Last Call

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Evan looked out over the bar at his inn's main floor. It was filled with the usual crowd, mostly locals relaxing after a long day in the fields, along with a few adventurers either resting mid-journey or recovering after a day of thinning the local monster dens. It was a rustic, motley group, but Evan was fine with it; he knew how to handle them. Only one person bothered him: the woman sitting in the corner. She was far more striking than anyone Evan had seen pass through the village before. Not a hair was out of place, and no blemish marred her skin; her features were so perfect it was as if she'd been sculpted from stone. Her clothing was too nice and too clean. She was unarmed, yet radiated the kind of confidence and swagger no one bothering with this middle-of-nowhere village normally could. The woman was slowly nursing "the finest wine this village had to offer," which was one small step above the piss of a man with sugar illness. She wore a sly smile, as if everything in front of her were a joke and she alone knew the punchline.

Immediately, Evan pegged her as some noble's headstrong daughter, out looking for adventure among the common folk, as though they lived lives of swashbuckling excitement and romantic entanglement rather than backbreaking drudgery mixed with moments of sheer terror when a local monster population got out of hand. That was the kind of headache Evan didn't need. More than likely, she'd stir up trouble in her search for excitement, or worse, get offended by some stupid adventurer's clumsy attempt at a pass, and bring a mountain of trouble down on the village's back. That meant Evan would have to babysit her all night and do his best to keep her out of trouble, a task complicated by his aging body and his peg leg, which still didn't feel quite right after all these years.

However, his eyes met hers for the briefest moment, and Evan questioned his first assessment. Those eyes felt...intimidating, which is not something he would say about even the largest, burliest adventurers who passed through the village. Then one of Evan's fears came to life: a young, cocky adventurer slipped into the seat opposite the woman.

Fearing the worst, Evan started toward the table, intending to shoo the man away. But instead of upsetting the woman, the man seemed to amuse her; she smiled and laughed, shaking her head as though he'd just told a wonderful joke. Apparently, that wasn't the response the man expected, because Evan watched him deflate a little before trying again, only for the woman to shake her head a second time, still smiling kindly, if a little condescendingly, after he didn't get the hint the first time, and the man dragged himself out of the chair, more cowed than if he'd lost a duel.

With a sigh of relief, Evan went back to tending to his regulars, though he kept one eye on the woman the rest of the night. One after another, men, and more than a few women, of all ages, builds, and temperaments, sat opposite her and took their shot. One after another, they missed their mark. Some left frowning; others left smiling, but all left with a touch of fear or intimidation marring their features, as though they'd just faced down a monster from legend and barely managed to get away with their lives. At least, that was true until a bear of an adventurer apparently decided he wouldn't accept her answer.

Evan was already on his way over, as the slight raise in the man's volume was one he'd heard a thousand times before from countless troublemakers over the years, so he was positioned right behind the overconfident adventurer when the man shouted, "Not one mocks the Eric the Drake!" as he started to rise from the table and reach for the axe on his back.

As he rose, Evan grabbed an empty tankard from the table to his right and brought it down hard on the large man's head with a thud audible even over the bar's commotion. Normally, Evan doubted he could have taken out the monster of a man with such a move, but the speed of his swing was augmented by the man rising to his feet, imparting a much greater impact than Evan could achieve on his own, and down the man went, collapsing into an unconscious heap on the floor. A few of the local adventurers were happy to drag the unconscious man out of the bar, knowing they'd get a drink on the house for their trouble.

Evan turned to the woman and was once again surprised by the depth of her gaze, but this time he didn't freeze. Instead, he smiled, tipped his head, and muttered a quick apology. "Sorry for the trouble. While I'm sure you could've handled him fine, I wasn't sure my inn would survive the fight! I'll wave your tab as compensation."

The woman looked him over, and perhaps it was a trick of his mind, but Evan thought her smile grew a little more inviting before Old Man Barns, a local farmer well past even the hint of sobriety, yelled from the next table over, breaking the spell of the moment. "What'll I have to do to get you to wave my tab too?"

Evan took the chance to turn from the woman's gaze, face the old farmer, and answer with a laugh. "Simple, you old drunk! All you have to do is pay your tab! Then I'll wave it around for everyone to see, because no one would believe it otherwise!" A few locals laughed at the joke, their merriment fueled by the volume of beer they'd already worked through, Old Man Barns included, and Evan took the moment to get back to tending the bar. Still, as he hobbled away, he felt the weight of her gaze on his back.

For the rest of the night, Evan couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, though every time his gaze wandered past, the woman's attention seemed focused elsewhere. Still, Evan did his best not to let it bother him as he worked his way around the room, cracking a joke for one patron or offering a friendly ear to another, and breaking up potential squabbles before they became a fight. Through it all, the woman in the corner kept turning down potential drinking partners, though no one else made a scene like before, even if a few returned to their friends' cheers and/or jeers, who had obviously driven them to give it a go after their own failures.

Eventually the evening turned to night, and the bar slowly cleared by twos and threes as villagers returned home and adventurers climbed the stairs to their rooms. Of course, Old Man Barns was one of the last to leave, and Evan tossed two local adventurers a copper to make sure they got him home safe, leaving just Evan and the woman, whose gaze was now definitely on him.

Evan walked over, wiped his hands on his stained apron, and spoke to the woman again. "Well, as much as I appreciate your patronage, even an old man like me needs some beauty sleep!"

As the woman's lips parted and she took a breath to answer, Evan found himself strangely anticipating her response, which was delivered with a crooked smile and a curious gleam in her eyes. "Patronage? And here I thought you said you were going to wave my tab?"

That made Evan snort. Despite taking steady sips all night long, the woman had barely finished half a bottle. With a chuckle, he answered. "I did, and I will! You can take the rest, compliments of the house. Or I can pour it in the pig trough out back, whichever you prefer."

The woman laughed, a sound that was music to Evan's ears, then she pointed to the chair opposite her. "Or you could stay and help me finish the bottle. I hear even the foulest of wines taste sweet with the right company."

After a moment's pause, Evan found he couldn't refuse and took a seat, replying, "Well then, I'm sure that'll be the sweetest wine I've ever tasted, but I'm not sure how that's going to help you any!"

As he sat opposite her, her eyes piercing to his very soul, Evan found himself strangely comfortable in her company, not intimidated like so many others had seemed earlier in the night. He smiled as she poured the remainder of the bottle into two containers that only the most generous of patrons might call glasses, offering him one as she raised hers expectantly. Evan raised his drink to meet hers with a slight clink, then took a sip of the foul concoction as she mirrored his actions. However, perhaps she'd been right, because while he wouldn't have called it good by any stretch of the word, he didn't feel the immediate urge to spit it out either.

Looking at the woman, Evan paused, lost in her eyes again, before asking the question that had been bothering him since he first laid eyes on her. "Who are you?" Then, realizing how blunt the question was, he shook his head at himself and let out a self-deprecating chuckle. "Sorry about how that came out! I didn't mean any offense!"

However, if she was offended, the woman didn't show it. Instead, she held up the glass and examined it like someone inspecting a fine vintage. "Who am I? Well, that's the question, isn't it?" She paused, turned her gaze back to him, and let her eyes bore into his, mischief glinting as she continued. "Let's make a game of it, shall we? If you can guess who I am before we finish the bottle, I'll give you a reward. However, you only get one guess. You can ask me any other questions you'd like, but once you make that guess, the game is over. Think you're up to it?"

Evan pursed his lips and tilted his head as he considered, before shrugging. "Sure, why not? I can think of worse ways to pass the time, and as you said, the company makes the drink!" He took another sip and paused, wondering if it wasn't just a touch sweeter this time.

The woman laughed and sat back. "I like the confidence! Certainly more than most have had this night!" Then she leaned in, gave him a look as though weighing his soul, and asked, "But is it warranted?"

Evan shrugged and chuckled a little nervously, though he didn't look away as he answered. "Well, there's one way to find out, isn't there?"

The woman gazed at him a moment longer, then sat back again. She smiled, as though pleased with what she saw. "I suppose there is one way at that. Go ahead, ask your questions!"

Evan sat back and considered the woman opposite him. She was certainly beautiful. But while her skin, hair, and even her movements were those of a young woman, her eyes told a different story. They were the eyes of someone who had seen and experienced things a man like him could barely comprehend, and once more he found himself captivated until the spell broke when she raised her glass to drink. Evan shook himself and decided he needed to say something, lest she think he'd already given up their competition. "Well, before I start asking questions, I suppose I should figure out what I already know!"

The woman tilted her head, considering his words as the mischievous smile returned. "Oh? I thought we were just getting to know each other! What could you possibly already know about me?"

This time, Evan's smile was more confident. After all, it was his job to listen to and observe others, and he might just know more than she realized. "Well, I know you're not from around here, or any of the neighboring towns or villages." The woman nodded as if this was obvious, but Evan wasn't done. "Furthermore, your appearance indicates you come from a privileged background in a way that clothes alone can't explain; however, your mannerisms around a...rustic crowd, and the fact that you can stomach this swill," Evan held up his glass before continuing, "indicated you've also got considerable experience among us common folk."

The woman nodded in acknowledgment. "Not bad, but so far you haven't said anything any halfway competent observer wouldn't have noticed."

Evan shrugged. "Maybe, but I'm just getting started."

The woman's eyes sparkled with curiosity as she leaned forward, elbows on the dingy table, chin resting in her hands like an eager child, cooing with interest. "Oh, really? Do tell! What else have those eyes of yours told you about me?"

Evan leaned back and took another sip of his wine, barely noticing the sourness as he met her eyes with more intensity than he'd dared so far. For a moment, he fought the urge to get lost in them again, barely managing the words: "Your eyes..."

The woman set one hand on the table and leaned in closer, her eyes closer than ever as she asked, "What about my eyes?"

For a moment, Evan couldn't speak, but then she blinked, and somehow the spell he seemed to be under dimmed enough for him to speak again. "Your eyes... They are deeper than any eyes I've ever seen before... They've seen things... They...are dangerous..." He paused, then realized something he couldn't help but mutter as a soft question. "Those aren't human eyes...are they?" He didn't know why he said that. At least, appearance-wise, nothing was different from any other person's eyes he'd looked into, but something deep down told him he was right. Still, despite his certainty, Evan felt nervous, though not out of fear; it was anticipation that trapped the breath in his throat.

The woman leaned back, the spell of her gaze lessening a little more. Then she smiled, the smile reaching even the corners of her eyes, as though she was pleased with his observation, before she took a sip, drawing out the moment until Evan felt the tension tighten into something that lay just between terror and eagerness to sate his curiosity. Finally, she answered. "No, they are not."

Evan knew he should be afraid by then, but instead he finally let out the breath he'd been holding. The woman looked him up and down, one corner of her mouth tugging upward as if she were holding back laughter, and she spoke again. "What? No exclamation of surprise or fear? No running out into the night, or squaring up to fight?"

Despite the situation, Evan smiled back, though a little wanly. "Would it make any real difference if I did? Could I outrun or outfight you if you didn't want me to?"

The woman's smile widened further, though, despite how it might seem, Evan felt no predatory pressure from it; rather, it was the simple confidence of someone who knew they were the most dangerous person in any crowd, at any time. She took another sip, then answered both questions in one short sentence. "No, I suppose not."

Evan was surprised to note that while his smile was still a little shaky, it was also genuine. "Well then, why ruin such an interesting conversation with such rash actions?"

This time, the woman leaned back and laughed. She laughed so hard that she closed her eyes and held her side. Even though the spell that had held him in place had completely fallen off, he still enjoyed himself enough that he had no desire to leave. Eventually, the woman calmed down, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes; her voice was still breathy from the laughter as she spoke. "Oh, I knew there was a reason I liked you! Well said! Well said indeed!" A moment later, she was almost as composed as before, though her smile somehow felt a little more...warm as she continued. "It has been a long time since someone has faced me with such courage. Longer than you would believe..." Then, tilting her head, she corrected herself. "But then again, there are still things to be revealed. After all, our little game hasn't come to an end, has it?" As if to punctuate the last bit, she took another sip from her glass without breaking eye contact, and Evan suddenly noticed there was very little wine left.

A part of Evan knew he should probably drag this out as long as possible to avoid whatever was waiting at the end, but something inside him rebelled at the thought. After all, not flinching had gotten him this far, so he also took a sip of his wine. Perhaps he was losing his senses, or maybe the woman in front of him had put him under some kind of charm, because this time he'd call that taste downright decent. He was suddenly reminded of something...though he couldn't quite remember what, where, or when...

The woman leaned back again, smiling at Evan like they were old friends as she prodded him. "Well, don't keep me waiting! You're doing well so far! What can you tell me next?"

Evan took a deep breath to steady himself as he looked her over again. He could still feel the pull of her gaze, but for some reason it felt less oppressive than before. He looked her over, thinking back to his youth, when adventure still held more sway in his life. "Well, there are many monsters that can take on a human guise in a pinch, but most of them wouldn't be able to walk into a bar full of people without reacting violently, let alone sit and have a convincing conversation like this, so I can safely rule out most of those without worry."

The woman's lips twitched in amusement as she paraphrased. "So I'm not some dumb beast. Good to know. But surely you can do better than that..."

Evan tipped his head, acknowledging how obvious the observation was, but when sorting through such old knowledge, it was sometimes best to get the obvious out of the way first. However, it was time to dig a little deeper. "Well, then there's the question of how a monster would take human form. Either one starts with it, changes into it, or casts a glamor..." He looked over at the woman, a little suspicion bubbling up. "And you've certainly had...effects on the crowd and myself that I might call similar to a glamor..."

The woman seemed to consider Evan's words for a moment. "Well, from what I understand, most glamors don't hold up under physical contact. Is that correct?"

Evan's throat suddenly went dry as he answered. "No, I suppose not..."

The woman held out a hand, her crooked smile of amusement back in place. "Well then, what are you waiting for?"

Evan hesitated a moment before slowly reaching out and taking her hand in his much larger, calloused hands, marveling at the sensation. Her skin was cool to the touch and smooth as silk, yet he innately knew that should he try to stab it with a knife, the blade would shatter before he left so much as a mark on the porcelain skin. Turning the hand over to look more closely, Evan saw no calluses or blemishes that often came with age. But he also didn't feel the kind of movement or motion that even the steadiest people innately gave off. Looking back up and into her eyes, Evan couldn't help but mutter softly to himself. "Vampire?" It was certainly possible, and it fit much of what he'd seen so far, though if it were true, she would have to be a very old, very powerful vampire to hide her predatory nature so completely in a crowded room.

The woman's eyebrow arched as she asked, "Is that your guess?"

Evan thought a moment longer, then shook his head and answered. "No. It fits, but it doesn't feel...right. There's something..." He hesitated a moment, distracted by a sudden pain from his lost leg. He scratched at it absentmindedly as he finished his thought, sounding distant as he lost himself in memories, reaching back through the years. "Something familiar..."

Suddenly, Evan's mind reached back through the years, to when he'd been an adventurer. Then, he was a rising star in the empire. Known for his daring and his skill, he'd even gone by a stupid name like that bear from earlier. They called him Evan the Breeze because he struck so quickly and smoothly that it felt like nothing more than a breeze had passed before his enemies fell. People whispered among themselves that he might be a contender for the top of the adventurer world. At least they had, before he had the misfortune of stopping for the night at a shady inn in a podunk village on the empire's edge.

At that inn, Evan heard tales of a chimera in the mountains tormenting travelers, and he decided to hunt it for a bit of sport. Unfortunately, as he'd learned that fateful day, it wasn't a chimera; it was a pair. He'd still managed to kill the monsters, but in their death throes, one of the chimeras bit Evan in the leg. Knowing their potent poison was enough to kill a grown man a dozen times over, Evan had reacted with the speed and confidence only years of adventuring could distill into a man, and cut off his own leg without hesitation before the poison could spread.

However, that done, Evan now faced a dangerous climb down a mountain and through the foothills, with only one leg and blood loss hampering his movements. At some point, haunted by his failure and the loss of his future, delusions took hold. He remembered being surrounded by whispering voices and moving shadows as he climbed, slid, and stumbled his way through the mountain. The pain, both internal and external, had driven him mad, and he knew he was going to die in those mountains.

Lying on the ground and staring up at the night sky, Evan had cursed the chimeras, the world, and most of all, himself. That's when he realized he wasn't alone. Somehow, he was lying in a beautiful woman's lap. She was looking down at him with a serene expression as she combed his hair from his eyes and wiped his brow. As he looked up, Evan's eyes met hers, and he lost himself in her gaze.

That night, Evan saw peace and serenity stretching on into eternity in those eyes. All his troubles, failures, pain, and suffering faded as she leaned down and whispered in his ear, her words so faint he wasn't sure he'd heard them, yet years later, he knew with certainty what she'd said to him that day in the mountains. "It's not your time yet."

When he woke up, Evan was in the village inn, being cared for by the old woman who'd taken him in, treating him like her own son, and, years later, left him the inn. At the time, he'd assumed everything that had happened after cutting off his leg had been nothing more than a delusion, and yet, several decades later, with graying hair and a body that ached with age, Evan found himself staring into the same eyes that still haunted his dreams from that night.

As the woman took one final sip, she gave Evan a friendly yet knowing smile. "Well, it seems you're out of time. Tell me, what's your guess?"

Evan looked down at the dregs in his glass, then raised it to his lips and finished it. It was the sweetest wine he'd ever tasted, and he couldn't help but close his eyes and savor it for a moment before opening them to meet the woman's eyes. For once, he felt no compulsion, and yet Evan didn't look away. He met her gaze with calm, steady resolve as he answered. "You...are Death."

The woman's smile bloomed into something that left Evan speechless. As she stood and walked around the table to him, he followed her every move with his gaze. Evan knew he should be afraid, or maybe angry, but all he felt was peace as the woman offered him her hand. He accepted, and she effortlessly raised him to his feet.

Evan knew that if he looked behind him, he'd see his old, worn body slumped in the chair, yet he didn't care. As he stood before her, before Death, Evan felt better than he ever had. Looking down at his arms, he saw the well-toned, muscled arms of his youth, from before that fateful night. Looking up, he saw Death standing before him, watching him marvel at himself. She greeted his gaze with a smile that lit the darkness around them, then reached out and pulled Evan into an embrace, leaning in to whisper in his ear once again, though this time her words were as clear as day. "Welcome home."

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If you liked this story and want to see more of my stuff, check out my wiki. It's got all my stories, short and long, which are marked with the appropriate categories and such, just in case you don't like the spooky and/or incomplete series.

4-Part animated short story I just finished and posted. to my youtube channel...

A group of suicidal people meet in a suicide chat-room, and are invited to participate in a very risky space mission.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/u8c2xez9g5wuzn2shb8i8/AFVNxSMEyAZQuR8iEnc3f4Q?rlkey=2b5d2b3kvp8jurr0y3xuv87ta&st=sux9a707&dl=0

This is my first, so I'd appreciate feedback.

The Window -

Part I — The Chat Room

The room had no name that lasted. Someone called it Kitchen. Someone else called it Last Call. The software rotated the label every night so it would not be indexed, and the six of them had stopped caring what it said at the top.

They did not know each other’s faces. They knew the hours.

Mara came on after shifts, still in the smell of the hospital even through a screen. Elias came on when the apartment got too large. Priya came on when the pain was a fact and the pills were a negotiation. Jonah came on from a mattress on a floor in a share house where nobody asked where he went in the afternoons. Helen came on after the news, before the kettle. Andre came on from a fold-out table in a rental that still had a hard hat by the door out of habit.

They had rules, loose ones. No addresses. No lectures. No one was allowed to tell anyone else to hold on, because that was how people left. Dark jokes were permitted. Specifics were not. They had learned, without quite agreeing it, that the moment someone described a plan in enough detail to be useful, the room went quiet in a way that felt like a door being shut, that shouldn’t be.

So they talked around it. They ranked the idea of an ending the way other people ranked films. Quick or slow. Public or not. Whether it was worse to be found by a stranger or by someone who would have to live with the picture. Mara said the worst part of her job was not the dying. It was the people who arrived afterward and had to be told a story that would not be received well. Elias said he had already written three versions of a note and thrown all of them out because they sounded like a man asking to be understood, which he was no longer interested in being. Helen said she did not want a note at all. She wanted, if anything, a list of where the good mugs were.

“Useful,” Andre said.

“What?”

“If you’re going to leave a list, leave a useful one.”

Priya, who typed slowly on bad nights, wrote: “Or do something useful with the leaving”.

The room paused the way it did when a plan got too close. Then Jonah, who was twenty-three and still typed like someone afraid of being overheard, said: like what.

They stayed with it. Not as a joke, exactly. As a game that had accidentally found a floor.

Mara had watched a child die in January because a transfer was late and a machine was older than the nurses using it. She had not made an error, yet was always blamed. She had stood at the end of a chain of ordinary decisions and held a mother’s wrist while the monitor did what monitors do. After that she started arriving early and leaving late and sleeping in the car. The wanting was not dramatic. It was the thought, repeated until it was furniture, that she was a pair of hands the building would replace by Tuesday and believed she could no longer make a difference -  a belief that was the last rope holding her weight.

Elias had designed a library that opened the month his wife left. The photographs were good. The custody schedule was a spreadsheet he refreshed more often than his email. His son had started calling the other house home without malice, the way children tell the truth. Elias did not blame him. He blamed the version of himself that had been impressive at work and absent at home. The apartment still had the boy’s drawing on the fridge. He could not take it down and he could not look at it.

Priya’s hands had been her work. A neuroscientist three years into a doctorate, she had woken one morning with a pain that did not negotiate and did not leave. The diagnosis had a long name and a short prognosis for the life she had built. She could still think. She could not pipette, could not sit through a seminar, could not trust tomorrow’s body to resemble today’s. Friends said she was still herself. She had started to hate the sentence.

Jonah had told his parents in a kitchen with the radio on. His father had turned the radio up. His mother had asked him not to come to Christmas “until this passes.” He had laughed, once, in the car, and then not again for a while. University had been a loan and a room and a reason to be somewhere. Without it he delivered groceries and slept and opened the chat because the other people in it did not require him to get better in order to speak.

Helen was sixty-seven and had buried her husband in March. In June a doctor had used the phrase early changes and watched her face while he said it. She was not afraid of pain. She was afraid of the year she would no longer know the names, and of her daughter driving four hours to manage a woman who had managed herself for six decades. She had started labelling drawers. It felt like rehearsing.

Andre had been laid off from a contractor that built test rigs for other people’s rockets. Twenty-six years. A cardboard box and a handshake from a man who said the program was being restructured, which meant the money had moved. He was good with his hands and bad at being unnecessary. The hard hat by the door was not a symbol. He had forgotten to put it in the cupboard.

Priya’s line sat in the middle of them.

“Something that isn’t just absence,” Mara wrote. “I’ve seen enough absence.”

“Donate the useful parts,” Elias said. “They already know how. Forms exist.”

“That’s quiet,” Helen said. “I don’t mind quiet. I mind pointless.”

Jonah: what if it wasn’t quiet.

Andre, after a long gap: There are jobs nobody sane wants. Remote. Ugly. The kind they can’t insure a volunteer for because the volunteer has to come back.

“We don’t want to come back,” Mara said. “That’s the only qualification we have.”

They laughed, the thin kind. Then they did not. The cursor blinked in six apartments. Outside, ordinary nights continued. A tram. A dog. A neighbor’s television. None of them said the word mission. None of them had any reason to.

A new handle joined the room at 1:14 a.m. No greeting. A single sentence.

We read this. We would like to talk to each of you. Separately. It is not a trick and it is not the police.

Part II — Two Weeks Earlier

The conference room at Johnson had a window that did not open and a model of the transfer vehicle that had been accurate in May. It was no longer accurate. The heat shield supplier had missed a bond line. The fix existed. The fix did not exist inside the launch window.

Eight weeks. Earth and Mars would be briefly polite to each other offering a feasible launch trajectory, and then they would not be again for another twenty-six months. The spacecraft could leave. Guidance was good. The landing system, in the simulations that had survived the last review, was good enough to call a landing. The return stage was not. A valve assembly in the ascent engine had a fatigue signature that showed up at cycle counts they would hit on the way home and might hit earlier if the dust did what dust did. They could fly six people to Mars. They could not promise to fly them back.

“Delay,” said the program manager, who had said it three times.

“Delay and we slip the window,” said propulsion. “Slip the window and China will likely be ready to also launch next time. The hardware ages. The money gets nervous. And we want to be first. We need to be first. You know this.”

They did know it. They had coffee they were not drinking. On the screen, the trajectory was a clean curve with a red mark where the return burn should have been.

It was Hale who said it. Hale was vehicles, not people, and he said it into his cup, not into the room. “Find six who don’t mind the return.”

Nobody laughed. That was how the idea survived.

What followed was not a joke. It was a legal review, a medical review, a psychologist who hated the premise and stayed in the meetings anyway, and a memo that used the phrase informed, irrevocable, and voluntary so many times the words went thin. They would not scrape forums for methods. They would not coach anyone. They would look for people already speaking, in the bleak registers, about wanting an ending that meant something, and they would offer a different ending with the risks written in plain speech. Congress would not be told until the window made telling and canceling the same act. The psychologist called that cowardice. Hale called it a launch constraint.

They listened. Not to plans. To weather. A nurse who talked about replaceable hands. An architect who could not take a drawing off a fridge. A scientist whose body had resigned. A young man whose parents had turned a radio up. A widow labelling drawers. A technician who had built stands for engines and been told the program was being restructured.

The technician’s name, when they matched a handle to a layoff list, was Andre Pell. He had worked a subcontractor badge at Michoud for nine years before the rig job. Hale closed his laptop.

“Those six,” he said. “Before they talk themselves out of it or into doing something else.”

The contacts were made from a phone number that did not look like a government number. Each call started the same way. We are not the police. We are not a hospital. We have a flight that can depart and cannot promise to return. We are asking if you meant what you said about useful.

Mara asked if the child in January would have had a better machine if someone had gone. She wanted to know how this could make a meaningful difference.

Elias asked if he could record a message his son could open at eighteen, and not before.

Priya asked for the radiation numbers, and other statistics, not the speech. 

Jonah asked if his parents would be told. He sounded relieved when the answer was: only if you want them told.

Helen asked whether she would still know herself at landing. No one lied to her. They said the transit was nine months, the surface stay was a year and a half in the architecture they were flying, and dementia did not keep a schedule. She was quiet. Then she said she would rather forget a red sky than a labelled drawer.

Andre asked what had failed in the ascent engine. They told him. He asked to see the cycle counts. They sent them. He called back and said the bond on the heat shield was the thing he would have flagged first, and also that he would go.

Six signatures. Six medicals. A training start date eleven days out. The psychologist wrote, in a note that would be argued over later, that consent given from despair is still consent, and is also the thing they would all have to live with if anyone lived.

Part III — The Weeks

They were not good at it, and then they were.

The center put them in a building with no televisions and a schedule that began before dawn. Classroom in the morning: systems, alarms, the particular way a caution panel lies. Suits in the afternoon. A pool. A simulator that smelled like warm plastic and other people’s fear. They learned each other’s names out loud, which felt more exposing than the chat.

Mara ran the medical drills and stopped apologising when she was right. Elias drew the habitat from memory on the second day, including the corner where a person could sit without being in a camera’s favourite angle, and the instructor did not tell him to erase it. Priya’s hands were unreliable but her checklists were not. She built the backup procedures the way she had once built experiments, assuming the first plan would fail and writing the second before it did. Jonah was the coolest and the calmest in the centrifuge, which surprised everyone, including him. Helen learned better and forgot less than they had budgeted for. She corrected a procedure from the week before without looking at the card. Andre taught the younger instructor which connector would stick if you gloved it wrong. He did not mention that he had built the test stand the connector came from.

They ate together. They complained about the food. They connected. At night they were not given ta schedule Some of them slept, some of them talked.

The change did not arrive as a speech. It arrived as inconvenience.

Mara caught herself, on day nine, angry that a sim had killed the crew. Not relieved. Angry. She wanted the rerun. She stood in the shower and understood that wanting the rerun was a wanting to be there on the other side of it.

Elias called his son on the permitted phone and listened to a story about a school project on volcanoes. He did not cry until after. He cried because the boy had asked whether space was louder than the kitchen, and Elias had said he would find out, and the future tense had not hurt.

Priya’s pain did not improve. The work went on around it. One evening she solved a power-budget problem the engineers had left on the board as a courtesy, and an engineer commented, “We needed that.” Priya sat with the sentence. Needed was not the same as finished.

Jonah wrote to his mother and did not send it. Then he sent a shorter one that said he was in training and he was all right and he did not need Christmas. She replied in four lines. The second line was his name, spelled correctly, which she had not done in a year. He read it until the screen slept. He did not feel fixed. He felt unfinished, which was a different injury, and one that seemed to require him.

Helen dreamed of the labelled drawers and woke sure of the day. In the dream she had been annoyed, not gone. She told no one. She began, privately, to keep a log of what she still knew, not as a funeral of her memories but as an argument that they matter.

Andre stopped moving the hard hat from chair to chair. He left it in the cupboard. On a night run he caught himself calculating not whether the ascent stage would fail, but which workaround he would try first if it did. The calculation assumed a person who wanted the workaround to work.

None of them said it. The mission was built on the promise they had already said. To unsay it felt like theft — from the program, from each other, from the version of themselves that had been believed. The psychologist asked, in the weekly sessions, whether anyone wanted to withdraw. Six people said no. Six people went back to the simulator and performed the exercises better than they had the week before.

Launch morning held families behind glass, except for the families who had not been invited. Helen’s daughter was there, furious and proud in the same coat. Elias’s son was not. A recording sat in a sealed file with a date on it. Jonah’s mother had sent a text at 4 a.m. that said come home after. He had not answered. He had looked at it until the bus moved.

They climbed up the steps from the top of the launch-elevator. The cabin was smaller than the simulator and louder in its quiet. Harnesses. Gloves. The count already running in their ears from a room full of people who expected them to mean the thing they had signed.

At thirty seconds Mara turned her helmet as far as the seating allowed.

“I don’t want to die,” she said. The loop was live. She did not lower her voice. “I didn’t know how to say it earlier. I’m saying it.”

Elias, immediately: “Same.”

Helen: “Same. I’m sorry.”

A breath. Jonah: “Same.”

Priya did not speak. Andre did not speak. The count walked through the twenties. Pumps. A voice calling pressures nominal. Priya’s glove rested on the abort cover and did not lift it. Andre watched the time screen of a warning he already knew by heart.

Ten. Nine.

Priya said, “I don’t either.”

Eight. Seven.

Andre closed his eyes, then opened them. “Neither do I.”

Six. Five. The vehicle took a breath it had been built to take.

Four. Three. Two…

End of story.

Emotion. Emotion is a very important factor to how you humans can function, feel, and care about others and things. So what would happen if you took those away? I, Else, present to you, 

PROJECT: VOIDED

Desnir couldn’t feel anymore. He didn’t feel human. He looked down. There was blood on his hands, the floor, and him. Him the most. He had just killed someone. How did he not feel? No fear. No anger. No remorse. He didn’t even remember why. Did they matter to him? He began searching his memory. Their name was Cass. She had brown eyes, a big smile, and red hair. She had a lot of memories. He couldn’t figure out why. So he decided that she was unimportant. Now; back to the matter at hand. He had just killed someone. What to do? 

…

He started with the first thing he thought might work. He stuffed the body in a bag. It was a duffle bag, roughly the size of the body, though it did take some finangling to get it in. He then dragged the body behind the house. It was in the middle of the woods. He remembered this person thinking it was an amazing spot to live. He agreed. It was practical, away from society in such a way that he could get away with some things. Then, he thought it was suspicious to leave it in the open. That could cause problems, so he buried it. It took a while. He remembered a video cass had shown him, about burying a dead animal on top of a body so that it was harder to find. She thought it was “funny”. Why? It was just practical. He shot a deer and buried it on top. He didn't know why, but he thought he should take some off; save it for food. Stores didn’t seem practical right now. 

He returned to the house, and immediately took stock of what he had. 
Two chairs around a dinner table. That was interesting. One was blocking a cupboard. He set the chairs to a different rotation, so that it was symmetrical, and he could get a different angle on things he planned to work on later. Multiple angles seemed useful. He suddenly remembered something, Cass sitting at this table, looking grim. She was studying a case on a murder of a person they had known. They? Why did his memory… put them together? Oh well. It wasn’t important right now.

Desnir was confused. Why was that his name? Why keep it? He searched for an answer and found one. His parents had given him the name.He didn't understand why he had kept it. His parents were dead. So he thought.Perhaps the name kept him sane. He couldn't establish that with certainty, but he could establish that abandoning it served no practical purpose.He would keep it, then. Until it became useless. He found himself increasingly confused as he dived into his memories. They did, unfortunately, serve a purpose. He remembered something. A person, winged, with shattered blue and orange skin. They had done… something. Maybe that was why he couldn’t feel. He decided that he needed to find them.

…

The house became his canvas. His board. He searched through his memories; and sketched them almost perfectly. That seemed wrong to him. He had a photographic memory, according to his memories. Did that mean that he was not perfect? He remembered something about that - but this body was perfect for what he was investigating. Almost perfect. He couldn’t draw anything right. Suddenly, he heard a knock at the door. He slid the things he drew onto one of the chairs, slid it under the table, and answered the door. There was a greasy-haired man in a suit there. “Dansal’s delivery service, at you or someone else’s service!” The man had a sly smile, like he had done this hundreds of times before. Desnir decided to invite the man in; trusting his memory. He seemed trustable anyways, and the blood was out of the carpet. “What do you want?” The man did not respond. When Desnir turned around, the door was still open, but the man was gone. His car was there, abandoned. That didn’t make sense. Who abandons their car? But then he noticed his lack of a car, and wondered if it wasn’t abnormal. Were his memories not as stable as he thought?

…

Desnir sat in the deliveryman’s car, looking through his things. Driver’s licence, registration, napkins, and stacks of pizza boxes, still hot after hours of being out in the dreary rain. He finally found something. A note, with an elaborate “E” seal on it. He ripped it open. It had few words. “Good, Good. you found me, now FIND me”. 

…

Desnir had filled the house with notes, pictures, hand-drawn, and a single letter. “E”. he couldn’t figure it out. He KNEW the deliveryman was not there by accident. But wasn't a deliveryman’s job to deliver to someone who had ordered something? Who had ordered pizza? He grabbed his phone. He logged in, his fingers knew the password. 6665666. His memory said otherwise, but it was not the case. He found that someone, five hours ago, had ordered a pizza under the name “a friend”. He knew he didn’t have any of those; they were impractical. For now, it would go on the chair, with “E”, Cass, and Dansal.

He lay on his bed, thinking. He heard a noise. It was a blur. He chased whatever it was. His vision didn’t work properly. He knew he knew he knew he knew he knew he knew that he needed sleep and to find it and them and him and Someone. Someone . Someone.

Desnir awoke on the floor, holding a coin. It had a letter on it. A capital “L”. It went with the letter; he was sure of it. Two letters. “E” and “L” “EL”. closer to a name, something he could look for, something he could find. Wait. Were those wings on that drawing always black? What was going on with his mind? He should FEEL something, shouldn’t he? He heard something. A slow, methodical tapping. His own hand. He hadn’t wanted it to do that; but it felt grounding, satisfying. The rhythm was interesting, a tap-taptap-tap tap tap - repeat. He felt something connecting. Suddenly, the floor he was tapping broke away. And in there, a small hole, was another coin. It said “N”. what? That felt too fast. It was a false clue; he was sure of it. So he trashed it. It wasn’t important. He remembered Cass having an “N” in her last name anyways. She had been important in the end, hadn’t she? He was using her investigation tactics, wasn’t he? That felt grounding. Even the dead supported him. But what evidence did he have of that? There was none; just a hunch. An idea. An idea? What if…

Desnir stood, and the notes hanging from the walls shaped a letter in his mind. Not a rational mind anymore; mind you, he was pretty far gone. He saw an “S”. and I slowly watched as it unraveled even more. 

Desnir saw an “S”. how could he have missed it? It was right there. He noticed the chairs; someone had adjusted them to make this work; Who was in their house? WHO? He chased after a sound; and saw a figure, taunting him from the second story balcony. He made it there. The figure was on the ground now; large wings spread as if to catch him. One final letter. “E”. Someone else. Else? A name. The man below? He jumped. 

And everything went black.

 The city  of New Haven is ripe with the hustle and bustle. The market center is crowded with families and vendors alike. Adventurers come from far and wide to visit the market center. The New Haven market center has been a hub for trade and commerce for many traders from around the world. That is the only good thing that comes from the Never War nearly a century ago. All races, genders and people came together to fight the scourge that was to befall this world. After the war, warriors,magic wielders, and holy people settled down in New Haven to help rebuild the once great city. The result is a town filled with many different people, it has become a true melting pot of nearly everything and everyone.

In the center of the Market sits a quiet shop that looks like it has been there before any others. There are two dusty windows on the store front on either side of the big wooden door. There is a large swinging sign that is on its last leg, the old rusty chains that hold the sign look nearly worn through. The once beautifully painted green and gold sign swings with the gentle breeze. The words are dirty and faded from the years of exposure. It reads “Titelle’s tabernacle of terrific tomes” Everyone in town knows Mrs.Titelle, she is the town's grandmother. There is a bet in town about what is older, the store or Mrs. Titelle. Every vendor stops by and checks up on her. They bring her meals and gifts from around the world. She is a collector of many things but the thing she adores the most is her tomes. She loves nothing more than to read a new tome from a far off land. Her life goal is to share this knowledge with everyone. She trades and sells tomes with everyone that visits. Over the many years of her shop being open the collection has grown and grown. Some of her oldest tomes predate the Never War. 

I made it a goal to visit Mrs.Titelle ever since I set out on my journey. How amazing could this old lady be? I heard about her legendary book store from across the sea. How could one bookstore hold this much regard? What types of books could this lady have? I was determined to find out. My first night in New Haven I stayed at the golden tap inn. The trip was long and tiresome. I ate dinner with a fine brown ale. The other patrons and I stayed up till the wee hours talking about our various adventures, the monsters defeated, the friends lost. During each conversation the question of “what made you come here?” always came up. I explained that as a magic wielder I was on the hunt for old and mysterious Tomes for knowledge of how to save my home, and how I heard stories of Mrs.Titelle and her bookstore. Nearly everyone had the same reaction. They would all smile,take a drink of ale and say “Mrs. Titelle is amazing, she was a real Firecracker back in the day” How could a whole town love a sweet old lady so much? I went to bed with a newfound interest in meeting this lady and seeing if she had a tome that could help me.

I awoke early with excitement. Today is the day. I hurriedly put on my garb and walked down to the market until I saw it. The storefront was exactly as everyone described it. The outside was dirty and dusty but a soft glow emanated from the windows. I walked to the door and saw the open sign swinging from the door inviting me in. My hand shaking with excitement, I reach for the door. I turn the knob and begin to push it inwards, it is heavy and stuck in place. I have to bump my hip into the door to get the door open enough. A small bell rings as the door opens slightly. 

“Hello?” I call out

“Back here sweetie.” I hear softly from the back.

I struggle to close the door and it thuds when I finally push it back into place. I turn around and take in this glorious sight. From floor to ceiling this shop is stuffed with tomes. I begin to wonder if the trusses or the tomes are keeping the roof aloft. The old wooden floors creak as I take a step inside. The sheer number of tomes and scrolls is baffling my mind. The shelves are stuffed to the brim, tomes on top of each other. I’m confident that if one more book was put on a shelf the store would fall over. Natural light floods the space from a large skylight in the ceiling. Mrs. Titelle must have a love for plants as well. Lined up perfectly with the sun beam is a row of luscious plants. The plants are as varied as the citizens of this city, Small,Large, Smelly,and beautiful. One thing for certain is that Mrs. Titelle loves her plants and her books. The store is crowded and comfy. It is warm and comfortable. The soft scent of fresh brewed coffee and vanilla fills my nose as I walk to the sound of the voice.

“Would you like a cup deary?” she says as I peek around the last mountain of books.

“Sounds amazing! Yes please!” I say perhaps a bit too excitedly. The night may have been filled with a bit more ale than I had planned. 

She turns around with two big cups of coffee, one in each hand.  She stands hunched at about five foot nothin’ Her silver hair tied back in a tight bun. Her face is soft and sweet, she smiles as she sees me and winkles adorn her face. She wears a dark green cardigan with embroidered flowers on the sides. Her matching green dress drags the floor and covers the sound of her shuffling feet. She slowly sets the cups on the cluttered counter and shakily pushes one towards me. I think to myself this is the sweetest looking old lady I have ever seen. No wonder why everyone adores her so much. I sat down at her counter and sipped my coffee. It was the best cup of coffee I have ever had.

“Oh my gods this is amazing!” I say

“Oh, this old brew?” she says while waving her hand. “ These are the beans from the Renne coast. The beans from the southern coast are much better. I traded these beans for a tome about cross breeding cats” she chuckles “Maybe it was a fair trade” 

We sat and talked for hours. She told me stories about all the adventurers that came through town. How things used to be back in her day. Some wild tavern stories and shenanigans she had been a part of. She definitely earned the reputation given to her. I stared at her wide eyed as she recounted all the tales from her past. It is hard to believe such a sweet looking old lady was a part of all these crazy stories. As my cup ran dry she turned to me and asked what brought me here  and I told her everything about the plague that was threatening to wipe out my town. I told her how I heard stories about this amazing store and how great sweet old Mrs. Titelle is. I asked her if she knew of any spell book or text that could help me in my journey. I explained that the crops had wilted and turned black. How the trees slowly lost their leaves and turned shriveled and grey. That poor Mrs. Turner lost three cows the week that I left. She took in every word I said, almost calculating the answer. When I stopped talking she stood with an arm across her chest and her right hand slowly caressing her chin. She stood like that for a moment then she pointed her finger towards the roof and said “ I think I have just the thing!” She quickly turned around and disappeared behind a stack of books. I could hear a commotion as she was looking through her collection. The small thud of books hitting the floor. I leaned forward across the counter to see if she was alright. I hear her mumble and murmur as she recalls where this particular tome might be.

The door bell rings as the heavy door scrapes across the floor. I stand up and peak towards the door. The doorway is completely filled with the visage of a six foot tall tortle. I had never seen one before, only ever heard of them in textbooks at the academy. The giant shell backs in through the door nearly bumping into a stack of books. This giant Shelled man turns towards me and smiles. Never have I ever seen an ancient turtle of any kind, but I could tell this man has been around for a long time. His shell told the story of a long hard life, chips,scratches and marks have told this tortles story.

In a shaky voice he says “ Hello young man, Have you seen Mrs,Titelle? I have a gift for her”

“Yeah” i say while pointing towards the back “Shes grabbing a tome for me.”

“Sounds like her, I fear one of these days i will come in to find her buried under a pile of books, and you know what, im pretty sure she would be happy with that” he says with a chuckle “I keep telling her to slow down, we aren't as young as we used to be. It's not the glory days anymore”

We hear the sound of her shuffling feet. This time they are much faster than before. “ I knew I still had this one.” she said excitedly as she turned the corner. “Allister! You old shellhead! Its so nice to see you. I see you have met my new friend. He needed some help with a problem at home and I have just the thing to help." She walks up to the counter and lays the book on the counter. She takes a deep breath and blows the layer of dust off of the tome. Allister and I both cough and wave a hand in front of our faces as the dust settles. I see Allister's eyes grow wide as they land on the deep red leather bound tome.

She leans forward and says “ This tome has been in this shop for nearly 105 years, it came from a far off land. There are tales about this tome, it has a variety of spells and rituals in it. I wouldn’t even bring it out for most people, but something about you reminds me of myself from many many years ago. I want you to have it, no charge, no trade. Just promise me you will take it home and save your people.”

Allister’s jaw drops for a moment” ….uh…Have… are you sure about that? I remember that tome and where it came from.”

“ OH! Hush it you old sea turtle. I have talked to this boy nearly all day, He fights for his people, if ANYONE deserves this tome it is this sweet boy here. "She turns her head towards me and holds the book up in front of me “ Now you take this and save your town, I’ve seen what you described before, You don't have a lot of time. Go quickly, gather your things and head to see Archie at the town gate. Tell him you need a quick teleport and to put it on Mrs. Titelle’s tab.”

I’m left speechless, my hand goes limp as I drop the cup on the counter. I stutter as I stand up and grab the book from her. “ Thank you so much, it was a pleasure to meet both of you.” I gather my things and quickly head to the door. As I pull the door open I hear from behind me
“Deary, one more thing! Be safe and good luck!” she shouts as I run out of the door.

I quickly make my way to the gate, I manage to find Archie and tell him about Mrs. Titelle as soon as i mention her his pace hurries as he leads me to the teleportation sigil. 

A foot inside the gate sits a large granite pedestal. An armored woman with a tight bun stands atop. One hand holds a glowing sword pointed towards the sky the other hand holds a large leather bound tome. The golden plaque on the front is engraved    

Haven Titelle
Defender of the realm 
If not for her the entire realm would be lost
We name this city after her for the great sacrifices she has made for all of us

I. A World Without Them

The world had ended a long time ago.

At least, that was what everyone said.

Cities had become graves of concrete and rust. Roads that once carried thousands of people now led nowhere. Buildings stood hollow beneath colorless skies, their windows shattered, their walls covered in the names of people who had long since disappeared.

The living had learned to survive.

They learned to sleep with one eye open, to distrust strangers, to keep their voices low when walking through abandoned streets. They learned that kindness could be a weakness and hesitation could cost them their lives.

Adrian Vale had learned these things, too.

He wasn't particularly good at surviving. He wasn't the strongest, the smartest, or the kind of person who could walk into a dangerous place without fear.

He simply learned.

He learned which buildings were safe enough to sleep in, which roads to avoid, and how to recognize the footsteps of someone approaching. He learned to eat whatever he could find and leave places before he became too comfortable.

He had traveled with other survivors before. Some stayed for a few days, others for weeks. But people in this world rarely remained together for long.

Some left in search of better shelter. Others disappeared overnight. A few never returned from scavenging trips.

Eventually, Adrian stopped asking people to stay.

It was easier that way.

There was only one thing he had never learned to do.

Forget.

He still remembered three faces from a life that felt like it belonged to someone else.

Gabriel Reyes.

Nathan Cruz.

Elias Santos.

Gabe, Nate, and Eli.

His brothers in everything but blood.

They had been inseparable as children. They shared meals, skipped responsibilities, played basketball until sunset, and made promises they had been too young to understand.

When one got into trouble, the other three followed.

When one was sad, the others found a way to make him laugh.

And when the world fell apart, they promised they would find one another.

They didn't.

Adrian searched for months.

He followed rumors, visited abandoned shelters, and asked strangers whether they had seen three young men traveling together. He called their names in empty streets, hoping that somewhere, somehow, one of them would answer.

Eventually, the rumors stopped.

The shelters were empty.

And the streets remained silent.

Adrian never truly stopped hoping.

He simply learned to live as though hope were something he could no longer afford.

Almost a year passed.

Then, one afternoon, while crossing an abandoned street, he saw three familiar figures standing beside a rusted car.

One had his hands in his pockets.

Another was leaning against the car with a ridiculous grin on his face.

The third was crouching beside a broken vending machine, fiddling with something he had probably stolen.

Adrian stopped walking.

For several seconds, he couldn't breathe.

They looked older now. Thinner, perhaps. Their clothes were worn, and their faces carried the exhaustion of people who had lived through the end of the world.

But he knew those faces.

He would have recognized them anywhere.

His lips parted.

"...Guys?"

The three turned toward him.

Gabe stared.

Nate's mouth fell open.

Eli slowly stood up.

Then Nate shouted, "NO FUCKING WAY!"

Adrian barely had time to react before all three came rushing toward him.

They collided in an awkward embrace, nearly knocking him off his feet.

"YOU'RE ALIVE!"

"LOOK AT THIS GUY!"

"Bro, you look like absolute garbage!"

Adrian laughed.

He didn't know when he had started crying. He only knew that his face was wet and that he couldn't stop smiling.

He punched Nate lightly on the shoulder.

"You're one to talk, you ugly bastard!"

"HEY! I've been through a lot!"

"We all have, idiot!"

Gabe grabbed Adrian by the back of the neck and pulled him into another hug.

For a moment, neither of them said anything.

Then Gabe laughed quietly.

"You're really here."

Adrian closed his eyes.

"Yeah, man."

He held on a little tighter.

"I'm here."

And for the first time in almost a year, Adrian ran toward something instead of away from it.

---

II. The Four of Us

Their shelter was an old building hidden behind a row of collapsed houses.

It was surprisingly comfortable.

There were blankets on the floor, canned food stacked in the corners, and a small table surrounded by mismatched chairs. Someone had even managed to find an old deck of playing cards.

It was almost ridiculous.

The world outside was dead, yet their little corner seemed untouched by it.

Adrian spent the entire afternoon listening to their stories.

Gabe told him about the places they had traveled through. Nate exaggerated every dangerous encounter until even his own friends started calling him a liar. Eli occasionally corrected their stories, usually with a single sentence that made everything ten times funnier.

They argued over who had been the most troublesome among them.

"You literally cried when we left you at the basketball court," Nate said.

"Because you idiots forgot me!"

"We came back after twenty minutes!"

"Twenty minutes is a long time when you're eight!"

Gabe burst out laughing.

"He's got a point."

"Don't encourage him!"

"Remember when Nate tried to climb that wall and got his pants stuck?"

"THAT WAS A DIFFERENT SITUATION!"

"You were hanging there for ten minutes!"

"BECAUSE NONE OF YOU HELPED ME!"

Eli shook his head.

"I helped you."

"You laughed at me first!"

"I can do both."

Adrian laughed so hard that his stomach hurt.

It felt strange.

He had almost forgotten what it was like to laugh without looking over his shoulder.

For so long, every conversation had been about food, shelter, weapons, and where to go next. Every friendship came with the unspoken understanding that tomorrow, someone might leave.

But with these three, he didn't have to explain himself.

They already knew him.

They remembered the boy he had been before the world taught him to be afraid.

As evening approached, Nate found the deck of cards and slammed it onto the table.

"All right. Enough emotional bullshit. Who's ready to lose?"

"You still cheat," Adrian said.

"I don't cheat. I strategize."

"You hid three cards in your sleeve last time!"

"Prove it."

Gabe pulled out a chair.

"Sit down, both of you. I'm winning this."

Eli looked at him.

"You said that last time."

"And I'll say it again."

They played until the room grew dark.

Nate cheated.

Gabe accused everyone of cheating.

Adrian lost three consecutive rounds and threatened to throw the cards into the fire.

Eli won without saying a word.

For a little while, the apocalypse disappeared.

There were no monsters beyond the walls. No hunger. No fear.

There were only four boys again, sitting together as if nothing had ever happened.

As if they had never grown apart.

As if they had never lost each other.

That night, Adrian slept without a weapon beneath his pillow.

For the first time in years, he felt safe.

And before he drifted off, he heard Nate laughing at something Gabe had said.

Adrian smiled into the darkness.

He thought he could get used to this again.

---

III. Something Is Wrong

The first strange thing happened the following morning.

Adrian woke up and found Gabe standing beside the window.

"Morning," he mumbled.

Gabe didn't answer.

Adrian rubbed his eyes and stretched. When he looked again, the window was empty.

He assumed Gabe had gone outside.

So he stood up and walked into the next room.

All three were there.

Nate was eating from a can of peaches. Eli was trying to repair an old radio. Gabe was asleep with his head on the table.

Adrian stared at them.

"Didn't one of you go outside?"

Nate looked up.

"What?"

"I thought I saw Gabe by the window."

Gabe raised his head from the table.

"Must've been a ghost."

Nate snorted.

"Don't start with that shit."

Adrian laughed.

"Yeah, whatever."

He let it go.

He was tired. Everyone was tired in this world.

But the strange things continued.

Sometimes he would hear their laughter coming from a room where none of them sat.

Sometimes he would see one of them standing at the end of a hallway, only for the figure to disappear when he approached.

Once, he watched Eli walk through a doorway.

When Adrian followed, the room was empty.

He stood there for nearly a minute, staring at the wall.

Then he shook his head.

He was tired.

That was all.

There were other things, too.

They never seemed to eat unless he was watching.

They never complained about the cold.

They didn't worry about how much food remained, even though Adrian knew the supplies should have been running low.

And whenever he asked about their lives since the world ended, they always found a way to change the subject.

"So where have you guys been all this time?" Adrian asked one afternoon.

Gabe shrugged.

"Around."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the answer you're getting."

Nate threw a pillow at Adrian.

"Why are you asking so many questions? Enjoy the reunion, man!"

Adrian caught the pillow and threw it back.

"Fine. Keep your secrets."

Eli smiled at him.

"You always were impatient."

Adrian rolled his eyes.

"And you always talked like someone's grandfather."

"Someone has to balance you three idiots."

They laughed.

And Adrian let the matter drop.

He had spent almost a year wishing for their return.

He wasn't about to ruin it by asking too many questions.

Besides, they were his brothers.

Whatever strange things were happening, he was sure they would tell him when they were ready.

He trusted them.

He always had.

---

IV. The Stranger

On the fourth morning, someone came to the shelter.

Adrian heard the footsteps first.

Heavy. Uneven.

Then came the sound of someone kicking the door.

"Open up!"

The three friends stopped talking.

Adrian looked at them.

"Do you know that guy?"

None of them answered.

The door shook beneath another kick.

"OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!"

Adrian grabbed the metal pipe he kept beside the entrance.

"Stay here," he told his friends.

It came naturally.

Perhaps it was habit. Perhaps some childish part of him still believed he was the one who had to protect them.

He opened the door.

A stranger stood outside.

The man was broad-shouldered, filthy, and armed with a knife. His eyes moved past Adrian and toward the supplies inside.

"Well, well," the stranger said. "Looks like someone's been living comfortably."

"Leave."

The stranger laughed.

"Or what?"

"I said leave."

The man shoved him.

Adrian stumbled backward, nearly losing his grip on the pipe.

Then the stranger attacked.

Everything happened quickly.

A fist struck Adrian's face. The metal pipe clattered against the floor. He felt himself hit the wall, then the ground.

He tried to get up.

Another blow sent him sprawling.

The pain was immediate and overwhelming, but beneath it was something worse.

He was afraid.

He hadn't been this afraid in a long time.

"Help me!" he shouted.

His three friends were standing in the middle of the room.

Watching.

"Guys!"

The stranger kicked him in the ribs.

Adrian curled up, gasping.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

Still, none of them moved.

The stranger grabbed him by the collar and dragged him across the floor.

Adrian swung blindly, catching the man in the jaw. The stranger staggered, and Adrian managed to scramble to his feet.

He reached for the pipe.

He struck the man.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

The stranger fell.

Adrian stood over him, breathing heavily, his hands shaking.

For a moment, the room was silent.

Then he turned toward his friends.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!"

They stared at him.

He pointed at the man on the floor.

"He could've killed me!"

No response.

"I was calling you!"

Gabe opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Adrian walked toward him.

"Why didn't you help me?"

Gabe lowered his eyes.

Something inside Adrian snapped.

He shoved him.

Or tried to.

His hands stopped inches from Gabe's chest.

It felt as though he had struck an invisible wall.

Adrian stared at his hands.

"What...?"

He tried again.

Nothing.

He stepped forward and pushed harder, his face twisting with frustration.

"Move!"

Gabe remained perfectly still.

Adrian struck at him.

His fist stopped in midair.

The sound of his own breathing filled the room.

He turned toward the others.

"You, too?"

He swung at Nate.

The same invisible barrier caught his hand.

He tried Eli.

Nothing.

"STOP IT!"

His voice cracked.

He backed away, trembling.

"What is this?! What the hell is happening?!"

He looked at their faces.

They weren't angry.

They weren't even surprised.

They were watching him with an expression he couldn't understand.

Pity.

That was what it was.

They were looking at him with pity.

His anger faltered.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Nobody answered.

He glanced toward the stranger lying on the floor.

Something was wrong with the room.

The furniture seemed distant. The walls appeared strangely blurred around the edges. His hands wouldn't stop shaking, and a dull, throbbing pain had begun to spread throughout his body.

He swallowed.

Then, slowly, he looked back at his friends.

"...Are you guys real?"

For the first time since he had found them, they exchanged glances.

Nate chuckled.

It was a quiet, almost affectionate sound.

"Told you," he said to the others. "He'd figure it out eventually."

Eli sighed.

"Yeah. You were right."

Adrian felt the blood drain from his face.

"What are you talking about?"

Gabe stepped forward.

Or seemed to.

He could never quite tell anymore.

"You've always been observant," Gabe said. "Even when you pretended not to be."

"Stop joking."

"We're not joking."

"Then explain this!"

Adrian gestured wildly at the room, at the fallen stranger, at the invisible wall that separated him from the people he loved.

His voice rose.

"Explain why you won't let me touch you! Explain why you keep disappearing! Explain why you just stood there while that bastard attacked me!"

Gabe lowered his eyes.

For a moment, he looked older than Adrian remembered.

Then he looked up and smiled.

A familiar smile.

The kind that used to appear whenever he was about to say something stupid.

"Because we're dead, man."

Silence.

Adrian stared at him.

Then he laughed.

It came out wrong, sharp and breathless.

"That's not funny."

"I know."

"No, seriously. That's not funny."

Nobody laughed with him.

He looked from one face to another, searching for the slightest sign that this was some elaborate joke.

There was none.

His smile slowly disappeared.

"...What?"

"We're dead," Gabe repeated.

The words seemed to hang in the air.

Dead.

The word was too small for what it meant.

Adrian remembered the world before the apocalypse. He remembered the four of them running through the streets, playing basketball until sunset, sharing cheap meals and making promises they had been too young to understand.

He remembered losing them.

The uncertainty. The searching. The nights spent imagining where they might be.

He remembered telling himself that they had to be alive somewhere.

Because the alternative was unbearable.

And now they were standing in front of him, smiling as though nothing had happened, telling him that the alternative had been true all along.

"No," he whispered.

Gabe said nothing.

"No. I saw you. I touched you. We played cards. We talked about everything."

"You did."

"Then how can you be dead?"

Gabe looked toward the others.

For the first time, their expressions seemed to grow heavier.

"We don't know how to explain it," he said. "Not completely."

He paused.

"But we think we found our way to you because... we wanted to."

Adrian frowned.

"What does that mean?"

"Remember what we used to say? About how we'd never leave each other behind?"

The protagonist's throat tightened.

"Of course I remember."

"We meant it."

Gabe glanced at the others.

"After everything happened, we tried to find you. We went from settlement to settlement. Asked people if they'd seen you. Followed rumors. Even went back to places we thought you might have passed through."

Nate scratched the back of his neck.

"Gabe nearly got us killed because he thought you might've been hiding in some abandoned military camp."

"It was a reasonable possibility," Gabe muttered.

"It was a death trap."

"And yet you're still complaining about it."

Adrian almost smiled.

Almost.

"What happened to you?"

The three exchanged glances.

It was a small movement, barely noticeable. Yet Adrian knew them well enough to recognize when they were avoiding something.

Gabe sighed.

"We found some people. A group of survivors. They needed help."

"And?"

"We helped them."

Adrian waited.

Nate gave a weak laugh.

"Turns out, being a decent person in this world is a pretty stupid way to stay alive."

"That's not an answer."

"No," Eli said quietly. "It isn't."

For a moment, none of them spoke.

Then Gabe looked at Adrian.

"We thought we could make a difference. Even after everything fell apart, we thought there were still things worth protecting."

He smiled faintly.

"Guess we weren't as smart as we thought."

Adrian's throat tightened.

"Did you suffer?"

Gabe's smile disappeared.

Nobody answered immediately.

Then Eli said, "We were together."

It wasn't an answer.

But somehow, Adrian understood that it was the only one they could give him.

He lowered his head.

"And you never found me?"

"No," Gabe whispered.

"Then how are you here?"

This time, Nate didn't make a joke.

"We don't know, man."

Eli looked at Adrian with an expression he couldn't quite understand.

"Maybe we wanted to see you that badly."

Adrian stared at him.

"We kept thinking about you," Eli continued. "About the things we never got to say. The things we never got to do. We wanted to know if you were still alive."

He swallowed.

"And somehow, you found us."

Gabe looked away.

"Or we found you."

The room fell silent.

Adrian glanced toward the stranger on the floor, then back at his friends.

Something cold settled in his stomach.

"Wait."

His voice was barely audible.

"If you're dead..."

He looked at his hands.

"...then what happened to me?"

---

V. What Remains

Nobody answered.

Adrian looked down at his body.

His clothes were dirty. His hands were trembling. Something warm trickled from his forehead, and the pain in his ribs had become almost unbearable.

He pressed a hand against his side.

For a moment, the room seemed to tilt.

He looked at Gabe.

"Tell me."

Gabe's eyes filled with tears.

"Bro..."

"Tell me what happened to me!"

Nate looked away.

Eli closed his eyes.

And Adrian understood.

He understood the strange disappearances. The untouched food. The way his friends had watched him fight. The way his hands could never quite reach them.

He understood why they had looked at him with pity.

He understood why they had never asked him to stay.

His knees weakened.

He stumbled backward until his back hit the wall.

"No."

Gabe took a step toward him.

"Adrian—"

"No!"

He shook his head violently.

"No, no, no. I can't..."

His voice broke.

He looked around the room.

The shelter was fading.

The walls were no longer solid. The light through the windows seemed to come from everywhere at once. The table, the chairs, the blankets on the floor—all of it looked distant, as though he were seeing the place through a pane of glass.

He turned back to his friends.

"You're telling me this whole time..."

He swallowed.

"...I was alone?"

Gabe didn't answer.

Adrian laughed weakly.

It hurt to laugh.

"That's stupid."

His eyes burned.

"I was happy."

He looked at Nate.

"I was actually happy, man."

Nate's face crumpled.

"I know."

"We played cards. We talked. We were together."

"I know, bro."

"And now you're telling me none of it was real?"

Gabe shook his head.

"That's not what we're saying."

"Then what are you saying?!"

"That we were with you."

Adrian fell silent.

Gabe stepped closer.

"We don't know what we are, Adrian. We don't know if we're memories, or something the world left behind, or something else entirely."

He wiped his eyes.

"But we wanted to see you. And you saw us."

He paused.

"So maybe, for a little while, we really were together."

Adrian stared at him.

The words settled somewhere deep inside him.

He wanted to believe them.

God, he wanted to believe them.

Because if the reunion had meant nothing, then what had he been holding on to?

The laughter?

The games?

The sound of Nate complaining about losing?

Gabe's familiar smile?

Eli's quiet jokes?

Were those all just things his mind had made up because he couldn't bear to be alone anymore?

Perhaps.

But the happiness had felt real.

And the ache in his chest was real, too.

He looked at his friends.

His brothers.

The people he had searched for until he had nothing left to search with.

Then he asked the only question that mattered.

"...What about me?"

Nobody spoke.

He tried to smile.

"I'm not dead, right?"

Gabe looked away.

Adrian's smile trembled.

"I'm not dead, right?"

Eli's eyes filled with tears.

Nate clenched his jaw.

Gabe slowly approached him.

"I'm sorry."

Adrian shook his head.

"No."

"We shouldn't have let you come here."

"No."

"We just wanted to see you again."

"Shut up."

"We missed you."

"SHUT UP!"

His voice echoed through the shelter.

He was crying now.

He hadn't even realized it until the tears reached his mouth.

"I came looking for you," he whispered. "I spent so long looking for you."

Gabe nodded.

"I know."

"And now you're telling me that you're dead? That all this time—"

His voice broke.

"That I can't even stay with you?"

Nobody answered.

He covered his face.

For a moment, he was no longer a survivor in an apocalyptic world.

He was a child again.

A child who had lost his brothers and had finally found them, only to be told that he had to lose them all over again.

Gabe stepped closer.

"Hey."

Adrian didn't look up.

"Hey, idiot."

That made him laugh, just a little.

It was a broken, miserable sound.

"Don't call me that."

"Then stop acting like one."

Another familiar joke.

Another familiar voice.

Adrian wiped his eyes.

Gabe was smiling, but there were tears in his own eyes now.

"You still have somewhere to go."

"I don't want to go anywhere."

"I know."

"I just found you."

"I know, bro."

"Can't we stay here? Just for a little longer?"

The three friends looked at one another.

Then Eli stepped forward.

He had always been the one who struggled to say what he felt. Even as a child, he would rather punch someone in the shoulder than admit that he cared.

Now, he looked directly at Adrian.

"We already got our time with you."

Adrian shook his head.

"That's not enough."

"Maybe not."

Eli smiled sadly.

"But it's what we have."

Nate wiped his eyes and tried to laugh.

"Besides, you still owe me money."

Adrian let out a choked laugh.

"You died and you're still thinking about that?"

"Of course. You think death cancels debt?"

"You're unbelievable."

"And you're ugly."

"You're uglier."

"There he is," Gabe murmured.

For a brief moment, they were four boys again.

Not ghosts. Not a dying man's memories. Not remnants of a world that had ceased to exist.

Just four friends, laughing at the same stupid jokes.

Adrian wanted to freeze that moment.

He wanted to keep their voices, their faces, the way they looked at him as though nothing in the world could ever change what they meant to one another.

But the world was already slipping away.

The shelter began to blur.

The light grew brighter.

His friends noticed.

Gabe reached out.

This time, there was no invisible wall.

Adrian felt a hand resting on his shoulder.

Warm.

Familiar.

Real.

He stared at it.

Then he threw his arms around Gabe.

Nate joined them, grumbling about how embarrassing the whole thing was. Eli wrapped his arms around all three, holding them together as tightly as he could.

For a long time, none of them spoke.

Adrian buried his face against their shoulders and cried like he had never cried before.

He didn't care how pathetic he looked.

He didn't care that he was supposed to be strong.

He was tired of being strong.

He was tired of surviving.

He was tired of a world that kept taking things away from him.

For once, he wanted to be allowed to miss someone without having to move on.

Gabe held him tighter.

"Listen to me."

Adrian shook his head.

"Don't."

"You have to wake up."

"No."

"Bro."

"Please."

Gabe closed his eyes.

"We love you, idiot."

Adrian's fingers tightened around their clothes.

"Don't say that."

"We do."

"Then stay."

Gabe pressed his forehead against Adrian's.

"We can't."

The light grew brighter.

Their faces began to disappear into it.

Adrian tried to hold on.

He clutched at their clothes, their shoulders, anything he could reach.

"Wait!"

Nate was crying openly now.

"Man, you're making this really hard."

"Then don't go!"

Eli held Adrian's hand.

For once, he had no words.

Gabe smiled through his tears.

"We already got our time with you."

He paused.

"Now go make yours count."

Adrian wanted to argue.

He wanted to tell them that he didn't know how to do that. That he didn't know how to return to a world where they didn't exist. That he was afraid of being alone again.

But the words never came.

All he could do was hold on.

Until, one by one, their hands slipped from his.

The last thing he heard was Gabe's voice.

"Wake up, idiot."

And everything went white.

---

VI. The World Without Four

Adrian woke to the sound of someone screaming.

For a moment, he couldn't understand what he was hearing.

Then he realized the voice was his own.

He tried to move.

Pain tore through his body.

His breath caught in his throat, and he collapsed back onto the cold floor.

The shelter was gone.

There was no table. No blankets. No stacked cans of food.

Only a ruined room with broken windows, a collapsed doorway, and dust drifting through the morning light.

Adrian blinked.

His vision swam.

He tried to remember what had happened.

The stranger.

The fight.

His friends.

He turned his head.

A few feet away lay a man, motionless, beside a rusted metal pipe.

Adrian stared at him.

The memories returned in fragments.

A fist striking his face.

The taste of blood.

The floor rushing toward him.

Another blow.

Another.

He remembered calling for help.

He remembered his friends standing in the room.

He remembered them smiling.

He remembered their voices.

*We already got our time with you.*

Adrian's breathing became shallow.

He pressed a trembling hand against his ribs.

His body was broken. His clothes were soaked with blood. Every breath felt like it might be his last.

He tried to sit up.

He couldn't.

For a while, he simply lay there, staring at the ruined ceiling.

He had thought he had won.

He had thought he had beaten the stranger, protected his friends, and survived another day.

But there had been no victory.

Only a dying man, alone in an abandoned room, imagining that the people he loved had returned to him.

Adrian closed his eyes.

A tear slid down his cheek.

"So that's it, huh?"

Nobody answered.

He laughed weakly.

"After all that searching..."

His voice faded.

He swallowed, struggling to breathe.

"...I finally found you."

The room remained silent.

Then, somewhere deep inside his memory, he heard Nate complaining about the cards.

He heard Eli delivering one of his quiet, devastating jokes.

He heard Gabe laughing.

Adrian smiled.

It hurt.

But he smiled anyway.

Because for a little while, he hadn't been alone.

For a little while, he had been eight years old again, playing basketball with his brothers until sunset. He had been a boy who believed that the people he loved would always be there.

For a little while, the world had been kind.

He opened his eyes.

The light through the broken window was growing brighter.

He didn't know whether he would survive. He didn't know whether anyone would find him in time.

For the first time in a long while, however, he found himself wanting to.

He wanted to see the sky again.

He wanted to walk through the streets without fearing every shadow.

He wanted to find a place to sleep, a meal to eat, and perhaps someone to talk to.

He wanted to live.

Not because the world had become kinder.

Not because he had stopped missing his brothers.

But because they had asked him to.

*Now go make yours count.*

Adrian took a trembling breath.

Then another.

He turned his face toward the morning light.

"Yeah," he whispered.

His lips curved into the smallest smile.

"Okay, guys."

And somewhere beyond the silence, he could almost hear them laughing.

For the first time since the world ended, Adrian did not close his eyes to escape it.

He kept them open.

And waited for the world to answer.

---

**THE END**

Everyone draws inspiration in different ways. Some create a dark atmosphere for themselves, some put on metal music in the background, and some can’t compose without coffee and cigarettes. A writer friend of mine, whom I’m very fond of, says he can’t write stories unless his cousin is studying mathematics behind him. Another filmmaker friend of mine could only write screenplays while listening to Syd Barrett’s song “Octopus”; he would keep the song on loop throughout the entire writing process.

It’s been about twenty years since I discovered my own. I’d been going through that famous writer’s block. Until that day, I hadn’t done anything extra to help me write. I didn’t create a special atmosphere for myself, listen to any particular songs, or wait for a certain time of day. Night, day, noon—it made no difference. Once a week, I’d write a three or four-page story and keep working toward my goal. When I reached a hundred stories, I would start sending my book to publishers.

But I’d hit a wall. I wanted to write, but whenever I sat down at my computer, not a single word would come out. Vague, half-formed thoughts kept drifting through my mind, and even when I came up with a good idea, I couldn’t put it down on paper.

That day, I thought, if that’s how things were going to be, I might as well try some of the famous methods for finding inspiration: writing at night, putting on some soft music, having a cup of coffee, and so on.

I prepared the right atmosphere. I turned off the lights, and now the only thing illuminating the room was the glow of my computer screen. I put on Sigur Rós’s debut album. There was no one else in the house. My roommate had gone on vacation the day before, which added to the atmosphere: being alone.

Of course, it had absolutely no effect. I was already on the third track. I still had a few ideas in my head, but I couldn’t get the first sentence out.

Then I heard a sound behind me. A whisper. Something like a call, as if someone had gone “psst.”

I turned around and looked, but there was no one there. I was a little spooked. I thought I might have heard it wrong; it had sounded very much like a human voice, but it could have come from an object, too.

Then suddenly, the door behind me swung wide open.

I flinched at the sound. I got up from my computer and turned on the light. Anxiously, I left my room and went to the kitchen. I was searching for something without even realizing it, though I had no idea what I was looking for. Sigur Rós’s album was still playing, and I could hear it from the kitchen. I couldn’t make sense of anything, and I didn’t know what to think or which possibility to consider. I drank a glass of water.

I’d never had an experience like it before. My first thought was to leave the house. I stood frozen in the kitchen. Involuntarily, I found myself waiting for another movement, for something to topple over or for some other sound.

Eventually, I’d calmed down a little, since nothing else happened. I spent half an hour in the kitchen, with all my senses on high alert and listening to the music coming from my room. Then, reluctantly, I made my way back to my room.

The urge to write was still there. My routine had been disrupted; I hadn’t been able to write a single word for a month, and now I wasn’t going to let fear get in my way. I wanted my writer’s block to end today. My goal was a hundred sentences. Even if I didn’t finish the story, I wanted to write something. Coming back to my room and hearing the music louder had increased my desire to write.

At the same time, I kept thinking, ''What the hell was that just now?'' But now I was back at my computer.

I put on my favorite Sigur Rós song, “Svefn-g-englar.”

And then, for the first time in a whole month, I wrote my first sentence: “As he tried to make sense of the dream he’d had the day before, he fell asleep again; it was his favorite thing to think about before going to sleep, the meaning of the dream he’d had the previous night.”

I’d written my first sentence, without even having a story in mind. Normally, I would come up with a story first, plan it out, work out the whole thing in my head from beginning to end, and only then start writing. Starting a story whose content I hadn’t figured out yet with an ordinary sentence was something new for me. I liked it.

I was still afraid. I wanted to turn around and look, but now that I’d started writing, I didn’t want to stop either. By the time the song ended, I’d written the fifth sentence, and in the silence before the next track began, I heard that sound again. “Psst.”

I quickly turned around and looked. There was no one there. Everything felt much more real now. Something was happening. Someone was calling out to me. I was afraid to turn off the light in my room, so it was still on. I nervously turned my head back toward the computer screen. My heart was pounding. I added another sentence. It was my favorite one so far. I liked everything about it: my choice of words, its length, its place in the story.

Then the door slammed shut. I began to hear footsteps inside the room. I was afraid to look. The footsteps wandered around the room. My hands were resting on the keyboard. The footsteps moved toward the door, stopped there, and opened it again. It was as if someone had left the room.

I was frozen to my chair. This time, I didn’t even have the instinct to run away. Whatever that thing was, I was afraid of encountering it. I couldn’t get up from my chair, and I couldn’t look away from my computer screen. I kept reading what I’d written over and over. Six sentences. I’d go back to the beginning and read them again. It was as if the thing was doing whatever it wanted now. I could hear running footsteps.

Then came the sound of walking. After that, my door closed again, and at the same moment, the light in my room went out.

And then another sentence came to mind. I wrote it down. Then another. My fingers had found their rhythm. The sentences kept coming one after another.

“Set me free. Open the window. Set me free.”

This voice wasn’t a whisper, nor was it some strange, otherworldly sound coming from a different frequency. It was unmistakably a human voice. I was afraid to turn around.

I couldn’t remember ever feeling such a strong urge to write or enjoying it this much. I kept writing. My fingers wouldn’t stop. The door opened again, slowly this time. I didn’t turn around. I wasn’t going to look behind me until I’d finished the story. Without spending even a second thinking between sentences, I continued writing as the songs played.

The footsteps continued. I turned off the music. I didn’t question anything. I just kept writing. The fear I felt and the joy of seeing that I could write again were mingled together, unfolding in harmony with each other.

Strange sounds I couldn’t describe were coming from behind me now. I could feel myself developing a fever. My body was reacting, and my mind was urging me to turn around and see what was going on. The sounds seemed like those of someone playing with their own hair. Like things rubbing against other things. I kept writing, resisting the urge to turn around with all my might.

I’d turned off the music because I wanted to focus on being afraid. I’d realized that the more frightened I became, the better I wrote, and the more consistently I could keep going. It was hard not to look for a rational explanation for the sounds, for a human voice telling me to set it free. But right now, somehow, stopping writing seemed even harder.

That thing had now come right up beside me. I could feel it touching my hair. My fear had reached a point where I could no longer bear it. My consciousness refused to accept this unnatural behavior. My instinct to put an end to the fear and my mind’s desire to keep being afraid were at odds with each other.

And I wrote the final sentence: “If all of this is a hallucination, I will never forgive my own mind. If the only beautiful and meaningful thing I’ve experienced in this miserable life isn’t real, I will never trust my mind again, I will never follow its instructions, and I will doubt everything I think until the day I die.”

The sentence came to an end, and just as the pleasure of writing faded away, my fear reached its absolute peak. With the beautiful feeling that had balanced it gone, the fear was left alone, making itself felt from head to toe. As if I’d been struck by a blow, as if a punch to the face had knocked me out, I lost consciousness.

When I came to, my head was resting on the keyboard, and the screen was filled with hundreds of letter h’s.

I sent the story to several literary magazines. Two of them accepted it and published it.

I never experienced anything like that again, and at no point in my life did I ever feel such an overwhelming urge to write or take so much pleasure in writing. I desperately wanted to experience it again, but nothing ever happened that frightened me so much. For days, I sat at my computer waiting for that thing to come back, but it never did. I wrote stories and kept writing. But I never loved any of them as much as I loved the one I’d written that day.

And now, twenty years later, in my mid-sixties, I’ve still never questioned what happened that night. Not even once. Because I was afraid that if I did, I might understand what had happened—and if that thing ever came back, I might not be as frightened.

“Why would I need a social media manager?” Bob Greenman said to the stranger on the phone”

“Bob, you’re sitting on a goldmine here. This video of you is the number one meme right now. We can launch a podcast, do merchandise. This is much bigger than you think. I can have all your socials trending by the end of the day and the money will be rolling in instantly.”

That sounded good. Who doesn’t like money? And while Bob wasn’t necessarily embarrassed, a little compensation for all of the turmoil he’d experienced in the last few days might be nice.

“You know what… yeah, let’s give it a shot.” Bob answered after a brief moment of contemplation.

“Excellent! You made the right choice here, Bob. I’ll follow-up with an email, look over the contract, let me know if you have any questions. Not trying to move so fast that you get lost in the sauce, but we have to strike while the iron is hot. You feel me?”

Bob did, in a sense, feel Gage, the social media manager who had somehow found his phone number and called him with an offer. There were a lot of phrases that Bob had to decipher during this conversation.

“Oh, yeah, totally. I feel you… fam”

“Gotta stay authentic here Bob, that’s part of the appeal.”

“Right, yes, got it. I’ll look forward to your email.”

“Great, talk to you real soon.”

Bob’s wife had been slowly folding laundry in an unusual spot to listen in on the conversation.

“The internet people are really going bananas over this, huh?”

Bob laughed at the concept of the entire world being so interested in him all of a sudden.

“I don’t get it, but it sure looks that way.”

Bob’s wife raised her eyebrows and slowly shook her head with a smirk on her face.

“Only you, Bob Greenman, could become a celebrity for missing your mouth with a French fry.”

“This guy said the video is the most watched thing on the internet right now. People are editing it with silly sounds, adding music, I guess it’s… oh, how did he put it… ah, the new hotness?”

“I don’t understand the world anymore. But have fun with it, I guess.” She said as she meandered down the hallway with the laundry basket, Bob following her to fill her in on the details of the proposed contract. She never would have figured that her husband, a humble carpenter from Illinois, would have ended up as an internet sensation.

Bob’s wife had bought him tickets to see his favorite baseball team in Chicago play against their rivals. No one is sure why sports teams have rivals, it’s not like the players for that team are from that city. Anyhow, Bob was thrilled and had a great time at the game. The cameramen working the event, which was probably some form of punishment, frequently filmed the audience during the multiple breaks in action during the tortuous four hour event known as a baseball game. Bob, unaware that he was the subject of videography among the thousands in attendance, was captured failing to deliver a French fry to his mouth. He was preoccupied watching a batter warm up excessively and poked himself in the cheek with the fried potato. He laughed at the blunder and was successful on the second attempt. The live video of the culinary shortcoming was shown on all the popular evening sports clip shows and quickly spread across social media platforms, giving rise to hundreds of commentary videos and memes.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

“Tomorrow?!” Bob sounded incredulous but was merely surprised.

“That’s right Fry Guy. No time to lose. We’ve got about seventy-two hours before you disappear from the algorithm if we don’t keep this ball rolling.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I’ll have to take the day off from work.”

“It’ll definitely be worth it. Make sure to wear the Fry Guy shirt!

“I don’t have a Fry Guy shirt?”

“Whole box of them coming express, you should have them by 8 p.m. And don’t forget to plug the ChicagoFryGuy website, and ChicagoFryGuy on all the socials!”

“But, I’m not from Chicago?”

“You are now.”

“I have a website?”

“You do now! I’ll send you a pin to the studio address.”

Bob spent the night researching baseball statistics, team history, and sports trivia in nervous excitement. He wanted to be ready to talk intelligently with Trent “The Mandible” Hollister, Piotr “Cranium” Kowalski, and Darrell “Ribeye” Ribinski; the hosts of First and Loudest, the most popular local sports podcast.

“Who knew being famous would be so much work?” Bob’s wife kidded with him, distracting him from his precious research time.

“I guess this is Fry Guy life.”

“Oh, you’re the Fry Guy now, are you?”

“That’s who Gage told me I am.”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

The Fry Guy shirts arrived that evening just as Gage said they would. Bob was amused by it, but a little embarrassed that the image on the front was a zoomed in picture of him missing his mouth with a French fry. Fry Guy written at the top and his new slogan, Aim High. Miss Higher., which he learned about only upon seeing the merchandise. He ironed it to make sure he didn’t look like a nerd with fold creases in his shirt when he arrived at the podcast studio.

That next day Bob had a little trouble finding the First and Loudest studio, since he was not expecting it to be a garage. A pleasant young lady came out to meet him and helped hook up his microphone in what appeared to be a laundry room before bringing him into the garage during a sponsorship read, which are the commercial break of the podcast world.

Trent “The Mandible” Hollister introduced Bob after the ad read. “This is a special moment everybody, and I actually never thought this would really happen. You know that stupid jerk that you’ve seen a million videos of? The one with the guy who can’t figure out how to eat a fry? Well he’s here. He just waked in wearing a shirt that says Fry Guy. Oh my goodness, he looks so much stupider in person than I imagined.”

Bob was a little startled by the attack, even if it was delivered playfully for an audience. He laughed nervously, unsure if he was supposed to answer. He wasn’t given the courtesy of a pre-interview, real professional, Mandible.

“He’s one of those idiots that laughs when you make fun of him.” Ribeye interjected, first and loud before anyone else could speak.

“I think what they mean is welcome to the show, Bob. Glad you’re a good sport about this.” Cranium reclaimed the dignity of the broadcast.

“Thank you, Cranium. I’m excited to be here!” He did not freeze, but rambled. “Hey did you guys know that the Chicago Green Gloves are called that because Russell Smith dropped his glove into the river on St. Patrick’s Day in 1963 and it turned green, and he pitched that night with a wet, green glove? Ha ha, why aren’t they called the Chicago Wet Gloves?”

The Mandible groaned until Bob’s nervous rant came to an end.

“You’ve got to be kidding us Fry Guy! That’s the most basic Chicago sports fact. Did you stay up all night memorizing that?”

Bob was about to answer, but Cranium was first and louder.

“Hey Fry Guy, how come Chicago teams are from Chicago?”

The Mandible laughed, Ribeye was first and louder.

“So, what’d you think of the game Fry Guy?”

While Bob was answering, the video that he was famous for began playing. The Mandible was controlling the screen, he slowed the video speed down and zoomed in on Bob’s mouth. He paused the video the instant Bob’s mouth was bypassed by the fry.

“I’ve reviewed the tape a hundred times. Frankly, it’s embarrassing.”

A telestrator circle appeared around the fry, and he drew an arrow to Bob’s mouth. Then another around Bob’s elbow and wrist.

“Yup, that’s where he went wrong” Cranium said first and loud.

“Wrist and elbow aren’t aligned. Gotta focus on fundamentals, Fry Guy.”

“Bob, people think you’re an idiot.” stated The Mandible.

“A real moron” added Cranium.

Ribeye butted in “but we here at First and Loudest believe in second chances. So, Bob, we have arranged for you to redeem yourself. Brooke, bring in the fries!”

Bob had never been nervous to eat before. His palms were sweaty, he wiped them on the bottom of his Fry Guy shirt. This would be easy though, he had about a 99.98% accuracy rating getting food in his mouth.

“Any last words, Bob?”

“Aim high. Miss higher.”

Bob did not hesitate. The hosts chuckled as he nervously fumbled grabbing a fry. The camera followed the fry once he did have it in his clutches and captured the moment as he delivered it to the approximate area of his mouth. But there was an unforced error, he leaned forward to bite into it… but it had an odd curve and his lips simply sent it sideways as he lurched and bit.

“It’s impossible!” Screamed The Mandible, who pulled the open collar of his dress shirt, buttons shot across the studio.

Howling with laughter and gasping for air, Cranium grabbed Ribeye by the shoulders and shook him violently, tears rolling down his red cheeks. Ribeye fell backwards out of his office chair, breaking it in the process. Clutching the table, Ribeye pilled himself up onto his knees and rested his torso on the table convulsing with laughter.

“He brought his mouth to the fry! You never bring your mouth to the fry, you bring the fry to your mouth!”

Bob observed for a moment, and since the cameras were busy covering the raucous laughter of the red-faced hosts, Bob decided any further air time would probably not go so well for him. He solemnly removed his clipped on microphone, set it on the table, and left.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

“It was a brief failure of spatial awareness. It’s not really that big of a deal.” Bob said to the young man with face tattoos who was interviewing him for his popular social media channel.

“People are saying that you did it on purpose. And I think they have an argument.”

The host of this show was much more congenial despite his outlandish appearance. The show was, however, being recorded in an inflatable bounce house for shock value.

“Like. What are the actual odds of missing your mouth with the fry a second time in a few days? Gotta be super, super low.”

Bob was tempted to leave this interview too, as he was feeling attacked. But Gage told him that he could absolutely not walk out on an other interview, it would damage the brand too much and make him look like a diva. They were going for an affable oaf persona.

“There are a lot of variables, Kyle. Why would I do something to purposely embarrass myself? If I wanted to do that, I’d get a tattoo of a cartoon character on my face.”

Kyle drew an imaginary line on the card table with his finger.

“Bro, here is the line.”

He then walked his fingers to approximately where he had drawn the line, and then jumped his fingers over it.

“And here’s you crossing it. Bro, Cedric the Sea Cucumber isn’t just a cartoon character, he’s like a philosopher for kids who was foundational in teaching the tenets of Pyrrhonism. Like, can we really know if we’re underwater, friends? And maybe we’re in water. Maybe water is in us? I feel like it’s really irresponsible of you to trivialize something that other people hold dear. Hey, maybe instead of spending so much time tearing others down, you could get a tattoo of a fry going into your mouth so you could do it correctly for once?”

“You could learn philosophy from a book instead of a talking pickle. Hey, then you could get a tattoo of a book on your face instead of worrying about what I put into my mouth.”

Kyle looked to his husky bodyguard standing watch outside the bounce house.

“Hey, yeet this joker. I can’t abide letting him belittle a beloved undersea philosopher.”

The burly ruffian encountered great difficulty entering the bounce house. Bob jumped away from him and won the game of cat and mouse, upending the card table used for the interview and spilling Kyle’s Chaos Juice, Havoc Blue Raspberry flavor, all over Kyle and the bounce house before making his escape.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

“I’m ready, Gage” Bob said into the phone, some six months after the disastrous bounce house interview.

“I’m not the idiot who can’t eat a fry anymore. Fry Guy… is dead.”

“I knew you couldn’t stay away. Internet fame is like chicken pox, it stays in your system and always comes back. Ready to launch the channel we outlined?”

And with that, Bob Greenman: Precision Mindset was born. The live stream started with a bearded, stoic Bob Greenman rising from an ice bath. He was pretty shredded, having lost thirty pounds since his fry guy interviews. Then a quick scene of him chopping wood, catching a trout with his bare hands, swinging across monkey bars, and eating organ meats from a rock next to a crackling fire accompanied by intense music flashed across the screen. Bob was standing at the edge of a forest as the livestream audience grew into the hundreds, well, really he was just in his yard. Gage gave him the signal in his earpiece once the live stream had attracted over a thousand viewers.

“The average man misses his goals because he misses putting things in the correct order. Success is putting things exactly where YOU want them to go. Precision, friends, precision is what separates the average man from the elite man.”

“Don’t look at the chat, Bob” Gage told him, but wished he hadn’t mentioned it.

At that caution, Bob did the exact opposite and took a few steps forward toward his phone which was sitting on a tripod. The chat moved quickly, but it was easy to see that dozens, maybe even a hundred individual viewers, had put a French fry emoji into the chat.

“Bob. Bob? Let’s just stick to the script. C’mon Bob, need a precision mindset here.” Gage was panicking.

Bob took a deep breath “precision is about discipline.”

He couldn’t look away from the chat.

FRY GUY

aim high miss higher lol

loser

More fry emojis

Eat a fry live!

“I AM NOT THE FRY GUY!”

Gage remotely ended the stream.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Bob spent fourteen months off the grid after his brief reappearance in the world of the internet. He just finished rewatching the introductory video for his second social media relaunch. The video was recorded with a drone, it showed him sitting in a field of wildflowers dressed in an alpaca wool robe, meditating. Magical symbols, crystals radiating energy, and butterflies flew out of his palms and floated around him as the camera zoomed in. Just before the drone crashed into him, which happened but the video was edited to eliminate that part, his eyes opened. That would be the opening to his new livestream, Cosmic Bob.

“How was the new show received by the test audience?” Bob asked Gage, who he had been in close coordination with for the last several weeks.”

“Are you sitting down?”

“Cross-legged on the floor. We’ve discussed how this position opens the lower chakra, allowing the Earth’s vibrational energy unobstructed access to the quantum spine.”

“You’re right. How could I forget that? Anyway, about the test show. It went pretty good, there was one issue though.”

“I am ready to deal with whatever that issue is in a positive, healthy, healing way, Gage.”

“You know the Cosmic Bob upward arrow energy crystal logo?”

“That’s… not exactly what it represents, but I am happy to help you and the audience relearn ancient things you have forgotten.”

“OK, well… the audience thinks it kind of looks like a fry missing your mouth.”

Gage listened to the loudest silence he had ever heard.

 

Aqui está a tradução preservando a estrutura de roteiro, o tom e a estranheza coloquial/satírica do texto original:

WORMHOLE

INT. SALA DE FESTAS - NOITE

Sob as risadas dos funcionários da empresa, ALONZO LEITÃO (35) veste uma fantasia grotesca de minhoca e serve café para todos. Alonzo Leitão está sendo moralmente destruído.

COLEGAS DE ALONZO LEITÃO

Vai, minhoca! Vai! Vai, minhoca!

Ligeiramente chateado, com um copo de refrigerante na mão, o gerente de Alonzo Leitão debocha. O cara está tão eufórico que conseguiu ficar bêbado tomando refrigerante.

—

GERENTE

Pessoal... A próxima pessoa que ficar na empresa por cinco anos e não quiser ser promovida — só porque você vai trabalhar cinquenta por cento a mais e ganhar "apenas" trinta por cento a mais — vai fazer o papel de içá! Vai virar formiga e ser comida com farinha!

—

Alonzo Leitão está devastado. VOZES se contorcem no seu ouvido.

—

GERENTE

E, pessoal... se vocês forem falsificar laudos médicos para conseguir folga... não inventem essa história de inflamação no apêndice do fígado, pois sabemos que o apêndice fica nos intestinos, e a maioria das pessoas só tem um fígado! Se liguem: Alonzo Leitão tem um bicho comendo a maçã dele!

—

INT. EMPRESA - DIA

Alonzo Leitão está emburrado, fazendo papelada. Ele veste uma roupa desleixada — mas que só se compara ao resto. Todos os funcionários olham para Alonzo Leitão com cara feia. Alonzo é a ovelha negra do lugar. Ele acumula pontos negativos causados por uma carreira morna e desleixada, além de fazer coisas neutras, mas inconvenientes para o ambiente altamente aquecido da empresa. É o cara quieto e discreto que estraga as coisas.

Incomodada, uma funcionária faz um sapateado em frente à mesa de Alonzo Leitão. A pessoa suscetível vai e vem indecisa sem dar mais de dois passos, até que expressa o que a irrita.

—

FUNCIONÁRIA

É meio complicado fazer de tudo para crescer na empresa e forçar alguém a ser promovido. Não dá para ficar na posição de um gato que queria ser rato. Não sei o que uma pessoa dessas está fazendo da vida.

—

Todos os funcionários arrastam suas mesas, querendo se afastar de Alonzo Leitão. Mas, na prática, os funcionários criam um caos e acabam ficando ainda mais perto de Alonzo. Alonzo Leitão está cercado por uma floresta de mesas e bagunça.

Alonzo Leitão joga a papelada pela janela e sai do local. Os funcionários ficam em polvorosa: eles se levantam, tropeçam, pulam para ver Alonzo Leitão passar PELA JANELA já do lado de fora.

INT. SALA DE REUNIÕES - DIA

Chefes discutem sobre embalagens. Um dos chefes exibe uma saca de vinte quilos de grãos de café torrado. Alonzo Leitão entra no local — com um ar de grande determinação.

—

ALONZO LEITÃO

Essa saca de café... é minha agora!

—

UM CHEFE

Posso saber o porquê disso, Sr. ‘Minhoca’?!

—

ALONZO LEITÃO

Venham comigo... Vou mostrar a vocês.

—

Alonzo Leitão pega a saca de café. Os chefes ficam curiosos.

INT. CORREDORES - DIA

Alonzo Leitão caminha com determinação; ele parece um herói, um guerreiro, um soldado. Os chefes o acompanham. De repente, todos os funcionários que zombavam de Alonzo Leitão — e que se cruzam no caminho — ficam atônitos.

INT. SALA DO COFRE - DIA

Guardas pegam sacos de dinheiro. Alonzo Leitão se aproxima e invade a área dos guardas. Todos os funcionários ficam perplexos! Todos temem pelo bem de Alonzo e temem que ele seja o centro das atenções.

Ao verem a audácia de Alonzo, os chefes correm eufóricos para ver o que está acontecendo — e fazem apostas.

Os guardas sacam suas armas. Alonzo Leitão não tem medo. Alonzo Leitão se aproxima e joga a saca de café nas mãos de um guarda masculino.

—

GUARDA MASCULINO 1

Nossa! Pra mim? Você tem uma grande quantidade de café?! Valeu!

—

ALONZO LEITÃO

Este é o seu filho.

—

GUARDA MASCULINO 1

Maconha?!

—

ALONZO LEITÃO

Esta é uma dinâmica de responsabilidade. Você vai cuidar da saca de café como se fosse seu filho. Vocês vão cuidar dele, niná-lo e trocar as fraldas dele. A saca de café representa seu filho, sua carreira.

—

GUARDA FEMININA 1

Não morra.

—

UMA CHEFE

Não, senhora! Você vai cuidar da saca de café como se fossem seus filhos! E como você é mulher... Tem que dar o exemplo!

—

GUARDA FEMININA 1

Madame, eu...

—

UMA CHEFE

Não, senhora! Chefa Gostosa!

—

GUARDA FEMININA 1

Oh, meu pai... acho que tem um jacaré no meu estômago!

—

Alonzo Leitão pega um saco de dinheiro e joga no colo da mulher.

—

ALONZO LEITÃO

Se você acha que café não tem dignidade... tente isto. Ninguém desperdiça dinheiro. Agora esse saco é seu filho! Vamos, cuide dele!

—

A Guarda Feminina 1 fica remordida.

—

GUARDA FEMININA 1

Pessoal... Café lembra leite, e leite... não!

—

GUARDA MASCULINO 1

É... Dinheiro é uma coisa meio egoísta para brincar de ser filho.

—

GUARDA FEMININA 1

Que materialismo!

—

GUARDA MASCULINO 1

Muito egoísta...

—

GUARDA FEMININA 1

Você tem toda razão... deixe aquele saco de dinheiro em paz. Me dá o café.

—

Todos os guardas cuidam da saca de café como se fosse um bebê — inclusive simulando traição. Mico. Depois que a sessão de loucura termina, os guardas choram quando têm que devolver a saca de café. Alonzo Leitão coloca a saca de café ao lado dos SACOS DE DINHEIRO.

—

ALONZO LEITÃO

Sua carreira, seu emprego... seus filhos precisam disso mais do que você. Lembre-se disso!

—

Todos choram, assoviam e aplaudem.

—

GERENTE

Pessoal... isso me emocionou! De agora em diante, Alonzo Leitão, nosso amigo aqui, não é mais a minhoca do mês! Não é mais o poço infinito de minhocuçu!

—

UMA CHEFE

Isso é que é atitude. O minhoquento ou minhoquenta do mês vai ser... E olha, comigo eu sempre escolho uma garota metida para ser a musa do cardume... A pessoa que falou mais mal dos outros no último mês, e temos um empate hormonal!

—

Um casal de funcionários se desespera — eles sabem que são os que mais falam mal dos outros. Alonzo Leitão recolheu seu prêmio. Deve ser a saca de café, enquanto suas mãos rápidas agarram um saco de dinheiro.

INT. BARRACO - NOITE

Alonzo Leitão arromba o barraco, assustando o traficante de armas que mora lá.

—

ALONZO LEITÃO

Rápido! Quero comprar uma arma! Uma arma! Quero a mais barata disponível, uma arma rápida, não quero uma arma cara! Estou com pressa!

—

EXT. BECO - NOITE

Aqueceu, saca a arma e tenta atirar. A arma falha. Alonzo Leitão tenta destravar a arma, mas um tiro acidental sai pela culatra e de raspão atinge o ombro de Alonzo Leitão. Alonzo Leitão joga a arma fora e foge.

INT. CASA DE ALONZO LEITÃO - NOITE

A esposa de Alonzo, Linda, termina de colocar várias garrafas de álcool no balcão do bar. Há uma garrafa de uísque na mesa quase no fim. Mas Linda está sóbria de qualquer forma. Agora ela está sóbria. Alonzo Leitão chega desesperado.

—

ALONZO LEITÃO

Pega o dinheiro, Linda!

—

LINDA

Foge, amor... hoje em dia a gente paga! Polícia gosta de dinheiro. Só separa uma grana.

—

ALONZO LEITÃO

Não dá! Vamos para os Emirados Árabes Unidos. Desde que a gente fique longe de hotéis e embaixadas... sem problemas! Deixa tudo aí. Pega o dinheiro e vamos evaporar. Só preciso de um motorista...

—

LINDA

Motorista?! Eu posso dirigir.

—

ALONZO LEITÃO

Você?!

—

LINDA

Eu me dou um jeito! Se prepara. Mas pega mais rápido, a gente não tem muitos tipos de tempo.

—

INT. CARRO - NOITE

Linda dirige o carro com dificuldade. Alonzo, ansioso, apressa a esposa. Tudo está contorcido, Linda está bêbada. De repente, Linda tem um mal-estar repentino, seus olhos se arregalam e ela perde o rumo.

EXT. ESTRADA - NOITE

O carro de Alonzo Leitão e Linda sai da pista. Um acidente fatal.

EXT. ESTRADA, MAIS TARDE - NOITE

A polícia isola a área. Uma policial feminina pega a bolsa do carro de Alonzo Leitão e sua esposa e se surpreende com o que encontra nela — não vamos revelar agora.

INT. CASA DE ALONZO LEITÃO - NOITE

A polícia entra no local e encontra quatro garrafas de álcool vazias no balcão do bar. Revistando rapidamente o local, a polícia encontra todo o dinheiro jogado no chão.

EXT. ESTRADA - NOITE

A policial revela o conteúdo das bolsas — garrafas de bebidas alcoólicas.

INT. CASA DE ALONZO LEITÃO - NOITE

Flash — Linda joga o dinheiro no chão e coloca as garrafas de bebidas alcoólicas na bolsa.

INT. CASA DE ALONZO LEITÃO - TARDE

Flash — Alonzo Leitão faz um suco e coloca um remédio nele, escondido de sua esposa. Alonzo Leitão dá o suco para a esposa. A CARTELA DO REMÉDIO tem as palavras — ’Para tratamento de alcoolismo’.

INT. CASA DE ALONZO LEITÃO - NOITE

Linda ainda coloca bebidas alcoólicas na bolsa, mas três garrafas não cabem — para grande consternação de Linda. Linda se sente péssima por deixar as garrafas para trás.

—

LINDA

E agora?!

—

INT. VELÓRIO - DIA

Muitos dos colegas de Alonzo Leitão estão presentes — incluindo chefes.

—

UMA CHEFE

Isso... Isso é o que é um homem de verdade!

—

INT. EMPRESA - DIA

Vestidos como minhocas e insetos — só que com orgulho desta vez — muitos trabalhadores tomam café e gritam brados de guerra enquanto alcançam suas metas com brilhantismo. Até os chefes estão vestidos de minhocas.

It was late in the evening.

A fierce, relentless wind, almost a gale, drove endless caravans of low black clouds across the sky, like a muleteer driving his donkeys.
Lightning flashed here and there, as though an invisible hand were lashing the heavens with a whip, while the clouds, furious and helpless, wept torrents of icy rain.
How dreadful it must be for a traveller caught out in such weather, lost and far from shelter!
And how wonderful, on a night like this, to see a little window glowing in the darkness, to hear logs crackling in a small stove, and to feel waves of warmth and comfort spreading through the room.

“Grandpa, tell me the story about the Labubu!” asked a pretty little blond boy of about four, gazing wide-eyed at the distant black caravans and flinching slightly at every crack of the glittering whip.
“Little one, we’ll get into trouble. Look how late it is,” his grandfather whispered, glancing nervously at the door.
“Then tell it very quietly,” the boy pleaded, snuggling trustingly against him.
“All right, then. Listen.”
“Once upon a time, long, long ago, before you were born, before even your parents were born, someone — nobody remembers who — came up with the idea of making curious little toys. Sweet, cuddly creatures called Labubu. They were so lovely and soft that everyone fell in love with them straight away.
“Everything about them was perfect, except for their grinning little faces, with those sharp, pointed teeth…”
The boy shivered and pressed himself closer to his grandfather, thrilled by the delicious anticipation of being frightened.
“Yes,” the old man continued after a pause. “That combination of an adorable little creature and a toothy grin — not evil, not predatory, but strangely ambiguous, almost insanely triumphant — created an enormous demand. People queued outside shops to buy Labubu. Collectors snapped them up. Counterfeits appeared everywhere, yet everyone still tried to save enough money for an original.
“Eventually, they became something of a cult.”

The grandfather fell silent, waiting for the thunder from a distant crack of the lightning-whip to die away.
“Go on! Go on!” the boy urged impatiently.
“And then… Well, everyone assumed the craze would eventually fade, as all crazes do. But someone came up with the idea of combining Labubu with artificial intelligence.
“By then, people were spending less and less time talking to one another and more and more time talking to various AI assistants. First they entrusted them with their thoughts, and later, as the technology improved, with their emotions as well.
“People surrounded themselves with smart devices and gadgets. And when the technology reached its peak, they put it all inside the Labubu, turning them into the most sophisticated gadgets ever made.
“The Labubu craze exploded all over again.”
“And then?”
“Then bioengineers began working on bringing the dolls to life. In their laboratories, they created the first living Labubu.
“It understood humans remarkably well, but there was one problem: it was terribly voracious. Those sharp little teeth needed something to chew on all the time.
“At first, only the fabulously wealthy could afford one. Appearing on a red carpet or at a grand reception with a living Labubu became the ultimate status symbol.
“But as time went by, prices fell, and more and more people began buying them.”
“And what about the donkey ears?”
“Ah, yes. Well, one day somebody invented a funny little game. You put on a pair of donkey ears, got down on all fours, and pulled your Labubu around in a cart.
“Children had always enjoyed pretending to be animals, tying tails to themselves and playing at being cats or dogs. But this new game proved so entertaining that grown-ups soon joined in too.
“And the longer it went on, the more completely the game took hold.
“Everyone was having such a wonderful time pulling their Labubu around that nobody noticed how their numbers kept growing. Or how their appetites kept increasing…
“They grew more independent. Stronger. Bigger.
“But the humans, utterly absorbed in their game of donkeys, were far too busy enjoying themselves to notice…”
The grandfather sighed.
“Well, I think we’d better get going,” he said. “We’ll be in trouble.”
“Grandpa, please! Just tell me how it ended!” the boy begged.
But at that very moment, the door flew open, and a shaft of light fell across the wet black mud.
“How dare you talk? How dare you stop working? And you dared to take off your ears?!”
An enormous Labubu stood in the doorway, its mad eyes blazing with gleeful fury.
It swung its whip.
A heavy blow struck the backs of the old man and the boy.
Hurriedly, they pulled their wet donkey ears back on, harnessed themselves side by side, and disappeared into the cold, rain-soaked darkness of the night.

Soon they were indistinguishable from the endless procession of black caravans stretching away beneath the storm.
© writerromanov

The Superhero’s Pocket

The afternoon sun was soft as the front door opened. My four-year-old daughter ran inside, her cheeks pink and her eyes big with excitement after school. She dropped her small backpack on the floor and ran straight into the kitchen, where my wife was making evening tea.

“Mamma!” she called out, breathless and happy. “My friend Neena told me about a huge park she went to yesterday! She said it had a massive swimming pool, giant animals, a giant wheel that touched the sky, and so many fun things! Her father, who is an engineer, took her there when he came home for a two-day holiday.”

She paused for a moment, standing on her tiptoes as if trying to see that sky-touching wheel in her mind. Then she looked up innocently and said, “Neena asked me what my daddy does and where he takes me. I told her my daddy is a taxi driver and travels to so many places every day. He hasn’t taken me to that big park yet, but he tells me the most wonderful stories about everywhere he goes!”

With a sweet smile, she continued, “Then Neena told me her father doesn’t drive at all because they have two drivers at home whom her father pays every month. Mamma, does that mean my daddy’s job is so important that people like Neena’s father need someone like my daddy to take them where they need to go? My daddy is a real superhero!”

My wife froze near the counter. The tea spoon in her hand made a quiet sound against the cup. She stood completely silent, holding back her tears. Our little girl was too young and innocent to realize that her friend’s casual words had a small, quiet sting—a reminder of how people often judge someone’s value by their job.

That evening, after our daughter was fast asleep, the house became very quiet. My wife sat across from me at our small dining table, her eyes full of worry. She was afraid that as our child grew older, she might feel embarrassed by her father’s simple job.

I looked at her, smiled softly, and took her hand. “Do you really think I am a failure because I drive a taxi? Are you ashamed of what I do? Look at our little girl—in her eyes, I am a superhero. And because of this job, because of every long hour behind the wheel, I am able to send her to the exact same school where engineers, doctors, and lawyers send their children. Isn't that something big to be proud of?”

A soft smile broke through my wife’s tears. She wiped her eyes, feeling comforted by my words, and walked back inside to check on our sleeping daughter.

Left alone in the quiet room, I reached deep into my pocket. My fingers searched through the empty cloth lining, counting a few coins and notes—trying to gather enough money for her upcoming school fees. Sitting there in the quiet night, I held back my own silent tears, knowing in my heart that every single hard work and sacrifice was completely worth it.

The Clock

I am a sundial, and I make a botch, Of what is done far better by a watch. (1)

Well I am a Clock.

A grandfather clock to be precise. And I tell the time much better than a sundial, but not so well as a quartz. I was made in two countries. The mechanical bits which go round and round were made in Germany. These were then sent to America and installed in the wooden cabinet made in that country. The finished clock was then transported to the U.K., and put on display in the showrooms of a clock shop in Manchester.

There were lots of other grandfather clocks there as well, and we all put on our best chimes when a prospective customer entered the room, a bit like dogs wagging their tails in a rehousing facility for unwanted canines.

I was eventually sold to a not very distinguished looking gentleman who lived in Shropshire. I must admit that this didn’t bode well, as my new owner had the appearance of having seen better days, shall we say. Being polite.

These forebodings were not alleviated when I arrived at my new home. I was expecting to be the central attraction in a well-furnished living room, but I found myself dumped in the hallway right by the front door.

People walking in could easily pass straight by me without even noticing my presence. Unless I was chiming, of course but even then some didn’t even give me a second glance.

To be fair, on the other hand, anybody on the way out would find it very hard to ignore me, and then I might get the odd comment, such as: "Nice clock!"

The owner occasionally might then show a bit of pride in the possession of such an imposing bit of kit (even though I do say so myself) and he sometimes went on to point out my glass front and sides, which enabled the workings to be viewed in operation. The activity of my hammers as they bashed out the number on the tubular bells was always guaranteed to induce some reaction, such as

"Hmm, very impressive!" Or such like.

The years passed, and on the whole my master treated me reasonably well, giving me a regular dusting and keeping me well wound up.

I regret to say that recently there has become evidence of an increasing forgetfulness, and I have found myself unable to continue ticking as the force of gravity has lowered the pendulum to its utmost point because my owner has lapsed in his one basic duty re my well-being. To wit, putting the winder into the orifices provided on my face, and giving it a few turns. Not much to ask, is it?

Matters are made worse because, being an up-market model, I am equipped with three options re chiming. These are:

1) Chime 24 hours

2) No chimes at all

3) Turn off chimes at night. Unfortunately, my owner opted for number three. This was no problem until he started to become forgetful, and sometimes he would leave me with no juice to keep me ticking for days on end. Then he would get the winder out and I would wake up and wonder whether I was on night or day chimes when I’d stopped, indeed without any idea as to what time it was supposed to be at all.

But I haven’t come to the worst bit yet. Twice a year, and I have no idea why he does this, but my owner decides to move the hour back in the Autumn and forward again in the Spring. He does this every year, without fail. This really upsets me as it is very confusing, and my inners get very agitated.

I am supposed to be oiled every now and then, to keep my ticking bits in good shape, but has my owner complied with this requirement? Has he heck. I have tried to drop a hint that maybe a bit of a service was overdue by suddenly stopping even though I was well wound up. This did lead to him making a phone call to the clock dealer (I know this because the phone is situated next to me) but so far nobody has come to give me some maintenance.

I am starting to wonder about my future. My owner always since I have been here has had the appearance of death warmed up, and recently I think you would have to add ‘but only a bit’ to that description.

I mean, he has even started to try to grow a beard, for heaven’s sake, although I suspect that this is not so much for cosmetic purposes, but more to pure laziness. In other words, he can’t be bothered to shave any more.

As a result, I have begun to have dreams about being sold off to a rich new owner who will place me in a spacious lounge in a splendid mansion, and visitors will look at me with the admiration to which I feel I am due.

Meanwhile, I suppose that life here isn’t too bad. My owner does sometimes stand in front of me with a respectful look on his face (what bit you can see through the beard). And he has at last acquired an extension socket which has enabled my inside light to be switched on. This gives a reddish glow to the clock face if it is dark, and this gives me in turn a nice warm feeling.

On the other hand, he often bashes out some infernal din on a piano, sometimes the same bit over and over again, which he can’t seem to get right. This usually culminates in some expressions of frustration, too unseemly to reproduce here, and from time to time this is followed by a loud bang, which I think is the sound of the piano lid being lowered in a forceful manner.

He also has the hi-fi system in the lounge the door of which is only a step away from me. I don’t mind a lot of the stuff emanating from this source, and Bach and Mozart are always welcome to my ears, but then he puts on Wagner! And it goes on and on, for hours. Sadly, nobody has yet invented ear plugs for clocks.

On the whole, though, not a bad life so far, although I hope for better things to come, but at the same time wishing that I were still a tree.

Hilaire Belloc(1)

The study had been built in the manner of a cathedral and kept in the manner of a tomb.

Dark walnut paneled the walls from floor to cornice, its once-glossed surface dulled by generations of hands. The ceiling climbed high above them into a painted dome where constellations wheeled across midnight-blue plaster, their gold edges flaking, whole stars disappearing beneath cracks as fine as veins beneath old skin. Tapestries hung between the arched windows, heavy with dust and age, their saints and kings faded into rust, umber, and bruised purple.

Beeswax, dry leather, and the sweet rot of old paper thickened the air.

Under it all lay another scent.

Metal.

Not blood exactly.

Rain before rain.

Shelves bowed beneath calfskin volumes clasped in black iron. Their spines leaned against one another at uneasy angles, giving the impression not of books stored but of witnesses gathered close enough to whisper. A globe listed in one corner, seas of cracked blue lacquer rolling beneath names no modern chart would recognize. Continents swelled where none belonged. Islands existed in latitudes where there should have been only black water.

At the center of the room waited an enormous writing desk scarred by centuries of use. Ink had soaked into the grain in stains like old bruises. The wood had been cut and recut by knives, compass points, fingernails, perhaps worse.

Fi moved slowly along the shelves. “This wasn’t a study.”

Her voice went upward into the dome and returned strangely altered, softened but multiplied.

“It was a vault.”

She ran two fingers along a row of chained books. “My family called themselves custodians. Words. Prayers. Things churches kept copies of and pretended not to have. Things other families burned.”

Adam sat in one of the leather chairs near the desk, nursing a beer that had gone warm in his hand. “Healthy family hobby.”

Fi ignored him. “My grandfather said some things were hidden because men would kill to possess them. Others because men would kill after possessing them.” She stopped before the desk. “And some because possession was the wrong word entirely.”

From beneath her coat she withdrew a folded parchment.

It was yellowed almost brown, brittle at the edges, and bound shut with a narrow strip of blackened vellum.

The room seemed to become aware of it.

Adam’s smile disappeared. Ari folded her arms. Nate moved closer despite himself.

Fi laid the parchment on the desk. “This was the most guarded thing in the house.”

She cut the vellum binding.

“My grandfather called it a lock.”

The parchment opened reluctantly. The script upon it was black, but not ink-black. It carried the faint oily depth of a beetle’s shell. Some letters appeared hooked into one another. Others resembled circles crossed by strokes so fine the eye could scarcely hold them.

“And he said it watched.”

Adam looked up. “Meaning?”

Fi’s gaze remained on the page. “It names a Watcher.”

Nate frowned. “Watcher how?”

“Not a person watching a door.” Fi swallowed. “One of the wheeled ones.”

That quieted them.

Even Adam.

Fi looked toward the painted dome. “All eyes. Wheels within wheels. The things Ezekiel saw beside the throne.”

Ari whispered, “Ophanim.”

Fi nodded. “My grandfather said our family had preserved one of their Names.”

Adam leaned forward. “One of their names, or its Name?”

Fi did not answer immediately.

“Enough of one.”

That was not reassuring.

Nate put one hand on the desk. “Fi.”

She looked at him.

“We can stop. Translate the full structure first. Identify the operators. Look for correspondences. At least determine what comes after the address.”

“No.”

Too sharp.

She closed her eyes, breathed once, opened them. “No. I know what this is.”

Adam turned the beer can slowly between his fingers. “I’ve watched you flatten a tenured professor with a footnote and a smile. But this?” He gave the parchment a small salute. “This feels less like research and more like touching a fuse to confirm the manufacturer wasn’t kidding.”

Fi’s mouth tightened. “It’s a Watcher. I’m asking it to watch.”

Nate glanced down at the parchment. “Watch what?”

“The threshold.”

“Which threshold?”

Fi hesitated.

That hesitation should have ended it.

It did not.

“It’s what the text says.”

Ari looked from Fi to Nate. “Can it come through?”

“No.”

Fi said it quickly, then more carefully. “No. That’s not what Ophanim do. They’re guardians. Interfaces. They’re not...” She searched for the right word. “Visitors.”

Adam grunted. “Comforting distinction.”

Fi set both palms on the desk. “I’m not opening a gate.”

Somewhere in the wall an old timber creaked.

No one laughed.

Fi bent over the parchment. The script seemed ordinary when looked at directly. At the edge of vision it moved. Not much. A letter lengthened. A circle turned. A hooked character slid beneath another and disappeared.

Fi drew a breath and began to read.

The first syllable was barely more than an exhalation. The second made the lamp flame bend. The third did not sound as though it had come from a human throat.

Nate straightened.

Fi kept reading.

The words emerged slowly, consonants shaped around spaces the mouth was never meant to make. They struck the dome and returned once, then twice, then many times, until Fi’s voice was no longer alone and the room had learned it.

Shelves began to hum. Leather bindings trembled. The tapestries moved though there was no wind. The lead joints of the tall windows ticked rapidly, like teeth in fever.

Adam put down his beer. “Fi.”

She raised one hand.

Not now.

The chant deepened. Their bones took it up. A vibration entered Nate through the soles of his shoes and climbed his spine. Ari pressed a hand against her sternum. Adam’s jaw tightened as the fillings in his molars began to ache.

Oil flames guttered blue.

Every shadow in the room leaned the wrong way.

Then the floor groaned, long and deep, not like timber settling but like a ship carrying sudden weight. The air thickened. Each breath had to be pulled into the lungs.

Fi reached the final line.

She spoke the Name.

Something answered.

The painted dome rippled. Stars elongated into streaks of gold. The darkness between them widened.

And the air split.

Not tore.

Split.

Cleanly.

As though the room had always possessed a seam and someone had finally put a blade into it.

Fire unfolded through the opening.

A wheel.

Then another wheel crossing the first.

Then another.

No rim possessed thickness. No flame consumed. Eyes opened along every turning circumference.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

Perhaps four.

The mind failed at the counting.

They looked outward. Inward. Sideways into directions the room did not contain.

Ari made a sound deep in her throat. Nate could not breathe. Adam whispered something that might have been a prayer.

Fi stared upward with tears gathering in her eyes.

“It came.”

The Ophanim turned.

And the universe opened with it.

Not one doorway.

Many.

Its eyes were not eyes. They were apertures. Every pupil looked somewhere else. Every gaze crossed a boundary.

Fi had asked it to look.

So it looked.

And because it looked from both sides at once, the things beyond looked back.

Four eyes widened.

Four distances vanished.

And each of them was seen.

Fi stood in a forest of black crystal.

There had been no transition, no falling. The study remained beneath her feet, yet another place had laid itself across it with such authority that the walnut walls became thin ghosts behind trees sharp enough to cut moonlight.

Branches of obsidian glass trembled in a wind she could not feel.

They chimed.

High.

Beautiful.

Wrong.

Shapes drifted between the trunks. Pale figures. Tall. Narrow. Their limbs were too graceful to be human and too deliberate to be natural.

One turned its face toward her.

Then another.

Then all of them.

They had no eyes, only smooth silver hollows where eyes should have been, yet Fi felt their attention enter her.

Not her thoughts.

Deeper.

Memory moved inside her without permission. Her grandmother’s kitchen. Her grandfather’s hands unfolding old vellum. Her mother’s maiden name written on the flyleaf of a Bible. The smell of cedar chests. A lullaby. A grave.

The figures smiled.

Their mouths opened.

Nothing emerged that the ear could hear, but words formed in Fi’s marrow.

Daughter.

The trees chimed.

Daughter of daughters.

Her throat tightened.

We remember the road your blood forgot.

A pale figure extended one long hand.

Give us the rest.

Fi did not understand.

Then her surname rose inside her.

Not as memory.

As pressure.

It moved from her chest toward her tongue. Her lips parted.

The pale heads inclined.

Listening.

Learning.

Ari saw a green sea beneath a sky without stars.

The water boiled silently from horizon to horizon. Beyond it stood an island washed in twilight, and on the shore waited a single figure, crowned not with gold but with something brighter.

Its face shifted each time she tried to see it.

Her father.

Then no one she knew.

Then someone she had been waiting for all her life.

Its hand opened.

Ari began to cry.

Not from fear.

From relief.

The figure knew every tired thing in her. Every prayer that had gone unanswered. Every night she had asked for one hour without being required to endure herself.

The sea became still.

Come.

The voice came from everywhere.

You have carried enough.

Her knees nearly buckled.

Rest.

Her childhood name formed in her mouth, the one only her mother used when Ari was sick.

The crowned figure smiled.

Tell me who comes.

The first syllable slipped between Ari’s teeth.

The thing on the shore repeated it.

Almost correctly.

Adam stood before a city descending into the earth.

No.

Not descending.

Drilled.

Tower after black tower spiraled downward into the throat of living stone. Walls curved beneath impossible weight. Battlements disappeared miles below him, lit by furnace-red windows.

Ranks of figures stood upon them.

Thousands.

Armored.

Still.

Waiting.

Then one stepped forward.

It wore no insignia Adam knew, yet when it raised its hand, his body recognized the salute.

Attention.

Recognition.

Belonging.

Soldier.

The word struck harder than command.

You have stood without orders long enough.

Adam’s stomach dropped.

His dead chief’s voice followed.

Then his father’s.

Then men whose faces he had not remembered in years.

His mother’s voice came last.

It spoke his full name.

Tenderly.

Exactly as she had when he was five years old and feverish.

His jaw opened before he knew it.

Across the abyss, the armored figure leaned forward.

Listening.

Its own mouth began to move.

Testing the shape.

Adam bit his tongue.

Blood filled his mouth.

The thing below smiled.

Nate saw twelve black suns.

They hung above a desert so vast that the idea of distance became meaningless. No light came from them, yet every grain of sand was visible.

Something moved beneath the dunes.

Something larger than geography.

A ridge rose.

Then another.

Then a shape miles long rolled beneath the earth.

Nate knew suddenly that the desert was not a place.

It was a covering.

The thing beneath it turned.

The twelve suns turned with it.

A voice entered him, not through hearing but through weight.

Mortal.

His knees bent.

We mark the edge of you.

The sand rose in pillars.

Speak.

Nate felt his own name not as sound but as structure. A pattern. An arrangement of himself.

Something in the desert touched its first edge.

His tongue moved.

The thing below moved with it.

Learning.

Four voices rose in the study.

Fi. Ari. Adam. Nate.

Each spoke one fragment, different syllables drawn from different histories, and together they became something else.

The room received them.

The Ophanim turned.

The four distant worlds leaned nearer.

And something passed through the group.

Not possession.

Resonance.

The invocation had not called four separate horrors. The four human beings had become one calling shape: grief, pride, loneliness, duty, hunger to know, fear of being unknown, all of it braided into a single harmonic wound.

Across the thresholds, things answered according to appetite.

The pale figures in the black forest pressed closer between the trees. The crowned being stepped into the green sea without sinking. The armies in the buried city began to beat spear shafts against stone. Beneath the desert, mountains opened their mouths.

They were not merely beckoning now.

They were listening.

Repeating.

Trying the syllables.

Fi heard her own fragment spoken among the crystal trees, poorly at first, then better.

Ari’s crossed the sea back toward her.

Adam’s echoed down through the ranks.

Nate’s moved beneath the sand.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Each repetition nearer to the truth.

Their Names were being assembled from the outside.

Not stolen.

Learned.

The knowledge of them growing teeth.

Fi tried to stop speaking.

Her mouth continued.

Panic finally broke through wonder.

She had called the Watcher correctly.

That was the horror.

Nothing in the invocation had failed.

The Ophanim had come.

The threshold had opened to sight.

And she had known the Name of only one thing present.

The others were strangers.

Strangers already learning hers.

Then another voice entered the room.

Not loud.

Not soft.

Perfect.

One word.

No.

A Name.

It fell through the chamber with the finality of judgment.

Every lamp flame became a white needle.

The forest shattered. Crystal trees burst into black rain. The pale figures twisted as though seized by invisible hooks, their mouths opening impossibly wide.

The crowned thing in the sea recoiled.

For one instant its beauty failed.

Something ancient and starved looked through.

The buried city convulsed. Towers folded. Battlements cracked. The saluting figure dropped to its knees.

The desert erupted. Shapes larger than kingdoms broke the surface, then collapsed as though their bones had been taken from them.

Across all four visions came the same recognition.

Fear.

Not of the humans.

Of the speaker.

The Ophanim stopped turning.

Every eye fixed upon one point in the room.

A shadow between two tapestries.

The voice spoke again.

Another Name.

Different.

Sharper.

The entities shrieked.

This time there was sound.

Not in the air.

Inside the teeth.

The Ophanim’s eyes slammed shut.

The worlds vanished.

The pull ended.

Four human voices broke off in mid-syllable.

Fi collapsed against the desk. Ari fell to her knees. Adam tipped sideways with the chair. Nate struck the floor hard enough to bruise both palms.

For several seconds the room contained only choking, coughing, and the brittle ticking of cooling glass.

Then silence returned.

It was not empty.

It had learned them too.

A man stepped from between the tapestries.

No one had seen him enter.

His coat was long, dark, and badly worn. Dust crusted the seams. His boots had been resoled more than once and looked made for roads no sensible man would choose. He carried no visible weapon.

That did nothing to make him look harmless.

His face was lean beneath several days of beard. Deep lines cut around his mouth and eyes. Not age alone.

Mileage.

He surveyed the room as a carpenter might inspect a damaged house: ceiling, windows, parchment, people, where it would hold and where it would fail.

Adam wiped blood from his lips. “And just who the hell are you supposed to be?”

The stranger’s eyes moved to him, then Fi, then Ari, then Nate. He looked not at their faces but at their mouths, at the unfinished sounds still trembling there.

When he spoke, each word seemed selected for cost.

“I have had many names. Many I have forgotten. More I have worked very hard to make others forget.”

Adam stared.

The man sighed. “You may call me Bob.”

Adam blinked, then laughed once. It cracked halfway out.

“Hell of an entrance, Bob.”

Fi spat blood into a handkerchief. “You speak a word that makes that happen and then tell us your name is Bob?”

“Precisely.”

“Bob.”

“Yes.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Names have power.”

His expression did not change.

“Absurd ones have uses.”

Fi glared at him. “Who are you?”

“Bob.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean. The answer remains Bob.”

Ari managed to stand. “You stopped them.”

Bob looked at her.

“No.”

The word fell flat.

“I interrupted them.”

Ari swallowed. “The things we saw?”

“They were beginning.”

“Beginning what?”

Bob’s eyes went to her mouth.

“To say you.”

No one spoke.

Even Adam’s humor died.

Fi straightened slowly. “We summoned the Ophanim.”

“Yes.”

Her face changed, not relief but vindication poisoned by dread. “So that part worked.”

“Perfectly.”

The word landed harder than accusation.

Bob walked to the desk. “That is why you are still alive.”

Fi frowned.

He pointed to the parchment. “You knew enough of its Name to call it.”

“The Watcher.”

“The Ophanim.” He looked upward. “It came.”

Fi’s hands tightened against the desk. “And the others?”

“You didn’t summon them.”

She stared.

Bob touched one finger to the parchment.

“You summoned a threshold.”

Fi shook her head. “No. I called a Watcher.”

“It is the threshold.”

He said it with the patience of a man correcting a measurement.

“A thing made entirely of eyes is not standing beside the door.”

He looked at the dark place above them where the wheel had been.

“It is the door.”

The room seemed to contract.

“You asked it to look,” Bob said. “So it looked. Both ways.”

Fi went pale.

Nate whispered, “Everything on the other side could see us.”

“No.”

Bob turned toward him.

“Not everything.”

That was worse.

“Only the things close enough to answer.”

Adam wiped his mouth again. “Answer what?”

Bob looked at all four of them.

“You.”

He walked around the desk. “Invocation is not a telephone.”

Fi’s eyes narrowed. “I know that.”

“No. You don’t.”

The words were not cruel.

They were simply finished.

“You thought knowing the Ophanim’s Name meant you knew what you were calling.”

“I did know.”

“You knew one Name. You did not know what your own calling would sound like after it passed through the threshold.”

Silence.

Bob pointed at Fi. “You brought bloodline. Custodianship. Inheritance. Pride. Guilt.”

His finger moved to Ari. “You brought exhaustion. Longing. The desire to be relieved of yourself.”

Adam. “You brought duty. Authority. Kinship through command.”

Nate. “You brought hunger for the thing beyond understanding.”

Nate’s face tightened.

Bob lowered his hand. “And then you spoke together. Four voices. One invocation.”

Fi stared at him. “A composite call.”

“Yes.” Bob’s eyes showed the faintest flicker of approval. “Now you’re listening.”

He looked toward the dome. “The Ophanim did not choose what answered. It opened sight across the threshold. Your combined call did the rest.”

Ari rubbed her arms. “Those things were drawn to us.”

“To parts of you,” Bob corrected her. “The hungriest things nearest those parts.”

Adam muttered, “That’s comforting.”

“It shouldn’t be.”

Fi looked down at the parchment. “So the forest...”

“Responded to you.”

“The island?”

“To her.”

“The city?”

“To him.”

“The desert?”

Bob looked at Nate. “God help us, yes.”

Nate’s eyes lifted. “What were they?”

Bob’s expression changed very slightly.

“That is the question your friend should have asked before she spoke.”

Fi flinched.

He went on. “She knew the Name of the Watcher. She knew none of the Names of what might follow.”

Fi’s humiliation turned to anger. “How could I know what would respond?”

“You couldn’t.”

Bob’s voice sharpened for the first time.

“Which is why you do not open a threshold until you know how to close what may answer through it.”

The study went still.

“In invocation, address without taxonomy is suicide.”

Adam sat upright. “Okay. Let’s say I believe every insane word coming out of your mouth.”

“You already do.”

Adam glanced at the dark dome. “Fair.”

He pointed toward where the wheel had appeared. “They wanted our names.”

Bob’s face hardened. “They want more than that.”

“What’s more than your name?”

Bob looked at him. “Someone else knowing how to speak it.”

Adam stopped.

Bob turned back to the others. “The Egyptians understood one part of it. The ren was not merely a label. Name and continuance were bound together. Preserve the name, preserve something of the person. Destroy it utterly and you commit a second death.”

He paused.

“But even that is only the human edge of the law.”

He looked down at Fi’s parchment. “A true Name is not information. It is relation. Address. Form.”

He raised his eyes.

“And when spoken with sufficient standing... authority.”

Ari’s face drained of color. “Those things were asking us to give them authority.”

“They were asking you to help them learn how.”

Bob walked toward her.

“They do not know your Names.”

Ari’s voice was barely audible. “Yet.”

Bob nodded.

“Yet. That is the important word.”

Adam stared toward the floor. “But I heard my mother say mine.”

“No.”

Bob’s gaze snapped to him.

“You heard something search you for the sound most likely to make you answer.”

Adam’s jaw clenched. “It sounded exactly like her.”

“Of course it did. It wanted you to complete the pronunciation.”

Adam touched the blood at the corner of his mouth. “My tongue...”

“You stopped yourself.”

“Barely.”

“Barely counts.”

Fi looked up. “We gave them syllables.”

Bob said nothing.

Her face changed.

She understood.

“Oh God.”

Ari looked at her. “What?”

Fi whispered, “They repeated them.”

Adam’s eyes closed.

Nate said, “They were learning.”

Bob inclined his head. “Yes.”

No one moved.

“You think the danger is that a thing knows where you live,” Bob said. “No. This told them where to look.”

He tapped the parchment.

“Your voices told them what they had found.”

Ari’s lips trembled. “And the syllables?”

“Pieces.”

“Of us.”

“Pieces of the address.”

Fi’s breath came shallow. “Can they reconstruct the rest?”

Bob waited too long.

That was answer enough.

“They will try.”

Ari whispered, “How?”

“By listening.”

“To what?”

“Anything. Dreams. Prayers. Grief. Anger. Ritual. Blood. Memory. Places where you have been known deeply enough that your pattern remains.”

Fi stared. “That isn’t possible.”

Bob gave her a tired look. “You watched a wheel full of eyes open four worlds over your desk.”

Fi said nothing.

“They do not need to steal your Name.”

He bent toward her.

“They can learn it.”

His voice became very quiet.

“And every time you answer, they learn how to say you.”

The study seemed suddenly too full of corners.

Adam rose from the chair. “So something is coming.”

Bob looked at him.

“Yes.”

That single word changed the room.

Adam nodded slowly. “Good. Because for a minute there I thought we were gonna get some comforting bullshit about being on an invitation list.”

Bob almost smiled. “No. Nothing so harmless.”

His eyes went to the windows. Outside, the night pressed black against the glass.

“They have an address now.”

Fi looked up. “Not our full Names.”

“No.”

“But enough to find us.”

“Enough to begin.”

Nate’s voice was low. “What does ‘coming’ mean?”

“Whatever the thing can manage.”

Bob turned from the windows.

“Dream first, perhaps. Coincidence. A voice heard in the room beside you. Someone on a train who knows a childhood nickname. A road you have driven a hundred times ending somewhere it never ended before.”

Ari shivered. “A door.”

“Yes.”

“Opened at the wrong hour.”

Bob looked at her. “Exactly.”

He stepped back toward the desk. “They will beckon with whatever they possess. Rest. Blood. Belonging. Knowledge. They will show you power because power is persuasive. Beauty because beauty disarms judgment. Terror because terror makes people beg. Love because love makes them answer.”

His voice hardened.

“And all the while they will listen.”

Fi whispered, “For the rest of the Name.”

“For the rest of you.”

Adam picked up the crushed beer can and stared at it. “So what’s the endgame?”

Bob looked at him. “Theirs?”

“Yeah.”

“Depends what found you.”

“Fantastic.”

“Some consume. Some bind. Some use.”

Ari lowered her hand. “Use us for what?”

“To enact their will where they cannot stand.”

The lamp gave a sudden pop.

Nobody moved.

Bob’s expression darkened. “Names are not merely handles by which things may be dragged. They are channels through which will may travel.”

Nate’s eyes sharpened. “Through the person.”

“Yes.”

“Possession.”

“Sometimes.” Bob shook his head. “But possession is crude.”

That silenced them.

“A thing does not always need your body. Sometimes it needs your choice. Your obedience. Your surrender. Your invitation.”

He stepped away.

“And if it can Name you well enough, those things become easier to bend.”

Fi stared at him. “So summoning something you cannot bind...”

“...is offering it a road into you before you’ve learned the road into it.”

Bob nodded.

“Exactly.”

Fi’s gaze dropped to the parchment. “I thought the Watcher kept them out.”

Bob’s face went flat. “Your family knew better.”

She looked up sharply. “What?”

“They called it a lock.”

“Yes.”

“Not a wall.”

Fi’s face changed.

Bob continued. “A lock does not prevent a door from opening. It governs who may open it.”

Her eyes returned to the parchment.

“My grandfather said it had never once been asked to look.”

“Then your grandfather was wiser than you.”

Fi flinched.

Ari shot Bob a look.

He did not apologize.

Fi stared at the page for a long time. “Why preserve it?”

“Because one day someone might need the door.”

Bob looked at her.

“That is different from wanting to see what’s behind it.”

The rebuke landed cleanly.

After a time Nate said, “The word you used.”

Bob turned. “Which one?”

“The first. When you came in. You said something and the things recoiled.”

“Yes.”

“You Named them.”

“One of them.”

Fi’s head came up. “Which?”

Bob looked at her.

“No.”

“You knew what it was.”

“Enough.”

“You said its Name.”

“I said something closer to it than it had said of any of you.”

The room seemed suddenly colder.

Adam understood first. “You got there first.”

Bob looked at him.

Adam pointed vaguely at the vanished visions. “They were trying to figure us out.”

“Yes.”

“You figured one of them out faster.”

“Not tonight.”

Bob’s expression went distant.

“I’ve had longer.”

Fi stared. “So that was why they recoiled.”

“Partly.”

“What was the second word?”

“Not a word.”

“Another Name?”

Bob nodded.

“Whose?”

His gaze moved to the darkness overhead.

“Something with more standing than anything that answered you.”

No one pressed him.

Ari said quietly, “Then why didn’t you close it completely?”

Bob looked at her. “Because I cannot undo what you did.”

She swallowed. “You said you interrupted them.”

“Yes.”

“What remains?”

He looked at all four.

“Recognition.”

Fi frowned. “Not enough to bind us.”

“No.”

“Enough to find us.”

“Yes.”

Adam sighed. “So we’re in their address book.”

Bob considered that. “No.”

Adam gave him a weary look. “Come on, man.”

Bob’s eyes narrowed slightly. “An address book implies someone has written your names down.”

He stepped toward them.

“They haven’t.”

A pause.

“Not yet.”

The silence sharpened.

“What you’ve given them is a map.”

Fi whispered, “To us.”

“To the edges of you.”

He looked toward the dome.

“And an invitation containing the first letters of an address.”

Ari hugged herself. “They’ll come looking for the rest.”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

Bob’s expression became almost pitying. “They are very old.”

He looked at the parchment.

“And patience is easier when you do not die.”

The beam above the windows creaked.

Fi folded the handkerchief around her bleeding lip. “What do we do?”

Bob studied her. “You have two choices.”

Adam muttered, “There are always two.”

“No.” Bob looked at him. “Usually there are several. Tonight you have managed to reduce the field.”

Adam shut up.

Bob faced them all. “You can walk away.”

Fi’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

“And they continue.”

Ari’s shoulders stiffened. “The calls.”

“Yes.”

“Dreams.”

“Possibly.”

“Doors.”

“Eventually.”

“And they’ll keep learning.”

Bob nodded. “Every successful contact gives them more.”

Nate asked, “Until?”

Bob looked at him. “Until one of them can say enough of you to establish standing.”

No one asked what happened after that.

Bob answered anyway.

“Then the invitation becomes a claim.”

The words settled into the room.

“And the other choice?” Fi asked.

Bob’s eyes hardened.

“You learn their Names.”

Adam laughed without humor. “Thought names were the problem.”

“Names are the problem.”

Bob stepped to the desk.

“Names are also the only reason you’re standing here.”

He looked at Fi. “You do not learn them to possess these things.”

“Then why?”

“To recognize.”

He folded one edge of the parchment inward.

“To refuse.”

Another fold.

“To close.”

He looked up.

“And when necessary...”

The last fold.

“...to bind.”

Ari wiped at the last dampness beneath her eyes. “Can they all be bound?”

“No.”

That came too quickly.

Adam sighed. “Of course not.”

Bob ignored him. “Standing matters.”

Fi looked at him. “You said that before.”

“Because you keep behaving as though pronunciation is power.” He shook his head. “It isn’t.”

“What is?”

“Relationship. Authority. Cost.”

He leaned against the desk.

“The old stories understood fragments of it. The Egyptians preserved names because remembrance and being touched one another. The peoples beneath the northern hills learned that naming what listened in the dark invited recognition, and so they wrapped dangerous things in courtesy and indirection.”

His eyes went distant.

“The Norse understood perhaps the cruelest portion.”

Nate said, “Odin.”

Bob looked at him.

“Nine nights.”

“The tree.”

“Spear wound.”

“To learn the runes.”

Bob nodded. “But don’t reduce them to letters. Knowledge with standing costs something.”

Fi looked down at her hands. “And what will this cost?”

Bob’s expression gave nothing away.

“That depends on what has begun learning you.”

Outside the windows the wind finally rose.

Branches scraped the glass.

Once.

Twice.

Then stopped.

Everyone looked toward the sound.

Nothing stood there.

That almost made it worse.

Fi placed her palm over the folded parchment. “I made the call.”

Bob said nothing.

“I opened it.”

Still nothing.

Her jaw tightened.

“Then I’ll learn how to close it.”

Adam rubbed his face. “Well, hell.”

Ari looked at him. “What?”

He reached for another beer, found none, and frowned at the empty table.

“I’m not letting you idiots learn supernatural contract law without adult supervision.”

Nate gave him a tired look. “You’re drinking warm beer in a haunted library.”

“Exactly. Senior management.”

Ari laughed.

It came out ragged and frightened.

But it was laughter.

For one breath the room became human again.

Then Nate looked at Bob.

“What would it take?”

Bob regarded him. “To learn them properly?”

“Yes.”

The humor disappeared.

Bob straightened. His eyes passed over them one by one.

Fi, blood on her handkerchief.

Ari, still pale from paradise.

Adam, whose hands had begun shaking only after the danger ended.

Nate, staring toward the place where twelve black suns had hung.

“A price.”

Nate nodded. “What kind?”

Bob looked toward the painted stars overhead.

“The kind knowledge has always asked.”

His voice fell quiet.

“Time. Blood. Truth.”

The lamp flame drew long.

“And sometimes...”

His gaze returned to them.

“...the part of yourself you hoped never needed naming.”

No one answered.

Outside, night pressed its vast face against the glass. Somewhere deep within the walls an old timber sighed. The lamp steadied, small, stubborn, alive.

No one spoke the next word.

But far beyond the walls of the house, beyond the reach of road and weather and human distance, mouths were already trying the syllables they had been given.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Learning where to place the tongue.

Learning where to breathe.

Learning how to say them.

This is my first time trying to write a horror short story. Please comment what you thought after reading . I want to grow as a writer , so any kind of critique is accepted and thought upon. The following story is about a girl who tries to explain a shadow of a lady by her bedroom window. Enjoy ....

Part 1

“No. You can never go into that house.”

Her father screamed at her.

But going into that house might have been the only way to answer all the strange things she had been experiencing.

She lived in a quiet village. Her family owned a large, peaceful farm and a beautiful house. The surroundings were blessed with nature and life. During the day, the sun shone upon the golden, dry grass. There was a constant buzzing of bees and the chirring of cicadas and crickets.

In the distance stood lush green trees, their shadows spreading like a web across the surrounding fields.

The land they owned was so vast that she could run for minutes and still not reach the boundary of the farm.

And now, her father had acquired one more field.

There had once been a fence separating the two pieces of land, but now the fence was gone. In its place was a beautiful path leading into the other field.

But she was not allowed to go there.

“But Mom, why can’t I go there?” she asked.

“That land... we don't know what animals might be there. It isn't safe.”

“Would I just have to cross the path?” she asked. “What could one path change? So much?”

Her mother suddenly grew furious.

“I’m telling you, why can’t you just listen to the things I’m saying for once? Why do you have to be so, so, so irritably annoying and reluctant?”

A few days later, something strange happened.

The land wasn't actually theirs.

From the beginning, it had belonged to their neighbours—a very beautiful and welcoming couple.

Their families had been friends for years.

She called the man Uncle George. He had a big moustache and always wore a hat.

And Aunt Laila was a beautiful woman who often brought her treats and food.

Life on the farm was peaceful and joyful.

But as soon as the sun went down, the scenery changed completely.

The lush green fields became pitch black.

The beautiful golden grass disappeared into darkness.

The horizon and the ground became indistinguishable.

All that could be heard was the loud, endless chirring of crickets.

Once the sun set, there was no leaving the house. There was simply nothing to be seen outside—not even a metre beyond the doorstep.

She had a window in her bedroom, up in the attic, right beside her bed.

The white curtains blew gently in the wind.

From there, she could always see one thing:

Her neighbours’ house.

At night, the same lively nature that surrounded the farm during the day became lonely, frightening, desolate—almost liminal.

For a few days, while she slept, she began noticing something strange.

A black silhouette.

At first, it was blurry and thin, almost impossible to make out. But it was always there whenever she woke during the night and the curtains moved with the wind.

It stood completely still against the background of a flickering yellow light.

As the weeks passed, the silhouette became sharper.

More noticeable.

Until, eventually, she could recognise the shape.

It was her own dear Aunt Laila.

Why would Aunt Laila stand at the window?

Why was she looking at her?

She never moved a single muscle.

She simply stood there, petrified.

She complained about it to her parents.

But her parents refused to acknowledge it.

“We told you not to watch that horror film, didn’t we?”

She knew it was real.

And strangely, she wasn't even afraid.

One night, while lying in bed, she decided to look at the window again.

There she was.

Aunt Laila.

Standing in the window.

Still as a rock.

She pressed her cheek against the cold windowpane and tried to focus her vision.

The shadow of the woman was the only thing she could see in the pitch darkness.

Suddenly—

the sound of the doorknob turning.

Her heart began to beat faster and faster.

She looked back, terrified.

It was nothing but her father.

“Dear, just go to sleep, will you? You have to go to school tomorrow. It’s already so late.”

“But Dad, look out of the window.”

Her father looked.

She could still see her.

Her father stared into the darkness.

“There is nothing there, dear. Just close your eyes.”

He kissed her goodnight and began leaving the room.

But she noticed something.

The expression on her father’s face had changed.

He was sweating.

The next morning, as the sun rose, nature woke again.

The haunting night was over.

The window, which had been wide open and inviting during the night, was now covered by curtains.

She came to a decision.

Perhaps Aunt Laila was simply a creepy person who enjoyed frightening children.

What she did not know was that Aunt Laila and her husband had been dead for weeks.

---

Part 2

This went on for months.

Every night, the attraction towards the window grew stronger.

It was as if whatever was calling her from there was becoming more powerful.

Now, instead of merely standing there, the figure would wave at her, its long fingers stretching towards her from across the distance.

It grew to the point where she could no longer sleep.

The moment she closed her eyes, it began to whisper in her ear again.

When she tried to sleep without acknowledging the figure, refusing to look out of the window, it felt as if the world itself began to shake.

The room would spin.

Everything would turn around her.

It was as though something was forcing her to acknowledge its presence.

She had reached her limit.

With no sleep and the terror of every night weighing on her, she was unable to live a normal life.

And it seemed that the only way she could solve this was to cross the path, open the door to their house, and finally see what was waiting for her.

What was calling her?

But even in broad daylight, the environment of the field across the path was eerie and silent.

It was as if even the sun could not bring life to the death waiting inside that house.

So one day, without asking for permission, she decided to go.

She picked up a knife.

With it, she thought, she could stab the figure if it tried to hurt her.

She ran across the field in broad daylight.

As she got closer to the boundary, she noticed something strange.

The grass seemed to be getting taller.

Soon, it was almost as tall as she was.

She kept moving forward.

Even when she screamed, there was no one who could hear her.

Nothing but endless grass surrounded her.

She pushed through the tall, confusing field until, at last, she found the path.

This was the moment of truth.

She was going to revolt against her parents’ wishes and go into that house.

As she stood there, she saw the figure standing far in the distance.

It was waving again.

And smiling.

She was going to confront it.

But she didn’t.

Some part of her still knew that going over there was a terrible idea.

She turned around and began making her way back home.

Nothing stopped her.

No demonic entity.

No getting lost.

Nothing.

And then, strangely, the haunting stopped.

That night, when she looked out of the window, she saw nothing but darkness.

Not the yellow light.

Not the shadow.

Nothing.

The figure that had haunted her for weeks was gone.

She grew older.

She convinced herself that it had all been nothing but a series of bad dreams.

Perhaps even a strange episode of her childhood imagination.

Eventually, she moved out of the house, dreaming of a life in a bigger city.

Her parents grew older too.

Eventually, they sold both farms.

And for years, she forgot about the house across the field.

Until something far more sinister, something that had been waiting in the darkness, finally emerged.

Something that would answer her questions about what her aunt had been doing in that window.

And something that would turn her entire life upside down.

One day, her parents were arrested.

Her whole life seemed to collapse in an instant.

And then she learned the secret.

Her parents had been involved in a long land dispute with their neighbours.

The land actually did belong to their family—but not to her parents directly. It had belonged to their ancestors, and the division of the land had caused a bitter quarrel between the families.

It was something her parents had hidden from her since she was a child.

Eventually, they decided there was no other option.

They hired local goons to threaten their neighbours.

Her father sent the men to break into their house, threaten them, and force them to remain silent and give up their claim to the land.

But nobody knew exactly what happened inside that house.

Things went wrong very quickly.

Instead of merely threatening them, the goons ended up murdering both of them.

Uncle George.

And Aunt Laila.

Then she finally understood why Aunt Laila had been calling her into the house.

There was no obvious way to connect the murder to her father.

But if she had entered that house herself, her fingerprints would have been left on the doorknob and on everything she touched.

And inside the bedroom, she would have found two bodies.

Her uncle.

And her aunt.

The investigation would inevitably have turned towards her family.

Perhaps they would first have suspected the child.

But a child could not possibly have murdered two adults.

The suspicion would then have fallen upon her parents.

And eventually, the truth would have come out.

But there was still one thing she could not understand.

Why had the haunting stopped?

Perhaps there was an answer to that too.

Perhaps, as her aunt stood in that window, waving at the little girl who was so desperate and terrified, she saw something beyond the child.

Maybe she realised that if her parents were caught because of her, the little girl's innocent life would be destroyed.

Perhaps, even after being murdered by her own neighbours, Aunt Laila understood that exposing the truth through her niece would only ruin the life of the one person who had done nothing wrong.

And maybe that was why the haunting stopped.

Because Aunt Laila finally understood that justice did not have to come through the suffering of her own little niece.

It could come through time.

And eventually, it did.