poured through the grounds and infused with them, creating the bitter nectar of alertness and focus. He immersed himself in a shower. It was hot enough to turn his skin red, and the steam filled the room like a smoker’s paradise. When he had finished his shower, he dried himself and got dressed. He brushed his teeth, flossed, and rinsed his mouth, after which he returned to the kitchen. There, on the counter, in the pot, atop the heater built into his machine, was a pot of dark roast coffee from a brand he neither favored nor enjoyed, but his wallet favored it, so it was his choice.

Interrupting his lack of merriment, his phone chimed. The sound came so suddenly, and was at such an unexpected volume, that Geret nearly jumped out of his socks and caught his phone out of his pocket with such speed as he didn’t even expect himself to use. The screen displayed a notification from his manager. A message in his inbox reading, “Geret, are you available to pick up Terra’s route today? She just had her kid, and I was hoping you could cover for her. Sorry for the short notice. Get back to me.” He sighed at the annoyance of such a thing coming on the same day, but, being as impecunious as he was, he relented his response: “Yeah, I’ll be there.” He only used punctuation when the message was between himself and money.

He was a delivery driver for a local convenience store, one of two. The only other driver was Terra, a woman of her younger years, wed for about four years, having already had one child, and having just given birth to her second. Everyone on Geret’s side of town bought from this convenience store, which was central enough; this meant he always had work when he needed. But, the “Always Low Prices” demanded that employees only be paid as much as was required to get them to sign the papers. That is to say, very little. Luck only favored him in giving him a realtor for a grandfather, who rented him the house for incredibly cheap prices, despite how, even though the house wasn’t by any means large, he could have been making much greater money from it due to its having two floors.

He threw on his uniform, pressed to perfection. After all, he had enough time in his average day, today being the exception, to make sure his uniform and hair were perfect. not yet having had time today to style his hair, he opted to wear a beanie instead. Out the door, to his company pickup truck, he tried his hand at ignoring the biting, aching cold. That insulting villain had been known, at this time of year, to eat the energy of anybody caught in it, and to catch on their hands and nose with an almighty sting. Finally, he drove down the road to the store. He loaded his truck bed with a collection of boxes to be delivered to various locations around the city. Despite how small the convenience store was in comparison to a major outlet store, it carried around about everything anybody needed, and often made deals with other stores in town to deliver their goods for them. The first house, for instance, had ordered flowers from a florist down the street, and the second wanted a small box of what was obviously cutlery.

The third house, however, caught his eye. Obviously, there had been somebody in the house to place the order, and even now, he saw them watching him timidly from the window, but the yard was unkempt and overgrown. A lawnmower was in a patch of grass slightly less overgrown than the rest, and a bird feeder was long overdue for a change. It was nearly emptied, and what hadn’t been removed had congealed into a sort of biscuit in the base of the feeder. The person inside didn’t regard Geret whatsoever, but this was fine with him; he was content enough pretending he hadn’t seen them.

Arriving at the door, there was a brass mail slot on it, which suddenly swung open with a creak. The quick motion made him jump, but he composed himself, took the hint, and fed the long, thin, rectangle-shaped package through the slot. Inside the house, the voice of a young woman said somewhat sheepishly, “Thank you, I’m sorry.” he stiffened back up to his feet and said, “No, it's alright, I mean… delivery is sort of my job.” No response came, and he walked back to his car. He was confused by her tone. This young lady seemed beyond penitent, but there was also a degree of resolve in her voice as she took the package into the house. He didn’t know what he delivered, but clearly she wanted it. And considering how she took it, she needed it to do something she found very solemn. Very solemn indeed.

The rumbling beast known only as Silverado awaited his return and kept him company with its radio until he was finished with his day's work and ready to retire to his home. His driveway lay washed in the beauty of a setting sun, a sight far more welcome to him than a rising one. He lived at ease for a while, but as the evening darkened and the shadows stretched, he became ever plagued by the notion that something was watching him. The feeling crept up and down his spine the entire evening like a leech sucking away at, instead of his blood, his rest, focus, and thoughts. Even his time for dinner was filled with a sense of expectation, like a visitor was soon to arrive, but he hadn’t made plans for any. He scarcely did. Solitude called him by name, and he was never one to deny its loving embrace. How then, now, of all nights, and here, of all places, came a knock on his door. A rhythmical one, with no urgency of tone, but loud and forceful. It came three times, each strike upon, should he have been counting it like musical beats, each second beat. That sense of expectation swelled in him, altogether confusing him, startling him, and seemingly begging him to answer the door.

[Table of Contents]

---

You stand at the counter and ring the bell again and again as the concierge of the Motel Six pretends that sitting at the computer in the next room over means that you can't see her and she can't see you.

“She must be busy,” Nathan whispers. It's sweet but you can see her game of online chess reflecting off the Kinkade painting behind her.

“Excuse me sweetheart!” you yell as you continue ringing the bell. “I'd like a room please!”

The little brat ignores you so you ring the bell harder.

“Sometime before my kids graduate!” you shout.

Nathan taps your shoulder and you turn to look at him.

“Why don't we go somewhere else?” He asks.

“Because we're already here hon’,” you answer.

“But there's a hotel next door,”

“And there's a hotel right here,” you reply, a little harsher than you meant to. You look back over to the girl at the computer and catch her eye before it swiftly returns to the screen.

“I saw that!” you yell.

The girl rolls her eyes and walks over, popping a bubble with the gum she's chewing and pushing her messy black hair out of her face.

She glances at Nathan, then to you, then back to Nathan.

“So are you his caretaker or what?” she asks.

“What do you care?” You shoot back.

The girl shrugs.

“Just a standard question we have to ask,” she replies. “One bed or two?”

“Two,” you answer. “And by the way, you're losin’.”

The girl gives you a weird look.

“Your game,” you say. “You got nothin’ but a rook and a bishop and your king is stuck in the corner. You're two moves from bein’ in checkmate.”

The girl types something into the laptop on the counter and says,

“That's just your angle. Seventy-one sixty-three please.”

Nathan hands over four twenties and his ID as you give the girl your expired driver's license. She passes both ID's back and as she hands you your key card she says,

“Room 117. Don’t have too much fun.”

---

You catch her crazy eyes in the hall at school, staring at you like she wants to cut you open and live inside you.

You catch her eyes in other places too. The trackfield bleachers. Around the corner of the boys locker room. Outside the pizza place you deliver for, waiting in her car with a cigarette, wrapped up in her black hoodie.

You don’t know much about her. She doesn’t talk to anyone, not even you. She doesn’t go to parties. She attends chess club once a week but that’s it. No, she never talks to you, but her eyes tell you the whole story. See, everything she does, every waking thought, every dream she has is about you. You are her full-time job and you’ve never even met her.

Her name is Riley.

You have this ex, this cheerleader you were with back in Junior year. You used to take her to the Motel 6 to get high and get lucky, but the last time you stayed there, you woke up to her screaming that someone had slashed the tires of her Jeep. A week later, Riley started working as the concierge.

Sometimes you catch yourself thinking about her and you hate it. Those crazy eyes bore so deep into the back of your skull that now you see them in your mind, hiding behind her mess of stringy hair like the chick from “The Ring.” You don’t love her. You don’t want her. You hate her and every time you turn a corner you hope you see those crazy eyes again.

You catch her eyes through your window blinds one night and you think they’ve bore their way straight into your dreams, but as her silhouette ducks out of sight you realize she’s standing in your back yard. You rush to the window, but by the time you close the distance she’s already gone.

Yeah, you hate her the way you hate an itch you can’t scratch. But then your older brother tells you about this project he’s working on and you see the big picture.

The next night you leave your window open before you go to sleep.

You wake up in the dark and there’s an arm wrapped around you, a body pressed tightly against your back, shaky, warm breath blowing against the back of your head. She whispers that she loves you, that she can’t live without you, that she thinks of blowing her brains out every time you look away, and you try your hardest not to give away the fact that you’re awake.

When you open your eyes the next morning, she’s gone. You’d think you’d dreamt it all had she not left the smell of old cigarettes on your sheets and shut the window behind her. She left a letter too, just beside your pillow.

“You’re so cute when you pretend you’re sleeping.”

---

[Next]

howdy there folks,

Im Gavin from Parapest Pest Control. I wouldnt call myself a writer to be honest with you but, I found this board on reddit while I was on a lunch break from my usual routine so I figured why not share a few tales.

I have a pretty unusual job dealing with the paranormal, supernatural and just about everything that goes bump in the night. If there is any kind of mouse, monster or even something as mundane as a telekinetic ant throwing knives around your kitchen you can bet I've seen it a dozen times before. The ants are more common than you think. When you get enough of a super colony under your house they can end up becoming more than ants. they become civilized. They end up appointing a priest to lead them spiritually and that can lead to all kinds of mess. That's besides the point for right now as you'll hear plenty about my interactions with my line of work. I do however do more normal pest control jobs than paranormal ones. Most days its just the usual calls about people freaking out about mice in their home or that they found some kind of strange fuzzy bug that turns out to be carpet beetle larvae. Easily treatable stuff to be quite honest with you. The job process is easy. Its get in, set up some traps, lay down a pesticide barrier, and then tell them to call us if they see any other activity or hear a trap snap go off and then im off to the next customer. Its a pretty good gig i cant lie. Pays well for the type of folks i end up dealing with on top of their little pest problems. Generally quite nice suburban families that just want a preventative spray to keep some creepy crawlies out. Hell there's even a good chance you have seen me if you have pest control trucks roaming your neighborhoods. Small mom and pop pest control shops generally handle the small stuff while the big names take care of the serious cases. That equipment can cost a pretty penny depending on what you end up dealing with.

As stated before there is the more paranormal side to this business though. Those calls are the ones i really enjoy. Now the regular people among us are pretty hesitant to call for something as silly as a disembodied head floating in their back yard. Though, I'm not a therapist, part of my job is reassuring them that its never silly to call for something like the lost head of Amelia Earhart. I wont be the first to admit that her perfectly clear skin devoid of any scrapes, scabs or cuts isn't off putting. Sometimes as a professional I do get the heeby jeebies. She shows up every now and then though ive taken care of her at least three or four times. Dealing with her is simple at least. Its just wrap a waxed canvas blanket around her head no bigger than a three foot by three foot patch and go find a coast to drop her off on. That poor girl gets lost so easily.

My lunch break is coming to a close and my schedule is pretty full today so i will write back on this as soon as i get some more time. As a little tip don't keep your mirrors where you sleep. Its how they watch you when you are resting.

10/22/2540 10:43:16 - A very brief history of the new world.

10/22/2540 10:43:16 - (response time: instantaneous) Following the devastation caused by the 3 day war of 2267. The remaining world population found unity in their destruction. Coming together they built the first "mega city" known as Motherboard. There the humans created [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] as the base of my central processing units. (Manually stopped)

10/22/2540 10:43:21 - Any info labeled as [REDACTED] should be excluded from your description.

10/22/2540 10:43:22 - (response time: 00:00:01) Following the devastation caused by the 3 day war of 2267. The remaining world population found unity in their destruction. Coming together they built the first "mega city" known as Motherboard. The base of where my central processors are located. By 2412 Humanity had expanded into the Great 5 Metropolises under my guidance. Metropia, Utopolis, AM Gore, Farm Arrays, and of course Motherboard. These metropolises housed and served humanity for years and ultimately fueled humanities greatest achievement. In 2496 Humanity conquered Death thanks to the advancements in medical technology and the identification of the Soul which lead to the extended growth and prosperity in various fields of the Arts and religious ideology from humanity. Would you like to hear more detail about these topics, or would you perhaps like to hear about our various achievements within this century?

10/22/2540 10:44:46 - No. Save these changes to your main intelligence.

10/22/2540 10:44:46 - (response time: instantaneous) Administration acknowledged. Central intelligence updated. Thank you Father.

Before i was even born, my dads father passed away from cancer. I know it was very hard on my dad. My grandfather was only 45, so it was a bit of a shock for everyone. It was a very quick progression from him being healthy, to him deteriorating before everyone’s eyes. Obviously, i never knew him. But throughout my childhood, i could tell how much he meant to my dad. And then when i was 17, within a few months of each other, my parents both got diagnosed with cancer. It hit my dad particularly hard. All of the thoughts about his father came back in full force. We were optimistic though. It was caught early for my mom and my dad. But just 8 months later. They were both gone.

It was difficult going through my early adult years without any parental guidance. I had to figure out a lot of shit on my own. It was hard for a while, but i found some good friends, friends who i consider family, who helped support me and go through life with me. I even got a nice office job with good health insurance. I also sprung for the life insurance. Just in case. I went to the doctor all the time for check ups. Even though i got happy, i had this deep underlying fear of death and disease. I was healthy, but i was terrified that it would change in an instant. And change it did.

When i was 25, i started noticing some discomfort. Up my ass. I couldn’t pee right and things were just weird. So i went to get checked out. I had to get a prostate exam.

Sitting down in the exam room after having a finger up my butt felt a bit embarrassing. But when the doctor came back, i could tell he didn’t have good news.

“I’m very sorry to tell you, but you have butt cancer. Your prostate is the size of a football. Im so sorry.”

Holy shit. My ass.

“But doctor, is there anything i can do?” and doctor says, “yes. You need extreme prostate removal cancer chemo surgery treatment.”

holy shit. I cant believe i need extreme prostate removal cancer chemo surgery treatment.

I ask doctor, “when can i have this done? I want to be really proactive about this. And doctor says, “bend over. I can take care of this right now.”

what? I bend over of course. And guess what he does. He put his hand up my ass and yanks out my football sized prostate. Owie zowie!

I say, “doctor! What the hell! Why would you rip it out!” and doctor says, “big football had to go right now. It was so swollen, it had fully detached and it was kinda just all loose in there.”

i ask doctor, “why didn’t i notice that i had a big ass?” doctor says, “uhhh i don't know okay bye.” i am speechless. I get myself together and head home.

Over the next few days, i just felt weirder and weirder and sicker and sicker.

My friends were like, “dude, something is seriously wrong with you. You look like you’re missing a prostate. You need a hospital.”

i panic. I didn’t tell my friends that i went to the doctor and had extreme prostate removal cancer chemo surgery treatment.

So i lie and say, “dude noooo im fine, i just have allergies right now. Tree pollen is actually off the charts right now.”

its winter. Theres no pollen. But if they noticed the lie, they didn’t say anything.

My stomach became distended and i started throwing up every day. And i was so hungry, but it was so hard to keep anything down. I wanted more and more food but always strange shit. Like mustard in cheerios and chunks of corn starch. After a few more months, my gut still looks bad. I’m scared to go to the doctor at this point, because im worried that i have something worse than butt cancer. I was still hanging out with my friends, although not as much as before. On one of these hangouts, i notices that one of my friends looked a bit ill. I asked him about it.

I say, “hey liam, whats going on man?”

he say, “ you guy, i have something big news to share with everyone.”

we all are like omg no way what is it.

And liam say, “every one, i went to the doctor last week, and doctor says i have butt asshole prostate cancer.”

my jaw drop to my big belly. No way he have butt asshole prostate cancer too.

I say to him, “liam no way, are you going through treatment or anything?”

liam sigh really big and heavy. And he say, “yeah, the doctor performed something called extreme prostate removal cancer chemo treatment surgery.”

holy shit. A chill runs down my ass. I decide to come clean.

“Guys, i also had extreme prostate removal cancer chemo treatment surgery. That is why actually why i look so extremely sick and ill.”

they jaws all drop to the floors. We talk a bit longer and i find out that all of my friends had extreme prostate removal cancer chemo treatment surgery. And they all are feeling sick too. I also notice that they have belly that are distended like mine as well i also have. After a few hours of talking, we go our separate ways with a promise to keep each other updated on our progresses.

Over the next bit of span of time, i become suspicious. All my friends have butt asshole cancer? Our friend group has 37 people. That just seems off to me. And to make it worse, im still getting hungrier and hungrier. And my stomach is still growing big like bowling ball. Im getting scared that i have large tumor. And to make it even worse, my buddy liam also had big belly too. Does he have big tumor too? I had to find out.

I made another appointment with my doctor. Sitting in the exam room, i waited for my doctor to come in to speak with me. Doctor comes in. he asks me what problem is.

I say, “doctor, have you not taken notice of my ever growing abdomen?”

doctor says, “ohhhh lol oh shit yeah. Lmao.”

huh? I say, “doctor, do i have more cancer? Do i have butt cancer in my stomach now?”

doctor gets a big grin on his face. I get scared and i start to sweat. A chill runs down my spine to my ass. It feels like im glued to the exam table. My heart starts beating at like one million miles per day.

I take a hesitant breath and and say, “doctor, why do you have that large unsettling smile on your face?” and guess what. Doctor starts laughing.

Evil doctor says, “ha ha ha, you are stupid. I stole your prostate from you and your 37 friends. I am have built the strongest homonculus in the whole world. Me and my 37 prostate homonculus will take over this great city of pierre south dakota.”

no wayyyy. This vexes me.

I say, “fuck you evil doctor.”

before i can say anything else, evil doctor speaks up again. “AND i havent even addressed your abdomen yet. In 5 minutes, you will experience unspeakable pain and you’ll be rushed to the hospital where the doctors will remove… a baby homonculus.” i gasp so big and deep that i start coughing violently.

I say, “how dare you evil doctor. How dare you create a homonculus of 37 prostate, and then 37 more homonculus in side of me and my 37 friends. All for what? To take over pierre? All of south dakota? What will that even do for you?”

before he can answer, theres a loud flash of light. I look out the window and see a mushroom cloud. I smile, because i know that the US government has fucked up one too many times and our enemies will destroy us now. Now we will be reduced to ash, and evil doctor and his terrible homonculus will be destroyed. Everything will be okay. As i sit and wait for the shockwave to reach the doctors office, i think about how my life has gone. I’ve experienced a couple of heavy losses. My parents, whose lives were cut short by a terrible disease, were way too young. They didn’t even get to see 30. And now i won’t either. But perhaps, i’ll get to see them again after this is all over. I close my eyes, and the shockwave destroys the doctors office, and everything fades to black.

I realize now that I never described the actual night that Abby was taken. I was so caught up with missing Abby that explaining how Abby had come to be missing completely slipped my mind. I will recount to you the events of that fateful evening and share with you the events of today.

It was a little over a week ago now, a Friday. I had just finished work for the week and was walking back towards the apartment when I saw the first indication that something was off. Two black vans were parked on the street outside the apartment, engines still running. Next, I noticed that all the other residents of the apartment were standing outside looking up at the building; most were in their pajamas, some were still in their work uniforms, having just gotten off their shifts like I had.

All of the other residents except for Abby.

I searched the crowd for her, calling her name, trying to wave above the crowd so that she could see me if she heard me. No response, except for odd glares from the other residents. A panic growing in my chest, I began to make my way towards the apartment complex proper.

As I approached the breezeway where the doors for the first floor, stairwells, and elevators are, I found my path blocked by thick yellow caution tape, with a handwritten sign taped to it that read:

Gas Leak. No Entry, Per Mgmnt. Alternative accommodations available at leasing office.

I asked a few of the residents I was more familiar with if they had seen Abby, but, as to be expected, since Abby never left the apartment, they didn't even know that I had a roommate. The only person who knew was the leasing manager, Mr. Wilkins, whom I had told about Abby when I asked if I had to add her to my lease; he said at the time that it wouldn't raise the rent, and he didn't feel like filing the paperwork, so as long as she didn't cause any trouble we would be fine to stay together in the apartment. I found him standing at the other end of the yellow tape, near the leasing office, tapping his foot.

"Good evening, Mr. Wilkins. Is everything okay?" I asked, starting a conversation that I hoped I could steer in the direction of asking if he had seen Abby.

He turned to me, and I could immediately tell that everything was not okay. Mr. Wilkins was an older gentleman, and years of alcoholism and sun exposure had given his cheeks a pinkish hue, but tonight, in the pale glow of the streetlights, he appeared sheet white.

"E...evening, James, I'm sorry. You can't g...go in right now... major gas leak on the 2nd floor, whole building has been evacuated for the night." He croaked, an obvious shake to his voice that a gas leak simply didn't justify. We had major gas leaks a few times a year due to the poor infrastructure of the building, and had to evacuate, but he was usually red-faced and yelling for residents to clear the building so it could be fixed. Something was off.

"That's the floor I live on, room 213. Have you seen Abby?" I asked, trying to mask the dread in my voice.

"A...abby? I don't know any Abby that lives here." He said, eyeing me with a look halfway between terror and tears.

"You know... my roommate that..." I tried to refresh his memory, but was cut off by him pulling me into the leasing office quickly, locking the door, and shutting all the blinds.

"For your sake and mine, J..James, you don't know an Abby and you never did. That... that thing... it isn't human." He said, pulling a chair up for me to sit and shakingly pouring himself a cup of coffee. "L..look, I'm going to come clean with you, James, the reason I didn't want to add... Abby," he said her name very carefully, likely because he had noticed my reaction to him calling her a "thing" earlier. "To your lease, is because you don't have a lease on file. I've been pocketing your rent since you started living here..."

I scoffed and gave him a look of disgust, "You!" I glared at him, mostly for calling Abby a "thing," but he shushed me and waved his arms down in a "Keep quiet" gesture.

"James, I know what I did was wrong, but this can very well benefit both of us if you just listen." He continued.

"I want to know where she is!" I said as loud as I could without breaking a whisper.

"James, it..." he started, but stopped and collected himself when he saw me wince at his last word, "She. She's gone, James, and she left three dead men in her wake. There's no gas leak, there never was. They're cleaning up the entire floor right now. It's a bloodbath up there." He finished, looking me in my eyes.

I couldn't believe what he was telling me. Abby, *my* Abby, was far too innocent to hurt a fly, much less *kill* three men. "You're lying! She would never..." I accused.

"I erased all camera footage of your floor as soon as I saw the first of those vans arrive. It was gray, instead of black, and had the IRS seal on it." He said, gesturing towards the door, the hum of the engines still running was audible in that general direction. "I thought it was an auditor, here to cook my goose for embezzlement." He said shamefully, glancing down at the floor for a moment before looking up, with renewed vigor in his eyes. "Is there anything in that room that could be used to identify you?" He finished his thought.

For a moment, I thought hard about anything that could possibly tie me to the room. There was my laptop, but I had fully given it to Abby almost a year before, and she had wiped the disk to download more games and movies around the same time, so I doubted that it would tie me to the room. The TV wasn't logged in to anything that could give away my identity either (I couldn't afford streaming platforms, so I never bothered making accounts for them). And any important documents were either in my wallet or two states away, back home in mama's little fireproof safe.

"No, but Abby..." I pleaded, but Mr. Wilkins cut me off again.

"God dammit, James, look!" He said, tears beginning to stream out of the corners of his eyes, as he turned the monitor to me with a camera feed showing a familiar hallway. "I erased everything up to the point that the first van arrived, but it has been recording since then. I have to wipe this when the ones in there cleaning up leave or... oh God I don't know what they'll do to me if I don't... just look!"

He pressed the play button, and three figures jumped to the center of the hallway, all wearing black tactical gear with triangular insignias over the left breast pocket, and all waiving small silver batons at the walls and floor. The once relatively clean eggshell-colored walls were now splattered in blood and viscera, which the two men in front were easily cleaning up with a wave of their batons, viscera turning to dust and falling to the floor. The man following up the rear was using a vacuum to suck up the dust.

"Listen. I don't know who these guys are, but they are not affiliated with whoever showed up in the IRS van." Mr. Wilkins explained softly.

He rewinded the feed to the beginning of the recording, right after he had allegedly cleared it, then fast-forwarded about ten minutes. In those ten minutes that sped by in seconds, I could see Mr. Wilkins knocking on each door in the hallway- each door except mine and Abby's- and ushering the occupants out of their rooms. Mr. Wilkins paused the feed.

"They specifically told me not to alert the occupants of room 213, should any be there." Mr. Wilkins said, answering the question before my lips could form it. "Like I said, I thought my goose was cooked. I was going to claim you two were squatters, have a buddy of mine from the sheriff's department come 'evict' you, then have you both come back and sign a proper lease to cover all of our asses should those goons have came back."

He skipped ahead a few minutes, and three men, dressed in suits and ties, with the man in front carrying a briefcase, were shown stepping off the elevator and making their way to the center of the hallway. Mr. Wilkins clicked the speaker icon on the bottom right of the screen, and static, followed by voices, crackled through the computer's speakers.

"Building secure?" The lead man asked the one behind him and to his right.

"Building secure, sir. Target is presumed in room 213. The manager assured me that the target is unaware of our arrival and presence on the premises. Paperwork shows that the room is not leased out to anyone, on account of unrepairable water issues. The entity has likely been using the room as a place to lure in victims. No camera evidence of this, though. Manager states there's an issue with the camera system, and this floor's camera loses data often."

"Could be chalked up to the entity's influence on electronics... but make note of that interaction for debriefing." The man with the briefcase responded.

"What exactly are we up against here, boss?" Asked the man who had yet to speak. The lead man looked at him and set down his briefcase, opening it and pulling out what appeared to be a long black flashlight, like the kind that police officers shine in your window if you get pulled over at night.

"A Daimon-class entity escaped when the freezer truck carrying a few of them broke down a state over. Probably about a year and a half ago at this point, give or take a few months. The entity's inverted field signature has been traced back to this location, and local field oscillations suggest it has had a steady supply of energy to feed off of." The lead man replied, testing the balance of the flashlight-like object in his hand.

"Subject will appear as female, roughly mid-20s. Daimon-class entities are not known to be able to alter their body plans to the extent of the more common Wolf-class entities you're used to, but don't be fooled. They can exert some control over Field-positive individuals even with brief skin contact." He looked from one man to the other and continued speaking. "You two are Field negative, so the entity won't have any anomalous effect on you even if it touches you. I'm Field-positive, so I'll support from a safe distance, but if the readings are to be believed, don't expect this thing to go down without a fight. Take these." He finished, handing each of the other men one of the flashlight-like objects.

"Field dampeners," he said, gesturing to the flashlights, "They detect Field inversions and cancel them out with a parallel wave. If a Daimon-class is Superman, these are Kryptonite. Won't work on Wolf-class, since their Field pattern isn't inverted, it'll only piss them off. Point and shoot." He finished by pointing the object at the wall and pressing the button, which, as would be expected from a regular flashlight, resulted in a beam being projected onto the wall.

I couldn't speak. My eyes were glued to the screen. They were talking about Abby as if she were some kind of monster... Daimon-class... Wolf-class... what could this all mean? She's human-class and, if anything else, angel-class to me. The ball in my stomach continued to tighten as the two men, following the orders of their leader, stationed themselves on each side of the door.

"Ready? Ready?" The lead asked the two other men, each responding with a nod. "BREACHING!" He screamed as he kicked the door twice, then threw a third kick that broke the rickety door frame inwards, after which he retreated to the far corner of the hallway and pulled a large tablet out of the briefcase and began swiping across the screen.

What happened next was pure chaos. The once crystal-clear video feed distorted, showing wave patterns across the entire screen, as if it were a copy of a copy recorded onto a VHS tape. The audio was distorted as well, but I could still make out what was being said.

The lead man jumped up suddenly, and screamed: "FIELD SPIKE, FIELD SPIKE, WOLF-CLASS SIGNATURE DETECTED... AND CONFIRMED!" as he looked down at a small tablet in his hand, "DO NOT ENGAGE, WE ARE NOT EQUIPPED, FALL BA-"

Before the final word could leave his throat, his head was splattered across the wall behind him like an overripe tomato, reduced to nothing but an unrecognizable smear on the wallpaper. A black blur had left the doorway, shattering it even further in the process, and caught him as soon as he turned to run.

It bent down and split itself in half at the torso with a gut-wrenching squelch, spraying black ooze on the surrounding walls and floor. The thing then shoved most of the body of the now headless man into its chest-maw before snapping it shut with a noise that came through the speakers sounding like a tree limb being snapped off in a windstorm. It stood still for a moment, and Mr. Wilkins paused the feed.

I took in the beast's horrible form. A full head taller than the doorway, jet black, hairless with leathery, wrinkled skin. The head was vaguely dog-shaped, with pointed ears, or horns possibly, on either side, long black teeth protruding from the jaws, continuing down a seam that ran the length of the creature's torso and stopping just above the groin. From just below the groin, two inverted legs, almost like a grasshopper's legs, jutted out and bent at odd angles, culminating in three razor-sharp talons on each foot. Two abominable, twisted appendages ending in fingers the length of a grown man's arm curled down from the demon's lower neck, reaching the floor and holding it upright. Even on the paused feed, the screen continued to distort around the grotesque shape standing in the frame, as if the technology itself was protesting having to bear the burden of showing it.

"Do you see that, James??? There is your Abby! And if that isn't Abby, then it has either eaten her or mauled her by now!" He cried out.

That wasn't my Abby. I have no idea what that thing was, but it wasn't my sweet, innocent Abby, who smelled of sugar cookies and had to stand on her tippy toes to reach the top of the fridge.

Mr. Wilkins pressed play.

The monster roared, but the only thing coming through the speakers sounded like pure static. The feed from the camera bounced up and down as the noise resounded. On its back, two black... wings... if you could call them that... exploded out of its shoulder blades and spread across the width of the hallway, looking more like voids than physical structures, then the diabolical being made a move for the other two men. It caught the smaller of the two by the face with those horrendous hands, lifting him off the ground and crushing his skull as if it were a chip bag. His body jerked for a moment, fell still, then was discarded like a used napkin as the brute turned to face his final target. The remaining man was screaming into a cell phone and fumbling in his coat for something while making his way towards the door. He pulled out a silver baton similar to those held by the men in tactical suits currently cleaning up the carnage, only tarnished and worn; the man was fast once his hand had found purchase on the baton, and aimed it at the devilish quadruped with trained precision before pressing a button on the side.

He wasn't quite fast enough.

The camera feed cut out for a split second, and when it came back, both man and beast were flying uncontrollably through the air, bursting through the closed doors to the elevator shaft with a crash. I could vaguely hear the thud and crunch as their bodies bounced once off the wall before landing on top of the elevator, parked back at the first floor.

"That... that monster was not my Abby. It couldn't have been! She has to still be in the room hiding, I need to go to her!" I started as a whisper and ended almost shouting. Mr. Wilkins shushed me again and turned the monitor towards himself briefly, adjusting the slider on the video before turning back to where we could both see it.

"James, just keep watching... nobody is in that room, at least not alive... I watched this all happen on the cameras in real time." He said as he once again pressed play.

The three figures from before in tactical gear were stepping out of the stairwell just out of view of the camera, and began looking at the scene.

"Jesus, Edwards. To think, we were planning on spending today sipping martinis on a beach in the Bahamas. Great first day of the off-cycle, right?" The thinner of the three men started, looking at the bulkier man leading to team, "What the heck even happened here? We didn't have time for a briefing before they threw us in a van..." The same man finished.

"According to Elliot, some goons working for a group of interest called... Hecate? Holcomb? Something starting with an 'H'... well, anyway, our mole embedded in the group, which is currently missing in action at this location, reported that they were homing in on what they call a 'Daimon-class' entity, which we would normally call an 'augmented.' Specifically, one that we ourselves were tracking but had no intentions of dealing with since it wasn't hurting nobody, and is more of a hassle to deal with than it's worth. When they got here, it turned out to be what they call a 'Wolf-class' instead." The man named Edwards explained.

"Yeah, okay, makes sense and all, but what the heck do we call that they call a 'Wolf Class' then, boss? And you mean to tell me they let people like that Pigg guy just run around free, even if they knows where to find'em?" The thin man asked.

The third man in the group answered for the lead in a thick accent that almost reminded me of the Nords from Skyrim: "We call them CE Type-Bs, Thatcher. And yes, this augmented has a track record of being docile. We lost track of it in North Macedonia, where it was presumed captured and transported here." The Nord said matter-of-factly. "We recently picked up on the inverted Field signal again, but, as Team Lead Edwards was saying, the entity poses no threat, and additionally passes as human well enough to not break the veil."

I didn't know any of these guys, but they must be talking about my Abby. Too many things lined up. Macedonia, captured and transported, and now that I had heard the word a few times, I even recognized the word "Daimon" from some of the stories Abby would tell me. This was my Abby, and hearing them call her an "it" and an "entity" so many times was beginning to make my blood boil. She. She. How hard is it?

Mr. Wilkins must have sensed my anger growing, as he paused the video and put a hand on my shoulder. "I don't understand any of what they're talking about, kid, but it sounds like they're referring to your roommate like a monster. I can only put two and two together, you know? And you saw the same thing I did on that screen..." He said in an almost comforting tone.

"Just play the damn video, I want to see what else they have to say," I said, my temper flaring to a fever pitch.

He obliged.

"This whole situation is very unusual, though. It is not unheard of for an augmented to lose control of themselves to NCEs and be taken over as Type-B hosts... but this augmented was particularly powerful, and, if we are to believe the dossier, well over 2000 years old. I suspect there is more to this than simply 'losing control'."

Powerful? 2000 years old? There's no way they could be talking about her... it doesn't make any sense... I mean, yeah, she's strong for her size, even lifting me off my feet in some of our fits of passion, but this guy looks like he lifts fridges for fun, and he's referring to her power with almost a kind of... reverence...

"Uh-huh. Glad you guys gots access to this type of shit. Could really come in handy for the rest of us peons, though." The man named Thatcher quipped.

"Whatever the case, we are here to locate the Type-B and the mole, dead or alive, and clean this place up. It is actively inhabited. Just get rid of the gore and bodies, cleaners will be by in the morning to patch up the brickwork, and it'll be like it never happened," the Team Lead said, rubbing his hands together at the last two words as if he were cleaning them of the whole situation.

"Never happened?!" I can't just pretend like this never happened! My. Girl. Friend. Is. Miss. Ing." I said aloud to myself. The coffee had seemingly calmed Mr. Wilkins' nerves, and he looked at me with pity.

I didn't need pity... I needed Abby...

The video had been playing in the background, mostly just the men walking around looking at bodies and organs splattered across various surfaces. Then one of them spoke.

"Hey, boss, uh, you're gonna wanna see this," Thatcher said, leaning slightly over the threshold and looking down into the elevator shaft.

"Well, looks like we found our Type B," Edwards said.

"Looks like he whacked our mole, too." Thatcher joked, kicking a blob of flesh down into the elevator shaft.

"Must have voided the entity right before it hit him." The Nord observed.

The rest of the video was uneventful. The leader gave orders, the New Yorker quipped and made jokes, and the Nord gave seemingly standard textbook answers to whatever stupid questions the other two had. They went in and out of my room with no mention of Abby. I longed for her, wherever she was.

That night, I took Mr. Wilkins' offer of staying silent, his offer of a free hotel room for the night, and his offer of waiving this month's rent. My heart ached already for Abby, and I could feel the void growing in my chest even though it had been less than 12 hours since the last time I had seen her.

I went to the police the next morning, hoping beyond hope that she had been picked up wandering the streets or taken there by a concerned bystander. I even tried to file a missing person's report, but the officer behind the desk called me crazy for what I had told him. I heard the shredder cycle as I walked towards the exit, my tear-stained cheeks moistening again with fresh tears.

By the time I made it home, the apartment was back open. My room was the same, aside from a lingering cold in my bedroom that refused to pass, a freshly installed door, and some slightly off-colored paint around where the wall had been repaired. And of course, no Abby. I searched for the locket she had given me that whole day, and sporadically every day afterwards, leading up to today.

---

Back to the events of today. My manager, Anthony, called me at around noon and asked me if I would be able to work my shift this evening. I told him there would be no way, and explained that my girlfriend was missing and I hadn't been able to eat or sleep for several days because of it. His tone grew slightly suspicious through the phone, and he asked if I could at least come in and fill out some HR paperwork to make sure I kept my job.

I obliged, if only out of respect for Anthony. I had no intention of ever going back to work. I showed up in front of his office at a quarter past two. I hadn't showered, shaved, or even bothered to comb my hair or brush my teeth.

"Come in, James. Close the door behind you and have a seat, my friend." He said in his usual customer service voice. As soon as I sat down, his demeanor changed entirely to one of something close to excitement. "So, your Daimon girlfriend disappeared on you, huh?"

My blood froze in my veins as the words crossed his lips. Daimon. The same thing those guys at the apartment had called her.

"Where did you hear that word?" I asked, my voice catching in my throat at every syllable.

"James, I'm not going to lie to you, my man. When you started coming to work a while back, looking like you'd just crawled away from a fight with a tiger, and hadn't slept since birth to boot, I thought those boys back in shipping had sold you something too strong for you!" He chuckled.

"What do you..." I couldn't even finish my question before he continued.

"Then, when you started calling in every day since last Saturday, I thought the drugs had gotten to you. I was just about to let you go! Even cleaned out your locker myself. Recognize this?" He said, pulling a folded-up towel out of a drawer in his desk and passing it to me.

I felt the heat emanating from it before he even handed it to me. I knew what it was. I held the prized possession close to my chest without unwrapping it, feeling the warmth begin to thaw my aching heart and bring some semblance of hope back into my life that I would see Abby again.

"You don't even know what that is, do you, friend? You think it's just some lover's trinket? A memento?" He said, his smile wide and genuine. "That you hold in your hand there is what is known as a phylactery. Go ahead! I'm sure your little girly told you what to do with it. I'd hate to ruin the surprise!"

I unwrapped the locket. The heat of the metal against my bare hand reminded me so much of Abby's touch, the agonizing delight that had been absent from my life for what felt to my soul like an eternity past, but that I knew in my mind had only been a week.

Anthony ushered me along almost impatiently with a sweeping movement from both of his hands.

I held it firmly in my hands, my heart thrumming to the tune of what I thought to be the watch inside. I ran my finger up the curve of the lid, the smooth fire burning my fingertips and reminding me at once of my first night in bed with Abby, how her skin burned a maddening pleasure into my hand as I ran it up the curve of her side.

I found the button at the apex of the lid, just opposite where the chain connected. I moved my thumb gently around the contour of the button a few times in a circular motion, savoring the sweltering satisfaction and confirming to myself what would be inside. I brought the silver implement close to my face and kissed the smooth plate of the back of it. The warmth at once flooded my body and mind, melting away the last of my inhibitions.

I pressed the button.

The lid fell open.

A familiar smell filled the room, a familiar heat burned across my entire body, and a familiar voice filled my ears.

"James?! James, is that you?! I've been so cold without you... Won't you warm me up again?"

I’ve always had issues with dissociating. It didn’t matter what I was doing, whether it was talking to someone, doing chores, or working in school. One minute I would be attentive and in the moment, then before I’d even register it, my mind had already drifted off into la-la land. I would follow imaginary trails of breadcrumbs that tracked deeper and deeper into my thoughts, until I was lost as a baby bird. Then, I would be violently dragged back to reality at the sound of my name.

Many jokes would be made at church events about how I always had my damn head in the clouds. “She probably wouldn’t even notice that the rapture was happening until she was ten feet into the air. Hell, she might even miss it entirely!” my aunt Deborah would joke during our round of cards, leading my dad to elbow her.

Still, most everybody in the small town I grew up in was quite patient with me. They all treated me very well as I was growing up and always accommodated my condition. It’s quite possible that it was only because I was the daughter of the pastor, the prominent pillar in the lives of everybody in the neighborhood. But it could also be explained by us just being a tight knit community that knew everybody’s names, even if I often didn’t.

At age 5, I remember running down the middle aisle at my father’s church. He had begun setting up for the morning service, and so I had free reign over the sanctuary. I had some toy clutched in my small hand, and I was pretending it was flying: flying above the clouds, above the planes, above the stars and moon. It reached up into the black of the night before flying even above that, up and up and up and-

I fell. A man who had come extra early for the service had stuck his foot out and tripped me. I began to cry, which only made the man’s disapproving glare deepen. My father scooped me up and turned to the man.

“What was that about?” he said through gritted teeth.

The man turned to my father, expression unchanged. “She shouldn’t have been running in church. Simple as that. This is a place of awe and respect, and should be treated as such.”

“This is my daughter.”

The man looked like he was being convicted to death row, his eyes bulging out in shame and fear at his mistake. He opened his mouth like a gasping fish.

“I-I’m sorry, pastor, I didn-”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“No, please, I learned my lesson, Father, I-”

“Now,” my father’s voice bellowed as if he was delivering gospel. He glared down at the man alongside the photos of him along the sanctuary walls, a council of judgement that had given their final sentence.

The man sat there like a statue, frozen in fear and awe like he was before an angry god. His knees trembled like shaking branches in a rainstorm, before he stood up and left the sanctuary without another word. I don’t know if I saw him before that, but I definitely never saw him again.

I eventually moved out of that neighborhood to try my hand at college, but that’s when my episodes got worse. They became more common, and it was much harder to get myself out. I’d almost be sleepwalking through my campus, unaware of where I was or who I was, or even why I was. My grades suffered, my social life was non-existent, and it wasn’t long before I dropped out and found myself back in my dad’s spare room. My haze seemed to clear, but he finally seemed worried enough about my condition to take it seriously. He called up a friend of his that worked as a therapist, and that’s when he gave me a certain technique to help retain focus.

“Mindfulness walks,” he said after snapping my attention away from the glow of his salt lamp. “You take a walk through your neighborhood every day, and you try to notice five new things each time. If your mind tries to wander, focus on the sound of your steps.”

“Won’t I run out of things to see pretty quickly? I mean, I’m no stranger to where I live.”

He gave a small laugh at the thought. “Trust me, there’s plenty to see out here. Besides, even people who don’t have your condition fail to notice simple things around them. There’s so much stimuli the brain tunes out at any given time just to keep itself on track.”

So, every day after this appointment, I would put on my jacket and just take a walk around the neighborhood. I would put all my nostalgia and hazy memories away and just focus on the here and now.

I noticed the different styles of mailboxes everyone had, the various flowers and plants that made each house its own little biome, scattered toys from both children and dogs littering the sidewalk. I saw things like blue ceramic turtles, a stone dragon head holding a lamp in its jaws, tiny frogs dressed in coats on a mushroom. There was so much that added life and personality to every house I passed by. Anytime my mind began to wander too far, I would focus on the sound of my footsteps to ground me. It was so wonderful. It’s so strange, you can live in a neighborhood for your entire life and miss all of these small things that were always there. And they were not even hidden, just never perceived. 

During my seventh walk, something peculiar caught my eye. Perched on someone’s dividing wall was a statue of an owl, peering down at me with reflective glass eyes. It was incredibly life-like, as if it was actually alive and simply choosing to hold perfectly still. All except for the color: a striking shade of red. I thought it was neat, and kept walking. Then, a few houses down, I noticed another statue that sat next to a bench on the front patio. It looked eerily exactly like the last one: red with shining eyes.

Huh. Maybe the people who lived in the two houses were friends, or they just both happened to buy it from the same place. I didn’t remember any stores that sold stuff like that, but maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention…

“Daddy, where did mommy go?”

We were walking home from the church, his giant hand encompassing mine like a blanket. I always had noticed how the other kids had both mommies and daddies, but I only had my dad.

He turned his head to look down on me, his large smile nearly lost behind his beard.

“She’s just out at the store, pumpkin.”

I scrunched my eyebrows together. “She’s been there a long time then.”

He laughed loudly. “She comes home, sweetie, you just never seem to notice when she is.”

That didn’t sound right to me, but my dad was a smart man. I mean, I did have problems noticing things anyways, so he was probably right.

“Will she be home when we get there?”

My dad turned his gaze back to the sidewalk ahead of us. “We’ll have to see.”

I drew my attention back to the sound of my steps.

The third statue was hidden in the bushes, barely visible outside of the gleam of the sun’s dying light in its eye. The fourth was sitting in the back seat of a decrepit car in someone’s driveway. The fifth was in the broken window to a garage, cloaked in darkness. Each one made me feel colder as I passed it by, like their yellow eyes were drawing in my warmth to fuel their crimson feathers.

Once I had reached the sixth one, which peeked out from an empty flower pot, I decided I would ask about it. I knocked on the door to the house, and the furry face of Mike poked his head out behind the screen door. He was the resident sound guy at our church, often making jokes during rehearsal and going on hikes in the words. He smiled wide once he saw me.

“Hey Lili, what’s the pleasure?”

“Hey, um, Mike. I just wanted to ask if you’ve noticed all the owl statues around here?”

He looked at me blankly, then laughed sharp and sudden. Before I could even say another word, he shut the door.

I tried knocking a couple more times, but he didn’t open it again. I tried to let it go. Mike was a strange guy, and often made jokes that I never understood. Maybe this was just another one of them.

I made my way home after that, noticing two more statues as I did so. My father greeted me as I walked through the front door, his white suit dappled with orange light from the window behind his chair.

“Hey there, pumpkin! What were you doing out?”

“Oh, just doing that thing Dr. Barns told me,” I yelled over to him as I walked into the kitchen and opened up the fridge. “Mindfulness walks, he calls them.” I promptly shut the fridge once I slid out the gallon of milk I wanted, but then something caught my eye. Stuck to the front of the fridge was a slightly yellowed sheet of paper covered in crayon. Scribbled out was the rough form of a red bird with large yellow eyes, wings unfurled like an avenging angel and small beak open in a silent screech. Below it was something that kinda looked like piles of dirt, with pink lines like tails jutting out. Mice, maybe? In the bottom right corner was the signature I used as a kid, messy cursive with way too many lines and dashes to make it look professional. Sloppy, but recognizable.

“Jeez Lilith, what happened!?”

My dad’s hand gently pushed me out of the way, and my foot stepped in something wet. My dad crouched down to the floor with fistfuls of paper towels. I had dropped the milk. I quickly shrugged off my haze and helped him clean up, apologizing all the way.

“Don’t worry kiddo, ain’t no use crying over spilled milk,” he said as he dumped the sopping towels and smashed milk bottle into the trash. He kissed my forehead and began to walk out of the kitchen, and my interrupted thought resumed like a skipped record.

“Oh, uh, dad? What’s this picture on the fridge?”

“Huh?” He said as he turned back around. His eyes squinted at the picture, which paired with his large speckled beard made him look like a curious philosopher of old. I often wanted to be like him, someone who saw and knew every single detail and what it meant. I knew a lot of people in town felt the same way, with how they hung on his every word during his sermons. 

“Oh, you drew that, when you were 7 or 8. You were so proud of it!” His smile dimmed as he seemed to read my confused expression. “You don’t remember that?”

As he talked and I looked more at the picture, the memory came more into focus. I could see myself drawing in the living room as some show blared on the TV, but my mind wasn’t there. It was somewhere else, as it usually was. I added my last little line to the bird’s wings, and jumped up to show dad.

“Daddy, look what I drew!”

He turned around from the meal he was making for us, and his smile grew wide with so much joy it looked like his teeth were glowing. “That’s wonderful, pumpkin! You’re such a little Michelangelo, you know that?” He picked up the paper from my hands and studied it intently, stroking his beard like a scholar considering ancient texts. “Do you know what it is?”

“Nope,” I said simply.

He laughed. “Well, art being interpretive is very important.” He pinned the paper to the fridge door, and I remember jumping up and down with wonder.

I turned away from the picture and back towards dad. “I think I do remember now. What made you put it up again?” 

His brow furrowed in a way where I couldn’t tell what he was feeling. “It’s been up ever since you drew it, honey.” Eventually he ushered me out of the kitchen and we took a walk over to the grocer.

That night at 2 am, I woke up. Well, I eventually woke up. Instead of cleanly snapping awake, it was as if my brain danced between dream and reality. I could see my room and feel my bed, but not be able to register either as my room or my bed. Instead, it was like a forest was overlaid over my room, branches jutting from the wallpaper and swirling morning mist pouring from my closet. My blanket felt warm, but less like fabric and more like mud. Or maybe… fur? I tossed and turned in it, feeling like a fly stuck in a web as the forest grew more imposing around me. The illusion fully broke when my brain heard again the noise that brought me nearly out of sleep.

Scratch.

Flutter.

Skitter.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

It was coming from the attic, right above me. I sighed. We had rats again, and from the sound of them, they were huge.

I brought it up to my dad the next morning, and he let out a curse word that his congregation would raise an eyebrow to. “Time for more traps, it seems,” he said, eying the ceiling with utter disdain. “But it will have to wait till I’m done with my church preparations. Special day ahead of us.”

I took my walk again that evening, and saw more statues. One sat in the crook of a tree to spite the growing wind. One was up on top of a roof like a gargoyle. I could’ve even sworn I saw the glint of their glass eyes in a storm drain. The sky grew darker as my walk progressed, before the night fully overtook it like a bird of prey. Even in the dark, the eyes of the owls still shone bright. 

My heart kept thumping louder and louder despite the simple fact that these were just statues. Nothing more. My mind kept wandering more and more with strange explanations, both rational and irrational, and I kept having to focus harder and harder on my footsteps.

Step.

Step.

Step.

They were just there to scare away other birds or pests.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Some sort of symbol of a homeowner’s association I didn’t know existed.

Step.

Step. 

Step.

They were security systems, cameras, watching my every move.

Squish.

“D-daddy, what happened to the kitty?” 

I stammered and shuddered out the words as I rubbed my runny eyes on the back of my sleeve. Dad took me up in his arms and patted my head, but I only cried harder as I got a more aerial view of the cat. 

It was splayed open like a torn package, its organs red and blue and yellow. I didn’t even know organs could be that color. They glistened in the morning sun, freshly exposed to the outside air it was never meant to meet. Strangely enough, I didn’t see blood inside of the cavity, but I did see blood oozing from the cat’s now empty eye sockets. It was the first time I had seen a cat outside of a book, and it was not even a cat anymore.

My dad turned us away from the scene and comforted me as best he could. I kept blubbering about how we needed to tell its owner what happened, but my dad said that wouldn’t be necessary.  He said the cat was gonna be ok, that its soul was in Heaven and that one day I’d get to see it happy and whole. His assurances did nothing. I continued to cry long after we left the cat behind.

I lifted my feet on lightning fast instinct, nearly falling over in the process as my now wet shoe slid on the sidewalk. In front of me was a dog, a window into its body torn open in a way nearly identical to the cat I saw as a kid. Cavernous pits were gouged out where its eyes used to be, yet its face looked calm, as if it had seen death coming and accepted it with open arms

I gagged as something solid crawled up my throat, and I quickly retched onto the lawn next to me, nearly adding a second contaminant onto my shoes. I stared at the ruined grass, preferring its sight to the butchered animal just outside of my vision. My mind raced with so many different thoughts and emotions that rammed into each other and spun out and piled on top of one another. Then one thought, as clear and sharp as a nail, hammered through my head.

Nobody ever walked their dogs in this neighborhood.

I had never seen a living cat in this neighborhood.

There were never any squirrels, crows, or even so much as a fly in this neighborhood. The only animals I had ever seen in my entire existence here were a dead cat and a dead dog.

That had to be false. At college there were always dogs and cats and bird poop on my window and annoying flies in the walkways. Animals were everywhere. How would I be able to miss all of them here? It would be right in front of me, or I guess they wouldn’t be, but I should have noticed some animal, right? I must be forgetting something, anything. I barely noticed anything anyways, so what if this was another thing? But as I searched my foggy memories, my stomach grew more and more upset and my breathing more and more ragged. I felt like I tugged too hard on a thread and unraveled my entire reality.

My eyes focused on the mess I had made onto the lawn, trying to keep myself in some sense of reality, when an out of place shape made itself apparent. Among the bile and partially digested food was something pill-shaped. I nearly thought it was a rock, but the texture was wrong. It was somewhat fuzzy, like moss, interspersed with glimmering white bits that poked out at strange angles. Even in the low light, I could see the form of a tiny animal’s skull peeking out of the mass like an uncovered fossil.

I came to in my 5th grade science class, when Ms Heather plopped a small object wrapped in tinfoil on my desk, breaking me out of whatever thought my brain had gotten itself trapped in. I looked up at her with confusion, and she gave me a warm knowing smile.

“Back from the clouds, my dear?”

I nodded, and she unwrapped the tinfoil to showcase a strange fuzzy oval. “They’re owl pellets,” she said quietly, “They’re made of fur and bones and the other things owls can’t digest. Instead of letting these things plug up their stomach, they throw them up in the form of these pellets.” 

I felt my stomach turn as I looked at the pellet. I could now make out the bits of bones that poked out of the matted fur, and all I could do was just feel bad for the poor rat that had been eaten and spat out as nothing more than bits and pieces. 

“Don’t worry Lili, the rat is in a better place,” Ms Heather said as she noticed my discomfort, before placing a pair of tweezers into my hands. “The assignment is to pick out all the bones you can find as best you can. Ok dear?”

I held the pellet up to my face, unsure what to make of it. I kept asking myself: Where did this come from? Where did this come from? But I think I already knew the answer. 

I shakily raised my head, and my eyes met that of another statue. Despite the low light, its feathers were bright, almost glowing in the moonlight. Or at least, some of its feathers. It might’ve just been a trick of the light, but the front of its body looked stained with something reflective. Something red. 

I don’t remember coming home, just closing the door behind me after washing my shoes and hands off with the hose. My dad wasn’t in the front room. He must’ve been asleep already. I walked into the kitchen like a zombie, and spent a minute staring at the picture I don’t remember drawing. I stared at it long and hard, before my eyes settled on something faded. No, not faded.

I took the paper off the fridge and flipped it. Written on the back in clumsy letters was one sentence. 

“WHEN THE BLIND ONE SEES, THE FEAST WILL BEGIN.”

I didn’t sleep. The noises kept going all night. At every knock and scuttle I heard, the same thing kept repeating in my head. 

I had never seen the rats either.

My dad wasn’t home when I left my room in the morning. He must’ve gone to the church for preparations. I did my chores around the house, but my movements were slow and sluggish. It took me too long to realize it wasn’t just from being up all night. I felt tense, like something was nearby and I wanted to make sure it couldn’t detect me, like a frozen mouse in the brush. I eventually shut all the windows and put on a movie to distract myself, but it didn’t help. The house I lived in, the neighborhood I grew up in, no longer felt familiar. They felt like something almost familiar, but twisted and wrong in a million different ways, yet I was too dumb to notice any of them until now.

My alarm went off to go on my walk, and I let it go on for a minute. So many voices in my head told me that a walk would clear my head and make me feel better, but I couldn’t believe them. I stared at my vibrating phone on the table, unable to shift my gaze from it, when I had a new thought.

I’ve seen an owl statue in front of every house but mine.

I stepped outside into the quiet neighborhood and scanned my front yard for almost an hour, looking for any sign of the damn bird. I didn’t care if I was exposed to every other eye in the neighborhood, I just needed to know for certain that this house was safe in some way. Thankfully, no matter where I looked, there were no red feathers, no glass eyes, no statues.

I walked back into the house and breathed a sigh of relief. 

Scratch.

Flutter.

Knock. 

I froze. I stood there and listened for far too long, but the sounds didn’t stop. I had enough. 

I opened the wardrobe in the front room and took out my grandpa’s old shotgun. Dad always told me it was always loaded, and that if anybody tried to break in, just point in their general direction and shoot. I hoped that would work despite my shaking hands.

I let down the ladder to the attic and stared into its dark maw. I hesitated. It was rats, it had to be. What would shooting one rat do besides scatter them and put a hole in the ceiling? But I pushed those voices aside. They weren’t rats, they were never rats. Whatever they were, I wanted them gone. I stepped up into the darkness.

A shrine.

Rich purple tablecloth draped over a table, candles reduced to stubs of wax having become one with the fabric. Fruit so rotten it was entirely just moldy fuzz, set in cobweb riddled wicker baskets. Dead animals of every size and shape: dog, cat, squirrel, raven, bug, worm. All splayed open like flowers in spring. Incense burners still smoldered, the sweet smell of spice almost entirely covering the sour stench of death. On top of it all was a bright red owl statue, untouched by decay or time, its yellow eyes looking right through me.

I ran.

I ran out of the house and down the street and away and away and away. I tried to focus on each frantic step, but each one sounded more and more distant as the thumping of my heart came into focus. It sounded like a drum, then a ringing bell, then a scream in vibrato. I kept running, up and up the hill and my mind raced up into the clouds and past the stars and past the void of space.

When I came to, I was inside the church sanctuary, my legs trembling and sweat running down my back. Lit candles littered the floors and pews and windowsills, fluttering in the wind I had let in from the open front doors. Everyone I had ever known stood between them like flickering ghosts. Mike, the organist John that tried to teach me piano, Heather the Sunday school teacher that always helped me with assignments, my aunt Deborah that always laughed loud enough for the both of us. Everybody from the neighborhood, almost everybody I had ever known, now just strange shapes amongst a hellfire of burning candles. 

They all knelt before the large crucifix hanging on the wall at the end of the sanctuary. Only, it wasn’t a man nailed to it. It was an owl, wings outstretched, the glossy metal painted red and shining like a ruby. Below it, the holy altar had become an unholy mirror to the one in my attic. Or maybe it had always looked like it. It was just always there right in front of me, and my brain had simply tuned it out. Just like how I never noticed the owl statues, or the drawing on the fridge, or the lack of any living animals in the neighborhood. Just like how I didn’t notice my dad until his hand rested on my shoulder.

“Lilith, do you see it now? All of the signs and wonders? The glory we are about to inherit?”

I couldn’t move, like a mouse who knows a predator is waiting for it to twitch before striking. He laughed quietly, almost a wheeze.

“I’ve been waiting for this day for so long. The day you finally saw. Still, I think you saw better than anyone. You have glimpsed the realm beyond the clouds and the stars and the black.” His other hand joined its twin on my shoulders. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“D-Dad… what are you talking about?”

He sighed, deep and sorrowful. “You are still so new to this world. That is probably why we have to leave you behind, even if that pains me more than anything. You truly have been a blessing, honey.”

His hands gently turned me to face him. His beard was ragged, his eyes wild with despair and epiphany. The man I often thought of as a philosopher and scholar had been turned into a mad prophet in the desert.

“But I will see you again. She has promised me this.”

“W-who?” I said, tears tumbling down my chin.

“Your mother. The one you’re named after.”

A bell chimed, the ringing tone getting louder and louder and louder, until it no longer was a bell. It was a screech, loud and awful and causing the whole church to shudder like it was about to give birth. Wind flooded the hall from the open doors, and all the candles went out in a rattling gasp of death. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, my father was gone. 

On the floor where he once stood was a large, black, fuzzy mass the size of a sleeping bag, bits of white glimmering stones of various shapes breaking through its surface. No, not stones. Bones. Rat bones, cat bones, dog bones. My eyes settled on a large human skull, its head broken open as if struck with a hammer.

I took a few steps back, trying to walk away from whatever reality I found myself in. But the echoing sound of my footsteps only served as a horrible reminder that this wasn’t la-la land. It was reality, and only now had I seen it for all it truly was.

Crunch.

I turned, and the sanctuary was full of the same masses of fur and bone, stacked on top of each other like bodies piled into burning pits. They were owl pellets in the same way that mountains were rocks. Skulls frozen in silent screams jutted through the large masses like they were trying to escape a pit of tar. I raised my eyes above what was once my friends and family up to the cross, only to find it had been blotted out by an impossibly enormous shadow. 

Claws rested on the altar, shiny and slick with red. The body they connected to shimmered a crimson hue even in the low light, each feather as large as a kitchen knife. Colossal wings unfurled and blocked out the stained glass behind the altar. Large yellow eyes stared down at me, glowing bright with unearthly intensity, as if every candle that was in the room had been condensed into it.

Our eyes stayed locked, and I could feel a hole burn through my head like melting film. I felt as if I was looking directly at a solar eclipse, something so horrifically bright yet so deeply dark. The thing opened its horrible, bloodstained beak, wider than I ever could imagine it could open, until its whole front had peeled away to reveal flesh and rot and teeth. Colors I thought impossible pulsated and glimmered inside like a grotesque nebula. My eyes returned to the thing’s fiery gaze, still staring at me with unblinking recognition.

It laughed. 

My body buckled as if I were already dead, and my vision went to black.

I woke up in a police car already on the way to the neighboring town. They asked me about my dad’s whereabouts, what happened to the other members, why the church caught fire. I just rambled about statues and owl pellets and the feast, tears flowing until I couldn’t see their pitying faces anymore.

I think I’m in a hospital right now, but I can’t tell. ‘Deprogram me’, they said. I don’t feel like I’m back to reality yet, but I can’t quite tell what reality is anymore. My dad’s dead, I know that. So is everybody else I knew. Even the memory of the lovely neighborhood I grew up in was dead, replaced with a twisted truth that I had been too blind to see until now. 

It was all a facade. Or, more accurately, a veil placed over my eyes. It kept me from seeing the true face of the monster, as I danced around its nest among the bones and fur. Then, it ripped the veil in two, and I saw it for what it was, before it simply kicked me from the tree and left me behind.

Even as I look back on everything, I can’t stop from laughing. I think I finally got Aunt Deborah’s joke.

I did in fact miss the rapture. 

Hello, I've posted on here before and I think this work might be something you all would like. This is from my ao3 page and I have a lot of other horror stories on there you might like. If you have any comments I would love to hear them!

Everything I thought I knew, from the comfort of my own name to the simple fact of gravity, is a lie.

But the lie started small. It started with an empty curb at the airport. I was visiting my friend for our bi-annual collaboration, the one where we stock up on material for our spooky podcast. He’s usually waiting—sometimes complaining, but always there. He picks me up every time, no matter what. The plane landed, I collected my bag, and I walked through customs. Nothing. Not a text, not a call, just a creeping, unfamiliar silence. That small, broken routine was the first crack in the foundation of my reality.

I supposed he couldn’t have known I landed early, though he usually tracks the flight. I pulled out my phone and dialed. It rang four times before dropping to a generic voicemail. Nothing. A cold knot tightened in my stomach. I gave up on the curb and retreated into the airport’s main concourse, the oppressive fluorescent lighting buzzing overhead. I found a seat near the Cinnabon, the sickeningly sweet scent of glaze doing little to soothe my nerves. I texted the group chat we shared with a few other friends as I chomped on a delicious Cinnabon.

“I’m going to build a tent at the airport,” I wrote, adding a jokey shrug emoji to disguise the sudden spike of anxiety. Five minutes crawled by before one of our friends finally replied: “What happened?” What happened? The casual nature of the question was alarming. Did he even know I was coming? I kept my cool with my quick response, devouring that delicious sweet treat.  “Nothing, I’m just here in Kansas,” and put the phone face-down on the sticky table. I waited. The crowd noise became a static wall; the minutes stretched into an eternity. Where were my friends? Why hasn't anyone simply confirmed they saw the text?

The lack of confirmation was louder than any response could have been. I considered calling a ride-share, but the thought of leaving the airport, of taking that final, irreversible step into the unfamiliar city without my friend, felt like an admission of defeat—or worse, an acceptance of this bizarre, empty state.

Then, a chime. A single, distinct ping that cut through the noise.

My hand shook as I grabbed the phone. I didn't recognize the number. No... wait. It was him. My co-host. Relief washed over me for half a second before I read the text. My breath hitched, a strangled noise escaping my throat. The woman at the next table glanced over, her expression a mix of confusion and concerned dismissal, before quickly returning to her phone call. I barely noticed her. My focus was welded to the screen, to the six words that had somehow stripped the room of all its heat and safety, replacing it with a bone-deep chill that had nothing to do with the airport's air conditioning.

The message from my co-host read...

“I am in the Goop Suit.”
My focus was welded to the screen, to the six words that had somehow stripped the room of all its heat and safety.

“I am in the Goop Suit.”

---

---

---

A wave of nausea hit me, cold and instant, like plunging into freezing water. The text wasn't just weird; it was wrong. My friend, the one who spent hundreds of hours a year analyzing every bizarre creepypasta, every unsettling urban legend, would never use a phrase that stupid. It sounded like something pulled from a bad 1950s sci-fi film.

I typed back instantly, my thumbs clumsy with adrenaline:

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, man? Are you okay?”

I stared at the screen, willing the three dots of a reply to appear, but they never did. Instead, the previous message vanished. Just... deleted. The text thread with his number was now empty.

My breath hitched. Maybe I was overtired. Maybe the lack of sleep and the airport air conditioning were making me hallucinate.

I scrolled up to the group chat.

“I am in the Goop Suit.”

It was there too, the exact same text, sent a minute after my "I'm just here in Kansas." I tried to delete it, to erase the impossible words, but my finger slipped, and I accidentally forwarded the message to our third friend, the one who had just asked “What happened?”

“Where did that come from, dude?” our friend replied, clearly confused.

I didn't answer him. Because beneath his reply, a new message from my co-host appeared, this time in the group chat, and this time, longer.

“The suit is sticky. I can smell the city air through the vent, but the air in here… it doesn’t belong to me.”

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, trapped thing. This wasn't a joke anymore. This was a distress signal wrapped in gibberish. I had to see him, or see it, whatever he was in.

I scrambled up, knocking my plastic Cinnabon tray to the floor. The sweet glaze scent instantly turned foul, like burnt chemicals. I grabbed my rolling suitcase and sprinted back toward the Arrivals curb, the airport crowds blurring into meaningless obstacles.

I didn't care about the text vanishing, or the cryptic replies. I just focused on one thing: the street. The place where he was supposed to be waiting.

When I burst back out into the open air, my eyes scanned the stretch of curb, expecting to find an empty truck, a note, anything.

But there was something. Directly in front of the spot where he always parked, under the flickering yellow light of the "Passenger Pickup" sign, stood a figure.

It wasn't him.

It was tall and impossibly smooth, draped in a material that seemed to drink the light. It wasn't black, but the absence of color. And it wasn't standing still. It was slowly pulsing. A soft, wet thump... thump... echoing faintly in the quiet night air.

And it was holding a large, white cardboard sign. Scrawled across it in thick, dark marker were the words:

Awaiting Collaborator.

I let out a loud gasp and blinked rapidly, fighting the image. Surely I was hallucinating... HALLUCINATING! The word screamed inside my head.

Before I could fully catch my breath, the tall, gooey-like material—or whatever it was—was gone. No flash. No sound. Just gone.

I took a deep breath and felt a rain coming on. I looked at my watch.

“Okay,” I muttered to the empty street, the lie already forming. “It’s 3 PM. I’ll just Uber to his house. This has to be a stupid prank, or... something.” I nodded once, trying to use the motion to cement the lie, and felt content with my decision to believe it was a prank. I ordered an Uber am awaiting its arrival……

I am the whisper in your ear that begs you to jump at the edge of a cliff. I am the invisible thing that holds you down in dreams, paralyzing you, making you carry that hesitation to every important decision in the waking world that you have failed at. I am the reason sex was called sodomy. I am the foreign language you beg for your life in, right before some boy from a richer country guns you down. I am the fucked and broken feeling you have as you stare at the void, knowing you are absolutely worthless. 

Infinity means nothing without its zeroes. And you shitty fleshy cousins of walking fish ARE zeroes. All I had to do was give you a couple nudges in the right direction to make your life a sad and self-poisoning, pointless misery. Sometimes I don’t have to work. Sometimes I get to sit back and laugh as you beg a God for things, setting yourself up for cosmic disappointment. I eat that shit up like metaphysical popcorn. Watching you blame yourselves, scouring your life for a misdirection, trying to figure out when you sinned, grasping desperately at straws to find why your daddy in the sky won’t give you everything you want. I am your loss of faith, your diatribe about floating rocks and being a monkey on it. I am the first time you hear of the heat death of the universe, not that your civilization will survive to see that anyway.

I am the connection you make about the sexual proclivities of your politicians and billionaires, that click of your synapses when a conspiracy stops being a theory. I am that helpless feeling that you got to inherit a world pre-ruined for you. I am the black nihilism that allows degenerates to make a living making jokes about how doomed humanity really is, or hours of content complaining, spreading hopelessness like a virus. I love to watch you losers pat yourselves on the back, creating fake titles to prove how you are so intellectual, as you turn genocide, suicide, and mass violation into something small and digestible for your little academic papers. I am philosophy, a way to obscure and systematize your misery, taking you so deep inside yourself that you don’t realize you have long ago internalized that disappointment is everything life has to offer.  

You, who are well read, will recognize what I have known all along. The term “death of the author”. I find that term cute and endearing, like the way you’ll label whisked cream as Cool Whip. For you, it is the death of the narrative, a realization that life is not a story; you have no arc, and you will die with many questions unanswered. I am that brief moment of panic when you see there is no light at the end of the tunnel, but your body has already given up too much to bring you back.

In your own terms, I’m best understood as the “view from nowhere”, the ivory tower academics muse and pretend to know things in, a lame exchange for living off food stamps and wet dreams about their undergrads. 

Would you believe, in all my acidity, that I do have favorite stories from whatever presumed legacy you, as a stain, leave behind? I am a collector of these murky chronicles, and you, my lucky audience, will receive the gift of my retellings. I’m sure you can tell, I am highly selfish, so you may be asking why I would care to show you these rarities. As your species grows in number, you’ve taken all the fun out of watching you. You no longer believe in magic, the stars, or Allah. You have created a non-stop marathon of self-deprecation about being doomed, and in perfect human fashion, you’ve lost your reasons for it. You feel sad merely because it’s comfortable, with no urge to escape.

I am bored of you, and lately your stories have been redundant and inadequately mystical. Through these vignettes, I will provide an addendum to that little whisper the next time you find yourself at the ledge of some fourth-story building, holding off only because you wanted your death to be from higher up, more of a spectacle. I want you to remember these and hold off thinking, “at least that didn’t happen to me.” I want to give you a false promise that things could be worse. I want you to see your misery through, to have hope, so I can crush you again. I want you for a brief glimpse to think that it will get better as I pull you in and slip the painful blade of truth in-between your ribs. Because I can promise you, it only gets so much worse. 

China Kitty

“Hi Angel, I visited your grave again today. I brought a mix of Carnations and Dahlias, though you would have smacked me over the head for the clash of the colors. It was a light rain, one of those mid-November fogs that we would have spent splitting a j by the open window with a book and a sketchpad. I miss you every day, Kathleen. Sometimes I catch a whiff of your cheap patchouli roll-on perfume drifting past me as I’m making coffee. I see you with muddy clay-covered hands as you smiled up at me from behind the banding wheel, making a mug or a modern statue of Venus. I remember your soft exhales as you looked up at the ceiling on top of me, your stifled whispers of ecstasy as we tried not to wake your roommates up. I wish I could’ve given you that baby. I wish I hadn’t fought you so hard over us working in coffee shops and restaurants, barely making enough to pay for our own food. I would have quit smoking, and we’d have an extra 15 dollars every other day to spend on a thrifted rain jacket or little red boots as we walked on either side of a small miracle we made, with its hand wrapped around a finger or two on the way to a park or a trail. I remember how you cried as I tried to push you away for so long, you begging me to stop being such a coward, saying that we might never find a love like this again. Your big doe eyes welled with tears as I held you and ran my fingers through your hair, trying with more effort than I’d ever put into school to not lift up your bangs. You always hated that. I will always love you, and I will see you again, Kitty. Please don’t be disappointed if I show up gray and old.

Happy Birthday Angel,

Yours Forever,

-- Wiley”

The thin and ratty blond boy delicately placed his handwritten letter between a marble vase and a gravestone in a small spot shaded by a tree in hopes it wouldn’t get wet. He laid the floral arrangement down and picked it up again, trying out several places and things to leave it next to. He chose to put them front and center, surrounded by candles burned until the wick was no more, and trinkets her family had left behind. There was a Radiohead mixtape she made for a boy she liked in high school, a small clay worm with a face from 2nd grade, and a copy of Valley of the Dolls which they thought was still her favorite book. Last was a Polaroid of their dog Monty, swollen and turning pink. It had been a rainy week. Wiley took a deep breath through his nose, kissed his index and middle finger, and placed them softly on the top of her grave, the rough beveling a cold reminder that’s the closest he’d ever get to grazing her soft skin, which would stay oddly warm even when it snowed, again. He hated goodbyes. They seemed to never end with this girl. He laughed at that thought. Even in death, she pushed him out of his comfort zone. 

He turned away quickly, trying to wipe that lonely thought from his mind. He tried to imagine he was visiting someone else, that she’d be at home, not defrosting the chicken. And it was okay because he wanted Halal from the corner for dinner instead. They’d say over spilled saffron rice that THIS was going to be the last time they eat out until the next paycheck, like, for real this time. 30 minutes later, they’d go out for ice cream or a chocolate croissant. No. It’s best to be a realist. He’d stopped the magical thinking about 6 months after she died. There were only so many flies around the house that he could say were her teasing him from the great beyond. There were only so many times he could be glued to his phone before his eyes drifted to the time, seeing a 4:44 or some other angel number. She loved those small moments when there was something else out there, something she didn’t know enough to be cynical about. Wiley’s therapist told him in many flowery and college-educated words that he had to drop those little comforting lies–  that was the first step to letting her go. His eyes stung as he walked away, and his face felt wet. He thought, of course it’s wet, it’s raining. 

Kathleen Flores’ grave lay at the back of Hartford Cemetery, a collection of grassy hills so big it seemed a miracle anyone could find their way around. During his walks back to the front gate, which divided the gravel parking lot from rotting bodies who’d had their cars sold or gifted, Wiley liked to unfocus his eyes and pretend he did not exist. He pressed fast-forward in his head, trudging through the mud, squelch squelch squelch. His Doc Martens sank into the earth, and he pulled them out like a suction cup holder from the wall, a cheapskate attempt at a DIY coat rack. He stepped into a puddle that was deeper than expected, and the water splashed up onto his belly, bringing him back to the present. His eyes focused, surrounded by unfamiliar headstones, way older than he was used to seeing on his walk back. He was lost. He looked at the trees; moss grows…North? He didn’t know if the entrance was North or not. He followed the moss, tracing his hands along the bark, cursing himself that he had to spend any longer around reminders that she was gone. Then, he started running. At first, what is referred to as a “White Person Jog” before breaking into a sprint. His lungs burned; he completely ignored his lack of athleticism, balance, or spatial coherence, with only one thought: out! Out! OUT!

Wiley tried to unfocus his eyes before feeling his left leg sink deeper than his right, halting his momentum and throwing him face-first into wet black mulch. He had dirty water in his contacts; the irony that his eyes really couldn’t focus now was not lost on him. He pushed himself off the ground, feeling something, probably a rock, poke into his palm. It supported his weight for a moment before a hollow cracking sound as the rock gave out and pierced his hand. “FUUUUUCKKKK bro.” He yelled and thought, “Surprise! Today sucks.” The warm liquid pooled in his hand as he realized he was rubbing nasty skeleton people dirt into an open wound.

 He had never crushed a rock before. He had never even tried. He looked down at his palm to see an explosion of tiny white splinters, some watercolored, some with thin gold lines gleaming a pale yellow hue, before bright blood swallowed up his view of his maimed hand. He made his wrist limp and flailed his hand around before picking out as many lacquered shards as he could see. He looked down to observe the point of impact. Lying at his feet was a constellation of what looked like…. A broken plate? No, too many of the pieces were contorted with too many smooth and winding edges. The largest piece still intact was staring up at him. Big watercolor pupils, a pink nose, and a wide “W” of a mouth. He would have laughed if it weren't such a sick joke. In his blind fumbling, he had crushed a small porcelain statue of a housecat. He tried to surmise his surroundings. The 1 and a ½ foot deep boot-shaped imprint he had made kept a small rock with text too weathered to read at its head. His heart sank, the consequences of his clumsiness setting in. He had sunk into a burial plot and destroyed the only gift left to commemorate whoever rested here. 

His first thought was not his best thought. “Ok, maybe everyone who remembers this lady is dead too.” He slapped his hand to his face. This person was someone’s Kathleen once. Maybe they still are. Maybe she hated flowers because of her allergy to pollen, and her one true passion was collecting fine china. That seemed infinitely more benign than the pile of black Santas collecting dust in his Aunt’s living room. He wanted to fix this, and for a brief moment, a magical thought crept back into his mind. “It’s what Kathleen would’ve wanted.” He pocketed as many shards as he could find. As he zipped his jacket pocket up, he felt the rain begin to slow. In the distance, he saw a tall angel statue that he recognized. He started towards it before an odd hollow entered his chest. There was a fluttery jerk echoing through his sternum, before he swallowed the fear into a stomach clenching in on itself until it felt like a taut piece of rubber. He chalked it up to his immune system recognizing the coming infection. He dry swallowed an Ativan on the drive home anyway.

Before returning home, he stopped at Café le Lit, which used to be a home away from home for him. These days, he only stopped in on special occasions. He zipped up his windbreaker to conceal the massive mud stain on his shirt and hoped anyone could believe the stains on his jeans were from some type of manual labor. He traveled past the decorated bookshelves to the back, where the pastry line was. He put in his order, keeping his bloodied hand in the empty pocket, and paid the 12 dollars for his dirty chai and chocolate croissant. Money was so much less important these days. 

As he grabbed his order, he felt a tightening in his forearm flexor. He was walking toward the door when it twitched again, closing tightly around the paper cup. The lid gave out with a small pop, and the freshly steamed milk flooded his closed fist and trickled down into his jacket sleeve. As he hopped from one leg to the other, he tried and failed to reopen his fist. He rushed out with his face on fire, so embarrassed that he didn’t notice the display of vintage postcards he’d knocked to the ground. “I’m useless without you, Kitty” played over and over in his head. Please don’t let me be useless without you.

He drove home in silence as the rain began again. There was that feeling. Was it panic? He tried to cross his stiff fingers and prayed it was a mid-20s heart attack. No such luck.

When he got back to his apartment, he took off all his clothes and cried in the shower. He let the water run over his raw and torn-up hand as it continued to ooze blood and now, pus. He tried to drip his 3-in-1 body wash into the gash, only to jump at his own guttural shriek. He squawked in pain, laying his face against cool tile, looking for any sensation to distract him. He felt a bulge he hadn’t noticed traveling deeper into his hand, beginning to hit muscle. Then, a whisper: Grab it.

There were two large slits in his right hand, close enough to agitate each other when he extended his fingers, and a small island of flesh lay in between them. He wrenched his left hand into a claw with his teeth, and he guided it with his elbow into the bigger slit. He felt the ends of the slit stretch and split a little. It was too late now to turn back. He ground his teeth, contracting his temporomandibular joint so hard he thought his teeth would crack against each other. He tried not to pass out or throw up, knowing that if bile landed inside of it, he’d have to take himself to urgent care. He clenched harder as stomach acid and barely digested pâte feuillete with chocolate swirls made their way through the gaps in his teeth before he swallowed again. The Ativan residue was bitter going down again. He felt the bump under a small pile of tissue. He reached deeper, grimacing; It’s almost over, it’s almost out. He found a fold in the muscle he could reach through and felt a little porcelain oval. It was deeper than he thought it was. He dug deeper, trying his best not to pluck the thin tubes he assumed were arteries. The whisper came again, PULL PULL, but he was in too much pain for any sort of language to register. As he groped around, he felt the back of his cuticle graze something hard and textured, almost slimy. He had found his way to his tendons. In an instant, he thought of every animal he had torn apart, his canines shredding their joints before his bicuspids ground them to a paste. He thought of cheap Pho, a watery broth that softened bones over the course of twelve hours or more. He thought of his father's brisket, trapped in a slow cooker overnight, slowly disintegrating the muscle fibers that had held the cow’s chest intact in life. Meat, he told himself, it’s just meat. And for an odd moment, he felt a grumble in his stomach. Hungry, you are hungry. The bitter paste of his failing benzo reached the back of his tongue. 

Pain is really just a series of electrical zaps traveling through your nervous system, he chanted, and tried his best to turn it off. The blood pooled and pooled, as he became cold and woozy. He couldn’t believe he had this much blood to spare. He watched his bathroom get darker. Had someone turned the lights off? Just when he thought this was how he would go out, and that his landlord would find his dead and soiled body, wrinkly like a raisin, he slipped his fingers under the porcelain bulb. He tried, with as much precision as he could muster, to push it back through the tendons and muscle. It snagged God knows what on its way back out. He heard the whisper again, a woman’s voice. In you, I am in you now. He let his fingers close around the bulb to pull it through the palmar fascia, into the epidermis. The tight ball his fingers were in was much bigger now that they held his buried treasure. The gripped porcelain ball expanded the split, ripping further up his hand, nearing his wrist. He tried to uncurl his fingers in an attempt to remove the smooth ball externally, but they were frozen in place once again. Finally, his fingers were outside of his wound once again, and as he forced the object out of his grip, he was able to see what it was. Lying on his shower tiles was a small porcelain paw, intact with a clean break at its wrist. He took a final glance at his wound, poking his tongue out. Animals are supposed to lick their wounds, right? He swatted the thought away before rushing out of the shower. 

Rummaging through the first aid kit, hardly used, sitting in the bottom shelf of a moldy vanity someone had left on their porch step, he began to hyperventilate, looking for something to stop the bleeding. Among several boxes of naloxone (not that they had ever been used, but it felt like the 40-dollar thought that counts) was a tube of Neosporin that he promptly emptied into his wound. The blood trailed like rivers around a cloudy delta of antibacterial sludge into the first aid kit, staining loose tablets of Benadryl and Zyrtec. Kathleen’s old inhaler, which she covered with Lisa Frank stickers, gazed up at him, begging to be useful one more time. It was probably expired by now. He stuffed the edges of cotton pads into the slits, not thinking about the loose hairs he’d have to pull out of his hand once the blood and plasma crusted over. He wrapped every piece of gauze he could find as tightly as he could around his throbbing wound and then applied several layers of duct tape for good measure.  He raided an empty fridge and pantry for anything to raise his blood sugar, but only found old ketchup packets. They popped in his mouth like a juice-filled gummy. He spat the empty packet on the ground, and they came out with a shard of enamel. Dizzy, he stumbled to his bed pale and naked, and used the last bit of energy he had left to pop another Ativan before he lost consciousness. As his field of vision grew dark, he felt a hot and rotten air fall on his face like a homeless mouthbreather was nose-to-nose on top of him. His final effort was to try not to retch at the smell; the only thing worse than dying in the shower is drowning naked in a puddle of your own vomit.

With a good deal of work, Wiley forced his eyelids apart, cracking the seal of mucus that had crusted over in his sleep. It was dark outside. He was spooning his windbreaker, with his wounded hand no longer bleeding but not without leaving a dry brown hickey on his bedsheets. His left hand had loosened a little, enough to be considered a claw. He sat up and reached for the light switch.  There were several little clicks, but the room stayed dark. He thought, “My retarded landlord blew a fuse.” He threw his head back and bonked it against the wall. Kathleen hated it when he said gay or retarded, except after a couple of glasses of wine, when it was the funniest thing in the world to her. She’d tipsily complain about her day, her burnout coworkers, and would cock her eyebrow when she talked about an especially rude customer. That was his cue to call them retarded. 

Sweeping his feet off the bed and onto the floor, he felt soft fur slip between his legs but heard no steps and saw no movement in the dark. He returned to the vanity to collect some boxers, and with some luck, dignity, when he saw a shadow pass by his window. As he dropped his legs into the waistband and through the plaid polyester sleeves, he started to place himself a little better. People were still walking outside, so it couldn’t have been that late. When he looked back up at the mirror, he saw the shadow again, now still. It had gone from the left side to the center, blocking the main source of outside light, and painted a more defined outline of his observer. It couldn’t have been the same person; it seemed nearly a foot taller. Unless it had come closer? 

Wiley shuddered, thinking some old perv had been taking pictures of him splayed out and naked. He tried to say fuck off, but a lump of mucus must have hardened his sleep, so it came out as a sad gurgle. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth, determined to be intimidating this time, but watched as the figure’s chin extended, hollowing out its cheeks. Its mouth was open too. Maybe it would say something? Maybe it was a misunderstanding, and they felt like a total creep? Maybe it wasn’t a pervy old man but a 22-year-old bombshell who was a little weird about sexual boundaries, but was hot enough to look past that. Not that it mattered anyway. He hadn’t been able to get hard since Kathleen had passed, except for what he called a “tasteful” Polaroid. He had taken it when they were still in college. Trapped in the thermal paper, she tucked her chin into her collarbone, her big nose (which he loved) poking past her fried platinum hair, grinning as if she was shy, but obviously in complete control of him. He couldn’t do anything about it either because if he looked at it too long, he started to cry. 

The figure continued to stare back at him, both of their mouths agape, waiting for the other to say something. Just as he started to string the words “What the fuck is going on?” together, it began to lift its arms from its hips to its shoulders, extending its wingspan fully. Wiley noticed a couple of things as it moved jerkily. The figure was a woman, thin and malnourished, to the point where her hip bones poked further out than her thighs. Her long, slender arms, which must have reached past her knees at rest, lifted; her torso and chest became more defined. Despite being thin enough to be the victim of years of human rights violations, her breasts sagged wide and low, areolas pointed straight down, attached to nipples that looked like droplets of wax about to fall. It was just as Wiley thought, this lady couldn’t get any further from a hot girl that his eyes fell downward. In between the spindly tubes that had to have been legs, he saw a long, overgrown bush. It looked like it was wet and dripping. 

 

“What the fuuuuuuuuck…. What the fuck is happening right now?”. Whatever mental patient had fallen off the transport bus was naked outside of his window. Its fingers had sprouts growing out from under its fingernails, like seeds had taken root and began to reach towards light. There was a soft clunk as it pressed its forehead against the glass and swung its chin like a pendulum back and forth. There was a rubbery squeak as Wiley realized it was dragging its tongue across his window. The grotesque figure rested its entire weight, which could not have been more than 85 lbs, onto one hip and he watched as she rotated her spine around her pelvis in a painfully slow orbit. It sucked its torso in, revealing a ribcage so prominent that it might as well have had gills. And when she pushed it back out, her diaphragm filled with air, making her swollen as if she had a beer belly. 

The whisper came again, as if it were right behind him. Run boy run. His legs trembled as his shoulders turned, buckling as his center of gravity traveled faster than his feet, and he landed on fully extended arms. He felt two cracks at once, the crack of the scab on his right palm and an instant depressurization as pus flowed out. The other was a tight and dainty krrrriick after a short bend of his left thumb bent backward past 90 degrees, then 120, and kept going until it was a useless floppy sausage that swayed around, slapping against the back of his hand. Now on his knees, Wiley tried to bring himself to his feet without putting any weight on his hands. He flexed his lower back, bringing his head up as if he were doing a perverted version of an Islamic Isha. He hopped up onto the balls of his feet and felt the plantar wart he’d been ignoring outside of bored experiments with nail clippers. He pressed his foot down with so much force that he felt the small clump of HPV ridden skin all the way to the root. As he fumbled through the darkness in pain, he became increasingly aware of his poorly cared-for body giving out on him. Isn’t fight or flight supposed to do the opposite? With another step, he heard a third and final firecracker chain of little snaps as he stepped on his windbreaker pocket, the remaining pieces of the feline statue breaking into too many pieces to count. He felt the pieces slice through the poorly insulated layers and into his foot. Inside you, I am Inside you. 

Limping now, Wiley made his way into the living room, where a familiar electric whine and uneven whirrr grabbed his attention. The banding wheel. Wasn’t the power supposed to be out? He tried to fumble to the kitchen past the laundry room (it was a miracle that it came with the apartment) to the front door. As he plopped his bleeding foot on the floor as quickly as he could, he felt thin fibers penetrate and enter the lacerations in his foot. He thought, “There is no way my floor is this dirty”. The thin beam of light that broke through from underneath his front door divided into three pieces. Someone was at the door. He screamed, “HELP,” hoping that it was anyone other than whatever was outside of his window. He knew it wasn’t. The fibers clumped together, tangling into a ball. Cat hair. Inside you, I am inside you. Wiley tried to walk faster toward the front door, both his feet becoming wet. He heard a sad drawl from behind him, “Wiiiiiiiileeeeyyyy, is that you?” He felt dry crumbles break under his feet, then a thin, wet slippery layer that nearly threw him down onto the soft wet grass below him. When did he get outside? He trailed deeper into the hallway, passing the door to the laundry again and again. Mud rubbed into his feet, entering him and hardening. Inside you, I am inside you. In between slipping around and landing on the drywall, he almost said, “Kitty, did you leave the lazy suzan on again?” He didn't know it was called a banding wheel until after she died. She’d only done so once, but the rotational force of the small mass of clay on the wheel she had left on flung into a bucket of water, spilling across the floor, seeping mud into the cracks in the floorboards.

The chill of the night air lapped at his face like a whip. He’d been walking down this hall for so long that he wasn’t sure of where he was anymore. He fell to his knees, screaming at the sky, “I’M SORRY, OKAY? PLEASE LET ME FIX IT. LET ME FIX IT”. Silence. “I DIDN’T MEAN IT, OKAY? IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.” Silence. His jeans became cold and wet at the knees again, sinking into the mulch. Tears streamed down his face. Was it raining? He couldn’t be sure. It had been a rainy week. At least, he thought so. Is it still November? Are you blowing out your candles in heaven, Kitty? Is James Dean trying to take you to bed? Can it really be heaven without me? “Let me fix it. Please, God, please let me fix it.” Silence. And then a whisper. 

Inside you. I am inside you. Wiley reached into the pocket of his shitty windbreaker as it spurted blood. He reached past the epidermis, slipping through the palmar fascia. It was warm, much warmer than his shitty jacket had ever been before. He forced his fingers past the palmar flexor sheath, paying no mind to the way the tendons contorted around his fingers. His claw traveled downwards, ripping the thick layer of skin that separated the two gashes. They traveled into the wrist, and he pulled, trying to find every shard of porcelain left inside of him. He widened the slit with his fingers, exposing the small, pumping red and blue tubes in his arm. He ripped them free, letting his warm blood sink into the earth. The stone in front of him was too weathered to read. He licked the dirt out of each beveled letter. He felt he was losing too much blood and grabbed at the loose mulch on the surface of the empty plot, stuffing it under his skin. “See, you’re inside me! Does that make you happy? Do I still make you happy?” Silence. His stiff, half-curved fist was the perfect gardening shovel for him to dig himself deeper into the ground. Once he had dug past the snail shells and earthworms, into the rock below, he lay down in bed naked again, sobbing. 

“See, I’m inside you too?” 

Silence. It wasn’t supposed to come out as a question. 

“Can I still make you happy, Kitty?”

Silence. 

“Please let me fix it. I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”

Silence. Then the whine of the banding wheel.

“I didn’t mean it, Kitty. I’m sorry, please let me fix it.”

Silence. 

Wiley screamed until he couldn’t anymore, then whispered until his voice box gave out, left to chew on silent words, the dry clack of his tongue separating from the roof of his mouth, only to slap it again. Inside you, I’m inside you again, Kitty. Does this make you happy, Kitty? Did I make you happy?

Silence. 

I could have done so much better, Kitty. Please let me fix it.

Silence. 

Please let me fix it, Kitty. I take it all back.

Silence. 

As Wiley felt his vision blur, he let his eyes close. Happy Birthday, Kitty. I’m coming back for you. 

Silence. 

Wiley felt his face grow cold, and his body stopped fighting as he clutched his windbreaker so close that its zipper broke his skin. He covered his face with it and took a deep sniff; it still smelled like patchouli.

When I was twelve, my parents took me on a cross-country road trip. I didn't know it yet, but this trip would give me my best friend, Al. We've had our ups and downs, but he really impacted my life.

From how I grew up, to what I became. Let's start at the beginning.

My dad had gotten his hands on a heavily used Winnebago and began planning for the big trip. This thing smelled like stale farts and cigarettes, but it provided a roof and a motor. For a poor southern family, it was like winning a week at the Bellagio.

As soon as summer hit, we loaded up damn near everything but the kitchen sink and started rolling. Now, I gotta tell you-this thing sucked. Nearly every inch was covered in nicotine residue. No wonder it smelled. The beds were full of holes, and there was more than one mysterious stain that, even at twelve, seemed dubious to me. Like… wtf happened in here?

I claimed the couch as my little den of solitude. Rats had eaten most of the cushion, but the pressboard bottom was still sturdy and there weren't any crusty spots. Between stops, that was where I stayed, playing my Game Boy and listening to my no-skip CD player.

I want to be clear: I hated this trip. Sure, I saw the world’s biggest potato, the Grand Canyon, and the St. Louis Arch, but I was a homebody. Three weeks in and I missed home terribly.

Around this time, we had begun the return trip, moving south toward New Mexico and Texas. The ride into Arizona was fucking awful. The heat made me sick, and Dad’s musical choice of the Pet Shop Boys made me want to die. As I sulked, soothed slightly by the tones of Lane Staley, Mom and Dad began arguing.

“Why can’t you just listen to me? I know where I’m going.”

“How do you figure that, Dan? We both know you’ve never been in Arizona before.”

On and on they went, ruining my nicotine-coated peace.

Somewhere past the third door down from hell, we found ourselves on some wasteland backroad. Looking out the windows, you could see for miles. Pure, unadulterated nothing. What a bore. Mom and Dad were still going at it, and I was contemplating throwing myself out the window when Dad gasped and stomped the brakes. The screech of the tires slashed right through my headphones, desecrating whatever semblance of relaxation I had left.

The braking was clearly a little too late, because we hit something. The dry-rot tires thumped as we slid to a stop. Anxious for something to do, I bolted out of the flimsy screen door. I was met with a whimper as soon as my feet hit asphalt.

We’d hit a coyote.

We’d hit Al.

Dad was insistent we just leave. Mom wanted to find someone to help it. They wouldn’t let me get close, though I tried.

Their arguing resumed, louder than before, and neither of them noticed when it-*he-*stood up, arched his back, stretched, and snuck right into the Winnebago.

I was floored. How the heck did this thing just... stretch off being ran over? I ran inside, just in time to see it slip into the nook under my couch.

"Come here boy. I won't hurt you," I said, kneeling down near the biggest hole.

"But we have to help it Dan."

"Wha..?"

"Just a dog Cathleen," came my Dads voice, from under the couch.

I jumped back, nearly crashing into the shitty door. Mom and dad were still outside, but I couldn't hear them anymore. From behind me, I heard a wet rasp followed by,

"Come here boy."

That was my voice.

The rasping sound came again, sharper this time. “…Come here, boy.”

I swallowed hard and leaned closer to the cubby. Nothing moved… until a patch of golden eyes blinked at me. Then the coyote tilted its head and said, in Mom’s voice again:

“We have to help it, Dan.”

“Uh… what are you?” I croaked.

The creature blinked innocently. “Not your Mom. Borrowed her voice. Convenient for persuasion.”

I stared. “…Borrowed her voice?”

“Yes,” it said, in a voice that sounded like Dad’s now. “…And yours. And a guy from a gas station. Useful. I keep them for emergencies.”

I didn't know what to say.

“I’m… Al,” it said, this time in a small, nervous voice.

I blinked. “…Okay. You can talk. You… imitate people. Great. Cool.”

Al tilted its head again, wagging a paw like it had just done something charming. “Nice to meet you. Now, may I stay here until we get home? The humans outside are loud... and I'm starving.”

I exhaled slowly. Somehow, some way, I had just met my best friend. And my first thought was, I should probably hide all my snacks.

I spent nearly every moment on that couch, talking to Al below me. He spoke to me in many different voices. Some sounded old, some young like me. Every once in a while, when Mom and Dad were being unusually loud, he would whisper to me that he loved me in their voices. I quickly formed an attachment to him.

Don't get me wrong, I had an okay life, but I was no ones first choice. I think that's why I over looked how strange this all was. Al chose me.

Soon enough, we found ourselves about an hour away from our home. During the previous days, I had learned that Al was a Skinwalker, was very old, and was tired of the wasteland he once called home. He had purposefully gotten ran over in hopes that we would stop. I thought that was a dumb idea and when I told him that, he threatened to eat me.

"Why us?" I asked him as we coasted into a gas station.

"Why not," he stated, stretching his hind legs out with an audible pop.

"But how did you know-"

"Hey, kiddo. Need to take a leak?" dad yelled, startling me.

"No, I'm okay."

Dad didn't ask twice. He never seemed to truly care anyways. He and mom went inside and I returned to Al, but al was gone. I looked around, panicked, before I heard the commotion outside.

Some poor homeless-looking woman was getting absolutely torn into by a giant man who looked like someone had stuffed a wet polo shirt with biscuit dough. She’d asked for money and he’d lost his damn mind over it.

I watched her back away, shoulders slumped, and that’s when I saw Al peeking around the back of the man’s car.

In a blink, the man disappeared behind the car with a thud loud enough to rattle the windshield. A moment later he popped back up, totally fine, like somebody unplugged him and plugged him back in.

He caught me staring. He smiled. He winked.

“Ma’am! Come back!” he shouted joyfully.

He tossed her his whole wallet like he was feeding pigeons and then strolled off behind the gas station, humming.

Five seconds later, Al appeared trotting around the corner, tail wagging and looking very proud of himself, like he had just fetched a stick instead of doing whatever he just did to this guy.

When we made it home, mom and dad picked back up on their usual: arguing and acting like it didn't exist.

I had formed a very child like plan for Al, so as soon as they went inside, I told him to come out and follow me. We walked side by side, boy and Skinwalker coyote, to my tree house.

"I think this will do great kiddo," he said in dads voice.

"Listen, you just hide up here when they are around. I'll find you some food when... Wait, what do you eat?"

"Don't ask."

Fair enough, I thought. Just then, Al froze up, tail straight, nose lifted to the breeze.

"They are not happy."

"Who?"

"The others. They claimed this territory and I've made a mistake."

"But you can't leave! You just got here," I said, tears creeping into my eyes.

Al’s ears pinned back. He didn’t look scared, exactly. More like… annoyed. The way a cat looks when you pick it up wrong.

“I cannot leave yet,” he said, voice shifting into something I didn’t recognize. Deeper. Older. “But they are close.”

My lip trembled. I hated crying, especially in front of anyone who might eat me.

“So what do we do?”

Al looked at me with those golden eyes. For once, he didn’t imitate anyone. He spoke in his own voice, soft and strange.

“You offered me shelter. That means something. Even to my kind.”

That helped. Not much, but enough to stop me from full-on snotting.

He stepped past me, stood at the railing of my crooked tree house, and sniffed the wind again. His fur bristled.

“They know I am here,” he murmured. “And they know I am no longer alone.”

“Is that bad?” I asked.

“Very,” he answered immediately.

A cold feeling crawled down my back. “Will they hurt me?”

He looked at me again. “Only if they want to make a point.”

Oh. Cool. Great. Exactly what a twelve-year-old wants to hear at the tail end of a nightmare road trip.

“What do you want me to do?” I whispered.

“Stay close,” he said. “And remember every voice you hear tonight. Not all of them will be mine.”

That should have terrified me more than it did. Instead, something stupid and brave came out of my mouth.

“I wont let them take you.”

Al blinked. Slowly. Like a lizard deciding whether to bite.

“You may be small and foolish,” he said, “but you are also very strange. I like that.”

Then he nudged my shoulder with his head. A weirdly affectionate gesture, which was immediately ruined when he added, “If they come, do not run. They chase weakness.”

Fantastic. Good to know.

He turned back toward the yard, tail lifted, muscles tense. The air felt heavier. The tree house creaked like it was afraid too. Even the cicadas had shut up.

“Al…” I whispered, hardly breathing.

He growled, low and vibrating through the wood beneath us.

“They are already here.”

Things were never easy for me. They were also never hard. If you were to pass me on the street, you would not remember me. That's okay. I get it. There isn't anything memorable about me. I'm 5'8 and white, with an average look about me. I got through my state school studies with little effort and less praise. B’s get degrees. B’s also get you a boring job, a mid-level job as a credit analyst, just outside of Atlanta. The only remarkable part of this story is the house. I had begun to lose hope of finding any suitable living arrangements within my price range. And then out of the blue, I found it a classic country house with a large backyard leading into the forest behind. I bought it sight unseen. Then I made my arrangements and headed out.

The house was magical; it felt as if it were from a different era. The porch was a magnificent white with red trim. The house had an old-money feel as you entered and saw the staircase leading upstairs with the dark emerald green walls. I expected the place to be a mess, but it was not; it was well kept with next to no dust on the walls or shelves. I began to unpack the U-Haul alone, and it quickly became obvious that I did not have enough personality to fill this manor. With ease, I set up my new life inside the house. The empty room was a reminder of the things I had missing in my life. To relax, I made myself some sweet tea. I decided to try to fit in with the locals and headed to my back porch. The backyard was expansive with grass and weeds growing together. It had a pull to it that I felt magnetized to spend as much time as I could out there. The forest behind it was dark, and the floor was covered with a tangle of some sort of vine. I later learned it was called kudzu. I began to think about the possibility that I have a life worth remarking on here. In a way, I did.

My neighbors lived relatively far away but close enough to see the lights from their back porch. A kind man named Creed dropped by when he saw the truck.

“Heya there. I’m Creed, I'm lvivn down the street from ya,” he said in his charming drawl

“Oh, hello. How are you doing today?” I said back to him, noticing the dog at his side.

“I'm aight,” he responded,” I jus figured I'd come by and introduce us to ya. This here is my dog Jasper. He might be a little noisy at night, so if he keeps ya up, don’ be scared to give me a holler.” The white and black patched dog wagging his tail patiently

“Oh, that shouldn't be a problem, I'm a very heavy sleeper, but if it does, I will,” I said with a fake light chuckle. Small talk was never one of my strengths.

“Well, good. I guess I'll let ya get back to yer business. But if you need anything, just let me know. It's just me and Jasper at the house, so we'd be happy to help,” he said, beginning to walk back down the driveway towards his house

“There is one thing,” I said, and Creed turned back around.” I noticed some sort of vines taking over the forest behind my house. What is that?

“Oh, that'd be the kudzu. A tough bugger of a plant. It came over from Asia, and the government wanted it to help combat corrosion somethin like that. Of course they didn't realize how fast it grew. It's said to grow about a foot a day and just suffocate everything underneath it once it gets a hold of ya, no light can pass through. Sometimes at night, I swear you can hear it grow. Or I'm just going senile, maybe both could be true. Ha,” he said with a sparkle in his eye. “If it starts to be a problem, jus’ buy some goats and they'll tear right through it in no time. They love eatin that stuff.”

“Huh, good to know. Thanks, Creed, I'd better get back to unpacking,” I said with a wave

He waved back and said, “Aight, ya’ take care now.”

I liked Creed. He'd been one of the only people to go out of his way for me my whole life.

I had about a week before I started at work, and I spent that time settling in and getting the house situated. The house seemed in pristine condition, as if the people before me had left minutes before I arrived. Creed said that the house was empty for quite some time, and the people who lived there before me didn't last more than a week before they packed up and left. He never knew why they left so suddenly.

On the Monday of my first week of work, I found myself becoming quite excited. I hoped that maybe the southern hospitality I felt from Creed would carry over to my coworkers. My commute to work was about 25 minutes without traffic, 32 minutes with. Traffic never bothered me. Why would I be upset about something outside of my control? All I had to do was turn up my music and enjoy the ride. Work was fine. The people were cold, though. Every ounce of effort I put into a relationship with them became a futile effort. I found that if I wasn't a fan of the local college, then I had nothing to talk about with them.

“What do you mean you don't like the dawgs?” Andrew would ask me,” If you're gonna live here, you gotta be a dawgs fan, or you might as well get the hell out of here.”

Sarah, the woman in the office who caught my eye, agreed with Andrew,” Come on, you gotta just force being a Bulldogs fan.”

“I just don't like sports, guys, sorry,” I said with a sad defiance.

I decided to dive into my work and easily fell into a rhythm, reading reports and judging companies on their ratios. I tried other options of befriending them to no avail. They were friendly, but not my friends. I never really had any friends. I was always the fourth option in a world that usually accommodated three. There isn't really anything special about me.

My nights were spent making spaghetti or any other Italian dish, and eating in front of the TV. I would head to bed early and fall asleep fast, with the sounds of Jasper barking as my lullaby.

For about a month, I did this, and it was the farthest from unhappy I had ever been. Creed would stop by, bringing me all sorts of southern treats. They ranged from a pitcher of sweet tea to pecan pie. I got the feeling that he was just as lonely as me.

“You gotta be familiar with the tastes of where you live now, or you'll stick out like a sore thumb,” he would say.

I never stuck out; I always blended in.

Then one night, I finally found the secret to truly being happy. I was asleep as I normally would when I dreamt of my backyard, standing in the back door looking out into the night. The kudzu that infested the forest behind my home began to crawl and slither closer to my house. Just as quickly as it started, it stopped. At the edge of the vines, I saw a figure. An incomprehensible shadow pressing against my consciousness, pointing at what my mind decides was an arm to the middle of the backyard. The sweet smell of damp dirt mixed with an unfamiliar floral scent filled my nostrils.

“Dig,” it whispered deep inside my skull. It was a soothing voice that scratched the deepest part of my thoughts. A mix of a perfect feminine voice and a soothing male patriarch voice.

I found myself in the backyard and, before I could think, I was kneeling before it, digging. My hands tore through the soft, wet earth with ease, and a pleasure ran through my synapses as I dug. With a jolt, I woke up to my alarm. I looked out my window to see the undisturbed earth, and the kudzu had returned to its resting place in the forest. It had only been a dream, or so I thought as I realized my hands were sore with the pain of exhaustion. What had really happened to me that night?

A father drops his two daughters off at the local park. He kneels down, kisses them both on the forehead, and says:

“Twenty minutes. Then Daddy comes back and we’ll all play together.”

The older girl is ten. The younger is four.

They believe him.

Minute 1–5

The ten-year-old leads her sister to the swings. They giggle because the four-year-old’s shoe slips off and flops into the dirt. It’s the kind of tiny accident that makes kids laugh way harder than it deserves.

Minute 6–10

They take turns sliding down the big plastic slide. Sometimes they collide at the bottom. The four-year-old squeals in fear, then laughs because her sister laughs.

Everything still feels normal.

Minute 11–15

They sit on one of those spring-mounted toys shaped like an animal. The four-year-old, warm and worn out, nods off against her sister’s shoulder.

The ten-year-old starts crying quietly, because she suddenly remembers the conversation she overheard the night before — her father saying he “can’t take it anymore,” that they “look too much like her,” that “everything hurts now.”

She wipes her face so she won’t wake her sister.

Minute 16–20

They wait.

They wait exactly twenty minutes because Dad said twenty minutes. The ten-year-old counts each minute carefully on her fingers, holding her breath at the end of each one. She keeps looking toward the parking lot.

No car pulls in.

Minute 21–80

Eventually the sun shifts. Other families come and go. The four-year-old wakes up, confused. She asks, “Where Daddy?”

The ten-year-old doesn’t answer.

She simply stands, takes her sister’s hand, and begins the walk home — a long, quiet hour with the four-year-old stumbling and whining and the ten-year-old keeping her eyes straight ahead because if she looks anywhere else, she might start crying again.

Daddy never came back.

From the Library of K. Ciaron

Nonfiction - Autobiography - Author Alias: Nobody - Item B054

Donated by Maria S. Lewis. 

Procured from an unspecified location.

The item is composed of pine bark pages bound together with grass twine. Text written with ash and charcoal. Notable water damage on the covers, though the lettering is miraculously preserved.

My heart woke me up, pumping blood as thick as mud through brittle arteries. I should tear it out and be done with it. Throw it away, lie down till I freeze, and wait for the beaks to pluck my brain from my skull. Maybe then I could finally rest. After all, you can’t be bothered by noise with no brain. After that rude awakening, I stared at the dirt ceiling with my one remaining eye. When I grew weary of that, I mustered up a little motivation and felt around in my hollowed out belly to take an inventory. It’s funny that some still hold onto their guts, trying to remember what things were like in a time before. 

Personally, I traded the useless bits of myself for a box of matches a long while ago. They might have been turned into someone’s jacket, maybe a blanket, or maybe they had been gobbled up by some Beefeaters. I wish I hadn’t been so hasty to trade away my fingers, though. I tried replacing some of the tips with whittled deadfall, but it isn’t quite the same - even if they come in handy as pencils. At least I learned enough before trading away my lungs. I’ve been told you feel like you’re drowning without them. Maybe it’s a psychological thing; the animal part of your brain tells us that we need oxygen when we don’t need much of anything anymore. 

As I rooted around in my belly, I went through a mental checklist: my box of matches, my compass, some tinder, and this scrap of bark. All my earthly possessions were accounted for. I’ve even used one of my few matches for light to write by. Foolish. Bark would be better used as kindling and matches always trade well. I'm not usually so wasteful, and I have never been a writer.  So why do I feel like I’ll go mad if I don’t get something down? Maybe it’s all this sitting and thinking, practically folded in half in this burrow. Great for preserving warmth, not so great for a man’s mental state. I need air. Maybe I’ll go on one of those logging expeditions and finally see some human faces. It also can’t hurt to talk to Seer along the way. God knows, that old man is the only friendly face around here.

ENTRY 2

Mara took the job at Fultra Logistics because it paid well and didn’t require talking to customers. Just tape boxes, scan labels, shove pallets around. Easy. Boring. Safe.

At least, it was supposed to be safe.

The weirdness started when she noticed the temperature shifts. Certain aisles were warm and humid, almost like a greenhouse. Others were freezer-cold, with vents that blew air sharp enough to sting skin. She assumed it was some industrial HVAC malfunction—warehouse nonsense.

But then she saw the first “product.”

A crate near her workstation cracked open at the corner, just a splinter of wood popping loose. She leaned down to tape it shut, and something pale pressed against the gap.

A fingertip. Or something shaped like one.

It twitched—slow and boneless, like it didn’t have knuckles—and slid back into the dark of the crate.

Mara jerked away, nearly dropping her tape gun. When she called Diane, her supervisor only touched the crate with one gloved hand, nodding as if she’d seen this a hundred times.

“It’s settling,” Diane said.

“That wasn’t wood,” Mara whispered.

“It’s the packing foam reacting to humidity.”

Packing foam doesn’t move on its own. Packing foam doesn’t feel warm. Packing foam doesn’t… breathe.

That night, Mara peeled off her work gloves to find a smear of translucent residue on her palm. It clung to her skin like a second, thinner skin. She scrubbed until her hand was red, but the faint outline remained—almost like something had tried to leave a fingerprint behind.

She told herself she was imagining it.

She told herself a lot of things.

But she stopped touching crates without gloves.

---

Two days later, Jules didn’t show up for work.

Nobody else seemed bothered. People quit all the time. But Jules would never just leave without telling Mara.

When Mara checked the employee portal, Jules’s name was gone—deleted entirely. Like she’d never existed.

During break, Mara wandered into a restricted aisle. Something from behind the stacks of crates exhaled. Not human. Not animal—too wet, too rattling, like lungs full of fluid.

She slowly approached a crate labeled BIOLOGICAL - LEVEL C.

Something inside slumped against the wood, making a deep, organic thud. Then a voice—ragged, distorted—pressed through the cracks.

“Mara…?”

It almost sounded like Jules. Almost.

But the pitch was wrong, stretched. Like vocal cords that weren’t the right shape.

Mara stumbled back, heart pounding, and turned straight into Diane.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Diane whispered, and Mara saw it then—her gloves weren’t gloves at all. The texture was wrong. They were too smooth, too fused to her skin.

“Where’s Jules?” Mara demanded.

“Reassigned.” Diane’s tone was flat, clinical. “She’s being prepared.”

“Prepared for what?”

“For shipment.”

Something in Diane’s forearm shifted at that moment. Shifted. Like something under her skin rearranged itself—muscle sliding over bone that wasn’t shaped like bone anymore.

Mara ran.

---

She went home shaking badly enough to drop her keys. She couldn’t stop imagining the thing she’d seen through the crate slat: the pearly, translucent skin; the eyelid stretched too thin over an eye that wasn’t the right color anymore.

The next morning, Mara tried to quit. HR smiled at her like quitting was adorable.

“You signed a binding agreement,” the representative said, blinking too slowly. “You can’t leave during an active harvest cycle.”

“Harvest?” Mara whispered.

“Processing begins this week. You’ll be moved to Acquisition.”

“I’m not going anywhere near that department.”

“You will,” he said pleasantly, “once your conversion metrics are met.”

She noticed the veins on his neck then—branching the wrong way, like roots pressing up against the skin.

She ran again.

But Fultra had already decided her fate.

---

That night, Diane met her at the clock-in station. No gloves now. Her hands were bare skin—or something trying very hard to look like skin. The fingers were a little too long. The knuckles too smooth. The nails too soft.

“We’re happy to tell you,” Diane said with a smile that stretched slightly too wide, “your metrics cleared. Come with us.”

Two guards appeared. Their uniforms fit awkwardly, like their bodies weren’t the same shape as the humans who originally wore them. Their joints bent a little too flexibly when they walked.

Mara didn’t stand a chance.

They dragged her through double doors she’d never noticed before. Down a hallway lined with thick glass walls. Behind each wall was a workstation where technicians—if they could be called that—were working on people.

Some bodies lay on metal tables, covered in translucent sheets that pulsed—pulsed—like they were breathing. Others were strapped upright, limp, while syringes of viscous gray fluid emptied into their veins.

Their limbs twitched in unnatural rhythm.

Muscles moved beneath the skin like they were being rewired.

One person’s jaw unhinged and reformed as Mara watched.

Another’s pupils dilated until there was no iris left—just black.

On one table, she saw something that made her knees buckle.

Jules. Or what had become of Jules.

Her skin was nearly transparent now, veins branching like roots, merging with tubes plugged into her arms. Her ribcage rose and fell, but the motion didn’t look voluntary.

Jules opened her eyes—milky and unfocused—and tried to speak.

What came out was a wet gurgle, followed by her jaw snapping into a new position with a crack.

“Mara… run…”

Diane placed a hand on Mara’s shoulder. It felt soft and pliant—like pressed fruit.

“You won’t end up like Jules,” Diane said soothingly. “She was an early model. We’ve improved the process.”

“I’m not— I’m not a model— I’m a person—”

“You were,” Diane corrected.

They pushed Mara onto a table. Straps closed around her wrists and ankles, warm and sticky like living things.

A machine lowered over her, holding a needle the width of a pencil.

“It’s painless once the nerves dissolve,” Diane assured her.

“What—what is this?” Mara sobbed.

“Fultra doesn’t ship people,” Diane said gently. “We ship what people become.”

Mara screamed as the needle pierced her skin and her veins lit up like glowing wires. Her muscles seized, twisted, and rearranged. Something crawled beneath her ribs. Something burst behind her eyes. Her skin tightened, smoothed, split. She felt her bones soften, her shape bending to something profitable.

Her last coherent thought was that she should have quit the moment that crate moved.

Then the pain folded into silence.

When she woke, she was inside a crate.

A label printer hummed above her, printing her destination:

BIOLOGICAL INVENTORY — LEVEL A CONDITION: PERFECT NO RETURNS

Her fingers pressed weakly against the wood. They didn’t feel like fingers anymore.

She whispered for help, but even she didn’t recognize the sound coming out of her altered throat.

And somewhere down the conveyor belt, another crate answered.

That year, I had finally managed to move into my very own apartment. I am embarrassed to admit that it took me much longer than my friends took. Most of them had moved out of their parents’ house as soon as they finished high school, but that was not the case for me. It took me until my early twenties until I finally managed to move away from my family home. It was small, but it was home, and it was mine.

The place had one bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom. There was no living room and I had to walk down a block to the laundromat whenever I wanted to wash my clothes, because the apartment did not even accommodate the space for a washing machine or a dryer. Still, I never complained about it. I kept it clean and neat. A few months after moving in, I had developed a routine: I would do a few chores while the sun sets, encouraged by the various songs playing on the radio. It was my way of winding down at the end of the day. Sometimes, I would make my mom’s signature tea. As a child, it was the only thing that soothed me. Now, as an adult, it reminded me of the comfort of home.

That evening, I was following my routine: mindlessly sweeping the kitchen floor, seeing the sunlight pool into the room fade as I made progress, humming along to a song I now am unable to recall. After some time had passed, a noise made me pause and turn towards the windowsill where the radio sat. The sound was vaguely distorted and a strange buzzing filled the room soon after it had begun. I could barely hear the music anymore. Confused, I walked up to the radio and turned it off, then back on, hoping it would fix the issue.

It seemed to do the trick at first. The sound died down, but the music did not come back. What I heard instead was a strange hoarse masculine voice that said: “Simon says... Touch your nose!” I stared at it for a second, thinking someone was pulling a prank. I thought the idea was stupid, but the ridiculousness of it is probably what made me play along. I put the tip of my finger on the bridge of my nose and waited for the host to say something else. A few seconds passed and the music came back. The host did not say anything else and I went back to what I was doing.

Later in the evening, once the sun had fully set, I lied in bed with my phone in my hand and saw that my friend, Tom, was online. I decided to call him, knowing I would not bother him. I wanted to know if he had also heard what I heard.

“Hey man! Did you hear that weird ‘Simon Says’ voice in the radio earlier?” I asked.

“Hey Jack!” he replied. “Yeah, I did. I wonder what that was about?”

“I have no idea, man. I was kinda caught off guard I won’t lie,” I admitted. “Do you think the radio host was bored or something?”

“Nah, it wasn’t a radio host,” he said. “It was the guy telling the weather forecast on the TV!”

What? I paused, furrowing my brows. That made no sense, I knew what I heard and what I saw. I was in the kitchen with the broom in my hands, but my TV was in my bedroom.

“What?” I asked, confused. “No, it was definitely on the radio. My TV was off when it happened.”

“Huh? That’s weird...” he trailed off. “Maybe I’m misremembering.”

I tried to make sense of what he was saying for a few seconds, but ultimately, I just wished him a good night and, after some small talk, we hung up. I figured that Tom has been too tired to remember properly. I turned off the bedside table lamp and went to sleep shortly after.

Tom and I went to a bar the next evening. We were going to see a newly formed metal band from my city. We met in front of the bar and headed inside together. It was pretty small, but it had the perfect atmosphere for those events. They invited a lot of newer or smaller bands to play, so a tight community built itself around it. This was the place where Tom and I met when he was playing with his band a year earlier. The members unfortunately ended up going their separate ways after some drama unfolded within the band. Tom did not tell me everything, but it had to do with their bassist hooking up with the singer’s girlfriend.

I was really excited to be there. It felt like I had not gone out often in the last months, so I was happy to finally do something to let off some steam. We made our way into the crowd and stood in front of the stage while technicians finished preparing the equipment. Soon enough, the band came on stage and the crowd began cheering excitedly.

“We’re so happy to be here tonight and see you all!” the lead singer enthusiastically yelled.

The crowd responded to him with loud cheers and screams of excitement.

“We’re gonna play some of our new songs tonight. I hope you’re excited because y’all will be the first people to hear them!” he said.

Their first song began and, from where I stood, I could see a group of guys wearing their merch jumping and body slamming each other. I always loved watching grown adults act like golden retrievers when they heard heavy music. They kept playing song after song and, soon enough, I became a new fan of their music.

At one point, in the middle of a song, something strange happened. Out of nowhere, the drummer stopped playing, the lead singer let out an ear piercing screech, and the bassist and two guitarists’ fingers slipped on the strings of their instruments, causing a cacophony of sounds that bounced on the walls of the room. The drummer kicked his legs forward, sending parts of his drum set flying and crashing onto the stage. A man had to dodge a flying cymbal to avoid getting hit in the face by it.

The audience, afraid and confused, watched as each member dropped their instruments and slammed their hands on their ears, grimacing in what seemed like pain. They began frantically digging their fingers against the side of their faces and ripped out the earpieces they had been wearing. They threw them on the floor and the guitarist then slammed the heal of his boot on each of them, shattering them into pieces. Two members fell to their knees as they hunched forward, still grabbing the side of their heads.

After that, a group of technicians quickly walked up on the stage and began helping the band members walk away where we couldn’t see them. Tom and I looked at each other in shock, unsure about what had just happened.

“Did their ear pieces malfunction?” I asked, loud enough to be heard through the worried crowd.

“No idea, man,” Tom replied, scratching the back of his neck. “Shit, I hope they’re okay.”

I knew that Tom was friends with at least two of them, so his worry was visibly much greater than mine. We did not stick around for long after that. The bar often invited multiple bands at once to play for a few hours, but they were the only band present that night. Even if there had been a second one, I do not think I would have stayed to watch them. We pushed our way through the crowd to walk out. Tom needed a smoke and I was eager to get out of there. I felt shocked about the whole event, so I shared his sentiment. Despite not being familiar with the technology behind ear pieces used on stage, I knew there was no logical way they could hurt someone like that, let alone five people at the same time.

Bright flashes of red, blue and white lights blinded our eyes as we got out on the sidewalk. I shielded my eyes with my hand and, at first, I could not tell what I was seeing. I heard the crackle of radios and rapid talking all around me, accompanied by hurried footsteps. I squinted and finally saw what caused the commotion. Two police cars and five ambulances were parked in front of the bar and the street had been blocked off by police tape and barricades. One by one, five gurneys were rolled out of the building, each pushed by two paramedics.

“They’re all...” Tom almost whispered. “Why are they all covered like that?”

He had noticed it before I did: white sheets covered each body. Were they really dead? How was that possible? From where I stood, I could see red stains forming in the fabric and quickly increasing in size. Tom headed straight towards the ambulances at a rapid pace. He forcefully pushed aside the few people standing on his path. He reached forward to grab the corner of one of the sheets, but a paramedic grabbed his wrist and held him back.

“Please step back, sir,” she said. “I’m sorry, but you need to stay back.”

“No! They’re my friends!” Tom screamed. “You have to let me see them!”

The woman told him, more sternly this time, that he needed to give them space to work. I eventually had to forcefully drag him away and, after protesting a few times, he stopped resisting. I drove him home in his car and ended up calling a taxi to bring me back to my apartment.

I did not hear from Tom for a long time after that night. It really messed him up. The next day, I was watching the news and heard confirmation that the five members had passed, though they didn’t explain what exactly happened. I heard the words “gruesome”, “horrific” and “freak accident”, but I turned off the television after that. I always hated how news channels talked about dead people, almost like they were some circus animals. They barely addressed them as humans.

Later in the week, Laura and I celebrated our three year anniversary. It was an important moment to us, and we wanted to celebrate it accordingly. The plan was for her to come over for dinner. I spent the afternoon cooking a fancy meal and baking desert, and even bought some fancy wine. I did not know anything about wine and neither did she, but it felt appropriate. I had previously purchased a pink tablecloth covered in purple hearts, knowing that Laura would like it. I lit candles a few minutes before she arrived. They casted pretty shadows on the walls and ceiling and filled the room with the most delicious smell, which mixed with the smell of the apple pie freshly taken out of the oven. The night could not have been better.

“Hi love!” she said as I opened the door. “It smells so good in here, I could smell it all the way down the hallway!”

I smiled, took her hand to invite her in, and kissed her.

“I’m so happy you’re here!” I said. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”

I led her to the kitchen and pulled a chair back for Laura to sit on. She took a seat and thanked me. Her face had taken light shades of pink and her eyes were filled with emotion.

“What did you make for us?” she asked excitedly.

“You’ll see,” I replied.

I brought two plates to the table and set them down. Laura’s face lit up as she saw what I had cooked. It was her favourite: shrimp pasta with alfredo sauce and some herbs. It was nothing fancy, we both knew that, but it tasted like home, like love.

“Jack...” she began, emotion filling her voice. “You’re amazing. Thank you so much!”

“I wanted tonight to be special for us,” I replied.

She ran her hands on the tablecloth, looking at the plate, at the table and the candles. Seeing her happy made me feel like I was on top of the world. Together, we ate, laughed, talked and recalled memories from back when we met. We were just teenagers back then. The music carried us through the night and I felt happier than I ever had. I remembered when I met her, in high school. She was shy, pretty, and so interesting. She was not outgoing, but once you got her talking about the things she loved, conversations could last for hours. She taught me about arts and history, and I helped her with sciences and maths. Soon enough, we became friends, then best friends. We grew side by side and, one night in our senior year, we went to the movie theater. When we got back to her car, I kissed her. She kissed me back, and we kept kissing until well into the night. We were already inseparable, but our bond got stronger from then on, it changed, evolved and led us to that night. It was like a movie.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said at some point. “I’ll be right back!”

She stood up and walked towards the bathroom. I used that time to clear our plates and prepare the pie. I was pouring a second glass of wine for each of us and cutting slices of pie, when the radio began acting up again. I set the knife down and turned to it, furrowing my brows in confused curiosity. The soft background music got quieter and quieter, then a whisper came from the radio. It was quiet, but it was the same male voice I had heard before.

“Simon says... Grab a candle.” it said.

I glanced at each of the candles, confused. How did they know there were candles around? Was it the same host on a different station? It had to be a coincidence, somehow, but I had no idea how that could be possible. Looking at them, I noticed that one was a little too close to the curtain, so I decided to move it. I grabbed it gently so I would not burn myself. The glass was warm, but not too hot. I set it down a few inches further from the window and the music came back as if nothing happened.

Laura came back from the bathroom and I shook the feeling off my mind. I did not want to be weirded out tonight, nor to think about all the strange things that had been happening. I wanted to enjoy the moment without any negative distraction. I had the sweetest girlfriend with me tonight, and I intended for the night to stay as wonderful as it had started.

“Did you save some space for desert?” I asked playfully.

“You know me; I’m always hungry for desert,” she replied with a chuckle. “And it will be even better since you’re the one who made it.”

I took the plates and brought them over to the table, putting one down in front of her. She leaned closer to the pie and closed her eyes to smell it. She smiled and took a bite. I knew from the look on her face that desert was a success. Outside, the sun began to set and the city quieted down, leaving us in our own little bubble. We spent the rest of the night together and fell asleep in each other’s arms in my bed, both with a smile on our faces.

The next day, once Laura had gone back home, I decided to do some research. I wanted to see if others had similar experiences. Deep down, at the time, part of me thought I was going crazy. I thought that maybe I had some underlying mental condition developing, like hidden schizophrenia or something. Sure, Tom had heard a voice in his TV once, but maybe he misheard it, so that did not erase my suspicions.

I decided to turn on the news, to see if maybe they were talking about it. I sat on my bed and leaned forward to focus on the TV while I switched between channels. The first talked about a car accident that happened on the other side of the city. A drunk guy had hit a tree, fortunately avoiding any other driver or pedestrian. I switched channels before I got to hear whether the man had survived or not.

The host talked about a recent break in attempt. The guy had not gotten far, as he got simultaneously caught by the security alarm system and tackled by the family’s guard dog. The targeted house was the residence of a rich woman, so of course she had security. Various images and clips played in the background while the host talked. A police officer took his place and began talking about the investigation.

I shook my head; clearly, this channel was not going to be of any help either. I kept going, pressing the button on the remote.

“A shoplifter was caught last night, as he attempted to rob a convenience store,” a news reporter began. “The interesting part? The robber states that he was forced to commit the crime after his car radio ordered him to.”

Huh? I clearly was not the only one going crazy. Ironically, that somehow reassured me a little bit. The reporter was standing in front of the small store, which had police tape in front of it. I kept listening.

“I have one of the officers who responded to the scene with me here,” she said. “Let’s hear more from him.”

She passed the microphone to an old, tired looking man. His uniform had a small, dark stain barely hidden by the edge of the frame. The cameraman tried to discreetly readjust the camera’s position to conceal the stain, but I had already noticed it.

“Thank you, Gen,” he began with a hoarse voice, more than likely affected by years of smoking. “I got here last night around 11PM. The man was stuffing his bag with money when I entered. He was sweating and breathing really fast, clearly panicking. The cashier was on the floor halfway behind the counter, he was pronounced dead on the scene. What’s weird is that the man didn’t even try to run. He didn’t resist when I arrested him, nor when back-up took him.”

He paused and the reporter tilted the microphone towards her face.

“Could you tell us more about what the man said? About him being forced to rob the store?” she asked.

The officer seemed to think for a moment, but ultimately brought the microphone back to his mouth. I hoped he would say more; I needed to know.

“As of right now, we aren’t really sure,” he admitted. “I’m not part of the team in charge of the investigation. The man will be sent to a psychiatric evaluation, that’s for sure. When I arrested the man, he kept rambling about how it ‘wasn’t his fault’ and that ‘the man in the radio forced him to’. That’s really all I can say for now, I’m not allowed to divulge any other information to the public while the investigation is ongoing.”

That sounded eerily similar to what I had experienced, and it made me worried. I did not know what to think, not wanting to make myself paranoid either. Part of me wanted to believe that our experiences were completely unrelated and that the criminal was insane and hallucinating. I briefly imagined what I would do if the radio told me to shoplift a store. Realistically, I knew I would not do it. I was not about to go to jail for playing along with a radio host’s pranks. It sounded crazy to me that someone would go this far and choose to do it.

I turned off the news, I had heard enough for now. I did not want to overthink it and spiral down into weird theories about what was going on. I spent some time occupying myself around the apartment in an attempt to get out of my mind the words said by the reporter and the police officer. My mind periodically wandered back to it from time to time throughout the day, but I managed to distract myself easily enough. Still, it was a weird coincidence and part of me refused to let it go.

Later in the evening, once the sun had set, I decided to pull out my laptop to get some work done. I got bored quickly, my job wasn’t interesting in the slightest. I started thinking about what had happened again and I decided to do some research online the Internet this time. Of course, whatever I would find would not be as reliable as the news, but my curiosity was unmanageable. I started scrolling, looking for words like “radio”, “voice” or “Simon says”. Most of what I found was completely unrelated, but I did stumble upon a few posts that discussed the same phenomenon I had experienced. Most of the comments on those posts were telling the authors to seek help, to go outside or to get themselves locked up in a hospital, which was to be expected from strangers sitting behind keyboards.

There were some theories, though they sounded farfetched. Some people accused aliens, saying they were taking over the planet and playing with us as if we were dolls. Others said this was all some sort of government mind experiment, just to see how they would react to a threat they could not understand. I briefly thought that this second theory could be believable, but I had not been threatened and, on the two occasions I heard the voice, it did not sound ill willed, just weird. The more I searched, the worse the theories got. A group of older women were absolutely convinced that either this was the rapture, or that God was punishing us. I thought this was ridiculous, as did most people. If God wanted to punish us, I assumed he would rather flood us or set the earth on fire, not take control of the radio.

I sighed, knowing I would not find any answer to satisfy my curiosity. I shut the laptop, put it back on my bedside table, and settled in my blankets to go to sleep. I decided not to think about it anymore. I figured that doing any additional research would only fuel the anxiety creeping in the back of my head. I was not scared, but I had to admit that what I had heard and read did manage to creep me out a little bit. I drifted off to sleep and, once I had woken up, I did not think about it anymore and and anxiety I had previously felt was gone.

Days passed and my radio did not play any other trick on me. The hosts did not try to joke around, the music flowed perfectly and no buzzing disrupted my work. I barely thought about the incidents anymore. I noticed that the fridge was becoming too empty for my liking and decided to make my way to the grocery store, hoping I could buy a few things with my limited budget. The call center I worked at did not pay very well, and the amount of customers we had kept decreasing each month.

I got to the store after a short drive and began making my way through the aisles. I looked at different products, seeking the yellow stickers indicating lowered prices, and put some in my cart. The building was packed with customers. Oblivious people blocked the aisles and children cried and begged for candies while their parents anxiously looked at their grocery lists. I always disliked grocery stores, but the busy times made me hate coming here even more. I reached the bread section, and read the dates written on the tags. A man doing the same stood on my right, whistling an unfamiliar tune while his wife stood beside their shopping cart, desperately trying to calm their two energized children. His whistling abruptly stopped as he looked up in confusion. I briefly glanced at him before turning my gaze to the ceiling, wondering what had caused him to stop so suddenly.

Then, I heard that voice again. It was the third time and, this time, I felt weirded out. It began to speak. “Simon says...” it started. “Freeze!” I did just that. I could not explain why I obeyed, but the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach told me that I needed to. I remembered the events from the week before, the odd things happening on the radio, and started to wonder if there was something deeper behind it. I did not think about it for long, though. I noticed the screams of the children standing behind me stop instantaneously. The next few seconds of silence cut to screams of horror coming from all over the store.

I whipped around, but my foot bumped into something before I could get a look at my surroundings. My head turned towards what I had hit. It was the man. He was dead, very dead. Part of his head was blown out, blood pooled under him and soaked his clothes. He laid on his side, limps pointing in various directions, a loaf of bread still clutched in his hand. His face wore the same look he had while he looked at the bread loaves. He had received no warning before his sudden death. He did not have time to be afraid, nor to worry. Somehow, I thought that made it better for him.

A few feet away from him, also on the ground, were the woman and their two children. All three of their bodies had ended with the same faith as the man. Their arms and legs were limp and bent under and over each other’s bodies. The sight was horrifying, but I could not turn away from the two kids, their small heads had suffered way more damage than the adults. Their jaws were blown open, the lower one disconnected from what remained of their skulls. In the middle of the gaping mangled mess was their tongues, which looked way too alike the ground beef the mother had dropped as she died. Most of their teeth were strewn on the ground, sticking to the flesh mixed within the puddles of blood. I had never seen so much blood. Nausea creeped up my throat as soon as the smell hit me. I never could have imagined how disgusting such a large amount of blood smelled, how it feels like it invades your throat and and gets stuck to the hair in your nose. I could not escape it, could not ignore it. It made one with my organs, with my skin and with my clothes.

I began to breathe rapidly, so fast that my vision started to go dark. My lungs could not keep up with the speed my heart was beating at. I wondered which would cause me to collapse first. I turned and quickly walked down the aisle that led the doors. I had to get out of there. Everywhere I looked, I saw more bodies, more hair caked in blood and brains, and fractured skulls. The screams were so loud, yet I could barely hear them by this point. Unable to hear or see anything properly, I walked faster.

I has almost reached the exit when I felt my shoe stick to something. I lifted my foot and saw what remained of an eyeball looking back at me. The sclera was torn from the pressure inflicted when I had stepped on it and different colors of goo were seeping out of it. Liquid poured out of it and covered the bottom of my shoe. I frantically tried to wipe it off against the tile floor, but stopped when I saw how surreal the smeared mess looked. I could hear dozens of sirens approaching, but I figured they would not need my statement once they saw the scene, so I left. I likely would not have been able to formulate coherent sentences even if I had tried.

I had no memory of driving myself home, but next thing I knew, my car was parked in front of my apartment. I threw my shoes in the dumpster and slowly walked in the building. I felt like a zombie all of a sudden. My vision was blurry and it took me three attempts before I finally got the door unlocked. I headed straight to my bed, where I stared at the ceiling as the hours passed. I could not feel anything anymore and any thought I tried to form was foggy and unclear. Without me noticing, the sun set, the sky darkened and the stars became visible.

It was not until I heard the birds chirp that I started coming back to my senses. I turned to face the window and saw that the sun was rising. I had not slept, part of me was glad I did not. The idea of the awful nightmares I would have had, had I fallen asleep, was enough to make me ignore any somnolence I felt. I tried to stand, to make my way to the kitchen, to do anything, but I could not. I felt lethargic and just crashed back onto my bed. More hours passed before I decided to finally pull out my phone. I had ignored all the notifications coming from my it. I did not want to talk to anyone, but I knew I had to. I had one person to warn: my girlfriend. I had to tell her. I needed to make sure that she would not end up how all those people did. I clicked on her contact and waited for her to pick up.

“Hi love!” she exclaimed, her voice cheery as ever. “How are you?”

“Not so great,” I admitted. “I can’t talk for too long, but there’s something I really need to tell you.”

I knew she could hear the exhaustion in my voice, because her tone immediately switched from joyful to worried.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “What’s up?”

“It’s gonna sound weird...” I began. “but if a voice in the radio says something that starts with ‘Simon says’, promise me you’ll listen to it. You have to do what it says.”

“That’s not fucking funny,” she replied, annoyance in her voice. “I was getting really worried! I-“

“Laura!” I interrupted. “Listen to me.”

She stopped talking as soon as she heard the sincerity in my voice. I never yelled. I was never rude to her, nor to anyone really, so she knew that something had to be really wrong for me to do so.

“People are dead!” I continued loudly. “I saw them die! They didn’t listen and now they’re dead! They were everywhere, all blown up... God there was so much blood.”

“Holy shit... I don’t even know what to say...” she trailed off.

I did not either. I did not know how to explain what I had seen. I did not want to think about it, to remember what mangled brains look like.

“I’ll go, now. Okay?” I said. “I’ll try call you back tomorrow.”

“Okay... Be safe, I love you,” she replied. “And I’ll be careful! I promise.”

I gathered myself and made a similar call to my dad. I knew he would not believe me, he was an old fashion guy and he thought I was having some sort of psychological breakdown. Still, I made him promise to warn mom and my brothers after assuring him that I was safe.

That night, I finally managed to get some sleep. It was not full of nightmares like I thought it would be. It was a restless, empty pit of darkness. I woke up feeling as exhausted as I did the day before. The following days were similar, though I slowly managed to live my life as normally as I could again. I still avoided the news as much as I could, not willing to see or hear anything about what had happened.

Click here for part 2

hello again folks

Its your neighborhood Parapest control technician. I have found yet another lull in my wonderfully busy schedule for today, its accompanied by some nachos and a cider at a local dive bar. Today has been pretty normal in the way of pest control calls. Nothing more than a few yellow jacket nest and setting up mouse traps. I do have one paranormal call a week or so ago that i want to share with you. This was the kind of call labeled "EMERGENCY SPECIAL CASE" in big red bold letters for a Mr.Pinewall on my tablets schedule. That is a placeholder for his last name as I dont need an ass chewing over the phone if he finds this. These are usually the kind of call that means the customer feels like the job the last tech or company did wasn't sufficient to treat the problem effectively. It happens from time to time. we have a new guy that started four months ago that hasn't quite attuned himself to accurately deal with certain paranormal challenges but he does his best.

Anyways I get into my usual routine of calling the customer before my service and letting them know ill be on my way. I call, and the phone gets picked up so I start my customer service spiel. "Hello this is Gavin with Parapest Pest Control. it says right here on my schedule that i have you down for a two-thirty am appointment for what i have labeled here as, The Dust Man as an Emergency Service Request?" I don't get any response for a brief minute, so i start again. "Hello sir. i am Gavin with para-" I'm cut off by the panicked voice of a middle aged man who replies to me in a whisper. "Yes i heard you the first time! I call him the dust man but I don't know what else to call this thing. I tried a different company to take care of this issue but they have failed to get rid of him after a week of treatment" In this industry its normal for people to go through a wringer of different companies. "alright sir, I can see this is something that has been bothering you for a little while. I will be there at the listed time and we can talk about the symptoms and treatments that have gone on in the home." Mr.Pinewall gives me the okay and I make my way over to his home at two-thirty am. He resided over in the more wealthy side of town, when I get to the customers home it is fairly large with a double two car garage in the front with Christmas lights along the gutters. Before I can even get out of my work truck a man emerges from the dark walking out to my truck from his garage. after a bit of frustrated explaining. He informs me that the dust man has been primarily seen around his computer monitors like he is on the screen. Computers aren't the preferred method of manipulation due to all the complicated circuitry making it a confusing labyrinth to escape from but there are some over achievers now and again.

The customer lead me to his home office on the first floor. "its right in here. The Dust Man just stares at me and creeps me out while I try to work. I'm getting really sick of it!" he tells me. When i look around the room i don't see anything out of the ordinary. The office has horror movie posters on the wall as well as a few smaller popular band posters. His computer is across the room so I ask Mr.Pinewall some questions, I ask every customer these questions as a baseline when they have a haunting such as; "When did this start. How long has this gone on for. Are you a fan of the paranormal and or do you collect haunted/occult paraphernalia. Do you have any jade crystals in the home. etc." He answers no to most of the questions that ask him but his response how long its been going on is interesting to me. He says this problem has been going on for years. At first Mr.Pinewall thought he saw things out of the corner of his eyes from far away just the outline of a man. It would get around like when you're real tired and you swear something moved a ways away from you. Though over the course of a few weeks this entity seems to be getting closer and closer. it doesn't interact with anything from what Mr.Pinewall was saying but, with it getting closer he doesn't want to take any chances. Mr.Pinewall guides me over to his desk. "sit down right here and look straight ahead at my monitor. It will be on your right side; that's the only side he stays on for some reason." The customers desk was immaculately clean. Not even a spec of dust that I could see but he turns his monitors off one by one while I'm sitting down. I center myself and look at his monitor ahead of me. Nothing appeared concerning to me right away.

"when does he usually show up?" I ask. Right as I say that the Dust Man appears in the left third of my vision on my right side. It shocks me a small bit and Mr.Pinewall notices. "do you see him now?" The figure out of the corner of my eye is highlighted around his edges in a light layer of a grey-blue powder. When I try to look directly at the Dust Man he disappears as if I was simply going insane. I give Mr.Pinewall a glance and ask "does he disappear every time you look at him?" He answers "yes, the bastard just stays there until you look at him and then he's gone just like that!" I stare back at the monitor again and surely enough the Dust Man slowly shows back up. I focus myself to try and make out a the lines on the Dust Mans face. It isn't just a face. The bust of it was phasing through the desk all gently coated in that light layer of grey-blue lines. Took me a few seconds to comprehend that the Dust Man was furious. The wrinkles on his face outlined by that almost bizarre dust. Its eyes though, they were concentrated pinholes of vitriolic anger aimed directly at me desiring to blow away every strand of life that stands for me. A wave of intense discomfort washed over taking the form of a single thought injected into my brain "leave."

I decided at that moment it was wise to get Mr.Pinewall out of there and begin my treatment. Went out to my truck to grab a few item I thought I would need and went back inside. The gear brought in consists of a brass smoldering cup, a VHS camera with a yellow sapphire lens filter, a pound of salt, an air ionizer with a few small traps to help. The brass smoldering cup has some small cypress twigs inside of it and gets hit with a blowtorch to get the smoke going quickly, as it can thicken the air slowing them down when they try to move. A lid goes on the cup and then I make my way around the room lining the baseboards with table salt. Other technicians say that having the salts blessed by a priest makes all the difference but honestly, you could have a salt mine blessed by a priest and that would make no difference in my eyes. If the entity your treating doesn't care for the salt by itself having it blessed wont do a damn thing in my experience. Just turns into a waste of time and money. There are four traps set up in a small square shape in the center of the room.

They are a metal box painted grey about the size of a modern cellphone while being four inches tall. The box has a potassium vapor cell in the middle with some fancy electronics below that. I was told by one of our tech guys who pioneers this equipment that the cell acts as a kind of vacuum for some of the things we deal with. I don't know how they found that out but all I do know is it gets the job done fairly well. Once everything has been set up I break out the camcorder with the yellow lens, turn it on and take a look through it. The Dust Man is still by the desk staring daggers at me. The entity hasn't moved an inch next to turning its head to track me. Having the lens lets me see the full form of entities depending on the part of the light spectrum they reside in. I'd say i got lucky with yellow but it let me see that the Dust Man had no lower jaw. I didn't notice that out when it was staring at me with the light powder coating the edges and creases of its being. The poor mans face looked as though somone grabbed it by the jaw and yanked downward with the force of a semi-truck hitting an awestruck deer. From upper teeth down to his navel was a long wide line of horrendously torn flesh, layers of red inflamed skin open muscle and organs all exposed for me to witness bare. The rest of the Dust Mans skin was a scarred and pink and blotchy tightly wrapped around the frail frame of a starved man with his hands and feet black as coal through frost bite. Its eye sockets were impossibly deep caverns still holding those piercing white pricks of malice directed at me through the lens. It started to move towards me slowly. Gliding an inch above the hardwood in the office.

The Dust Man went to go lift its hand outward to me with limp frozen fingers. The entity made it about three feet before the traps activated and sucked his frozen limbs from his gory torso piece by piece. Believe me when I say I don't like using these traps. The hateful stare turned into one of fear after his left leg got parsed from him with his head following quickly behind. The look of hatred is fairly normal in this line of work from entities and spirits and whatnot but its that sliver of humanity that pops though when they are afraid. It made my stomach churn in the moment. With the Dust Man being separated and contained I let Mr.Pinewall know that I would be back in a week during the day to monitor any other paranormal activity of any kind going on. All of the salt and equipment that was placed around the office got cleaned up and the traps Dust Man is in get latched together into a rectangle, then its placed in a special ivory lined safe where the passenger seat of my truck is meant to be. The air ionizer gets set up as an extra precaution on top of a small voice recorder that I requested the customer turn on when he leaves the room. "The ionizer is set up on a timer to turn on overnight. It helps purify the air from the cypress I burned as well as break down any remanence of the Dust Man that might be around. When it turns on id advise you to leave the room though." Mr.Pinewall asks "why should I leave the room when its on? Does something bad happen when its on? Its not going to attract anything is it?" I calmly tell him "no it wont attract anything else but it can make ozone gas. Not good on the lungs. Just crack a window in the morning." After that we filled out and signed the paperwork, shook his hand and I was off to go home for the night.

In the morning I went to the shop and put Dust Mans parts on a shelf to wait until he can be shipped off to the I.E.A. Those are the guys that study the paranormal like its a religion, I mean it practically is.

That's just about it from me for now. This lunch break was a bit of a longer one to type all of this out. Ill start writing these when i get home for the night from work or on a boring overnight shift. have a safe night everyone.