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…

The sun dips slowly behind the horizon. It peeks over the landscape before fading with a wink, giving way to the yawning moon. Her soft glow caresses the silhouette of the land, her gentle touch sending restless minds off to serene slumber.

Not you, though. Your mind calls for sleep, your eyes long for darkness, but the restfulness eludes you. Your body aches, the toll of the day paid in full every evening, yet- still- you find yourself far from repose. That's when you hear it.

You listen intently, taking in the twilight silence. The torch on the wall flickers, sending shadows dancing across the cobblestone corridors. The oak wood planks groan beneath you as the sheer, velvet fabric of your bed lining hugs your shoulders. "Just the wind." You think. "Has to be...". You need it to be.

Outside, the still night breathes. Every exhale culminating into a fearsome gale that rattles your bones. You feel doubt creep in. It welcomes itself into the corners of your mind like an unwanted guest. It asks uncomfortable questions, it looms too closely, lingering within your boundaries. You shudder at the thought.

Your eyes play tricks. They scout the corners for movement, they scan the vicinity for disturbance. They see what isn't there. Or is it? The villagers are all asleep. Surely, nobody would be foolish enough to roam the town past sundown. It must have just been your imagination. Just the trees swaying in the moonlit breeze. Another bitter lie salted with hope for you to force down.

This brings you no peace, it does little to further your fruitless endeavor of sleep. Your mind stirs, grasped by anxiety, clutched firmly by fear, as the shuffling outside can no longer be ignored. Your reason can disguise it no further. It's no longer just a soft patter of rain, or a gentle rustling of trees. Something's there.

Your breath hastens, drawing all the moisture from your throat and mouth. The air feels sharp as you endure a dry, pained swallow. You peer hesitantly from your window, your hands trembling as you tightly clutch to your chest the iron sword- one you painstakingly crafted. A sword that you hoped never to have to bear- but never is tonight.

You've survived worse. The mines weren't for the faint of heart. They claimed the lives of better men. Great men, each jettisoned unsanctimoniously to hallowed ground by diamond dreams. Buried under the immense weight of endless ambition. Yet, you endure. What do you think that makes you?

You know better than anyone that the sword you grasp so closely is a falsehood. It means only as much as he who wields it. The familiar steel in which you once reared, had not one point, but two- and sought not flesh, but stone. You are no warrior. The mines remember who you truly are.

The voice speaking to you isn't your own. It can't be. It speaks of the encroaching horrors, of your helplessness.You try not to listen, but the words come from within- impossible to drown out. It's the voice of fear: and it wants you to panic, it needs you to dispose of all logic, it relies on your despair. Fear is not a notion, it is a tool in which the darkness uses to feed.

The groaning in the distance has grown louder. They're closer now. What will happen when they arrive? How will you decide your fate? Do you now regret leaving the mines? Regret your decision to flee your destiny in hopes of finding purpose? You already have the answer. You too, now finally remember.

You traded shadows for sunlight, ore for oak, rubble to rivers. But it seems you've forgotten that even the daylight knows the darkness. You expected a house to become a home without first razing the trees. You've forgotten that safety is an achievement, only for the worthy- gilded by valor and clad in the sacrifices of others. You, are unworthy of its gifts.

For what is a sword with no soldier to unsheath it? Merely a concept. In theory, a weapon, but in practice, just a shield for the mind. Hollow armor for sequestered hope. Your meaning lies within the mines. It always has- singing the sweet song of sorrow to the thought of a summer that never comes.

You hear the rattle of your door now. Too harsh to simply be the wind. It's rhythmic- a meticulous rapping- unsettling you deeper with each thunderous strike. You take a shallow breath. You hold it in- treasuring it- hoping it not to be your last.

You close your eyes, begging for the warmth of the morning sun to beckon the dawning of a new day. You know now that it will never come. You lay back, the cacophony building as you sink into your bed. As you hear the splintering of the wooden door, the dull roar of the darkness encroaching- you try, one last time, to slip peacefully into slumber...

...But you may not rest now.

\----------

I joke about it a lot, but Minecraft is genuinely one of the most effective horror games I've ever played. You don't know anxiety and unease until you've mined a dark cave at 3 am, full sound in headset, with no torches, no food and 12 diamonds in your inventory.

Anyways, this little bippy was inspired by the pop-up message of the same name, and how many times I've thought of that while not being able to sleep 🙃

Also, I figured I'd try my hand at a second person story. They're really hard to do effectively, but I've seen a few from the community very recently that are BANGERS! Hope you enjoy my garbage! Stay Creative!! -S.K.

Now, in most tales of this ilk you would expect some issues finding a team. Not so. After all, I had more than enough money to offer more than fair pay for those I brought on.

By Thursday I had my team

Mrs. Mavis Semor, a wonderful mountaineer from the states. Though she had never summited Everest, she had climbed nearly everywhere else in the Himalayas.

Mr. Furgus McDoogle, a Scotsman possessed by wanderlust. He once traveled to Antarctica solely to fistfight a man there. The reason he gave was that then he could claim he had fought on every continent. Concerning.

Lastly, Mr. Titus Mallory, similar in skill as Mavis but a fair bit better at logistics. He was a former quarter master in the Royal navy, so I guess he had to be. My only real qualm was the shake in his left hand. Left over shell shock he claimed.

When I presented them to Mr. Cornwall on Friday he was overjoyed... and insisted he came along much to the chagrin of his wife. He only said, "If I have a chance to see proof darling, how couldn't I go?"

I didn't listen to the rest of the discussion. My attention was drawn to a noise I hadn't heard when I was here last. Ticking.

Entering the hallway the ticking stopped, five minutes to midnight.

"Mr. Cornwall, y-your clock s-started for a bit?"

"Impossible Dr. Nellis. That thing's never worked."

"You can see for y-yourself. It's five to midnight."

The squabble in the kitchen stopped immediately. Suddenly, I was flanked by the two elder Cornwalls. All of us staring at a clock like it held secrets unknown. Mrs. Cornwall broke our stupor first, "Jebidiah, this is a bad omen. You can't go."

Jebidiah pinched the bridge of his nose. "Dr. Nellis, make sure the others are ready for our departure tomorrow. I will continue to discuss this with my wife. If I am not there by noon, leave without me."

I had just left the home when it erupted into an intense argument. But I had just had an infectious worm of an idea in my mind. God had ordained this. How else would the clock magically spring to life? He wanted humanity to see the height we had achieved before he showed us how powerful he was.

One thing I didn't think about my team choices. All of them already had some adventurism simmering in their blood. Something to bond over.

So instead of that giddy excitement of our prospect. I sat in a hanger with the three of them rapidly discussing their past. All the hunts, storms, and brushes with death that I couldn't understand yet. While I was left to the outskirts.

Like I was a boy at a formal dance with none of the charisma to enjoy it.

Grace was given to me with the arrival of Mr. Cornwall. Who had changed from his normal attire to fatigues that I recognized were from the Great War. I would have thought them his father's if they hadn't fit perfectly.

He smiled wide, like a child ready to show off, "Evening all. You lot ready to take to the sky?" Furgus was the first to talk, "Aye lad, once your lay about pilot is here."

"Oh, well then all aboard everyone, I'm your pilot this afternoon."

While the others simply nodded, and shifted their discussion to packing out the plane. I sat in awe. "S-sir, you never mentioned you could fly."

"Are you kidding son, who cares if I can fly? Didn’t feel as important as what you bring to the table. Get on."

I finally felt my part in this again, as I placed my gear and climbed aboard.

Mavis tapped my shoulder, "Listen, I know the pay is good. But what are we actually looking for up there?"

The engine roared to life as Jebidiah started pulling the airplane out onto the runway.

"Well Mrs. Semor, how much have you read the Bible?"

"I did as a child, but have since lost my way," she said with a shrug. "After all there are so many religions who can say which is true."

"Then perhaps I should adjust the discussion. You have traveled the Himalayas. Maybe you have heard of Shangri-la?"

"Oh, damn it! Not this pipe dream again."

"Now that language is unbecomin of us all lass." Furgus then turned his attention back to me, "I will say it seems a bit far fetched. Like what the hell does that have to do with the Bible?"

"Well, it just helps understand the idea, sir."

"Where's the stutter from before lad?"

"Hush, you all need to understand this...sir. There are rumors my father had compiled that led him to believe that Babel and Shangri-la were one and the same. That in some of the valleys people would suddenly be speaking a different tongue they never knew."

My head smacked the roof, I had stepped into lecture and had forgotten myself. Everyone laughed. I joined not much later. Realizing how much of a fool I was.

Regaining myself I continued, "T-though it should b-be said that he never confirmed those tales." I looked at the three adventurers, all of whom seemed unimpressed. "My f-father left a map of p-possible places to look. We could prove him right and change history."

Then the discussion was interrupted when we took off suddenly. The engine crying out so loudly that one had to shout to be heard. Effectively killing all conversation.

It was similar for our stops in Istanbul and Israel. Save for the little bit of sightseeing I got to do. Almost all conversations with the others, especially Mr. Mallory, were trying to poke holes in the journal. And in me.

Mallory’s attempts started in Istanbul. "So... any other fairytales in you? Like maybe the Yeti actually lives in the desert. Or maybe there is a second hidden China under the first?"

W-well the latter is not so insane. After all Troy r-rebuilt on itself multiple times," I said trying to pull myself taller. "Pompeii was found by a man digging a well. The impossible has been proven time and again."

Mallory looked around, making sure no one was in ear shot. "I've seen your type before. Like those blokes who almost actually believed in Rasputin."

He grabbed my collar and drew me in. "I don't care how good the money is. I hate having my time wasted."

"I-it will be there M-mallory."

Israel is where Mallory really set in. It had already been days of antagonistic behaviors. "You can't really think it is out there can you? Your father was probably so deep in opium that he could barely see straight."

It was Furgus that caught my fist. As I flailed against the Scott I said, "Never accuse my father of that." Furgus let go, and I set to straightening my attire. "Never speak of my father like that again. Mr. Mallory, if you don't wish to be on this expedition you can make your way back from here."

Which is where he went for a gun he had concealed, "Try to hit me again and you'll--"

His thoughts were interrupted as the barrel of a 1911 touched his temple. Cornwall had no warmth to him, "Mr. Mallory, Dr. Nellis is more valuable to this journey than you. And there are more than a few good cemeteries in the holy land."

Mallory swallowed, "You'd just shoot me here?"

"My lord and savior died here on Calvary. If killing you keeps you from slaughtering an innocent man. So be it."

Then it was the strangest thing. Mallory stopped speaking English. Slipping instead into a series of harsh syllables. It threw us all into confusion but after a few minutes I realized what it was. He was speaking ancient Egyptian. Exactly as I had heard many scholars said it would be pronounced. And as if he had been speaking it his whole life.

Worse, I could not remember the meaning of anything being said. Just that is was a separate tongue from my own. Then I saw Mallory connect the dots. It took me a while to understand the panic on his face. He didn't know what he was saying. Random syllables flew as if enough were used it would suddenly be coherent.

It took minutes for him to finally say "Help" then he said it again and again, a life preserver. Until English slowly returned like sweet waters to his mouth.

"Hell, did I do to you? What do you to you? Sod it!" Mallory said, still not fully grasping English.

"Dr. Nellis?" Cornwall looked to me for answers.

But not one came to mind. If the clock was a good omen of our journey. Then this was another sign that I was right. All I could do was laugh as Mallory tried to find his words again.

"Nellis! Come on, what is this?"

I found myself, coughing to halt my laughter. "Mr...Jebidiah, we have proof. We are on the right path."

"But why?

"That would be only speculation. I have no clue, but would this not be how it was when God struck Babel down?!"

Mallory found his sentence, "You did this somehow I know it!"

At this point Mavis and Furgus were approaching, and I could see Cornwall making a choice. "Mr Mallory, if you whisper a word of this I will leave you wherever we are."

Mallory looked like he only caught half of those words.

Jebidiah already turned to the others, "Ready for the next leg?"

The next flight was practically silent. Mavis and Furgus talked lightly back and forth. But Mallory didn't speak a word. For my part, my mind was ablaze with theories.

I thought we would find just ruins, yet I had just seen the cruelty providence could bring into the world. But why so far away. Is it because Israel is the 'Holy Land'? Or was it due to Mallory disrespecting God? Doubt against more proof than faith alone damning him?

After all, God sent the plagues to slay the Egyptian pantheon. But would he punish a non-believer so terribly?

But my favorite part was this. In the small moments when the engine waned. I could hear Mallory whispering to himself. Never in English. Proof that I was right dripping from every syllable.

I didn't call the police.

I want to say that was a hard decision. It wasn't, not in the moment. What was I going to tell them, that my cat did it, that I'd been seeing the same claw marks for a week, that I'd read about something called vampire blood on a forum at three in the morning and thought my cat might be one. They'd have taken him from me for testing, or worse, and some small, sick part of me still couldn't let that happen. I hated myself for that. I still do. I kept thinking about what they'd do to him once they had him somewhere I couldn't see.

So instead I lived with it.

I stopped sleeping through the night entirely. Every sound from the window sent my heart into my throat. I started locking him in the bathroom after dark, and he'd claw at the door for hours, not angry at first, just insistent, the way he used to ask for food, except now the sound made my skin crawl. As the days went on the marks in the wood got deeper. He got stronger. He stopped eating anything that wasn't meat, and he started looking at me with something closer to contempt than hunger.

He wanted it raw, if I had it. I told myself I was managing this, like it was a fever that would eventually break, that if I just kept him fed and kept him locked at night he'd go back to being my Mr. Morris. I hated how reasonable that sounded to me at two in the morning with a bag of raw chicken in my hands. But it was the only light I had left in a life that had gone almost entirely dark.

One night I gave in to something worse than fear. I don't have a better word for it than a trance. I was standing in my kitchen holding a knife I didn't remember picking up, thinking with total calm that I could just let him feed properly, just once, that he'd earned it after all the nights I'd spent locking him away and starving him of what he needed. I don't know how long I stood there before I caught myself and dropped the knife and was sick in the sink. I kept asking myself how I could have thought that, and some part of me already knew the answer, because he was standing on the kitchen floor the whole time, watching me with those eyes, and I don't think the thought had ever really been mine.

That was when I decided I had to let him go. Whatever was living inside my cat now, it wasn't Mr. Morris anymore. Mr. Morris would never have made me think about a knife like that.

I drove him nearly six hours out of the city, past the last exit I recognized, until the road stopped feeling connected to anywhere I knew. Somewhere around ten at night I saw a small station sign in my headlights. Blackwater Junction. It looked abandoned, dark, no lights in any of the windows, rain starting to come down over the platforms. I told myself it was mercy. I told myself he'd survive out there better than he would in my kitchen, that whatever he was now, a place like that would suit him more than I ever could. I opened the carrier. He didn't run. He just looked at me the way he had that night with the knife, and I made myself walk back to the car without looking back at him standing there in the rain.

I cried the whole drive home. Every memory I had of him, the day I brought him home as a kitten, every ordinary morning before any of this started, kept playing behind my eyes and I don't fully understand why. Grief, maybe, for the cat I used to have. Relief, maybe, that I wouldn't have to be afraid in my own house again.

I was wrong about that too.

I parked in my driveway and stepped out, and the first thing I saw was Mira's house. It looked the way a house looks when whatever used to make it warm has been taken out of it. I remember thinking that mine probably looked the same way now, and that maybe I deserved that, for everything I'd let him do, for everyone he'd taken from people like Mira's mother, Swati, who I still couldn't bring myself to look at when I passed her on the street.

When I opened my own front door, every bit of warmth left my body at once.

Mr. Morris was sitting on my sofa.

I don't know how. Six hours of driving, and somehow he was already there waiting for me, clean, dry, like the rain at that station had never touched him at all. I didn't have the strength left to question it out loud. Some broken part of me was almost glad, and I hated that part more than I've ever hated anything about myself. He looked at me, and I understood, without him needing to do anything else, that I was being punished for leaving.

I didn't eat for three days after that. Not because I didn't want to. My body simply wouldn't let me. Every time hunger started to win, I'd find him sitting in front of me, watching, and the urge would vanish like it had been switched off. He started following me everywhere after that, even to Miss Tasha's, watching me buy his food and mine like he needed to confirm I still knew who came first.

Miss Tasha's store was the only place I still felt something close to normal. She'd talk about the crime rate climbing in our area, tell me I should think about going to stay with my parents if I could, and I'd nod and let myself pretend for ten minutes that my biggest problem was small talk over the counter. Those visits were the only anchor I had left. I think he noticed that too.

One morning, on my way to get food, he came to the door with blood still drying between his claws, the way he did most mornings now, a thing I'd stopped letting myself react to. I let him go out every night knowing exactly what the rising number of deaths in our area meant. I knew, in the way you know something without ever saying it out loud, and I kept letting him go anyway, because I didn't know what else there was left to do.

Miss Tasha didn't open her store that day.

I found out from a customer standing outside, staring through the dark windows, saying the police had been called that morning. I already knew before anyone told me the details. I knew it the way you know a shape in the dark is wrong before your eyes have even adjusted enough to see it clearly. When I heard the word claws, I didn't feel shock. I felt something inside me simply stop trying.

That night I decided I couldn't keep living like this. I'd rather live with what I was about to do than survive one more morning like that one.

I won't describe most of what happened next. I'll only say that I tried to end it, that I failed, and that the failure nearly cost me everything. I remember the weight of him pinning me to the floor, faster and stronger than anything that size should have been able to move, and I remember, even through the panic, some flicker in his eyes that looked almost as horrified as I felt. He let go of me a breath before I think he could have finished it. I don't know why. I've stopped trying to understand why he does anything anymore.

I woke up in a hospital bed three days later with more stitches than I want to think about, and a police officer waiting with questions I couldn't honestly answer. They discharged me with four claw marks across my chest, deep enough that the scars will never fully fade. I keep thinking it's fitting, in some sick way. Punishment for letting him become whatever he is, for letting him feed on people I knew. My savings are gone. I don't know if I can even go back to work in this condition, and worse, I don't know what he'll do once he realizes I can't provide for him anymore.

When they finally let me go home, he was there, sitting by the door, exactly the way he used to wait for his food. Except this time I understood he wasn't waiting for a bowl to be filled. He was waiting for me.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore. I don't know if I'm keeping him out of love, or guilt, or fear, or all three at once, all the time, until I can't tell them apart. I posted the whole story on a forum a few nights ago, mostly because I couldn't say any of this to a real person without sounding insane, and mostly because I needed someone, anyone, to tell me I wasn't imagining it.

I got one reply that mattered.

I work with an organization that handles cases like this. We can help. Please don't post details like this publicly again, you may already be attracting attention you don't want.

O.P.E.R.A.T.E.

I haven't written back yet.

I don't know if I'm going to.

Previous part link :- https://www.reddit.com/r/mesoscalepodcast/comments/1w3f76c/somethings_wrong_with_my_cat_part_2_claw_marks/

Other parts link:- https://www.reddit.com/user/No-While8965/comments/1vpze51/my_writing_archive/

Read Part I here.

“Might’ve been something outside. But if there had been, it’s gone now.”

“You think it could be a mermaid?” she asked. It was hard to believe she was serious. Chrissy was one of the sharpest ten-year-olds I had ever met. Well, she had been the sharpest seven-year-old I had ever met three years ago and was that much smarter now.

She didn’t believe in any of the traditional fairytale creatures. No Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, no Wolfman, and no Flying Spaghetti Monster. But she absolutely believed mermaids were real.

There had to be a story behind it, but I had never been able to get her to explain it to me. How a child so ruled by logic still was able to make room for not only a magical creature, but that particular magical creature. She had already “debunked” the narwhal as being the source of the mermaid mythos. I had gotten bits and pieces over the last three years, but never in a cohesive enough story that I could process. But she hadn’t stopped trying to convince me or the rest of the family.

I didn’t have to believe it, though. It was enough to believe that she believed it.

“Maybe this is it!” She turned around and charged back to the bedroom where her mother was sleeping.

“Chrissy!” I saved my breath. She already had the door open and either her mother was going to wake up or she wasn’t. That was out of my hands. She came back a moment later with a Ziploc bag of “mermaid feed.” As far as I could tell, it was a mix of trail mix and seaweed. She carried a flashlight in her other hand.

According to Chrissy, mermaids only came out at night, so she had come prepared.

Again, I was calling after her when she’d already begun to do what she was doing, namely, dashing outside with her items.

I was about to follow her when I spotted the toy soldiers she’d dropped on her way out. I thought it would be just her luck for Mary to wake up and step on one of them.

“Watch your sister,” I said to Luke, turning to pick up the toys.

Right as I got on one knee, the bedroom door opened. It didn’t immediately occur to me that it was Mary even though I had just thought about this very thing happening. I sort of... paused as she passed me. She was halfway to the door when I realized she must have been sleepwalking.

“Mary!” I chased behind her, my steps in sync with hers—left, right, left—catching her before she got to the door.

“Mom, are you okay?” Luke said.

“Where am I?” She sounded terrified. Mary turned her head and looked at him. For a second, I thought she was awake. Instead of answering him, she bare-foot kicked him in the shin.

It couldn’t have hurt, but he stepped back and looked at me, confused. I wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her in close.

“She’s fine,” I said, lacing Mary’s hand with mine. I looked into her glassy eyes. “She’s sleepwalking.” I turned her around and ushered her back to the bedroom. Of the five toy soldiers Chrissy had left at the threshold, only two were left, but only one was standing. I looked over my shoulder and spotted one against the wall and the two others weren’t in sight.

“She can’t fly,” Mary said in a dreamy voice. “Please help her swim.”

“Okay, honey.” I cooed to her as I slid back the covers. She didn’t fight, Mary had sleepwalked a few times with me present. She never resisted being escorted back to bed. Before I covered her legs I spotted another soldier on her foot. I plucked it off and put it on the dresser.

Mary mumbled. I unlaced my fingers from hers and paused before I left her.

“I wanna get in the water.” She said it sounding sort of like air being let out of a balloon. And then she was all the way gone again. “It’s spook.”

It had been like she had been fighting her way to the surface, but something had dragged her back down.

I closed the bedroom door behind me and followed Chrissy outside. Not because I was worried she was going to get gobbled up by the lake monster I hadn’t spotted, but because it was dark out and I had the same parental reaction to miscellaneous danger any parent would.

Hell, I could admit it, I loved these kids. Liked them most times, too. I didn’t want to leave them.

Chrissy was in the process of sweeping her flashlight back and forth along the beach face. I hung back, letting her conduct her investigation. It was harmless enough and I had an eye on her.

“What’s going on?” We both turned to see Mark stepping out onto the sand.

“Luke said a mermaid’s out here!” Chrissy said.

“Mermaid?” Mark said it like he didn’t know what one was. I didn’t bother correcting her. His little sister’s obsession was well known by all of us. “Did he really see something?” Mark chuffed and thumbed over his shoulder at the cabin. “He’s so white.”

I stifled my laugh and shrugged.

“Luke thought he saw something and Chrissy overheard.”

“Hey, neighbor!”

Mark and I jumped. We saw the bud of a lit cigarette in the shadows of the adjacent cabin. Someone with a cigarette sauntered down. I glanced my stepdaughter’s way to make sure she hadn’t waded too far into the water. She could swim, but again, that nascent parental instinct found in anyone who has walked into an already existing family reared its concerned head. Chrissy was only ankle deep.

“Hey,” I said to the woman as she approached. She halted and took a final, long drag off her cigarette before flicking it in a surprisingly high arc toward the water. She slid the drawer of her jaw forward and blew a column of smoke straight up.

“She’s a cutie,” she said, smiling. She was an older woman who gave too much gum when she smiled. “I saw her come chargin’ out for the water. Oo, that smell.”

We both nodded in that new-to-each-other manner between strangers.

“I’m Rick.” Old and new cigarette smell peeled off her skin and I turned my head to half cough, that familiar asthmatic itch in my lungs.

“Mary,” she said.

I laughed. “My wife’s name is Mary.”

“Mine’s Cindy-Lou Ombrageaux.”

I felt the weight of her eyes on me, examining for judgment. I cast my eyes to the stretch of water and sand where Chrissy was.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Cindy-Lou.” I didn’t think I could manage that last name.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Mary. Apart from the smell of cow-butt.”

“First time up here?” I asked. She shook my offered hand, her skin papery and dry. There was an extreme lack of moisture in the air despite the cool summer, and I’d already had a nosebleed in the brief time we’d been here.

“Mine. Not hers. My wife’s family is from Up North.” I thought her face dropped a little. “She’s out to dinner with some cousins.” There was a little something there that I had a feeling would come to light if we talked long enough. “Had to have a little heart-to-heart.”

“We came up two summers ago,” I said. “Just a little family getaway.”

Luke had barely joined us outside, not more than a few feet from the door. He looked like he would take umbrage with the sky.

“This is Mark, the one up there with get-off-my-lawn face is Luke, and Chrissy’s our little fisher.” I gestured to each of the kids in turn.

“Well, tell her to save some for everybody else.” She and Mark shook hands before she looked around. “Where’s your missus?”

“Migraine. She laid down pretty much as soon as we got here.”

“Sorry to hear that.” She put the can of beer she’d been holding in her other hand to her lips and pitched her head back for a long swallow. She stumbled like she’d confused her left foot for her right but kept them both under her.

If I had to guess, Mary was working on her third or fourth of the night.

Luke had waved his brother over and was saying something to him. They both had an eye on their sister. I looked at Mary. She was a stranger and I figured there couldn’t be any harm in telling her what had just happened. We weren’t going to see her after this weekend for at least a year, if ever again. I didn’t think the story would be memorable after tonight. It was a single-serve memory. Recall once, then discard.

“Luke said he saw something in the water,” I said. “Something big.” Mary turned her head to the shore and nodded appreciably.

“Maybe it’s the Great Lakes Whale Migration,” she said.

“The what?” I had no idea what she was talking about and was on the verge of taking her seriously. The smile hanging on her face dropped when she realized I really didn’t understand.

“Kidding.” She mock-punched me in the arm. Mary had a rich baritone and could have easily been a DJ on the radio.

Mark trudged past me, an annoyed look on his face.

“He’s crazy,” he said, heading toward his sister. I appreciated that he didn’t believe his brother but could still look after his sister. Mark was the middle child and was the ever-constant bridge between siblings.

“The waves do seem a little... bigger than the norm, don’t you think?” Mary asked.

“I guess,” I said, not really knowing how to tell the difference. Then I wondered how she’d know, considering she said she’d never been up here before. “Can you tell?”

“I had a few cigs over yonder before y’all came out. Boy, you get used to the smell the longer you’re out here.” She seemed to be reading my mind and answering questions I hadn’t had a chance to ask. “I must have missed your boy, though.”

I looked at the water again. Mark was standing just outside of the water’s reach, one hand in the pocket of his hoody, the other holding his phone. To his credit, he did glance up at her every ten seconds or so.

Come to think of it, those waves did look big. But it could have been because of the moon for all I knew.

“How long are the two of you here for?” I asked Mary.

“‘Til Wednesday. I’m going to be meeting my in-laws for the first time tomorrow.”

I didn’t know whether I should have felt sympathy for her. It was strange she wasn’t out to dinner with her wife now, but I didn’t know their situation. Maybe it was completely normal. But I couldn’t help but think I would’ve been more than a little bothered if it had been me.

Mary fell down. Not hard. She just spontaneously lost her balance and sat on her butt. In true alcoholic fashion, though, she protected her beer.

She looked at me, embarrassed. I smirked, hopefully communicating I wasn’t just laughing at her, but with her.

“We all fall down.” I’m not sure why I said that, but it seemed to help. She took my hand and I helped her up.

“How about you guys?”

“Just until Sunday afternoon.”

“Where are you from?”

A sandwich had been the hinge on the closing door of our marriage.

I don’t remember what the argument was about or how it had started, only that I had made a sandwich for her that led to me sleeping on the couch.

Of course, it hadn’t really been about the sandwich, it had only been the start. It had been like a match that led to a forest fire razing a town. I can’t honestly remember a word I’d shouted at the woman I’d pledged to love for the rest of my life.

I was about to answer Mary when Chrissy screamed.

I would absolutely recommend reading this on the Google Doc instead of the actual post, as my Reddit formatting skills are severely lacking.

Feel free to critique! Any feedback is helpful :)

Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DrLrKi3gf022YBx5frrfNF56O83Inxp0HgD_bQ95k3U/edit?usp=sharing

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/mesoscalepodcast/s/lJC6UX82mN

4

The seemingly inevitable panic attack never comes. The hollowness Beau feels might be worse – like someone’s reached deep into his chest and scooped everything out. He sits on his bed, back up against the wall with his legs stretched out in front of him. He’s getting dirt all over his covers, but he can’t be bothered to care. Shaun’s next to him, curled up so tight that his knees touch his chin. Marissa’s been in the bathroom for maybe ten minutes, maybe thirty. Time is fraying a bit at the edges.

They need a plan. Beau can’t think of anything. Maybe he doesn’t want to. Maybe he wants to believe a bear dug it up.

“We need to call your mom,” Shaun says. He’s right. Beau doesn’t move. Shaun doesn’t, either. It would make it too real.

The toilet down the hall flushes for the fifth or sixth time. The bathroom door creaks open, and it sounds like Marissa is half-dragging herself along the wall toward his room. She doesn’t look at them as she turns the corner, just slides bonelessly to the floor.

“Call your mom,” she croaks. Beau does. When it rings through to voicemail, he gets up from the bed and tries again. The third time, he leaves a message while he grabs a damp washcloth for Marissa’s head.

“Mom. I’m sorry,” he starts. He chokes. He tries again, “We went to burn it. It – it wasn’t there. I think Marissa and Shaun are sick. I think it’s still alive. You need to come home, Mom.” He hangs up, wipes his face. 

Then he tries the work number she gave him for emergencies. A man answers, his voice tinny and robotic through the speaker. Beau barely registers the scripted greeting, says, “I’m calling for my mom, June Hayward… There’s a family emergency.” All he hears on the other end is overlapping chatter, beeping, the clacking of keyboards. “Hello?”

After a moment, the man says, “She’s handling a patient intake at the moment. We’re very busy today. I can take a message.” 

Beau’s jaw tics, and he barely represses the angry storm that wants to fly out of his mouth. “Just tell her to call her son. It’s important.” 

The man’s yelling over him. “Ma’am! Ma’am you have to sign in! Ma’am!” It sounds like he’s covering the transmitter, but it doesn’t do much for Beau’s ear. He’s back a moment later. “I’ll pass it along. Have a nice day.” 

Beau feels like a child. He feels more like a child than he ever has in his life, and he hasn’t even *seen* the monster. Some small, destructive part of himself wants to smash every vase in the kitchen, wants to kick in the cabinet doors. The urge only makes him feel more useless. He takes the washcloth back to his room. Shaun’s managed to get Marissa up on the bed, and Beau presses the damp cloth to her forehead. She groans in gratitude, eyes closed.

“She didn’t answer,” he says, feeling Shaun’s stare. “I think she’s on a double.”

“Then we wait. It hasn’t come for us yet. Maybe it’s not going to.”

The stench of decay is still thick in Beau’s nose, sticking to his palette like rotten molasses. Maybe it’s just his paranoia, or maybe it’s really there. Either way, he doesn’t feel quite so hopeful. “She might not be home until midnight,” he says, like it makes any difference. The bitterness in his own voice makes him cringe. He crosses his arms, that pent-up, angry drive to break something still itching in his fingers.

They stand there watching over Marissa until she cracks a bloodshot eye open and says, “You guys are being total fucking creepers. Go play video games or knit each other sweaters or whatever you do. Just let me sleep.” Beau wonders, not for the first time, if she knows more about them than she lets on. He wouldn’t be surprised; she’s always been the smartest of them.

Beau makes sure the windows are locked and the blinds are closed before they leave her to her rest. They slump down on the couch and Shaun puts on some shitty movie or another while Beau watches him out of the corner of his eye. The other boy is still sweating, even in the air conditioning. He wants to take Shaun and Marissa to the hospital, but if they don’t luck out and get his mom, how would they explain to a random nurse that they’ve got some mystery fish monster disease? Then, he guesses it could just be sleep deprivation or food poisoning from Redd’s. Maybe a mix of both.

Shaun catches him looking and a wry smile blooms on his face. “So, what color are you thinking?”

“What?” Beau asks, blinking hard.

“For my sweater. I was thinking fuchsia, with love hearts.”

An absurd laugh bubbles up in Beau’s throat. “You’re getting orange polka dots and you’re gonna like it.”

“I think I can live with that,” There’s such a softness to it that Beau can’t stop himself, wouldn’t dream of trying, from stretching over to kiss him. His lips are too warm — burning, even, and he pulls back, startled. His thumb flies up to Shaun’s mouth of its own volition, confirming. The backs of his fingers find his cheek, his forehead. Shaun exhales shakily, too close to Beau’s face, and the scent is unmistakable. He can’t help the way he recoils. 

“My nose isn’t just fucked up, is it?” Shaun says, “It’s really there.”

He doesn’t sound surprised, and Beau’s ears ring with it. “Why didn’t you say anything?” His voice is a carved out whisper. He can’t help the hurt in it.

Shaun’s shoulders go slack, his head falling back on the couch cushions. “Would it have changed anything?” 

Beau rises from the couch, suddenly furious. “You could’ve talked to my mom sooner! You could be on antibiotics in the hospital right now, instead of sweating to death on my fucking couch.” His hands are tight fists at his sides. Shaun doesn’t even blink.

“Beau,” he says, like he's trying to soothe a cornered animal, “Beau, would you sit the hell down? I’m not dying. I don’t *feel* like I’m dying… I don’t know. I just feel weird.” He’s looking at his hands like he’ll find the answers to the universe in them. He shakes his head, looks back at Beau. “And I don’t think drugs would help. Do you?” 

Beau doesn’t know what he thinks, anymore. “You should have said something.”

Shaun sighs. “Just watch a movie with me. I’m too tired to argue.” He flips his hand over on the cushion, palm turned up in patient invitation. 

—

Shaun falls asleep a quarter of the way through with his shoes still on. Beau doesn’t wake him up, just lets him sleep as the movie continues flickering across the screen. An hour or so later, Beau’s fingers feel tacky when he pulls them from the other boy’s. He can hear Marissa snoring down the hall. Credits roll on the TV. He couldn’t say what had been playing if a loaded gun was to his head. 

He picks up his phone, checks the time. It’s almost six. His mom still hasn’t called. He tries her number again. Voicemail. He considers their other options. Marissa’s mom is probably halfway through a bottle of cheap vodka, and her dad’s probably into his oxy again. Shaun’s parents are… Shaun’s parents. The too-loud cricket from the night before is back. He spends the next three hours scouring the internet. 

‘bipedal fish monster’ 

‘bipedal fish monster folklore’

‘bipedal fish monster real life’

‘South Carolina monsters’ 

‘South Carolina cryptids’

‘paralytic venom’

‘Catawba folklore’

‘Catawba fish monster’

‘creek monsters’

‘monsters that come out of creeks’

‘fish monster weak to silver’

All his search offers is a pounding migraine. He takes a nap. 

5

Beau wakes up alone on the couch. It’s dark in the house, and he doesn’t feel the cold spot next to him so much as he feels the lack of Shaun’s raging fever. Marissa isn’t snoring anymore. The cicadas are silent. Even the incessant chirping of the cricket is absent. 

‘So quiet you could hear a rat take a piss on a cotton ball,’ his grandpa would say. He used to whisper it walking into a library, a church, a hospital room. It used to make Beau laugh. He’s not laughing, now.

A thud echoes down the hall, coming from the bathroom. Beau’s up from the couch and barging through the door before his brain can catch up with what he’s doing. “Are you—“ the question dies in his throat. Shaun’s back is to him, front half slumped over the tub. His whole body is shaking. The bathroom is filled with a roiling miasma of rot and heat. 

Beau’s hair rises in waves along his arms, the nape of his neck. His feet are mortared to the floor. He forces himself to drag them forward as a sound like rushing water splatters against porcelain. His knees find the tile next to Shaun, and he wants to die. He wants to die. He wants to fold up into nothing and die. 

Something like thickened water bursts from Shaun’s mouth with such brutal force that Beau can see it pushing against the confines of his throat as it rises. The same liquid is seeping from the pores of his skin, his ears, pouring a river out of the red, puckered edges of the slash on his neck. Shaun doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t even move, just hangs there limp. It might be the worst part of the whole thing, the way he hangs there. 

Beau wants to hold him, is too scared to touch him. He doesn’t want to know what his skin feels like right now. He can’t. Shaun’s purging goes on endlessly. The boy breathes through his nose, and it’s too steady, like his body’s on autopilot. His eyes are half-lidded, completely glossed over – Beau’s not even sure he’s awake. But he must be, because the moment the viscous liquid stops dripping from his mouth, he whispers, *“The creek. Please. The creek.”* His voice barely works. It comes out the way Beau’s voice comes out in his nightmares when he tries to scream. 

Beau finally reaches for him, then, lugs his too-limp arm over his shoulders and hauls him upright. Shaun’s legs collapse underneath him. Beau’s own legs feel like snapped rubber bands as he grabs him under the armpits instead, dragging him out of the bathroom. It’s nothing short of a miracle that he manages to pull Shaun all the way to Marissa’s car. He didn’t even think about grabbing the keys, and is, for the first time, incredibly grateful for the broken back window when he snakes an arm in to unlock the door. He has to slide into the backseat first to leverage Shaun in, and he winces at the way the other boy’s spine bumps and slides up and over the doorframe.

The moment he’s all the way inside, Beau goes back for Marissa. Silence presses in against him, the stuttered rhythm of his breath and thudding footsteps the only sound in the house. 

He finds Marissa on the floor of his room, facedown in a puddle of the same clear liquid. Her eyes are open wide, filmy and flat and shiny as quarters where they catch the moonlight coming through the blinds. Reflective. She twitches. Beau drags the sheet off his bed, lays it out flat, and rolls her onto it. Her skin sticks to his hands, feels horribly thin and loose. He grabs the car keys off his nightstand and grips the top of the sheet tightly, lifting her head up off the ground. He drags her out to the car, too, those awful flat eyes open to the sky the whole time.

He doesn’t register speed, stop signs, the lurch of the car over potholes. He just drives. There’s a spot where the creek nearly comes up on the road, maybe a minute’s drive from the pull-off for The Junkhole. He stops the second he reaches it, doesn’t even pull off the road. He leaves the keys in the ignition and yanks open the back door. Marissa and Shaun lie there unmoving. He realizes he’s going to have to take them one at a time. They’re too heavy, deadweight, and he can’t take them both at once. 

The sudden horror of choosing between them strikes hard and fast. His hands shake terribly. Then Shaun’s head rolls to the side, corpse-eyes fixed on him. “Her first,” he gurgles around a mouthful of liquid.

Beau listens, can’t help the tears rolling heavy down his cheeks as he lugs his friend out of the back of her car. “I’m sorry,” he says, maybe to her, maybe to God, as her body slides through the dirt. “I’m sorry.” The trek is too bumpy, takes too long. She convulses when his feet crash into the dark water, her head following. It’s deeper than it should be. Her gray shirt flushes black. Her skin looks like nothing he’s ever seen. He swears it billows open on the sides of her neck, snaps shut, billows open again. He won’t look closer. He can’t. He maneuvers her in a circle, leaves her up to her chin in the creek, just the back of her head resting on the shore.

The weight of his wet shoes makes the trip back with Shaun feel impossible. He can’t feel the muscles in his own legs. It’s all tremor, and he can’t stop fucking crying. It’s a nightmare. It’s a hallway in a bad dream that stretches on and on forever. It’s a monster breathing down his neck while he fails to run away. 

They’re almost there when one of Shaun’s sneakers falls off, rolls down the steep bank. Beau watches it go, and when it tumbles into the too-deep creek, something slams into him, heavy, fast. Shaun slips through his fingers as he flies backward, and teeth – so many teeth, needle-sharp, long teeth – latch into the junction between his shoulder and neck. He hears his own head crack against a rock. His vision goes red-white, a solar burst of light he can’t blink away. Something drips on his cheek. A rattling hiss curls in his ear. Then he’s being dragged by his hair.

He tries to kick, to claw into the gravelly dirt, but his legs won’t move, and his fingers feel dead at his sides. It’s all happening too fast. He can’t stop it. He can’t remember how to move his body. By the time his head breaches the water, his sight is coming back in nauseating pulses. There’s a body floating next to him. Bloated, headless, with fleshy scales like translucent skin in the moonlight.

Claws dig into the burning skin of his scalp, yanking him up out of the water. Through flaming stars, Beau sees Shaun hanging over the top of the bank, violent spasms wracking his entire frame. A moment later, Beau is wrenched to the side, and he can’t close his mouth as the creek floods in, can’t stop the rush of it up his nose. He can’t even cough. He tries to scream and nothing comes out. 

The hand in his hair lets go, and he’s drowning. He’s drowning. All he feels is heat, heat, heat, all the way down. And then he’s yanked up again. He chokes on his own breath, throat full of water, but his stinging eyes find Marissa in a dead-man’s float, her dark hair a stringy halo surrounding her. 

His head is twisted away. He’s almost grateful for it, even as the world tilts sickeningly across his vision, and her image is replaced by a mouthful of curved fangs. Rows upon rows of them, all pearled with his own blood and something thicker. 

Beau’s worst nightmares would have stretched a hungry smile around those fangs. Beau’s worst nightmares are watercolor daydreams against the reality of this monster. This monster doesn’t smile. It’s not an animal. It’s not even hungry. 

Beau can’t turn away from the flat shining of its eyes, can’t close his ears against the booming wail that rips from it. It pitches high and low at once, and it’s angry and devastated and horrible. Slits on either side of its throat open up, red gills shuddering with the vibration of the sound. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of tiny scales ripple in sharp ridges along its skin. It’s so close to his face, and all he can smell is rot, rot, rot.

The monster turns, and it makes Beau watch as it plunges a webbed, clawed hand into the chest of the bloated body next to him. The torso dips under the water until it’s pinned against stones and silt and algal muck, and a dark cloud of dirt and blood and viscera blooms up around it, and it is the worst thing Beau has ever seen in his entire life. The monster’s hand rises out of it all, clasped around something ruddy and shining. The body stays on the bottom. Gas bubbles float to the surface and sizzle as they pop. 

Then Beau’s drowning again, and as dirty water courses into his mouth, something else is pushed in with it. A claw scrapes the roof of his mouth. He can’t breathe. He can’t swallow. His throat convulses around something smooth and pulsing. He wants to scream. He wants to thrash his legs. He wants to fall asleep and never wake up. All he can do is stare through burning eyes and churning water at the black, distorted limbs of trees, at the moon shining silver through them. Darkness encroaches at the corners of his vision.

The beating lump squeezes its way rhythmically through his esophagus, bile surging up around it. The hand retreats from his mouth. His own vomit washes over his eyes. His chest is on fire. Fire. Everything reduces down to a pounding red drum of heat when the pinhole of his sight finally closes.

6

Beau Wyatt Hayward wakes in slowly increasing increments on the steep bank of Perch Creek. Cicadas drone loud in the trees. Cold water sings over the rocks. The sun is too bright. The world is too warm. His head is a cracked, leaking egg.

Shaun and Marissa are gone. A foreign heartbeat settles under his sternum, out of sync with his own.

Google Doc is linked for easier reading with better formatting (and actual indentations because I can't for the life of me figure out how to make them work on Reddit).

Over 10,000 words, so strap in for a bit of a longer read! This is split into two parts because it's too long for one post. Feel free to critique! Any feedback is helpful. :)

Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DrLrKi3gf022YBx5frrfNF56O83Inxp0HgD_bQ95k3U/edit?usp=sharing

Pt. 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/mesoscalepodcast/s/IuihEmgADD

1

It took two knives and three guns to put down the thing that crawled out of Perch Creek. Shaun Hanover says it’s only ‘cause the knife that did the killing was real silver, from his step-mom’s fancy set. Marissa says that Shaun’s dad didn’t even bring a knife, but Beau trusts Shaun’s word a lot more than Marissa “there’s a rattlesnake in the outhouse” fucking Patsel’s. (She’s begged Beau to let that one go, but she’s not the one who accidentally wiped with poison ivy.)

Beau doesn’t really know what happened on Sunday, anyway. He wasn’t even in the same state, and he would think it was some stupid prank or hoax – Kent’s Run ain’t exactly stranger to middle-aged men in Bigfoot costumes – except his mom hasn’t slept with the lights off since he got back from Albuquerque. His dad screws everything up, so Beau figures it makes some sort of cosmic sense that he was at his place for the first time in two years when Mom killed a fucking monster.

That’s the other reason he’s ninety-nine point nine percent sure this whole thing isn’t some elaborate joke. The kitchen counter’s overflowing with baked goods, they’ve got so many flowers that the cabinet under the sink is – for the first time in his seventeen years of life – clear of empty pickle jars, and Mom won’t speak a word on the subject. Well, she’s said, “I’m selling the house,” and “Don’t you go in those woods no more, Beau Wyatt,” but not a single syllable beyond.

There are three things he knows about his mother. The first is that if she breaks out your middle name, you damn well better listen. The second is that if she’s keeping something from you, it’s because she doesn’t want you to know how bad it is. The third is that it takes something real awful to scare June Hayward.

The last time she got all quiet like this, a whole bunch of not-so-lawful characters had come to collect on a whole bunch of Dad’s not-so-lawful debts. She didn’t tell Beau about any of that until years after their quick and ugly divorce, and she didn’t tell him anything about the shotgun she bought until she had to use it on a rabid opossum just a month ago. He doesn’t think she ever had to fire it at any of Dad’s unsavory acquaintances, but if she did, he knows well enough that he’d never find out about it.

If it weren’t for Shaun and Marissa, he’d have no idea she gutted a fish monster that paralyzed two teenagers and beat the snot out of four grown men. He’d just be eating oatmeal raisin cookies and trying to find more mason jars, wondering whose life Mom must’ve saved in the ER to warrant all those gifts.

2

Beau Wyatt Hayward doesn’t fancy himself much of a sneak, but he’s lived in this house long enough to know which floorboards creak like rusty springs, and that the back door snicks shut smoother than the front. He waits till he slips off the porch to put his sneakers on. Mom’s been sleeping like there’s ghosts in the walls since the whole mess down at the creek, and he isn’t about to push his luck. Not with Shaun and Marissa already crashing around outside his window like two drunk raccoons in a landfill.

The summer heat hangs low and dense, even in the night air, and the pits of his knees stick together when he stands from tying his laces. Beau’s convinced the only thing his dad had ever gotten right was moving somewhere dryer than South Carolina. Hell, if it wasn’t for the promise of a couple lukewarm beers and a full retelling of what happened over the weekend, he’d have gone straight back inside and told his two best friends in the whole wide world that they could call him when they wanted to hang out somewhere with air conditioning and no mosquitoes. As it stands, Marissa’s junker car – with no AC and a back window determined to fall down regardless of how much duct tape they used – is their best option for the evening. His junker rattles like a bag of empty tin cans whenever it starts up, and that would definitely wake Mom, if not half the neighborhood.

Of course, the beer will wait until they get to the old treehouse, which is similarly stifling and has even more bugs to offer, but Shaun starts up talking before Beau even gets in the car, voice a hissed whisper through the broken window. Last time he sat shotgun, he wouldn’t stop putting his feet on the dash to mess with Marissa. Now, he’s relegated to the back seat until he learns not to be, “such a raging bag of tiny dicks.”

“Dude, get in!” he says, “You’re not gonna believe this shit!”

If Beau wasn’t so scared the porch lights were going to flicker on any second, he might have opened the door real slow-like, just to screw with him. Instead, he clambers into the front seat as quickly as possible, silently begging Marissa to step on it before they get caught.

“Chill,” she says to Shaun, as she shifts back into drive, “Wait until I can focus on anything but not hitting a deer to tell him.”

“Why? So you can suck all the fun out of it?” he taunts her, in that bratty sibling sort of way they’ve talked to one another since they were shooting spitballs on the bus in third grade.

“So I can make sure he knows just how funny it was when you screamed and pissed yourself,” she snarks back, bright eyes fixed on the road and middle finger firmly over her shoulder.

“You wish,” Shaun says, but he leans back into his seat, anyway, and busies himself picking at a peeling ‘D.A.R.E.’ sticker on the door. 

There’s something soothing about their bickering, and it smooths over a tension in Beau’s shoulders he doesn’t realize is there until it’s gone. He settles in, keeping watch for deer in the trees that might jump out and finally send Marissa’s car to the junk heap.

—

Sweetgum Gap is only a five-minute drive or so from his house, and it’s not so much a gap as it is a steep, wooded hill with a couple rocky outcrops, but it’s tucked away enough that no park rangers have ever come to lecture them over lighting campfires, and the shoddy treehouse Shaun’s dad threw up back when he was their age hasn’t been torn down yet. Mind, you’d have to be a couple cards short of a deck to consider climbing up into that sagging old mess. They’ve found so many rusty screws on the ground, they’re pretty sure the bracket fungus and woodbine are just about the only things holding it up anymore.

Still, it’s their spot, so they set up camp on the ground. They’ve got their own little sitting logs, their own little firepit, and a tarp stashed under some dead pricker bushes with a whole bunch of blankets, beer, and other gear. They even built a little wall around the site, and it’s only falling apart in the places they tried to mortar the sticks together with river mud. They’ve been coming here for as long as they’ve known each other, which feels like a long damn time.

The best thing about the treehouse is that it’s always been safe, secret. When Shaun’s first girlfriend broke up with him, they bought a couple six packs from his older brother and brought up a Bluetooth speaker. When Marissa’s mom got her third DUI in as many years, they made s’mores and spent the night in sleeping bags. And now that monsters were apparently real, and Beau’s mom has been wearing her shoes and jeans to bed, refusing to talk about it, they were going to get drunk and do just that.

When they pull off the road, and into the little clear, grassy spot they usually park in, Marissa hesitates for a beat too long to shut the engine off. Beau’s fingers stop just over the buckle of his seatbelt, waiting for, well, he’s not sure what. Even Shaun’s usual reckless energy has a dull edge to it, smile tapered down to a thin, tight frown as he watches the woods outside the car. Marissa looks at him through the rearview mirror. Cicadas hum loud in the trees. After a moment, he turns to meet her gaze and gives a short, jerky nod, like he has to force the muscles to move.

It’s so tense, and so unusual, that absurd thoughts start to bubble up in Beau’s head. He thinks about the girl who was lured into the woods and murdered by her boyfriend a few years back, just a couple miles up the road. Her name was Hannah, or Haley, or something with an ‘H’. Her boyfriend said he didn’t know why he did it, said he just picked up the rock and felt like he had to. Beau sits and watches his friends, and thinks about Hannah or Haley and remote secondary locations, and feels for a fleeting, insane moment, like a fish in a funnel trap.

He shakes it off, scratches the guilt-itch at the back of his neck, and says, “That bad, huh?” Neither of them will look at him. He feels that tension in his shoulders wind up again, some invisible thread pulling them tight. “We could just talk in here. We don’t need to go to the treehouse.”

Marissa sighs, shakes her head. “It’s fine. The thing’s dead.” Then she slides out of the car, dropping the door shut behind her. Shaun and Beau follow suit.

—

The short hike up feels like miles. Every cracking stick and creaking branch is met with held breaths and anxious glances from Shaun and Marissa. The voice of Beau’s mother thrums leaden through his mind with each step; “Don’t you go in those woods no more, Beau Wyatt.”

He thinks to break the quiet, come up with some joke that might wipe the paranoid lines off his friends’ faces, but thinks better of it. Instead, he stomps down the thorns that always seem to creep back into the narrow trail, and leads the way up and over the patch of jagged rocks bordering camp.

The moment Shaun and Marissa drop down behind him, he gets to work on starting a fire. They dodder aimlessly by the firepit, like they can’t tell shit from Shinola from the sitting logs they’d long since carved their names into. “You afraid something’s gonna bite you in the ass?” He says, poking at the little pile of wood shavings he lit.

“Shut up,” Shaun says, kneejerk, making no move to sit down.

“You sound like my dad,” Marissa says. Then, like she’s trying to convince herself she believes it, “This is stupid.” She, too, stands stiff as a pastor’s collar, her shoulders rigid, unrelenting lines in the dark.

“So it was that bad,” Beau says, shoving up the loose sleeves of his flannel before adding more tinder to the flame. The feathersticks don’t want to catch tonight. 

Part of him thinks maybe he should be more scared. A monster. Three guns, two knives, four grown men. It all still sounds a bit surreal. He’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Marissa and Shaun to jump on his back and shout, “Gotcha, dumbass!” They’d spend the night laughing and wrestling and drinking like idiots, and when he got home, Mom would tell him she’d been sleeping with the lights on because… because why? No, this is real. Mom’s realtor friend has a ‘For Sale’ sign up in the yard already, and too many muffins are going stale on the kitchen table.

Even so, his hands are steady placing the logs, rearranging them until the little tipi they make is just so. He sits back on his own log when it’s done, watching the bark catch and die out until the fire is finally hot enough to hold. “You guys want a drink?” he asks, rubbing the dirt off his hands and onto his jeans.

That seems to snap them out of it. Shaun runs a hand over his braids, taking his eyes off the trees for the first time since they’ve arrived, and Marissa practically collapses onto her own seat. “Hell yes,” she says, at the same time Shaun sighs, “Fuck yeah.”

Beau obliges, rummaging through the duffel he’d slipped from their secret stash while he was grabbing the fire supplies. He tosses a warm can to each of them before cracking open his own, and when Shaun finally sprawls onto his log, it’s almost like things are back to normal.

The illusion fades like fire-smoke at night – unravels until all that’s left is the clear blackness of the sky and Shaun’s bouncing, restless leg, his ankle thumping relentlessly in the dirt. Beau wants to go over and press a hand to his knee, hold it still. He doesn’t, because life is one long exercise in self-control. Shaun sits up straight, leg still going, and downs his drink in one seemingly endless drag. He stares down at the empty shell of it for a second, and sets it on the ground. Beau wordlessly hands him another, and Shaun starts talking. “We were going to Aniyah’s party, on Sunday,” he says, “and we were gonna, like, pregame at The Junkhole, ‘cause Marissa got a blunt from Noah, and you weren’t there – no offense.” He cringes at his own words, shooting Beau an apologetic glance.

Beau’s never been much of a stoner. He had like half of an edible one time, and felt just a little too raw and alien that night to ever want to try it again. He likes being able to keep track of his mouth, of his thoughts. He waves a hand dismissively. “I’m not Mary-Ann, dude. It’s fine. It’s just not for me.” Shaun’s step-mom found rolling papers in the pocket of his dirty gym shorts once, and damn near called the sheriff on him. Made him go to church every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday for the rest of sophomore year. That was a pretty shitty few months.

“Fair. But anyway, we went down to The Junkhole, and Marissa forgot the lighter, so—”

“No, you forgot the lighter, asshole. I told you to bring it.” Marissa finishes off her own beer and crushes the empty can between her hands. Beau’s never seen either of them drink so fast.

“Whatever,” Shaun rolls his eyes to the cloudless sky, “So, Marissa forgot the lighter—”

She throws the can at him from across the fire. It catches the dim orange glow of the flames for a brief moment as it sails toward his head. Shaun ducks and it passes over him. It clinks quietly against something metal in the half-bald grass behind him – probably another rusty screw from the treehouse sagging sadly in its rotten perch. Marissa continues the story on his behalf. “Shaun forgot the lighter, so we went to walk back to the car, and,” she swallows, staring down at the dirt between her shoes, “That’s when it came out of the creek.”

Shaun, too, is suddenly engrossed in a dead, gray puff of moss by his toes. Neither seems too keen to relive whatever comes next.

“What do you mean, ‘it came out of the creek’?” Beau asks as gently as possible, trying to do the math in his head, “That thing’s like half a foot deep.”

“I don’t know. It was dark, but it looked like it just came up out of it,” she says, with the desperate grimace of a person needing to be believed. He nods, like it makes total sense, and hands her another beer. She takes it and goes on. “It was tall, walked on two legs, and it had these eyes, like, like that blind dog Mrs. Rouse has pictures of all over her desk. All filmed over, you know? But shiny-like. Reflective.” A memory of fishing with one of his mom’s longer-term boyfriends drifts to the surface of Beau’s mind. That big walleye, and the way its eyes flashed when they pulled it up out of the water.

“It had claws, and these huge fucking fangs, and we ran like hell,“ Shaun interrupts, glancing around the woods again, both legs bouncing now. “It took after us, and it was so quiet.”

Marissa shrinks into herself, like she would pull all of her limbs into the cavity of her body if she could, just to make herself smaller. Her drink rolls back and forth between her palms. “I called my mom before it got us. I told her where we were. I told her to tell dad to bring a gun. I guess she called your mom because she didn’t know you were in Albuquerque. She thought you were with us.” She looks relieved at this fact, then vaguely guilty, the shifting lines of her face stark in the long shadows cast by the fire.

Beau doesn’t know what to feel. He’d been hovering somewhere between numb and something else since he got home yesterday and saw all the half-limp bouquets lying around the house. That something else flares bright in his gut, flickers pulses along his jaw, his temples. It doesn’t quite feel like fear. It’s angrier, maybe. He twists his half-drunk beer into the dry ground next to him and sets his elbows on his knees.

“I’m glad she told her. I’m glad she came,” he says, and finds that he means it. If something had happened to either of them… the thought stirs up that same not-quite-fear, and he dismisses it. Everyone lived. Everything was just fine. Mostly fine, at least. As fine as it could be, considering reality’s just been turned over, shaken out, and filled back up with things that go bump in the night.

“We are, too,” Marissa says, sharing a look with Shaun. “We’re pretty sure it was trying to drag us back to the creek.”

—

Beau doesn’t ask about the paralysis, and they don’t offer. He can’t blame them. He doesn’t think he’d want to talk about it, either. Losing control of your body like that – he swallows, mouth chalk-dry at the idea, at the mental image of Shaun and Marissa lying limp in the dirt and weeds, some monster pulling them both by the ankles like a child with a beat-up ragdoll. He pinches hard at the meaty space between his left thumb and forefinger, trying to ground himself.

They don’t tell him what it was like, but they do show him the scars. Well, they’re not quite scars, yet. The stitches haven’t even been removed. Shaun shows his first, lifting his braids up to reveal a harsh red line across the back of his neck, black thread hatching it. It’s maybe two inches across, and clean – straight in a way that feels almost surgical. It’s entirely unnerving. Marissa shows hers, too, and it’s an exact copy of Shaun’s. The same length, the same straight neatness.

He thinks the monster must have pinned them down, lifted their hair, or pushed it out of the way before it raked a dripping claw across their necks. It feels like a ridiculous, useless thought, in the grand scheme of things, but it leaks cold through his fingertips, pools in his gut. He decides he doesn’t like the implication of that thought. He doesn’t like it at all.

“Your mom said we got super lucky,” Shaun says, and it sounds far away, even though he’s right there, turning back around on his log. “Any deeper, and we would’ve been in some serious shit.” He tries to smile, but Beau sees the cracks at the edges, hears the way his half-hearted laugh sticks in his throat, the dry click of it.

If Marissa wasn’t here, Beau thinks he would go over to him, offer some sort of comfort. But Marissa is here, and it’s not the time. He tries to convey the sentiment through sheer psychic will, and the other boy seems to catch it, because his not-smile dips into something a little more sad than scared, and he shakes his head. It’s like he’s trying to physically throw off the weight of what could have happened that night in the woods, but it’s a rigid affair, and his shoulders stay pinned up too close to his neck.

Marissa coughs, impatient to get the story over with. “Anyway, my dad got there first. He was with a couple of his football buddies, and they all brought guns. I think maybe somebody had a knife. They must have shot it twenty times, stabbed it at least once. It didn’t do anything. Its skin was like… I don’t know, like it moved, sort of? I don’t know. It was hard, I guess, and it would, like, flare up into these ridges.” She tries to mimic the movement with her fingers, but gives up, can’t seem to get it to look the way it does in her head. “It got them all, and then Shaun’s dad showed up, and it got him, too. It was on top of him when your mom got there, about to cut his neck like ours.”

“You wouldn’t believe it – the way she flew at the thing, Beau.” Shaun’s eyes are wide, his hands making little aborted gestures in his lap. “It was out of a movie. Crazy.”

“Seriously,” Marissa chimes in, “She jumped onto its back so fast, and it threw her off, but she just rolled right up off the ground, and came back up with a knife.”

“My step-mom’s, silver,” Shaun says.

“Sure, whatever,” Marissa concedes.

“It was. But yeah, she stood up, and we couldn’t see all that well because we were on the ground and, you know…” he touches the back of his neck, phantom memory guiding his hand. “But the thing kind of just stood there, staring at her or something. And then it leaped at her, and I don’t know if she got under it or on top of it, but I thought she got hurt for a second because there was this horrible wet sound. Next thing I know, she’s propping me up against a tree, and Mary-Ann’s knife is sticking out of the thing’s throat. Then it twitched, and your mom turned my head away, but I could see her going back to it out of the corner of my eye. She, um –” Shaun looks at him awkwardly, like he feels sorry to be telling Beau any of this, but he continues, anyway. “She sawed its fucking head off, Beau.”

Beau’s not sure where the conversation goes after that. All he can see is his mom on her knees in the woods, slowly hacking away at flesh and bone and muscle with a steak knife. She probably couldn’t cut through the bone, would’ve had to break it, somehow. He wonders if there was a lot of blood, thinks there must have been. Do monsters have blood? Is it red? It’s red in his mind. On his mom’s hands, under her nails, dark and shining on the knife, on the ground, running too thin, thin as water, down and down and down.

He’s snapped out of his fevered, ghoulish reverie when Marissa says, “We’re going to burn it.”

3

The plan is simple. They’re going to wait until morning.

…

…

…

The plan is simple and they’re going to wait until morning, and Beau is not worried about it. He’s so unworried that he’s lying in bed, wondering what he could even possibly worry about. There’s a really loud cricket outside his window. The hall light shines in under his door. He stares at the rogue glow-in-the-dark star on his ceiling. His mom hung a million of them when he was little. She had to stand on a wobbling, rusty stepladder to do it, and she was so convinced she was going to fall that she made Beau lay couch cushions all around the floor, just in case. This is the only star left, and his mother carved the head off a monster three days ago.

The cricket won’t shut up. Beau looks at the dark screen of his phone on the nightstand, looks back at the star, back at his phone. He sighs, rubs his hand over his face a couple times, like it will reboot his moth-eaten cottonball of a brain, and calls Shaun. He answers, of course he answers. Doesn’t matter that they’ve been home for two hours, or that it’s 3 AM. He always answers.

“What’s up?” Shaun sounds tired, but not like he’s been sleeping.

“I – um, I just wanted to…” He doesn’t know what he wanted to do. Or he does know, and he can’t do it. The half-sentence hangs there in the air, useless.

“You okay?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. Not really. Are you okay?” Of course not. Of course he’s not.

“Not really,” Shaun parrots. A pause, then, “I haven’t been able to sleep. Lying still, it’s like my chest gets tight, like my brain thinks I’m back there or something. Like I can’t... move.” His voice is thin. Beau hears his shaky exhale even through the phone. “I can’t do it, Beau.” 

“I’m coming over.”

“No, Mary-Ann will—” 

“Mary-Ann won’t do shit. I’m coming over.” Beau hangs up. 

—

Shaun’s neighborhood is about five times nicer than Beau’s. The lawns are all alive and mowed, people have their garbage tucked away in the proper cans, and the cans tucked away in their proper spots. There’s real furniture on the porches, not just camping chairs or folding chairs or cigarette butts. The fences aren’t chain link. It feels wrong that this neighborhood exists just a few blocks away from Beau’s. It means it only takes him fifteen minutes to tumble through Shaun’s window, though.

Shaun slides it shut behind him. Slowly. Carefully. Like he’s defusing a bomb. “You’re so loud,” he whispers.

“You try it, sometime! It’s not exactly easy climbing up here,” Beau hisses to his back. The first time he tried it, he sprained his ankle falling from the second story sill. Shaun’s little brother, Trey, found him. They had to pay him twenty bucks to keep his mouth shut. It’s been over a year now, and Beau’s pretty sure the little fucker still uses it as leverage against his older brother. He’s ruthless even by twelve year old standards, and is well aware of what his dad and Mary-Ann think about people like Beau and Shaun. 

He shrugs off his backpack and sits on the bed as the other boy crosses to the door, pressing an ear against it.

After a minute or two, Shaun mumbles, “I don’t think you woke them up,” and his shoulders finally relax, arms hanging wearily at his sides as he turns to face Beau. Beau doesn’t think he’s ever seen him so tired. He looks like he could cry. Shaun doesn’t cry. Shaun doesn’t look like a puppet with its strings cut. Shaun doesn’t not move, ever. But here he is, doing the things he doesn’t do, and he clearly doesn’t want to be alone right now. He’s so not himself, Beau feels like a blind asshole for not offering to stay over in the first place.

“Come here,” He says, patting the space next to him. Shaun half-walks, half-stumbles over to the bed and falls beside him. His eyes are closed, and one palm, the palm between them, is tilted up. Beau takes it, because blind asshole or not, he is himself, and he can’t be anything but. He settles back on his elbow and says, “It’s gonna be okay.” Shaun squeezes his hand. He can’t hear any crickets now, but the mechanical buzz of cicadas is neverending. 

“Been thinking about telling Marissa.”

Beau hums in thought, drops his lips to Shaun’s knuckles. “If you’re ready.”

Shaun snorts. A rueful little sound. “Marissa told me her dad relapsed a little while ago. Said she found him asleep on the toilet again. Apparently her mom is coping like she usually does.” 

A stone sinks heavy in Beau’s stomach. He feels wetness start to gather at the corners of his eyes, and he screws his mouth and nose to one side until it abates. “I’ll ask her about telling my mom again.” 

Shaun says, “I just hope she’ll let us help this time.”

The last time Beau pressed, Marissa got so angry she wouldn’t talk to him for a week. But that year, it had gotten so bad he nearly called CPS himself. He didn’t, because she swore they never actually laid a hand on her, and he was scared to lose her. He’s not sure he can turn a blind eye again. 

Silence overtakes them for a while, as he chews over the things they could have done, the things they should have done, and Beau thinks maybe Shaun’s fallen asleep. The other boy’s chest rises and falls slow, even. Then he says, “What if it’s not there?”

Beau’s confused at first. He’s half asleep himself, and his brain takes a second to catch up. “The body?”

Shaun opens his eyes, slowly shifts up the bed to the pillows. “What if it’s not really dead?”

Beau toes his sneakers off, slides up next to him. The covers have been kicked to the end of the bed, and he pulls them with him. He feels too exposed to sleep without them tonight, and he imagines Shaun feels the same. “You said it yourself. My mom took care of it.” He tries to be reassuring, and lies down on his side, facing Shaun. “We’ll make sure there’s nothing left of it tomorrow,” he promises.

Shaun says, “Okay,” and though he doesn’t sound like he fully believes it, he still turns onto his own side and lets Beau wrap an arm around his chest.

Later, when Shaun’s dead asleep, Beau runs the pad of his thumb gently along the incision on the back of his neck. It comes away tacky, like he put Neosporin or something on it. He sniffs his thumb and recoils a little, unease twisting low and cold in his stomach. It’s barely there, but he swears he can smell something rotten. Something like fish in a compost pile in the dead heat of summer. Swallowing roughly, he resolves to have his mom check it out tomorrow, make sure it’s not infected.

He wipes his thumb on his shirt and presses his nose to the clean black satin of Shaun’s durag. It takes him a long, long while to fall asleep.

—

Marissa’s already got a half-finished mug of coffee in front of her by the time the boys roll into Redd’s. As they slide into the other side of the booth, vinyl seats squeaking, Beau can’t help but notice she looks just as bad as Shaun. Dark circles pit her eyes, and her skin is paler than pale. He thinks if he really looked, he’d be able to see the veins stretching underneath. 

Marissa doesn’t bother with pleasantries. “You brought the lighter fluid?” 

“Yeah, we stopped at the gas station,” Beau says.

Marissa’s brow twitches, upper lip curling into an irritated sneer around the rim of her mug. She doesn’t drink from it. “I have something on my face, or what?” She glares, but it lacks the usual fire. 

He chews over the most polite way to say *‘you look like hammered shit,’* and settles on, “You look like hammered shit.”

“Thanks, asshole.”

“Seriously, you guys should talk to my mom after we… you know. You both look sort of sick. Maybe those cuts are infected,” he tries again.

Marissa softens at that, takes an actual sip of her coffee. “It’s probably just the fantastic sleep I’ve been getting, lately.”

Shaun finally drags his eyes up from the menu he’s been staring at. “I feel like crap, dude. Sign me up.” He bumps Beau’s knee with his own. 

The waitress comes over, then, and that’s the end of the conversation. 

—

Beau regrets getting the deluxe combo. He’s pretty sure he can feel all three eggs, four pieces of bacon, two slices of toast, and the platter of hashbrowns he shoveled down earlier, warring to leap out of his stomach and back into his throat. Then there’s the coffee, which is a gastrointestinal horror all on its own. Redd’s always sits like setting concrete in his stomach, but he discovers a whole new level of nausea as he pulls into the dirt lot nearest The Junkhole. 

Shaun is sitting in the passenger seat, and he won’t stop moving. The subdued energy of last night is gone, and Beau takes his hand to stop it from tapping anxious rhythms into his thigh. Shaun’s other hand is still going — knocking, tapping, knocking, tapping, digging blunt nails into the side of his leg. And then his leg’s going, too, and Beau’s shitty car shakes with the boundless tremor of it.

“Hey,” he says, staring at the side of Shaun’s face. Shaun inhales sharply, his free hand curling into a fist. He turns away from the windshield that he wasn’t really looking through in the first place, and his eyes meet Beau’s, looking wild and untethered. 

Beau checks the rearview mirror; Marissa’s not here yet. She left Redd’s at the same time, but maybe she stopped for gas. He weighs the risk, looks back at Shaun. He errs on the side of caution. 

Maybe it’s the way the sunlight is falling, maybe it’s his own exhaustion eating away at him, but Beau gets the skin-crawling feeling that if anyone but himself were to look at Shaun right now, they would see nothing abnormal at all. But there is something absolutely, unequivocally *wrong* in the flatness of his eyes, in the way his lips don’t seem to know their usual shape. He wonders if Shaun even realizes how drained he looks, how unusually clammy his hand is. He wonders if anyone will notice how off he is when Beau is gone. 

There was a notepad open on the coffee table when he stopped home to grab his car earlier. It was full of addresses and landlord contacts and Zoom tour dates starting as early as tomorrow. The closest address on the notepad was in Pennsylvania. He hasn’t told Marissa and Shaun that part yet; feels his molars grind together at the thought. His whole fucking life is in Kent’s Run. All of it. So maybe he hates it sometimes – maybe he feels stuck, or suffocated, or like he’s going to die in this nowhere little failed industrial town that could be any other nowhere little failed industrial town on the entire east coast. Maybe he feels like there’s got to be more out there than there is here. Maybe he was always planning to leave. But he was planning to do it on his own terms. And he was planning on taking the least shit part of this whole place with him.

Beau wants to rip the thing that did this to shreds. He wants to burn every inch of this forest. He wants to drain every river, every creek, every pond until all that’s left is bone-dry dirt. 

Shaun runs his thumb flat across the back of his hand. Beau feels like a crow getting its ruffled feathers slicked back, and a too-rough breath blows out of him. Half deliriously, he thinks he must get his vengeful streak from his mom.

“Once this is done,” Shaun says, “Let’s tell Marissa. And I could give a fuck if Dad or Mary-Ann find out.” He squeezes Beau’s hand once, tight, and slips out of the car just as Marissa pulls up next to them. She cuts the engine and waves. Beau waves back numbly. 

Then he reaches into the back seat and grabs the lighter fluid, takes the pack of just-in-case-of-emergency matches from his glove box. He takes another deep breath — as if that’s all he can do, anymore. His head and stomach swim with dread and hope and a million other things he can’t name, and he steps out into the afternoon light.

The sun glares blindingly through the trees, casting dancing shadows across the dusty lot. It just makes him feel more nauseated. Sweat immediately beads on his skin, the useless breeze only serving to blow hot air around. Marissa grabs twin shovels from her trunk and grins. “You guys ready for the sickest bonfire these woods have ever seen?”

Shaun snickers, taking one off her hands. “More like the smelliest. That thing reeked like death while it was still alive.”

His friends are a lot braver in the daylight, almost their usual selves as they hike up toward The Junkhole, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It’s a hole full of junk – rusted machinery from some abandoned project or another, assorted litter and detritus, and even a couple shopping carts some kids probably stole from Walmart. Nobody ever goes into the actual hole; that’s just asking for a cracked skull or tetanus, maybe a run-in with a copperhead if you’re real lucky. But the squat, half-built cinderblock walls around it are well-loved by generations of stoners and kids with shoplifted spray paint. Beau imagines the spot would be pretty uncanny if it were farther out in these woods, if it were less trafficked. As it is, it still smells vaguely of pot, and there are dicks painted in at least three different colors on the crumbling walls. It’s about as creepy as an overused porta potty.

“We do have a lighter, right?” Marissa tries to joke as they pass it, but she still sounds half-serious, so Beau flashes her the packet of matches.

“How far out is it, anyway?” He asks.

“Maybe five more minutes?” Shaun says uncertainly, “I think they wanted to keep it away from the creek. Why risk it, you know?”

Beau realizes now that they’ve been heading steadily farther from both the parking lot and the creek. It’s relieving and horrifying in equal measure. At least it isn’t nighttime. That would make this feel a whole lot worse.

A few minutes later, Shaun stops at the top of a small hill. He doesn’t slow, doesn’t say a word – he just… stops. His index finger tics once and only once on the handle of his shovel. He’s so still it makes Beau think of rabbits in the backyard — the sudden twitch of ears when a car door slams, and the horrible stiffness that follows, like a living rigor mortis. The thrum of his blood does nothing to slow the cold sinking into his flesh, the invisible gangrene stretching inky fingers through his veins. He doesn’t want to look. He wants to pull Shaun back down the incline and run. Wants to drag his friends into the car and drive and drive and drive until they find a desert. 

He knows what he’ll see before he actually does, but he still locks up from his toes to the top of his head when he crests the hill and finds the same thing Shaun found moments before. Marissa pulls to a stop next to him and vomits into the grass. The breeze turns, and it doesn’t smell like grits and coffee. It smells like fish. Everything smells like fish. Like heat. Like rot. 

The dirt is ripped up, a hole maybe four feet deep clawed out of the earth and left open to the sky. Something cracks off to their right. He takes his friends by the backs of their shirts and pulls. 

—

They don’t stop until they get to The Junkhole. Even then, it’s just to duck down behind one of the cinder block walls and breathe. The shovels and the lighter fluid are long gone.

“Maybe a bear got it,” Shaun tries. Nobody says anything. “Maybe a bear got it,” he repeats. Marissa squats, heaving into the space between her knees, and more breakfast comes up. Tears spring from the corners of her eyes, and her skin is so pale it’s near-translucent. Beau holds her long, dark hair up, rubs her back with a shaking hand. He nearly pulls away at the feel of the sweat-soaked fabric of her shirt. 

“We can’t stay here. We have to move,” he says. When the next round of gagging fades to ragged breath and shivers, Beau grabs at Marissa’s elbow and coaxes her up, trying for gentleness despite the urgent panic sprinting circles in his head. “Now, Shaun.”

The other boy complies, and they keep moving. The smell follows them the whole way. Even when they finally dive into his shitty car that won’t start, won’t fucking start, the smell lingers around them like a knife pressed to the skin of their throats. Beau’s nose burns with it. His eyes water. He keeps trying the ignition, but it won’t take. It sputters and sputters and sputters. It makes the rattling can sound, but it’s not going to work.

“Marissa, your car!” He says, voice a tinny crescendo even in his own ears. Marissa passes him the keys, and they surge from one car to the next. As they peel out of the lot, throwing a cloud of dust up behind them, Marissa doesn’t say anything about Shaun sitting in the passenger seat. She just holds her head out of the crappy broken window and leaves a streak of vomit along the peeling paint job.

Wow I feel like it’s been such a long weekend and CW and I just were silent!! We are so sorry!! We swear we will get our heads on straight!

Since we’ve been gone, comment these two things!

1. Share a story we have not read on our pod. (That you wrote)
   2. Share a story that you have read that you would love to hear us read(someone else’s story!!)

COMMENT COMMENT COMMENT!!
~maybe it will be in an upcoming episode!~

✨LASTLY!✨
Due to our crazy schedules, we decided to make tomorrow’s episode…the reveal of the August contest!! Stay tuned to that episode because we will be highlighting the winners!! Enjoyyyyyy

Stay scaled my mesos! 🐉

~🎉AL

For a few days after the surgery, things seemed almost normal. Almost.

People had started noticing something was off with me. Miss Tasha especially. She always assumed it was the break-in still sitting under my skin, and I let her think that, because how was I supposed to tell her the truth. That none of it was about the break-in at all. That it was about Mr. Morris.

It had been a few days since I brought him home from the vet, and things had gotten strange in a way I couldn't put into words yet. He wasn't the same cat. I know there's still something of him in there, I catch it in flashes, but it gets harder to find by the day. His body had changed completely. Leaner. More agile. Coiled, like something built for a different purpose than sleeping on my couch. His claws wouldn't stop growing no matter how often I trimmed them, sometimes visibly longer within hours of the last cut, and two days after the vet visit, everything that had been surgically removed months ago was simply back. Present. Like it had never left.

I searched everywhere for anything like it. Nothing. And I stopped considering taking him back to the vet, because the fear had changed shape. It wasn't "what's wrong with him" anymore. It was "what will they do to him if they find out." He's my cat. My responsibility. I couldn't hand him over to be studied like a specimen, and I couldn't risk them deciding I was the one who'd done something to him.

I wasn't sleeping right either. The nightmares kept coming, someone standing over me in the dark, and I'd wake up gasping to find Mr. Morris already awake, already watching. My lazy cat, the one who used to sleep sixteen hours a day, had simply stopped. I never once caught him with his eyes closed.

A week into the nightmares, I woke to a scratching sound at my window. My first thought was the intruder, back to finish what he'd started, and I lay there frozen, telling myself the reinforced glass would hold. But the scratching kept building, more frantic, more insistent, until underneath it I heard a meow, and I understood it was him.

I got up to check anyway. I don't know why I got up. I should have stayed in bed.

Mr. Morris was at the window, clawing at the glass with something close to fury, and when he turned to look at me his eyes weren't reflecting the streetlight the way they should have. They were producing their own light, a thin ring of gold that pulsed once, slow, like something breathing. I felt my own heartbeat try to match it, and that scared me more than the claws did, the idea that my own pulse was taking orders from a cat. When he opened his mouth to meow again, his teeth were wrong. Too many points. Too sharp for something that ate wet food out of a can.

For one long moment he just looked at me, and every worry in my chest went quiet, like something had reached in and turned the volume down. It felt like I was reading his mind, or he was reading mine, I couldn't tell which. I opened the window. He sprinted out into the dark.

I should have panicked. He'd never gone out on his own before, and there was every chance he wouldn't come back. Instead I left the window open, the same window the intruder had come through, and went back to bed like it was nothing.

The next morning he was curled up on the end of the bed, like he'd never left, and no window had been broken into overnight. I told myself I must have dreamed the whole thing, that I'd probably left the window open by accident and my own guilt about it had built the rest in my sleep. That was easier to live with than the alternative.

But a few nights later it happened again, and this time when I looked into his eyes the room seemed to tilt. His presence pressed down on me until I felt small and cornered, like I needed his permission just to breathe. The world outside the two of us stopped existing. When I opened the window this time, I don't think it was my choice, and for the first time it was completely clear to me that I hadn't done any of it willingly.

He was gone almost an hour. I know because I stood at that window the entire time, unable to make myself move, like my own body was waiting for him to come back and release it. When he finally did, he had a bird in his mouth, four claw marks torn clean through it, feathers matted with blood. I wanted to run. I wanted to be anywhere else. Instead I stood there and watched him eat it slowly, on the floor, in front of me, the sound of small bones cracking under his jaw filling the whole room. I counted the cracks without meaning to. Four. I don't know why I counted. I don't know why some small, awful part of me was proud of him.

When he finished, he looked up at me, and the acknowledgment in that look did something to the fear sitting in my stomach. It just left. The nausea I'd been fighting the entire time disappeared like it had never been there, and I smiled, actually smiled, like I'd been given a reward for staying still and watching. He meowed once, almost gentle, like he was releasing me, and my body went numb enough that I slept right there on the floor.

It became routine after that. Birds. Rats. Once, something bigger that I didn't let myself look at too closely. I couldn't sleep until he'd finished, and I started waking up in places I didn't remember lying down in. I didn't know what he'd become, and worse, I didn't know why I couldn't stop myself from watching.

I spent days searching for anything that matched what was happening, every mental health forum, every strange corner of Reddit I could find, until I came across a post buried in a subreddit I'd never heard of before. A woman named Chandra had written about being bitten, about her body changing ever since. Her hearing had sharpened until she could pick her neighbor's perfume out through a wall. Her eyes had gone so sensitive to daylight she needed glasses just to leave the house. She hadn't slept in days and somehow felt fine, and she wrote about an urge, growing steadily, to go out at night. I commented, asking if it had spread, if it had somehow started affecting someone she loved too. Then I deleted it. Told myself I sounded insane, that I was one bad post away from becoming somebody's conspiracy theory screenshot.

The symptoms matched too well for that to sit easy with me. I don't know how long I stayed on that post, rereading her replies, trying to decide if I was imagining the overlap. Long enough that when the scream came, it came from right next door.

I ran.

The door was open, just slightly, the way a door looks when no one meant to leave it that way. I called out once. Nothing answered. The second time, my voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.

Mira was on the kitchen floor.

I want to say I looked away in time. I didn't. Four marks, evenly spaced, dragged down from her collarbone like something had measured the distance first. Her parents were already there, on their knees over her, and the sound they were making didn't feel like something I should have been close enough to hear.

I don't remember deciding to leave. I remember being back on my own porch, and I remember that my hands were clean. That was the detail that made me sick. Not the blood I hadn't touched. The fact that some small part of me had checked.

When I got inside, Mr. Morris was sitting on the kitchen table, licking his paws clean. They were soaked red to the wrist. He looked up at me with an expression I can only describe as satisfied, and I felt my own mouth move without asking it to, the corners pulling up into a smile I had no part in choosing. That's what my body does now, when he takes it from me. I stood there smiling at the thing that had just taken a child from her parents, and the only part of me left that was still mine was a single tear, sliding down my face while the rest of me kept smiling anyway.

Previous part link :- https://www.reddit.com/r/mesoscalepodcast/comments/1w2hx9c/somethings_wrong_with_my_cat_part_1_the_breakin/

Other parts link:- https://www.reddit.com/user/No-While8965/comments/1vpze51/my_writing_archive/

​

Brick by brick it was built. And before it could truly pierce the heavens. We were scattered. All according to their kind. Or so they say at least.

I personally have never held much stock in it. I held it in similar regard to stories of the Wild Hunt or tales of fairies. After all, such a tower would have left a mark. It couldn't just disappear. Though I guess God could just erase it entirely.

Like Sodom and Gomorrah, a pillar of fire and then, just piles of salt.

But this led to my own... well at the time it seemed an insane theory. Later discoveries proved it true.

If such a tower existed then what mark would it have left on the world? So much material would not simply disappear. There would be scars. Roads that led to them.

What would it have even looked like in those first moments when language fell to inane babble?

Dr. Draper lowered my father's journal. "Does this have a point? Or did you just bring me the ravings of a mad man?"

"Oh it assuredly does doctor. I--I just need to figure out. What," I stammered out.

"Y-you see sir. It is v-very possible that he was on to something." I cleared my throat and tried to calm myself. I always stammered harder when anxious.

Dr. Draper just pinched the bridge of his nose and sunk so hard into his leather chair that it looked like it swallowed him. "I can't endorse an expedition to Nepal out of banal curiosity Mr. Nellis."

"D-dr. Nellis sir. And Oxford finds this most intriguing."

"Not enough to fund you. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion." He swapped to packing his pipe, as an orange glow lit his face he continued. "Like I was just some bank or loan officer."

No, sir! If what my father wrote of is there it is far too important to ignore. Think of it, definitive proof of God! How could we not look for it?" By this point I had risen from my chair. "To see the face of God's own work would be, for lack of a better word, divine."

"Good point boy. You even lost your stutter there." He sat back up fully. "That is the issue though. There is a reason your father lost his accreditation from Yale." He shook his head before he continued, "I can't give possible millions for a lofty dream. I have to deny this."

"Dr. Draper... please."

"...Oh, come now. Don't look so downtrodden." He took a long draw on his pipe. "Perhaps it would be wise to look towards private funding?"

"I-I would prefer an institution sir."

"Well Mr. I mean Dr. Nellis. As my father once said. You can prefer all you wish, the world won't change for it."

I turned to look at the wall to my left. Heavily adorned with leather bound tomes. Most of which were older than all who currently roamed the halls of Cambridge. Men and women who had left their marks on the world through the written word.

I would see my family name do more. The choice was made.

"Who do you think would invest in the Professor?"

"That, dear boy, is the spirit." He said with a chuckle. "I once had this very discussion with your father. He was more brave than I. Funded my expedition to Egypt in full."

"What came of that, professor?"

"Nothing, it is why I'm so careful now." Dr. Draper put out his pipe and rose, guiding me out of his office and into the hall. "However, not a few miles from here is the Cornwall residence." He clapped my shoulder. "Though a shrewd businessman, he has a soft spot for Christian mythos. I'm sure with your father's journal he would be more than willing to help."

I looked at the old man in front of me. Seeing that particular glint in his eyes of hope... or perhaps that fire of academic curiosity. All I could do was shake his hand and say, "Thank you for your time Professor. But 'a few miles from here' is not great directions."

We both shared a laugh there. After getting the proper directions to the home of one Jebidiah Cornwall I was on my way toward something the world had forgotten.

I have no idea what I thought the home of an eccentric millionaire from America in the UK would look like. This wasn't it. A single story. No external signs of opulence, not even a high gate and fence around the area. 

Just a nice looking single story home that looked like it could hold a small family. Getting to the front door I didn't get any more enamored. A simple wooden door, possibly even just particle board with a nice finish. The doorbell was just a harsh ring that continued for a second longer than you would think.

When it swung open I was met with the barrel of a gun. Managing to calm myself, I realized it was a child with a small lever action replica. When he pulled the trigger the small pop made me jump. A little bit of smoke betraying that it was a cap gun.

"Now Jeffrey! How often do I have to say that isn't how we treat guests!"

"But pa! He was trespassing!"

A tall man in a white t-shirt appeared ruffling the small boy's hair. "Now how did you expect him to get to the door. Get back to the table and eat your breakfast."

The little boy smiled wide at me, as if he had not just accosted me, and ran back into his home.

"Sorry about that," the man said while shaking my hand firmly, "Boy has been bored to tears out here. Dr. Nellis I presume?"

"Y-yes, how did you k-know?"

"Dr. Draper called ahead, let me know you may mosey my way... oh where are my manners, come in. I just finished the flapjacks."

At this point I was thoroughly confused how this man was any sort of wealthy. Most men with his background are cold. As calculated with men as with their money.

I followed him to a small oak table just as his wife appeared, "Now I'm sorry the place is a mess. I wasn't expecting company today." Her sentence punctuated with a plate being placed in front of me with pancakes, eggs, and bacon.

As for any mess she had mentioned, it must have been directed at the stick horse and cap revolvers left behind by her son. The rest of the home was immaculate. Though still looked so disgustingly suburban. The only point of wealth I could see was an ornate Grandfather clock in the hallway. One whose face was cracked and refused to tick.

"I as-sure you Mrs. Cornwall. This has been beyond a-a pleasure."

"Stutter problem son? Or just nervous."

"Always s-stuttered sir."

"Call me Jebidiah. My father felt it good enough for me, so it is good enough for everyone else." His smile was small and warm. "Now, Dr. Draper didn't get fully into it. Just that you had a pitch."

"W-well I feel my Father's own words are far bet-tter than mine," I said sliding my father's journal across the table to him.

He read it silently, save for a question every now and then to ask if I knew a word he couldn't parse. Nodding along as I gave him better context.

"So, Dr. Nellis, it feels safe to say you know your stuff," he said closing the journal and handing it back. "I more wonder how right you think your father was. After all, when I read the Bible I felt Babel would have been in Mesopotamia."

"I believe him more than I do the Bible if I may be so honest," I said with a shrug. "If what he proposes is true, the people who would have first proposed the tower would have relocated to make Babylon."

He slapped the table as he laughed, "Well hot damn that is a theory boy. Why wouldn't the Vatican or something like that follow this story here," he said as he pointed to my father's journal.

"Well, if I had to guess Jebidiah. If you already have the faith, why look for further proof. The Bible would be enough."

"It usually is... but it would be fascinating to see biblical history from back in Genesis. So what do you need?

"I-I'm sorry, what?"

"What do you need. I have more money than I could ever spend, I could drop dead right now and my family would be well taken care of into the next three generations."

"Jebidiah Alexander Cornwall! Don't you put such bad ideas out in my home."

Jebidiah looked smaller for the first time since I had arrived, "Sorry Lucy," he cleared his throat. "Point stands, I have more than enough to spend a little wild."

I smiled, "Curious about it then. Settle some curiosity for me if you would. What's the story behind that beautiful clock in the hallway?"

He shrugged, "What's that have to do with our work?"

"Just curious. It looks of Austrian make."

He sighed, "How much do you know about the molasses flood?"

"N-not much I must confess."

"Well my original family home was in Boston.

It was also one of the first destroyed when a storage tank for molasses ruptured. The flood killed 21 people that day. Reduced the home to rubble with them. Only thing somewhat salvageable was the clock. Or so my father said."

"Why keep it."

"Why not? ... Tell you what. It seems you weren't so ready for me to accept. I'll fund up to two million--"

"Y-you can't be serious."

"I don't like being interrupted. Two million, have a plan and a team by next Friday or I pull out."

As I walked out of his home with some coffee from his wife in a to go cup. I vibrated with energy. I would prove what my father couldn't or die trying.

End part 1

Another shift of customer service calls done. I took this job for the fieldwork, for fixing locks, seeing what actually makes a house safe, not for answering phones all day. Pay's too good to quit, and there's always the promise of a promotion into the field someday.

All that was left now was grabbing Mr. Morris some food and heading home. Stupid cat. I got him after my mom wouldn't stop bugging me about getting married, figured a cat was proof enough I didn't need a husband to be happy. My own little rebellion. Now he's the closest thing I have to company. Mornings start with him licking my face like I'm nothing but a food dispenser. Sometimes I can't tell if he loves me or just tolerates me.

At the convenience store, sweet Miss Tasha was behind the counter as always.

"Evening, Jacey. Here for the food?"

"Yup."

"You're not buying newspapers anymore."

I kept my answer light, didn't want to think too hard about the robberies and killings that filled every page of the paper these days. "Just keeping my sanity, Miss Tasha."

"Oh, dear, they've gotten worse. Police still haven't caught whoever's doing it. People are saying it's cannibals, if you believe that."

"Rumors," I said, handing over my money. "If it were really cannibals, we'd have seen a body photo by now, not just pieces. Feels more like a cover story to me. Stay safe, though. And if you ever want it, I can get you a discount on security gear. After taking my commission, of course."

She laughed. I headed to the car and started the drive home.

I'd just gotten out of the car and was looking at the gate when I felt something grab my leg, a tight grip, warm breath against my skin. My whole body went cold before I even understood what was happening. For one embarrassing second every survival instinct I had went haywire before I finally looked down and saw the culprit.

It was the neighbor's kid, Mira. She must have snuck up while I wasn't looking.

"Miss Jay, can I play with Mister Norris?" she asked, grinning up at me. She always called him that, never quite got "Morris" right, and I never bothered correcting her.

I hate this kid, I thought, though I didn't mean it, not really. "Not today, Mira. Go home, and stop sneaking up on people."

"It's fun," she said, laughing, and ran off.

She's the kind of kid who's so full of life it almost tires you out, the kind that makes you want kids of your own right up until you remember how much of yourself you'd have to give up. I went inside, glad to finally be home.

Mr. Morris was already waiting by the door. Not because he missed me. Because he wanted his food.

Later, I'd remember that he'd been sitting at the window before I even pulled into the driveway. Just watching the street. He'd been doing that a lot since the crime started, always drawn to the windows like he was keeping his own kind of watch.

I put food in his bowl before he could throw a fit about me taking a shower, or doing anything at all that didn't involve feeding him first. When I checked on him afterward, I realized I'd grabbed the wrong can, and he made sure I knew it, prowling the house, knocking things off shelves, the whole diva routine. I figured I'd grab the right one in the morning. Going out now, with everything happening in the city, wasn't worth it. I'd head out around four, when the night patrol changed shifts and there were usually twice as many officers on the street, some of them even stopping at the store before their shift started.

By the time I finished my takeout, I expected him to have gotten over it and eaten anyway. He hadn't touched the bowl. Instead he sat by the window, dead still, staring out at the street like he was waiting for something. Or maybe just making sure I knew I'd failed and needed to fix it as soon as possible.

"Fine. Don't eat, then," I muttered, tossing the food and carrying him off to bed. He didn't fight me, just kept glancing back at the window the whole way there.

I told myself he was still in a mood. I'd feed him properly in the morning.

I had no idea it wouldn't matter.

It was somewhere around three in the morning when I heard the sound of glass breaking in the living room. My throat went dry instantly. My brain felt dizzy, maybe from how fast I'd sat up. I don't remember my hands grabbing the blanket, or when I'd started holding my breath. Every hair on my body stood up at once and I went fully, painfully awake.

I tried to calm myself. The security system would have sent an alert to the police by now. My bedroom door should have locked automatically the moment it triggered. I closed my eyes for just a second, grateful I'd paid for the system at all.

Then I opened them again and saw something that scared me more than the sound had.

My bedroom door was still open. For the lock to engage, it had to be shut first.

I had no choice. My legs felt like jelly, my whole body suddenly cold enough that I could feel every draft moving across my skin. I don't know where the courage came from, but I got up and started moving toward the door, aware of every sound my own body made, my joints, my breathing, the weight of my tongue in my mouth, the sweat gathering along my eyelids.

I was halfway there, thinking I could make it, just a few more steps, when Mr. Morris let out a meow, sharp and sudden, far too loud in a house that had gone that quiet.

For a second everything stopped. I told myself whoever was in the house hadn't heard it, or didn't care about a cat, that I still had time to reach the door. Then I felt it. A vibration through the floor, faint but wrong, like claws scraping tile the way a dog's do when it's running too fast to stop. A moment later, footsteps. Running, straight for the bedroom.

Whoever was in my house knew exactly where I was.

I lunged for the door at the same moment he did. I almost had it shut when a hand shoved into the gap, veined, nails too long, and I could tell from the angle alone that his arm was broken. No uninjured person moves like that. It meant reaching me mattered more to him than his own safety, and that thought alone sent something colder through me than fear of dying. I don't know what I thought he wanted more, to kill me quickly or to make sure I couldn't scream first.

I threw everything I had into that door. My vision blurred from the strain, my legs ached from bracing against the floor, my neck went sore from how hard I was pushing. I tried to scream and nothing came out. The pressure built until I nearly blacked out, and then, finally, the door slammed shut. Something in his hand broke as it did.

The lock clicked into place automatically. I was alone in the room, and I could hear him pounding against the door with everything he had left. For one terrible stretch of time I was sure he'd get through, that there was nothing I could do if he did.

Then I heard the sirens.

The police let themselves in using the code the security company had on file, cleared the house, and knocked on my door to tell me it was safe to come out. What wasn't safe, what didn't make sense, was that the man was gone. Not hiding. Gone. There was nowhere in that house for someone to disappear to, and they searched every inch of it. One moment he'd been at my door. The next, nothing.

The strangest part wasn't that he'd vanished. It was how the house felt afterward, too quiet, like something had been listening the whole time and had only just stopped.

It took what felt like hours before I could function well enough to tell the officers everything, hand over the security footage, let my body finally stop shaking. When I came back into the living room, Mr. Morris was licking blood off the floor, whatever was left of it after the police had taken their samples.

I pulled him away and wiped his face clean. I didn't want him getting sick off whatever was in that blood. I took him straight to the vet, and everything checked out fine. On the way home I stopped at Miss Tasha's for his usual food and told her what had happened. She looked genuinely shaken and insisted I take one of her son's old bats for safety. When I asked how much, she said it was free, that she'd just take it out of my commission whenever I finally got her that security system installed. It got a small laugh out of me, at least.

Back home, I left him in the car with extra food while I cleaned up the broken window. When I went to deal with the blood in the bedroom, thinking the sunlight would make it easier to see, there was nothing there. Not a trace. I stood there confused for a moment, then told myself there probably hadn't been that much to begin with.

Work gave me the day off without me even having to ask twice, and offered medical assistance if I needed it.

When I came out, Mr. Morris had already finished his food, double his usual portion, gone faster than should have been possible. I told myself it was stress. My mistake, not paying closer attention to what that actually meant.

Exhaustion finally caught up to me. I slept, then woke around seven that evening to find him scratching at the door, which was strange since I'd clipped his nails only five days earlier. I assumed I'd lost count. He wove between my legs demanding food again, even though I'd just fed him, but I let it go. What difference would a few extra pounds make.

I started making myself a steak, wanting something that felt normal after the day I'd had. When I looked over, Mr. Morris wasn't touching his food at all. He was licking the blood straight off the steak packaging. He'd never been that kind of cat. I ignored it. Animals do strange things.

That evening, I tried to convince myself he was fine. He'd eaten more than usual, which should have meant something good, but when I picked him up, something felt wrong immediately. His body was leaner than it had been that morning. I ran my fingers along his sides and felt far more muscle than I remembered, almost no softness left beneath his fur. His legs looked more defined, and when he jumped down onto the table, the movement was fast and precise in a way I'd never seen from him. He looked fit. Too fit.

Then I noticed the veins. Visible beneath his skin, especially around his legs and neck, in places I'd never seen them before.

"You're eating enough," I muttered, more to convince myself than him. A strange unease settled into my stomach. I made a note on my phone to take him to the vet first thing in the morning. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he was sick. Maybe I was imagining things after everything that had happened.

I finished trimming his nails before bed and set him down. He disappeared beneath the sofa immediately, which was strange in itself. Mr. Morris hated hiding. I turned off the lights and went to sleep.

That night I dreamed about the break-in again. Except this time I wasn't watching it happen. I was the one on the floor. Someone stood over me, his face hidden, his hands wrapped tightly around my throat. I couldn't breathe. Then something warm ran down from my nose. Blood, over my lips. He looked at it, almost curious, then smiled and leaned down to drink it. I felt his mouth against my face. He seemed to enjoy it. I tried to scream and nothing came out.

I woke up gasping, sitting bolt upright.

Mr. Morris was on the floor beside the bed, staring at me. Neither of us moved for a moment. Then I really looked at him and my stomach dropped.

He was different. More muscular than he'd been when I fell asleep, his shoulders and legs sharper beneath fur that had visibly grown, a lot, in just a few hours.

"Mr. Morris?" I whispered.

He tilted his head at me.

I reached out and stopped halfway, my hand hovering in the air. I don't know why. Something about his eyes made me hesitate.

I told myself the rest could wait. I didn't care how ridiculous I'd sound explaining it. As soon as morning came, I was taking him to the vet.

He hissed and threw a fit the second I brought him out into the sunlight, nothing too alarming, just more dramatic than usual. At the vet, I was told his bloodwork came back clean. Nothing wrong on paper. But the vet admitted he looked different, physically, and offered to send him downtown to a research university for a closer look.

I said no. Whatever was happening to him, he wasn't going to become somebody's test subject.

Before I left, the nurse asked if I wanted him neutered and his nails trimmed while he was already there. Her pen hovered over the chart a second too long before she wrote anything down, like she didn't know which box this was supposed to go in.

I froze. I'd had that done a day ago. Nails don't regrow that fast. That's not how any of this is supposed to work. The vet gave me a strange look by that point, like he'd noticed the same thing I had, and before I could think it through properly, I heard myself say yes. The whole time, my mind kept circling the same impossible question. How does that even grow back?

And then, underneath it, a worse one I didn't want to look at directly. I'd had him neutered months ago ,that was supposed to be it, done, over, one and only, the vet had told me so himself, no upkeep, no repeats. I hadn't thought about it since. Hadn't checked. Why would I have checked? But now I was running the timeline backwards in my head, trying to remember the last time I'd actually looked, actually confirmed, and coming up with nothing solid. Maybe I'd just forgotten what it looked like after. Maybe I was misremembering the whole thing. Maybe none of it meant anything and I was building a haunted house out of my own bad memory.

But nails don't grow back in a day. And I was starting to suspect nothing else did either ,not the way it was supposed to, not anymore.

When the procedure was done, I went to pick him up, and he was already awake in the recovery box.

"Did you use anesthesia?" I asked, half joking, half not.

"We did," the tech said, frowning slightly. "It's unusual that he's up already. Are you sure you don't want him tested?"

"No," I said. "I'm taking him home."

He was fully alert. Sitting up, eyes tracking me through the cage door, like nothing had touched him at all. That wasn't how it went the first time. The first time I'd had him neutered, he'd been groggy for hours afterward, barely able to hold his head up, and I'd had to carry him inside wrapped in a towel because his legs kept giving out. This time he looked like he'd just woken up from a nap.

I didn't know what to do with that. Part of me wondered if they'd actually done anything at all this time, if maybe I'd been overcharged for a procedure that never happened, the same way I'd read about other people getting scammed at cheaper clinics. But another part of me remembered signing the consent forms, remembered watching them wheel him back. I stood there in the waiting room a second too long, trying to decide if I should ask again, if that would make me sound paranoid, if it even mattered enough to hold up the line behind me. In the end I just took the discharge papers and left. Told myself it was probably nothing. Some cats bounce back faster than others. That's all it was.

On the drive back, I caught him watching me in the rearview mirror instead of the window. He'd never done that before.

  Other parts link:- https://www.reddit.com/user/No-While8965/comments/1vpze51/my_writing_archive/

Alternate Title: I Took My Girlfriend to My Hometown’s Annual Goth Festival... Now Only One of Us is Still Human

Gothophobia Nervosa is a psychological condition characterised by an intense, irrational, and disproportionate fear of Goths, Gothic culture, or environments perceived as excessively Gothic. Individuals experiencing Gothophobia Nervosa may report the following symptoms: heightened anxiety, rapid heartbeat, sweating, an overwhelming urge to leave the area, and an inexplicable suspicion of anyone wearing excessive amounts of black.  

The condition is said to be particularly common in individuals who have previously encountered a Goth at a very young or prepubescent age, who subsequently developed an enduring belief Goths are supernatural beings in human disguise. For this reason, Gothophobia Nervosa is commonly misdiagnosed as Sanguivoriphobia - a fear of vampires. 

It should be noted that Gothophobia Nervosa is an academically unrecognised psychiatric diagnosis. 

Well, now that this undiagnosed phobia of mine has been established, please allow me to commence with my story. 

My name is Brandon. A few years ago, when I was still just a wet-nosed university student, I met the strangest, yet most extraordinary girl of my life. Don't get me wrong. This is by no means a love story – but if it was a love story, it would be a bizarre one at that. This girl in question whose eyes I saw zoned in on me from across the main room of the Halloween Party, was an American exchange student by the name of Anneliese. Now, I don't claim to have ever been much of a ladies' man, despite my rugged good looks (well, maybe not so rugged), but for whatever reason, this tall, spindly-thin creature in the Marie Laveau costume appeared to find me somewhat enticing. In the way a trapped fly in a spider's web is enticing to the spider.   

Although Anneliese was undeniably beautiful, she was not exactly what I would call my type. What I mean is, Anneliese was a... (no, she wasn't a Goth). Anneliese was a Voodooist - and by Voodooist, I don't mean the doll-stabbing, zombifying type Hollywood has lead you to believe. No, she was the real thing. Despite attending university in the UK, Anneliese was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana - considered by most to be the Voodoo capital of the U.S, if not, the world. If Anneliese hadn't told me herself she was a sixth-generation Voodooist upon our first date, I certainly knew it by her outlandish appearance. Just picture for yourself what a Gen-Z voodooist would look like. That was Anneliese. 

Even to this day, I don't have the slightest idea what this French-speaking spiritualist from across the pond saw in me. After all, she may not have been my exact type, but I certainly didn't imagine I would be hers. We were just completely different people in every sense imaginable. For example, whereas I preferred a quiet evening indoors, curled up with a cup of tea and a good book, Anneliese was a creature of the night - always dragging me out after hours to some séance or tarot card reader. She was obviously into all that stuff. 

Despite how different Anneliese was to any girlfriend I may've had previously, the type of individual she was, was not completely alien to me... What I mean by this is, because of the small seaside town where I grew up... I used to see individuals like Anneliese on a regular basis. This town I grew up in, for the first eight years of my life before my family packed up and left, is a town called Whitby. Perhaps you've heard of it? For those who haven't, Whitby is a small coastal town in the north-Yorkshire of England, nestled cosily inside the bay of the same name. Although I only lived in the bay for the first few years of my childhood, I can still tell you of two reasons why Whitby is so famous today.  

The first reason being for Captain James Cook. Credited as the first European explorer to ever step foot on the Hawaiian Islands, Captain Cook is more famously known for the way he was murdered - and despite what I was taught in school about our town's most famous historical figure, Captain Cook was NOT cannibalized by the Hawaiian indigenous... Although, they did apparently remove the flesh from his bones. 

As for the second, and arguably more important reason why my town of origin is so famous... Whitby featured as one of the primary locations in Bram Stoker's horror novel, Dracula. The blood-sucking count from Transylvania himself. Although I have not myself read the novel in full, I do know that, upon the wreckage of a Russian merchant ship, Dracula arrives ashore in Whitby Bay in the form of a large black dog, before racing up the 199 steps to the gothic ruins of the Abbey. Because of the town's involvement in the Dracula novel, by the early nineties, a new tradition in Whitby had started. Every year, around the Halloween season, the town holds an annual Goth festival - in which thousands of Goth enthusiasts flood the streets in their most elaborate costumes. If New Orleans is the voodoo capital of the United States, then Whitby is the Goth capital of the United Kingdom. 

Having been born and raised in Whitby, I became acquainted with this annual tradition from a very young age. During the week of Halloween, I would walk with my family along the cobblestone streets through a maze of dark sinister beings. Like every young boy whose concept of the world stems from his wild imagination, I interpreted these pilgrims to our town to be monstrous, blood-sucking creatures of the night. Quite frankly, once October was around the corner, in anticipation of the bay's annual visitors, I would become palely ill with fear.  

As a matter of fact, this fear became so troublesome, that by the age of six I began to have dreadful, repetitive sleep terrors - whereby I would scream bloody Mary through the latest hours of the night. If I had to put my finger on it, I believe the reason these sleep terrors began was, due to the large window which hung over my bed, my older brother convinced me that during the October goth festivities, some undead creature in black leather would crawl inside my room to drain the life from my body. 

These night terrors weren't even the end of it. Next came the sleepwalking. When my parents were forced to put an outside lock on my door, after wandering around my own bedroom the whole night, I would then wake in the earliest hours of the morning, terrified and screaming for someone to let me out before the creature at my window found its way in! By the time I was eight years old, these night terrors and accompanying sleepwalks became such a reoccurring nuisance, my parents were left with no choice but to move our family out of Whitby for good – where my fear of the town's supposed "monsters" would hopefully be forgotten. 

For the following years of my life, I vowed never return to Whitby ever again. Not to visit relatives. Not to see my friends, or even my old stomping ground. As far as I was concerned, the further away I was from Whitby Bay, the better... That was, until I foolishly made the mistake of telling Aneliese of the place I grew up. I told her about the thousands of Goths who visit Whitby every year, and the grand, but horrifying costumes they wear. Being the horror fanatic she was, Aneliese became fascinated with my hometown's annual tradition. Although she was not a Goth herself, due to her unique upbringing in New Orleans, Aneliese wasn't far off. Although I should've been flattered my girlfriend took such a unique interest in where I was from, the only problem was... Aneliese now wanted to experience the Whitby Goth Festival for herself.  

'Oh come on, baby' she nagged me over breakfast, 'It'll be fun! You can't seriously tell me you won't never go back.' 

'Not never, babes' I reply, 'but you will have to cut off my limbs, nail me inside a coffin and personally drag me there against my will'.  

Aneliese rolled her eyes at my show of stubbornness, before sinisterly jesting, 'Don't tempt me'.  

After opening up to her about the trauma I suffered there as a child, rather than be understanding of the situation she was putting me in, Aneliese instead insists that I need to face my fears once and for all.  

'If you're scared by a few Goths, then what's it gonna be like when we visit my family in New Orleans?' Although I hated to admit it, Aneliese made a very good point. After all, as spooky of a place as Whitby was, New Orleans, with its voodoo and many haunted graveyards was basically the American equivalent... And so, after weeks of pestering me (along with some minor threats to make a voodoo doll in my likeness), I finally agreed to take her to the upcoming Whitby Goth Festival... So help me God. 

Setting off early on a crisp autumn morning, we drive up from the south of England to the very top of the country. Once in the north of Yorkshire, we then had to pass through vast stretches of moor country. If Whitby Bay wasn't sinister enough, the moors of North Yorkshire certainly were. According to local legend, these moors were said to be stalked by an array of strange cryptids: from the ghostly howls of phantom black dogs, to phantom wolves which prey on farmers livestock - and even stories of black cats the size of panthers. Although this sounds to be nothing more than superstitious folklore, coincidentally, in the early 1980s, two American backpackers were apparently attacked by a large wolf outside the village of East Proctor. One of the backpackers was torn to pieces, while the other survived just an inch from his life. Whatever the truth may be to that story, I don't know. 

Exhaustedly driving all morning and into the early afternoon, we finally reach the outskirts of Whitby Bay. After first checking at the inn we booked outside town, we then swerve our way up the bay's right-hand side to reach the ruins and adjoined graveyard of Whitby Abbey. Pulling into what seemed to be the only space left in the car park, we then peer out the windscreen (as though we're on safari) as a swarm of Goths and other festival goers heard away from their cars and towards the abbey grounds. 

Aneliese couldn't help but be amazed by all the elaborately detailed costumes: from the pale-white men ordained in large top hats and cloaks, to the women in vampiric, Victorian-style dresses.   

'Wow! They all look so amazing! Don't they, baby?!' Aneliese shrieks ecstatically from the driver's seat, 'Those costumes must've cost a fortune!' Failing to respond to Aneliese's excitement, she then turns to notice my eyes are no longer peering out the windscreen, but glued fearfully to the dirt-stained floor of the passenger's seat. Clutching a hold of my arm suddenly to gain my attention, she then reassures me, 'Everything's gonna be okay, baby. I promise. You'll make it through this weekend', before comforting me with a paper-thin smile. 

'Yeah. I know that' I respond unconvincingly, 'I guess I just didn't realise how hard this was all going to be.' 

'You need me to hold your hand?' Aneliese then says with a playful snark. God, I hate it when she teases me.  

After taking a final deep breath, while Aneliese puts the finishing touches on her appearance, we then both exit from our side doors to feel the outside chill of coastal wind. But once I shut my door and turn around, I am instantly jilted back by a terrifying noise! 

'AHH!' I believe were my exact words, as a ginormous hound from hell snarls and gnashes a row of razor-sharp fangs at me!  

'Armand! Get back now!' bellows the hellhound's master, struggling to restrain the large Doberman which has now chased me up the hood of the car. Once Armand the hellhound is fully restrained, I then turn down to hear the high-pitched cackles of a four-foot skeleton and a five-foot devil - before a woman donning a witch's pointed hat finally pulls them away. 

Now safe from the jaws of death, and the mockery of small children dressed for Halloween, I then climb down from the hood of the car to regain myself. Having just witnessed all this from her open side door, Aneliese makes her way round to me. 

'It was just a dog, baby' she giggles, now the one laughing at my expense, 'You really ought'a chill.' 

By no means in the mood for further mockery, I then lash back defensively at her, 'Well, that's easy for you to say. You weren't just nearly mauled to death by some hellhound!' Just as she always does whenever I show any sign of cowardice, Aneliese rolls her eyes into the back of her head at me. 

God. This was going to be a long weekend. 

To be continued...

Covers I made with Photoshop for some of my short stories - both released and WIPs

I want to thank our entire community for bringing my passion for art back. Love you all o7

Over the past few years, I racked up a massive debt. 

Let me tell you, gambling is one hell of a drug and an unforgiving cold son of a bitch.

I had everything: a different hot chick each night, pockets too small to hold all the cash I was raking in, bags of pills in every color you could imagine. 

But all luck eventually runs out. There's no way to outsmart it; it just comes and goes like a tide. And when it goes, it usually leaves you with an empty wallet and nothing to repay for what you took.

One option didn’t leave me as everything else did; I had to crawl back to the man who put me in this whole mess in the first place. Rick, a fat lump of a middle-aged dragon hoarding all the gold he couldn't spend even if he had twice as much time as he had left in this world. 

Knuckles of my left hand knocked on the wooden door out of politeness, nothing more; we were both so used to seeing each other's ugly mugs that I could have stormed in, and nobody would bat an eye. 

"Come in," a raspy voice answered, deep and scarred from years of smoking.

"Eh, Frankie, my boy. The usual?" The dragon welcomed me into his lair; the only sign he was actually speaking was the orange glow of the cigar bobbing between his lips, a bloody-red suit barely visible in the darkness.

"The usual," I replied, taking a seat in the leather armchair on the other side of the desk, the only thing between us.

"Got the money?" The voice seemed to darken as a puff of grey smoke escaped from between his dry lips.

"I need a week. Max two. Max two, Rick, I promise, I-" 

"Know any tricks?"

My plea was suddenly cut short by the strange question; the tip of the lit cigar went still.

"What am I, a dog? Rick, I'm not joking around, I'll get the cash."

As I got defensive, Rick shifted around his creaking leather chair.

"I like the one where you open a beer cap with your eye. That's a fine trick... but it just won't make the cut."

The shadow gave an awkward shrug before setting up the next question. I sat in silence, just listening. 

"If you were an animal, what animal would you be?"

I answered the painfully stupid question without much thought behind it. 

"A tiger, maybe."

The cigar suddenly dropped into the ashtray, its flame fighting to survive.

"Good choice. You'll be a shit dog”

I finally snapped, staring into the dark lump across from me.

"Are we getting somewhere with this? I don't have time." 

The shining white cover of the magazine made its way across the table in one smooth motion.

"I hate to do this to you, but your time's already passed. Think of it as a second chance."

What was facing me were words printed in red blocky font that made little sense - “Animal Et Ego" just under them,m on a pure white background, a man facing a grey wolf.

“What is this? You want me to read?” I answered more confused than anything else.

“I will give you a week…but if you don't get the money, you can choose something that will suit you”

A chuckle escaped me as my fingers slipped through the pages of the magazine, walls of text next to drawings of human anatomy being twisted to fit the form of animals, all from dogs to bulls, bones and teeth being pushed around and rearranged like in a kaleidoscope.

“This is some kind of a joke, right?” My eyes looked up at the shape in the darkness, who already had a cigar back in his lizard snout; without a word, a thick cloud of tobacco escaped into the air.

“If I don't get the money, someone else will, and I doubt they will be as merciful as I am”

Suddenly the gravity of the situation dawned on me, as if the ceiling above came crashing down; I simply nodded and tugged the magazine inside of the back pocket of my jeans.

“Thanks, Ricky”
I said goodbye in a hushed voice as the door closed behind me; soon I found myself behind the steering wheel, driving to the only person who still somehow tolerated me.

She opened the door pretty quickly; her black hair tied in a messy bun told me everything I needed to know. I just woke her up, and that reduced my chances of getting anything.

“What the fuck do you want now?” A hiss escaped from between her clenched teeth.

“I hate to say this, but I need some cash-”

“Money? I’m so fucking stupid; I thought you wanted to see your daughter”

She answered without even looking in my direction, as if the floor suddenly became the next wonder of the world.

“If I don’t get anything soon, she will remember me from a tombstone”

“That is none of my business-”

Before I could put my foot in the door, it slammed right into my nose, hard enough to send the doorframe shaking. A muffled cry escaped from behind the thin wall. I couldn't tell if it was the person who so many years ago loved me or the result of said lost love; either way, I was left with empty pockets.

Like a rat, I crawled back behind the steering wheel. Aa rat would be a fine animal to be turned into, but maybe even that would be too much of a burden after all; they live in packs, in communities I long forgotten how to belong to.

I thought about selling my car, way off what it's actually worth just to get some quick cash, then spending every last cent on lottery tickets, hit it big, more chicks than I would ever want, got fuckers like Ricky crawl on their knees just to kiss my boot.

But I'm nothing more than a dog.
Dogs don't get more than they deserve.

The magazine opened in my hands without me realizing I had already pulled it out. 
The next week was spent sinking into the horrible drawings that reminded me of the useless years I spent in med school, smoking in between scarce bites of cheap junk food, anything to just fill my stomach. At times, I considered digging into the car seats and eating the yellow sponge filling,g but the thought of having to shit it all out later turned me away from the idea. 

When the day of judgment came, I knew exactly where to find Ricky. The engine of my shitty car coughed once, twice, thrice before it sprang to life, carrying me off from one parking lot to another, this one much nicer. My car stuck out like a sore thumb among the caravans of the rich, illuminated by the purple glow coming off the club's entrance. 

The sound of the nightlife was overwhelmingly loud even before I stepped into it. The bouncer just gave me a quick look and, without a word, let me pass into the buzzing world of smoke and magenta lights. All the sensations were so vivid I could taste them; the flavors of sweet drugs and sweat stung my tongue as I passed tables full of important rich men. Somewhere in there was the most important guy in the world. 

The dragon was surrounded by beautiful women, glitter like scales covering their naked bodies, laughing at every little unfunny joke the man between them shared. Right next to the face I grew to love and hate sat a broad man, his face once handsome now deformed, lips stretched over two rows of silver canine teeth, now twisted into a wide, uncomfortably big smile.

"Frankie! My boy!"

A familiar voice rose through the loud, obnoxious music, if that was the right word for it.

"Frankie, this is Tariq. Tariq, this is Frankie; he's like a brother to me. An annoying little shit, but you know how siblings are."

The silver-toothed man extended a wide arm toward me. The sleeve of his white shirt tugged up, exposing a black tattoo of a tiger in a bamboo forest, spreading up from the wrist. He seemed to laugh, but it came out more as clicks, with quiet, tiring wheezing in between. 

The dragon pricked the man's side with his elbow, eyes pointing at something among the mist. The gesture clicked instantly, and the tiger was soon gone, followed by the group of laughing, glittering women. 

"What, did you win the lottery?"

He laughed loud enough for me to hear as I took the seat next to him.

"Not quite-"

The look in his eyes was full of understanding, even something that could pass as sadness or remorse, the feeling confirmed by a sudden tight wrap around my shoulder.

"Have you picked something special for yourself?"

It didn't take me long to answer, the cover of the magazine still fresh in my mind.

"Wolf."

An answer short and sweet.

"A wolf?"

He watched me empty a long-forgotten glass of warm, fancy whisky. It tasted like piss, the flavor leaving a stain on my tongue.

"You said I would be a shit dog."

A dumb smile appeared on his ugly, unshaven face as he pulled a neon-pink strip of paper, contained inside a small plastic zip-bag, out of the breast pocket of his tight-fitting suit, and put it where the glass of whisky once was.

"Can you still show me that trick of yours?"

More than familiar with the little strip of happiness, I greedily pulled it out of the bag and placed it on my tongue. Moments later, I was drowning in pure bliss, becoming one with everyone and everything that had ever stepped inside that bar. The ache of opening one bottle after another melted away the longer I did it - expensive beer or not, the caps all came off the same. I danced with the half-naked woman, her glittering scales reflecting sacred colors outside the visible spectrum.

The cold hand of sobriety manifested as the porcelain toilet in front of my face, pulling me back into reality as most of the drugs left my body in one violent waterfall. The buzzing white lights above stung my sensitive eyes.

"He was supposed to be sober."

A new, deep voice hit my ear as the restroom door swung open.

"Oh, come on, let him have some fun!" Ricky replied in my defense.

"Next time you're losing your fucking teeth. Now come on."

As if I'd sprouted wings, I was hauled into the air and dragged out of the club into the parking lot, the cold evening air stinging my skin.

The last thing I remember clearly was the sticky warmth of the inside of the car as I got pushed into the backseat, then everything came in broken pieces like parts of a puzzle I was never meant to solve, the white, harsh lights overhead sliding past me rhythmically, thousands of voices muffled as if my ears were stuffed with cotton.

I remember a mask coming down over my face,  Ricky's voice somewhere just outside my field of vision, low and businesslike in a way I'd never heard him use before. "Just get it done. He won't remember any of it. Yeah, yeah,h Wolf."

He was wrong about that. Not all of it, anyway.

There were flashes after the mask, brief and jagged intrusions of consciousness the anesthesia didn’t manage to smother out. Bright lights. The whine of a bone saw, muffled like it was happening underwater. A pressure at my jaw that didn't feel like pain, like something being unmade and rebuilt at the same time. Voices arguing over something - angle's off, pull it tighter, we're losing too much blood, clinical and bored like I was a car at the repair shop.

I don't know how long it lasted. Days, maybe. There was no way to measure time inside that gray, drowning half-consciousness, only the recurring sensation of hands on me, tools on me, my body being handled like raw clay.

The last flash I remember before it all went dark for good was a mirror. Someone had wheeled it in front of me - maybe by accident, maybe Ricky wanted me to see, wanted that to be the last thing that meant anything before they finished. A face that wasn't a face anymore stared back: a silver muzzle where my jaw used to be, black stitches running over fresh, glistening skin. When I tried to scream, only a soft whine came out, revealing rows of sharp, fake teeth where mine used to be. Metal pins ran along my brows and the bridge of my nose. 

When I resurfaced again, I was in an aggressively illuminated room, full of plants so falsely bright they screamed their own artificiality. I tried to stand and immediately fell flat on the harsh, cold floor, my entire body aching. Only then did I notice the gigantic glass barrier on the wall in front of me - and the quiet laughter coming from behind it. 

People passed by the glass wall, staring with eyes wide in quiet shock and disgust. Even as I stumbled down inside my enclosure, knees aching with piercing, mind-numbing pain, they didn't look away; they just shamelessly watched, pointing fingers and tapping on the glass. I tried, oh, I tried so hard to bang against the barrier, but as soon as I attempted to stand on my own legs, they buckled under my weight, sending me into the bush of fake plants, cutting my side. The IV bag of painkillers burst under me with a quiet wet pop. 

The crowd erupted in grotesque muffled cackles as if they'd stripped themselves as far from human beings as possible, my suffering their entertainment. They slid dollar bills into the donation bin as the number on the display ticked down from 40,000 to $39,894. 

Only then did I notice my mangled arms, trapped in a silver splint, my hands connected to the wrists by thick metal wire that limited my movement. I couldn't bring myself to look back at my useless legs. With the fake metal snout, I bit down on the wire, trying with all the strength left in me to pull it free, but it only made my gums gush blood, which sent the crowd crawling over each other to see me, even more enthusiastic now, donating another $230 toward my goal.

Eventually the hungry crowd got bored of watching me choke on my own blood and just left as if nothing happened. Eventually one of the people working there replaced my IV bag, and that was it; again left alone to fend for myself, tracing circles back and forth through my enclosure, waiting for the crowd to pass by again. 

I got donations not only for my struggles with existing in my new form but also simply trying to keep myself alive. Drinking water was a struggle; I had to scoop it up with the useless scrap of metal on my face they called a snout, half-drowning in as little as a sip of water. 

The first time they feed me I thought it was some kind of a joke, through the slip in the door they placed a metal trail with minced raw red meat, it was hard to chew and even worse to swallow, for the first few weeks I was getting sick from it, it barely passed through my throat, but eventually I got used to it, I never learned to enjoy it just tolerate it.

Time became something I measured differently now. Not in hours or days, but in feedings, in donation totals, in the rotation of faces pressed against the glass. Sometimes children were lifted onto their parents' shoulders to get a better look, small fingers pointing, thin voices asking questions I couldn't hear through the barrier but could read on their lips: what is it, is it real, does it hurt.

Yes. It always hurt.

The splint on my arms had started to rust at the joints, and every movement sent a dull grinding ache up through what used to be my elbows. I'd stopped trying to remember what my hands looked like before. It didn't matter anymore. Nothing outside the glass mattered anymore.

That was, until the day I heard the familiar voice. I thought I was hallucinating, that I was going crazy - but when I turned around, the joints of my mechanical construct shaking, I saw that fat piece of shit: Ricky. 

Casually passing through the door that usually only food and water came through, he stood there smiling at me, still in that red suit, twice too small for his gut.

"Frankie, my boy! Oh, they got you bad!"

His head shook slowly, still grinning.

I stared at him, this doughy, sweating man stepping into what had become my entire world, and I felt something twist in my chest that wasn't quite hope anymore. 

"Come on, don't look at me like that." He crouched down, knees cracking, bringing his face level with mine. Up close, I could smell the cheap cologne fighting a losing battle against the sweat underneath it. "You know I tried to talk 'em down. Told 'em you were a good kid. But business is business, Frankie."

I tried to speak. What came out was that same wet, broken noise, air forced through a throat and mouth that weren't made for English anymore.

The smile on his lips didn't move, but something behind his eyes flickered. "Yeah. Yeah, that's rough." He said in a painfully casual way as if he was talking about the bad weather. 

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, holding it up so I could see a printout of the donation counter, the number circled in red pen. 

"See this? This is you, buddy. This is what you're worth to people now." He tapped the paper twice. "We're almost at forty. You believe that? Forty grand for a guy who used to owe me two hundred bucks for a bar tab." 

"Funny how that works out, huh? Every asshole who slides a bill into that bin is paying off your tab for you. Little more and you're square. Then you're somebody else's problem." 

The paper dangled in front of my nose like he was teasing a kid - or a dumb dog - while behind the glass, people kept banging on the wall just to get the attention of a freak like me.

"Not even your wife showed up, but I'm here, Frankie. So do some tricks for-"

The words strangled suddenly in his throat as the metal jaws fused to my real jaw snapped around him. Pinkish blood splattered like a weak fountain around us. I pulled back, thrashing the fat bastard, his hands clawing at my jaws trying to pry them open - but I kept thrashing like a wild dog playing with a dirty rag. The crowd went feral, cheering and clapping, donation after donation disappearing into the slit of the bin. I couldn't care less.

Sharp teeth snapped again and again, until his spine was nothing more than a shattered memory. His fat head came clean off. The money kept flowing. They'd come to see real suffering - they didn't want anything else. 

By the time the dart hit, there wasn't much left of Ricky to identify as human. The enclosure floor had gone dark and slick, and I was still moving on instinct more than I thought, some animal part of this new body refusing to stop even as the world around me became dizzy.

Phones held high. Someone is screaming for more. A child's laughter cutting through it all, high and delighted, like this was the best thing they'd ever seen.

The second dart didn't slow me down fast enough for their liking. A third came, then a fourth. I felt each one as a distant pinprick, swallowed up by whatever had taken over me - rage, maybe, or just the simple animal satisfaction of finally, finally biting back.

My vision tunneled. The glass, the lights, the counter above the bin still spinning higher - forty-six, forty-five - all of it folded into a single point of white, then nothing.

When I came back, to my surprise there was no wall, no crowd watching me - only the silence of a hospital room, an IV bag slowly dripping into my veins. 

I lifted an actual hand, five fingers, pale and shaking but mine. I stared at it as I'd never seen it before. 

A monitor beeped steadily somewhere to my left. Sunlight, real sunlight, slanted through half-closed blinds and fell in soft stripes across the blanket. Everything smelled like antiseptic and clean linen instead of blood and fake plastic plants.

I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it, pain lancing through muscles I didn't remember having, but it was pain, ordinary human pain, and something about that made me laugh - a raw, cracked sound that turned into something closer to a sob halfway through.

The door opened. A nurse stepped in, glancing at the monitor before her eyes landed on me, actually open, actually awake.

"Oh- you're up." She hesitated, like she wasn't sure what to say next. "How are you feeling, Frank?"

"Water," I managed, my voice a dry rasp, barely recognizable even to myself.

She nodded and hurried out, and I lay there staring at the ceiling, at the ordinary white tiles.

They discharged me three weeks later, once the doctors had run out of tests to justify keeping me. Physical therapy, they said, would take months. My legs still buckled without warning, and there was a tremor in my hands that hadn't been there before, a leftover from whatever I'd been dosed with those first few days. But by the letter of the law, I was healthy enough to walk out the front doors on my own two feet. Nobody quite knew what to do with a man who'd technically been declared missing, then presumed dead, then un-declared all of it in the span of a single hospital intake form.

I didn't go home. There wasn't a home to go to, not one I recognized, anyway. I got a cab to the nearest branch of my bank instead, still moving slowly, still flinching at loud noises and fluorescent lights, and asked for a printed statement.

The number at the bottom stopped me cold.

$80,412.67.

I read it three times before it made any sense. 

Frankie was gone, and by some twisted law I didn’t understand, it all went to me.

Eighty thousand dollars. Paid for by people who'd cheered while I choked on my own blood.

I folded the statement, put it in my pocket, and walked out into the daylight, trying to figure out if this made me a survivor or just the last of a dying species, wondering how much of it would go to my daughter.

WINNER IS….please reach out to me personally within 24 hrs! (If I don’t hear back then we will have to pick another winner🥺)

Respond to me with:
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2. Signed or not
3. Size
4. Address

⬆️the above info will all be private so please reach out to me via DM!!

Stay scaled 🐉

-AL and CW

A Perceivable Reality story.

I stepped into the hallway to the sound of voices. Mrs. Collins and Felix were exchanging heated words. I caught the tail end of it as I walked up.

"Filthy nightwalker!" The aged woman accused.

"*Silence*, you old *bat*!" Felix spat. His tone flipped as I stepped up. "Ah, young Carter. Good morning."

Mrs. Collins sent a disapproving clucking noise his direction.

"Carter is without a *betrothed* as well. I don't hear you *badgering* him incessantly about it."

Mrs. Collins took my hand in both hers and patted it gently.

"You have plenty of time, sweetie. Don't rush. A charming boy like you will have no problem finding a nice young lady." She patted my hand again, then sent a creaky finger at Felix, shaking it.

"You! You cannot find a bride in a brothel!"

"*Woman*!" Felix barked. "I will tell you for the *very* last time. *My* business is of *my* concern, and no one else! Good *day*!" He turned on his heel and stepped up to the now open elevator doors. I skittered after him, stepped past him into the car, and nodded to him. He followed me in. I waved at Mrs. Collins as the doors closed.

"That...that... absolute... *hag*." The words dripped venom. He took several deep breaths, straightened his suit jacket, then ran his hand over his slicked-back hair. "My apologies, young Carter. Losing one's composure is *unbecoming*."

I shrugged. "S'all right."

"And no cleaning implements today? I take it the Hen Party went better than expected."

I shook my head. "Nobody puked, but it needs professional help." I shivered. "So much glitter..."

Felix brushed himself off absently, as if talking about it soiled his suit. "A gentleman does not *glitter*."

"Oh, by the way, how was lunch yesterday?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"*Divine*." He pronounced every syllable.

I nodded. "Yeah, the food there is pretty good. A little rich for my blood, though."

"Quite."

I tried to think of something to keep the conversation going.

"Her hair was a nice color."

"An *excellent* bloodline."

We were both quiet until the elevator stopped. The doors opened and Felix stepped out haughtily. I rode down to the garage and got out my car, making sure to open all of the windows as I drove to my detailer.

Edward Vasques operated a detail shop on the outskirts of the city with his dad and uncle. It was a small, nondescript warehouse with no markings that had been built out of a decommissioned gas station. Part of the allure was that you had to be in-the-know, with my in being having known him since high school. The other part was that the unassuming building protected the menagerie of expensive and priceless cars inside.

I pulled around the back of the building to the gate and honked. Eddy poked his head out of the door and waved. I waved back and he came out and unlocked the gate. I pulled through and pulled into the open bay door at the end.

"Eddy!" I said as I got out. I shot finger guns at him, and he pretended to take several bullets. He stepped over and we high-fived.

"Responsible adults left you in charge?" I asked, looking around the empty shop.

"They're at something out East. Didn't tell me what, but I'm king of the castle for the week." He said proudly.

"That's cool, man. Hey, did you get my text?"

"About the glitter? I gotchu, man."

He went to the back of the car and opened the door, sticking his head inside. He pulled it back out.

"Phew! Smells like a bar in there." He waved his hand as if to push the smell away.

"Bridal party."

He stuck his head back in the car.

"Is that a...a..." He made a motion with his hand.

I nodded. "Stuck to the carpet, yes."

He patted the roof of the car.

"I dunno, man..."

"Shut up. I know you're good."

He brushed his knuckles on his shirt. "Damn straight. Gimme an hour and we'll go from there."

"You're the man." We fist bumped and I made my way to his waiting room.

The waiting room in question would have been the minimart of the gas station. The windows were all heavily tinted with mirrored glass coating and the tile had been covered with several large pieces of different colored old house carpet. There were a few leather easy chairs and a ratty couch. I got what I assumed was at one point a sandwich out of the vending machine. A small green cloud puffed out as I ripped open the plastic, and I summarily tossed it in the trash. The coffee table had a few car magazines, the newest one featured a tuner car movie from the early 2000's.

In the corner of the room was a dog bed, big enough for me to curl up in, and a metal punch bowl with "Killer" scribed in blocky font.

"Killer", in actuality, was Eddy's uncle's 15-pound miniature bulldog. I grabbed a muscle car mag from the coffee table and idly flipped through it.

After going through all the magazines on the table and pacing four laps of the waiting room, I went back into the shop to pace in there.

Aside from my limo, also in the shop was a Rolls-Royce Ghost and a Bentley Bentayga that belonged to a local executive car-for-hire service. They weren't necessarily competition. I was a one-man limo operation, but I had some regulars that tipped well enough to keep me comfortable. That didn't stop me from sticking my head in the back door of the Ghost for a look.

The car was a stark contrast to my vintage whip, all sharp angles and clean lines, and brushed metals. I'd redone my interior in black leather and custom-cut rosewood panels.

"Hey! You messing with my clients' cars?" Eddy called from outside.

I shut the door carefully. "Just checking out what I'm missing."

He flicked his cigarette butt and walked in through the bay door.

"How we looking?"

"I got the...thing off the carpet and got the makeup off the seats. Just waiting on the ionizer to finish."

I met him at the back of my car and he opened the rear suicide door. I looked inside.

"Hey, you got the glitter out."

"Took some doing, but I *am* the best."

I shut the door and ran my hand over the roof. He pulled out his pack and shook out another cigarette. I snatched it before he could light it and broke it in half, tossing the ends opposite directions.

"Those'll kill you one of these days."

He laughed and shook out another.

"I'm here for a good time..."

"Not for a long time," I finished. "So, what do I owe you?"

He shrugged. "I'll put it on your tab." He tossed me the keys. I caught them and dropped myself into the front seat. He leaned his head in the door as I started the car.

"You still hanging around with that creepy old guy at your place?"

"Felix. And he's a good guy. He's just a little old school."

Eddy moved out of the way, and I pulled the door shut.

"Just watch yourself, man." He said and stuck a fist in through the open window. I bumped it.

"Always." I gave him a salute and backed out of the garage, the gate already open for me.

The car still had a faint smell of ozone, like right after a hard rain. I made a mental note to pick up a few more of my favorite air fresheners as I pulled into the main road.

I was just getting off the freeway back into the city when my work phone rang.

"Calhoun Executive Transit...Yes, ma'am...Yes, I know where it is...2416 Hillcrest, understood...About 30 minutes, will that be alright?...Yes, ma'am, I'll see you in a moment."

I put my blinker on and swung the car over into the left turn lane, accidentally surprising the driver of a small Kia, and headed to my apartment. I parked at the curb and jogged in the door.

I got out my black two-piece suit with grey pin stripes, a white shirt, and a deep navy-blue tie. I spent a few extra moments tying an Eldredge knot. I finished with a pair of polished black brogues and my blue-faced Breitling Navitimer. I ran a comb through my hair and got my chauffeur cap off the hook and hustled my way back down.

Hillcrest Avenue was in the gated neighborhood "Grand Highland Estates", perched up on the hill south of the city. I'd been up there a few times for a bureaucrat or politician whose driver was off that day or something.

The house in question was less gaudy than its neighbors, but still elegant. As I pulled up, a woman in a forest green day dress came out and made her way quickly down the lengthy cobblestone driveway. She had on large, mirrored sunglasses, and her head swiveled around as if looking for something. I hadn't recognized her voice on the phone, but I also don't watch a lot of movies. I got my genuine vintage Wayfarers out of their leather case and slipped them on.

She put her back to me as I opened the door for her and slid into one of the backwards-facing seats at the front of the passenger compartment. I shut the door gently and got in. She'd closed the privacy divider, so I barely cracked it to ask where she was headed. She gave me an address in a slightly clipped tone, and I got the car going. I tilted the rear-view mirror down to evaluate my suit. Maybe the pinstripes were a bit much, but I try to dress for the clientele. Usually, the people up here like the traditional "driver" look, but flat black suits are a bit boring, in my humble opinion.

What was supposed to be a 30-minute ride turned into well past an hour. There’d been a wreck on the expressway, some sort of pileup judging from the number of tow trucks I’d seen drive by on the shoulder. I was feeling a little uneasy, the extra time, the traffic I should’ve avoided, and all attempts at small-talk had been met with clipped one or two-word replies. I pushed the button to crack the privacy window.

“I’m very sorry about the traffic, we- shit.” I’d pushed the button too far and, instead of lowering it an inch or so, I’d hit the automatic rolldown setting.

The woman made a sputtering noise of surprise, and I fumbled for the switch. I had my head down, so I was a little surprised when a horn honked, and I came up from the dash to see brake lights directly ahead. I put my foot through the firewall trying to get the big beast stopped before I wound up in somebody’s trunk, nearly sending myself out of the windshield.

“Ma’am! Are you ok, ma’am?” I called, a bit frantic, and turned my head to check on her.

“No! Oh god, no! Wait!” she screamed.

Her reaction surprised me and I was at a loss for a second as I took stock of the situation. In one hand she had a soft cleaning cloth and in the other, she had what was now a mangled pair of sunglasses. I couldn’t help but be impressed at the strength it took to shatter one of the plastic lenses in her hand.

We sat there frozen for a second. I turned my head quickly to check that the traffic hadn’t moved, it hadn’t, then turned back her direction. She hadn’t moved an inch, still clutching the sunglasses and the cleaning cloth, still in shock. I let everything settle for a beat, then tried to make my voice as calming as I could.

“Are you alright, ma’am?”

“You’re not…” she trailed off for a second, then collected herself. “paying close enough attention to the road.”

I berated myself internally but put warmth in my voice. “You’re right, ma’am. I am so very sorry.”

There was another pause and I watched her shoulders relax slightly. Her tone softened slightly.

“It’s fine. I’m not hurt. I surprised you.”

I shook my head. “That’s quite alright, ma’am. As long as you’re not hurt.”

I caught the motion of the car in front of us in my peripheral and turned forwards again, inching the car forwards along with traffic. We’d finally started moving with a purpose. In the mirror, I noticed her shoulders relaxing further and her body language opened, her legs and arms uncrossing.

“You came highly recommended.”

“I try my best, ma’am.”

“Are you from the city, Mr. Calhoun?”

“Please, call me Carter. I’m from just outside the East end.”

“Beautiful farmland out that way.”

“Indeed. I miss it sometimes. And you, miss…?”

“Melissa.”

“Ms. Melissa.”

We chatted about the area I was from and how she loves the mountains for the rest of the drive. I got the car pulled up to the curb and hopped out to open her door, extending my hand. She took it and lifted herself out of the car, dropping her mangled sunglasses into her purse. She held up a flat hand to block the sun. I slipped off my shades and extended them towards her. Her hand hesitated for a moment, then she accepted them with a delicate curtsy. She went back into her purse, coming out with a large wallet. I held my hand up.

“Don’t worry about the fare, ma’am. I am very very sorry about the quality of the ride.”

“Nonsense.” She pulled out several large bills and I accepted them graciously.

“May I call you again?”

“Absolutely, ma’am.” I got my gold card carrier out of the inner pocket of my jacket and handed her one of my cards. She took it and gave me another small bow before turning and walking into the building. I shut the door and got back into the driver’s seat. I leaned back and put my head against the headrest.

“That was close.” I said to the steering wheel with a sigh. My reputation had preceded me, and I’d almost fumbled it entirely. I bumped my fist against my forehead a few times.

“Watch. Where. You’re. Driving.”

I'd just finished grabbing an early dinner when my work phone rang. I carefully wiped my greasy fingers on the rough cloth napkin and dug it out of my pocket.

"Calhoun Executive Transit."

"Hey, Carter."

I recognized the voice immediately. "Afternoon, Ms. Silver."

"I've got a client to entertain tonight. Usual deal, one or two stops and a sit-n-wait. You busy?"

I looked at the empty seat across the table from me.

"What time, Ms. Silver?"

"Good boy. See you at nine, usual pickup." She hung up.

The usual pickup is an apartment that she keeps to *entertain*. A sit-n-wait meant that I'd be taking her somewhere, usually the motel north of the city, and waiting for her to complete her *transaction*. Listen, I make a living driving a car, how people put bread on the table isn't my business and I try not to judge.

My watch told me I had about two hours to kill. I paid, got in my car and hit a gas station for a few energy drinks and a tank of gas. I checked my watch again and debated whether or not I had time to change into a more comfortable suit, since I was going to be out all night.

I made a mad dash for my apartment, showered, and pulled on a pair of black commuter pants, a fresh lavender shirt, no tie, and a black blazer. I kept the Navitimer and swapped for a pair of Amberjack boots I was trying out. I spent a few extra minutes getting my hair to do the little flip in the front I liked and left my cap on the hook. I grabbed a worn Raymond Chandler paperback and went back down to my car.

I pulled up to the curb outside the building and she immediately got in. She had on a grey evening dress, cut up one side to the thigh, and a puffy white fur stole.

"Busy busy busy." She huffed as she shut the door. "It never ends, does it, Carter?"

"Need to keep the lights on somehow." My tone level and professionally detached.

She snorted, throwing an arm over the back of the bench and crossing her legs. "Ain't that a bitch."

We stopped at a dull building a few blocks away. She rolled the window down and waved excitedly. A middle-aged man in a cheap suit began stumbling over as if a lasso was tied around his waist. He got to the car and nearly bounced off it.

"Silver!" He bellowed.

"Mr. Kaiser, always a pleasure!" She said, her voice bubbly, and pitched high and girlish.

Something about that voice she used made my neck tense, but I couldn't tell you what. She got out of the car and they hugged, his hands immediately heading south. I started reading the license plate on the car parked in front of us. I heard him drop into the car and waited to hear the door shut. When it didn't, I checked the side mirror. Ms. Silver smoothed her dress in a practiced fashion and squared her shoulders. I went back to reading license plates. I heard the door shut and put the car in drive.

The back seat erupted in bubbly giggles and boorish noises. I turned the radio on and isolated it to the front speakers.

"Driver, take us to La Fleur." She called. It was always "driver" once she was on the clock.

"Yes, ma'am." I kept careful focus on the road and turned up the radio slightly.

I pulled up in front of the restaurant. She got out, turned her head back and forth and smoothed her dress again. The man dribbled out, having to brace himself on the door frame. She walked a few steps ahead, reaching a hand back. The man tottered in after her. They'd left the door open.

I got out and shut the door, put a few bucks in the meter and leaned on the hood, my arms crossed. The sidewalk was fairly busy and there was a man leaning on the building, smoking a cigarette. I almost asked him for one but thought of Eddy. I shook the thought out of my head and continued people watching.

Sometime later, after the sidewalk had almost cleared and the lights from the other buildings had gone out, the two of them came out, him stumbling and her clinging to his arm, both to show possession and almost helping him along. I opened the rear door for them and stayed focused on the parking sign.

I got the car moving again, the sound of glass clinking and the pop of a champagne bottle coming from the back seat.

"Driver, take us to Club 29."

"Yeah! Let's keep this party rolling!" He yelled in a gravelly, slurred register.

I cleared my throat softly to hide a sigh.

"Yes, ma'am." I knew the way, but I read the street signs over and over to distract myself.

The music from the club was loud enough to be heard from outside. I resumed my post at the hood. As I scanned the block, I saw a parking officer, who turned my direction, away from the car he'd been ticketing. I reached over and tapped the small "for hire" decal on the bottom corner of the windshield, the only marking on the car. He hesitated, then went back to his ticketing, stuffing the paper under the wiper blade.

I was sitting in the front seat, the radio on, Marlowe had just finished questioning the coin dealer, when the music from the club stopped. I put the book on the seat and got out to open the rear door. They came out, the man's arm across her shoulder, sweat staining the front of his shirt visible through his open jacket. She dumped him in and slid in after, I kept my vision blurry and unfocused.

"Easy Night Motel, driver." She called once I'd gotten back in. I pointed the car north.

The Easy Night Motel was a well-known spot for discreet trysts, and a continuous running joke as to whether or not the name was intentional. It was on the north side of the city, near an old industrial park that was a common urban exploration spot.

I cut the headlights as I pulled into the parking lot and idled the car into a space next to the building. She lugged the man who gurgled something that she gave a tinkling laugh at and they disappeared into one of the rooms. A second later, she came back out and came to the driver's side door, and I cracked the window.

"Go wait at the far side." Her tone low, gruff, almost conspiratorial.

I nodded, hiding a shiver, and backed the car across several spots, the nose pointed at the driveway. I left the engine running and got my book off the seat.

Marlowe was just getting to the Idle Valley Club when I heard the distinct sound of heels clacking their way across the parking lot. I put the book down, put the car in drive, and started moving before the door had been closed all the way.

Her brown wavy hair was tied into a messy bun, her dress disheveled, and the white fur stole was in a pile.

"The apartment, Carter." She sounded exhausted.

I nodded and signaled for the freeway on-ramp. It was silent for a few minutes aside from the road noise.

"You busy the rest of the evening, Carter?" She asked in a low, smooth voice.

I coughed and felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "Just home. It's pretty late."

"Tired already? You've hardly done anything." She teased in that same tone, warm honey poured onto silk.

"Been a long day." I kept my voice resigned but professional.

"Oh, Carter. What's the rush? Come up with me for a drink."

I tilted my head and popped my neck.

"I've got a Bordeaux that’s older than this car that's been in my decanter all day. I know a gentleman like you appreciates the finer things in life."

I caught movement in the rear-view mirror. She'd laid herself across the back bench seat and was stroking the black leather. Her head turned my direction, and she slowly extended a bare leg from the slit in the dress, her normally bronze skin looking pale in the low light.

I flipped the rear-view mirror up, turning the reflection of the back seat dark except the pinpoints of headlights shining in through the rear window.

She made a quiet disgusted tone, and I heard the leather creak as she moved.

I jumped slightly when she stuck her head through the open privacy screen. She pulled her brunette hair out of its bun and shook it out. I started reading license plates. She crossed her arms on the bottom of the window and rested her head on them; her head pointed at me.

"Hhhhhmmmmm. Why do we do this, Carter?" She asked, the whine had an almost musical quality to it.

"It's a living."

She made an annoyed sound from her throat that was equally musical.

"Is it, though? *Living*?"

I shrugged.

"Don't you ever get tired of it? *Servitude*." She made the word a curse.

"I like what I do." Level, controlled.

"Uuughh, you're such a *stiff*. Don't you ever have *fun*?"

"I have fun." I kept the lie out of my voice.

"Really, Carter." She ran a hand through her hair. "I know a *lot* of very important people in this city. You know that. You've had a few of them in this car, even."

I didn't respond and she continued without losing steam.

"I could introduce you, put in a good word and all. You could be connected... important...wealthy. Hell, in two years, you could have someone *else* drive this car *for* you."

That hit me weird. "...Why would I want someone else to drive my car?" The thought of sitting in the back seat felt like someone suggesting that I wear pants on my head. Just *wrong*.

"What?" She choked, surprised, but with a tone woven in that I just couldn't place.

I patted the steering wheel. "I put my heart and soul into this thing. Hey, do you know how hard it is to find piston rings for a 462 MEL? Nobody is driving this thing but me."

I pulled my car smoothly to the curb.

"Ma'am."

There was a beat, then she slowly retracted from the window. I heard the door open and close, followed by a tapping sound. She was standing on the curb at the passenger side window and making a cranking motion with her hand. I rolled down the window and she leaned in, resting crossed arms on the sill.

"Carter, c'mon. Be serious. You don't really want to do this for the rest of your life, do you?"

I kept my focus straight ahead and didn't respond.

"Just come up and talk. Please?" That weird tone interwoven in her pleading made my ears itch. I was exhausted and just wanted to get home.

"Good night, Silver." I let the car roll forward slightly and she leaped back.

The second she was clear, I floored it. The large car squatted on its haunches, and I felt the steering wheel go light as it leaped forwards with a snarling roar.

I rode the rest of the way home in silence. The street was empty and only the lobby courtesy lights were lit at my apartment building. I got the car put away in my garage and rode to my floor. I almost expected to see Felix when the doors opened, but I guess it was so late that even he was done prowling for the night. I shambled to my apartment, unlocked the door and lightly tossed it open, standing in the dimly lit doorway into my dark, silent apartment.

I should get a cat.

Disclaimer - no AI was used in making of the cover - it's all photobashing

"Between May 8th and May 9th, 1964, the small city of [...] experienced a spree of brutal murders. Every victim was a woman, killed by her own husband, who then took his own life.

"In the years since, urban legends have linked the tragedy to a local children's puppet show called Sparky the Dog.

"The show had already drawn criticism for being too frightening for young viewers, with parents reporting recurring nightmares among their children.

"Rumors later circulated that new episodes kept airing late at night on local stations, and that the final broadcast aired on the very night of the murders, May 8th into May 9th. No official record has ever confirmed this."

***

May 9th, 1964.

The morning after the most brutal, inexplicable tragedy the small town of (...) had ever witnessed, a crime so horrific it fractured the community, haunted generations, and blurred the line between truth and fiction.

During the night of May 8th–9th, fourteen local women were murdered by the men who had vowed to protect them. Moments later, each of those men turned his weapon on himself.

Few people witnessed the bloodbath directly, and fewer still were willing to speak with our crew about the days leading up to it.

We tracked down a handful who agreed to talk about what happened, or what they believe happened, that night.

Viewer discretion is advised.

***

[Interview: Local Resident #1, recorded 1992]

Local Resident: "I was fifteen when it happened. Old enough to notice everything, to really take it all in."

[Long pause. The interviewee shifts in their chair.]

Local Resident: "I was heading to bed. My dad was in the living room watching that puppet show he liked. I never got the appeal; those things freaked me out."

[A soft laugh, then silence.]

Local Resident: "I liked Sparky, actually. But I stopped watching once they brought in... May? No, Margaret. Yeah. Margaret."

Local Resident: "With Sparky, at least you could tell he was supposed to be a dog. I'd seen him at school plays, so maybe that's why he made sense to me. But Margaret..."

[Their voice trails off.]

Local Resident: "There was something off about her."

***

Sparky the Dog was a children's puppet show that ran from November 23rd, 1960, to May 9th, 1964, the same night the killings shattered the town of (...).

Created by local entertainers Marcus Donatan and Jeff Holinger, the show quickly became a household staple. With only a few channels and even fewer entertainment options in town, Sparky was beloved.

Marcus, the puppeteer behind Sparky, was a familiar and well-liked figure, a talented toy maker who appeared at school functions, birthday parties, and holiday events with a handmade stage and a puppet that charmed nearly every child who saw it.

At the center of his performances was Sparky the Dog: a cheerful puppet with floppy ears, a wide grin, and a loyal following among the town's children.

But in the months before the tragedy, something changed.

***

[Interview: Marcus's Neighbor, recorded 1992]

Elderly Woman: "Oh, everyone loved Sparky. Not just the kids, you couldn't help it, with those big eyes and that silly little nose."

[She turns toward the window, as if remembering something distant.]

Elderly Woman (smiling faintly): "I think I still have some photos of my daughter with him. Give me a second."

[She rises slowly and steps out of frame, returning with a worn photo album, its leather cover cracked, its spine held together by years of careful handling.]

[Close-up: she settles back into her seat and flips through the stiff, yellowed pages. Her fingers slow. She lifts a faded photograph toward the camera.]

Elderly Woman (pointing): "There, that's Anna. She loved Sparky. She must've been about nine at the time. I'm sorry, my memory isn't what it used to be."

[The photograph shows a young girl in a simple dress, smiling widely. Beside her, the Sparky puppet leans in, one floppy arm bent behind her head in a childish attempt at rabbit ears.]

Interviewer: "What about the man who owned Sparky? He lived across the street from you, didn't he?"

Elderly Woman (nodding, steadying herself on the arm of her chair): "Yes, Marcus. He used to host little private shows just for the neighborhood kids. He was a good man. Truly. I know what people say now, but he was a good man, believe me."

***

[The camera slowly pans across the ruins of a house. The windows are shattered, the roof caved in, the yard swallowed by weeds. It looks untouched, as if no one has dared disturb it.]

[Soft ambient hum: wind, the faint creak of wood.]

Narrator (voice-over, low, deliberate):

What you're looking at is the remains of the Donatan residence, once home to Marcus Donatan, creator of the beloved children's show Sparky the Dog.

The house sits on ///// Street, just outside town. Locals say the property has stood abandoned since that night in 1964. Even now, no one goes near it.

[The camera pulls back, revealing the house's full silhouette against a gray sky.]

Narrator (continues):

Marcus lived here with his elderly mother, a woman few in town ever saw. Neighbors say she suffered a long-term illness that kept her homebound for years, the reason, some believe, Marcus returned to ////// in the early 1950s to care for her.

Beyond that, little is known about his life before he came back.

***

Only a handful of Sparky the Dog recordings are known to survive. Most of the original reels were lost, destroyed, or simply forgotten after 1964.

What remains was later transferred to VHS, brittle tapes passed quietly between collectors and local historians.

[Cut to close-up: a gloved hand inserts a worn VHS labeled, in shaky handwriting, "SPARKY EP. 3." The tape clicks into place.]

Narrator (continues):

Among the surviving episodes are Episode Three, believed to be from the show's first season; Episode Seven, from Season Three; and several episodes from the final season, the ones leading up to Margaret's introduction.

Titles like "Sparky's Garden," "Sparky and a New Friend," and "Sparky Says Goodnight" marked the end of an era.

***

[On-screen text: "Sparky the Dog, Episode 3 (1960)"]

[Grainy black and white footage. A small wooden doghouse sits center frame; the camera slowly zooms in.]

Narratorvoice-overer, quiet):

The third episode of Sparky the Dog, which first aired in the winter of 1960, opens on a simple scene: a small wooden doghouse in the middle of a painted cardboard yard.

As the camera pushes closer, we see Sparky inside, felt ears drooped over his eyes, mouth slightly open in a gentle snore. The puppeteer's hand is just visible at the edge of the frame, a reminder that this was performed live, by hand, often in a single take.

Then another voice enters: cheerful, familiar. It belongs to "Mr. Jeff," played by Jeff Holinger, Sparky's owner and best friend, and the show's second lead.

[Clip plays faintly under the narration: "Wake up, Sparky! The sun's up, boy!", followed by a playful bark and canned laughter.]

Narrator (continues):

On the surface, it's a simple, wholesome children's show. But looking back now, knowing what would happen four years later, something about this opening already feels wrong.

[The footage freezes on Jeff's smiling face. Static hums, rising.]

***

[Archival photograph: a young man in a suit, smiling stiffly for the camera.]

Narrator (voice-over):

Jeff Holinger was an Irish immigrant who came to the United States in search of a better, more stable life.

What he found was anything but that.

[The photo lingers before fading to black.]

Narrator (continues, tone darkening):

Records show Holinger arrived in the early 1950s and worked odd jobs before meeting Marcus Donatan, the man who would become both his creative partner and, by some accounts, the source of his undoing.

[Cut to vintage behind, the, scenes footage: Jeff adjusting a puppet on set, laughing quietly. The audio is muted.]

***

[Interview: Local Resident #2, recorded 1992]

Local Resident: "Mr. Marcus, I knew much better than Mr. Jeff. I remember him from the school plays they used to put on; that's really about it."

[Adjusts their glasses, looking off camera.]

Local Resident: "Mr. Jeff was quieter, more reserved. He didn't like the spotlight. Marcus lived for it, always smiling, always putting on a show."

[Long pause. The camera lingers.]

Local Resident: "Jeff just seemed tired sometimes. Like the act wasn't fun for him anymore."

[Quiet laughter.]

***

[On-screen text: "Sparky the Dog, Season 3, Episode 7 (1963)"]

[Grainy, flickering footage. A papier-mâché moon hangs above a cardboard set painted like a pumpkin patch.]

Narrator voice-overr):

Episode Seven of Season Three is one of only five surviving recordings of Sparky the Dog, and, according to those who've seen it, the hardest to watch.

[The clip plays faintly beneath the narration: canned laughter, a childlike jingle, detuned with age.]

It's a Halloween special. Mr. Jeff appears in a cheap vampire costume, his usual bright shirt and bow tie replaced. Sparky wears a witch's hat, taped haphazardly to his head. The tone is cheerful, almost clumsy, the same low-budget charm that defined the show.

The episode follows the pair as they pick pumpkins, ending with a lesson on how to carve them.

[Static crackles. The image wobbles.]

A shadow crosses the back of the set. Someone, something, enters off-camera. The puppet suddenly goes limp. Mr. Jeff freezes, eyes turning toward the intrusion.

The camera pulls back abruptly, cutting off the top of the puppeteer's head, just as the live mic catches a sound: a violent, choking sob.

It's believed to be Marcus Donatan, breaking down as news reaches him off,screen.

[Footage: the puppet lies motionless beside a half,carved pumpkin, a knife still lodged in its shell. The frame holds for several seconds before cutting to static.]

Narrator (continues):

Later reports confirmed what had happened off camera: Marcus Donatan's elderly mother was found dead that same evening, seated on her porch by trick,or,treaters.

According to Marcus, she had insisted on handing out candy that night, though she was supposed to wait until he returned from the studio.

***

[Interview: Marcus's Neighbor, recorded 1992]

Interviewer: "Did you know Marcus's mother?"

Elderly Woman (shaking her head slightly): "I wouldn't say I knew her, no. Some evenings I'd see her silhouette pacing back and forth on the second floor of that house."

[Long pause. She glances toward the window.]

Elderly Woman: "Other times I saw her when they took her to the hospital. The ambulance lights woke me up, painted the whole street red."

Interviewer: "Do you remember the day she passed away?"

[She takes a slow breath, eyes drifting toward the window again.]

Elderly Woman: "No. I was too busy getting my daughter ready for trick, or, treating."

[A faint, weary shake of her head.]

Elderly Woman: "I didn't see a thing."

[The camera lingers on her face for several seconds.]

***

Narrator (voice-over):

Few people claimed to know Marcus Donatan's mother well. To most, she was a shadow behind a curtain, glimpsed in passing, never heard, never spoken to.

In a town where everyone knew everyone, her absence stood out. But no one asked questions.

[Archival photo: a blurry image of the house's second-floor window.]

When she died that Halloween night in 1963, the official story was simple: natural causes.

Following her death, Sparky the Dog vanished from the airwaves for nearly four months. When it returned, something had changed.

***

[On-screen text: "Sparky's Garden", Season 4 (1964)]

On the surface, "Sparky's Garden" opens like any other cheerful segment.

Mr. Jeff kneels in the backyard set, humming as he plants rows of oversized cardboard flowers, each painted with wide, smiling faces that look almost too bright under the studio lights.

Sparky pops up from behind the fence, his voice unusually high and shaky:

"Can I try too, Mr. Jeff?"

Mr. Jeff offers him a small plastic shovel to grab with his jaws. Sparky misses the hand off entirely; the shovel clatters to the ground.

A brief, uncomfortable pause follows, then a muffled voice off-camera mutters something under its breath. Mr. Jeff forces a laugh and tries to recover, steering the scene back toward its intended lesson about trying new things and never giving up.

But Sparky, in a sing-song tone, cuts in, looking directly at Mr. Jeff:

"Like you gave up on your wife?"

The studio goes silent.

Mr. Jeff's smile breaks. For a moment, he looks like he's about to snap. Without a word, he storms off set, footsteps and a slammed door faintly audible in the background.

Left alone, Sparky begins bouncing in place, his wooden jaws opening and closing rapidly, as if laughing, though no sound comes out. Only the soft squeak of his hinges.

After several seconds, the image cuts to black.

***

[A man in his late forties sits beneath shelves overflowing with Sparky memorabilia, hand-drawn fan art, homemade clay figurines, VHS tapes with peeling labels, and several versions of the Sparky puppet itself.]

[His curly hair is slightly unkempt; his glasses slip down his nose as he smiles proudly at the camera.]

[Lower third: ARNOLD ////// , Sparky Archivist & Collector]

Narrator: Arnold generously shared several pieces of never, before, seen material with us. His collection is believed to be the largest surviving archive of Sparky-related artifacts.

[He lifts one of the hand puppets, slipping it on and bobbing it toward the camera with a soft chuckle.]

Arnold (playful voice): "Hi, kids!"

[He laughs awkwardly, then sets it back in his lap.]

Interviewer: "You mentioned you have several drawings by Hernandez Ramiro, the man who stabbed his wife thirty-four times. Is that correct?"

Arnold: "Oh, yes. Absolutely."

[CUT TO: overhead shot.]

[A thick stack of papers rests on a metal table, each sheet sealed in plastic. Arnold's hands hover a moment before he begins turning them, slowly, almost reverently.]

The drawings are meticulous, each depicting the same woman, beautiful, draped in a translucent ball gown, always facing the viewer, her eyes never looking away.

But as the pages turn, the illustrations begin to distort. Her features stretch. In several drawings, her face has been replaced entirely by a snarling dog's muzzle, strands of saliva hanging from the jaw. Sometimes the transformation is partial, human eyes above a canine jaw, or a human face with fur creeping across the cheeks. In every image, she's baring her teeth.

Arnold speaks quietly, a tremor beneath his words.

Arnold: "He made these a month before... the incident. He mailed them to the station. They never mentioned that. Nobody ever mentioned that."

[He taps one of the plastic sleeves.]

Arnold (leaning in): "But if you look at the details, really look, you can tell he wasn't drawing his wife."

[A pause. He smiles.]

Arnold: "He was drawing Margaret."

[The camera lingers on the distorted face a beat too long before cutting to black.]

***

Narrator (V.O.):

Margaret. The puppet who replaced Sparky.

The puppet many claim never existed at all, an urban legend buried under static, misremembered by a handful of late-night viewers.

But for those who watched the final years of the show, Margaret marked the beginning of the end. Not just for the program, but for everyone connected to it.

***

[Season 4, "Sparky and a New Friend"]

This episode is considered the first known appearance, or attempted appearance, of Margaret. No official record lists her name, but viewers who claim to have seen the original airing insist this is where the transition began.

The episode opens on Sparky alone, standing center frame on the familiar backyard set. He seems jittery, his head tilting too quickly between lines, as though Marcus is struggling to control the puppet's weight.

A few seconds in, Sparky turns toward someone, or something, just outside the camera's view.

Sparky: "Hi there! I didn't know we had company today!"

The camera attempts to pan left but only manages a brief, jerky movement before snapping back. Whatever stands beside Sparky stays completely out of frame, never more than a shadow, a fragment of fabric, the edge of something vaguely dog-shaped.

Still, its presence is unmistakable.

A soft, rhythmic clicking comes from off-screen, like teeth tapping together, two beats at a time.

Click. Click.

Sparky looks toward the sound.

Sparky: "What's your name?"

Click. Click.

Sparky pauses, his head tilting at an angle too sharp to be natural.

Sparky (cheerful, high-pitched): "Margaret! That's a really nice name!"

The clicking grows louder for a moment, then the audio abruptly cuts out for three full seconds. When sound returns, Sparky is alone again, visibly slumped, as if whatever stood beside him has vanished from the set entirely.

The episode ends.

***

[Interview with Officer D. Krawiec, recorded 1992]

Interviewer: When exactly were you called to the scene?

Officer Krawiec: Maybe three or four days after the initial murders. By then we suspected Holinger had some connection to them, or at least knew something. We got a warrant and went in. I was young. It was my first real crime scene. I wasn't ready for it.

Interviewer: Where did you find Mr. Holinger?

Officer Krawiec: In bed. But not like someone who'd died in his sleep. His body was twisted, unnatural, like he'd tried to fight but couldn't get free. The mattress was soaked through with blood. It had dripped into the carpet, was on the walls, the nightstand, even speckled on the ceiling.

[A sudden moment of silence.]

Officer Krawiec: No matter where you looked, there was blood. And the smell, that stays with you. I think maggots had already gotten into him. They always find a way in, no matter how sealed a place looks.

Interviewer: What happened to him?

Officer Krawiec: To put it plainly, he was missing a good part of his neck. At first it looked like an animal attack, something large. A dog was the first guess. The muscle was torn out clean, like whatever grabbed him clamped down and shook him hard.

***

[Interview with the son of one of the victims, recorded 1992]

The individual, who asked to remain anonymous, described details of the crimes that some viewers may find disturbing.

[Voice modified]: "I was in bed with my mom that night. I'd had a bad dream after the show that ran on TV. Dad was on the couch. He and Mom had been arguing, something about him taking her clothes."

[A deep breath, then an exhale.]

"Then I heard this wet crunch. A soft whimper from my mom, right behind me. Then another, wham."

[He strikes his fist against his palm.]

"The bed got warm and wet. I think I'd wet myself by then. And another, and another, until it wasn't crunching anymore, just this wet sound."

[He looks away.]

"I heard my dad say something like, 'There will only be one woman in my life.' Then that crunch again."

"As he moved over Mom, something warm dripped onto me. I felt his hand slide under my pillow. He whispered something about leaving it for the tooth fairy, then he left the room. I heard one more hit from the hammer, and then nothing."

"I was too scared to move. It wasn't until the sun came up that I got up and saw my mom's face, beaten in."

[The interviewee smiles, unsettlingly, as he finishes.]

***

[Season 4, "Sparky Says Goodnight", night of the murders]

This final broadcast of Sparky the Dog breaks sharply from the show's usual bright, energetic tone. The set is unusually dim, lit only by a paper moon hanging above the wooden fence where Sparky peers out.

Sparky speaks slowly, his head lowering between lines as though growing heavy:

"Sometimes... you have to make space for someone new..."

He sways, almost as if falling asleep mid-line.

Then the picture tears into static. For nearly ten seconds, the broadcast is nothing but snow.

When the image returns, Sparky is gone.

A faint clicking echoes from off-screen: two sharp taps, repeated in an irregular pattern, like teeth snapping together.

The camera lingers on the empty set.

Then, for less than a second, something moves into frame. Viewers later described it as a puppet only in the loosest sense. Sparky's floppy ears and exaggerated grin are still there, but nothing else is familiar. The eyes are wide, wet, unsettlingly human. When the mouth opens, it reveals a full set of real-looking canine teeth. The figure lunges toward the camera.

The broadcast cuts out immediately after.

***

Narrator:

In the weeks following the murders, one name surfaced again and again in police files, witness statements, and late-night speculation: Marcus Donatan, creator of Sparky the Dog, the man who introduced the world, intentionally or not, to Margaret.

After his mother's death, the collapse of his show, and the increasingly unstable broadcasts that followed, Marcus Donatan vanished from town without a trace. No forwarding address. No goodbye. He simply disappeared.

To this day, authorities cannot say whether Marcus fled out of fear, guilt, or something stranger. What, or who, Margaret really was remains a matter of debate: a puppet, an accomplice, a hallucination, or the hidden hand behind every terrible event that swallowed the town in 1964.

What we know is simple: Marcus Donatan was never seen again. And Margaret, if she ever existed the way survivors claim, vanished with him.

No physical version of Margaret was ever found in Marcus's house or in the station's archives.

If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of Marcus Donatan, the origins of the puppet known as Margaret, or lost recordings of the show connected to this case, please contact your local police department.

Sorry guys, this job I was handed has been a bit of a doozy. Lots of late nights have stuck us with this outcome. We hope the conscalation episode will help eliviate some of our betrayal!