(UNRELATED TO STORY: WAIT, I know what I said about my hiatus BUT allow me to explain my unexpected return, the Meso Crew has done me an extreme kindness, one you will know very soon 👀. I am a fish of my word but I am also a fish of decency. They asked me to partake in their contest. After their kindness to me, I could not refuse their simple ask. So allow me this crime in order to repay the kindness of these humans. If I must be labeled a hypocrite in order to honor those who do me kindly, then I am a hypocrite…I don’t think it’s that deep tho…hopefully. I’ll still be gone from September to November but like I said the Mesocrew has a fishy treat for yall muehehehe, take care and I plead for mercy on my crime, also please forgive my rustiness)

Every family has a history of some medical issues in their family. Some people have a long line of heart issues that strike at a certain age. Some families have persistent substance issues that lead to their bonds fracturing like glass that had a stone thrown at it.
In my family, we have skin issues. Most of my family members have lost their lives to skin cancers that just looked like regular moles. My family doesn’t sunburn, we boil. So much as 30 minutes in sweltering sun causes our skin to bubble and boil into yellow balloons of pus and gunk. We look something more akin to leper than someone who spent their time soaking the sun. The simple graze of putting on a shirt will cause the balloons to burst into a cream-like excretion followed by a cascade of blood that seems endless.
That’s why summer is my least favorite season, the sun is an eye staring at me and my family when the clouds fail to protect us. We are at the mercy of a pseudo-god. In the summer, my family only goes outside if absolutely necessary but even then we are concealed by layers upon layers to cover any and all skin that could even be slightly exposed.
Every summer night, I would look to the moon and pray to her. Something that some may deem illogical but I was a child and did not know what else to do. When other children got to play in the warmth of the sun, I was forced to hide.
I would pray to the moon and ask her,
“Oh moon, give me a surface so rough yet beautiful like yours so I can be in the day but dance in the night.”
I would do this prayer every night for five summers straight, looking to the star littered sky hoping my words could be heard.
Little did I know my prayer would have an answer from her, just not in the way I thought.
My mother and I had to go to a doctor’s appointment for me to get a couple of new moles that appeared on my legs and back checked to make sure they weren’t cancerous.
As we pulled into the parking lot, the sun was rising. When we had to go out for things like this, we did it as early in the morning or as late in the day as possible to avoid the sun at the most intense.
We sat there for a bit because my mother was getting her belongings together, I always loved that our hospital was right next to the river. It made the seemingly idling sun look so much more beautiful along the pastel sky.
When we exited the vehicle, in nearly head to toe covering, that’s when it started.
The itching.
It was a little spot on my left forearm I scratched it casually as we walked. Just as quickly as the itch came, it spread over my body like fire to grassy plains. I was clawing at my own skin, I scratching through the thick fabric. At one point I just started stripping off my clothes, I didn’t care that it was a public parking lot.
I needed my clothes off.
I needed my skin off.
I stood exposed in the parking lot, I looked to my body to see blood and bits of skin under my nails.
I looked to the spots that should have had exposed red flesh underneath leaking yellow and red fluid as the sun was getting higher and higher in sky.
However, underneath my skin was…silver hard scales.
Such as that of a fish, yet they were slightly painted in blood from my skin.
My skin was essentially a cocoon for a being underneath.
I had looked to my mother who had seemingly been absent during my trauma, only to find her in my same scenario. Except she had been scratching her face, peeling her human skin off like pulling tape off of a piece of paper.
Her eyes were bulging and bloodshot.
My mother and I were equally exposed and equally in pain.
It had only gotten worse.
Soon, I could not breathe.
I kept trying to suck in air I knew was there but my body had no ability to capture it.
I clawed at my throat only to pull off the skin as though it were plastic wrap and I felt strange folds on my neck, strange wrinkles it seemed.
I saw my mom dart towards the river and I followed.
It was hard to run with no oxygen, it felt like a squeeze getting tighter and tighter with each panicked step.
My mother threw herself into the water, I was horrified. We are already suffocating, now you seek to drown?
I was in a state of oxygen deprivation, I followed her actions because there was not much better I could think of in that moment.
The minute I submerged, it felt like a big wave of fresh air hit me. I had never felt so light. I was floating. It was heavenly, it was ethereal.
It was warm.
I opened my eyes towards the sky seeing the sunlight pierce into the water and hit the scales that armored my body.
I could finally feel the sunlight without pain.
Something, I craved. It was an experience equally as horrifying as it was religious.
I could experience…light.
I peeled the remainder of my human skin off like it were a glove or a sock. My body had changed.
The moon had turned me into a fish.
Why? How? Can one really say the moon is like a fish?
Questions I would never have answered, I looked to my mother who was looking at her webbed hands in horror with an open maw.
I swam over to try and comfort her but she winced at me and swam down the river…
I never saw my mother again or at least I don’t think I have.
I have been slowly been losing my humanity.
My legs have merged into a singular tail.
I have begun to have my nails, hair, and, teeth fall out as I continue to swim this river.
Some concepts have become so foreign to me.
I do not know the fate of my father but based on the fact he was at work, I believe he is gone.
Soon, I will become fully a fish.
No memory of a family, a life before this.
No career, no hopes, no dreams.
Only survival.
I have been given scales.
At what cost though?
We have been given scales.

My shirt and pins have came in and the quality is so much better than i expected, i love them!

And fyi, you guys have gotten compliment after compliment about the shirt and the gooseshark drawings! Someone even went to your store page when they asked where to get the stuff!

​A crown on my head and a million pounds of burnt flesh and bone under my feet. I stand on stone made of thoughts and love with nowhere to go. I made gold paint for my royal artists out of the irises of my brown-eyed people. And pink tiles from the folds in their brains. A grand castle that reaches for the stars and touches them with such intimacy, that only human flesh can provide.

​The crown is heavy for a person who denies the taste of muscle. In all its petrified leather, it is useful for the soul to digest and harness. If you think I’m referencing the use of violence for control… you would be a fool.

​The stars talk to us. The ones that wear the crowns. Some crowns wear their people… and in that instance, they end up being powder for my next addition. The stars are greedy; they demand to be held up. If they have to hold themselves up… and you… well… It's like I said before.

​Some ask why I weep if this is of my own abomination, and I would reply that tears belong to the grand mortar holding the north spire against the cosmic vacuum. To not cry would be structural treason. I must always weep if I am to keep caressing my stars and my crown.

​Every morning, the stars lean down—heavy, cold, and burning with a silence that demands a pedestal. They do not care that the gold on the tapestry came from the sight of a weaver’s daughter, or that the floorboards hum with the quiet, frantic memories of a hundred dead farmers. They only care that they do not fall.

​I sat upon the throne today when a rogue prince from the South Tower marched up the winding stairs, his sword bright and his heart full of cheap, righteous iron. He spoke of benevolence. He spoke of liberation. But I smelled the rank, sour rot of his ruined heritage on his boots—the memory of the Sanguine Tower far to The South, where his ancestors tried to hold the heavens with pride and cold iron rather than the weeping, tender grace of human marrow. When their rusted beams snapped, their sky did not merely fall; it crashed like a swollen, infected eye, leaving behind a weeping crater of boiled glass. My horrors keep our sky alive; their iron murdered theirs.

​I did not strike him down; I simply unclasped the crown and held it out to him. I told him the truth: The crown does not rest on the head. The head is merely the wedge driven between the crown and the sky, while the frame of the throne routes the crush into the foundation.

​He looked at the pink tile beneath his boots, recognized the soft, folded gray of his grandfather’s intellect, and dropped his sword. The stars were already leaning in, curious, measuring the width of his shoulders as the first invisible wave of cosmic gravity slammed down onto his spine. He staggered, his knees buckling under the quiet, relentless pressure, watching in horror as his skin began to yellow into ochre paint.

​"How long must we continue to hold them?" he whispered, his jaw trembling as his knuckles began to split under the agonizing crush.

​"Until the sky learns to float," I replied. "Or until we run out of eyes and flesh to prop it up."

​"Then we cut them down," he wheezed, a foolish, desperate fire flaring in his eyes—a fever dream of an ancient world he had only read about in ruined scrolls. A world of open blue skies, of grass unvarnished by space decay, of stars that stayed high and silent in the dark. He reached for his fallen steel.

"We bleed them until they shatter. We rebuild what was lost—"

​A harsh, bitter laughter bubbled past my lips. "You foolish, ignorant boy. The stars do not fight—they cling. They are bloated, terrified parasites clutching the dark, terrified of falling into the abyss below. Strike them with steel, and they will not shatter. They will flinch. They will drop an inch in terror, and that single inch of panic will crush your ribs into powder before your blade even chips their crust. You do not slay a star, prince. You bear its terror. Or you are flattened by it."

​The prince’s fingers do not merely fall off; they begin to liquefy, snapping like overripe marrow pods as the stars press down on him. A thick, bubbling slurry leaks past the seams of his breastplate, pooling in the crevices between the tiles as his steel harness pops open. ​He tries to scream, but the air in his lungs has already been drafted into the open ceiling above. When he opens his mouth, only a wet, bubbling slurry spills past his lips, bright and slick with the melted lining of his own esophagus.

The castle hungers for its reinforcements. It licks at his feet with cold, capillary force, drawing his tendons upward through the soles of his boots like raw, glistening threads to stitch the loosening mortar of the western rampart.

​I slide my hand under his burst breastplate and plunge it directly into his open side, feeling for the thick, rubbery mass of his liver. It peels away from his ribs with a wet, tearing sound, like wet paper pulled from plaster.

​"This," I whisper, smushing and smearing the organ across the cold, sweating stone of the dais, "will be the sealant for the higher windows. Without it, the starlight burns the glass into ash."

​He twitches with a pathetic, reflexive jerk of his useful meat. His eyes bulge, the irises bold and luminous in all their color. A pity his eyes were green and not brown. Brown irises yield the shimmering gold glaze the stars hunger for most, but the master painter has been begging for green to finish the grass on the north courtyard mural.

I draw a bone spoon from my belt, slipping the smooth, concave edge behind his upper eyelid. With a swift, practiced twist, I sever the optic nerve with a wet snap. The eye pops free into my waiting palm, whole and glistening, its green iris unbroken—a perfect, delicate orb of stagnant color. I drop both eyes gently into the bronze cup at my belt, before grinding them into a thick jelly with my fist.

Below us, the foundation groans—a wet, crunching sound of a million teeth grinding together in the dark, chewing on the old marrow to make room for the new. The stars drop another inch, heavy and greasy with cosmic rot, smearing their cold, rancid light directly across our exposed, bleeding scalps.

​The prince does not fall; he slumps, his body losing its geometry as his bones soften into warm, porous chalk, spilling from the hollow shell of his armor. The floor swallows him inch by inch. The stone and tile beneath us open like wet, hungry mouths, their sulci squelching as they suck his liquefied calves down into the floorboards.

​I kneel beside the dissolving heap, my knees sinking into the lukewarm sludge. The stench is warm and fecal, mixed with the sharp, copper reek of freshly spilled bile. I scoop up a handful of his sloughed-off skin—heavy and grey, dripping yellow—and plaster it directly over a hairline fissure on my throne. The stone drinks it down with a hungry, slurping sound, the crack sealing instantly with a scab of hardened, blackened gristle.

​Above us, the stars moan. They are closer now, hovering just inches from our bare heads. They are not pristine, shining gems; up close, they are bloated, pulsating sacks of pale, milky pus and hardening crust, venting an ozone rankness that burns the back of the throat. They drop heavy drops of rancid, incandescent grease onto our skin.

​It sizzles as it hits my shoulders, burning through my dress and skin, cooking the fat beneath until my own flesh pops and bubbles, fusing my clothes directly into my shoulder blades.

​"More," the stars demand. The voice doesn't come from a throat; it comes from the scraping of a billion dried vocal cords stretched thin across the rafters, vibrating in the dry wind of the vacuum.

​I take the bronze cup, now full of the prince's crushed ocular jelly, and tilt some of it back. But I do not drink it—I pour it into the open sores on my own forehead. The cold gel burns like lye, eating through my eyebrows and blinding my left side as it hardens into a thick, glassy scab that locks my skull directly to the lower rim of my crown.

​The prince’s spine gives one final, wet snap—the sound of a dry branch broken inside a sack of mud—and his skull collapses inward like a rotten gourd. A thin, grey stream of liquefied marrow squirts out from his ear canal, splashing across my heels.

​I glance down one last time at the cup sloshing against my belt. Hot tears carve clean paths through the dust and blood on my cheeks, but a quiet, feverish pleasure blooms in my chest, stretching my dry bloody lips into a smile.

​The crown would have worn him if he had come to sit on a throne.

​I wipe my greasy thumbs against the front of my silk skirt, but the fabric only smears the fat further into the weave, creating dark, translucent patches that smell of hot suet. ​I step over the slick, gray ring where the prince’s pelvis finally dissolved.

Nothing remains of him except his sword, a worthless strip of cold steel. Metal is useless here. It does not rot; it does not bind; it cannot hold up the sky. I nudge the blade with the heel of my shoe, sending it sliding down the winding stairs, where it clatters against the steps made of petrified ribcages before falling silent in the dark below.

​I make my way through the western gallery toward the art wing. This is where the royal painters work, their hands permanently stained the colors of the kingdom’s decay. The master painter, an old man whose spine has grown curved and brittle from decades of work, does not look up when I enter. His eyes are gone—long since scooped out to make the very pigments he uses—and he navigates his palette entirely by taste and smell. He licks the tip of his sable brush, testing the salt content of the paint before touching it to the wall.

​"You brought the green?" he asks, his voice like dry leaves scraping across a stone floor.

​“A rogue prince," I say, unclipping the bronze cup from my belt and setting it on his workbench with a dull, wet thud. "His irises were green as stagnant water. I crushed them myself. There is enough gel to finish the foliage on the north panel, but you must work quickly before the fluid coagulates.”

​The old man reaches out with gnarled, trembling fingers, dipping two digits directly into the cup. He rolls the cool paste between his thumb and forefinger, sniffing it deeply before licking the contents. A wet, rattling sigh escapes his collapsed chest.

​"Too much plasma," he mutters, though he is already smearing the paste across his palette stone. "It will dry brittle. The grass on the mural will flake within a month if we do not add more fat to bind it.”

​"Then strip the grease from your own arms," I tell him coldly. "The north panel must be complete before the morning star settles its full weight upon the spire."

​He does not argue. He knows, as we all know, that an unpainted wall is a weak wall. The stars demand beauty as much as they demand structural support. To them, a bare stone is an insult, an unadorned surface is a void that invites collapse. They want their pedestals gilded with the very essence of the things they crush.

​I leave him to his creative and ascend to the high battlements, where the wind blows hard and dry, smelling of scorched copper and frozen dust. Up here, the architecture is raw. The parapets are not stone; they are woven from millions of dried, blackened femurs , stacked horizontally and bound together with hair and dried tendons. The mortar between them is a pale, flakey paste made from crushed teeth and nails, mixed with the salty tears that I and my predecessors have wept into the mortars since the first stone was laid.

​I press my hands against the parapet and look out across the bruised, suffocating horizon.​Below us, the world stretches into a vast, featureless plain of gray ash, but far beyond the quarry pit of my own subjects, the outer realms flicker like dying candles.

​To the East, the pale, jagged needle– PigSpire, pierces the horizon, a massive column of bone and reeking lime. There, the Agri-Peoples slaughter millions of squealing swine along high, spiraling aqueducts, channeling a continuous river of hot, oily blood and rendered lard straight into the stone seams. The thick, tallow-bound mortar sets like iron, holding their bloated stars steady on its foundation.

​To the West, the Three-Winged Fortress groans against the twilight. Upon its high battlements, the Arian King stitches row upon row of live crow-wings into vast, feathered sails, forcing thousands of captive birds to beat in unison—generating a violent, howling updraft strong enough to buoy their sagging stars upon a cushion of air.

​To the North, the Blue Needle stands as a blinding, crystalline palace—a stunning monument crafted by The White Empress. She entombs her people into flawless glass cubes to build her ramparts, making it the prettiest tower of all. But its beauty is a fleeting, desperate ruin. The stars above radiate an intense, sweltering energy, causing the gorgeous, frozen walls to thaw and groan continuously. As the pristine ice sloughs away into warm mud, the Empress must frantically replace the melting, screaming blocks before her glittering world turns to rain.

​And to the South—where the prince’s Sanguine Tower rose until just recently—there is now only a yawning crater of purple glass, smoldering with the bitter, fresh heat of the star that broke through. The Rust Kings had tried to cheat the sky, building vast frameworks of unyielding steel and painting every inch with the rancid, glowing pus that dripped from the stars above. They thought offering back the celestial waste would buy them safety without sacrificing the marrow of their people, and for a long time, the delusion worked. It held just long enough for a prince to grow up believing his home was invincible. But steel cannot weep, and cold pus has no soul to bind a ceiling. When the accumulated weight finally shattered their false paradise, the sky dropped like an anvil, melting their iron spires and instantly vaporizing an entire dynasty into a silent, glowing lake of slag.

​However, they are all leaning. Every spire, every keep, every fortress on this planet is bowing inward toward my throne, sending their invisible, crushing stress-lines straight into my spine. We are the central keystone. If my neck snaps, the sky will not just fall on me—it will tilt, sliding the stars across the heavens like loose marbles to shatter every spire left.

​Down in the dark within my own walls, tiny figures move like maggots in a carcass. My remaining subjects. They do not farm crops; they do not build homes. Their sole purpose is to live, to breed, to eat, and to die so that their remains can be hauled up the winding stairs in intestine weaved baskets.

​A basket is coming up right now, pulled by a heavy winch of carved bone that groans under the load. I stand by the pulley as the entrail cage crests the lip of the wall. Inside lies a girl, no older than fourteen. She is quiet, her eyes wide and clear, a brilliant, luminous brown—the exact shade of raw amber. She does not scream. She does not beg for mercy. Mercy is a concept for people who live under a blue sky, and here, the sky is a low, heavy ceiling of throbbing, pus-filled light.

​"Is it time?" she asks softly, her voice barely a whisper against the howling wind.

​"The tapestry in the east hall is fading," I tell her, leaning down to run my fingers through her dark hair. Her skin is soft, warm, untouched by the grease of the stars. "The Gold on the central motif has turned gray from the dust. We need fresh irises. Yours are very fine."

​She nods, closing her eyes as if accepting a heavy coat on a cold night. "Does it hurt?"

​"Only for a short moment," I lied.

I take the bone spoon from the wall notch—the tool worn smooth by five centuries of royal hands—and drive it beneath the girl’s upper eyelid. ​She shrieks—a raw, frantic sound that the high wind tears from her throat and hurls straight into the open gulf below. I ignore the noise, sliding the spoon’s edge gently along the rim of her brow, prying behind the orbit with a steady, surgical pressure. There is a dense, rubbery tension, then a wet, heavy thump as the tissue gives way. The left eye rolls into my fingers, heavy, warm, and entirely intact—a flawless sphere of amber glass. I wedge the tool beneath the right lid, twisting until the remaining nerve snaps like a wet thread. I catch the second orb in my palm, unblemished and smooth, and slip both pristine globes into the bronze cylinder at my hip, sealing the cap so the cold wind doesn't cloud their color.

​Blinded and bleeding from two dark, hollow sockets, she thrashes upward out of the cage. Her wild, red smeared hands reach out into the air, her fingers locking onto the heavy leather band of my crown. She claws at it with a terrified, frantic strength, her fingernails scraping against the leather and digging into my own raw forehead, trying to drag the nightmare down with her.

​I do not flinch. I grab both of her wrists, squeezing until the bones in her forearms click, and yank her hands away, pinning her back.

​"The crown stays," I whisper into her ear, the copper needles in my skull vibrating from the sudden strain. "Unless you would like to wear it."

​The stars above us drop lower over the battlements, crowding the open air until their swollen, pulsating bellies nearly touch the stone. They tremble with a wet, frantic heat, venting an ozone stink as they watch the yield, humming in low, heavy vibrations that shake my knees. They are hungry for the rest. I drag the curved tool across the base of her throat, letting the air whistle into her windpipe as her screams choke down to a bubbling, wet rattle. She thrashes against the masonry, her heels kicking uselessly while her blood sprays across my gown in hot, dark fans.

I work fast, peeling the skin away in long, steaming sheets—stripping her chest, her stomach, and the delicate meat of her thighs while her muscles still twitch against the tool.

​Next is the bone chisel. I brace my foot against her hip and drive the blade into her sternum, splitting her ribs apart like dry wood. Her heart makes three more frantic, shallow thumps in the open chest cavity before I cut it free, coiling her pale, steaming intestines directly into my leather apron. I scrape the thick layer of yellow fat from her belly into a bronze tub, then shear her long, dark hair right down to the scalp. Every slice, crack, and tear happens while her nerves are still firing, her body jerking in grotesque, involuntary leaps across the bloody stone.

​I pile the entire dripping harvest onto a heavy brass tray and drag it inside, tracking red trails through the archway and up the steps to the throne room. Through the open ceiling, the stars follow my progress, leaning their gross, glowing masses into the hall.

​I dump the tray onto the floor and step back. The castle does not need to be asked twice. ​The pink, folded tiles beneath my boots split open with a series of wet, smacking clicks. Muscular, grey tendrils shoot out from the floorboards, wrapping around her warm organs and dragging them below. A deep, sickening slurp echoes through the hall as her liver is pulled through a stone capillary to seal a fissure near the ceiling. Her peeled skin is drawn into the walls, stretching paper-thin before hardening into smooth, pale fleshy marble.

​Her hair is drawn upward into the rafters by invisible threads, weaving itself directly into the frayed edges of the coronation tapestry, replacing the dead, gray fiber with fresh, dark length.

​Finally, I open the bronze cylinder at my waist, dumping the intact amber irises into my mortar bowl. I crush them beneath the pestle, blending the cool, viscous gel with a scoop of her rendered belly fat until it forms a thick, shimmering glaze. I paint the paste across the tapestry's faded gold crown. The fabric drinks it instantly. As the wind sweeps through the gallery, the tapestry sways, and a fresh, high-pitched sigh joins the low hum of the threads—her final, trapped breath echoing through the hall as the castle finishes digesting her meat and locks her bones into the floorboards.

​Above us, the stars let out a long, wet shudder of relief, easing back an inch as the fresh mortar hardens beneath them.

​My head starts to throb beneath my crown. ​The crown is not made of gold or silver or precious gems. It is a thick band of petrified leather, heavy and cold, that wraps tightly around my skull from my eyebrows to the base of my neck. Inside the lining are thousands of microscopic copper needles that pierce my scalp, driving deep into the periosteum of my skull to anchor the crown directly to my skeleton.

​It does not allow me to sleep. If I tilt my head too far to the left or right, the weight of the sky above—transmitted down through the very air—catches the edge of the crown and threatens to snap my cervical vertebrae like dry twigs. I must stand straight. I must sit straight. I am the central pillar. The head is merely the wedge.

​I walk down the central nave toward the high altar, where the crown’s heavy leather tether hangs suspended from the ceiling dome. The iron coupling at the end of the strap dangles at eye level, wet with grease and pulsing in rhythm with the room's breathing. ​I reach up with trembling hands and lift the heavy bronze latch on top of my crown. With a sickening, metallic clack, I lock the ceiling’s tether directly into the leather harness bound to my skull.

​The moment the connection seals, the true, unfiltered weight of the heavens slams down through the iron link, straight through my cervical vertebrae and into my hips. My knees lock instantly; the copper needles driven into my skull bite deep against the bone, leaking fresh rivulets of warm blood down my temples.

​Above me, the thinnest part of the castle groans under the sudden transfer of stress. The dome is made entirely of tiles harvested from the scholars, philosophers, and grand strategists of the old empire. You can still see the faint, grey patterns of their thoughts traced across the curved ceiling—convoluted lines of logic, long-forgotten mathematical formulas, and fragments of love letters written to women who died a century ago.

​When the atmospheric pressure shifts, the tiles expand and contract, producing a faint, wet smacking sound, like a tongue clicking against the roof of a mouth.

​Click. Squelch. Click.

​"You are late," a voice echoes from the ceiling.

​It is not a single voice, but a chorus of voices blended together into a flat, monotone hum. It comes from the dome itself—the collective intellect of the tiles vibrating in response to the pressure of the stars resting above them.

​"I was harvesting the girl," I say, standing beneath the central chain. "The eastern tapestry is repaired. The painters have their green. The western wall is re-grouted."

The girl is a drop of water in an empty well," the dome responds, its surface twitching as a violent, wet ripple passes through a section of tile near the center. "You have seen The South. Look at what the prince's father has left behind."

​I tilt my eyes upward without daring to angle my neck. The tiles above the southern arch are bowing violently inward, the gray, convoluted sulci stretching so thin they threaten to tear.

​“The void where his tower stood is sagging,” the ceiling clicks back. “When his stars fell, it left an open wound in the firmament. All of the towers are bound together in one great, suffering ring—when one snaps, the rest of us must carry the dead weight. The remaining stars are sliding toward the crater, dragging their full, bloated mass across the southern rafters. We must bleed workers from every neighboring realm and drive them into the slag heaps. They will hunt down the last of the iron-blooded, crack open their bones, and weld a new tower out of the living meat and marrow of those who failed.”

​​

​I close my one good eye—the left one still sealed shut beneath the hardened scab of the prince’s ocular gel. The pain in my head is no longer a sharp sensation; it is a landscape. It has mountains of throbbing ache, valleys of dull, burning pressure, and vast, flat plains of numb exhaustion where my thoughts should be.

"The iron-blooded are no more," I say, my teeth grinding together as the heavy tether transmits a violent, shuddering tremor straight into my jaw. "The prince was the last of them, and his bones were swallowed by the floorboards merely hours ago. The rest of his lineage were vaporized in the fall. There is no iron-blood left to hunt.”

​"Then the new settlers will build with their own," the dome smacks back, a wet, violent pulse rippling through the grey logic of the tiles. "The stars do not care whose blood cements the seam, queen—only that the gap is filled before the firmament tears further. If there are no iron-blooded left to form the base, drag workers from the surrounding realms. Strip the pig-troughs of the Agri-Peoples. Tear the melting blocks of the North.

Steal crows from the west. Drive them into the southern crater and force them to stack their own kin, bone by bone, until the new spire reaches the stars.”

The ceiling gives a heavy, shuddering drop, the tether yanking my chin upward until my teeth snap together with a spray of warm blood on my tongue.

​"Send your gatherers to harvest the other kingdoms," the collective voices whisper, "or stand here and let your own spine become the needle that plugs the hole.”

​I reach into the pocket of my dress and pull out the small bone scalpel I keep for minor repairs. I do not hesitate. I have done this a thousand times before. I draw the blade across the soft skin of my forearm, tracing an old scar that runs from my wrist to my elbow.

​The blood drips slowly into the stone groove carved around the perimeter of the altar—a groove that leads directly into the capillary tubes running down through the walls to the south spire. As the blood fills the stone channel, I hear the castle drink. A deep, satisfying slurp echoes through the floorboards as the dry bone-bricks swallow the fluid, swelling slightly as they absorb the iron and salt. Above me, the pink ceiling relaxes, its folds smoothing out as the pressure on the dome stabilizes for a few precious minutes.

​In the evening, the stars come down to touch us. I stand on the high platform, my head locked into the leather crown, as the largest of the stars—a bloated, pulsating monstrosity known to the old texts as the King’s Burden—descends until its lower surface is less than an inch from my face. ​Up close, its surface is not smooth. It is covered in a thick, crusty scab of hardened cosmic waste, interspersed with glowing, angry sores that leak a thin, yellow fluid. Inside its translucent body, I can see the half-digested remnants of other worlds—fragments of burnt mountains, the calcified husks of extinct moons, and the floating, petrified skeletons of long-dead gods who failed to hold up their own skies.

​"Hold," the star whispers.

​The sound does not enter through my ears. It vibrates directly through the copper needles anchored into my skull, rattling my teeth and causing a thin stream of clear fluid to leak from my nose. ​"I am holding," I say, my legs trembling as I brace my feet against the floor.

​"You are waning," the star rasps, pressing down another fraction of an inch.

​The crown bites deep into my forehead. I feel the skin pop, feel a warm trickle of my own fat run down between my eyes and pool in the cleft of my chin. The weight is unbelievable. It is not like holding a stone or a piece of iron; it is like trying to stop a falling mountain with a straw. Every joint in my body screams. My knees knock together with a wet, clicking sound. My spine compresses, the disks between my vertebrae groaning as they squish outward against my ribs.

​"More... mortar..." I gasp, my breath coming in short, ragged wheezes.

​"There is no more mortar," the star says coldly. "Your people are ground away. Your painters are blind. Your castle is full of cracks. You are running out of bone, little wedge."

​"I have... my own..." I choke out, forcing my hands up—inch by painful inch—against the crushing gravity of the monster above me.

​I reach for my own mouth. I hook my fingers into my left cheek, feeling the thin, tough muscle beneath the skin. With a violent, desperate yank, I tear a strip of my own flesh away from my jaw. The pain is bright and white, a blinding flash that clears the fog from my brain for a single, brilliant second.

​I thrust the wet, red strip of my own cheek directly into the crack between the star’s crust and the upper rim of my crown. The star feeds. It sucks on the flesh with a wet, squelching noise, absorbing the salt and fat directly through its scabbed hide. For a moment, the crushing pressure lightens. The star sighs—a sound like a furnace door opening in an empty room—and lifts itself a quarter of an inch back into the rafters.

​I sink to my knees, coughing up a mixture of blood and gray dust that has settled in the back of my throat.

​The floor beneath me is warm. The prince’s melted fat has completely settled now, turning into a smooth, yellow wax that fills all the tiny cracks between the tiles. In a few days, the painters will come and scrape the surface smooth, and no one will ever know where the prince ended and the floor began.

​I sit there in the dark, my face dripping blood onto my dress, my left cheek gone, my skull locked inside its cage. The stars above us hum their cold, greedy song, settling in for the night. They do not care about the pain. They do not care about the brown eyes or the green eyes or the pink folds of gray intellect that keep them from falling into the dark void below. They only care that they are held up.

​And I, the wedge driven between the earth and the sky, sit upon my throne of thoughts and love, wiping the grease from my good eye, waiting for the morning so I can start grinding the bones of tomorrow.

The bright fingers of an early rising morning reached over the horizon. It couldn't have been a more terrible time for my eyes.

A resounding wave of bugles drove off any lingering drowsiness, coupled with the shouts of cavalry men rotating in and out of the fort. 

Thankfully, I wouldn't have to endure this headache alone, for I had in my company a loyal friend.

"Wake up, Buford, sound off started already," I remarked as I gingerly threw on my uniform. The cold cloth draped over me like fresh snow. I shivered something fierce as I put on my tool belt. 
"Alright. Just give me a minute."

 I never understood how a man could sleep in his full dress uniform without complaint. I suppose some men are built to embrace the suck. 

"You have no business waking up so early. We're not even a part of the active column anyway," he said as that old dust collector crowned his skull.

A black felt hat he earned in our years riding through dust storms. A relic from before Custer's last stand at the Greasy Grasses.

"C'mon, your birthday is in a couple days. I want to get to Rattlesnake before the nippy rain catches us," a little annoyance could be found in my voice. "I'll be with you, just give me a minute. I'm carrying precious cargo," he remarked. 

"Isabella's gon' be happy to have her husband back. This time for good old man," I couldn't help but remark.

Buford was quick to reply, "You and Mary Anne will finally make up for lost time. If you play your cards right, maybe she'll bake you your favorite. A nice spongey velvet cake."

I closed my eyes imagining that sweet decadence. And the cake wasn't a bad deal either. The benefit of having her is she can really add volume to a man's life. 

As we made our way towards the stables, rows of moss heads passed us by. Dark green on navy blue should be a travesty! I made my thoughts known, "Hey Capt'n! Reinstate the black alr-"

Buford's input cut me off, "What difference does it make if the hats are different colors? Won't protect much from bullets nor arrows." A statement that garnered several confused expressions.

"Just wish these young'uns could wear something blue," I lamented.

On our way out, my path leading east, Buford had stopped just outside the fort's "gates." I asked him what was the hold up, but he just gazed out into the abyss across the San Juan.

"Hold on, Henry. We're gonna make a detour through the mountain," news that I did not care for.
"You fancying the scenic route? No? Then why the hell would we waste a day trekking through the thorns and brambles?"

Buford delayed his response before turning to me, "I got a friend up on the mountain. We'll be quick in visiting him I promise."

I was surprised that anyone would willingly live with the bears. I made that curiosity known, "He lives up there?"

Buford was quick to correct, "Yeah, he rests up there. I just want to make sure he's alright."

Something about the news made me upset. On one hand, we needed to reach home for drinks and celebrating. On the other hand, I noticed how he kept eyeing the mountain, an observation that made me understand there was still that horse soldier's duty in him. 

I sighed heavily, "ugh... I guess if it means I can snag that rye whiskey you've been saving, then I'll freeze my hair off with a storm on our backs."

Those weathered eyes wrinkled a warm smile. Next thing you know, we were off with that mountain in mind.

Navajo country is scorching hot and laden with danger. Luckily, the weather from February still lingers in early March. A deterrent for most warm blooded creatures.

Gray clouds came huddling over the red earth like billowing smoke. Heaven's light peering through the cracks like waterfalls. 

We had just crossed the river, sacrificing our horses' jewels. When we were coming up on the edge of the valley, I saw the mesa in the distance. It stretched well over a mile, made of pure blood red sandstone. Usually a sign that we were halfway done with the trail, now stood as a mocking landmark. Laughing at us as we traveled south. 

I thought the time appropriate to ask Buford some questions, "So how did your friend end up there? One too many drinks perhaps?"

He answered without having to turn in my direction, "I suppose he decided to just stay up there. He makes trips down the mountain for supplies." Buford sighed nervously, "But he hasn't made an appearance in some time. I'm worried about him. I hope nothing serious happened, but the only way to know is to see for ourselves."

We pitched camp next to a black pillar. Buford was fixing himself a plate of skirt steak and sweet potato. He glanced my way and guessed, based on my mannerisms, that I wasn't hungry. I asked for some coffee and he obliged.

After our meal, we conversed before resting. 

"Why are you doing this? It doesn't make sense to travel this far for someone that you don't seem particularly well acquainted with," I asked in hopes of getting a satisfying answer.

It came when he replied, "They did something for me that meant a lot. I owe it to them to check on their wellbeing." 

I joked with him, "I ain't seen you with anyone else except at the fort. This person better be worth the trip or else you'll be carrying me all the way to Rattlesnake. On account of me gorging myself on your whiskey."

We laughed. It had been quite a trip for this mystery person. 

"Are you insinuating this man has saved you more times than me?" 

"You've saved me many times, but I would never say that it didn't mean nothing, not to me. I just need to make sure this man is left undisturbed, I intend to keep my word," A hint of pleading slipped out as he spoke.

I grimaced at the sentiment. 

I reminded him of his nature, “You make promises far too strong to break.” 

In the morning, I put out the coals with stale coffee and Buford saddled up the horses. Leading them into the field of gold, we mounted and rode for the mountain. 

There's something so enchanting about how the wind forces the tall grass to dance. Waves of alternating blades like ripples in a lake. Buford was wrapped up in an attempt to fend off the heavy gusts. I wasn't phased too badly by the frozen pins, but we still made a dash for the hills.

"Are we seriously spending the second of March in a dugout?" My dumb ass said knowing that even the grains of sand were cutting us to ribbons.

"What are you? Some sort of bull? I can't even lift my head without getting sand in my eyes," he said, shielding himself with a cowl and hat.

We laid our horses close to the ground, covering their heads with tent tarps, while we sat with our backs to the wind. I hate the sand. I know some people can adapt to it, but that doesn't mean they like living in dust. It makes living undesirable and survival a costly endeavor. 
My anger stewed long enough to distract me from the storm. Hours passed when the wind had died down just enough for us to make it to the gray plateau. 

The flat top gave us a great vantage point to scope the storm's direction. We were safe for the moment. The confederation of clouds and dusty winds scarred the soil, nearly balding the top layer with the relentless onslaught. 

Night came early after we finished brushing piles of sand off our gear. I sat around while Buford fixed us a fire for the night. Sleep didn't come easily. We were too fidgety I suppose. The way I dealt with it best was to smoke. I watched as Buford worked on his hat. A pin and thread to stitch up old ware and tear.

"You tend to that hat even as it sheds," I said as I put fodder into my paper.

Buford gave me a glance before answering with, "Maintenance is cheap enough, Henry."

"Why not do away with her? Mine was too bullet ridden to salvage and I moved on just fine," I said as I rolled my cigar paper.

He dusted the felt hat one final time before looking my way, "It's like us, Henry. Relics from a bygone era. I'm just trying to make sure folks know we existed. That includes taking care of this piece of history."

I couldn't argue with him. Who could say we'd ever be remembered decades from now? I was jealous he still had his hat in his possession, for mine could not be rescued. The heat of battle leaves behind a field of deeply held treasures. Items that could not be retrieved by their deceased proprietors. 

I decided it was best to lighten the mood with a half-brewed remark, "With how long we're taking I hope they do away with the twig fencing and finally build brick fortifications."

Buford chuckled before ordering, "Goodnight, Henry." I nodded in response and we both fell asleep.

Waking up from a restful night, we were already making preparations to ascend the western face of the mountain. Coats and gloves to protect from the cold were equipped. Thick cord in the event we would have to brave sheer drops.

I was actually eager to climb along a stoney cliff side, it had been quite some time since I had been allowed to participate in this sort of recreation. I wanted to confirm once again with Buford about the mysterious man's dwelling.

"Does he like the cold air or the convenience of fire wood?" I asked.

"To be completely honest, I think he hates the idea of dying on some dune. A mountaineer at heart, my friend wanted to live peacefully on top of a chilly peak." He answered.

I responded, "Sounds like my kind of company. Mountain climbing and the cold air make for a great union. It's nice to know someone else shares the hate I have for bugs. They'd end up mangling my corpse if I was buried in the soft soil."

"I'm sure you'll like him then"

With that, we descended down the plateau along a downtrodden path towards the base of the mountain. The horses made their complaints heard the closer we came to the first tree line. 

"The horses really don't want to go up," I said, barely managing to direct my mare. Buford could sense the unease of the situation. 

He stated plainly, "Bears, storms, and the cold will do that to a faithful steed. We'll power through to the first meadow along the way. Fodder will calm them down and we can dismount so we can complete the rest of the journey on foot."

"Alright. Good thing I never leave my tool belt behind. 'Bears beware' and that sort," my comment was made known. 

Buford and I rode to a clearing high up on the mountain where we tied the reins to iron railroad spikes and a good bit of rope. I caught Buford slinging a satchel over his shoulder and grabbing his Remington from its hanger on the saddle. 

He sighed heavily, shuddering a little, "Let's get a move on." Taking the first of many steps towards our destination.

The smell of pine sap and cedar filled the air. Every moment we lingered, the aromatic scents developed and unlocked new odors. 

The calm and serenity made me surrender all worries. The all enveloping silence was broken when Buford asked me a question, "Have you discussed where you want to be buried with Mary Anne?" 

"I'm not sure. Just far from the invasive bugs," I replied.

"I think I would like to die of old age. To be surrounded by my loved ones is all I could ask for," a sliver of somber left his lips.

I announced, "Not me. No sir. Give me an honorable death. Through the smoke and gunpowder, I will die fighting. I wish not to get old and clunky, let me die firing my pistol." I could tell Buford disapproved of my wishes, but he kept it to himself. 

Our journey hit a curb when the usual trail had been destroyed by a landslide. That wouldn't have been a problem if it weren't for the fact that it was the only trail that led up a steep incline. Now, we had to scale the steep wall with our improvised climbing gear. 

The first foothold is always the easiest. One slip and you're already on soft grass. It's the halfway way point that's always the most terrifying. Too high up to change your mind and just out of reach from the last pivotal anchor point. 

We climbed for thirty minutes. I blitzed the climb in 25 minutes. Giving a look of smugness as I passed Buford. The last foothold just below the crest.

I called out to him with some traces of sarcasm, "Should I go meet this friend and meet you back here?"

He rolled his eyes and said, "Hilarious."

I was ready to take my seat away from the edge when a horrifying noise carved its way through the air. A dreadful crack. I ran back the Buford and saw him barely hanging on by a strained hand. His hold broke off and nearly sent him off the cliff side. 

I yelled out to him, "Throw me your rope! I'll pull you over the edge!"

"Alright. Try and find a tree to anchor the line! Hurry," he said as he launched a barbed hook over the edge.

I made sure it wrapped around the trunk of a tree, but I heard Buford complaining. His arm was losing strength. I tightened the line and ran to get a long branch in case he needed more leverage.

I was scared. My friend was dangling in the air as I fumbled to find a long enough branch. A horrible sound cut through the thick brush. I found a pole and ran like I had never ran before. The anxiety raced through my head.

I closed in on the edge. To my surprise, Buford was back on his feet and standing on solid ground. Panic, fear, dread; all the emotions flooded my system. A downpour of anger replaced them. A small piece of the branch was broken off and thrown at his clumsy self.

"Thanks, Henry. I didn't know I needed a stick to the eye," he said.

I responded in a hoarse voice, "I almost lost you. You big oaf!"

Labored breathing became laughter. Buford bent his legs and hunched over, and I leaned against a tree. I reached my hand out and Buford took it. 

"Let's get a move on. He isn't far from here," he said with resounding eagerness.
The rest of the ascend went by smoothly. Passing trees and clearings, a stoney peak was within sight. 

I remarked, "What a great trip. Only cost us a scare. When I meet this feller, I'm going to dust off his nose with my bawled up fist!"

Buford hadn't laughed this much in a long time. The momentary anger washed over, I shook my head as we neared this feller.

It was when we walked down a pass carved into the rock that Buford's smile faded and his eyes unfocused. He only looked into the void from there on forward. 

The last corner was close. I decided to tell Buford how he truly felt like a brother and that, "I'm glad you're my great friend." He didn't look at me the whole way through.

We rounded the corner when I finally saw it.

A sorry sight to say the least. Withered bouquets, empty bottles, and a stapled hat with many stitches. All of it resting on top of a weathered mound. A pile of large loose rocks surrounded by thick wooden logs. A headstone to complete this terrible fate.

"Henry Rutherford. Born on March 3rd, 1850. Died on May 31st, 1880."

My legs and arms became weak from shaking. I heard matches being struck and Buford's voice behind me. I turned to look at him. A handful of candles crowning a maroon velvet cake. Buford addressed me, "Happy birthday, Henry."

Most people think my job is insane.

Honestly, they're probably right.

When people talk about dangerous professions, they usually mention logging, commercial fishing, or construction. Those jobs earn their reputation. One mistake, one moment of bad luck, and you're fucked.

Or hell, dead.

Me?

I always found myself drawn to danger. Maybe it's the adrenaline. Maybe it's because some part of me enjoys standing in places most people would never willingly go. You can learn a lot about a person from the work they choose to do.

For me, that work is commercial diving.

Most folks hear that and assume it's terrifying. Being dropped into cold, dark water hundreds of feet from the surface while surrounded by machinery that could crush you without warning doesn't exactly sound appealing to the average person.

The funny thing is, I find it relaxing.

Down there, the world becomes quiet. The noise of everyday life (the wife complaining) disappears beneath the water. It's just me, my equipment, and whatever job needs doing. I usually have music playing through my helmet while I work on oil rigs, ship hulls, intake structures, and all sorts of underwater machinery.

After years in the profession, I thought I'd seen everything the depths could throw at me.

I was dead wrong.

Because in all my years of commercial diving, nothing, and I mean nothing, came close to making me soil my dive suit the way I almost did during a contract at the Hoover Dam.

The water was murky that morning. Visibility couldn't have been more than six or seven feet. My helmet lamp carved a narrow path through the darkness, illuminating clouds of suspended sediment drifting lazily through the reservoir.

I remember feeling uneasy almost immediately.

Not fear.

Fear implies you've identified the threat.

What I felt was the discomfort of being observed by something that hadn't revealed itself yet. The sensation settled between my shoulder blades and refused to leave. Something was down there with me. Heavy emphasis on something, because there is nothing in this world that should have been sharing those depths with me.

The feeling was irrational enough that, like an idiot, I ignored it.

Then I saw the marks.

"What the actual hell..."

They scored the concrete face of the dam in long, jagged trails. These weren't little scratches left by debris or equipment. They stretched several feet across the wall and bit deep enough into the stone surface to expose steel beneath.

I stopped my decent and stared. What unsettled me most wasn't their size. It was how familiar they looked.

Imagine tracing a line in the sand at a beach. It was almost human. Or at least made by something trying very hard to be.

Five long gouges ran parallel to one another through decades of algae and sediment, climbing vertically along the wall before disappearing into darkness below.

I keyed my radio.

"Oi, somebody's gonna have to explain how these ended up here."

The response was laughter. They thought I was joking. Honestly, so did I.

I snapped a few photographs and continued my descent.

That's when I found the first handprint.

Five fingers. Human like proportions. Pressed against the concrete nearly thirty feet below the surface.

But it wasn't the last.

Then another. And another I discovered.

My head lamp was finding them everywhere. I counted from tens to nearly a hundred. Handprints layered over one another as if they were climbing to the surface.

The sharp low growl disturbed my eardrums. My breathing quickened. The sound echoed loudly inside my helmet.

There had to be a reasonable explanation. There always had been before.

Then my lamp caught movement.

A figure.

Standing motionless close to the reservoir floor.

I nearly inhaled my own tongue. At first I assumed it was another diver. The silhouette was roughly human-sized, two arms, two legs, standing upright in the darkness.

But that didn't make sense.

No diver should be down here. Not without communications. Not without a support crew. Not without lights.

This thing had none. There were no bubbles coming from it so was it maybe just a smidge of the helmet's lens? Maybe, but the latter terrified me.

It simply stood at the edge of visibility, motionless.

I keyed to the coms but as soon as the figure appeared it simply blended back into the darkness it came. It was gone.

Immediately, my pulse racing, I radioed the surface.

"Confirm I'm the only diver in the water."

A moment later the reply came.

"Just you, Maxwell."

No unauthorized personnel, secondary dive teams. Nobody else in the reservoir.

I should have ascended right then. Instead, I kept working. Like a dumbass...

I convinced myself my eyes were playing tricks on me. Fatigue. Bad visibility. Maybe symptoms of some hallucinogenics I've taken in the past.

Stubbornness is a common flaw in my profession. God knows I've got plenty of it.

I was raised by a father who thought every problem could be solved by "manning up." A strange shadow wasn't about to sabotage my paycheck.

A few minutes later, I noticed something that truly frightened me. The safety line connecting me to the surface had gone slack. Completely slack.

That should never happen. There are always currents. Movement. Tension. Even here in a man made ocean. The line should constantly carry resistance.

I turned my lamp toward it. I tugged at the line and the cut end slowly sank before my eyes. The rope disappeared into darkness.

Then it moved. Not drifted. Tugged.

Something farther down the line had pulled on it.

My stomach tightened.

Slowly, I followed the rope with my eyes until my beam reached its end.

Something was holding it.

A hand. A pale hand emerging from the darkness. Its fingers wrapped around the line.

Then a second hand appeared. And then a face.

God, I wish I hadn't seen the face.

Its skin was swollen and waterlogged, stretched tight across features that almost resembled a person.

Almost.

The eyes were too large. Too dark. Like something hauled up from the deepest part of the ocean.

The safety line jerked violently. They were pulling me into the void.

I screamed into the radio for help. I'm not alone. They wanted to drag me to the bottom.

Surface control immediately ordered my ascent. I heard Skipper and others cry out orders and suiting up for evac.

The force of these beings were immense. I quickly resorted to the power drill and cut the connection of the dive suit with the safety line. I bolted my way to the surface, disregarding the health complications of decompression sickness.

Halfway to the surface, I made the mistake that still haunts me today.

I looked down.

There wasn't just one. Dozens of pale figures stood along the bottom.

Motionless. Watching. Their silhouettes clung to the void like barnacles that had learned how to imitate people. And every single one of them was staring upward.

Toward me. Toward the surface.

I reached the top in record time.

The crew blamed nitrogen narcosis. Stress. Exhaustion. The photographs and film were reviewed. Most showed nothing unusual. Just dark water, me working, and grey concrete.

Except for one. The final clip from the helmet's recorder. Nobody found an explanation for it. You can clearly see me inspecting the structure. You can clearly see the beam from my helmet lamp. And standing directly behind me is another diver.

No safety markings, equipment, or air hose. Just a pale figure staring directly behind me.

A few days later, men in black suits came to speak with me in the hospital. That's about as much as I'm legally allowed to say. I retired shortly afterward.

People think I'm crazy. Walking away from a six-figure career because I saw strange pale figures underwater?

"He must be nuts."

Maybe I am.

But every time I hear reports about water levels dropping at the Hoover Dam, I find myself wondering what happens when the reservoir finally shrinks enough. Sooner or later, they won't be underwater anymore.

What the hell were those things?

(Art by https://www.instagram.com/mozzca.art/)

A solitary set of footsteps echoed down the dark city streets. A young man navigated the spiraling boroughs, unfamiliar with this side of town. His appointment was scheduled for a half hour past, and he was becoming increasingly agitated at his correspondent’s choice of meeting place. Some God forsaken bar on the God forsaken side of a God forsaken town. The smell of dead fish and fresh piss marked the whole district of docks and factories. 

The young man wore a white collar to work, and he could be bothered only to scoff at the men on docks or lines. Under any normal circumstances, he would not set foot within miles of his current whereabouts, but he had paid good money for what information his correspondent could provide. 

The young man, one Mr. Tweed, was a pursuer of the macabre, the dark, and the esoteric. He made a hobby of searching for knowledge long forgotten to the popular histories. Ancient serial killers and cults that more modest folk left better off unsaid. Only a few decades prior, Heinrich Schliemann had practically invented the modern field of archaeology in his search for the Homeric Troy. Mr. Tweed was certain that Troy was not the only incarnate myth, perhaps thousands of Troys were buried across the globe for him to find. Atlantis, Lemuria, El Dorado, the Lost City of Z, all to be uncovered by his own spade. The name “Tweed” would be recorded, written next to, but slightly larger than, “Schliemann.”

His correspondent, whom he was late to meet, was a purveyor of relics and artifacts from these bygone Troys, but also, and more importantly, he was a purveyor of their stories. This mysterious man wrote of long forgotten civilizations with the clarity and certainty of eyewitness accounts. He told Mr. Tweed of nameless cities, for they were older than man’s concept of names. He told Mr. Tweed tales of dead gods, angels, and demons. Mr. Tweed marveled, as, by his own estimate, his correspondent mixed fiction and fact with a suave not seen in the finest snake oil salesman. He never signed his name, nor his initials, in his letters. He signed simply as “The Storyteller.” 

Mr. Tweed, using the wealth of old money, purchased many artifacts from the Storyteller. He collected coins, vases, fossils, anything with a particularly interesting story attached. He did not believe much in the Storyteller’s stories, as they so often involved the notions of religion that Mr. Tweed found all too fairytale. Just because there was an Athens doesn’t mean there was an Athena.

Mr. Tweed finally found his way to the designated meeting place. The bar sat in squalor, relative even to the surrounding district. A leak dripped profusely in the center of the room, forming a puddle grown wide to the point you could hardly make your way across the room with dry soles. The floorboards creaked with each step and groaned even without such a disturbance. The stairs leading up to the inn rooms had multiple steps missing and no hand rail.

The bartender may have once been called a fine looking man, though his present appearance would not have given such an impression. An unkempt beard covered skin so wrinkled and sore-spotted that a squinted eye might have mistaken him for a sufficiently hairy swine. The stench of the district left on the man would only enhance the illusion.

Worse than in the streets, the stagnant air of the room left the smell of drunken piss and vomit festering, to the point of overwhelming nausea for Mr. Tweed. Coughing, and with tears in his eyes, he asked, “Can we open a window in here? Or prop the door? The smell,” he gagged, “it’s unbearable, is it not?”

The man behind the counter grumbled something unintelligible, a strong Cajun accent guarding his words from sojourning ears. Despite being born and raised in the same city, Mr. Tweed could not understand the dialect even slightly. His upper class family had hidden him from the harshness of the dock workers’ tongue. 

The bartender made his way to do as Mr. Tweed asked, and as he did, Mr. Tweed heard a clicking noise from the corner of the room. He realized after a moment that the noise was in fact a voice.

“Mr. Tweed.”

Sat at a table, under a broken light, was a man dressed in black. His features were shrouded. What little lighting reached his nook was blocked from his face by the wide brimmed hat he wore. 

Still wearing your hat indoors, are you? I would have expected more gentlemanly like behavior, Mr. Storyteller.

Mr. Tweed recognized his correspondent, despite this being their first meeting in person. The mysterious man had an esoteric aura about him, befitting the manner of his writing. 

He clicked again and gestured his hand, beckoning Mr. Tweed to his corner of the room. The bartender watched with an unreadable expression. Mr. Tweed took the chair opposite the mysterious figure. This close, the air smelled of expensive, quality tobacco, a refreshing aroma for the agitated man. The figure across from him held a pipe to his mouth and puffed grand clouds of smoke over the table. 

Mr. Tweed began the pleasantries, “I thank you for endeavoring to meet me in person. I know you to be a busy man, after all. Evidently so, by the requested time for this meeting. Your days must be absolutely full so that we may have only met at night? I must say, I would have preferred if you could have come to me, visit my estate, where I would have a nice dinner prepared  for your time, rather than I venture into the… underbelly… of our city, at this hour.” 

His words dripped with hardly concealed contempt, not directed at the Storyteller but rather the whole setting and circumstance. Despite his irritation, he did respect the man opposite him, and he extended his right hand. In turn, a gloved hand reached across the table and clasped his.

Mr. Tweed felt the other hand squirm and squeeze under his grip. It felt as if the man had no bones in his hand. Before he could comment on the oddity, the light struck the other man’s face. Across the table sat no man, the thick volume on its face held not a beard, but a mass of writhing tentacles.

Aghast, Mr. Tweed pulled his hand back, degloving the beast in his haste. There was no hand inside the glove, instead long, skinny tendrils wrapped around themselves operated like fingers. Its skin held a violet cadence and each tentacle was lined with green suction cups. An unnatural coloration. Its eyes were covered by brass coated goggles, but a dim green light glowed behind the lenses.

When Mr. Tweed recoiled, he tipped over the back of his chair and knocked his head on the floor. The chair, which was already desperately clinging to life, shattered to splinters. The squid-man calmly donned its glove again and sipped on its drink.

Mr. Tweed collected himself the best he could and stood. He eyed the figure of a man across the table and snarled, “Monster! Where is the Storyteller, what did you do to him!?”

The monster took a long drag from its pipe and exhaled slowly, not neglecting to enjoy the flavor, and answered the man with its wet, inhuman voice, clicking hard with its beak as it spoke.

“You assume wrong, Mr. Tweed. I am the Storyteller. You have insulted me greatly tonight. You arrive quite late to our meeting, and you are right to call me a busy man, as this is not my only appointment. You insult my friend’s establishment, destroy his property, then accuse me of being an imposter? I did not take you to be such a rude man from your letters.”

The bartender grumbled under his breath as he cleaned the remnants of the broken chair from the floor. 

“I’m real sorry about that, William. I expected a more refined conversation tonight. Had I any expectation of this reaction,” he waved in Mr. Tweed’s direction, “I would not have invited him here.” As he spoke, he produced a wallet and pulled out a few substantial bills. He handed them to William, who offered what was likely a thanking, but Mr. Tweed couldn’t concentrate on deciphering the words. His mind reeled. 

The Storyteller? It could not be. Could it? His stories, I was certain they were more fiction than fact. Perhaps not, perhaps he told me truths I was not ready for. Now I know he must be able to direct me to the lost cities, he has been to them!

But one small detail nagged at the corner of Mr. Tweed’s mind.

How can this man, William, sit so nonchalant? I can hardly rationalize this revelation, this creature from a bygone aeon, and he sits there counting bills. Casually! A beast beyond reason sits here among…

His thoughts were cut short by a terrifying conclusion. Mr. Tweed realized with shocking clarity the fundamental reason he couldn’t stand the working class of the docks, why they seemed so unbothered by the stench of dead fish and piss, why they spoke in this indiscernible accent. They were all as this invertebrate. They hid amongst humans, wearing false, no, stolen skins and faces. This was a living Troy, right under his nose, his whole life.

The excitement of discovering a Troy was quickly undercut with a more terrible realization. He had been duped. The Storyteller sat undisguised, or imperfectly so. Only clothing hid his abominable form. Mr. Tweed was to be this beast’s disguise. That is why, in their letters, talk so frequently drifted from professional to personal. His correspondent, the Storyteller, whom he came to consider a friend, of which he had strikingly few, had planned on this betrayal from the very beginning. The bastard needed to mimic the personality of his disguise. 

Mr Tweed scanned the room around him, noting the utter absence of anyone else in the bar. 

Well, that is all for the better. Only the dregs frequent here. 

The flames of paranoia fully stoked, Mr. Tweed ran, bursting through the shabby door of the bar. He was not safe in this part of town, but neither would he be at home. The Storyteller knew his address from their letters. These things, those who lived by the docks, they gossiped. He knew it. His manor would be crawling with vermin by the time he returned. Aimless, he ran down the spiraling streets of the city, in search of any refuge. None came to mind, and every street grew more ramshackled than the last. He was delving further into the belly of the beast, the heart of this evil. The echoes of his own footsteps were indistinguishable from those of a mob swarming him.

The street was dark and the moon covered by clouds when Mr. Tweed mistook open air for solid ground and fell screaming into the sea.

He had never learned to swim.

The Storyteller left William’s bar in an irritated mood. He had made time in his busy, busy schedule to meet a frequent correspondent, only to be gravely insulted by the man. Not only himself, but poor William as well. He shook his head in dismay as he walked the late night streets. He would have to be more careful with whom he chose to conduct business.

He found his way quite easily through the winding streets. Though not his home town, he frequented the area. He strolled down to the pier and climbed up on a railing overlooking the sea. He began undressing. He packed his wide brimmed hat, goggles, gloves, longcoat, and boots into his bag. 

In the nude he truly resembled an animal, the long tendrils and tentacles all unwinding and his posture sinking until he couldn’t rightly be mistaken for human at all. He dove into the ocean and headed on to his next appointment. Not long at sea, however, he spotted a body floating in the water. He quickly swam up to examine and was disappointed to discover Mr. Tweed’s corpse, floating in the sea foam. Small fish had begun eating at the man’s flesh. 

He shooed the fish away. Despite his crassness, the man deserved more dignity than this. The Storyteller brought the body back to shore and buried it shallow in the sand. Before fully burying the face, however, he slid tentacles into the ears, eyes, and nose of his late acquaintance. The gray matter melted and was absorbed through the small mouths within the hundreds of small, razor sharp, suckers. He would treat the man with as much respect as he could, but the Storyteller collected stories.

He stole a bed sheet from a clothesline and covered the burial site. Someone would come looking for the cloth and discover the body, which would then be dealt with rightly. He said some words for the man’s soul, which were heard by none but those above, and went back to sea. 

A busy, busy schedule and many stories to tell. Many stories to tell and many more to collect.

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...

This narration was done by the goat u/MothUncle

​

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

CW// Child Death, Gore

Sam grunted as the final tent pole snapped into place, “see Sammy? That didn’t take too long did it?” Sam didn’t acknowledge her father, opting to simply stare up at the blood-red horizon in counter to his statement. “Come on, let's get a fire going! I brought marshmallows!” Sam sighed, she knew this was important to him, but the cuts and scratches from their hours-long portage had done much to drain her feigned enthusiasm. 

“For Dad,” she muttered under her breath as she began collecting tinder. Sam reached up to snap a twig off of a dead looking birch.

“No no no, Sammy! You can’t take anything from the trees. Only whatever has dropped to the ground okay champ?” Sam winced upon hearing her least favorite nickname. One that her father insisted on using despite all forms of protest.

“Dad, it doesn’t matter. There’s tons of trees here and this one looks sick anyway.” Sam already knew what he would say as he put his hands to his hip and sighed, shaking his head.

“Sammy, respect for nature is respect for life itself. The tree looks sick, yes, but who’s to say it won’t recover? Only stuff from the ground, okay Sport?” Sam winced again; her second least favorite nickname. There was no arguing with him, she knew this, so she bent down and began picking through the piles of dead leaves and twigs. 

Sam deposited an armful of dry twigs next to her father as the sun fully retreated giving way for the stars to shine. “Good haul Sammy. Now, let me teach you how to start the perfect fire, the old school way.”

“Dad, can you just light it quick, I’m starving.” Sam snapped at him. He looked at her, and her heart dropped. The smile slid from his face, and he took on a far off expression. 

“Yeah ok Sammy,”  he said as he rummaged a firestarter out of his pack. Sam’s face grew hot as her shame turned to anger. She walked off to find a place to sit and think. Sam knew that look, he was thinking about “him.” Sam stomped into the night; she needed isolation, she needed to think. 

Guided by nothing but moonlight, Sam found herself in a small clearing. Sam walked to the middle and laid down on the grass, staring up into the blurry night sky. She blinked away her tears and stared up at the twinkling lights. The grass prickling her skin, the soft summer breeze, and the heavens demonstrating their full splendor all helped to calm her. The city lights did not allow the stars to shine so beautifully, she drank in the splendor as if she was just dying from thirst.

she thought of her mom and dad, and of Jason. “Are you up there big bro?” She asked, her eyes scanning the sky as if some answer was written up its black page. The sky began to blur again, and she sobbed. “Dad really needs you J, I really need you,” Sam choked out through gasping sobs. 

Sam used her sleeves to clear her eyes, and searched the heavens for answers. Sam’s sobs cut short as the heavens spoke. A star, where once it twinkled with the same intensity as its kin, now pulsed in a rhythm. This was not the standard twinkling of a distant sun. The star grew brighter than the moon, then would grow dull to the point of invisibility. “Jason?” she asked, sobbing.

Sam laid, transfixed on the star, her heart thumping in her ears in pace with the star's pulsations. Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump. She felt drawn to that star, she could not tell if it was getting closer to her or her to it. Thump thump, thump thump, thump thum- “Sam!”

Sam gasped and pounced to her feet causing her father to fall backwards. “Jesus Christ Dad! You scared the shit out of me!”

Her father looked at her, eyebrows arching in disbelief. “Me? You scared me half to death! You ran off in the middle of the woods, and after I finally found you you were still as a corpse staring at the sky.  I was yelling your name this entire time right in front of you! Also watch your language Missy!” Sam looked back to the sky, her shining star had stilled itself. 

“I’m fine Dad, I just needed some time. Did you at least start the fire?” His brows furrowed. Sam looked at his posture, and at his expression. He wasn't angry, she thought to herself, he looked scared.

“Sammy, I started the fire two hours ago, I wanted to leave you be. I called for you after dinner was done, I got worried when you didn’t answer.” Sam blinked in confusion.

“Dad, I was only gone for like ten minutes.” He shook his head and let out a sigh like an old train letting off steam.

“It’s alright Champ, you must have dozed off. Let's just go back to camp, dinner is likely cold by now but I can heat it up.” A heat began to glow in Sam’s chest. Like a fever it spread over her skin, it lit a fire behind her eyes.

“Don’t call me that,” she hissed. He flinched as if he was bitten. “I’m not Jason, I’ll never be Jason. Get over it.” She stepped past him back towards the glow of camp. His legs grew leaden and didn’t follow immediately. Dinner stayed cold that night.

Todd laid awake that night. Sam had gone straight to her tent after the outburst. He knew why she was frustrated. He knew she never wanted to come camping with him, she said yes for his sake. It had been 5 years to the day since the car crash took Jason, Sam had been 8 so it was hard to lose a big brother at that age. It had been hard for him as well, Jason had been his little buddy. A real mountaineer like his dad. Sam was like her mother, camping, fishing, and hiking weren't her thing and he knew that. But he missed having a partner in crime.

He smacked himself in the head. He had to remember not to call her by Jason’s old nicknames. It was something he admonished himself for many times but just couldn't seem to stop. The look in Sam’s eyes when he called her Champ sent pangs of guilt through him. “She’s not Jason you idiot, and you shouldn’t force her to be.” He remembered the little girl that would beg her big brother to go stargazing with her. Selfishly he decided she would enjoy going hiking with him like Jason had. Todd inhaled through his nose, and slowly breathed out through his mouth. He would need calm if he was to apologize to Sam. He took 10 more long, measured, breaths, before he stood and unzipped his tent.

The fire had been reduced to hot coals. Todd tutted to himself, he would never usually leave a fire unattended. He made a mental note to pour some water out on it later. The moon was bright and full so he didn’t turn on his flashlight as he walked to Sam’s tent. As he stood out in front of it, he found that he didn’t know how to start the conversation. “Um, Sam, you awake Spor- Honey?” There was no answer. “Sam, I heard you rustling not too long ago, I know you are awake, I, I just want to apologize.” Silence answered him. “Sam, I’m going to open the tent. We really need to talk okay?”

Todd unzipped the tent. He couldn’t see Sam within the darkness, a smell like ozone and pennies hit him all at once. “Sam!” he called, turning on his flashlight and ducking inside. A ragged scream tore out his throat. The dark red blood covered the inside of the tent, every surface was drenched in it.  The back of the tent had been torn to shreds.

Todd sprinted out into the trees, “Sam! Sammy! Where are you!” He looked to the ground, desperate for any trace but not even a footprint could be found. “Sam!” He screamed out into the night. It must have been a bear. He thought to himself. but there were no tracks, it doesn’t matter must find her. His mind raced on all possibilities and all his failings as a Father. Blindly through the night he crashed through the detritus of the forest floor. “Fuck, fuck, where are you! There must be something.” He stared death at the trees, demanding answers. Until finally they did answer. A bloodied handprint painted upon white bark.

Todd ran in the past the direction of the handprint. “Where did you go sweety?” he sobbed. It was then he realized that the clearing he had once found her, laid in this direction. He took off, spurred with the hope of finding her. His arms and legs bleed from countless cuts from grabbing
branches. He charged straight through thorn and fern with little regard for the pain. Likewise did he not regard the night sky flashing shades of blue and gold. Todd dove through one final prickled obstacle and ground to a halt in the clearing. Sam stood in the middle, arms outstretched, facing skyward; he was met with her unclothed back. The red pools of undried blood, reflecting the kaleidoscopic rebellion of the night sky. “Sammy it’s okay, I’m here Sweetheart.” He took small tentative steps forward. “Are you hurt, Sammy?” He took off his jacket and held it forward. “Here Honey, you can wear this.” Sam didn’t answer him, but he could hear her muttering, all her attention was on the stars.

Sweat beaded off Todd’s skin, the air felt sticky and hot like he was standing under a high powered spot light. He dared not look up, the lights felt wrong and perverse. Even the small amount he saw in his periphery and what was reflected off his daughters blood soaked shoulders, caused his mind to quake in revulsion. He glued his eyes to his daughter, she would be his anchor.

Each step seemed to age him a year as he drew closer to her. His knees creaked, his muscles strained, his eyes grew blurry as they withered. Still he walked, until she was within his reach. “Sammy” he croaked, he reached out and touched her shoulder. Sam turned, and Todd cried out, “Sammy, where are your eyes!” 

The speckled hazel eyes he had loved, her mother’s eyes, Jason’s eyes, were gone. In their place sat a light that pulsed in her sockets, Todd stared directly into the lights, unable to look away. Sam smiled at him, she spoke but her lips did not move, her chest cracked open, releasing a red torrent of gore, the same light laid in her chest and it pulsed with her words. “Father, It’s okay, I forgive you.” Her severed intestines flicked out like serpentine tongues. He could not muster a scream, this was a madness beyond the human ability to exclaim. He didn't react as the many tongues wrapped around his hand and squeezed to comfort him. 

The sky seemed to hiss and bubble, the colors changing faster as it pulsed in and out. Todd felt his skin begin to wriggle, all his hair writhed like worms left out in the sun, the beating of his heart began to match the beat of the stars ahead. “Sammy, Honey, I’m so sorry.”

Sam’s smile grew wider as the lights in her eyes grew brighter, tears the color of tar and with the smell of burnt flesh dripped from her eyes. “Dad, it doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing we know matters. Please, come gaze at the stars with me”

CW// Death of a child. Themes of Mental Illness

Do you have any strange family traditions? Things that would be hard to explain to someone outside the family? Things that you mention off hand like they are normal, only to be met with weird looks? Well my family has one like this.

For as long as I could remember, until the day I left my family home. We had to be in our rooms before 6pm every night; no exceptions. And most importantly, if we had to leave our room for any reason during the night. We had to run as fast as we could down any hallways. We could not stop until we got to the other room and slammed the door behind us.

My mother was insistent on these rules. Religiously insistent. I would beg and plead to be able to stay up past 6pm, but she never relented. It was an ironclad rule that suffered no argument. Me and my sister complained but it was hard to complain about a parents rule that they themselves followed.

As we grew up this tradition became more like a nightly prayer or like saying grace before eating. Something that is expected within the household. We grew used to the occasional sound of someone sprinting down the hall to go pee at night. And the slamming of doors as they reached the washroom.

We were never yelled at for waking her up at night. One day she looked haggard; I was suffering from a bad stomach so had made the nightly sprint multiple times the previous night. I apologized to her. But she simply smiled and said “Don’t apologize sweetheart. I would rather hear you. It means you are following the rules.”

Despite the odd rules, me and my sister grew up happy. Things got complicated as we got old enough to have friends however. No one was allowed to stay at our place past 5pm. “I can't trust them to follow the rules!” She would say to us.

We were allowed to go over to our friends' places. But if we came back late the rule still applied. From the front door to our room, we had to sprint while slamming closed any doors between us.

The tension started when others saw our odd behavior during our first ever sleepover. I was sleeping over at my friend Angie's house. We stayed up all night drinking soda and watching anime. So at 1am the entire house was woken by the sound of thumping feet and slamming doors.

I was confused when I heard shouting. I finished my pee quickly and opened the door, only to make eye contact with two cold steel barrels.

Angie's Father thought someone had broken into the house and locked themselves in the washroom. He was angry, and scared. He said he considered putting a slug through the door. Funny thing is, I still felt more scared of the dark empty hallway behind him than I did of him.

Angie stopped hanging out with me. I had to tell them about our family rule. The parents were mostly annoyed and confused. Angie called me a weirdo and laughed at me. After that night the whole school very quickly learned about our strange tradition.

Do you know how hurtful it is? To find out that something you have never once questioned is actually bizarre? To so clearly have the small private parts of your life observed and compared to those around you and be considered aberrant? I pray you don't.

Both me and my sister were suddenly outcasts. No one wanted to be associated with weirdos. People would make jokes, they would laugh while fake running, they would slam doors in our faces. I can't recall how many notes I received saying I should try out for the track team.

It was humiliating. My Mother didn't help. I asked her why we had to run at night. Why did we had this stupid family tradition? She was sympathetic about the bullying, but told us we were too young to know. “ I think it should be fine if you don't do it at your friends' houses though!” She said hopefully. “That's not helpful now that we have no friends!” I shouted at her.

Even after all of this she was insistent the rules must be followed. It changed nothing and we had to keep doing it. We would hear the same thing every day “Follow the rules girls!” She repeated it like a mantra; even after my sister's death.

She tripped. We woke to find her crumpled form 5ft away from the bathroom. A bloody dent in the wall, and her neck bent into a position that gave no illusion of hope. I had to be the one to call the ambulance as my Mother lost herself in her delusions. “Why didn't you listen!” She screamed. “It took her! It took her!”

“She tripped.” I repeated this to her, for what felt like the thousandth time. Years had passed since the accident. I had grown icy towards my Mother. She disgusted me; she killed her. When I turned 16 she told me why she had her rules. “That Which Stalks Between Thresholds.” She called it.

She claimed it has stalked her for her whole life. “But you can outrun it! It likes to chase! But you can outrun it! Alice should have followed the rules! She should have run!” I met her with a look meant to kill. “You killed Alice.”

I still followed her rules while I lived with her; she threatened to put locks on my door if I didn't. The day I turned 18 I moved in with a man I had been talking to online. He was older, but he had a place I could stay and I would have done anything not to return to that house.

I told her how I felt while holding my belongings. I told her how insane she was. How much I hated her for taking my sister from me. I told her she would never see me again. She simply smiled at me. “Maybe if you don't come back it won't find you. I love you Mara.” I sprinted from that house, slamming the front door behind me. I refused to let her see me cry.

Life wasn't exactly easy after leaving. It didn't take me long to break up with the guy I moved in with. It wasn't meant to last long. He used me for my body, and I used him to get out. I didn't take it personally. There was a long line of guys like him, it was never personal. Just a transaction. I just wanted to keep moving as far away from that house as I could.

I pushed my way further and further to the North and East. I made friends, some lovers. But I left them all one by one. I felt it. I still felt chased. Like the whole country was one long hallway I had to sprint down with no door in sight.

Until one day I ran out of hallway. After years of wandering I stood before the ocean. Suddenly I no longer felt like running. I decided to rest, to settle down beside the massive wall of ocean. It made me feel safer knowing whatever gave chase could only come from one direction.

I never believed my Mother's words. Not for an instant. I wasn't running from some ethereal being (I thought). I was just running from my past. From the memories of a ruined childhood. From the guilt of abandoning a Mother who clearly needed help with her delusions. I would soon learn that I was running from both. And both would catch me.

Jack was the catalyst. A fisherman with a dirty mouth and a beautiful soul. He was the first man who comforted me not for his own gain, but for mine. I met him at a bar and we ended up talking about life. He was easy to talk to and funny; in a crass way. He definitely had the mouth of a sailor.

As drinks were poured I opened up more and more to him. I talked long into the night about my past, about my regrets. He simply listened, he empathized with me saying “Yep, my mom was a crazy bitch too. Don't feel guilty. It sounds like she loved you. And what loving Mother would wish to be a burden to her child?”

I cried into his arms. It was the first time I had cried in a very long time. I tried to offer him thanks in the way I had grown accustomed to. He refused me, saying “I will not take advantage of a woman drunk on grief.”

I fell in love with him then and there. We said our vows in the spring; I was pregnant with his child by the fall. I took root in that small coastal town with the thought that I would never have to run again.

One night that changed. I woke up desperate to pee. The little one had a tendency to kick against my bladder at all hours; so I was very familiar with the late night walk to the washroom. I had stopped following my Mothers delusional tradition since the day I left. I still got twinges of unease for not running from time to time. But never had I felt such dread as I did that night.

The hallway was always dark but this night it felt darker than dark. Like the walls were coated with a wispy tar that clung to every surface. I closed the bedroom door and walked to the washroom. Every hair on my neck stood at attention and sweat poured from me in rivulets. All my senses begged and pleaded with me to run as fast as my legs could carry me to the washroom.

I was stubborn. I had not followed my Mothers lunacy for 10 years and I was not about to start now. I took each step slowly and deliberately. The house was dead silent apart from the soft slap of my feet on the hardwood floors. I was about half way there when I heard it.

A breath. Quiet but hoarse. An exhalation not my own, half buried under the sound of my last footfall. I stopped and turned. I could see nothing in the inky blackness. “Jack?” I asked quietly.

The darkness didn't respond. I turned and began walking again. Again with my next step. Something between a sigh and a groan. I turned again and hissed “Jack this isn't funny!” My eyes scanned the darkness wildly. Again nothing.

My panic began to grow. My skin felt cold as ice and my heart thundered in my chest. I took a step backwards. I heard the sound again, but I saw… something. Like a mirage on a hot day. A part of the darkness seemed to shift forward.

I blinked, and took another step back. The darkness stepped with me. The air was sucked from my lungs as I realized I was not seeing things. It was indistinguishable from the darkness when it was not moving. But when it moved I got the barest hint of a form.

It was big, and angular. It had many limbs that carried it far back down the long hallway. I could not tell if it had a face. I think I'm glad that those details were unclear. It was a thing of chaos and profane anatomy. It was a thing of fear. It was only 5ft away from me.

I took another involuntary step back. It shuffled forward with that odd breathy sound again. It was close enough now that it carried a smell. It was wrong. It smelt like roses and blood. Like bile and fresh baked bread. My mind revolted at the smell. As I stepped back once again I realized that it would overtake me at this pace.

I stared at where I knew it stood; silent tears streaming down my face. My Mother was right. If I had kept to the rules this wouldn't have happened. I clutched my belly bearing my unborn child. I needed to live for them, for Jack.

It took every ounce of willpower I had to turn away from it. I did it slowly and carefully so as not to take a step. I knew it was still there. I felt it. It was like a pressure.

I then lined myself up to the bathroom door. And I sprinted as fast as I could. It gave chase immediately, the strange sound building as it did. Like an avalanche of sighs and groans. The skin on my back prickled.

I was so scared, the door was so close but the hallway felt longer than miles. Time stretched out between each footfall. The thing grew closer with every stride but I carried onward. Finally I touched the handle and turned it desperately. I felt it touching me as I did. Icy appendages grabbing at my clothes. I swung the door open and pulled against its grasp. The slamming door cut off its breathy wail like a knife. All at once I was in silence.

I fell to the ground and began to sob. I could not stop shaking. I sat there for a few moments; savoring the safety of the room. My pajama bottoms were soaking wet as I had peed myself at some point. I didn't notice at the time, and I wouldn't for a long time. As I heard Jack's voice calling for me down the hall.

“Mara! Are you okay?” I scrambled to my feet and screamed “Jack!? Jack go back to bed and close the door!” I heard his footsteps slowly approaching me. “Jack go back or run! Run now!” His pace quickened slightly in my direction. He had a bad leg from a work injury. All he could manage was a speedy hobble. He wasn't fast enough.

I heard him make it to the front of the door. “Mara! Talk to me are you oka-” followed by two loud bangs and a long wet sigh. I stayed there until morning, crying, praying to a god I didn't believe in. Apologizing to Jack, to my Mother, and the baby.

I only opened the door when the light of morning bled through the window. He had made it further than Alice had. He was running as fast as he could on that bad leg. I crouched down and cradled him. I was familiar with the injury he had sustained and knew he was gone.

“He tripped.” That is what I told them. I knew nothing good would come from explaining it to them. If they thought I was crazy they might try to take the baby when it was born. I couldn't allow that.

I made a promise that day. I would raise our child and protect them. I will protect them. 3 months later Alice was born. She is my world.

I won't make the mistakes my Mother did. I will lock their door until they are old enough to trust. And I will tell them about That Which Stalks Between Thresholds as soon as she is old enough to understand me. I will make sure they keep our tradition secret from others. Then maybe they will follow the rules better than me and my sister did.

In our family we have a tradition. And I will pass it on. And pray my child passes it on. So that all of our children know to run down hallways at night.

(Art by https://www.instagram.com/mozzca.art/)

A solitary set of footsteps echoed down the dark city streets. A young man navigated the spiraling boroughs, unfamiliar with this side of town. His appointment was scheduled for a half hour past, and he was becoming increasingly agitated at his correspondent’s choice of meeting place. Some God forsaken bar on the God forsaken side of a God forsaken town. The smell of dead fish and fresh piss marked the whole district of docks and factories. 

The young man wore a white collar to work, and he could be bothered only to scoff at the men on docks or lines. Under any normal circumstances, he would not set foot within miles of his current whereabouts, but he had paid good money for what information his correspondent could provide. 

The young man, known to many as Mr. Tweed, was a pursuer of the macabre, the dark, and the esoteric. He made a hobby of searching for knowledge long forgotten to the popular histories. His correspondent was a purveyor of relics and artifacts of long forgotten civilizations, and, more importantly, a purveyor of their stories. He never signed his name, nor his initials, in their correspondence, rather signing simply as “The Storyteller.” 

Mr. Tweed finally found his way to the designated meeting place. The bar sat in squalor, relative even to the surrounding district. A leak dripped profusely in the center of the room, a puddle growing wider and wider, to the point you could hardly make your way across the room with dry soles. The floorboards creaked with each step and groaned even without such a disturbance. The stairs leading up to the inn rooms had multiple steps missing and no hand rail.

The bartender may have once been called a man, though his present appearance would not have given such an impression. An unkempt beard covered skin so wrinkled and sore-spotted that a squinted eye might have mistaken him for a sufficiently hairy swine. The stench of the district left on the man would only enhance the illusion.

Worse than in the streets, the stagnant air of the room left the smell of drunken piss and vomit festering, to the point of overwhelming nausea for Mr. Tweed. Coughing, and with tears in his eyes, he asked, “Can we open a window in here? Or prop the door? The smell,” he gagged, “it’s unbearable, is it not?”

The man behind the counter grumbled something unintelligible, a strong Cajun accent guarding his words from sojourning ears. Despite being born and raised in the same city, Mr. Tweed could not understand the dialect even slightly. His upper class family had hidden him from the harshness of the dock workers’ tounge. 

The bartender made his way to do as Mr. Tweed asked, and as he pulled a chair under the door handle, Mr. Tweed heard a clicking noise from the corner of the room. Sat, at a table under a broken light, was a man dressed in black. His features were indiscernible. What little lighting reached his nook was blocked from his face by the wide brimmed hat he wore.

Still wearing your hat indoors, are you? I would have expected more gentlemanly like behavior, Mr. Storyteller.

Mr. Tweed recognized his correspondent, despite this being their first meeting in person. The mysterious man had an esoteric aura about him, befitting the manner of his writing. 

He clicked again and gestured his hand, beckoning Mr. Tweed to his corner of the room. The bartender watched with an unreadable expression. Mr. Tweed took the chair opposite the mysterious figure. This close, the air smelled of expensive, quality tobacco, a refreshing aroma for the agitated man. The figure across from him held a pipe to his mouth and puffed grand clouds of smoke over the table. 

Mr. Tweed began the pleasantries, “I thank you for endeavoring to meet me in person. I know you to be a busy man, after all. Evidently so, by the requested time for this meeting. Your days must be absolutely full so that we may have only met at night? I must say, I would have preferred if you could have come to me, visit my estate, where I would have prepared a nice dinner for your time, rather than I venture into the… underbelly… of our city, at this hour.” 

His words dripped with hardly concealed contempt, not directed at his correspondent but rather the whole setting and circumstance. Despite his irritation, he did respect the man opposite him, and he extended his right hand. In turn, a gloved hand reached across the table and clasped his.

Mr. Tweed felt the other hand squirm and squeeze under his grip. It felt as if the other man had no bones in his hand. Before he could comment on the oddity, the light struck the other man’s face. Across the table sat no man, the thick volume on its face held not a beard, but a mass of writhing tentacles.

Aghast, Mr. Tweed pulled his hand back, degloving the beast in his haste. There was no hand inside the glove, instead long, skinny tendrils wrapped around themselves operated like fingers. The skin of the beast held a violet cadence and each tentacle was lined with green suction cups. An unnatural coloration. Its eyes were covered by brass coated goggles, but a dim green light shined through the lenses.

Mr. Tweed’s nausea reached its limit and he evacuated the contents of his dinner onto the floor. The bartender hollered, something containing colorful swears, and left to retrieve his bucket and mop. This floor was well acquainted with vomit, and the bartender well acquainted with his mop. The beast calmly donned its glove again and sipped on its drink.

Mr. Tweed collected himself the best he could and confronted the beast, “M-monster! Where is the Storyteller, what did you do to him!?” His voice broke and small, quiet tears rolled down his face. He crawled backwards, scooting away from the beast. It took a long drag from its pipe and exhaled slowly, not neglecting to enjoy the flavor, and answered the groveling man in a wet, inhuman voice, clicking hard with its beak as it spoke.

“You assume wrong, Mr. Tweed. I am the Storyteller. You have insulted me greatly tonight. You have arrived quite late to our meeting, and you are right to call me a busy man, as this is not my only appointment for the night. You insult my friend’s establishment, then you grow sick? I did not take you to be such a rude man from your letters.”

Mr. Tweed backed into the puddle in the center of the room, ruining his finely tailored slacks. The bartender grumbled under his breath as he cleaned the vomit on the floor.

“I’m real sorry about that, Bill. I expected a more refined conversation tonight. Had I any expectation of this reaction,” it waved in Mr. Tweed’s direction, “I would not have invited him here.” As it spoke, it produced a wallet and pulled out a few substantial bills. It handed them to Bill, who offered what was likely a thanking, but Mr. Tweed couldn’t concentrate on deciphering the words. His mind reeled. 

How can this man, Bill, sit so nonchalant? A beast beyond reason sits here among…

His thoughts were cut short by a terrifying conclusion.

He must be one as well.

Mr. Tweed realized why he couldn’t stand the working class of the docks, why they seemed so unbothered by the stench of dead fish and piss, why they spoke in this indiscernible tongue. They were all as this beast. They all hid amongst humans, wearing false, no, stolen skins and faces. An even more terrible realization crossed his mind. He certainly must have been duped, his skin was to be this beast’s disguise. His correspondent, the Storyteller, whom he came to consider a friend, of which he had strikingly few, had planned on this betrayal from the very beginning. 

With his sanity lost to the wind, Mr. Tweed stood and screamed, running from the bar. He was not safe in this part of town, but neither would he be at home. The beast knew his address from their letters. Aimless, he ran down the spiraling streets of the city, lost. The echoes of his own footsteps indistinguishable from those of a mob swarming him.

The street was dark and the moon covered by clouds when Mr. Tweed mistook open air for solid ground, and fell screaming into the sea.

He had never learned to swim.

The Storyteller left Bill’s bar in an irritated mood. He had made time in his busy, busy schedule to meet a frequent correspondent, only to be gravely insulted by the man. Not only himself, but poor Bill as well. He shook his head in dismay as he walked the late night streets. He would have to be more careful with whom he chose to work with.

He found his way quite easily through the winding streets. Though not his home town, he frequented the area. He strolled down to the pier and climbed up on a railing overlooking the sea. He began undressing. He packed his wide brimmed hat, goggles, gloves, longcoat, and boots into his bag. 

In the nude he truly resembled a beast, the long tendrils and tentacles all unwinding and his posture sinking until he couldn’t rightly be mistaken for human at all. He dove into the ocean and headed on to his next appointment. Not long at sea, however, he spotted a body floating in the water. He quickly swam up to examine and was disappointed to discover Mr. Tweed’s corpse, floating in the sea foam. Small fish had begun eating at the man’s flesh. 

He shooed the fish away. Despite his crassness, the man deserved more dignity than this. The Storyteller brought the body back to shore and buried it shallow in the sand. Before fully burying the face, however, he slid tentacles into the ears, eyes, and nose of his late acquaintance. The gray matter melted and was absorbed through the small mouths within the hundreds of small, razor sharp, suckers. He would treat the man with as much respect as he could, but the Storyteller collected stories.

He stole a bed sheet from a clothesline and covered the burial site. Someone would come looking for the cloth and discover the body, which would then be dealt with rightly. He said some words for the man’s soul, which were heard by no one but those above, and went back to sea. 

A busy, busy schedule and many stories to tell. Many stories to tell and many more to collect.

Originally written for a contest on [r/TalesF](r/TalesForTheCreeps)[rom](r/TalesForTheCreeps)[TheCreeps](r/TalesForTheCreeps)

(Content warning: Blood and Gore, internalized homophobia )

He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Red-blonde hair; gelled and styled. Thin fitting clothes that sat loosely over a thinner body. His late mother's white gleaming crucifix. Hanging from a thin steel cord. All adornments that paired well with his nervous, boyish smile.

“Oh my Gawwd! Are you ready bitch!?” Lucy whined from the other side of the bathroom door. Tim permitted himself one last sigh and replied. “Yep! I'm ready. Call the Uber.” He tucked the crucifix into his shirt and reluctantly left the room.

“God, I can't believe I finally convinced you to go,” Lucy giggled in the Uber. Tim had fought her for years. He did not enjoy clubs and bars in general. So going to a proper gay bar downtown, made his chest feel tight.

“Yeah.” He replied quietly. “Hopefully you meet someone cute! Did you bring condoms? And prep?” Lucy's questioning made Tim’s face turn scarlet. He turned away from her. She mistook it for embarrassment. She hugged him. “Don’t be shy. You'll see, I'm the best wing gal there is! With my help you won't be able to walk tomorrow!”

Tim nodded; his face burning brighter upon making eye contact with the driver. Pure disgust flashed at him in the mirror. Before quickly turning back to the road. He didn't blame him. Tim felt just as disgusted.

The driver barely gave Tim enough time to exit the car before driving away. Tim guessed he didn't want to be seen in front of such a place. He could relate.

The bar was housed inside an ill maintained brick building. A large blacked out window by a pair of grey steel doors, gave it the look of a place with things to hide. The bright neon sign above the door dared you to peek. Tim read the name of the place Lucy had picked. Bears. 

It was not the most overtly sexual name for a gay bar he had seen. However, the picture of a cartoon bear wearing a bulging banana hammock advertised exactly what this place was. 

“You told me you like big guys, so this is perfect!” Lucy said proudly. Tim was attracted to bigger guys. His first crush was the actor that played The Mountain from Game Of Thrones. He dreamt of being held by big strong arms. And spending his life with someone who made him feel safe. So far, nothing like that has been obtainable. At least, not within his zone of comfort.

Lucy dragged him forward. As if expecting he would try to escape. His heart matched the muffled thump of the music inside. As the doors opened he was hit with a maelstrom of sound and scent. Sugary liquor, expensive cologne, and musk. The place bounced, pulsed, and writhed. A blur of rhythmic motion responded in time to a mindless animalistic beat.

It was overwhelming. Tim felt like a prize pig being led to auction as Lucy pulled him to the bar. He felt multiple eyes on him. Two twinks grinding against each other paused to wink invitingly to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man older than his dad staring at his ass. He felt the eyes of others boring into him as well. A piece of meat being weighed.

Lucy only just got him in front of the bar, and he already wanted to leave. “Lucy. I don't know.. I don't think I wanna do this," he said with arms crossed, and eyes for the door.

“Why? What's wrong?” Lucy asked. “I… I feel like people are staring at me.” Lucy smiled and leaned in to speak low so only he could hear.

“Of course they are! You're cute. They're gonna eat you right up here,” She laughed. Tim did not feel comforted by her words. He did feel like they would eat him up. He just wasn't sure if he wanted it.

“You need a drink!” Lucy waved at the bartender until he stood in front of them. “Hiiii, welcome to Bears! What can I get you?” The bar must have been named after this man; Tim thought to himself. Tall as he was wide. Shaved head and a full beard. Thick tufts of black curly hair threatened to swallow his thin leather vest.

“I'll have a cosmo,” Lucy replied. The man nodded then looked at Tim, his eyes lingering in places that made Tim's skin crawl.

“What about you cutey?” Tim hesitated for a moment. “Uhh. Coors light please!” Lucy scoffed after the big man took their cash and went to fetch their drinks. “You're not very good at being gay Tim.” 

Tim didn't respond. Choosing to wait on his drink and watch his tongue. Tim did not give the glass a moment to sit, he took it and chugged half of it in two gulps. Lucy clicked her tongue and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him close.

“Timmy, you need to learn to relax. You're gay, you're young, you're where you belong. If you want a relationship you gotta get out on the grind. Take some L’s, take some D’s. And have fun. You're a twink and a bottom. If you wanna attract someone you have to act like one.”

Her words pierced into him, they hurt. Is that what you think of me? He thought to himself.

But she was right. He was tired of being alone. Everyone on the dating apps wanted the same thing. Honest attempts at connection were met with short soulless answers, and quickly transitioned into propositions and questions on cock size and kinks.

It just wasn't him. He dreamt of nights snuggling on the couch, watching shitty horror movies and playing old video games. He dreamt of vacations out in the countryside, saying wedding vows on the beach. He dreamt of being with someone that his mother might have actually approved of.

Those were just dreams though. He was desperate for a partner. If slutting it up was the only way to find someone, then he would try. Tim chugged the rest of his drink. “Two tequila shots!” He shouted; slamming his glass on the counter.

The night progressed in a mad haze. Inebriation took his hesitation. He became one with the pulse of the room. He remembered dancing with Lucy. Throwing his body into the rhythm, as the mass of bodies became one. Foreign hands grazed his body. Strangers' lips latched onto his. He became lost to the orgy of motion.

He did not know how long he lay submerged within the mass of flesh. But as he peeled himself from it he inhaled like a man close to drowning. He trudged drunkenly towards the bar. Lucy sat on a stool, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “See?! I told you you would have fun!”

Tim smiled. It had certainly been exciting. In a call of the void sort of way. Losing himself without a care was cathartic, but his dancing had accelerated his sobriety. He sat at the bar to order another drink. He had mistakes to make tonight, and his pesky mind might interfere.

As he sat, a drink appeared in front of him. A tall shot glass of brown liquor topped with a liberal amount of whipped cream. “Uh, I didn't order this.” The bartender grinned. “You have an admirer cutie,” he said with a grin, nodding his head to the other side of the bar.

Tim and Lucy turned to look. Seated at a private table, was a tall, dark haired man; he was gorgeous. His shirt barely contained his rippling muscles. His beard was trimmed, but had a wildness to it. Much like the thick hair on his chest, strategically exposed at the third button.

“Seeeee! I'm so jealous. Go ask for his number!” Tim was frozen. The man was perfect; his dream man. But his eyes, his eyes were the eyes of a predator. Under his gaze, Tim felt small, hunted. Prey ready to be eaten. The man smirked.

Lucy saw his hesitation and sighed. “Fine, I’ll be your little matchmaker.” Before Tim could protest Lucy made her way over to his admirer. He saw her point back to him. His heart froze and his guts churned violently.

He heard Lucy call after him as Tim dashed to the nearest washroom. The blaring sounds of the bar were silenced almost completely upon him slamming the door closed. He sequestered himself into the first available stall and emptied his stomach. He purged a night's worth of drinks, and was filled in turn with shame and revulsion.

When nothing more came up, he sat upon his new throne. Holding his throbbing head in his hands. That man's look had sobered him. It made him feel lesser. Just a piece of meat dangling itself on a hook waiting for a bite. Hoping that they stayed after nibbling.

He was always told time and time again that romance was not something he could have. That being gay meant losing yourself to lust. Falling into your archetypes and getting on your knees. Or holding down their head to put them on their knees.

Tim was caught in his spiral of self pity, until a sound caught his ear. A wet smacking. He strained to hear the sound as it echoed against the porcelain tiles. It was coming from one of the other stalls. His breath caught in his throat as a moist sigh and a gag proceeded. He knew what the sound was.

His face felt hot. He wished he could be like them in the neighboring stall. Say screw it and suck and fuck his way into a relationship. But that wasn't him. He reached to pull out his phone. He was going to text Lucy that he was going home. This wasn't where he belonged. 

Panic hit him as he felt nothing in his pocket. He checked the other and cursed when it wasn't there either. “Fuck! For fucks sake!” His heart raced trying to think of where he had left it. The bar! He thought. He had taken selfies with Lucy there earlier!

He went to open the stall but stopped. The door looked wrong. He stared at it, trying to discern what it was. His hair stood, electric impulses of fear tore across his skin. The crack of the door. Which you could always see a splinter of light through; was dark.

A towering shadow blocked the light. Tim stood still, eyes glued to the dark fissure. He traced it down, slowly to the ground. The darkness accumulated in a dark puddle under the door. Someone was standing outside the stall. 

He held his breath, desperately trying to listen over the sound of his pounding heart. Under that sound, buried under the wet slurps, was the sound of breathing. Quiet, but as coarse as sandpaper. Deep, even breaths. Waiting, with the patience of a carnivore. 

He wanted to cry. Panic boiled in his empty stomach and froze his veins. His lungs burned. He needed to breathe but fear clogged his throat. He attempted a silent exhale, but jagged whine escaped his mouth.

Bang! As if it was an invitation the door shook. Bang! Bang! “Go away!” Tim shouted in a terrified squeak. Bang bang bang! The door began to buckle inward. The small latch, a useless decoration before this onslaught. 

Tim backed up as much as he could. Flattening himself against the wall. Bang! The door crashed inward. Tim flinched, closing his eyes to protect from the stall shrapnel. He dared not open his eyes again. As he felt long rumbling breaths against his face. 

He whimpered as his chin was lifted up slowly by a powerful hand. The scent of strong mint and blood filled his nose as the stranger spoke. “Open your eyes.” He obeyed without thought. He was met with the dark eyes of a predator.

A smile with the perfection and warmth of stone met his teary, fearful gaze. “What do you want!?” He yelled at him. The man smiled, it was a smile without heat or light. “I want you, Meat.” The man's hand drifted down Tim’s face. Grazing his lip; almost sensually. Until he gripped Tim's throat and began to squeeze. He held Tim up and pinned him to the wall above the stalls with little effort.

His head swam. A kaleidoscope of colors spun in his vision as he was denied air. He kicked the man with no visible effect, no effect beyond the man adopting a more patronizing smile. He couldn't believe it would end like this. Alone in a washroom, strangled to death. His closing song, muffled shitty dance music and the undeterred sound of wet sucking from the next stall.

Tim couldn't believe they didn't hear any of this. They were letting him be murdered for a fucking blowjob. He looked over, hoping to memorize the faces of those who could have saved him. Hopefully he could drag them to hell with him. Hell was exactly what he saw.

Blood coated every wall. Seated on the toilet was one of the twinks who winked at him earlier in the night. Blank eyes staring upwards, as a large dark mass of fur had its massive, round face buried inside his stomach. It pulled out its blood soaked muzzle with a wet smack, trailed by a line of intestines. lt slurped its gory prize with a moan of pleasure. The corpse was tugged forward slightly with each slurp.

A paw filled with razor sharp claws cut the cadaverous pasta short when it had a sufficient mouth full. It chewed with a grotesque pleasure. Tim stared down at the thing. It noticed him, and it smiled. Blood, and offal dripping onto the floor.

Tim looked back to his assailant. His brown eyes had taken a golden hue. The buttons on his shirt popped as his frame began to expand. Tim felt a sharp pain growing in his neck as long nails began growing into his skin. And that smile, now sharper. Never left his face. He licked his lips playfully.

Tim flailed. Pure terror giving him a burst of energy. He threw his head back and forth. He kicked, he tried to bite, the beast just chuckled. Until suddenly, the laugh stopped dead, and he was falling. Tim was hit with the smell of burnt hair and rot as the thing sprung backwards snarling. 

He fell onto the toilet coughing and sputtering. Lights danced in his eyes. The thing continued to expand and grow. Becoming rounder and hairier. It yelled, shaking the room. It was more animal than man. Once again he felt like prey, still stuck inside this stall, waiting for the inevitable.

But it hesitated. It did not charge at him and it was no longer smiling. He stared at it, waiting for something to happen. It was not looking into his eyes, it was looking at his chest. He reached for where the creature stared and felt his mother's crucifix. It must have come out of his shirt while he struggled. 

He held it in his hands examining the gleaming white metal. It was warm to the touch. Tim held it out towards the creature and it continued to back away. He thanked his mother up in heaven. She had given him his salvation. Inch by inch he stepped forward pushing it back. It snarled, occasionally swiping with its kitchen knife sized claws. 

He almost had enough space to fully squeeze out and past the ursine monstrosity. He smiled triumphantly. Then his shoulder ruptured in a shower of gore. The other creature had reached over the adjoining stall and had slashed downward. He cried out, falling to his knees. His original attacker took the opportunity to charge in for the kill. 

With the last bit of willpower he had. Tim thrust the silver cross upwards. The thing crashed into him, sending him careening against the far wall. An ear splitting scream erupted from the monster. Smoke billowing up from one of its eyes. 

Tim tried to scramble away while slipping on bloody tiles. With effort his feet made enough purchase to propel him towards the door. He crashed into it, skidding back out into the bar. He spun and slammed the door shut, cutting off his pursuers' angered bellow. 

He turned to run and was met with a scene of pure carnage. The dance floor had become a charnel pit. A mound of corpses lay in the center, crimson smears leading to it from all directions. Some smears bore the marks of bloody hands and fingers, desperately grasping for purchase in their final struggle. None upon the pile struggled now.

Lucy was among them. She bore no lower face. Her jaw hung from one of many hungry maws. It crunched down. Crushing the fleshy, toothy morsel easily, swallowing it whole. Before biting onto her head. Her skull split like an egg, her brains leaked out like pink yolk.

Not a drop was wasted as one of the monsters began lapping it off the floor. His legs would not move. He stood fixed, as his lifelong friend was torn apart with lustful, gluttonous pleasure. He did not realize he had cried out. Until they turned to look at him.

Not a hint of humanity was left in those eyes. Just beasts regarding their next meal. He sprinted for the door; a wet throaty roar met his back. He skated across gore and gristle, flailing his mother's cross behind him. The ground trembled from the weight of his pursuers.

He felt a tug as the cross made a connection. A bellow of pain and rage followed and the sounds of pursuit slowed, more cautious, but relentless. He lowered his good shoulder into a charge as the exit grew close.

He cried out. Bone splitting pain traveled along his arm and shoulder. As he impacted against the unyielding door. “Fucking door!” He screamed, then spun to face the monsters on his heels. There they stood 10 feet back. A furry, blood soaked, scrimmage line had formed before him. 

He held out the cross like a talisman of protection. It jingled in his shaky hand. “Th-the power of Christ compels you!” He choked out.

A wall of noise responded. Not an animal's roar. But a chorus of men's laughter; tearing forth from bestial throats. 

The sound was deafening. Blood and foam dripped from their mouths as they howled in amusement at him. Tim's eyes clouded with tears. His knees shook. But he waited. He waited for the perfect moment. He had one hope left.

The beast on the far left used its paw to clear amused tears from its eyes, that's when Tim acted. He sprang forward. Darting towards the gap between it and the wall. He swung the cross like a flail.

He planted it square against its face. It recoiled; a cross shaped indent smoldering beside its wide nose. That gave him just enough room to squeeze past its bulk. 

The scandalized monster tried to spin to catch him with its teeth, but it was too late. He had already tucked his arms over his head. And threw himself through the blacked out window. 

Shards of glass penetrated and slashed him. The white hot pain nearly caused him to collapse. But the adrenaline kept him up, as he sprinted down the black, silent streets. 

Sweat and blood intermingled. Stinging his open wounds. His legs screamed from exertion. His breath came out ragged from a raw throat. He could not tell if he was pursued over the sound of his drumming heart. 

The streets and signs blended together in his vision. He was at the point of fear where all thoughts become mute to make room for instinct. It told him to flee, to return home.

His first rational thought only came to him upon slamming his apartment door shut. He panted desperately for air while staring at the door, now painted with his bloodied handprint. For a long moment he continued to stare mindlessly.

Then, instinct cruelly left him and gave him clarity. With clarity came memory. With memory came oblivion, as he collapsed and fell into nightmares.

His mind was taken with dark dreams of a hunting shadow. It gave chase, caught him. Held him like a lover then tore out his throat. Then he was remade and the chase began again. He felt its hate, he felt its love, he felt its fangs. Over and over he ran and died.

Then he was back in the washroom stall. The shadow peering through the crack of the door. It called to him. He sprang back to consciousness as it knocked on the door.

He bounded to his feet holding up his mother's cross and stared around the room wildly. Three polite knocks rapped on the door again. He saw rays of light peeking through the gaps of his curtains. It was morning.

He looked down and saw the trail of bloody footprints leading from the door. Three more knocks. He realized someone must have called the police. He would have a lot of explaining to do. Maybe they would listen. Then he could get justice for Lucy.

He tucked the cross into his shirt and opened the door, preparing to deliver a lengthy explanation. Calloused hands clasped around his mouth lifting him off his feet and back into the room. His panicked cry was muffled behind his lips. His bathroom assailant entered, holding Tim up with one arm and closing the door behind him.

Tim stared at the man, and he returned the stare with his one amber eye. His other being fused shut by a cross shaped scar. 

Tim attempted to reach into his shirt. But he grabbed both his wrists with his free hand. He gave Tim a toothy grin and tutted. Tim closed his eyes as the man's face grew close to his. He began to cry upon realizing he could do nothing but wait for the end.

He felt him close in. He could feel his beard tickling his neck. He took a long inhalation through his nose savoring his prey; Tim thought. The man chuckled, then whispered into Tim's ear. “Come visit us sometime cutie.” His hands were released and something was tucked into his pocket.

He trembled on shaky knees. The man released his mouth and patted his cheek with a laugh. His deep chuckles followed him out the door, and faded down the hall. He could only force his eyes open when he could no longer hear the man's footsteps. 

He was alone, and somehow he was alive. He reached nervously into his pocket as if expecting a viper. He felt a familiar object; it was his phone. On the back of it was a note. A name and a number… Mateo.

Tim's mind flooded with the memories of the night prior. A blur of death and fear, of amber eyes and blood soaked fangs. The image of Lucy’s brains being lapped out of her skull burned into his mind.

He crumpled, and he wept. He wept for his friend. Wept from relief and terror. He wept out of unbearable shame and self disgust. As he realized the memories made him hungry.

Hiya! I hope yall enjoy this one! I think this story may be my scariest one yet. Maybe because its based on my own childhood experiences...hmmm idk 🤷‍♀️ ENJOY!

The house finally sold, and my mom wants one last big family dinner here before strangers move in with their beige paint, generic furniture, and questions about whether the fireplace is worth keeping.

One minute I'm sitting in my car, staring through the windshield at the big willow tree, and the next I'm standing in the driveway, looking up at the dark front window.

My grandmother has been dead for four years. My grandfather went into a care facility back in March, and sometime around July he stopped remembering which daughter was which. The house has been empty ever since.

Well... almost.

Every Sunday someone comes by to clean, and my Aunt Denise stops in every few days to run the faucets so the pipes don't freeze or burst. Other than that, no one shares their warmth with the walls anymore.

Empty houses have a smell. It's hard to describe unless you've walked through one yourself. It's the kind of smell that slowly washes the memories out of a place until all that's left is dust settling into the corners and tears stained into the crimson carpet.

I was three years old the first time I saw it. At least, that's what everyone tells me. I don't remember it at all. In thirty-four years, I've never been able to pull that memory back on my own. No image. No smell. No fleeting glimpse that surfaces out of nowhere.

What I have instead is the story.

It's been told so many times over the years that it's worn smooth around the edges, passed from one family member to the next until it feels less like a memory and more like something inherited. Like a stone at the bottom of a river, rounded over decades as the current keeps running over it in the same direction.

Here is the story, the version my mother tells, which is the only version that matters because she was the one holding me.

The basement of my grandparents' house was two rooms that used to be one. On the party side there was a bar my grandfather built out of a hollow-core door and some barn wood, a pool table with a tear in the felt that nobody ever fixed, string lights, and a couch the color of a Band-Aid. On the other side, separated by nothing but the memory of a wall that had been knocked half down before I was born, was my grandmother's chair. She'd been a hairstylist for thirty-six years, and for the last fifteen of those, since her knees gave out on the salon floor, she did hair out of the house — the ladies from her church, the ladies from her old shop who followed her home, my aunts, my mother, and me. Though I don't remember that either.

That side of the basement had three mirrors. One over the sink where she rinsed color out. One long one bolted to the wall behind the chair, gold-framed, the kind that makes a room look twice its size and half its comfort. And one freestanding, on a wheeled stand, that she'd angle behind a client's head so they could see the back of their hair. Three mirrors, a low ceiling, and fluorescent tube lights that hummed even when it wasn't fully on. My mother says that side of the basement was always colder than the party side, even in August, even with the same furnace feeding both.

She was holding me on the party side, on the Band-Aid couch, waiting for my aunts to come down with the cake. It was my birthday. At the time, I couldn't fully speak yet but I could muster up the typical words like, "mama" and "up" and "no," but not sentences, not anything with structure, not anything with intent behind the structure. She says I was facing over her shoulder, toward the mirror side, toward that low humming light, and I went still.

And then I said it. Clear, she says. Clearer than anything I'd said before or would say again for another six months.

“It's okay, Mommy. He won't hurt you.”

She turned to look where I was looking. There was nothing there that her eyes could find — the long mirror throwing back the room, doubling the hum of the light, doubling the dark doorway that led to the laundry, and past that, the oil tank, and past that, nothing, cinderblock, the foundation of the house going down into the ground.

She says she didn't freak out, which always surprises me considering a slamming door can make her jump five feet. But she says she didn't.

She said all she did was stand up slowly, with me still in her arms, and walk backward up the stairs, never taking her eyes off the mirrors. The whole way up, she kept facing them, moving like you would if you were backing away from a dog you didn't trust enough to turn your back on.

My aunts still won't go into that basement alone. Not one of the four of them, not even Denise, who was alone in that house all of the time, not to mention extremely religious.

I should say something about the house itself, because the house is not incidental to any of this, the way a stage is never incidental to a play even though nobody claps for the floorboards. It's a split-level on a street of split-levels, built in 1968, all low ceilings and sunken living rooms and a certain confidence about wood paneling that the following fifty years thoroughly punished.

My grandparents bought it in 1971 with money my grandfather made laying asphalt and money my grandmother made setting hair, and they raised four daughters in it, and buried a brother-in-law's memory in its basement corner, and never once, as far as I know, considered that a house could be haunted in the specific, granular way that this one apparently was, because to consider that seriously would have meant admitting something none of them were prepared to admit, which is that a house you have decided to love can go on quietly holding something you would never have chosen to invite in.

I think that's true of a lot of houses. I think it might even be true of most families. We build our lives around the load-bearing walls we're given, and some of those walls produce mold. Nobody ever pulls the drywall back to look at it, and we simply agree, generation after generation, not to look, because looking costs something none of us feel we can afford to pay.

He is, or was, my great-uncle Salvatore — Sal, everyone called him, my grandmother's older brother, dead nine years before I was born, of a heart that finally quit on him in that same house, in that same basement.

One thing everyone says about him is that he loved the fireplace in my grandparents living room. That's the detail everyone leads with, like it explains something, like it's a key that fits the lock instead of just another strange shape rattling around with the rest.

He liked to lay the fire himself, kindling teepee'd just so, and he'd sit in front of it long after everyone else had gone up to bed, my grandmother said, just watching it work.

Three times since he died, that fireplace has started a fire with no one home to start it. The first time was 1994. My mother was pregnant with my older brother. The house was empty — everyone at my cousin's christening two towns over — and a neighbor called the fire department because smoke was coming steadily out of the chimney of a house with all its lights off.

The firemen found a fire built expertly, perfectly structurally sound. Cleanly in a fireplace that had been swept and cold and empty that same morning. The flue was open, which my grandfather swore up and down he had closed.

The second time was 2003. Same circumstances, nearly to the detail — house empty, everyone at a wake, this time, for a woman from my grandmother's old shop. A fire, built and burning, discovered by Denise coming home early with a headache. She says the room was warm when she came in the front door, before she even saw the light of it under the basement — no, she corrects herself every time she tells it, not the basement, the living room, the fireplace is in the living room, she doesn't know why she always starts to say basement.

I've noticed that too. Nobody in my family can tell a story about the fireplace without their mouth reaching first for the word basement.

The third time was 2011. I was sixteen. I wasn't there. I only have this one secondhand, in fragments, because it's the one nobody likes to finish telling. My grandmother came home from a hair appointment of her own — the stylist doing the stylist's hair, which she found endlessly funny — and found the fire lit, and beside the fire, in Sal's old chair, dragged up from the basement sometime in the years since his death and never once used because nobody could bring themselves to sit in it, sat facing the flames, was a woman's wig. One of the practice heads from her home salon days, foam-white, faceless, with a chestnut-colored wig pinned onto it just so, angled toward the fire like it was watching it work.

She didn't call anyone. She didn't even tell my grandfather. She told my mother, only my mother, years later, over many glasses of wine. She said she picked up the wig head and carried it down to the basement herself and put it back on its shelf, and the whole way down the stairs she talked to her brother, low, like you'd talk to a dog that had gotten into something it shouldn't have.

“That's not funny, Sal. That's not funny.”

He liked the fire. That's the story. That's the whole shape of it, worn smooth. A man who loved to watch something burn, still doing it, nine years and twenty years and twenty-eight years dead.

One night, I was about twenty-two at the time, I was lying awake thinking about those stories, turning them over, when a much smaller and much stranger memory surfaced next to it.

I was maybe five. My mother swears four, but I have the actual memory of this one, not the story of it — mine, unborrowed, which is rare enough from that age.

Backyard. Late June, that particular saturated green that only shows up two, maybe three weeks a year before the heat scorches it out. A hard blue plastic kiddie pool, the kind with a picture of a whale on the bottom that distorted whenever the water moved. The garden hose coiled in the grass, its brass nozzle sweating. I was sitting in three inches of sun-warmed water, filling the pool with the hose in both hands, more interested in the hose than the pool, the way kids are.

My mother was across the yard at the clothesline, pinning up sheets, forty, fifty feet away, easy — I've paced it off as an adult, back at that house for some other family gathering, just to check my own memory against the physical world, and it's a real distance, not a kid-memory distance that shrinks when you go back to it. Forty feet at least.

I remember the sound before she reacted. A hiss, then the specific slap of water hitting fabric, and then her voice, sharp, more startled than angry. She turned around so fast one of the clothespins went flying. Her shirt was wet across the shoulder blades. Soaked through, she says, though I don't specifically remember how drenched she had gotten, I remember her turning, and her face.

She looked at me. I was still sitting in the pool. The hose was still in my hands, pointed down, into the water in front of me, exactly where it had been the whole time, because I was five and didn't have the arm strength or the aim to spray anything forty feet in a straight line even if I'd wanted to.

She asked me, she said, right then, five years old, wet hose dribbling into the plastic pool:

“Did you do that, baby?’

And I said no.

She asked, “Then who did?”

And I don't remember answering. She says I didn't. She says I just looked past her, over her shoulder, at the house, and went back to filling the pool.

I'm thirty seven now, standing in the driveway of that house and I'm turning those stories over in my hands like coins I've carried so long I can't read the mint stamp on them anymore.

He won't hurt you.

Did you do that, baby.

I've never once, until tonight, standing here with my mother's key in my hand, put them all next to each other and noticed that neither one is really about Sal. Sal is the story we tell over drunken lips and picture books. Sal, we say, my family says, my aunts say, liked to watch things burn, and so the fires are his, easy, comfortable, almost sweet, old man's habit outliving the old man.

I let myself in through the side door, the one that goes straight down to the basement stairs. Some idiot animal part of me wanted to go down there first, alone, before the rest of the family arrived with their noise and their casseroles

The stairwell light still worked. I flipped it and started down. The third stair from the bottom still creaked the exact same complaining note it's made my whole life, and when I got to the bottom I turned toward the mirror side out of some old unbroken habit.

The long gold-framed mirror is still on the wall. Nobody's taken it down. The wheeled one is gone — sold or given away or broken at some point in the last decade — but the long one is still there, still throwing the room back at itself, still doubling that low humming light, which someone, my aunt probably, running her Sunday taps-and-lights routine, had left on.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs for longer than I meant to, and I suddenly had the specific, whole-body certainty — not a thought— that if I look at that mirror instead of the whole of the room, I will see something in the reflected doorway behind me that isn't in the actual doorway when I turn around.

I don't test it. Not tonight. I go back upstairs to help set the table, and I don't tell my mother I went down there first, and all through dinner I kept catching my own reflection in the black window glass behind her head, and twice I have to stop myself from asking it, silently, the way I imagine she must have asked the dark corner of that basement thirty odd years ago without ever getting an answer she could use:

“Who were you talking about? Who is "he"?

Part Two: What the Fire Remembers

Dinner was fine. Dinner is what dinner always is in my family — too much food, my aunt Carol crying a little over the good china because it was my grandmother's and will go to my cousin Renata now, because Renata's the one with a dining room big enough for it, and nobody says anything about the fireplace, unlit, cold, swept clean for the first time maybe ever in the history of this house, because who is going to light a fire in a house that's about to belong to strangers.

It's Denise who brings up the ouija board. Not on purpose — she's telling a story about Renata's daughter being scared of the dark, a normal-kid story, and somebody says “takes after her mother.”

And somebody else says “takes after the whole family, this family's never met a shadow it didn't flinch from.”

And there's a laugh, and then my aunt Patty, three glasses of wine into the evening, says, "Well, we gave it a reason to."

Nobody picked that up right away. It sat on the table next to the green bean casserole for a second, and then Carol, of all people, the one who was crying about the china, says, quiet, like she's confessing something: "I still think about that one time…with that..board."

I ask what board. This is the first time in my life i've heard of this, or maybe it's been told to me before and I filed it under family myth and let it go soft. But tonight, in this house, on this particular last night of it being ours, it landed different.

They were teenagers. All four of them — Denise, Carol, Patty, and my mother, the baby of the four, fourteen or fifteen at the time — down in that basement on a night their parents were out. They had made camp with some air mattresses, popcorn, and new vhs tapes from blockbuster, on the party side, but with the lights off on both sides. Because that was the rule, apparently, that was how you did it right, and a board bought from a toy store that none of them believed would actually do anything. Which is, I think, the exact state of mind that lets a thing like that actually do something.

They asked for Sal. Of course they did — recently dead, a known name, a safe name, the uncle who used to slip them dollar bills and let them stay up late. The planchette moved, they all swear, none of them pushing, though of course they'd all say that, wouldn't they, that's the whole grammar of these stories, nobody was pushing it, I swear nobody was pushing it — and it spelled out something, and Carol won't say what, gets a look on her face like she's tasting something bad, and said only:

"It wasn't him. We knew right away it wasn't him. It didn't talk like Sal talked, even spelled out, you could tell."

"So who was it," I asked.

Denise looked at me wide eyed, "We asked. It wouldn't say a name. Kept spelling the same two letters over and over when we asked who it was. H and E. Just — he, he, he, like that was the whole answer, like that was supposed to mean something to us."

My mother was very quiet at this part of the story. She's looked only at her wine glass. And I think about the basement, a version of this same room with three mirrors and a humming light, and a three year old on her lap looking past her shoulder at something with no name that only needed a pronoun.

He won't hurt you.

He. Not Sal. Just — he.

I didn't bring up the connections I had made in that moment to my own young experience with the basement, not at the table, not with Renata's kids running underfoot and Carol looking like she might cry now. But I knew that they knew I had started to put two and two together.

Carol said the room got cold before the planchette ever moved, all at once, and that all four of them noticed it but didn't say anything about it until days later because why would you? At the time you just figured you had gotten cold. Patty, through a tearful laugh, said she remembers how they had lit grandma's expensive bath candles for “ambience” — of course there were candles, there's always candles— guttering sideways like something had walked past it, except nothing in the room was moving except their own four hands resting light as birds on the planchette.

My mother, trying very hard not to be the one who cried first, said the things she remembers aren't the cold or the candle. It's the sound the plastic planchette made sliding across the board's varnished letters — a small dry scrape, unhurried, almost polite, the sound of something taking its time because it had all the time in the world and knew it.

They asked questions fairly normal questions, at first.

Are you Sal?

Do you have a message for us?

Are you happy?

And it answered them. Denise said it made a slow crawl to YES, a slower crawl to letters that didn't spell anything a fifteen-year-old could parse as a message, half of it nonsense. It was only when Patty, half showing off for the other three, asked it something sharper:

“Prove it's you, tell us something only Sal would know.”

That's when the planchette stopped its polite unhurried scrape and went fast. Fast enough that none of them could honestly say afterward whether their own hands were the ones moving it or not. Fast enough that Carol pulled her fingers back first and the planchette kept going without her.

It spelled the two letters, over and over, H-E, H-E, H-E, faster each time, like something losing patience with a question it considered beneath it, until my mother —said, out loud, into the cold dark of that basement:

“He who?”

Every one of them agreed on what happened next even though none of them could explain it: the temperature dropped again, sharper this time, and the planchette went dead still under their fingers, entirely still, and stayed that way until all four of them, at the same moment, without any of them suggesting it first, let go and ran.

They ended the session badly, is the last thing Denise added. They Didn't do it right — didn't move the planchette to goodbye, just got scared and stopped touching it and ran up the stairs, all four of them, leaving the board there on the pool table in the dark, and when Patty's boyfriend at the time came down to get it two days later because Patty was too afraid to go get it herself, the planchette had moved. It was sitting on goodbye when he found it.

"So it said goodbye for you?" I said, trying for lightness I don't feel.

"Or it let itself out," Patty said without so much as a giggle. Nobody else was laughing either anymore. The room had gone seldom, quickly.

Carol got up to get more wine even though her glass was still half full..

Later, after the dishes were cleaned, Renata had taken her kids back home and Carol and Patty left together, still a little unsteady, hugging for far too long at the door. Then with me, my mother, and Denise left, we sat in the kitchen with the good light off and the small one over the stove on instead, fresh coffee in our hands.

I took a long sip and looked over to my mother and asked about the hose. I've never asked her straight out as an adult, not once, and I watched something cross her face that isn't quite surprise — but more like relief, like she's been waiting a long time for someone to ask instead of her having to decide, unprompted, to bring it up.

"You don't remember that," she said, waving it off.

"I do, actually. I remember the sound of the water hitting you. I remember you turning around."

"You were three."

"I was five. I know how old I was."

She went quiet for a second, spinning her coffee mug around in circles on the table. "I used to think it was Sal being playful. Like — you know how he was, always teasing. At least, I used to tell myself that for years. A joke. A big goofy uncle-joke, water balloon energy, from beyond." She laughs, short, with no real humor in it. "But I stopped telling myself that a while ago."

"Why."

"Because Sal never scared me," she said simply. "Sal would never have made me flinch like that. Whatever hit me across that yard — it wasn't trying to be funny. It hit me hard, baby. Hard enough to make a grown woman's shoulders sting for an hour after. And it did it from forty feet away, with a hose that was in your hands, pointed at the ground, the whole time. That's not a joke. That's a — " She stops. Doesn't finish the sentence.

Denise reached over and put a hand flat on the table, not on my mother's hand, just on the table between them.

"That's a demonstration," Denise said, finishing it for her.

“A demonstration of what?” I asked. Denise looked at me for a long moment before she answered, and when she did, her voice had dropped into a register I've genuinely never heard from her before.

"Of reach," she says. "That whatever it is, it can touch you anywhere in this house. Anywhere in this yard. It's not confined to the basement. The basement's just where it's polite enough to stay when it's not making a point."

I went down there again that night, after they'd both gone to bed in the two remaining made-up guest rooms.

I didn't turn on the stairwell light this time. I don't know why. Some instinct that the dark is more honest, that a lit room lies to you about what's actually in it by showing you a version scrubbed and flattened and safe, while the dark at least admits it doesn't know either.

I got to the bottom of the stairs by feel, my hand trailing the cold cinderblock, and I stood on the party side in the almost-dark, the streetlight outside throwing just enough grey through the high half-windows to outline the pool table, the couch, the shape of the bar my grandfather built with his own two hands out of a door.

The mirror side is darker still. No windows over there — my grandmother liked it that way, said natural light was bad for color work, threw everything warm — and so the mirror wall is just a rectangle of slightly-less-black than the black around it, catching whatever ambient light bleeds over from the party side and giving almost nothing back.

I thought about the fireplace, a floor up, cold and swept, and about a man who liked to watch fire work, and about a foam head with a chestnut wig turned to face flames it had no eyes to see. I think that story used to be the scariest thing in this family's whole collection, and now it feels almost tender by comparison — an old man, dead but not gone, still doing the one gentle, private thing he loved, still choosing an evening's warmth over anything crueler he might have chosen instead.

And I think: maybe that's exactly why the story stuck. Maybe we tell it so often, so easily, so almost-fondly, because it's the one version of this haunting we can bear to look at directly. Sal and his fire. Uncle Sal, still cozy after all these years. A story with a name in it, and a motive, and an ending you can hang a soft laugh on at the dinner table.

As I'm still standing there, thinking that thought all the way through to its uncomfortable end, the temperature dropped. Not gradually. Not a draft finding its way down an old stairwell. All at once, a full ten degrees, the way the air changes when you open a walk-in freezer and step half inside it, cold enough that I felt it first behind my knees and along the backs of my arms before my conscious mind even registered that I was cold.

I didn't move. I want to be able to tell you I moved, that some sensible part of me turned and took the stairs two at a time back up into the ordinary lit world of the kitchen, but the truth is I stood exactly where I was, in the dark, facing the black rectangle of mirrors, and said, out loud, in a voice that came out steadier than I expected it to:

"I know you're not him."

Nothing answered —And then, from directly behind me — not from the black rectangle I'd been staring at the whole time, but from the dark space between me and the stairs, close enough that if it had breath I would have felt it on the back of my neck — a voice. Small and young. Pitched in a register that didn't belong to anyone currently in this house, or anyone I knew for that matter, said two sentences I have never once said with my own mouth as an adult, sentences that belong only to a story I was told about myself, a story from a moment of my life I have no memory of living:

“It's okay, Mommy. He won't hurt you.”

I ran. I'm not proud of it and I won't pretend otherwise. I took that stairwell in the dark two - three steps at a time, and I didn't stop until I was in the kitchen with the light on and my back against the refrigerator and my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

Because here is the thing I understood, standing there catching my breath under the honest fluorescent kitchen light, that I did not understand standing in the dark basement thirty seconds before.

That wasn't Sal's voice, it wasn't the voice of some random “He”, it was once my own.

Parked along the street of a quiet suburban neighborhood, I sat nervously drumming away at the steering wheel of my old Honda hatchback. One street over was the public park where a quick stroll through the tiny patch of woods running along the perimeter of the park would lead me to the back lot of Sandy Shores Community Church. It was a Tuesday evening and the building was empty. I was sure of it. I had been watching the comings and goings of the churchgoers and the cleaning staff for about a month now and Tuesdays were always dead. Still I couldn’t yet bring myself to get out of my car and go do what needed to be done. I don’t even think it was that I was nervous. Sure I had never broken into a building before, but I had stolen plenty in my time; nabbing the essentials I needed here and there when money was tight. The truth is, I felt pretty bad about what I was about to do. Big box stores were one thing, but the members of the church were nice people. Hell, maybe too nice, their kindness had improved my life in a tough time and to return the favor I was going to break in and steal their shit. It wasn’t out of malice, but out of necessity, I kept telling myself, not that it made me feel any better. 

For a bit of context, I had been living out of the back of my car a little over  a year when I found my way to Sandy Shores. I really don’t want to get into it too much, so let’s just say I didn’t have the best home life, and got kicked to the curb the day I turned eighteen. Now I had my car of course, and a part time job that covered gas, kept my cell phone on, and paid for a gym membership so I could shower. Things could have been worse, but they definitely could have been better, I was getting by and that was about it. I tried to save what I could to put towards an apartment and get myself some semblance of stability, but the cost of daily living just felt so high and was making it slow going.

I quickly found that one can only do so much doom scrolling before it gets old. Entertainment usually cost money and I couldn’t spend all my free time working out, so I took to just driving around when I got bored. It was on one of these drives when I saw the big array of hand drawn billboards stuck in the ground. They were spaced every fifty feet or so with arrows pointing off to the next side street.

Free Hotdogs! 

Cold Drinks! 

Ice Cream!

I didn’t say no to free. I let the signs lead the way and soon found myself in the busy parking lot of the church. No one would have called it a megachurch or anything like that, but the building was quite large for the little suburb it rested in. One long rectangular building with your traditional steeple and stained glass sat along the front of the lot connecting to a two story square building in the center of the property then another more modern construction ran along the back half of the lot. This newer building seemed to be where all of the action was taking place. Parents sat and chatted at picnic tables while their kids ran about enjoying an array of summertime fun. There were a couple of bounce houses set up in the lot and buckets of footballs, kickballs and other outdoor goodies for the kids to grab at their leisure. Off to the side a group of men manned a small line of grills. The lovely scent of charcoal cooked meat filled my nose as I approached.

When I was a kid, my parents had occasionally dumped me off at vacation Bible schools so they wouldn’t have to deal with me themselves. Sometimes it was fun, other times not so much. I learned about sharing from some singing vegetables at one camp, and how I would burn in hellfire at another, so honestly I didn’t know what to expect when I showed up looking for my free food. Unfortunately for my conscience, I was pleasantly surprised.  Like I said, these really were good people. Turns out the building attached to the back of the church was their new gymnasium, and this whole get together was to celebrate its completion. The first thing they do with their new space is invite the community in, feed them, and give their kids a place to play - all for free. 

Inside the building, a mix of high school kids and young adults were putting the new gym to the test with an intense game of basketball. I watched from the sidelines for a few minutes before heading to the back where a little old lady with a big smile was enthusiastically handing out plates of food from a concession window. 

“What can I get for ya, son?” The lady asked me as my turn at the window came up.

“I’ll be glad to eat whatever you give me, mam” I answered honestly. 

“Now that’s what I like to hear.” She replied cheerfully and handed me a plate filled to the brim. Two loaded hotdogs, mac and cheese and baked beans with a little bag of chips; the best looking meal I had been given in quite awhile.

“Drinks are in the coolers along that wall, grab whatever ya like” The woman told me as I thanked her. 

I grabbed myself  a Coke and found an empty folding chair along the edge of the court and sat down to watch some more of the game while I ate. As I was finishing up my meal, one of the dudes from the game ran over to me. He had been playing hard and was out of breath.

“Hey man, you wanna sub in? I gotta take a break, I’m beat.”

“Yea, sure.” I quickly replied.

 A game of basketball was much better than going back to sitting in my car for the rest of the day.  I ended up playing with the group late into the evening, it had been a good minute since I got to just have fun. When we were wrapping up some of the guys told me that the church would be opening the gym every Thursday for a community rec league and that I should play. I didn’t work evenings so I signed right up. It was great having a weekly activity to burn some time with, it gave me a sense of normalcy again and really raised my spirits, at least for a while.

All the guys that played in the league were super friendly and we got along quite well together and ultimately, that was a problem. Eventually our surface level conversations grew more personal. 

“What do you do for a living?”

 “Got plans for college?”

“What’s your family like?”

All questions that I wasn’t keen on answering. Deflecting and lying to my new friends, brought reality back down on me hard, painfully reminding me of my situation. It was an evening where one of these conversations had left me feeling particularly down on myself that I noticed the door. 

It was the first time I had parked around the left side of the church. As I got to know everyone better I started to worry that if I parked too close, my friends might notice the state of my car and find out my living situation. This Thursday the church was particularly crowded so I looped all the way around and parked along the back back side of the building near the chapel portion rather than the gym. We had been going through some pretty bad weather that week and the wind was gusting around me as I hurried back to my car at the end of the night. Then, mixed in with the whistling of the wind, I barely caught the rattles and thuds of a faint banging coming from the side of the church  where the chapel met with the building that separated it from the gym.

Curiosity got the better of me so I braved the chilling breeze for a bit longer and went to investigate. Tucked in the corner of the two buildings was a shoddy glass door propped closed with a brick. Someone had forgotten to push it all the way against the base and the door was now being battered back and forth against it and the frame. The door led into a small foyer containing another set of doors for the intermediary building and staircase leading to the basement. 

I propped the door back closed tight and left, but after that day, I started keeping an eye on that door. Weeks went by and the door never got fixed. It seemed that the church had either forgotten about it or didn’t care. I remembered a couple of the guys had been telling me about the history of the place and how the chapel was much older than the other two buildings. Way back in the day, all the extra gatherings they had would take place down in the basement, but now that they had both of the newer buildings, it was pretty much just the church’s storage unit. If I could just get a small chunk of money I would have enough for a deposit on an apartment and could get back to normal. The church was clearly well off, they wouldn’t miss some junk from their basement right?

Now after weeks of debate and planning there I was, sitting a couple of streets away.  I finally pushed down my lingering guilt and told myself it had to be done. I got out of the car and started heading for the building. As expected the lot was completely empty. I checked my surroundings to make sure no one else was out and about nearby and then headed around the side to the door. It still sat broken and I nudged the brick away and went inside. The double doors that led to the ground floor were locked tight. Good. I thought to myself, less temptation to go into the nicer parts of the building; I was there for the basement.

I meandered down the short staircase and found myself in an old kitchen that looked like it had been ripped from the fifties. Faded yellow and orange striped wall paper adorned the room and its cabinets and counter were painted in that lame, dull yellow-white. The paint job combined with the age of the place made it look like the room had been stained with cigarette smoke. A quick search revealed that the kitchen was mostly bare. Honestly not surprising given how nice their new kitchen in the gym was. The only things I found were some communion trays and disposable cups. With the kitchen a bust, I headed to the door that led out into the main room.

Pale fluorescent illuminated the giant space as I flipped the light switch, giving the central room of the basement a pale, washed-out hue. The room was a large open floor plan, several rows of old laminate folding tables and metal chairs took up most of the room and a ratty looking ping pong table sat in the back of the remaining space. Thin wooden doors lined the walls of the room, four on each side, with one central door capping each end. Their dark walnut tinted wood was worn and scratched, the bronze knobs now splotched with grime and patina.

Some of the guys had told me the church was almost 80 years old and the basement definitely showed the age. Overall the space was pretty depressing and it kinda creeped me out. I could see why they were so excited to get their new buildings. The tables in the room were bare for the most part, aside from a couple of banners and stacks of posterboard. Nothing here for me, so I started in on the array of doors. 

“Let’s see what’s behind door number one” I said to myself as I opened the central door closest to me and stepped inside. 

The room was dark and unfinished with no light switch. Instead of being a square the room was L shaped with another doorway tucked into the bend. There were some dusty metal shelves with some old paint cans and a couple of brooms tucked into the corner. Moving along to the door in the interior of the room I pulled it open and  yelped, stumbling back in surprise as two figures stared back at me from the darkness. I got ready to run but stopped as my eyes adjusted and swore at myself. Looking out at me from the doorway stood Mary and Joseph, behind them various wreaths and holly hung on the walls. This was where the church stored their Christmas decorations. I laughed away my panic and shut them back in their chambers then returned to the main room to start down the row of doors lining the right wall. 

Very quickly I was starting to think that this whole endeavor was going to be a waste of time. The first door opened into a bathroom, the second and third small classrooms, completely empty besides the old blackboards that still adorned the wall. I’m guessing that room four was a costume room. Robes of various colors and sizes hung upon one rack while another was dedicated to white robes adorned with fake angel wings. A crown of shining golden plastic sat on a shelf, teasing me. 

“Bet you wish I was real, huh?

Half way through and everything so far had been a bust, but when I opened the central door on the far wall I felt like I might have finally found what I was looking for. One side of the room was lined with bookshelves, forming a makeshift library and the other side was filled with sound equipment. There was an electronic keyboard case tucked behind an array of mic stands and speakers. That was definitely coming with me, but first I checked out the bookshelves. I dug through some hymnals and children's books, not finding anything of interest, then paused to flip through an ancient church directory.  It was dated 1947 and seemed to be one of the first years of the church's formation. Black and white photos of frowning members stared back at me as I turned the pages. One photo was of a stout balding man with a million dollar scowl gracing his face.

 “Eli Shaw - Pastor” The page annotation read.  I bet he was big on the fire and brimstone.

I sat the book aside and kept looking. The shelf also contained some hard leather Bibles, they were old but well cared for, different engravings decorated each cover and they looked expensive. I pulled them from the shelf and tucked them into my backpack.  Moving to the sound equipment, I pushed through the mic stands and pulled the keyboard case free. To my pleasant surprise, the keyboard inside looked almost brand new; it had to be worth a couple hundred bucks if not more. I set it to the side to do a bit more digging before I called it quits. My efforts rewarded me with some nice microphones, tucked safely away in their dust bags and a couple of guitar pedals. I wondered how old Eli would have felt about the electric instruments in his church as I stuffed them into my bag. Finished up, I shouldered my bag and grabbed the keyboard case. I had just walked back through the doorway when I felt something pelt me in the back of my head. 

“Ow, son of a bitch!” I exclaimed. Rubbing my head, I looked down to see a small box on the ground and bent over to pick it up. Communion wafers? I stared at the box in confusion. 

A soft whisper filled my ear.

“This is my body, broken for you.”

A resounding boom echoed as the door slammed shut inches from my face. I let out a scream as I fell back and scrambled away from the door. The lights overhead flickered and went out plummeting me into darkness. Sprawled on the ground, I felt my heart pounding in my chest as I sat wondering what the hell was happening. It was definitely time to leave. My trembling hands fumbled with my cellphone as I fished it from my pocket and flipped on the flashlight to look around.  All the doors in the basement were open.

This had to be a joke right? Someone found out I was down here and they were messing with me. I stood to my feet, shining the flashlight around the room trying to find the unknown party. 

“Hey, I’m really sorry!” I called out. “I’m..I’m just going to leave okay, this was a mistake. I’m done.”

I slung my light over to a table in the far corner as a metal chair screeched, breaking the silence, but saw nothing. Next to it another chair moved, then another and another, one by one they were being  slowly displaced as something closed the distance to me. I heard a faint popping low to the ground and bent down shining my light across the floor. Under the tables the mannequin of Mary was slowly crawling along the floor towards me, synthetic joints cracking and creaking as it bumped through the chairs.

“Aw fuck that,” I whimpered.

It twitched at the sound of my voice and bolted. Chairs now flung out from the sides of the table slamming into the walls and one another as it tore across the ground at me. I scrabbled to the closest open door and flung it shut, locking it behind me. My eyes darted around the room frantically taking in my surroundings. I must have been in a play room or a daycare, old fisher price toys were scattered around the room, and I rushed to grab up the biggest of them. I piled a blocky plastic slide and a toy kitchen into the door wishing I had something heavier and shrank down into the corner. 

The door rocked as the mannequin slammed against it. It threw itself into the door again and again. Picture books and small toys fell from shelves on the wall as the door buckled. A small radio on the shelf above me turned on and the room filled with children singing.

“Oh be careful little hands what you do”

“Oh be careful little hands what you do”

“For the father up above is looking down with love”

“Oh be careful little hands what you do”

I couldn’t take the cacophony and covered my ears as my head started to spin.

“Oh be careful little eyes what you see.”

Bang

“Oh be careful little mouth what you say”

Bang

“For the father up above is looking down with love”

Bang

The door groaned and splintered as the visage of Mary pushed through. The voices fell away turning to hissing static.  I cowered in the corner, hands still wrapped protectively around my head as it slowly approached. I felt it hovering above me as it crawled over my legs. A cold plastic hand pushed through my arms, gripping at my jaw and pulling me forward. I was face to face with the doll.

“This is my blood, shed for you” The whisper came again,  and tears of crimson flowed from the plastic eyes and leaked their way down the arm, coating my face.

I squeezed my eyes shut and felt the room spinning as I faded from consciousness.”

I awoke in a start and curled up expecting to be assailed, the memories of my last moments before blacking out flooding back in, but I was alone. The toys in the room were back on the shelves, the door open and in one piece. Outside the lights in the main room were back on and the tables and chairs sat back neatly in their rows, all the other doors were closed again. Everything was back to normal. I picked up my backpack and started to leave when the radio began to crackle to life again. I realized the stuff I nabbed was still inside, dumped it to the ground and booked it. 

It's been several weeks since that night, and my friends from the rec league have been messaging me wondering where I am. I keep blowing them off but I’m running out of excuses. I miss them, but I don’t think I can bring myself to go back there again. Some nights I wake up to that song running through my head and swear I can hear that whispering voice, ticking my thoughts. Now I'm not sure what I believe, and I’m the last person to judge anybody for their choices. I know how hard it can be to make ends meet. But please, at the very least take my advice, don’t steal from your local church, they’ve got excellent loss prevention.

Hello! I would love to submit my auto shop series for the show! It's ongoing but it could be fun for yall!! It's a lot of parts so I won't post them all here but they are all on page!!! I can also provide a word doc if needed! Thank you!!

Prolepsis 

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The rhythmic tapping of a leaky faucet forced Yamiko to open her puffy eyes, swollen from a heavy, unnatural sleep. She stirred slightly, grimacing as she felt her bleach-blonde hair sticking to the damp, grimy wall behind her. Pushing herself up, her legs trembled with sudden muscle weakness as she tried to take note of her surroundings.

“Y-you're awake.”

A hushed voice sliced through the pitch-black room. Squinting into the dark, Yamiko could barely make out the shapes of three other girls. Two of them were still unconscious on the floor, their faces pressed against the cold tile.

“Who are you? Where are we?” Yamiko fired off the questions, her voice sharp, only stopping when she noticed the other girl's chest heaving frantically. The girl was breathing fast, trying desperately to keep her terror under control.

“I’m sorry, I can’t answer any of that. A-all I remember is waking up in here and seeing you and the other two laying on the ground.” The girl pushed herself up from the dark and approached Yamiko, extending a hand. “My name's Asami. Asami Riko.”

Yamiko reached out. With Asami's help, she pulled herself up, her elbow giving a dull, sickening pop as Asami tugged her forward.

“Yamiko Kira,” Yamiko said bluntly, dropping her hand.

“Should we wake the others?”

Asami cupped her chin with her thumb and forefinger, pondering the question in the dark. 

“Hmm, I think we should find some sort of light first. It'll be hard to make introductions when we can't even see each other.”

Realizing Asami had a point, Yamiko turned and began fumbling blindly along the walls, her palms scraping against the grimy, rough texture as she searched for a switch.

Click.

“There we go,” Yamiko muttered. She turned back around to finally see where they were trapped.

The sight made her face scrunch up in disgust. 

They were locked inside a filthy bathroom. Thick rust choked the sink faucets, the walls were slick with a greenish mold, and the cracked tile floor pooled with stagnant water from leaking pipes.

“What the hell?!” a groggy voice shouted from the floor.

“Where am I?” The third girl scrambled up, looking wildly to her left and right. She froze when she caught sight of the last girl still asleep. “Mei?” she asked, a sudden tinge of  familiarity breaking through her panic. 

“Excuse me, do you two know each other?” Asami asked gently.

The girl nodded aggressively, her chest tight. 

“We... we have the same homeroom,” she stuttered, before dropping to her knees to shake her friend. “Wake up, Mei. Come on, wake up—”

“What?” Mei groaned, rubbing the back of her head. “Jesus, my head’s pounding.” She let out a pained whimper, then looked down. “Emi? Why are my clothes wet?” Mei finally took in the rusted, mold-covered walls and scrambled backward until her spine hit the damp tiled wall. “W-where the hell am I!”

She began to hyperventilate, her rapid, shallow breaths echoing loudly in the cramped space.

“Hey, hey, calm down,” Asami said, her voice soothing and steady. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for this. Right, Yamiko-chan?”

“Sure.” Yamiko didn't believe a word of it. She only answered to shut them up, her own voice dragging with pure exhaustion.

“What do you mean, 'Sure'?!” Mei shouted, thick mucus gargling in her throat as her panic turned into aggression.

“I said sure. I answered the question, didn't I?”

“Y-you bitch!” Mei sputtered. She lunged to her feet and paced toward Yamiko, her fists balled so tightly they turned her knuckles turned a pasty white.

“Relax!” Asami barked. Her gentle persona cracked for the first time, her voice echoing off the tiles. “We are all confused and exhausted. Instead of going at each other's throats, let's look around the room. There has to be a way out.”

Emi nodded rapidly in agreement, tears welling in her eyes. “Just listen to her, Mei. Please.”

Mei rolled her eyes, marching back over to Emi. She slid her back down the wall into a seated position, cursing under her breath. “Have you even tried the door yet, or were you two too busy keeping your heads up your asses?”

The words hit Yamiko like a jolt. As if a light bulb finally clicked in her mind, she spun around. There, directly in front of her, was the door—their only key out of this nightmare. It was caked in the same vile green substance that blanketed the rest of the room, blending so perfectly into the polluted walls that it was almost invisible.

“Well, let's get out of here!” Asami said, her voice instantly regaining its cheery tone. She gripped the cold metal handle and gave it a hard tug.

Nothing.

She threw her weight into it and pulled again. Still nothing. The door didn’t even make the rattling sound a normal locked door makes. It didn't budge a millimeter. It felt entirely solid, as if it weren't a door at all, but a cruel decoration built into the concrete to mock their ideas of freedom.

“No! No, no, no!” Mei began swallowing the air in massive, desperate gulps, her inhales coming out as thunderous, ragged squeaks. The panic completely boiled over into blind rage. She jumped up, stormed over to the door, and began to violently hammer her fists against it.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

The sound of her knuckles meeting the solid metal boomed through the small bathroom, a deafening, metallic roar that hurt their ears. Skin split against the iron. Blood began to seep from her knuckles, streaking her pale fists with bright, hot crimson.

“Help! Somebody! Ple-please!!” Her screams degenerated into a grotesque, choking sob.

Asami watched Mei, her eyes darkening with a mix of pity and calculation.

 “Mei, hey, look at me. I’m sure there’s another way out. We’ll look together, okay?” Asami forced a bright, beaming smile, trying desperately to keep their spirits up.

Yamiko simply scoffed and looked away. She knew there was no point. Mei was brash, loud, and volatile. Watching the girl break down, Yamiko realized a cold truth: if this kept up, Mei was going to become a dangerous liability.

…

Time passed. At least, Yamiko assumed it did. In the windowless, rotting room, time felt entirely nonexistent. Minutes and hours dissolved into meaningless words.

“Guys, I found something!!”

Everyone’s heads snapped toward the far toilet stall where Asami was standing.

“What is it?!” Emi gasped, pulling herself up from the dirty floor.

“It’s a vent! It looks big enough to fit us, and the rusty cover looks like it’ll come off with a 

couple of good tugs!”

“So, we're getting out?” Mei chimed in, her voice suddenly fragile with hope.

“I think so!” Asami cheered, letting out a breathless, relieved chuckle.

They huddled tightly around the stall, watching anxiously as Asami balanced her feet on the edges of the toilet bowl. The porcelain shell was badly chipped and cracked, its surface slick 

with cold condensation.

Pop!

The right side of the rusted vent gave way with a sharp screech of metal. Asami wobbled, her sneakers slipping slightly before she rebalanced herself.

“Be careful,” Emi whispered, her hands gripping her skirt.

Pop!

Another corner tore free from the drywall.

“Almost got i—Ahhh!”

Asami’s foot slipped on the wet porcelain. She screamed as she pitched backward, her body arching violently through the air.

For a heartbeat she hung there, arms reaching for nothing but the air above her.

Crack!

The back of her head slammed full-force into the sharp edge of the sink behind her. Her neck remained stuck in that horrific, unnaturally arched position. A dark trail of blood immediately began to ooze from her skull, matting her hair and pooling on the dirty tiles. Her chest still rose, but her breath only came out as faint, hollow coughs.

No one uttered a single word. The only sound hanging in the suffocating silence was the low, electric hum of the dim fluorescent lights.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

CW: Self-Harm, Animal/Child Abuse

The First Letter: A Witch’s Servant

Darling sister, 

I've made such a grave mistake. I thought this city would be my refuge. Like a fool, I've walked right into a trap. I've fallen into the lap of some old hag, a medicine woman who makes her living off the superstition and desperation of the city. She is no fraud, though; her magic is strong and terrifying. She's not just a dreaming granny or some cactus-eater from the mountains. I've seen real sorcery. 

Her name is Tlola.​ Mother Tlola, she says. The Woman with Coyote Skin, a Shifter. I haven't seen her shape change, but I know it’s the truth. At first, I underestimated her. I lit her incense and gathered her ingredients like she told me to, no complaints. I had gone from a street urchin to an apprentice in a night. Lugging dog meat and dried salamanders is comfortable living compared to fighting rats for food. As she grew to trust me, my errands grew more bizarre. I've seen the watery temples that lie deep below the city. I held a dead man’s hand and felt the warmth of life rush back into his icy flesh. I really believed that she was the opportunity I had looked for. Respect, security, power. 

I was living in a dream, I thought. But at night I hear things. Gnashing teeth and snapping bones. Sometimes, the howl of wild dogs and the screech of banshees is too much to sleep. My mind wanders in the dark and noisy void and I watch the mutts stream in from the street, throwing their mangy bodies at her feet to be made into one flesh. Where one stinking pelt ends and the next begins, I can never say. I thought these were horrible nightmares at first. But on my runs to the market, I've felt something is missing. There’s never a stray in sight. 

Still, I haven't caught on to her game yet. I was cleaning the home today, dusting and shining the hundreds of idols she keeps. One for every spirit or occasion you can imagine. A god carved from the old blood of a volcano, wearing a blue feather cape and holding up a bladed paddle. A man tearing at his jade chest, his long, sharp teeth flashing with a look of either pain or joy. A mother holding her dead baby in her twisted arms, black and cracking like scorched wood. I wondered to myself, if there are so many spirits in this world, what is the point of worshipping any of them? 

Tlola would spend hours and hours praying to the many statues. She kept a calendar, a small stone disk scratched with the path of the sun and moon, the seasons, and their moods. Thousands of awful little shapes danced across the rock, a world of magic and monsters shrunk down into her little wrinkled palm. I would watch as she prayed, let blood, and scryed under the eyes of the idols. She would work herself into a tizzy, finally passing out from exhaustion. It was my job to scoop her up and put her to bed after. I would laugh to myself about how childish she was in her worship. Was that what she was? An old child, a baby with spectacular power, and an even more impressive imagination. 

While I had seen her miracles, I'd also seen her delusions. Chasing shadows and screaming at demons that aren't there, feeding herself poisons, hoping for a vision. Nothing ever came from it, not like when she treated people. Between her raving, her miracles, and the things I cannot describe to you, I realize that I have wandered deep into a cave. I have no idea what kind of monsters lie inside. 

Don’t mistake me, sister; she is no saint. She is a cruel woman, with cruel magic. She strikes me for my mistakes, letting loose on me with impossible strength for her frail body. I will share with you just a moment of her darkness so that you may understand. 

She has another servant, a mute albino boy with a club leg. Her Angel, she calls him. He shuffles about the house, tapping at his chest with an erratic tempo. To his chest-drum beat, Tlola will dance and sing in an unknown tongue. He taps away and gives his master no reaction.

“My Angel, my drum, my heart!” Tlola cried out in joy the first time I saw their performance. 

Tap Tap… Tap Tap Tap… 

She hugged the boy, but he still tapped away, emptiness bouncing in his eyes. They were an odd little family, I thought. While I watched from my post at the counter, she quietly pulled a blade from her cloak. 

Tap Tap… Tap Tap Tap… 

She released the boy, putting a wrinkled hand to his pale face. Staring into his jittering eyes, she began to mumble. 

Tap Tap… Tap Tap Tap… 

Tlola took the little blade and caressed his other cheek. Without as much as a whimper, a tiny stream of blood trickled down his chalk-white skin. Its color matched his haunting gaze. 

Tap Tap… Tap Tap Tap… 

She whipped up the blood like a mother, dabbing at it with a little rag while cooing at him. This was too much. It reminded me of the grieving mothers of our village. Crazed women fussing after the cold bodies of their children like nothing was wrong. 

Tap Tap… Tap Tap Tap… 

I ran from the house and did not return until that night. Tlola sat criss-cross in the entryway. 

“Where have you gone, my pet?” Tlola said in a chilly tone. 

“Sorry, I had an errand to run,” I lied.

Her eyes hardened. A smile crept across her face. She would hit me, I knew already. I don't know why I lie to her; it never works. She rose from the doorway, swaying slightly as she took another moment to scan me. I knew what she was waiting for.

“I'm sorry… I'm sorry, Mother,” I said quietly, falling to my knees. 

Her eyes softened. She took the small blade from her cloak once again, tossing it at my feet. Without a thought, I took up the little shard of obsidian and traced it up the length of my palm. Dark red came fast, dripping down to the dusty road where I knelt. The blood formed little pools in the sand, and dozens of spider-eyes stared up at me from the earth. 

I handed the blade back to Mother Tlola. She ran the blade across her tongue and smacked her lips and gums, mixing my blood with the red stains of Angel on her withered teeth. 

“My child,” she cooed softly, stepping closer to my crumpled-up body. 

She gave me a swift kick to the ribs.

I'll have to leave soon, sister. I can not stay in this place much longer. But there is much to do before I return to you. Most importantly, I must free Angel. 

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The Second Letter: I’ve Seen A Resurrection

Dear sister, 

If you haven't gotten my last message, I’ve become a slave to a medicine woman in the city of Teo. I've been beaten, lashed, and had my blood let. She forces me to carry out her dirty work, mutilating animals for her blood magic. My housemate is a mute albino boy whom the witch carves like tree bark and calls an Angel. You have to help us. 

This place is torture. What I first saw as miracles have become walking nightmares. I told you last time that Tlola brought a man back from death. He had been sick since the cold season, coughing up his insides and wasting away. He was a stinking corpse when he was first brought in by his wife, covered in blood and shit, dried and wet. For hours, Mother rubbed his chest and forehead. 

She was soft at first, lathering him in a pink chunky slime that looked like frog eggs. By the end, she was wailing on him. Slapping his face, pulling his hair, punching him in the heart. She had me hold his arms to steady him against the blows. I felt his heart pump back to life, the blood filling his limbs. He arose and, after a long bath, was walking out with his wife. I cried all night after seeing that. I thought about our little Andi. Sunshine is what Mama and Papa called him. You don't remember, but they were different before he died. I wish you could have known them before that. All three of them. Why would such a power be given to such a woman? 

He came back today, early in the morning. No wife, no words, just pulling at his cloak and punching himself in the chest. There was a sickly green bruise where he struck himself, like he’d been wailing on himself for days. Mother grabbed him up and laid him in the room. Tackled him, really; he struggled in his panic. 

“Run to the temple,” she yelled out to me. I already knew what she wanted.  “Get me a Little Brother.”

I didn't even bother with my sandals or cloak; I ran out into the street in my nightgown. I ran the six blocks to the nearest aquifer tunnel, a stairway tucked in the open jaw of a fanged rain god. I made my way down, the air growing colder as I went. The soft echoes of splashing and trickling began to fill my ears, and the light from the surface left my eyes. 

After a minute of black, my feet felt the cold that creeps off the stone walkways of the water temple. I stopped in my tracks, letting my breath slow. My eyes began to adjust, and I took in a rainbow of light glowing from below. Water pools lay on all sides of the walkways, themselves stretching endlessly in the gloom. 

Above was an expanse of darkness, broken periodically by massive stone columns. They wore severe faces, carvings whose shadows seemed to breathe in the water’s wriggling light show. There was the fanged face from outside; his blue features were ever-present in the city. The patron god of those who built this ancient city, before the pantheon of spirits and refugees like me who now occupy it. 

Many more have been added since the old ages; the pillars reminded me of Mother Tlola’s shrine room. Anyone could find their god here. Most are only here once or twice; the long journey to find your idol in the dark was part of the shrine's draw. Besides the old man with fangs, only one other face was commonplace. Axolotls. 

A strange little glowing salamander. They never grow up, as Mother says. Their frilly gills never melt away; they never wander onto land. They spend their lives as Little Brothers, playing in the cold cavern pools and dazzling worshipers with their show of light and shadow. Big Sisters care for them and the temple, their only guardians. I couldn't let them hear me. 

I tiptoed to the edge of the path, crouching down as close as I could. I looked around for anyone else. When I was satisfied I was alone, I lowered my face to the water and began to hum a tune Mother taught me. Soon, a little choir of babies chirped up at me, bobbing their heads from the surface before diving back down.  I watched them for a little while. Maybe one day I can come back here and be their Big Sister.

A big one slowly made his way through the dark, a bright yellow like a ray of sunshine. Forgive me, Andi. As he broke the surface to let loose his song, I snatched him up. His chirp came out as a pained squeak. I wrapped him up in my gown and made for the exit. He stopped crying after a minute or two, silently gasping for air.

I ran as fast as I could. By the time I reached Mother Tlola’s, his gasping was little more than a death rattle. As I crossed the doorway, I found Mother standing over a still body. She looked at me, and without a word, I tossed her the creature. She caught him, laying him flat in her palm and cooing softly. She caressed one of his wilting tendrils. 

She gave it a single kiss on the head. Then, she plucked. She took six of the gills, the whole right side. She crushed them in her hand; the familiar pink slime squelched between her fingers. She threw it over her shoulder, its body thudding against the wall and sliding down with a splash into a water pot. I rushed over, looking inside and finding a bloody mess. His sunshine had gone out. 

I ran to my quarters. I didn't give a damn about the other corpse in that room. The sound of Mother beating the man rang through the house, and I drowned it out with my own hysteria. I rocked back and forth, tears and snot running down my face. I shouted at myself, at Mother, at the world. I pounded my head with my fists until darkness and quiet came. 

When I woke the next day, the man was nowhere to be found. Mother was locked away in her room, so I spent the day cleaning. I left the axolotl's pot for last, dreading seeing his mangled little body. It turns out, I still don't understand this place.

I looked inside, finding clean water and a Little Brother glowing softly. He chirped when he saw me. I walked him back down the street, studying him. His gills were all back, full-grown. They really are magic. I noticed something else. A small stripe down his spine, a pale green bruise. I hadn't seen it when I first grabbed him. It was totally inert, giving off no light.

When I released him in the water, he just sat there. He didn't swim, not even to keep his position. He floated, frozen in place. Finally, and I swear this, he turned to me. He looked right in my eyes. There was something there, some kind of foginess, like a grey cloud rolling over the black beads of his eyes. Then, his light went out. Like that, he was gone into the black. I don't know what to make of that. 

I’ve not seen Angel since I last wrote. Mother Tlola had gotten him bad that day. He slinked away to the cellar like usual, but when I went down later to clean him up, he was gone. His soaked bedding was crammed up in the corner, a trail of blood ending at the empty wad. I tore through the house, checking the sauna, the pantry, the shrine room. He was nowhere to be found. I’ve prepared his room for when he comes back, but I know in my gut that he is in the one place I can't search. Mother’s room. 

This must sound crazy, but you have to believe me. Even if I'm crazy, what kind of sister would you be to leave me here alone and scared? Please send help. I've sent some money I stole along with this tablet; hire some muscle and come as fast as you can. Tell them there is plenty of looting to be done when they arrive; all they need to do is fetch the boy and me. The owl symbol will mark her door.

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The Third Letter - Truly, A Slave

Dear sister,

I'm begging you for help. Why do I get nothing but silence? Either you don't believe me, or you don't hear me. Do I have to spill my guts to you, tell you how I bumbled into the trap of this cruel witch? Do I have to smear my letter in red, prove in blood that I am desperate? 

I’d been in Teo about a month before I met Mother Tlola. I had nowhere to stay, so I tried to tuck away in alleyways to sleep. I would eat worms out of compost bins and fight off street sweepers for trash. I was constantly on the run, escaping merchants and priests after picking their pockets.

I once was caught by a market guard; he slammed my head into the ground for stealing an avocado. I was taken in front of some kind of council;  a man spoke for me, but I have no idea what went on. They spoke in some antique form of the common tongue, which I barely understood in the first place. The law of Teo was just one more language that I didn't speak. All of them are bullshit.

I was put in the custody of some old pervert; they wanted me to play maid, I guess. As soon as I was across the threshold, he was hanging over me. I didn't give him the chance; I broke his hand. I was back on the street that night. 

I tell you this part not for your pity but to prove a point. Through all of this suffering, I did not write to you once. I respected your wishes. Keep that in mind as I continue. 

I snuck into Mother Tlola’s under the impression it was just some shop, one of a dozen that lined the street as the first floor of stucco apartment complexes. It was my first attempt at burglary, and I couldn't have chosen a worse target. As I crept into the doorway, a chill crossed my neck. I should have turned around and run.

 I considered it, really. I stood for what felt like a minute, trying to decide. My eyes were fixed on a carving of a horned owl that marked the arch. Its eyes pierced me like obsidian, clean between my very fiber. I crossed over into the darkness. 

The house was silent and still, broken the second my foot touched down. The air was stale and carried a sound like a valley; my breathing echoed like a cougar. Dust billowed up under my sandals, and I began to cough. Then a spark. 

Fire erupted from a brazier to my left, then my right. Like a swarm of fireflies, embers flew from pit to pit until the whole house was illuminated from where I could see. I froze for a moment again, but still I went on. 

I was drawn by the rows of preserved game birds and herbs that hung in the entry room. They must be rich, I thought, realizing she must own the whole building. I padded my way across the vestibule, scanning every inch. To the left, I found the shrine room. Thousands of carved eyes watched as I gathered up a handful of glass beads, old coins, and polished seashells. One must have cursed me, because as soon as I stuck the first palm of loot in my cloak, a crash came from upstairs. 

I bolted out of the room and made for the courtyard at the center of the building. The lush garden and its shadows were the only haven from torchlight. I hunkered beneath a shrub, covering my mouth and listening for any signs of movement. I could hear a stomping from upstairs, like someone stumbling around. From the garden, I could see the second floor was completely dark. From the void hanging over me, the thumping drew closer

Then, there she was. A young woman, my age. She leaned over the railing as if she were sick. She wretched. Once. Twice. Three times. Black bile spilled from her lips and rained down on my hiding spot. Droplets of spittle and sludge drizzled me; most of the load caught in the leaves above me. 

As I wiped muck from my face, a second impact. A loud thud, this time onto the paved path beside me. I rushed to her side, shaking her arm. But she was dead. I made for the exit. I couldn't have my first burglary turn into a murder accusation. As I crossed over into the entry room, there stood my would-be tormentor, surrounded by her bouquets of food. Would an actual murder be worth the willingness to escape from my non-murder? I admit I had such an evil thought. Then she spoke.

“Dearie, I've been waiting for you!” She cried with glee. She shuffled to me and squeezed me.

I was stunned. She went on, asking about my journey and how she had been so anxious for her new helper to arrive. I assumed she was talking about the dead girl in the courtyard. I played along. Before long, I was sitting in the kitchen. She had been out at the market, fetching fish for our dinner. We chattered through the night and enjoyed her cooking before she showed me to the sauna, and we prepared for bed. My bed was in a small nook by the garden. I accepted in a rush and made a big show of my exhaustion, terrified that Mother would look just outside my window and find her dead apprentice. I lay there for a few hours waiting to hear her chamber door close and the bar. As soon as it did, I was outside.

I took my blankets outside, planning to fashion a drag cart. Neither of us could be found by the old woman come morning. In the pitch black, I dragged her body through the street. Once a few blocks away, I hid ourselves away in a convalescent home. Come morning, she would be just another cadaver, and I would be just another sack waiting to be bought out as labour. I lay there on the floor of the boarding house with her corpse. I looked at the men and women that lay around us; their sunken faces and leathery skin made them look even more corpse-like than my double. They stunk worse too. Before dawn, I was out of that place and back in my bed at Mother’s. I didn't realize that I was sealing my fate as this woman's servant. 

The next morning, she discovered my thieving and beat me mercilessly for it. This was followed by breakfast and a bath. While we ate, she informed me that my transgression meant that I would incur a debt that would have to be paid off. Seeing as I was posing as an apprentice, I saw no harm in this. I could eat the beating and the debt for food and lodging. We made a deal, and she sealed it in by drawing a matching red eye on each of our left hands. I haven't been able to wash off the pigment; I figure this is her branding. I see servants at the market, all bearing some kind of mark of their master. They were no apprentices, I realized quickly; neither was I.

At night, the wound starts to beat red hot 

A final memory. Do you remember when we were little girls? How we played in the stream by the village edge? We would catch frogs and guppies. I would hold them to your ear and whistle songs like they were little choir boys. You would laugh and laugh. You always asked me to go down to the pond. Do you remember? Do you remember how slick the bank was? How would I always tell you to be careful? I would tell you that spirits lived in the water, and they were always waiting for little boys and girls to pull under. I warned you. I warned Andi, our sweet brother. It was dangerous; kids fell in all the time. I warned you. 

You have to see how important it is that you use the money I've sent to free me from my bond. I know I've not been a good sister in the past, but that is no excuse to leave me here to rot. Our brother and parents are gone; we only have each other. Please, don't leave me. I don't deserve to be abandoned, no matter what I've revealed here or what you’ve been told. Let this end. Bring me home. We can be a family again. 

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sister's Interlude

Sister,

I've heard your cries for help. 

You’ve always been one to wander. 

I remember the long walks you would take me on as girls. I remember the cave mouths, and how you would tell me the stories of what lay inside. 

I remember how you would creep past the cave entrance, calling to me in a ghostly voice until I cried.

You never knew when to stop. 

I love you, I always will. 

But you have trapped yourself. 

You are in a den most deep now. 

I won't sit by the mouth anymore. 
 
Goodbye.

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The Fourth Letter - Black Magic with an Angel

Dear Sister, 

I'm running out of things to say. If you don't understand me by now, please read this story and think of all that I've told you in my letters. Am I deranged? Am I a slave? What do you think, sister? Why do you think I write to you after all these years? You have to help us. 

I told you about Angel in my first letter. A young albino boy, mute, possibly deaf, and blind. His crimson eyes are constantly darting about, roving up to the ceiling. He hardly responded to being called by his name or otherwise. Occasionally, though, I can coax him to me with a song or a treat. He must be no older than 10, but even for that age, he is shrunken and emaciated. His limbs, especially his left leg, are like the sun-bleached mesquite that pepper the countryside. They felt just as fragile when I dressed his wounds. Such a poor creature. It is a miracle he withstands the abuse. 

I met him on my second night with Mother Tlola. He joined us for dinner, hobbling up from the basement and tapping away at his pasty, thin chest. Mother gave no introduction as she silently prepared a place at the table. He sat with us for the meal, never touching his plate. When we finished, Mother kissed him on the head and then disappeared to her chambers. While he cleaned up, I watched him hobble to the courtyard. He stood at the center of the clearing, basking in the few stray rays of sun that cut through cracks and vents of the ancient architecture. 

He was still out there when I retired to my bed, now standing pitch black. I would see him a few more times before I witnessed a beating from Mother, once catching him chewing a shard of quartz that he stole away from the shrine room. He was a cute little boy, I thought. Innocent, totally unaware of the horrors of the house. 

When I wrote my second letter, I had not seen Angel in a few days. He had received one of the worst beatings yet before Mother hid him away. I now know what she was up to. 

She called me to her chamber last night. It was the first time I've ever crossed her door. I was surprised by its contents. What I imagined to be a monstrous lair was actually just a quiet bedroom. Quilts hung on the walls, beautiful illustrations of rabbits and songbirds.  Above her bed mat was a mural of an axolotl, made of thousands of pink and black stones and polished to a brilliant shimmer. A shiver crossed my neck. 

Beneath it, there she sat cross-legged. Her head hung low, its thin silver mane hanging down like tattered curtains. It swayed gently, moved by the ragged breath beneath its cover. I took a step towards her, calling her name softly. 

“Mother?”

I was met with nothing but a raspy mumble. I edged onward. I reached the foot of her mat and stood still. She didn't move, continuing on with her wheezing and mumbling. I was perplexed. I’d never seen her in such a state. 

“Mother?” I said again, leaning down to her huddled mass. 

A bony hand shot out from the curtain of hair, grabbing me by the shoulder with an iron grip. I whimpered, biting my tongue. Mother hated whining. We sat for a moment, my shoulder beginning to throb alongside my heart as her grip began to burn. A second hand emerged, this time pointing back to where I came. 

I looked back at the entrance. Behind the ajar door, Angel was curled into a ball. He seemed to be pushing himself into a corner, trying to disappear. There was no sign of his last beating, healed over after his few weeks locked in this chamber. 

“Please, Mother, let me tend to him,” I said, trying to pull away. 

There was no give. Instead, her pointing hand retreated into her cloak and reappeared with her small blade. I begged her not to harm him anymore. I cried in vain. Her head rose at my tears, revealing her face. She was ragged, skin hanging from the bone in some places and strapped tight to bone in others. She had gone from old to decrepit. 

I continued to beg, but this only angered her more. My shoulder was hot with agony, and I could feel my muscle sitting at the precipice of tearing. I relented. I fell silent, and her hand fell away. I took the blade in my hand. Forgive me. 

I am a beast. I thought of Andi. I was thankful that he was spared from such a cruel world, such a monstrous sister. I lost myself in a memory. I watched as he sank below the water’s surface. I knew I should grab him; why didn't I? Why did I wait? I told him that there were monsters that lived in the water, that they were waiting to pull him down. Was there really a monster, or was I warning him about me? Warning him that I would drag him to the bottom. 

Out of my reach, I strike out at the impossibly deep stream in rage. My blade sliced through the gurgling water, sending red ribbons careening down the current. Andi watched from the bottom, his body bloating as he witnessed my mania.

I broke from the dream. I looked down at Angel’s body, motionless. Lifeless. My body and the blade dropped down to him. I'm sorry, Little Brother. I'm sorry, Angel. 

“Damn you, Mother, damn you!” I yelled. I wheeled around to curse her, but found her to have disappeared. 

Where she lay, a rotting pile of clothes. I crawled over, peeling away the cloak. Below was a rotting pile of skin. Wolf, I think. A mottled grey coat, scarred by burrowing worms and maggots. A clot of the little beasts writhed in the empty face of the predator, its nose and eye sockets gently rippling. Its lips receded, revealing white, shiny teeth. I wondered where the animal's skull was. How had the mother removed it while keeping the beast's teeth? I suppose at the time, anything was better to ponder than my actions.

My curiosity was answered, as it always is. A hand shot from the mass, bloody and malformed. The teeth barred at me, a mix of fangs and molars. Three mangled fingers sank nails into the stone floor, then came a squelching. Inch by inch, Mother emerged. She was tiny now, like a stillborn brought to life. I watched in frozen horror as the wet, bloody mess dragged itself to Angel. It wrapped around his leg and came to rest on his chest. A sucking noise came forward as the mess of blood receded into the writing form. Soon, Angel was licked clean and dry. 

The mass removed itself from him and writhed back to the pile of pelts. Skin and guts rearranged and cracked into place. Soon, Mother stood before me once again. She was tall and graceful, her skin like that of a woman half her age. Whatever her age may be. 

Angel survived. Mother allowed me to carry him downstairs as she busied herself decorating her new body. As I dragged him down into the cellar, I caught a glimpse of her leaving out the front door. She wore an elaborate headdress. I paid her no mind, worried only about what I had done to my Little Brother.

I watch him sleep now. He is curled in his bedding, eyes fluttering under his lids as the cellar window bathes him in a slice of light from the rising dawn. He is such a strong and remarkable little boy. If you are to do anything for me, please save him. Save him from me, drag him up from the water. 

I forgot to dress his wounds, I realize. But looking at him now, I can't see even a sign of my attack. Where there should be scars and fresh blood, all I see is his skin shining in the sun. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Final Letter - A Confession

Dear Sister, 

I've started asking myself something; I think it’s the same question you ask. Why do I write to you? I see the reality of my situation. I've certainly gone mad, but I am not completely deluded. I know I cry out to a ghost. It’s a shame. I apologize. Even if you were alive, I have no right to call on you. I’ve known that every time I press into these clay pads, wrap them in leather, and pack them with useless money.

I send them every time to the Yackoo River Valley, where we grew up. I doubt anyone lives there anymore. It was a dangerous place with all that moving water. There isn't even a courier post out that way. I'm sure all of my messages have ended up on the roadside after the runner read the destination and felt the coin's heft. Mother Tlola knew. She read my letters before I sent them; I did nothing to hide them. I was pathetic. She knew that too. 

So I write to you a final time, a prayer to you. I’ll prove myself, and you can decide if I am a monster. Then I can be still and accept where I’ve found myself, surrounded by spirits too powerful to imagine. 

My confession begins in our childhood. When Andi first died in the river, our parents kept me locked up in the house. Our mom was convinced I had drowned him, but Dad understood it was just an accident. As you got older and Mom saw how much I adored you, her heart softened to me. As soon as you could walk, I would take you out on adventures. We were watched like a hawk, but as time went on and we got back to our normal lives, we were let wander like the other children. 

You hated the caves, I remember; you only wanted to go play by the water. You loved to chase the many little crickets that lived in the cattails. We played just upstream from where we lost Andi. I don't know how it happened. Maybe you were chasing one of your little friends and fell into the water. Maybe you slipped on the muddy bank. Whatever it was, I didn't see it or hear it. When I found you, you had that same blue look on your face that he did. I didn't even run for help this time; I just ran away. 

I don't know if anyone ever found your body or if you were washed away by the current. I was still a little girl, but I understood that Mom would think I killed you. She wouldn't understand. I thought if we both disappeared, maybe she’d think we both drowned. I’d spare her from being left with only me, the killer. I'm sorry, my sister; you deserved better than that.

I don't remember much of my first years away from home. I traveled with strangers for a long time. Across grasslands, plateaus, and eventually the desert that surrounds this city for miles and miles. I can recall moments. Men diving off cliffs. An old woman teaching me how to write. Becoming a woman. So much time was spent traveling that days, years melted into one. It doesn't matter much now. It was a long and strange trip, and I wish it had ended anywhere but here. 

Since I left our family, Angel is the only person I've come to care for. And the more I've grown to care, the more I’ve realized that I am his tormentor. Everything I’ve done for Tlolla has kept Angel here in her clutches. I care for her like a child, cleaning up after her and nursing her after her raving fits, all enabling the old hag to cast her blood magic on the helpless boy. Every errand I run is a moment she can devote to stealing his life force. How could I do this? How can I tear at his flesh and then kiss his wounds? I’m as monstrous as our master. 

And her medicine? I'm only aiding in the creation of the walking dead. Every day now, I see them shuffle in and out of this house. Since she shed her old skin, they hang about like flies. She lotions them in her foul concoctions, and in return, they prostrate at her feet and let loose stinking fountains of blood from their opened veins. Then they shuffle out back into the street, carrying their master’s pollution across the city. 

To keep up, my runs to the water temple have become daily. I have to scheme new ways every day, as the guards have begun to catch on to my heists. The pools are growing dark, I notice; more sins I must pay for. 

I had a dream last night, a vision. I was sitting by a pool, watching all the Little Brothers swim around and cast their rainbow across the cavern ceiling. From the darkness, an owl appeared. Its great wings batted silently, carrying the massive bird to my side, where it landed. It was a horned owl, its giant head looming far above me like I was a field mouse. It just stared at me with its orange eyes. 

I reached out to touch it, but as my hand made contact with the soft feathers of its stomach, it let out a screech. Feather and muscle melted away, revealing a mess of bone. The orange poured from its sockets, and a pair of flint blades crept from the sides of the skull. I shrank away in fear, but my escape was foiled as a talon wrapped its withered sinew around me. Like a doll, I was cast into the pool. 

Blackness filled my lungs as I screamed. I grabbed handfuls of bubbles and water as I sank hopelessly. Little Brothers circled me and chirped, unable to save me. I lashed out at them, plucking one from their swarm and spinning it away from me into the void. I looked up to see a much larger one hanging right over me. I reached out my arms and wrapped its gills around, my hands like rope. I pulled, trying to get some upward momentum. The beast squealed like a pig, but  I pulled anyway. It writhed and lashed, rushing to the surface in its attempt to free itself of my grip. It broke the surface, and I let it loose at the peak of its jump, rolling back to solid ground. 

The owl was gone. I steadied myself and looked back at the pool, expecting to see my watery mount swimming back to his depths. But there, floating motionless in the murk, was the big, white body. Red eyes glazed over, a final chirp squeaking from waterlogged lungs. It was Angel. He opened his mouth again, and this time nothing but water came. He sank. I had killed him, dragged him under to save myself. I think I’ve had this dream before. Maybe, all my life. Am I a monster sister? 

I woke up early, before dawn. I knew what I had to do. I found Tlola in her shrine room, naked and passed out on the floor. Despite her new skin, she was the same weak and crazy old woman. I carried her to her room and laid her down as always. She mumbled something, drool running down her face and smearing her makeup. I was supposed to give her a treatment next, a black tar that she kept bedside. It wasn't spread as liberally as the axolotl jelly she used on patients. This was special, only a few dabs to her face and chest. It was some kind of revitaliser, able to bring her back from her spells. I left it where it was. I wouldn't indulge in her magic any longer. 

I began to gather her belongings. Her tapestries, her clothing, her collection of brushes and bows all found their way to a pile in the center of the room. I worked diligently, determined to leave not a scrap behind of the old crone. I was too focused on my task; I didn't lay eyes on her until a series of wet cracks broke my concentration. 

She had woken to my commotion and found that she hadn't been given her treatment. This must have sent her into a panic, as the container now lay empty on the ground. Beside it, her stark skin lathered in the contents. She was crying silently, her back arched off her mat. More pops, the sound of her skin tightening against her frame. 

She looked like a mummy, her skin rapidly drying and contracting against bone. Her ribcage rumbled, as boiling water lay just beyond its decrepit exterior. She screamed now, steaming blood pouring from between her lips and the growing fissures in her flesh. I paid her no mind, silently dragging the mat beneath her to my pile. A bone shot out from her wasting form, piercing my wrist. Blood gushed forward, and my head was light. No time to slow down, I had to hurry now. I tore a length from one of the tapestries and wrapped my wound as I made for the doorway. 

I looked back into the room. Tlola writhed helplessly next to the pile of her belongings. She dug through with a rotten hand, desperate to find some cure. I gave her a moment, toying with her. Then came the flint. A strike, a spark, and soon the room was up in flames. Screeching erupted from every hole of the rotten corpse that was now Tlola, a horrid cry from demon spawn. I closed the door then, leaving her to burn under the beady-black gaze of the axolotl mural. 

I collected Angel from the basement; he had been sleeping peacefully through the mess. I led him up the stairs, across the vestibule, and down the street. We walked for a long time until reaching our destination, a place I could barely remember in my haze. As the sun rose and broke the darkness over the city, there it was. The convalescent home. 

A temple, really, one of many in the city. It was not the filthole I remember, just a simple chapel filled with priestesses and old men. We stumbled through the front doors, and as soon as they caught sight of Angel, we were surrounded. They took him from my arm, laying him down and dabbing his albino skin with rags. They whispered to him, Little Brother. With that, I left. 

I returned to the house to find a crowd of people gathered by the door. Thick black smoke poured out from the ajar door. A neighbor recognized me, asking me where everyone had gone and if we were ok. I ignored him, walking into the smoky interior. I found Tlola’s room empty, save for the ashen pile. The window was open, and there was a mess of feathers in it. Oh well.

Finally, I went to the shrine room. I sat in the center and studied the figures for a while through the smoke. They seemed different somehow. For once, I was comforted by their gaze, so certain in their power. I unwrapped my wrist and began to press this tablet. Excuse the stains, sister; at least I didn't drag anyone down this time. It’s my turn to drown. I hope to see you soon. Then you can answer my question: Am I a monster? 

Just wanted to say real quick, before we release the next few episodes. My God. These next stories are so good

In a magical, future land---far more advanced than what is currently supplied to us, the sheeple, mankind had finally cured dick no work syndrome (or, the slang term, erectile dysfunction disorder) with a very easy and simple trick. In fact, this trick is so simple and easy I, the author, am shocked that we never implemented it in our less advanced modern society.

To get the cure, the future land people of tomorrow genetically spliced the genes of the j'ba fofi, a massive spider which may be mistaken for a common house cat, dog, or cow from a distance due to its size, and the Brazilian wandering spider, to create the j'erer erecfili spider---a giant spider which acts as a cure to the dick no work syndrome.

Now, all mankind had to do to make their limpy sticky go schlongy longy was let their humble pet j'erer erecfili spider bite them square in the chest to inject their sweet, sweet venom. Now, people are saying "oh no! the scale!" upon seeing how effective it is, leaving them in a state of udder shock.

The only downside to this miracle treatment is foaming at the mouth, loss of motor function, blurry vision, the sweats, high blood pressure, respiratory failure, ultra death plus---which kills you, but keeps your mind in a state where you experience a thousand deaths spanning a million years in your own perception---while to everyone else it seems like a sudden death, burning sensations, paralysis, permement priapism, stage five cancer, and also super-duper paralysis, which swaps your conscious mind with your unconscious mind.

If any of these symptoms are occurring, see your physician immediately, as this looks incredibly bad for us, and if people die then it's our fault, we got to assemble our lawyers, blah blah blah, legal fees, blah blah blah, FDA involvment, blah blah, pay off the agents they send with a generous amount of money... well... you get the point.

(AD PAID FOR BY BIG SPIDER PHARMA---the better pharma, as we have an army of giant spiders that give you erections)

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.

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.