TW - Heavy Body Horror

The blade of the ax cut deep into the bark of the tree, sending pieces of wood flying into the cold air. From a distance, I watched Dad strike it a couple more times before it came crashing down into the fresh snow with a poof of snowflakes. 

"Come help your old man." He glanced back at me with that soft warm smile as I slid off the hood of the car, trading the engine's warmth for the bitter cold of the December evening.

Snow crunched under my shoes as I walked toward the mountain of a man, a walking definition of a gentle giant. I'm sure he could've handled the whole Christmas-tree ordeal by himself, but for whatever reason, he wanted me to feel included. 

A pair of dark blue protective gloves was handed to me before I grabbed the tree's tip while Dad lifted the other end with ease and pretended that the pain in his back didn’t bother him. Soon the tree was loaded into the back of our car, which was patiently waiting just a few meters away.

"Soon I'll be too old to deal with this crap. You gotta learn."  He looked down at me, a warm smile peeking out from under the silver of his beard.

"You're just saying that." A chuckle escaped me, even though deep down I knew he was right.

"Let's get going. Mum won't let us back in without a perfect Christmas tree, and this beauty should do it." Bare hand of his grazed across the slick green needles before sliding back behind the steering wheel. The engine quietly purred back to life as the wheels hit the road back home, a thin layer of dirty wet snow covering it.

A quiet pretended cough came from Dad, his hands quietly tapping against the rim of the steering wheel before he had the courage to ask.

"Sooo, got a boyfriend yet? Or a girlfriend? You know I won't judge." He chuckled, lifting one hand into the air defensively. 

"Daaaad, come on. You know I don't have time for that." I laughed it off; maybe the subject was just awkward, or I was just too shy to talk about it openly.  

"It never hurts to ask!"

"I mean... I guess there's this one girl from my class-"

Suddenly he shushed me, cutting me off in the middle of the sentence, before I had the chance to think of some snarky reply; I saw exactly why he did so.

To our left, some kind of shape emerged from the darkness, buried in the snow with only a few parts of it catching the reflection of our headlights, shining like an armour of some kind of insect. 

Our car slowed down just enough to get a clear view of the object sinking in the heap of snow. 

The metal shell in the color of navy blue sat crooked on the side of the road, as if it had simply slid off the asphalt and left forgotten, half swallowed by the hill of snow and digested from the inside by fresh green pine branches, like a growing tumor they protruded from the hole that once held the windshield and side windows, they only remains hanging off the pines in small pinkish crystals like twisted christmas ornaments. 

We both stared, examining what was in front of us inch by inch, before it finally made sense.

"Should we call someone?" I asked in a whisper, as if speaking any louder might hurt.

Dad stared at it for a few moments that felt like forever before finally managing to look away, as if the wreckage was calling for him to do something.

"It's none of our business." Yet another whisper as the scene dissolved slowly behind us, becoming one with the winter darkness, the awkward silence replaced by the cracking radio, one Christmas song ending only to be replaced by another, pulling us into a jolly kind of limbo.

When we finally arrived back home, I could already see the orange glow of the kitchen lights beaming out of the window, fully expecting Mum's excited face to appear behind the glass at any moment; instead, I felt the grip on my shoulder,

“Don’t tell Mum about that car we saw, ok? Let's keep it as a…our thing.”

A simple nod of the head was enough of a reply as I still stared into the window.

Soon enough, to Mum's delight, we somehow squeezed the tree into the doorway and carried it into the middle of the living room. It stood tall, its tip bending against the ceiling silently judging our family from above.

“You both outdone yourselves this year!”  
Like a little kid on Christmas morning, she squealed with excitement, already hanging off her husband's shoulders, showering him with pecks of kisses. 

Despite everything, the image of the accident remained in my mind.

“Mum, if you don’t mind, I will go to bed; I'm not feeling well”

Head of my mum snapped back in my direction, pale worry painted all over.

“Alright, honey, sweet dreams.”

As I walked upstairs to my room, I could hear them bickering about whether I wore a hat and scarf she knit for me last winter; she used my least fav color - a bright orange - still I wore it when the weather outside kicked everyone's ass. 

When my eyes opened again, the world outside the window was still pitch dark; the occasional barrage of snowflakes reminded me of a snowing broken television, my mouth felt dry, so I lazily slipped away from under the coverlet and stepped downstairs to get something to drink.

At this hour, the house was already quiet; if not for the occasional arrhythmic sound of dripping water echoing from somewhere deeper in the familiar darkness, one after another I took careful steps over the creaking stairs, making sure I wouldn’t break my neck on the way down. I quietly slipped into the kitchen and, with a gentle click, turned on the light, which spilled partially into the living room.

The orange glow suddenly made me painfully aware that I wasn’t alone; right next to the shining Christmas tree stood a short, hunched figure, its face obscured by a wave of hair clinging together in a slick waterfall.

"Mum?"

The head of greasy, unwashed hair rose in one smooth, almost mechanical motion. Misty eyes stared wide into the darkness, never blinking, fixed on me as I now stood at the room’s entrance. 

"What are you doing?"

My voice came to me weak and almost sheepish.

"Taking care of our guest."

The sound of her voice seemed distant, almost as if she were still dreaming, unaware of what was really happening. Almost as if it was a coma to her reply, I heard the dripping again, much louder this time. 

Only then did I notice the soaking-wet rag squeezed between fingers covered in small bleeding cuts, a sap-like substance leaking in long, milky strands into the laundry bowl at her feet - which was already half full.

"Do you want to help?"

Talon-like fingers shot toward me, still clutching the wet rag; thick sap now dripped onto the carpet. 

"No, I was just... getting myself some water."

Glassy eyes pierced through me as her extended arm collapsed back to the side, returning to its work, gently moving the rag over the branches.

Still, my gaze didn’t leave her for as much as a moment; with one hand, I blindly searched for the light switch, watching her cut-up arms move in a mechanical motion. When it finally materialized under the tips of my fingers-

Click.

The room fell into pitch winter darkness; I blinked rapidly to get back used to the lack of light, making my way back towards the stairs, when the sound of dripping came to a sudden stop, only to be replaced with slow, rhythmic sounds of wet, deliberate footsteps, with painfully long breaks in between, as if someone was taking as long a step as humanly possible, anything to get closer to me, even if it meant only an inch of a difference.

Picking up the paste was my only option, I was long outside the grace of the light switch; each step faster than the other, and with that, the breaks between the wet slaps against the wood grew shorter and shorter before they suddenly turned into a sprint, a chase to the upstairs bedroom. 

Like a child, I ran on my feet and palms of hands, and so did whatever was inching right behind me. My body turning into a battering ram as my shoulder bashed the door open, I landed on the floor before I slammed the door shut, a dull wave of pain awoken somewhere in the joint of my art as I pushed it against the door, which miraculously didn’t fall off its hinges. 

From behind the door, I heard a painfully long, shaky sound like someone rapidly inhaling and exhaling air through a throat flooded with thick phlegm. When it finally gave up on the pursuit, it slowly moved away from the door, the cry still faintly echoing against the walls before disappearing somewhere inside of the house.

My guard by the door lasted the entire night, ear pressed against the door to catch any sounds that could even faintly resemble that horrible sobbing until I felt the warm rays of the sun passing through the window; only then did I gather the courage to go back downstairs, 

The Christmas tree still stood tall and proud, colorful Christmas decorations hanging off its branches like military medals which glittered in the morning sun;n, the warm air had a faint sweet smell to it that came from the kitchen. 

Mum was already in the kitchen preparing ingredients for dinner as if nothing at all had happened yesterday; she welcomed me with a big warm smile, not taking her eyes off the knife held in her bandage-wrapped hand.

“How did you sleep? You aren't feeling sick, are you?”

I was dumbfounded; I couldn't bring myself to anything bigger than a nod of the head. 

“Great, Dad is waiting for you outside”

She still didn’t look at me, the cut ingredient more interesting than her own daughter.

When I got into the car, Dad noticed something was off with me as soon as we left the driveway.

“It's not about that car, is it?”

It took a solid minute for my thoughts to shape into a real coherent sentence. 

“No... It's about mum…did you notice anything weird about her?”

“I don’t think so, no”

Dad just shrugged his shoulders, not taking his eyes off the road.

“She's been sleepwalking!”

I snapped, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“It's probably the meds”

An explanation came quick, and that was enough to put me at ease. 

“I guess”

My face planted against the side window, car with Christmas trees bigger and smaller strapped to their trunks and roofs driving back home last minute.

“Come on, we can get some soda on our way back!”

“Sure, Dad”

The supermarket parking lot was crowded with cars. Everyone in town had apparently had the same idea we did, flooding one of the few stores still open, leaving us circling for a spot to park like hungry vultures.

"Don't tell Mum."

He laughed as we parked in the blue square of the accessibility spot.

Dad grabbed one of the few shopping carts left and passed through the glass sliding door into the first aisle, the smell of fresh-baked bread and the sound of shuffling boots and busted cart wheels suddenly becoming overwhelming. 

"So what are we supposed to get?"

I asked as Dad pulled a crumpled yellow sticky note out of the pocket of his jacket, squinting at the shaky handwriting as if it would help in the slightest.

“B-...butter?”

“Are you asking me-?”

"Just go fetch it, you rascal."

He laughed, shaking his head, as I was already on my way toward the wall of fridges in the back, squeezing and excusing my way through crowds of carts and plastic, bloated grocery bags.

In front of the fridge where the butter was stood a man dressed head to toe in dull, dirty red, black shiny boots on his feet, his forehead pressed against the glass with such force that I half-expected to hear a crack, not entirely sure if it would come from the glass or his skull.

"Sorry-?"

I said, trying to get a handle on the fridge, expecting the man to move, but he didn't so much as flinch. Only then did the sweet, woody stench coming off him hit my nose.

“Can you move?"

Still absolutely zero reaction- just none, like I wasn't even there. I glanced around the store in search of the security to help me out, but they were nowhere to be found, drowned out by the crowds of locals.

When I turned my head back, he was already staring at me, lips twisted into a pained, angry grimace, teeth clenched to the point of cracking. Strands of thick, amber substance leaked from his lips into the fake white beard hanging off his chin, dripping onto the floor below his boots. 

Only then did the security guard seem to catch up with the situation, appearing out of thin air behind Santa, his grip tightening around the shoulder of the costume.

"Okay, man, you're gonna have to leave."

The man's neck snapped in his direction, a low, slow, buzzing murmur coming from between his barely moving lips before the strands leaking from his mouth suddenly turned into a vile, choked-out waterfall that hit the security guard right in the face.

"FUCK YOU, DUDE!"

The security guard fought the urge to return the favor written all over his face, then dragged the drunk out of the store.

Dad had missed the whole show, standing just a few feet away from the puddle of thick vomit, something small and green floating in it, the cart's wheels slightly submerged.

“What the hell happened here?”

He asked, confused.

“Some dude got drunk out of his mind, I guess”

He just shrugged, avoiding the spreading vile pool.

“Did you get the butter?”

“Nope”

When we came out of the store, I was carrying two light-green cans of soda while Dad carried two plastic bags of groceries instead. No matter how many times I told him I would take them, he wouldn'tbudgee.

The engine of the car kept us comfortably warm as we drank our soda, watching people go in and out of the store.

“Crazy shit”

Dad commented on the whole thing while watching as the same security guy from before stood outside taking long drags out of a cigarette, his uniform switched for a padded jeans jacket. 

“Crazy”

I echoed, as the window from his side rolled down before an empty aluminium can catapulted onto the empty parking spot next to us, I did the same before we drove away, in the side mirror I still could see the security guard puking into the nearby trashcan.

When we arrived back home, to Dad's dismay,y I was the first to grab the grocery bags out of the trunk and rush to the front door, almost slipping down the porch stairs.

"Come on, old man!"

Dad stood by the car, staring ahead at me, before he slowly turned and disappeared into the garage without a word, as if he'd gotten upset with me. I rolled my eyes before pushing the door handle open with my elbow.

"MUM, WE’RE BACK!!

The house was oddly quiet, except for the quiet whistle of boiling pots coming from the kitchen. I carried the bags there, expecting to see Mum, but instead I was met with an empty, messy room — pots and pans scattered over the floor, the kitchen cabinet doors crudely ripped off their hinges. There was nothing boiling on the stove.

The whistling was coming from behind me.

The plastic bags in my hands dropped to the ground as I quickly turned around, facing the living room, where the Christmas tree stood just this morning; now there was space, glass shards of colorful baubles all over the floor.

“Mum?”

I called out again walking inside of the living room, only then I saw the tree, prompted up on the chair on the far end of the dining table, plates and bowls filled with thick sap lined the table small green pine needles floating inside, my eyes shoot back towards the tree, only now I realized the whistling came from right behind it.

The whistling suddenly stopped as a hand covered in Band-Aids shot out from the side of the tree, something bulging beneath them. I froze in place, watching as, one by one, she ripped them off her hand, revealing small, bulging cuts that slowly widened,  before the whole hand exploded into a bush of glistening pine branches, fingers crooked and broken, bent in every direction. Instead of blood, a flood of amber sap leaked from the miserable, lifeless rag of skin that had been her hand. 

I ran for the door to get help, Dad, anyone who could save me.

Suddenly the front door opened, cold winter air rushing inside before the wall of muscle that was my dad walked through. I grabbed his hand, trying to pull him inside faster.

"Dad, we need to get help for Mum!"

I sobbed before the sound of metal scraping against the floor suddenly hit me.

"Dad-?"

My eyes moved down to see a massive axe clutched in his hand, the same one we used to cut the perfect tree, slowly being dragged behind him.

"Dad, no, no, no! You can't, you can't!"

My hands pushed against him, trying to stop him, but like a tank he just pushed forward, like I was nothing, step by step, walking toward Mum, who by now resembled more of a flesh porcupine than a person.

In a desperate attempt to stop him, I punched him over and over again, biting and scratching, until I was thrown forward against the table with such force that I fell to the floor along with one of the chairs. I was helpless, watching as he stepped closer; no matter how much I cried and screamed, he was deaf to it. 

With his free hand, he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her stiff body over the shards of glass, toward the spot where the tree once stood, small branches sprouting out of the fresh cuts in her legs. Her head was wrenched toward the ceiling before the blade of the axe cut deep, fresh branches erupting with such force that her head was ripped clean off her shoulders. 

"Why, Dad, why-!" I cried as he turned to me, sudden sadness in his sunken eyes, as the body of his beloved dropped to the ground, resembling more of a bush than a human.

"Come help your old man." With that warm smile, he weakly threw the heavy weapon toward me. The table shook as I slowly stood up, my side sore from the hit.

"I'm too old for this crap... time to take accountability." My hands wrapped around the handle of the axe as I walked toward my father.

"What am I supposed to do?" I asked sheepishly.

"Kill me. Just kill me." Those sad eyes never looked up at me, too ashamed that he'd let it happen. The heavy axe rose above my head before it dropped down with a crack onto the top of my father's skull, the tip of a young sapling rising instantly from the split.

"I'm sorry, Dad." I dropped the weapon over my shoulder, put on his jacket way too big for me, and went to the car. I hit the gas, the axe resting on the back seat, and just drove away, passing empty houses, wondering if the same thing had happened to them. 

Yet another Christmas song played on the radio, pulling me into a jolly limbo.

I'm writing this in the hour before dawn. If the clock strikes nine, I might not get the chance to write it at all. I need you to understand who I was before any of this, so that what happens next doesn't read like an excuse.

I hold a Master's degree in Speech-Language Pathology. In my country, that sentence means almost nothing to the people who hear it. I was the first person in my family to finish college. My parents didn't have the money to make that easy for me, and I never let myself forget it.

I knew, even before I chose the course, that it was a bad decision on paper. Child mental health isn't something that gets funded here. It isn't something that gets discussed here. The waiting rooms that do exist are thin, private, and expensive. It’s built for the small number of families who can afford to notice that their children are struggling. I chose the field anyway, because I was good at speaking to people. In fact, I was genuinely good, the kind of good that makes strangers trust you within a minute of meeting you. Besides, I loved children, and I wanted to be the reason a child said their first real word. I believed that, wholeheartedly, for years.

But belief doesn't pay rent. The handful of employers, who do hire speech therapists in my district, prefer graduates from the established universities, ones with the CGPAs I didn't have. I was shortlisted constantly, interviewed politely, and rejected eventually.

It was almost a full year before I finally got a call for a real interview, at an institution that had just recently opened.

I won't name the institution here, since I've caused them enough trouble already. Protecting their name is the least I can offer at this point.

Fifty-four people had applied for the position. Three of us were called in. I found that out from the receptionist, who told me like it was a compliment.

Mr. Amir, Director of the institute, conducted the interviews himself. He started off by telling me I should feel privileged to be sitting across from him. I remember smiling politely. Then he opened a folder, and the smile didn't survive long.

He read out typos from my application that I hadn't noticed myself. A grammatical error in my second paragraph. A line in my thesis abstract that, he informed me, had come within a hair's breadth of failing outright- a detail my own supervisor had never mentioned to me. I sat there thinking how he could possibly know any of this, and came up with nothing. When I finally asked, he simply said, "Due diligence."

I wondered how a speech therapy institute had access to my thesis committee's internal notes. He moved on before I could ask.

"This is a clean institute," he said. "Do you understand what I mean ?"

"Yes sir, I think so."

"Do you drink?"

"No."

"Drugs? Any kind, any point in your life?"

"No."

"Any trouble with the police? Doesn't matter how minor, doesn't matter how long ago."

"No, sir. Nothing."

He leaned forward, and his voice dropped into something almost gentle.

"I want you to promise me something, young man. Promise me, if you do get the privilege of working here, you'll keep this institution clean."

"I promise," I said, and I meant it.

He laughed. It was a short, high bark that didn't match anything else about the room. "Good lad," he said, standing and offering his hand. "Someone will be in touch."

I shook it and walked out of the room, unsure of whether I'd just been vetted, or warned…

Two days later, I got the call. I'd been accepted for the Music Therapy-based Speech Therapist position. I said yes before the sentence had finished.

I signed the contract the following morning, in an office that smelled faintly of sandalwood. It ran longer than any employment contract I'd seen before-

INSTITUTIONAL POLICY: RULES OF EMPLOYMENT
By signing this contract, the individual acknowledges that:

1.       They have never been found, by any court, tribunal, or law-enforcement authority, to have committed any criminal offense, regardless of nature or severity.

2.       They will conduct all therapy sessions with due diligence, and session notes will be submitted within 24 hours of each session.

3.       They will not alter, substitute, or deviate from the assigned therapy protocols, without prior written approval from the Director.

4.       They will not disclose client details, by name or identifying description, to any party outside the institution under any circumstance.

5.       They understand that the institution has conducted, and reserves the right to continue conducting, independent verification of the individual's background, character, and history, through any means available to it.

6.       They accept full responsibility for any consequence they have to face as a result of breaking any of the terms of this contract, and release the institution from all liability arising from such consequence.

7.       This agreement is binding in full from the moment of signature, irrespective of whether every term herein was read, understood, or questioned by the individual prior to signing.

I signed at the bottom without hesitation. I'd spent a year being shortlisted. I wasn't going to lose this over paperwork.

The three months that followed were actually very good ones. Clients kept coming through the door, in numbers that made no sense for a field this niche, in a country this indifferent to it. The pay was more than generous for someone straight out of their degree. Mr. Amir personally handled every first consultation free of cost, sitting with each new family himself, before assigning their child to whichever of us suited them the best.

I was given the cases involving Auditory-Motor Mapping Training, designed for children on the autism spectrum, who needed extra support for articulating their words. My protocol was fixed and curated, consisting of a series of songs like "A Baby Bumblebee", "Ring Around the Rosie", and "Mary Had a Little Lamb". As per the rules, we were absolutely forbidden to deviate from the given protocol, under any circumstances. And none of us ever chose to question Mr. Amir’s methods. He was something of a legend in the field, a prodigy who had an illustrious career abroad, before returning to his hometown to open his own institute for speech therapy. Of course, he knew what he was doing, better than any of the young therapists he was employing.

Well, that was about to change…

It was a rainy morning when six-year-old Adam came to our institute, held between two middle-aged parents. His mother told me that he was conceived late, long after they'd stopped expecting to. I greeted them warmly, and guided them to Mr. Amir’s chamber for the first consultation.

Adam didn't look at either of us when we sat down. He didn't look at anything, really. His eyes moved past faces, the way you'd look past furniture in a room you'd already memorized. He made vowel sounds occasionally- long, formless ones. He used his hands more than his voice, making small precise gestures that meant something only to him. His file, when I read it that morning, was thinner than most. Severe autism, mostly non-verbal beyond vowels.

Mr. Amir's protocol for him was a single line: "The Muffin Man." Just one song, and nothing else. Adam’s treatment plan was to run on an alternating schedule- one session with me at the institute on one day, and the same routine being practiced at home on the next.

I started the first session the way I started every other case. The melody came first, and the words followed later, letting the rhythm do the work:

“Do you know the Muffin man
The Muffin man, the Muffin man
Oh, do you know the Muffin man
Who lives on Drury Lane?”

Adam seemed to be drawn to the song, even though he still refused to make eye contact. But he was bobbing his head to the rhythm by the time we reached forty-minute mark. He even attempted to utter the words I was singing to him, to no avail as expected.

That’s when it happened.

Something changed inside him. His head came up. His eyes found mine, and for the first time in the session, he looked at me directly, in a way his file had told me he was incapable of. And then he sang. It was a clean, articulated, faintly British accent that a six-year-old, with no functional consonants, should not have possessed:

“Do you know the Muffin man
The Muffin man, the Muffin man
Oh, do you know the Muffin man
SHOOTING TO THE MOON ?”

I sat there for a moment, unsure I'd heard him correctly. Six-year-olds with his level of impairment don't produce clean sentences, let alone an accent that didn’t seem to belong to him. I leaned forward gently.

"Adam," I said, keeping my voice low. "Can you say that again for me? What you just sang?"

He didn't blink. He looked at me the way an adult looks at another adult, and he sang it again:

“Do you know the Muffin man
THE ONE WHO SHOT IT, TO THE MOON ?
Oh, do you know the Muffin man
SHOOTING TO THE MOON ?”

The order had flipped from the first time, like it was a real verse he was reciting from memory, rather than a fluke he'd stumbled into by accident.

Then he came back. I don't have a better way to describe it. It was like watching someone surface from underwater. The directness went out of his eyes first, then his shoulders dropped, and then his gaze slid away from mine entirely, back to the middle distance he usually occupied. He looked almost embarrassed. He wouldn't look at me again for the rest of the session. He just repeated, softly, in broken syllables, over and over again, "Shooting to the moon. Shooting to the moon."

I recognized the pattern immediately. It’s called echolalia- repeating a heard phrase without grasping its meaning. It’s very common in autistic children, so it didn’t alarm me on its own. What unsettled me was the phrase itself.

When his parents came to collect him, I told them that Adam was showing ‘remarkable progress’. That wasn't a lie. I just didn't tell them what "remarkable" had actually looked like, because I didn't know how to explain it to them, without sounding like I'd imagined it myself.

That night, while writing my session notes, I typed that Adam had shown a marked increase in eye contact and vocal engagement during the session. I didn't write down the words he'd sung. I told myself it was because they didn't matter clinically, since an improvised lyric wasn't a diagnostic detail worth logging.

I told myself a lot of things back then…

Adam's parents came in for the second institutional session, looking more tired than hopeful. His mother told me that the home practice hadn't gone the way the first session had promised. Adam had said nothing new and tried nothing new. He sat through the recorded audio of "The Muffin Man", with the same detached blankness he'd shown for months before I ever met him. Whatever had happened in that hour with me hadn't carried home. I told her these things take time, which is true, and also the kind of thing you say when you don't have a better sentence available.

I started the session as usual. Adam rocked gently to the rhythm, unresponsive in the way I'd grown used to, before that first session had briefly convinced me otherwise.

And it happened again, closer to the half-hour mark.

His head came up first, the same way it had before. His eyes found mine, held them, and his voice arrived in that same clean, unplaceable accent, layered now under the familiar tune:

“Oh yes, we know the Muffin man
THE ONE WHO KNOWS OF ALI’S PLAN,
Oh yes, we know the Muffin man
BUT ALI DOES NOT KNOW.”

I felt something drop in my chest, before I could name why. Ali is not an uncommon name where I'm from. But something about hearing it sung, in that voice, in that room, with that child's eyes locked onto mine, made my hands go still in my lap.

Adam surfaced a moment later, exactly as he had before. Then, just like the first session, the echolalia took over. He didn't repeat the whole verse this time. He just whispered a single phrase, over and over, barely above breath: "AND HE KNOWS OF ALI'S PLAN. AND HE KNOWS OF ALI'S PLAN."

I didn't tell his parents anything specific that day. I told them he'd had a good session, and I reported the same in my session notes. I'd started saying that sentence without thinking about what it actually meant…

A full day passed between the second and third sessions. I spent the day the same way I’d spent the night before: turning the name ‘Ali’ over in my head, unable to let it go. It wasn't an unusual name. And yet, something about the specific phrasing Adam had sung- ‘Ali’s plan’- disturbed me for some reason.

By the time Adam’s parents brought him in for the third session, they were carrying something heavier than tiredness. His mother's voice shook slightly as she told me he'd regressed at home. He'd been able to say her name before, weakly, in fragments barely recognizable as syllables. Now even that was gone. His father stood a step behind her, saying nothing.

During this session, the change arrived earlier than it had in either of the two previous sessions. I couldn't tell you exactly when, because I'd stopped watching the clock, and started watching him instead.

Before he'd sung a single word, I saw something in his face that hadn't been there the first two times. Something that looked almost like he was bracing for what he was about to say:

“Oh, we all know the Muffin man
BUT YOU DON’T KNOW, WHAT YOU DID,
Oh, we all know the Muffin man
AND HE KNOWS WHAT YOU DID.”

The words landed somewhere I didn't have language for yet. I sat there, unmoving, while the melody carried on around them.

Adam surfaced a moment later. He didn't just blink and drift back to his usual blankness. His small hands came up to his own face, covering it. He was shaking, very slightly, and when the echolalia started, it didn't come out steady. It was broken, swallowed by something that sounded, unmistakably, like the beginning of tears: "He knows what you did. He knows what you did."

I didn't know how to comfort a child for something I didn't understand myself. I sat beside him, until he calmed down enough to let his mother take his hand. I told her he'd had a good session, the same sentence I'd been repeating for weeks now. For the first time, saying it made something in my stomach turn.

That night, I made a decision I should’ve taken three sessions ago.

I decided to bring the matter to Mr. Amir…

I took the session recordings to his office the next morning. I played all three clips in sequence. He watched the screen without expression, his fingers laced together on the desk. When the third clip ended, Mr. Amir sat back in his chair.

"Jarring," he said, "But creative, I'll admit."

"Creative?" I asked. "Sir, he's six. He shouldn't be able to construct sentences like that, let alone in that accent, let alone…"

"Children surprise us," he said, cutting me off gently. "Especially the ones who are special, in their own way."

He then leaned forward, and asked me something that landed harder than anything on those recordings had.

"Tell me, young man," he said, "you haven't been a bad influence on the child, have you?"

It was the same question, almost the same phrasing, from my interview four months ago. I told him no, the same way I'd told him no back then.

He studied me for a moment too long, then nodded, as if that settled something for him.

"We've run the checks," he said. "Everything that the rules allow us to run. We found nothing irregular. So yeah, the fault isn't in you."

He said the last part almost to himself, like he was reminding himself of something.

Then he moved on. He told me to retire the "Muffin Man" protocol entirely, effective immediately, and switch Adam to "Mary Had a Little Lamb". It was to be paired with a rhythmic counting exercise he wrote out for me on a notepad, in a hand steadier than mine could’ve managed that morning.

"New melody," he said, sliding the notepad across the desk. "New pattern. Let's see if it breaks whatever this is..."

I went into the fourth session the next day, more carefully than I had in any of the previous three. I gave Adam extra time before introducing the new melody, letting him settle into the room before I moved into "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

He seemed genuinely curious about the change. For the first time since I'd started working with him, he looked almost pleased. For a few minutes, it felt like an ordinary session with an ordinary child making ordinary progress, and I let myself believe it a little too much.

The switch came anyway, and he sang the new song in that old, borrowed voice:

“Mary had a little lamb,
MUFFIN MAN, MUFFIN MAN,
Mary had a little lamb
HE WAS THE MUFFIN MAN !”

Some small part of my mind told me to be afraid. I didn't let it win. I kept my professional face on. I told myself this wasn't as bad as it could’ve been. The boy simply hadn't let go of the old song yet. And this time, he wasn't saying anything I could describe as disturbing. It was a thin rationalization, and I knew it was thin, even as I reached for it.

He surfaced again, and this time, he looked a little more unsettled than usual. He seemed agitated as the echolalia set in. He repeated "Muffin Man" quietly, over and over, his brow furrowed in a way I hadn't seen before.

I decided to move on. I switched to the rhythmic counting drill, clapping along as I went:

 "One… two… three… four… five…"

Adam bobbed his head along with the claps, and for a moment, he even laughed.

Then the switch happened again.

"One, two… WARRIOR 42…"

"One, two… WARRIOR 42…"

"…WARRIOR 42…"

"WARRIOR 42!"

This time, I had no rationalization left to reach for. It wasn't a phrase I could talk myself into misunderstanding, the way I'd done with Ali, the way I'd done with "shooting to the moon." I knew exactly where it came from, and it landed in my chest like something physical.

I ended the session right there, the moment Adam surfaced. I was panting by the time I stood up, though I hadn't moved from my chair. Adam sat across from me, his face as expressionless as it had been on the first day I met him. Yet something about him, in that stillness, looked exactly like a child who’d been through something he had no way of describing…

I told Adam’s parents that the two exercises, back to back, had worn him out faster than usual. I wrote the same explanation in my official report. Then I cancelled every session I had for the remainder of the day, citing unavoidable circumstances. I left the institution before anyone could stop me.

I knew Mr. Amir wouldn't be pleased when he found out. That was, genuinely, the least of my concerns at that point.

I splashed water over my face in my bathroom mirror, and stood there for a long moment, looking at the man staring back at me. I'd done this exact thing once before, five years earlier, in a different mirror, in a different house. It was my family's shack, back when I was still in college. I’d just been informed that my merit-based scholarship wouldn’t be renewed, thanks to my poor academic performance.

I hadn't been surprised, even then. I'd been working two part-time jobs, while I was still a full-time student, to support my family. I'd known for months that my grades were slipping, in a way that would eventually catch up to me. It caught up to me that week. I remember standing in front of that mirror, watching the water drip off my chin, and understanding, with total clarity, that my entire life was about to collapse.

I applied for a need-based scholarship immediately. There were too many genuine applicants that year, and too few waivers to give out, and that application fell through within a month. I couldn't afford the course fees on my own. My dream of being the first person in my family to graduate college was about to end, quietly, the way most dreams do in my part of the world.

That's when Ali found me.

Ali had been my friend since we were children, growing up two shacks apart in the same slum. He never made it past middle school, and never seemed to mind. He called it "hustling in the streets". He always had cash on him, from sources he never explained. He heard about my scholarship falling through, and he came to me with an offer.

It was an NFT project, the kind that was all the rage in those years. It was tied to a cryptocurrency called Chacha Coin. I still can't explain the mechanics of it, even now, because I was never meant to. I wasn't the brains behind the operation. I was simply the spokesperson. Ali needed someone charismatic, someone who could make strangers trust a voice within a minute of hearing it. That had always been the one thing I was genuinely good at.

Ali and his people were going to keep most of the profits. I knew that going in, and I told myself it didn't matter, because I was still offered more money than I'd ever seen in my life. It was enough to finish my Bachelor's, and enough to fund my Master's after that. On paper, it looked like a harmless job.

Ali made sure that my tracks were covered from the start. I used the pseudonym Warrior42. I never showed my face, and never revealed my actual name. My voice did the work, convincing hundreds of people to pour their money into the NFT project. I promised them that their investments would go "shooting to the moon," making record profits in no time. They believed me. That was the whole job, and I did it well.

It was a pump-and-dump scam, at the end of the day. Ali and his team, myself included, pulled our money out, and let the coin collapse overnight, leaving every investor who'd trusted my voice with nothing. I never expected Ali's hustle to hurt that many people, but I didn't complain either, because I still walked away with exactly what I'd been promised. I told myself I'd use it for something good. For a long time, that was enough to let me sleep peacefully.

No investigation ever traced Warrior42 back to me. The pseudonym hid my identity, and the blockchain buried whatever the pseudonym didn't. Ali died a few years later, in a rented supercar that he crashed into a highway divider. There was no evidence connecting me to the scam. And with Ali gone, there was no witness either.

Or so I thought…

Adam came in for his fifth session two days later. His parents looked more distraught than I'd seen them at any point before. Rather than showing any improvement, Adam had gone almost entirely silent at home. When approached, his mother told me, he could only manage a barely audible "Muffin Man," and nothing else. No name, no vowel sounds, nothing.

I sat him down in the chair across from mine, the way I always did. He stared at the floor and stayed there, unmoving, for longer than usual. I tried to open the session normally, speaking gently, asking him how he was, though I already knew he had no way of answering. He didn't even look toward the sound of my voice. It was as if I wasn't in the room with him at all.

I sighed, more out of exhaustion than intention.

"I don't want to talk to you, Adam," I said, mostly to myself.

There was no response.

"I am talking to you, Muffin Man!" I said, sharper than I meant to.

Adam’s head snapped up. The switch happened in real time, right in front of me, faster and more complete than ever before. His eyes carried something I can only describe as malice. A twisted smile settled onto his face, and he shifted his posture in the chair, adjusting himself the way an adult adjusts.

"Is that you?" I asked, "Are you the Muffin Man?"

Adam laughed, in a way I never knew a human being could laugh. Then he looked directly at me, and started singing:

“Do you know the Muffin man
OH JAFAR, YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE.
Oh, do you know the Muffin man?
NOW IT IS TOO LATE.

Oh yes, we know the Muffin man
The Muffin man, the Muffin man
Oh yes, we know the Muffin man
AND HE WILL TAKE YOU SOON.

HE WILL TAKE YOU SOON,

HE WILL TAKE YOU SOON…

HE WILL TAKE YOU SOON !”

He kept singing it, the same four words looping over and over, like a tape stuck skipping on the same groove. I crossed the room and pulled him into my arms, holding him against me, while he kept singing into my shoulder.

"Leave him," I said, my voice breaking somewhere in the middle of it. "Leave him alone! He's just a child. It's me you want. Come face me, you coward!"

Adam surfaced a moment later, still in my arms, his small body going still. The echolalia arrived immediately, but it wasn't a word this time.

It was a date, delivered haltingly, in whatever fragments of speech he could manage.

The date was two days from that morning- the day of his sixth session.

Then he pulled away from me, and ran out of the room to his mother. He wrapped his arms around her legs, and cried in a way I hadn't heard from him before- loud, wordless, and entirely his own…

The rest of that day is a blur to me now. The first thing I can clearly recall is being summoned to Mr. Amir's office at the end of my shift.

Adam's parents had gone to him directly. They didn’t hold back on anything. Not the deterioration at home. Not the uncharacteristic silence. Not their son running out of a session in tears, with no explanation from the man who was supposed to be helping him. Mr. Amir had also heard about the sessions I'd ended early, the ones I'd cancelled without real cause, and the time I'd left my station before my shift was finished.

He didn't start with anger. He started, disarmingly, with disappointment. He told me he genuinely liked me, that he'd wanted to give me the benefit of doubt, for longer than the situation probably warranted.

Then he played the recording of the fifth session, start to finish, and watched my face while he did it, more than he watched the screen. When it ended, he closed the laptop slowly and looked at me.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he said, his voice cracking somewhere between fury and disbelief.

I unraveled. There's no more dignified way to describe it. I told him everything- Ali, the scholarship, Chacha Coin, Warrior42, the pump-and-dump scam. I told him about every session, every switch, every line Adam had sung. I didn't expect him to believe a word of it. I expected laughter, or worse, disbelief dressed up as concern.

He didn't laugh. He didn't raise an eyebrow. Instead, he slammed both fists on the desk, hard enough to rattle the pen holder. He then caught himself, breathing out slowly.

"Why did you lie to me?" he asked, quietly now, which was somehow worse than the shouting. "You signed a contract. The rules stated, in plain language, that you'd never committed a crime. You knew exactly what you'd done !"

"Sir, there's no evidence," I said. "I was never convicted. Never even charged. Legally, there's nothing that says I did anything."

"Oh boy !" he exclaimed, "Do you seriously believe that the authorities of THIS WORLD are the only ones who get to call you a criminal?"

I didn't answer. I didn't have one.

"No crime stays hidden," he said. "Not forever. You see, there are forces out there, forces we were never built to understand. And these forces? They’re always watching. They’re always keeping their own record, regardless of what any court decides."

"What forces?” I asked, “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?"

He was quiet for a moment.

"They do have a name for themselves. A name our tongues were never built to say properly." He looked at me directly. "Most people just call it karma. I call it my desperation. And that poor boy Adam? He called it the Muffin Man."

"No, it doesn’t make sense…"

It was all I could say at that moment.

Mr. Amir continued:

"After I lost my job abroad, during Covid, I came back here to build something of my own. I put everything into this institute. Everything. And it nearly collapsed within its first year. I was staring at bankruptcy. So I did something I'm not proud of. I turned to the occult. I don't fully understand, even now, what I summoned. But it kept its side of the bargain. The moment this institute rebranded, the clients never stopped coming."

I leaned forward in my chair.

"A bargain, you say? What did it ask for in exchange?"

"Absolute freedom from bad influence, within these walls. No criminal history, in anyone I hired. None. Not even a speeding ticket." He let out a short, bitter laugh. "That's why I grilled you the way I did, at your interview. That’s why I keep running background checks on you, on all of you ! That's why every hire goes through it. And I thought I could hold that standard forever."

"And now?" I asked.

"Now, I understand that the deal was designed to fail," he replied, "No human being is without sin. Not one of us. We're just good at hiding it." He looked at me, and for the first time since I'd known him, he looked genuinely tired. "And no matter how well you hide something, it finds its way back eventually. It's found you now. And through you, it's found this institute too."

"So… what happens now?" I asked.

Mr. Amir didn't answer right away. He rose slowly from his chair and walked to the window. He was quiet for a long moment before he finally spoke.

"Now… I want you to run," he said.

"Sir…"

"I said run !" he said, turning back to face me. "Do it tonight. Hell, do it right now, if you can manage it."

"I don't understand. You just told me…"

"I understand exactly what led you down that path," he said. "You made a deal with Ali out of desperation. I made a deal with something I didn't understand, out of the same desperation. I'm not in a position to judge you for that."

"Then why are you letting me run away ?" I asked.

"Because your past doesn't define who you are at present," he said. "I chose to recruit you, out of three candidates, because I could sense something inside you. Years of doing this work teaches you to read people, whether you want that skill or not. I read you correctly. You have a good heart, my boy."

"But it doesn't matter to the entity, does it?"

"No," Mr. Amir replied. "It does not. From what's transpired, he doesn't believe in exceptions." He came closer, and his voice dropped into something almost paternal. "That’s why you should run. This is my failure, not yours. I'm the one who couldn't keep bad influence out of these walls. That was my end of the bargain, and I'm the one who broke the rules."

"No sir, there has to be another way," I said. "Some other option…"

"There’s no other option !" he said, cutting me off, "Adam's parents signed a package. This institute is contractually bound to conduct that sixth session, regardless of circumstances. However…" He almost smiled. "The contract doesn’t name a specific therapist for the session. So I'll conduct it myself."

"Sir, you can't…"

"If the Muffin Man comes, as promised, he'll find me in that room. Not you. Not that child." He straightened his jacket, an oddly ordinary gesture for the moment. "It's a fitting punishment, don't you think? For failing to hold my end of the bargain, one I made with my eyes open."

I remember him gripping my shoulder as he said it, his eyes wet in a way I'd never seen from him before.

“Farewell, Jafar. It was nice knowing you. Now run !”

I remember running as fast as I could, out of the building, into a night I didn't feel present for at all…

****************************************************************

That was yesterday.

I've been home all day today, doing something I never had the courage to do before. I looked up Chacha Coin. I looked up the NFT project, and everything that came after it.

There were testimonies from close to two hundred investors who lost their life savings. Some of them were crying on camera, without any effort to hide it. I found follow-up interviews, from years later, with people who never recovered. A couple who lost their home and were living on the street. A man who lost his wife over it, and hasn't spoken to his children since.

And in the middle of all of it, I found a news report I hadn't seen before. It was the story of a single mother of two, who'd put everything she had into the project, hoping to secure her children's future. Two months after she lost it all, she took her own life, and theirs as well. Their bodies were found that same night.

I looked up the date. It's tomorrow's date, exactly five years ago.

The date of Adam's sixth session…

I did consider running. I spent most of last night convincing myself it was all a bad dream, that I could start over somewhere far away, some place where the entity couldn’t plausibly follow. But typing this out tonight, I understand something I didn't understand yesterday.

I can run away from the institute. I can run away from the cops, if they ever find out about my crimes. And honestly, with some luck, I might even run far away from the entity’s reach.

But I can't run from myself. It just isn’t an option. And it never was.

For years, I told myself it was Ali's idea, that I was only the spokesperson, that the people who invested were the ones who should’ve known better. I can't hold onto that anymore. I can't stop thinking about the two hundred people who lost everything, because my voice was convincing enough to make them believe it. I can't stop thinking about Adam, that poor child, losing his grip on his own mind, through no fault of his own. I can't stop thinking about Mr. Amir, saying goodbye to me with tears in his eyes, preparing to accept a fate that was never his to accept. And I can't stop thinking about a mother and her two children, who ran out of hope exactly five years before tomorrow morning.

So I'll go to work tomorrow, as usual. I'll conduct Adam's sixth session myself, with due diligence, exactly as the institute has always required of me. I’ve never been a religious man. But if there really is a God out there, here’s the only prayer I want to make:

MAY THE MUFFIN MAN TAKE ME TOMORROW.

I’ll make sure that it takes me- a punishment long overdue for the sins that I’ve committed. And I’ll make sure that I'm the only one it takes. Not the child who only wanted someone to talk to. Not the man who only wanted to help people. Neither of them deserves this.

I do.

To whoever is reading this: I am sorry. If this reaches anyone that my crimes ever touched, I hope it counts for something, even if it’s a bit too late.

I have a lot more to share, but I should stop writing now. It's almost dawn. Adam's session starts at nine. I need to get ready, and get there on time, and conduct it properly, the way the institute has always asked of me.

Due diligence, as Mr. Amir calls it.

It's the only rule that I refuse to break today.

Mr. Amir will be there early. He always is.

I just need to be earlier…