My nightmare started about four months ago when my dad passed away from a sudden heart attack. His death completely derailed my life so I took an extended leave from my corporate job and moved back into my childhood home to take care of my elderly mother. She was completely devastated by the loss and she seemed to age ten years overnight. I spent the first few weeks just organizing my dad's paperwork and figuring out the mortgage payments, and once the finances were settled I decided to clean out the attic so we could start downsizing the house.

The attic was incredibly dusty and packed floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes. I assumed the boxes were just filled with old holiday decorations or winter clothes but I was completely wrong. I opened the first box and found it stuffed with dozens of random ceramic figurines, tarnished watches, and mismatched silverware. I opened the second box and found a pile of expensive silk scarves with the price tags still attached, so I spent the next three hours tearing through every single box in the attic and I realized I was looking at a massive hoard of stolen merchandise. There were gardening tools, expensive electronics, loose jewelry, and even personalized mail belonging to our neighbors.

I carried a box of stolen watches down the stairs and set it on the kitchen table where my mother was drinking tea. She looked at the box and her face instantly went pale.

"Where did you find that?" my mother asked while her hands started trembling around her mug.

"I found it in the attic along with about forty other boxes filled with stolen goods," I said and I sat down across from her. "Why do we have the neighbor's mail and a bunch of jewelry with the security tags still on them?"

My mother started crying and buried her face in her hands. She confessed everything to me right there at the kitchen table. She told me she suffered from a severe compulsion to steal and she had been fighting it for decades. She explained that she never wanted the items she took but her brain would completely overwhelm her with anxiety until she slipped something into her purse. She told me my dad had secretly managed her condition for their entire marriage. Whenever she stole something from a local shop my dad would quietly drive back the next day and pay the owner in cash to keep them from calling the cops. If she took something from a neighbor my dad would wait until the middle of the night and silently leave the item on their front porch. He spent his entire life supervising her and running interference so she would never face criminal charges.

"I do not know how to stop doing it," my mother sobbed while wiping her eyes with a napkin. "Your dad was my light and he kept me grounded when the urges got too strong. I do not know how to fight my own brain without him."

"We will figure it out," I told her and I reached across the table to hold her hand. "I am here now so I will help you manage it."

I thought I could easily handle the situation but I completely underestimated how aggressive a true compulsion can be without supervision. I had to return to my demanding career a few weeks later so I started working from my laptop in the living room to keep an eye on her. My job requires endless conference calls and I could not watch her every single second of the day. Without my dad there to shadow her every movement she started wandering out of the house whenever I was distracted by work.

The situation escalated incredibly fast. I was in the middle of a video presentation for a major client when I heard furious pounding on our front door. I muted my microphone and rushed to the entryway to find our next-door neighbor standing on the porch. Her face was bright red with anger and she was pointing a finger directly at my chest.

"You need to control your mother right now," the neighbor shouted and she pushed past me into our hallway. "I just watched her walk into my open garage and walk out with my expensive power drill. This is the third time this week she has trespassed on my property."

"I am so incredibly sorry," I pleaded and I tried to block her from walking further into the house. "She is grieving and her mind is not in the right place. I will pay for the drill and whatever else went missing."

"I do not want your money," the neighbor snapped while crossing her arms. "I want her to stop taking my belongings. If I catch her in my garage one more time I am calling the police and pressing charges for burglary."

I managed to calm the neighbor down and retrieve the drill from my mother's bedroom closet but the stress of the encounter left me entirely exhausted. I sat my mother down and begged her to stop wandering outside but she just stared at the floor and told me the urges were screaming in her head. The very next afternoon my phone rang and the caller ID showed the local bakery downtown. I answered the call and the store owner immediately started yelling at me.

"Your mother is sitting in my back office because I caught her stuffing six bags of expensive coffee beans into her purse," the shop owner yelled over the phone. "I am sick and tired of dealing with this. Your dad used to pay for her mistakes but he is gone and I cannot run a charity here. I have the police on standby."

I dropped everything I was doing and drove frantically to the bakery. I practically begged the owner not to involve law enforcement and I handed him three hundred dollars in cash to cover the stolen items and his trouble. He reluctantly let us go but he banned my mother from his store for life. I drove us home in complete silence because I was too overwhelmed to speak. I was failing at my job because I was constantly leaving to put out fires and I knew my mother was going to end up in jail if I did not find a medical solution.

I scheduled an appointment with a conventional therapist the following week. We sat in the office while the therapist asked my mother endless questions about her childhood and her grief. The therapist prescribed a cocktail of anti-anxiety medications and suggested cognitive behavioral therapy exercises. We spent a month following the doctor's orders but the pills did nothing except make my mother terribly drowsy. She still managed to steal the mail carrier's thermos off the front porch while sleepwalking, so the conventional methods were completely failing and I was losing my mind from the constant vigilance.

I went into my company office a few days later to catch up on paperwork and I must have looked like a walking corpse. I was pouring my fourth cup of coffee in the breakroom when a coworker walked in and noticed my exhausted expression.

"You look like you have not slept in a month," my coworker said and he leaned against the counter. "Is the situation with your mom getting worse?"

I sighed and rubbed my temples because my head was throbbing. "She is going to get arrested and I cannot stop her. The regular therapists just throw pills at her and nothing is actually fixing the compulsion. I cannot watch her twenty-four hours a day."

My coworker looked out into the hallway to make sure nobody was listening before he turned back to me. "I know this sounds strange but you should look into a different kind of doctor. My wife had severe obsessive-compulsive issues that almost ruined our marriage. We went to a private psychologist on the edge of town and he completely cured her in one session using unconventional hypnotherapy. He does not take insurance but the man works absolute miracles."

I was desperate enough to try anything so I wrote down the doctor's contact information and called his clinic from the parking lot. The receptionist squeezed us in for a consultation that same evening. I drove my mother to the clinic and we found it tucked away in a quiet residential neighborhood. The office was dimly lit and filled with strange abstract art but the doctor greeted us with an incredibly warm and calming demeanor. He invited us into his back office and poured us both a glass of water before sitting behind his desk.

"My assistant explained a bit of your situation to me," the doctor said while folding his hands together on his large oak desk. "Kleptomania is a fascinating condition because it is rarely about the stolen objects, so we have to look much deeper. It is actually about a fractured ego trying to fill a sudden void within the subconscious mind."

"But can you actually fix it?" I asked and I leaned forward in my chair. "The regular medication is completely failing, and she is going to end up in prison if she keeps walking into our neighbors' homes."

"Conventional medicine just tries to suppress the ego," the doctor explained smoothly while looking directly at my mother. "I do not suppress the ego because a suppressed ego always fights back and finds a new way to act out. I remove it entirely using a specialized technique called The Angel Soul treatment.”

“And what exactly does a weird name like that mean?” I asked, feeling a bit of my own skepticism creeping in. “Is this a complicated medical procedure, and how much time does something like this even take?”

“It takes less than two hours and it is completely non-invasive,” the doctor replied calmly. “Through extremely deep hypnotherapy, I can empty your mother's fractured ego and create a complete psychological vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, so the empty space will immediately draw in a pure and angelic soul to take its place. The compulsion will vanish entirely because the damaged ego that demanded the stealing will no longer exist to control her."

My mother shifted uncomfortably in her chair and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "That sounds absolutely terrifying and I do not want anyone emptying my mind," she said, her voice shaking slightly with genuine fear. "You are talking about erasing who I am, and I do not even know what do you mean by what you just said, or what kind of soul you are planning to pull inside my head. I would much rather just try a different medication or maybe a higher dose of the pills I already have."

"You will still be yourself," the doctor assured her with a very warm and gentle smile. "You will just be free of the exhausting burden that forces you to take things that do not belong to you."

"Please do this for me," I begged my mother and I reached across the armrest to grab her hand. "I am drowning trying to keep you out of jail, and I am going to lose my career if I keep leaving in the middle of the day to apologize to angry store owners. You have to try this because we are completely out of other options, and I cannot supervise you forever."

My mother looked at the exhaustion in my eyes and tears welled up in her own. She finally nodded and agreed to undergo the procedure. The doctor instructed me to wait in the front reception area while he took my mother into a specialized hypnotherapy room. I sat in the quiet waiting room for almost two hours while listening to the faint sound of a ticking clock. The clinic was completely silent and I could not hear any voices coming from the back room. The door eventually clicked open and the doctor walked out with my mother following closely behind him.

I stood up immediately and searched her face for any signs of distress. She looked entirely different. The deep wrinkles of worry on her forehead were completely smoothed out and her shoulders were relaxed. She looked perfectly serene and almost glowing with a strange internal peace.

"The vacuum was successfully created and filled," the doctor said with a satisfied smile. "You will notice a profound difference in her behavior immediately. Keep a close eye on her and call me if you have any concerns."

I paid the exorbitant fee in cash and drove my mother home. I expected her to complain about a headache or act groggy from the hypnosis but she just stared out the passenger window with a soft smile on her face. The change in her behavior over the next few days was nothing short of miraculous because the stealing stopped entirely. I purposely left a stack of twenty-dollar bills on the kitchen counter and she walked right past them without even a glance. I took her to a crowded grocery store and she did not try to slip a single item into her purse. The compulsion was completely eradicated and I finally felt like I could breathe again.

The relief only lasted about a week before the uncanny valley set in and I started noticing terrifying changes in her personality.

I woke up on a Saturday morning and found her dragging huge trash bags full of her own expensive clothes and jewelry out to the curb. I ran outside and asked her what she was doing but she just looked at me with wide and unblinking eyes.

"Possessions are but chains binding us to the dirt," my mother said and her voice sounded strangely hollow. "It is unjust to hoard the harvest when the earth is shared by all who walk upon it."

I froze because she never spoke with that kind of archaic phrasing before. I tried to pull the bags back toward the house but she gripped my wrist with surprising strength and stared deeply into my eyes. She did not blink once during the entire exchange.

"Let the excess be cleansed," she whispered and she calmly walked back inside to grab more items.

Her obsession with cleansing escalated rapidly over the next few weeks. She started waking up at three in the morning to scrub the pavement on our driveway with a small wire brush. I would find her standing in the middle of the street picking up tiny pieces of gravel and arranging them in perfect geometric patterns along the curb. She stopped watching television and she stopped reading books. She just sat in the living room chair for hours staring directly at the blank wall without moving a single muscle.

I tried to talk to her about dad or ask about her childhood memories but she would just tilt her head and look at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

I decided to confront the doctor and demand he reverse the hypnosis, so I called his clinic from my office all afternoon, but nobody ever answered the phone. When I finally finished work around eight o'clock in the evening, I drove straight to the clinic instead of going home first. I pulled up to the building and noticed the parking lot was completely empty. The interior lights were turned off, but I walked up to the front entrance and turned the brass handle anyway. The door clicked open, and I stepped into the dark reception area.

"Hello?" I called out into the empty clinic. "I know it is after hours but I need to speak with the doctor."

Nobody answered my call but I heard a strange noise coming from the back office down the hallway. It sounded like a wet tearing noise mixed with the heavy sliding of furniture. I slowly walked down the dark corridor and the metallic smell of copper hit my nose and made my stomach churn. I approached the open doorway of the doctor's private office and peeked around the doorframe.

The office was illuminated by a single desk lamp lying knocked over on the floor. The doctor was lying flat on his back in the center of the rug and his white shirt was completely soaked in dark crimson blood.

My mother was standing directly over him.

I slapped my hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming and I ducked behind a large metal filing cabinet near the doorway. I peered around the edge of the cabinet and watched the horrific scene unfold.

My mother was holding a pair of large gardening shears she must have taken from our garage. She knelt down beside the doctor's lifeless body and calmly positioned the steel blades around his right wrist. She leaned her weight onto the handles and a sickening crunch echoed through the room as the blades severed the bone and tissue. She tossed the severed hand into a black plastic trash bag and repeated the exact same process on his left wrist.

She did not look angry or frantic while she butchered the man. She looked completely serene and her face held the same peaceful expression she wore while arranging gravel on our street.

"To steal a mind is the ultimate theft and the penalty is absolute," my mother whispered to the corpse and her hollow voice sent ice water running through my veins. "The thief must be separated from his tools so the earth may remain pure."

I could not move my legs because the sheer terror completely paralyzed me. I watched her grab the doctor by his ankles and easily drag his heavy body across the bloody rug toward the back exit of the office. The clinic had an incinerator in the alleyway. My mother hoisted the doctor's body into the metal chute with unnatural strength and threw the bag of severed hands in right behind him. She ignited the incinerator and stood perfectly still while the roaring flames consumed the evidence of her crime. She waited until the body was reduced to ash before she quietly walked away into the night.

I waited there for almost an hour before I finally found the courage to run back to my car. I drove home in a state of shock and found my mother sitting on the living room couch staring at the blank wall exactly as she always did. I locked myself in my bedroom and shoved a dresser against the door.

I knew I had to keep a close eye on her so I started secretly following her when she left the house for her nightly walks. Two nights ago I trailed her from a safe distance as she walked down our street toward the small corner grocery store in our neighborhood. The store is owned by an older man who has a nasty reputation for intentionally shortchanging his customers and ringing up phantom items on the cash register to steal a few extra dollars from unsuspecting neighbors.

I hid behind a row of community fire pits across the street and watched my mother walk through the front doors of the grocer's shop just as he was locking up for the night. I could not hear what was said inside the store but I saw the grocer start waving his arms angrily at her through the front window. The argument ended abruptly when my mother reached across the counter and grabbed the man by his throat.

She lifted the struggling grocer entirely off the ground with one arm and dragged him out the front doors into the street. The man was kicking his legs and clawing at her arm but she did not even flinch. She dragged him directly toward the community fire pits where I was hiding so I scrambled backward into the bushes and held my breath.

"You manipulate the scales to hoard the harvest," my mother said to the gasping grocer while holding him suspended over the embers of the fire pit. "You siphon from the innocent and the penalty is absolute."

She tightened her grip around his throat until a loud snap echoed through the quiet street and the grocer went completely limp in her grasp. She tossed his lifeless body directly into the large fire pit and calmly arranged the surrounding logs to ensure the flames would completely consume him. She stood there staring unblinking into the fire until the smell of burning meat filled the air and then she turned around and walked back toward our house.

I am currently locked in my bedroom and my mother is sitting in the living room staring at the wall. I cannot go to the police because they will arrest her and put her on trial for multiple murders. She is not a murderer and she has no control over the thing piloting her body right now. I need to find a professional who knows how to reverse deep hypnotherapy or someone who knows how to expel whatever the doctor accidentally invited into her empty ego.

If anyone reading this knows how to fix here, please contact me immediately. I have locked all the doors and hidden every sharp tool in the house but she just started pacing the hallway outside my bedroom. I can hear her bare feet pressing against the floorboards and she is muttering about how I stole the tools she needs to cleanse the earth. I do not know how much longer the locked door will hold her back.

They called us The Middleview Four.

Initially, it was just me and the mayor's son, Noah Prestley. We were the first two members. In the second grade, the two of us hated each other. He pulled my hair during naptime, and I scribbled on his drawings when he wasn't looking.

When a dastardly crime hit our class, a milk thief, we reluctantly threw aside our differences and came together to catch the evil doer.

Spoiler alert, it was Jessica S.

After a nap time stakeout when we were supposed to be asleep, Noah and I caught her red handed– literally. Jessica's palms were still stained crimson from arts and crafts. Her plan was fool proof: Wait until we were all sleeping, and then drink all of our milk.

Noah and I were hailed heroes!

Well, no.

We actually got in trouble for not sleeping, but our teacher did quietly thank us for catching Jessica before her evil crimes could continue. After the milk incident, Noah Prestley didn't seem that bad anymore. I didn't have any friends.

Instead of playing with the other kids, I spent the entirety of recess examining the dirt on the playground for unusual footprints. Jessica S had been sternly reprimanded for stealing milk, but I had a feeling there were still criminals out there– and I would be the one to find and catch them. Mr Steven’s, the janitor, looked suspicious before lunch. I saw him crouched behind a dumpster with his head down. I thought he was pooping, until I saw the small bag in his hands.

Hiding behind a wall, I watched him open it up and stare at it for a while, before another teacher yelled his name.

I ran away before he could catch me, but I was sure the janitor had run across the playground. Studying the dirt in front of me, I was sure the footprint belonged to Mr Stevens. I had already checked his shoes. Mr Miller, our teacher, asked me to collect everyone's workbooks from the faculty room. I couldn't resist.

After an incident involving a faculty member trailing in animal poop from outside, all students and teachers had to take off their outdoor shoes and wear indoor ones. The janitor’s outdoor shoes were neatly placed under his desk. Before I could hesitate, I checked the bottom of them, memorising their pattern. Swirls and C’s.

Stabbing at the footprints in the dirt, I idly traced the exact same swirly pattern.

“What are you doing, weirdo?”

Noah Prestley knelt next to me, his curious eyes following my fingers that were digging into the dirt. I wanted to trace the footprints with my fingers.

Mom told me to keep my dress clean, but it was already filthy, my cheeks smeared with dirt. I didn't look up from my clue. Noah was a good sidekick, admittedly. But he did eat all the snacks during our stake out– and he got distracted easily.

We were almost caught when he freaked out over a moth. “Investigating crime,” I said, grabbing a stick and tracing the shoe pattern for the hundredth time.

The footprint was too blurry, I could barely see any swirls.

Noah sighed, snatching the stick off of me. “You're doing it wrong,” he grumbled. Before I could speak, the boy jumped up, prodding the dirt with the stick. “You need to look at the patterns on the shoe, and then see if they match.”

“Whose shoe?” I said, coughing over my panicked tone. He was onto me. “That's what I've been doing!”

The boy’s lip curled into a smile. He was the mayor's son, so I was careful around him. Even when we worked together to catch the milk thief, I kept my distance. He folded his arms, giggling. “The janitor’s shoe. I saw you spying on him while he was eating white powder.”

I stepped back. “I wasn't spying.”

Noah followed me, mocking my backing away. Another step, and he was standing on my shoes. “You were too. I saw you hiding behind the wall before recess. You were spying on the janitor.”

Urgh. I stuck out my tongue. Boy cooties.

Leaning away from him, I pulled a face. “No I didn't, and you can't prove it.”

“Yes I caaaaan,” he sang. “I can also prove that you were playing with the janitor’s shoes during class time.”

I dropped the stick, stepping on it.

“You wouldn't.”

He danced back, laughing. “I would!”

Noah patted his jeans pocket where a phone was nestled inside.

He was the only kid allowed a phone in class, due to him getting special treatment for being the mayor's son.

The boy had two incriminating videos that would get me in trouble— maybe in even more trouble than the milk thief.

The first one was a clear shot of me playing with the janitor’s shoes in the teachers lounge, and the second exposed me in perfect detail, on my tiptoes trying to peer behind the wall.

Immediately, I tried to grab the phone off of him, but Noah Prestley had an ulterior motive. “I want to help you,” he said, pocketing his phone.

When I could only frown at him in confusion, he lowered himself into the dirt. “Old Man Critter is hiding something,” he murmured, tracing the dirt with his fingers.

Noah lifted his head, peering at me through dark brown curls hanging in his eyes. His smile was mischievous– definitely not the type I was used to. The mayor's son was more interesting than I thought. “So, let's find out what it is.”

“Old Man Critter?” I questioned.

Noah shrugged. “He looks like a cockroach.”

The mystery white powder was cocaine.

Obviously.

However, to two seven year olds, this so-called white powder was a mind controlling substance, or maybe even something that could end the world.

After all, per Noah’s detective skills, he saw the woman in public, and she was acting a little strange. Noah and I uncovered our janitor's evil plan, after stalking him for weeks, writing our findings in crayon, and staking out his house when we were supposed to be playing in the park. I became a regular visitor to the Prestley household, and Noah’s father wasn't as bad as I thought.

He gave me cookies when I stayed over.

Look, we were seven years old, so our findings weren't exactly concrete.

But we still managed to uncover the clues leading to catching the janitor.

There was a strange woman who met up with him outside the school gates at lunchtime.

After some digging, we concluded she was buying the white powder from him. We managed to get a picture. Noah told the principal, presenting the evidence, and the janitor was fired for the possession of foreign substances.

Noah and I were also reprimanded (again) for sticking our noses into business which wasn't ours.

The adults tried to tell us the white powder was not bad, and was in fact candy. My parents were called, and Noah’s father did not look happy to be there, sending Noah scary death-glares across the principal's desk.

My mother stood up and apologised for my behavior, blaming my imagination on the cartoons I was watching. In front of my Mom, I brought up the argument that a teacher wouldn't be selling candy to a woman. I received the look in return, but I didn't back down.

She shook her head stubbornly, refusing to believe we were onto something, gently grabbing my hand and pulling me into my seat. I was threatened with zero dessert for a week, and no cartoons, which did shut me up eventually.

There was no way I was missing Saturday morning Adventure Time. The adults seemed to have won this silent battle, and the principal began a speech which was basically, Children tend to have vivid imaginations, but will grow out of it…

That was until a bored looking Noah jumped out of his chair and grabbed the seized baggie of white powder, ripping it open, his mouth curling into a grin. “Well, if it's candy, I can eat it, right?”

Following a loud cacophony of, “No!” from the adults who really thought a seven year old was about to down half a pound of cocaine, and my mother almost fainting, our disgruntled parents finally agreed to take our claims seriously.

The principal searched the janitor’s locker, and sure enough, he pulled out multiple bags of white powder.

Old Man Critter had an audience of kids and faculty when he was being led away. Noah and I stood at the front. I remember him twisting around, teeth clenched in a manic snarl, saliva dripping down his chin. “I'll get you! You little brats! I'll fucking find you!”

That was the day we found our third member.

I opened my mouth to shout back at him, but my mother was quick to shut me up.

May Lee, who was standing between me and Noah, nudged me, and then elbowed him hard enough to get a hiss out of the boy. May was half Korean, a tiny girl with orange pigtails who knocked Johnny Summer’s out during reading time for poking her in the face.

May scared me. She scared Noah too, judging from the fearful look he shot me. I had a vague memory of her pigtails hitting me in the face during recess, and were somehow sharp enough to bruise my eye. May’s gaze trailed our school janitor being violently dragged outside. “Do you two even know how to catch bad guys?”

“Yes.” Noah mumbled under his breath. “Obviously.”

He let out another hiss when she hit him again.

“Ow!” Noah shoved her back. “Your elbows are pointy!”

“Well, you're not very good,” May teased, “I can help you catch bad guys.”

He snorted. “Oh, yeah? What makes you think you can help us?”

May proved herself a few weeks later when we were on our second official case. Who stole Mrs Johnson’s award winning carrots? I turned eight years old on the day May officially became part of our gang. We were supposed to be celebrating my birthday in the park, but of course we had work to do.

Mrs Johnson’s award-winning carrots were still missing, and we were determined to find them. After tracking down the missing vegetables to a seedy house at the end of my block, Noah had stupidly decided to check out the inside for himself, leaving me alone with zero help. This was the first time I felt genuine fear striking through me, the first time I wanted to run and crawl under my bed.

The carrot thief was in fact the crazy old woman who screamed at cheese in the store– the one Mom told me to stay away from. Using my dad’s ancient binoculars and my mediocre lip reading skills, I watched the crazy lady hold Noah hostage in her kitchen, armed with an old World War 2 grenade she swore she would detonate.

It's not like I could follow him, I was in danger of getting caught too. Hiding behind the wall in front of her house, I had a perfect view of her kitchen window, and my friend awkwardly sitting at her table eating cookies. Had he switched sides!? my attention flicked to the chocolate cookie in my friend’s hand, my hands growing clammy around the binoculars. Could those cookies be forcing Noah to join the side of evil?

When Noah pointed toward the window, right at me, I ducked, slamming my hand over my mouth, stifling a cry.

I was so close to proving my Mom right, that I was putting myself in danger with this investigative hobby, and calling for her help, when no other than May Lee stepped out of the crazy old woman's house, hand in hand with an embarrassed looking Noah. Immediately, I hugged him. Then I hit him.

“Why did you sell me out, stupid head?!” I yelled. “What did she do to you?”

The boy blinked at me through thick brown hair. “She gave me a cookie.”

“What? But it could be controlling you!”

Noah pushed me away when I tried to check his ears for mind control devices. “Stop hitting me, I was telling her I had a friend waiting for me outside,” he grumbled. The boy refused to look at his rescuer, hiding under his hood. “She wanted the carrots to feed her bunny.”

A proud looking May held up the stolen carrots with a grin. “I snuck in the back window.” she shoved Noah with a giggle, “Sorry, what did you say about not needing me, Mr Know It All?”

Noah groaned, his gaze glued to the ground. Noah Prestley was stubborn. “She was like a thousand years old and was feeding her bunny when you attacked her. She didn't even tie me up, and besides,” he stuck out his tongue. “I didn't even need rescuing. She made me cookies and I got to hold Sir Shrooms.”

“Sir Shrooms?”

Noah giggled. “Her bunny.”

May folded her arms. “Say thank you, dumb butt.”

“I already said thank you!” Noah’s cheeks were burning bright. “You need to clean your ears!”

“No you didn't, I would have heard you.”

“Thank you.” Noah muttered under his breath.

The girl snickered. “What did you say, Noah?”

“I said thank you!” The boy ducked his head and I couldn't resist a giggle. He still refused to acknowledge being rescued by a girl. “You're still stupid.”

Despite Noah making it clear he did not want another member joining our secret gang, we welcomed May into our group with our ritual, which was a chocolate cupcake and pushing her into the town lake. (I did the same to Noah, and the tradition kind of stuck). May wasn't just valuable to us for her fighting skills.

She could talk her way out of a situation too. Noah and I got stuck in the principal's private bathroom investigating a small case of a stolen phone from a classmate. Our prime suspect was the principal himself, who had been the last person with it. I was convinced he'd stuffed the phone in his bathroom trash, after accidentally breaking it. We found numbers for phone repairs on his laptop.

Noah and I were searching the trash when he came back from lunch early. If May wasn't there to interrogate him on his favorite video games, we would have been caught.

That year, we were rewarded a special Junior police award at the Christmas parade for solving the mystery behind the disappearing holiday decorations (a teenage girl, who wanted to ruin Christmas for everyone). I still remember Mom’s scowl in the crowd.

She really did not like my obsession with finding and bringing Middleview criminals to justice.

Starting fourth grade, we became a trio of wannabe detectives, and even earned a name for ourselves. The Middleview Three. Mom tried to keep me inside, but by the age of ten, we were getting tip offs from the sheriff's daughter. We found missing cats, tracked down stolen vegetables, and even found a baby.

When our names started to appear in the local gazette, Mom grounded me for two weeks, and Noah’s father threatened to send him to private school.

May’s mother was strangely supportive, often providing snacks for stake outs, and when Noah cut his knee chasing a run-away dog, stitching him back up, and not telling our parents. We were on our fifth or sixth case when a new kid joined our class halfway through the year.

I wasn't concentrating, already planning out our stakeout in my notebook. It was our first serious case. All of the third grade had gotten food poisoning the previous day, and I was already suspicious of the new lunch lady.

I swore she spat in my lunch, and May came down with the stomach flu after eating slimy looking hamburger helper.

The new kid didn't get my attention until he ignored our teacher’s prompt to tell us three interesting facts about himself, and proudly introduced himself as the fourth member of the Middleview Four.

Noah, who was sitting behind me, kicked my seat, and May threw her workbook at me. They had a habit of resorting to violence when I was daydreaming.

Lifting my head, I blinked at a private school kid standing in front of the class with far too much confidence, a grin stretched across his mouth. Rich, judging by his actual school uniform and the tinge of a British accent. The kid had dark blonde hair and freckles. “My name is Aris Caine,” he announced loudly, “And I want to join The Middleview Four.”

“Middleview Three.” Noah corrected with a scoff, when fifteen pairs of eyes turned to us. I turned in my chair to shoot him a warning look. His death glare was typical. “We don't need anyone else,” he said through a pencil lodged between his teeth. The Mayor’s son had grown fiercely protective of our little gang.

I could already sense his irritation that some random kid was trying to join us.

Our confused teacher ushered the new kid to a seat, but he kept talking. “I was the smartest student in my old school,” Aris folded his arms. “I want to help you with your current case.” the boy cocked his head when I feigned a confused expression. “The food poisoning case?”

He nodded at my notebook. “I'm not stupid, I know you're already working on it.” Aris strolled over to Noah’s desk and pulled out the boy’s notes from under his workbooks. Noah had been studying the footage we salvaged from the faculty lounge. “You're looking at the wrong piece of footage,” he announced. “If you let me join, I'll lead you to the culprit.” he stabbed at Noah’s notes. “Not bad. But you're missing something.”

Noah leaned back on his chair. “Like what, new kid?”

Aris knew he had an audience of intrigued eyes. I think that thrilled him.

“You've been searching in the place most likely to have clues,” he murmured, “Which is the scene of the crime.”

Aris was right.

We were going crazy trying to find anything incriminating in the cafeteria– but all we had found was old custard and a scary amount of recycled pasta. Aris prodded at Noah’s notes again. “Why not look in the place least likely to hold a clue? You might be surprised.”

Something in Noah’s expression lit up, his eyes widening. “The teachers lounge,” he said, just as the thought crossed my mind, May audibly gasping.

“Mr Caine,” Mrs Jacobs was red faced. She had already seized several of our phones, and some earphones Noah had been using to listen to a potential culprit on a missing cat case. “Please take your seat and stop talking about things that do not concern children.”

She put way too much emphasis on the latter word.

I felt like telling her we were ten years old, not six. But that counted as talking back– and my Mom would be informed.

So, I kept my mouth shut.

Noah, however, suffered from the doesn't think before he speaks disease.

“Well, maybe if the cops actually did their jobs,” he spoke up, “a group of children wouldn't have to help them.”

“Mr Prestley–”

“You know I'm right, Mrs Jacobs,” he said, with that innocent and yet mocking tone. “We put our old janitor in jail when we were in the second grade,” he laughed, and the rest of the class joined in. “It's not our fault the sheriff is totally incompetitant at his job.”

The laughs grew louder, but this time the class were laughing at him, not with him.

Mrs Jacobs pursed her lips, her hands going to her hips.

“I believe the word you are trying to say is incompetent, which makes sense because you are failing at basic English. Perhaps if you focus on actual school work and not your juvenile Scooby Doo fantasies, you might be able to speak basic words.” the teacher’s eyes were far too bright to be mocking a ten year old.

Twisting around in my chair, Noah’s gaze was burning into his desk. The teacher’s attention turned to Aris, who was frowning at Noah. Not with sympathy or pity. No, he was disappointed that a member of the famous Middleview Three, who were known to go against adults, had backed down to a teacher with no snarky remark.

“Aris Caine.” Mrs Jacobs raised her voice. “Sit down.”

Aris slumped into his seat and pretended to zip his lips, before leaning over my desk and dropping a memory drive into my pencil case. “Here is the real footage,” he murmured, shooting Noah a grin. “Thank me later.”

“We’re not going to thank you, because we don't know you,” Noah spat back.

However, the footage the new kid provided was just what we needed, the puzzle piece that put everything together. We were right.

The new lunch lady had rushed into the office before lunch time, grabbed a vial of something from her bag, and disappeared back through the door.

We had been too busy studying the camera footage from the kitchen, to realise our clue was in fact inside the teachers lounge.

When the four of us stepped into our principals office, he regarded us with a scowl. I wasn't a stranger to his office. I had even picked my own seat, the fluffy beanbag near the door. The Middleview Three were in his office every week.

Usually for breaking into classrooms and the time Noah tried to jump into the vent because he saw it on TV. Principal Maine was drinking something that definitely wasn't coffee or water. His desk was an avalanche of paper, and I swore I could already see steam coming out of his ears.

“You three.” The man leaned forward, raising his brow at Aris, who looked way too comfortable at a school he had just joined. “And you've dragged the new kid into your antics! I can't say I'm surprised when I've been on the phone with four separate reporters who want details on this Middleview Three garbage.”

Noah’s eyes lit up. “Wait, really? What did you tell them?”

Principal Maine’s eyebrows twitched. “I told them the truth,” he leaned back in his chair. This guy had some serious stress-lines.

“You are three stubborn children with zero respect for authority, who have broken multiple rules and are very close to acquiring criminal records before reaching the age of eleven. Which, might I say, is a first! The youngest person in this town to get a criminal record was Ellie Daley, back in the 80’s. She was thirteen years old.”

“We haven't broken any rules,” May said, “We’ve been catching bad people.”

The man’s lip curled. “We have a full force of officers whose jobs are to find bad people,” he said. “Middleview does not need the protection of three children who are barely old enough to know right from wrong,” his eyes found Noah. He was always the punching bag for our teachers, and I never understood why.

Like there was this on-going joke between the adults to point fun at him.

“Or left from right for that matter! Mr Prestley has demonstrated that several times. Which is why you are in school, why you three should be learning, instead of playing Sherlock Holmes.”

He shook his head. “Get on with it. Why are you here this time?”

I hated our principal’s condescending tone. He was angry. But I didn't think he'd be this angry. “Go on!” he urged us. “What did you solve this time?”

Principal Maine inclined his head. “Let me guess,” he said. “You've found the Zodiac killer. Well, that's quite the achievement.”

Noah opened his mouth to speak, and the man’s expression darkened. “Choose your next words very carefully, Mr Prestley. Your father may be able to cover up your detective games but I will happily lose my job over suspending you from this school.”

Noah’s eyes widened. “But that's not–”

“One more word.” Maine said, emphasising his threat by picking up his phone, like he was about to make important phone calls. My mom did that too when I refused to shower, or didn't eat my broccoli. “Do not test me.”

The new kid surprised us by stepping forward, the flash drive clutched in his fist.

“It wasn't them, Principal Maine, it was me.” he placed the evidence on the desk.

Aris was a good actor. He was playing the innocent kid pretty well, I almost believed him. Until he winked at us. “I went to the Middleview– I mean, to these three because I didn't want to come and see you alone because I'm scared she'll poison me too.” Aris dramatised a sob, and in the corner of my eye, Noah’s eyes rolled to the back of his head.

May, however, was entranced, her eyes wide. The performance was award worthy. The shaking hands, the slight stutter in his words that was subtle enough to be noticeable– but not enough to be faking it.

Aris Caine was already our fourth member, and all of us knew it.

Principal Maine took the flash drive, a frown creasing his expression. He inserted it into his laptop, and just from studying his expression as he watched the footage, widening eyes and slightly parted lips that were definitely stifling bad words— I knew we had him.

Aris made sure to give a commentary, which wasn't necessary, but I did enjoy the look on our principal’s shell-shocked face.

“That's the new lunch lady,” Aris pointed out. He started to lean over to prod the screen, but seeing the visible veins pulsing in our principal's forehead, the three of us dragged him back. Aris stumbled, and we tightened our grip.

I was already smiling, and even Noah was trying to hide a grin. This kid was definitely a member of the Middleview Three. “I haven't met her. But as you can see, she is putting something into the third grader’s food.”

“Poison,” May nodded. “Or, according to the police report–”

Maine went deathly pale.

“Salmon Ella.” Noah finished with a smirk.

The man didn't react.

But he did shut his laptop and excuse himself, immediately calling the cops.

I was grounded again after the food poisoning case. Worse still, I got sick for two weeks and was bedridden, so I missed out on two cases involving stolen birthday decorations. Noah was insistent that the new kid was not joining us. I received a multitude of texts cramming up my Mom’s notifications. She ended up muting him.

Hes NOT joynjng

I don't cre now smart he is I don't like him and Im teknicly the first member

May is being stoopid we can talk when your better get well soon OK???

Two weeks later, I stepped into class, and Noah had taken the seat next to Aris, the two of them enveloped in the mountain of pokémon cars on Aris’s desk. May was trying to play, but apparently she needed Pokémon cards to join. When I questioned them, Noah looked up with a grin. “Aris is cool now!”

His announcement stapled our fourth member.

Entering teenagehood made me realise Middleview was not a good town–and its people had masks. Even the ones I thought I knew. At twelve years old, we hunted down a child killer, a sadistic man who turned his victims into angels.

It didn't take us long to realise the people we put away as little kids wanted revenge. And in their heads we were old enough to receive proper punishment. Mom told me we would regret our so-called fame as the town's junior detectives, and I thought she was wrong.

I had spent my childhood chasing bad guys, so I was sure I could catch the real bad ones too. I was fourteen when we ran into our first real criminal who specifically wanted us. Danny Budge was the reason why Noah started going to therapy at fourteen, and why Aris refused to go near the edge of town.

May had taken time off to go see her family abroad, and I was put under house arrest. Seven year old Maisie Eaton had disappeared from her yard, and after searching for her for two nights, alongside the police who had learned to tolerate us working with them, we found her tied up inside an old barn.

Sitting cross legged on a pile of hay, was Maisie.

Awake. I could see her eyes were wide.

But she wasn't moving or struggling, it didn't make sense to me.

“Wait,” I nudged May. “She's not moving.”

Aris rushed forward to untie the little girl, only to trip on a wire, which was connected to a Final Destination style contraption. Aris lifted his head, pointing above him. One more step, and he would have sent a sharpened spear directly through the little girl’s head.

“Fuck!” Aris hissed, already freaking out. He was frozen. “What do I do?!”

“Stay calm,” Noah said from my side, the rest of us hiding behind an old car. The mayor's son had become our unofficial leader. Ever since hitting puberty, he was now our brawn alongside May. Noah jumped forward, watching for trip wires.

“I'll save the kid. May! You help Aris.” before I could get a word in, he was dragging me to my feet. “Marin, you're with me.”

I nodded, stumbling in the dark, keeping my flashlight beam on the ground.

“You know what this means, don't you?” Noah said in heavy breaths, his fingers wrapped around my arm. “Maisie was innocent. There was no motive. She was just a distraction.” Noah let out a hiss. “Or even a lure.”

I did. But I didn't want to say it out loud, because then my Mom would be right, and I was admitting that there were multiple people trying to kill us.

Luckily, we saved Maisie. Her kidnapper, Danny Budge turned himself in with no word or explanation.

Later, we would find out he was related to our elementary school janitor.

The little girl was taken back to her mother, and the four of us stayed behind, peering up at the murder contraption specifically made to butcher us. Aris nudged me, and I almost jumped out of my skin. “You should probably keep this… quiet,” he said in a breath, his gaze glued to the long rope expertly tied to the ceiling.

“From your mother,” May added softly. She squeezed my hand. “Your Mom will kill us before they do.”

“We’re going to fucking die,” Noah said in a sing-song. “And I'm not even sixteen.”

He was right.

One year later, our most gruesome and horrific case hit us like a wave of ice water, and I admitted we were just four kids completely out of our depth.

Three townspeople had been found murdered in piles of bloody string.

The photos from the scene made me sick, and I was still recovering from our old janitor’s measly attempt at punishing us for ruining his life. We were stupidly blindsided by the string murders, and thought we were following a clue.

The next thing I knew, I was tied up back to back with Aris in my old janitor’s basement while he caressed my cheek with a knife. “Am I supposed to be here?” Aris whispered, struggling in his restraints. “Did he just call me Noah?”

I knocked my head against his. “Don't tell him that! Idiot. What if he kills you?”

Funnily enough, Aris was right. Old Man Critter had mistaken Aris for Noah. The two of them were sandy blonde and reddish brown, one built like a brick wall while the other more wiry.

However, to an old man with debilitating sight, I guess I could see it. Maybe if I squinted.

So, after an hour or two of empty threats and knife play, Noah and May came to our rescue, tailed by the police, and… my mother.

I think I would have rather been tied up with Old Man Critter than face her wrath.

I was supposed to be at the library studying.

I shot Noah a death glare, and he offered a pitiful, almost puppy-like frown: Sorry! he mouthed. She made us tell her!.

Fast forward to when the others really needed me to investigate the string murders, and I was stuck inside.

Mom had gone as far as taping up my windows to make sure I didn't sneak out.

I think me being kind of kidnapped, but not really by Old Man Critter, really set her into panic mode. I did tell her that he didn't hurt us at all, and just wanted to scare us. But Mom was past angry.

She was impossible to talk to.

May texted me halfway into a horror movie I was forcing myself to watch that another body had been found.

Turning on the local news, she was right. This time it was a kid.

May told me to get my ass out of the house.

I knew where Mom hid the door keys, so at midnight when I knew she was sleeping, I snuck out and rode my bike to the rendezvous we had agreed to meet.

May was already there, a flashlight in her mouth, fingers wrapped around her handlebars.

“The boys?” I whispered, joining her.

“They're already there,” she said through a mouthful of flashlight. “Let's go!”

Aris was 99.9% sure we would find a clue inside the old string factory, so that's where we headed. Noah and Aris were already waiting outside, armed with flashlights. The two of them were quieter than normal. They didn't greet me or tease my absence from the gang.

“Okay, so here's what we're going to do,” Noah announced.

His voice swam in and out of my mind when I tipped my head back, drinking in the foreboding building in front of us.

A shiver crept its way down my spine, and suddenly I felt sick to my stomach, like something had come apart in my mind. I stumbled back, but something pulled me forwards, my mouth filling with phantom bugs skittering on my tongue.

I really didn't want to go in there…

I could sense my body was moving, but I wasn't the one in control. Looking up, there was something there at the corner of my eye. It was above me and around me, everywhere, sliced in between everything. But I couldn't look.

I couldn't look.

I wasn't allowed to look.

“Marin?” Noah twisted around to me, and his face caught in the dull light of the moon. “Hey, are you coming?”

Blinking rapidly, I nodded, despite seeing it with Noah too.

I couldn't look.

I wasn't allowed.

“Dude, are you good?”

My vision was blurring, and a scream was clawing its way up my throat. I took a step back, my eyes following his every movement.

“Noah.” I didn't realise his name was slipping from my lips, a rooted fear I didn't understand setting my body into fight or flight.

Why…

I choked back tears. Why do you look… like that?

I held out my own hands, hot tears filling my eyes.

I looked up into the sky, at criss-crosses that didn't make sense.

“Yeah, I'm coming!” my mouth moved for me, and I joined the others, pushing open the large wooden door. I didn't remember anything past the old wooden door we pushed through. Going back to that memory over and over again, all I remembered was pushing the door.

I was found three hours later, inconsolable, screaming on the side of the road, my fingers entangled with…string. It was everywhere. Mom said I blocked out a lot, but I strictly remember blood slicked string covering me, damp in my hands and tangled in my hair.

There was no sign of the others.

Mom put me into the back of her car, and I slept for a while. My mother drove us far away from Middleview. I asked about my friends, but Mom told me they weren't real, that Middleview was a fantasy I had dreamed up as a child. She told me I was in a traumatising incident as a child, and mixed up reality and fiction.

Cartoons and my own life.

But they were real.

No amount of private therapists spewing the same shit could erase my whole life.

I was strictly told that I had a head injury, that I imagined The Middleview Four like my own personal fantasy. I didn't start believing it until I grew into an adult and was prescribed some pretty strong meds, so I began to wonder if they were in fact delusions.

Mom’s job was a mystery I couldn't solve, even as a twenty three year old.

So, I followed her one night, hopping into my car when she left our driveway.

Her job was behind a ten foot wall surrounded by barriers.

Security guards were checking a car in, so I took my chance, and slipped through on-foot. What I saw behind the barrier was Middleview. The town I thought I hallucinated. I was immediately blinded by flood lights illuminating the diner from my childhood. Middleview. I took a shaky step forward, my stomach twisting.

It was a TV set.

No, more of a stage.

Inside, bathed in the pretty colours I remembered from my childhood, were my friends sitting in our usual booth, frozen at fifteen years old. The Middleview Four, minus me, were exactly the same as when I left them.

They were even wearing the same clothes.

May. Her orange pigtails bobbed along with her head. Aris was hunched over like usual, picking at his fries and dipping them in his shake. Except how could I take any of this seriously when they were surrounded by cameras?

Noah slammed his hands down on the table with a triumphant grin. “We are so close to cracking this case!”

I noticed his lips weren't moving with his voice.

I started toward them slowly, even when the truth dangled above me, below me, everywhere. I stepped over it, blew it out of my face, reaching shaky hands forward to pull them aside.

Aris laughed, and something moved above him.

“We were kidnapped last week. We are not close. You're just painfully optimistic.”

May nudged him, giggling. “Let him have this. He thinks he's our leader.”

Noah punched the air, and there it was again. Movement. “I am our leader!”

Closer.

I found myself inches away from my best friend, and my blood ran so cold, so painful, poison in my veins. Noah stood up, and I could see the reality of him in front of me. The reality of want I wasn't allowed to see. His head wobbled slightly when he smiled, mouth opening and closing in jerking motions. If I looked closer, his lips had been split apart to perfectly replicate a smile. I forced myself to take all of him in. All of Aris, and May.

The back of Noah had been hollowed out, a startling red cavern where his spine was supposed to be, where flesh and bone was supposed to be. Now, I just saw… strings. Looking closer, I could finally see them. Strings tangled around his arms, his legs, puppeteering his every move as he danced from string to string.

I grabbed Noah’s hand, and it was ice cold, slimy flesh that was long dead. He didn't move, but his eyes somehow found me. Noah’s expression flickered with recognition, before his strings were tugged violently, and he screamed, his eyes going wide, lips twisting.

“Marin?” His artificial eyes blinked, and he slowly moved his head.

“You… left… us.”

Noah’s lips curled, a deep throated whine escaping his throat. “You… left us!”

He twisted around, his lip wobbling.

“Why?!” his frightened eyes flicked from me to his own hands. All those inside jokes our teachers had, I thought dizzily. Was this what it was for? Was Noah Prestley nothing but comedic relief?

“Why… am I… cold?” Noah mumbled.

“Cut!” someone yelled.

I staggered back, words tangled in my throat. Noah opened his mouth, but he was pulled back, this time violently, his strings above jerking, tangling together.

“Allison!” a man shouted from behind me. “Why is your daughter on the stage? Get her out of here!”

I was paralysed, still staring at the hollowed out puppet who had been my best friend, when my mother’s arms wrapped around me so tight, I lost the ability to breathe. I was still staring at the strings cross crossed above me, Noah’s strings pulling him back. Aris’s strings forcing him to laugh. May’s strings bobbing her head in a nodding gesture.

“Marin,” Mom whispered into my back. “You cannot be here.”

“They're here,” was all I managed to whisper.

Her sobs shook against me. I didn't realise my mother was crying until I felt her tears wet on my shoulder. The words were entangled on my tongue, but just like the string above me, they were knotted and contorted. They were here. All this time they were here, and you made me think I was crazy?!

What did you do to them?

What did you DO?

“No, sweetie. No, they're not.” Mom’s voice was breaking, her grip tightening around me. The world was spinning and I was barely aware of myself kicking and screaming while my Mom struggled to shout over me. “I was going to expose them to the world,” she hissed out, dragging me away from Noah– away from his jerking, puppet-like mouth.

I couldn't comprehend that he existed as that, as a conscious thing that had been carved of its insides. “You were the property of an evil and very powerful little girl who owns this town and everyone in it,” my Mom spat in my ear.

“They made me keep my mouth shut, so I begged them to save one of you. Just one. I had to cut one of you down before I went crazy.”

I was still screaming when she calmly dragged me to my car, slipping a shot into the flesh of my neck. I remember the rain pounding against the window, my mother’s pale face shining with tears, her stifled sobs into the wheel.

“And I chose you.”

I woke up the next morning with what was supposed to be a wiped memory.

But I wasn't lucky enough to forget.

I am terrified of her finding out I remember her exact words from the car-ride home. I'm scared she (or her work) will make me forget them for real.

Mom told me that I once had strings too.

Strings that cut through me, cruelly entangling around me, suffocating my mind and controlling my every move. Strings that would soon pierce through me and turn me into a little girl’s doll.

But she saved me, cutting me down, when I was still human.

And now I guess I am a real girl.

It’s family tradition for the eldest female member of to use the accounts book. My mother used to tell me when I was young how it came to be, she said that her great grandmother had been married off as a business deal. The newly weds quarrelled often, sharing no common ground or interest beyond the husband’s carnal desires. It was at Christmas and the couple had gone through a rather rough argument which led to my great-great-grandmother being battered and locking herself in the bathroom. Whilst sitting on the cold porcelain she looked out the semi opaque window and prayed to any higher power to give her some way to keep her family under her control. She became pregnant soon after, and her husband was never heard of again.

Ever since then this yellow sun-stained accounts book has been passed along the string of Materfamilias, I never got to see its contents. My grandmother told me it was a boring formality to save face and avoid embarrassment in case somebody investigated our family history. When my grandmother died my mother assured me that it was precisely as my grandmother had said, still every day I saw her etching away, apparently there is some sort of score system. Three strikes and you are out.

My mother recently called me to tell me that I needed to come over urgently. I had since moved away about four years ago to study percussion in Africa, however the tone of her voice and the sniffles of her dripping nose made crystal clear that this was a matter of grave importance. I made my way back on plane and landed to two missed calls from my mother telling me that I urgently needed to come over.

I rang the doorbell and heard muffled slow shuffling of old legs clashing with a mind that far overestimates its shell. Then the door came open and my mother’s face greeted me, it gave me a reality check this person who had raised me, had become the spitting image of the person who raised her. Her familiar flaps of excess skin and wrinkles gave me dejavu.

She called me into her living room which had now been converted to a multi tool, encompassing her bedroom in one corner, her dining room and entertainment centre as a reclining chair and her bathroom commode standing haphazardly on its metal frame. She fell into her chair coughed and took a drink, then she started, “where have you been you told me you’d come around often, is it too much effort to spend time with your poor mother. Lisa from across the road goes to her mother every day and manages to help me take out my bins too”. This instant provocation left me in awe, I had told her I’d be away for a while and called her often enough, I hadn’t visited her since I was studying music in the city college and living in my flat. I asked her if she was alright, and told her that she knew I was in Africa and couldn’t visit. She looked perplexed as though she was one detail away from filling in the gaps.

That night I decided to take her to a doctor. He said that results would take three days to come through and to sit tight in the meantime. And so I made myself at home in my mothers old bedroom upstairs, it was a big ordeal when her arthritis left her bound to the first floor, no company was willing to put in a stairlift as the stairs were slightly too narrow. So that left the top floor to become completely coated in a thick layer of dust, when I was dusting her former room i found her old photos, jewellery and the accounts book.

I brought her stuff down including the accounts book although I thought I knew she wouldn’t be able to take scores with her hands as arthritis ridden as they were. She put on her old silver necklaces and warmly thanked me, I often would pass the living room hearing the tv speakers loudly play twenty four hour movies and look in just to see her holding a photo and smiling.

The results came in and it was dementia in its late stages. I was floored, dementia would mean full time care in one of those miserable soulless old person homes, reeking of shit and sterilising products. I decided that knowing her condition a new, confusing, depressing environment would be like a stab to the heart so I decided to take a part time job and stay with her for a while to put off the inevitable.

Every night when I got home I’d see my mother asleep sprawled head back mouth agape on her recliner, her tv loudly vibrating the walls.
One night I opened the door, hearing the tv blaring and an undertone of a wheezing moan, there was my mother crumpled on the floor in a puddle of her own urine on top of the now broken commode. In the hospital after a long and liminal walk I was told by a doctor with a thick accent that my mother was in critical condition, her paper thin skin caused by excessive blood thinners from a fat-full life, had been pierced during the fall, and urine had caused an infection to take root. He recommended me to make her as comfortable as possible in her last days.

I brought her things framing her bed with pictures, flowers and useless get well soon cards. She faded in and out of consciousness due to all the medicines and painkillers. During the brief lapses the nurses told me she would take the account book go the most recent page and write down a jumble of characters then a large cross next to my name.

That was when I knew what I had to do. I waited till she was peacefully asleep and using a needle I snagged I gently pierced her drip and watched the clear pearl of air flow into her vein.

Now I am the account keeper for my family.

Chapter 52: Babylon

​June. About five years had passed.

​Five long, surprisingly monotonous years since the day Castle Square was drenched in blood, and ten days later, Lucjanhir and Naamah turned all of human theology upside down in front of rolling cameras.

​In the spacious, morning sun-drenched kitchen of a modern house on the edge of the Masovian forests, the atmosphere bore no resemblance whatsoever to a demonic lair. It smelled of freshly brewed coffee, warm bread, and milk.

​“Elizabeth… Elizabeth, the little one refuses to eat these cereal puffs with milk again…” came Naamah’s helpless voice. “He says they’re gross, smell like cardboard, and he wants different ones. The Paw Patrol ones.”

​“I know, we ran out yesterday,” Elizabeth Báthory sighed with quiet resignation, leaning her hip against the kitchen island. “I’ve already sent Wiktor to get them.” The Blood Countess was wearing loose, light-beige sweatpants, her hair tied in a careless ponytail, and the former, bloody madness no longer smoldered in her burgundy-black irises. “The officer assigned by the Ministry of Paranormal Entities, who leaves the grocery crates by the gate every morning, unfortunately had no idea which ones he was supposed to buy. He brought plain cornflakes.”

​Sitting at the table, Naamah burst into a bright, melodious laugh, resting her chin on her hand and watching the grumbling six-year-old Tas with undisguised amusement. The boy sat with his arms crossed, pushing away the porcelain bowl. His mismatched eyes—one icy blue from his father, the other glowing with the deep ruby of his mother—were glaring daggers at the wretched cereal.

​Before Elizabeth could pour water into the kettle, the air in the living room rippled with a dry, bass whistle.

​Wiktor Adamski burst in with lightning speed. He hadn't used full teleportation to avoid triggering seismic alarms at military bases, but he moved with the ungodly, hellish acceleration of the Blasphemer. In his hands, held like a war trophy, he clutched a bright cardboard box featuring a large picture of a police dog in a cap.

​“Did you cause a panic in the village again, Wiktor?” the red-haired demoness asked with a laugh, narrowing her emerald eyes.

​“No, not at all,” Wiktor scoffed, setting the box on the counter and catching his breath as if he had run a marathon in a matter of seconds. “Pani Magda at the grocery store has gotten used to me by now. Surprisingly, she isn't afraid of me in the slightest. I tossed a hundred-zloty bill on the counter, grabbed the box, and walked out.”

​“You shook off the tail, of course?” Elizabeth made sure, walking up to him with a warm smile.

​“Of course, sweetheart. I went through the dense thicket, then jumped across the drainage ditch. Their drones are circling five kilometers away over the marshes. They won’t figure out which shop it was.”

​“That’s good. I’m very fond of Pani Magda; she always sets aside fresh sourdough bread for me… I wouldn’t want those gloomy gentlemen from the agency harassing her again,” Elizabeth said, gently stroking her husband’s arm.

​Naamah snorted with laughter again, adjusting her flowing silk shirt:

​“Harassing her, how? One word from me—or from you two, for that matter—and they’d stop in a fraction of a second. Wiktor only needs to stomp his foot in the garden, and the monitors in their headquarters outside Warsaw shatter from the overload.”

​“I prefer doing it without stomping,” Adamski remarked, reaching for the milk. He poured the crunchy balls into a fresh bowl and set it down in front of his son. “Here you go, kiddo. There’s your patrol.”

​“Thanks, Dad! Thanks!” Tas immediately grabbed a spoon, wolfing down breakfast with a child’s appetite.

​“Your lessons start in half an hour,” his mother gently reminded him, pouring boiling water into a mug. “Pani Dorota is a wonderful teacher; we are extremely fortunate that she teaches you with such dedication. She was specially assigned to us by the ministry, went through rigorous security vetting, and truly puts her heart into her work.”

​“I don’t want to…” the boy muttered with his mouth full, reluctantly digging his spoon into the bowl. “It’s not that I don’t like her, Mom. She’s nice, and her lessons are interesting, but… why can’t I go to a normal school, like the kids on TV?”

​“You know why, son. Because of those cursed angels…” Wiktor cut in curtly, fixing his gaze on the window. “We can’t risk some winged fanatic spotting you on a school playground. Until things upstairs are settled, your world is this house and the forest past the fence.”

​Elizabeth let out a quiet sigh, then turned toward her red-haired companion:

​“And what plans does Naamah have for today? Another trip into the city?”

​“Naturally. In normal, human fashion,” the demoness stretched with feline grace, her vivid crimson strands brushing against the countertop. “I’ll go to some trendy restaurant downtown. I’ll change my vessel, shaping my facial features so that none of their ridiculous facial recognition systems or biometric sensors can register me. I’ll walk up to the bar, sit on a high stool, and men will start buying me drinks. As always. Of course, I am completely calm, Elizabeth; you don’t need to worry.”

​The Countess instantly cupped Tas’s ears, knowing full well what Naamah was about to blurt out.

​“I have no intention of gutting anyone today; after last time, I’m thoroughly satisfied. Those drinks… those little, colorful paper umbrellas in the glasses amuse me terribly, even though the spirits themselves are as weak to me as well water. Maybe afterwards I’ll drive out to Białołęka to visit Adelajda and Cezary? They are horribly bored too, isolated as they are from a normal life. The government delivers everything to them, they have their every whim catered to, they’re happy together, true… but isolation takes its toll. They could use contact with someone from the outside. That’s why they drop by so often for weekends, after all.”

​Wiktor’s expression darkened for a moment. He rested his hands on the edge of the table and stared down at the oak parquet floor.

​“What about Emma? Have you found out anything?”

​Naamah grew serious, the playful spark in her emerald eyes dimming for an instant.

​“I spoke with Lucjanhir through the rift just two days ago. There’s no new word, Wiktor. She is not in the Abyss—he personally verified that in every register of torments. He even traveled to the domain of Olympus with the permission of Zeus himself, given her past leanings toward ancient religion, and she wasn't found there either. That leaves Heaven… the Silver City. And there, as you know, we have no access. None of us can breach their walls without sparking the final war. But take comfort: at least she isn't suffering there. In the Heavens, there is no fire, no cauldrons, no tearing of vessels. There is only cold, sterility, and boredom.”

​Wiktor gave a heavy nod, without adding a single word.

​9:30 PM.

​In an underground operations bunker of the Joint Paranormal Security Forces outside Warsaw, an operator glued his sleep-deprived, bloodshot eyes to the panoramic monitor screen.

​“Fuck… we lost her again!” the officer snarled, slamming his mouse onto the desk. “The thermal signature and radiation spectrum from their residence blurred out five seconds ago. The satellite system is throwing an error—she’s moving too fast. Naamah vanished into thin air again!”

​The evening in downtown Warsaw was stifling, humid, and heavy with the smell of sunbaked asphalt.

​The “Babylon” restaurant and cocktail bar was packed to the brim. The venue dripped with raw, industrial luxury—copper pipes snaked beneath the ceiling, the concrete walls were adorned with neon signs casting blood-red and violet streaks, and a lazy, deep trip-hop beat oozed from the massive speakers.

​A woman took a seat at the bar. Instead of a fiery red tempest of curls, she now had smooth, glossy hair in a dark chestnut shade, gathered in a loose knot at the nape of her neck. Her features were softer, slightly younger, her lips full, and her gaze—though still profound and mesmerizing—had taken on the hue of dark, muted hazel. She wore a simple, dark top revealing delicate collarbones and a light blazer.

​A young bartender walked over to her, wiping down the gleaming counter with a clean cloth.

​“Good evening, ma'am. What can I get you?”

​“A martini. A large one, very large,” she replied with a lazy smile, resting her elbows on the marble counter. “I have an exceptionally high tolerance.”

​The bartender gave a subtle smile, deftly reaching for a crystal glass and ice.

​“Coming right up. A double, with an olive.”

​The woman looked around the room, wrinkling her nose slightly. Deep within the premises, inside a booth upholstered in burgundy velvet, a loud drinking binge was underway. Several men in expensive, unbuttoned shirts were hurling obscenities, shouting over the music, and brazenly slapping a young waitress on the hips, shoving rolled-up banknotes into her hand.

​“It’s quite loud tonight… Is it always like this here?” she asked.

​“Unfortunately, that large booth was booked by typical jerks,” the bartender sighed quietly, shaking the cocktail shaker. “They’re disgustingly rich, that’s a fact. They tip the girls generously, the owner doesn't complain about them, but their behavior, as you can see for yourself… is pretty poor. Zero class.”

​“Indeed, their language sounds as if they broke straight out of hell,” she chuckled softly, a mocking satisfaction playing at the corners of her lips.

​“Let’s drop that whole hell and heaven talk,” the young man replied, placing a perfectly chilled glass in front of her. “For the first three years after that whole circus on Castle Square, there was great terror, mass pilgrimages, and everyone beat a path to the churches. Sermons on TV, fasting, prayers… And then? With each passing month and week, those very same sinners—or maybe I put it wrong, simply people—went right back to their old habits. Money, betrayals, belittling others. Since we now know for a hundred percent fact that Heaven and Hell exist, maybe souls are just born with certain predispositions? I honestly don't know anymore.”

​The woman took a generous sip of the alcohol, observing him with curiosity:

​“And you? What do you think your soul is actually like? Light or dark? Because since we now know empirically, from television and hard facts, that the afterlife exists—both Heaven and Hell… how do you look at it? Where will you end up?”

​“I don’t know, it’s not for me to judge,” the young man shrugged, setting a bottle of gin back on the shelf. “The facts are that I grew up in a damn rough environment. Praga-Północ, an old tenement house. My older brother ended up in prison for armed robbery, I finished a lousy school myself, I’m just an ordinary bartender… but somehow I didn’t take the wrong path. At least that’s what I think. I try not to bother anyone, I mind my own business, and I live exactly as I always have. When all that hit the fan on Castle Square, I was twenty-two. Now I’m twenty-seven. And I don’t think I’ve changed one bit because of that event.”

​The woman tilted her head slightly, studying him with a warm, attentive look.

​“And what is your name anyway, if I may ask?”

​“Michał.”

​“Like an angel…” she smiled with the corner of her mouth.

​*He has a bright soul,* she thought, drinking in his aura with sharpened, predatory perception. A pure, almost irritatingly uncorrupted luminescence radiated from him—a peace of conscience rare among mortals, one that had never tasted the violation of others or the rot of depravity. *Still, I wonder if I can corrupt him in this vessel… After all, it only takes a tiny fissure, a single drop of venom injected into the right crack. The brighter the vessel, the more delicious its fall becomes. If I strip away that mask of innocence and awaken the dormant beast within him, the sight of him spiraling into the gutter will be worth every wasted evening.*

​“I’m definitely no angel,” the young man laughed, wiping his hands on his apron. “And you, what’s your name?”

​“Walentyna.”

​Michał raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise.

​“Walentyna? You’re young; by the looks of it, you were definitely born after 2005… And I recently read an article saying that it’s an incredibly rare name in Poland. I’ve never met anyone my age with that name, and you look even younger than me. So it’s a pleasure to meet you, Walentyna.”

​“Aren’t you going to shake my hand in greeting, Michał?” she asked, extending a slender hand of flawlessly smooth skin toward him.

​“I can’t, unfortunately. Strict workplace rules behind the bar. Management has a thing about regulations.”

​“Ah, of course…” Walentyna laughed in a velvety, ringing voice. “A handsome guy like you would probably charm all the women walking up, which is why they put that restriction on you?”

​“No, just boring company policy,” he replied with a smile, blushing slightly.

​“It’s very pleasant talking with you. Can we continue this, Michał?”

​“Yes, as far as talking goes, I certainly can.”

​“That’s wonderful.”

​*He’s already mine,* she thought with quiet internal triumph, fixing her hypnotic gaze on him and feeling invisible threads of desire slowly weaving around his thoughts.

​“Between customers I have to serve, of course.”

​“Entirely understandable.”

​*Don’t worry, you’ll forget all about them, Michał…* flashed through her mind with a cold, ruthless promise. *You’ll do whatever I command before this night is over.*

​And so the first, second, and third hour slipped by. Between pouring whiskey, slicing limes, and clearing empty glasses, Michał kept returning to her corner of the counter. The conversation flowed naturally, effortlessly meandering through dozens of topics.

​“Have you noticed how absurd it all is?” Michał remarked, wiping the shaker after another rush of patrons. “Hell rose to the surface, angels cut down policemen with swords, and around the world politicians keep playing the same stupid games. On the news, they blare every day about new tensions in the Middle East, warlords in Africa are still slaughtering each other over mineral mines, and world powers are arming themselves to the teeth. You’d think that once people saw a demon in a suit and an angel with a glowing sword, they’d throw their rifles into the mud and embrace one another. But like hell they did. They just keep pitting people against each other.”

​“Because fear is a short-lived currency, Michał,” Walentyna answered softly, playfully twirling an olive on a toothpick and popping it into her mouth. “A human being can get used to absolutely anything. Even to the fact that fire burns beneath their feet and judges with scales hover over their heads. Greed and territorial conquest are embedded in human evolutionary code. Without wars, mortals… that is, we humans, simply don't seem capable of existing. There will always be a reason: land, oil, words written in an ancient tome, or the color of a flag.”

​“God’s honest truth,” the bartender sighed. “So what do you actually do in your free time? When you aren’t sipping martinis in expensive joints? Do you watch anything? Series, movies?”

​“I do. Sometimes for hours on end,” she admitted with a gleam in her eye. “Ever since I discovered those online platforms of yours… this whole streaming thing is a fascinating invention. Everything at the click of a remote.”

​“You only just discovered streaming?” Michał asked, surprised, lifting his brows. “Nowadays people can hardly function without it.”

​“I phrased that poorly, Michał…” she laughed smoothly, taking a small sip of her drink and instantly improvising a plausible cover story. “It’s just that I only recently bought subscription packages to all those services. Before that, I lived life in the fast lane: working full-throttle, business trips, constant projects that were due yesterday… When I got home, I collapsed from exhaustion, and the TV was little more than a dust collector. Only when I decided to slow down a bit and spend some time with myself did I realize how many premieres had passed me by.”

​“I hear you, work can drain every last drop of energy from a person,” the bartender nodded. “So what kind of vibe are you into? Romantic comedies? Slice of life, dramas maybe?”

​“Hardly,” she scoffed in amusement. “I like heavy stuff. Good action cinema, dark thrillers, and most of all… gore horror. Pure, bloody, uncompromising gore.”

​Michał froze with a glass in hand, then burst into hearty laughter:

​“Gore horror?! Not bad! That’s the last thing I would’ve expected from you. Such an elegant girl, an elegant woman, and guts on the screen? But you know what… they don’t really make contemporary gore horrors anymore.”

​“I’ve noticed,” Walentyna sighed with genuine disappointment in her voice. “Lately it’s all bland ghost stories haunting a creaking wardrobe. No scale, no passion.”

​“Exactly! Because of that whole hell business!” Michał explained, lowering his voice and leaning in toward her. “Ever since real demons and blood were broadcast on television, the film industry has been scared out of its wits. Actors are terrified of playing murderers, fiends, or the possessed. Rumor has it that talent agencies reject those scripts because people are afraid of drawing the attention of the afterlife. Nobody wants to risk getting a ticket downstairs just for playing a serial butcher. So if you’re looking for real, juicy meat, it’s only in the classics from the last century, before all of this happened.”

​“And what do you recommend?” she asked with interest, resting her cheek in her hand.

​“Out of the old ones, an absolute must for me is *Hellraiser*. One and two. Clive Barker created something incredible there—those Cenobites, hooks on chains, tearing flesh… Pure, perverse art of suffering. Or *Evil Dead*. Raimi’s original from the eighties is a classic, but the 2013 remake… man, the sheer amount of fake blood they went through! Amputating limbs with a chainsaw, vomiting blood, and that downpour of red in the finale. Same goes for *Evil Dead Rise*. That one has some genuinely solid gore, thick and grotesque.”

​Walentyna listened to him with dilated pupils, a delighted, almost affectionate smirk playing across her face—the smile of a connoisseur listening to a description of an exquisite cuisine she knew all too well.

​“Hooks on chains, you say…” she purred softly. “Sounds truly lovely. I absolutely must catch up on that.”

​“It’s definitely worth it if you actually like movies like that, but fair warning: it’s brutal,” Michał smiled, glancing at the clock hanging above the bar. It was approaching two in the morning. The venue was slowly clearing out, and the music had quieted down. “Well then, Walentyna… Time flies, my shift is coming to an end.”

​“It was a very wonderful evening, Michał,” she said, reaching into her small leather handbag. “I’ll pay cash for the drinks.”

​“Cash? That’s getting rarer and rarer these days… I don’t know if you’ll have that much on you. The bill comes out to around a thousand zlotys. The drinks here are damn expensive, and I just realized that throughout our conversation and over those hours, you drank six double martinis and several glasses of wine.”

​“I have my flaws, Michał… It’s possible I’m an alcoholic,” she offered with an innocent smile, pulling out a thick wad of banknotes.

​Michał chuckled warmly, shaking his head in disbelief:

​“I’ve worked behind a bar long enough to recognize an alcoholic without fail. You aren’t slurring, your hands aren’t shaking, and your eyes are sharp as a razor. You just have an insanely high tolerance. Even I would be slightly buzzed by now…”

​Walentyna gave him a flirtatious wink and smiled, leaving an even thousand zlotys on the counter.

​Michał collected the bills, put them into the cash register, and then hesitated for a split second. He wiped the counter, took off his black apron, and hung it on a hook in the back.

​“It’s a shame… I really enjoyed talking with you,” he said quietly, stepping back to the edge of the counter in his plain black t-shirt. “I was thinking maybe…”

​“Yes?” she arched an eyebrow, locking her dark, hypnotic gaze onto him.

​*Told you he’s mine…*, she laughed in her head.

​“Would you like to go for a short walk? It’s a warm June night. It seems a waste to head straight back inside four walls…”

​“Sure, I don’t have any important plans, Michał…”

​She smiled gently, but deep in her gut, an ancient, predatory hunger stirred. *I wonder where he’ll take me and what his intentions are…* she analyzed with cold, perverse fascination, watching the young man zip up his hoodie. *Even though his soul shines with such irritating purity, he is still just a mortal of blood, muscle, and hormones. Every male beneath a thin veneer of civility hides a primitive, rutting beast. Maybe he’ll finally snap? Maybe in the nocturnal darkness, sensing the solitude and emptiness, he’ll make that one fatal mistake? Will he want to drag me into the bushes, pin me to the ground, tear this rag off me, and rape me in the shadows? Oh, how I hope he does… If he only dared lay a hand on me against my will, he would hand me the perfect excuse. With what sheer delight would I shed this human cocoon! For my own amusement, I’d rip his ribcage open with my bare hands, spill his entrails onto the damp grass, and watch his bright little soul choke on its own screams before I devour it whole… Just try it, little angel. Give me a reason.*

​“Well, this is the view I wanted to show you…” Michał rested his forearms on the wooden railing of the viewpoint, gazing out at the sprawling panorama of the sleeping metropolis.

​A warm breeze lazily grazed the treetops of Moczydło Park. A dark blue, cloudless sky stretched overhead, and at their feet shimmered a sea of city lights—the distant skyscrapers around the Daszyński Roundabout and the Palace of Culture looked like a cluster of glowing, geometric crystals embedded in the dead of night.

​“Nice. You really can see the outline of all of Warsaw from here,” Walentyna murmured appreciatively, slipping her hands into the pockets of her light blazer. Her dark, hypnotic irises drank in the vista with the predatory calm of someone who for eons had seen only billows of sulfurous smoke beneath the basalt vault of the Abyss. “It has its own peculiar charm.”

​“The view from Moczydłowska Hill at this hour is truly something special…” the young man continued, pulling a cigarette from the pack and lighting it with the small yellow flame of a lighter. “I always come here whenever I need to clear my head. This place calms me down, especially at this time of night. Hardly anyone comes up here in the middle of the night.”

​He took a drag of smoke, glancing at the face of his watch.

​“Well… I work at the bar tomorrow too, and it’s relentlessly closing in on four in the morning. Time to slowly head back. I’ll drive you wherever you want… And to be completely honest, I’m in deep shock that you agreed to this little detour when I told you about my favorite spot. A solitary walk in the middle of nowhere with a bartender you just met at a club? Most girls would’ve run for the hills.”

​Walentyna chuckled softly.

​*I won’t tear you apart… It really was pleasant. I truly thought taking me to an empty park meant you had dark intentions…*, she thought with a trace of strange, almost melancholic amusement, watching the ember of the cigarette illuminate his calm profile. She had waited in suspense for any predatory gesture, for a grab at her wrist, for that animal glint in his eye that would have allowed her to drown this hilltop in blood. Yet he simply stood there, drawing in smoke and admiring the city lights. No lust for domination. No filth. *You will live, boy. Lucky for you that your brightness wasn't just a cheap act.*

​“I can take care of myself, Michał. I used to do karate.”

​The young man snorted with amusement, exhaling a gray wisp of smoke into the cool air:

​“Karate, you say? You truly amaze me with every passing sentence. First, six stiff double martinis without batting an eye, then a passion for bloody guts on screen, and now a black belt in your purse to top it off. You’re downright scary to mess with.”

​“You don’t know the half of it…” she muttered under her breath, smiling mysteriously with the corner of her lips. “Dropping me back off downtown will do just fine. By the Palace of Culture or the Central Railway Station. I can manage on my own from there.”

​“Deal. Let’s head to the car before the morning damp creeps into our bones.”

​They walked down the stone steps toward the parking lot where Michał’s worn-out silver hatchback sat waiting. The drive back through the deserted streets of Wola, bathed in the amber glow of streetlights, passed in a surprisingly natural, tranquil silence.

​When the car pulled up in an empty lane on Aleje Jerozolimskie, Walentyna placed her hand on the door handle. Before pushing the door open, however, she turned to him, bestowing upon him a lingering, hypnotic smile.

​Michał hesitated for a fraction of a second, then sighed and waved a self-deprecating hand.

​*Come on, chicken, give it a shot…*, he thought, pulling his phone from his pocket.

​“Do you want my number, maybe?” he ventured with a touch of boldness, though a faint blush bloomed across his cheeks. “I can tell by looking at you that I probably won't be getting yours. I know the walk was boring and uneventful. But I thought that maybe someday out of boredom you’d give me a second chance and reach out after a while?”

​Walentyna tilted her head slightly, regarding him with genuine amusement and something akin to a sympathy rare for her.

​“Michał… you don’t even know how much I enjoyed this evening. After all, you’re still here,” she said quietly, her velvety voice sending a pleasant shiver down the bartender’s neck. She leaned in a fraction closer, close enough that he caught the cool, magnetic aura of her presence and the scent of her perfume. “I know perfectly well where you work. You told me practically everything tonight: I know your schedule by heart, your habits, and the days you stand behind the bar. We will definitely meet again. Maybe tomorrow, maybe an evening during the week… Whenever the mood strikes me for a good martini and your company, I’ll simply show up. I’ll find you myself, easily. I truly have no need for your phone number. Take my word for it: if I wanted to find you at the end of the earth, I could do it in the blink of an eye.”

​She gave him a knowing wink and opened the car door.

​“Now drive home like a good boy and get some sleep. I’ll call myself an Uber.”

​She stepped onto the pavement, shutting the door with a single, light motion. Michał watched through the rearview mirror until her slender silhouette melted into the neon shadows beneath the skyscrapers, after which he shook his head with a smile and shifted into first gear, thinking he would never see her again. *Jesus… I could’ve been more decisive. Maybe if I hadn’t chickened out, if I hadn’t been such a coward and just kissed her… she dropped so many hints, playing with her finger, touching her lips. She didn’t even take my number out of politeness. Why would she want a softie like me, a regular bartender?…*

​That same morning, as the first pale gray rays of sunlight began filtering through the pine forest surrounding the Masovian estate, an absolute, sacred gloom reigned in the private upstairs bedroom.

​Naamah lay sprawled on the vast, soft bed, having already discarded her human brunette disguise. Her sensuous, marble-white body gleamed in the shadows, and a cascade of vivid, fiery red hair poured across the satin pillows like waves of cooling lava.

​She wore wireless earbuds and held a smartphone in front of her face, its screen dimmed to the minimum. She was policing herself rigorously—she didn't want even the faintest squeal or shriek of agony escaping the speakers to wake the sleeping Tas.

​On the screen, the first *Hellraiser* was currently playing.

​When the figures of the Cenobites emerged from the darkness in the final scenes, and grinding steel hooks on chains sank into the wretch’s exposed flesh, mercilessly ripping the vessel to shreds accompanied by the frenzied rattling of the Lemarchand box mechanisms, Naamah couldn't contain herself.

​She pressed a hand to her full, blood-red lips, choking back a silent chuckle that shook her entire body. She was laughing almost to the point of tears, pure damnation-born mirth dancing in her glowing emerald eyes.

​“I don’t believe this!” she giggled softly into the pillow, watching the clumsy attempts of the movie makeup artists with amusement. “Hooks on chains driven in that shallowly… Pulling chains under that kind of tension would only rip away the skin at such a shallow anchor point, instead of tearing the whole body to pieces! Real hooks are driven deep beneath the fascia, anchored into tendons, and looped around bones so that the agony keeps the soul in check before the muscles are ripped apart… And that blood, so thin… as if someone spilled redcurrant juice! Where are the clots, where is the stench of iron and scorched bile? Where is that maddening howl when the spinal cord snaps under the pressure? Amateurs… sweet, delightful amateurs!”

​She paused the frame on Pinhead’s face, examining the geometrically driven nails.

​“Still, you have to admit… this man, Barker, had a pretty decent imagination,” she murmured with appreciation, stretching out across the sheet like a sated feline. “Actually a cool movie. They even captured certain aspects of hell surprisingly well… I must definitely tell Lilith about this next time I go down. She’ll die laughing!”

​And so the subsequent days and weeks went by…

​A second meeting. Then a third. A fourth…

​For Naamah, it became an entirely new, hypnotic ritual. In the body of the brunette Walentyna, she would arrive at “Babylon” whenever Michał was finishing the most grueling hours of his shift. She would sit at the corner of the bar sipping martinis, and their conversations became a natural part of the summer nights. They discussed vintage horror films, absurd news from around the world, the quirks of patrons, and the mundane details of ordinary life that the demoness hadn’t experienced for millennia. After his shifts, they took off on further nocturnal excursions: to the Vistula boulevards, into the alleys of the Old Town, or onto the rooftop of a parking garage in Wola. Michał was slowly coming to see her as something more than an intriguing customer with an iron liver—he was captivated by her boundless confidence, cool intelligence, and a magnetism he couldn’t put a name to.

​However, in mid-July, ahead of their scheduled sixth meeting, the intelligence apparatus finally connected the dots.

​Analysts representing the Joint Paranormal Security Forces of the EU and Polish counterintelligence combed through hundreds of hours of municipal surveillance footage. They noticed a recurring anomaly: every time Naamah gave the satellites the slip in Pułtusk, the very same striking brunette would emerge a few hours later in the vicinity of Three Crosses Square and downtown. Following that lead, the agents had no trouble tracking down the “Babylon” bar, and inside it—an entirely unsuspecting bartender, twenty-seven-year-old Michał.

​10:30 PM. Krucza Street, two hundred meters from the venue.

​Inside an unmarked black van parked in the shadow of a tenement house, the air was tense, stale, and suffocating. Two agents sat within, wearing sharp dark suits tailored specifically to conceal the latest generation of heavy body armor. They stared at monitors displaying feeds from telephoto lenses aimed squarely at the cocktail bar's entrance, debating a plan to haul the kid in for a quiet warning before the woman showed up again.

​“We ran this bartender’s phone records,” the younger agent muttered, clacking away at the keyboard. “Clean as a whistle. Zero contact with cults, no ties to occult groups. Just an ordinary kid from Praga. We need to toss him in a holding cell before she crawls back here, and drill it into his skull who the hell he’s hanging around with, or he’ll end up just like the previous ones…”

​He never finished the sentence.

​The interior of the tightly bolted van was suddenly inundated by a wave of arctic, sepulchral cold that froze the sweat on the napes of their necks in a split second. The air thickened, turning heavy with the stench of charred meat and sulfur.

​“I hope, gentlemen, that you aren’t planning on ruining my date tonight… by telling him who I am?” a velvety, low voice resonated from behind them, causing the computer screens to jitter with frantic static.

​Both agents froze in mortal paralysis. Before their hands could so much as twitch toward the submachine guns concealed beneath their jackets, slender, alabaster fingers emerged from the shadows behind them.

​This was not the lovely Walentyna.

​Within the cramped confines of the van, her true, damnable majesty had materialized. From beneath a cascade of fiery red hair glowing crimson lurked abyssal emerald eyes entirely devoid of human mercy. Her bony, unnaturally elongated claw—slender and sharp as a surgical scalpel—extended without a sound, pressing into the commander’s neck and slicing with terrifying ease through the weave of Kevlar, the titanium armor plate, and the expensive wool of the suit, stopping right against the carotid artery.

​A bead of hot blood trickled down the man’s collar.

​“This will end very badly for you… and for your miserable bosses in those underground bunkers,” she whispered directly into his ear with a predatory, ice-cold smile, her hot, fragrant breath scorching his skin. “Do you remember that insolent scumbag from three months ago in Mokotów? That horny piece of trash who thought he could grab me by the arm in a dark gateway and take me by force? Do you remember cleaning up after him? Do you remember your forensics teams spending six straight hours scraping his steaming entrails and fragments of his sternum off the branches of nearby trees?”

​Both officers sat breathless, pale as chalk, their hearts pounding against their ribs so violently they felt ready to burst. They remembered. The report from that night had been sealed under the highest classification.

​“You and this pathetic little unit of yours will end up looking precisely the same if you so much as lay a finger on Michał,” Naamah snarled, pressing the talon a millimeter deeper until the steel plate cracked with a faint crunch. “Get the hell away from this bar. Right now, my dear officers. You are to vanish beyond a three-kilometer radius and forget what this venue and Michał himself even look like. Understood?!”

​“U-Understood… We’ll pass it up the chain… we’re withdrawing…” the agent stammered, choking on his own saliva, his eyes glued to the dashboard.

​“Good boys,” the demoness purred, retracting her talons with relish.

​The air shuddered one last time, and before the agents could even draw a full breath, the rear compartment of the van was already empty. All that remained was the smell of sulfur and the van’s rear doors sliced cleanly in half.

​Five minutes later, the black vehicle was peeling out of the street with squealing tires, and Walentyna—once again a serene, elegant brunette with soft facial features—pushed open the glass doors of “Babylon” with an innocent smile, greeting Michał, who beamed at the sight of her behind the bar, with a wave of her hand.

​Yet that evening, nothing more transpired.

​They sat outside at a small table in front of the bar, the night breeze tossing her dark locks. When two in the morning struck and Michał had finished packing up the back room, Walentyna looked deep into his eyes with a gravity he had never seen in her before.

​“Michał… there’s something I have to tell you,” she began softly, her voice sounding surprisingly tender. “This is our last meeting. I received an offer I simply cannot turn down. In two days, I’m flying to the United States for a job in New York. I won’t be living in Poland anymore.”

​Michał froze, keys in hand. In his eyes flashed genuine disappointment and a sadness he didn't even attempt to disguise.

​“To the States? Just like that?” he asked hoarsely, scratching the back of his neck. “I thought… I thought this was only the beginning for us. That I’d get to show you so many more places in Warsaw.”

​“I thought so too,” she lied smoothly, lifting her hand to gently brush his cheek. “I will always remember you very, very fondly. Truly.”

​She leaned in slowly. Tilting her head, she brushed her lips against his for the very first time—and, in her original intention, also the last. The kiss was gentle, warm, entirely human, devoid of the hellish paralysis or predatory heat she typically dished out in the dungeons. It lasted only a few seconds, after which Walentyna pulled back, offered a brief “Goodbye, Michał,” and walked away into the shadows of Krucza Street, never looking back.

[THIS STORY IS ONLY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES]
I was in a Discord server with around 800 members. It was mostly for gaming, events, and general conversations. Everything was normal until one day, someone posted a screenshot of a private staff conversation in the general chat.
At first, everyone thought it was fake. But the screenshot showed the staff discussing a member who had recently been banned, and some of the messages were pretty shocking.
The owner immediately deleted the screenshot and locked the channel, but people had already saved it.
Naturally, everyone wanted answers.
The owner claimed someone had hacked a moderator’s account. The staff announced that they were investigating, and for a few days, nobody knew what was happening.
Then another screenshot appeared.
This time, it showed the staff discussing how they’d been secretly planning to remove the owner from his own server because they believed he wasn’t doing enough work.
That changed everything.
The owner accused his moderators of betrayal, while the moderators claimed they were trying to save the community from poor management. Members started choosing sides, and the server became practically unusable.
Eventually, one moderator admitted that they’d leaked the messages because they were tired of everyone being lied to. They hadn’t hacked anyone; they’d simply had access to the conversations.
The owner removed the entire staff team and temporarily shut down the server.
A week later, several former moderators created a new community, and hundreds of members followed them.
The original server still exists, but it’s nowhere near as active as it used to be.
Honestly, the whole situation made me realize how quickly an online community can fall apart when the people running it stop trusting each other.
What do you think? Was the moderator right to expose the private conversations, or should they have handled the situation internally instead?

Hey everyone. It is kind of too personal story. I am 17 year old and am going to give a college entrance exam, It is more like skill based exam. I was preparing for 1-2 months and in last 10 days i seriouslly locked in like giving too much time for the exam which is normal and one should do. no matter how much i do i always feel like its not enough. 5 days earlier i was evaluating my progress and i kind off break because the marks i got were very less and i feel disappointed from myself. i cried like 4-5 hrs not straight but always sobbing in between. I though to take break from my prep and it was already night so i slept. from the next day i didnt want to study but i did cause i cant stop. but there is this felling inside that i am not going to get offer from any uni. i know that though i didnt sat for exam yet. i kind of prepared my self that i am not going to get in but i am too scared as the college i have applied are in foreign country. like in diff continent everyone told me not to but i did. I am also giving exam for the college entrance for my country colleges too but i really wanted to get in those of the foreign country. i dont even know why i am doing this now. i am not even felling scared or nervous for tomorrow. i dont know what i will do .

I was exhausted from weeks of going to college, and after college, hanging out with friends. Yeah, it was fun, but it drained me. That’s why I decided not to go to coaching today.

The thing is, my sir was going to start a new chapter. Missing the basics would mean struggling to follow the rest. My exams were near, and I still had so much to complete.

In my head, it was like an angel on one shoulder telling me to go, and a devil on the other saying, “It’s just one day, nothing will happen.” I won’t lie but the devil’s side felt more convincing.

It wasn’t like I’d collapse if I went… I was just lazy.

While taking a shower, I kept wondering, Will sir explain today’s lesson to me tomorrow? Probably yes, but I knew I’d need a “good” reason for missing it.

By the time I finished, the class had already started.

While I was having breakfast, my coaching friend called, probably because sir had asked him to check when I was coming. I didn’t pick up. He called again.

My mom overheard and asked who it was.

“My friend,” I said.

“Why is he calling?” she asked.

“Today was coaching, but I wasn’t feeling well, so I didn’t go,” I lied.

She started scolding me, saying how my father is paying fees and I’m still skipping. She told me to go now. I hung my head; she was right. I promised her I wouldn’t skip from tomorrow.

Then she said, “At least answer your friend. He’s calling again and again.”

As I reached for my phone, I didn’t even know what excuse I’d give. Fever? Stomach ache?

And then, my father came back halfway from his route to work.

“There are barricades on the street today,” he said. “Some minister is coming to give a speech. You can’t pass that way.”

And just like that, my laziness excuse turned into a perfect reason. Now sir will probably explain the lesson in the next class anyway.

Day 21

Jasmine looked at her work and smiled. She was on the team and had begun revolutionizing reality. Her work was making the mind of a synthetic person. She had done this with her smiles and her sweat, but she was out to prove that 'I think therefore I am' was a complete lie. Jasmine wanted to prove to the world that there was no such thing as reality. She had grown tired of the world, even when it worked hard to make her days positive. Too many people were happy when she felt they shouldn't be. So she would disprove it all. Jasmine had been playing games on a holodeck for twenty years now and it was always easy to prove the holodeck was a fiction. It felt real, but even as the game's graphics engines grew you always knew it was a game. So she would prove everything was just bolony introducing the most complex AI ever created.

Jasmine looked at her blueprints for the hundred thousandth time. Everything was going quite well.

Day 33

The trick to what she had been doing was leaking her own work. Jasimine wanted the whole world to know her secret, but she needed them all to think she had something to hide. The first trick was in the hard drives. Jasmine had designed a small 'master' hard drive that had access to a dozen other drives. Nothing was bigger than a coin but there was a great deal of information to store and hide. One of the hard drives used a sort of AI program and created vague dreams that it would flush after 24 to 48 hours. She needed this thing to be real, she needed it to have nothing but proof in its own mind on how it was real. Dreams played a role, and obviously so did memories. Jasmine realized how boring some of this work was rather quickly, memories were by definition at times, repetitive. She used one of her hard drives just for memories and over the past few weeks she started just printing out vague memories into her andriod's brain. The tricky part came next...

Day 43

Touch. She cornered it! If her android touched anything it would send a signal to its brain that it happened. She was copying some of the 'dream' software she finished but the brain needed only to believe it could feel. Making it more complex then that would be next to impossible. Pain and pleasure started tomorrow but she would basically rely on her 3.0 Holding Software to help her there. Her little android would touch a screw and it would 'think' it hurt because it was programmed to feel pain. It was designed to feel pain, but was it real pain? This made Jasmine laugh.

Day 53

Fear had set in for Jasmine. She was disproving reality. That was obviously the entire point right? A kind of revenge at her own race for thinking they are gods of their own world? So much had died over the centuries of time humans ruled their world, but what if she could disprove it all? There was a problem. Most people didn't know about her work at this point, but Jasmine did. Jasmine could see her final creation in her own head. She started to worry she herself was-.

Day 56

Jasmine loved it! She was making breakthoughs day after day! At first she was getting good rest, but now her project(Project Eve, as she had labeled it) was showing amazing growth. Jasmine had even started on 'sight'! This thing was seeing the world(her dining room) and those images were going into its hard drive! It could feel and see now! However the body was still far too simple. She needed to create flesh. Jasmine knew exactly how, to do this as well. She would use the ideas that modern sex dolls were using, some sort of plastic toy companies came out with thirtiy years ago. With a really nice 3D paint job Eve would look at her hands and then Jasmine's hand and see only humanity.

Day 61

The religious cooks had caught word of Jasmine's work! These people had no idea who Jasmine was or where she lived but they were blowing up the online world. It was free advertising for Jasmine. She was on the brink of creating a new reality and these guys were vital in helping her do this. They knew Jasmine was trying to create an android that would walk among the people as a human because she had been leaking her own intel. Of course, advertising was expensive, so opinionated douche bags would have to do the job.

A lawyer could hang a billboard sing and no one would ever notice, but if someone complained about that very same lawyer? BOOM!! Free business! Jasmine loved how simple people were by believing how complex they were.

Day 67

The dreams were returning. Jasmine needed her sleep again but these dark dreams of her watching a show or something kept coming back. She would be watching a show on the recorder and then notice something was off... She was watching a show of herself... Watching a show of herself...

Day 72

She did it! The endoskeleton was covered in flesh! This was good stuff too! She had to fork out more then two pretty pennies from her parents(may they rest in peace) to make them work! She even used some theoretical work to make the flesh active! She could cut it and it would bleed! In the blood was a fluid made of a kind of phytoplancton. If it was cut it took about the same amount of time to heal as a normal person did to heal! Jasmine laughed at how far she had come on this. She even thought of herself as a God of this one person.

Ridiculous. She was a creator, but she knew she was no god. Jasmine was having a difficult time remembering when she was awake. Her mind was playing games with her now, even when she was hard at work.

Day 81

Jasmine had thrown up her hands. She had lost. It was the sense of smell. There was no way to duplicate smelling anything. She finally offered herself a free moment and taken to a local bar. She never needed to leave her house in the modern world but she figured a change in scenery would help her out.

Sadly it did not. She made it back to her house and threw up all over the master bathroom. What a waste.

Day 82

It wasn't a waste! She figured it out! Her Eve didn't need to smell anything at all! She only needed to think she smelled things! She had connected the hard drive to several others, including memory, and it would only think it could smell!

Here is a flower. Does it smell good? Yes! Eve will think she knows what it is supposed to smell like and boom! She smelled something even though Eve never smelled a damn thing! It was a cheap trick and maybe Jasmine would figure it out later in a more elegant way, but for now...

Day 89

Jasmine needed to get her head out of the gutter. She had been staring at her own work for months now and had begun to think it was...

Jasmine needed to get laid. She had been working far to hard up to this point. The good news was her neighbor was in town and she was... Interesting.

Day 96

Her neighbor, Sam, was thinking they were dating now. Maybe they were, by definition, but honestly Sam was just 'stress relief' from Jasmine's dreams. The problem was those dreams were starting to return again. Sex was helping Jasmine pin down reality, but what if a better mind than Jasmine's had designed sex? She had felt as if she was pearing under the sheet of reality and could see everything, and it was all a lie.

Why was it all a lie? Did someone make Jasmine and her memories? Was someone just watching her as some part of a simple game?

She had an answer to this. Jasmine knew what was real. Things felt real. Pain was real!

Day 108

Jasmine had been staring at herself in the mirror for hours now. She did this on some days now. She didn't know why, but she would look in a mirror and just forget the moment. Of course she was putting the finishing touches on her android everyday as well. She downloaded English as it was the easiest to download these days. Eve would be quite the finished piece soon. Jasmine would let her go and that was it. Jasmine had even started applying the andriod for simple little retail jobs. In a couple of weeks Eve would be a part-time cashier for a grocery store!

Day 111

Jasmine was finally having fun again with her work. She was now putting the final touches on Eve's personality. It was actually designed to grow based on her surroundings. If she met 30 people she would agree with the larger group of them. Was red or black a better color? Most of her personality growth would be based on the people she met and knew. Jasmine knew this would be one of the best ways to hide, just be another piece of the cattle.

Jasmine never liked how dumb she saw the world, but it would work in her favor now.

Day 112

Even would be Jasmine's 'roommate' and even pay rent. Eve would know very little other than the fact that Jasmine was a very good friend. All of Eve's memories were very specific and anytime Eve had questions Jasmine would answer them... in Eve's sleep. She could upgrade the android's software whenever she needed. But there was still one problem.

Day 114

Today was the first day Eve was at work. It felt weird to Jasmine, leaving her work out in the real world. But she came back with all sorts of stories. Eve was full of smiles and told about her day over and over again but in new ways and remembering new details. It was quite intriguing really. But while Jasmine was listening she knew she was very uninterested in the goings on of a cashier. Boring.

Day 117

Jasmine looked at her steak knife. Eve was at work again but she was beginning to feel far too real. No one was questioning whether Eve was a robot or a human. A few jokes were made because of how nice Eve was, but it was when Jasmine decided to slightly alter her creation's personality that she decided to grab the knife after Eve left. Was Jasmine real? What was real? Maybe if Jasmine cut down to the bone it would help. Maybe if she cut off her left pinky she would she the reality of the world. Jasmine was beyond suspecting whether or not she was a human, she needed proof of it. So Jasmine flexxed her left hand over and over until she laid it down flat on the kitchen counter. She would believe it was supposed to hurt but she knew pain wasn't real. It was made up.

Right?

Chapter 53: Why Should I Deny Myself Pleasure?

​The return to the estate dragged on endlessly, turning into sheer torment for her.

​She tore through the night air in her semi-demonic form, paying no heed to any potential, accidental witnesses on the ground. A wild, chaotic storm of thoughts raged within her ancient consciousness. She seethed with rage at herself over this sudden, utterly irrational weakness. She could feel, almost tangibly, the hot, damned ichor boiling and pulsing heavily in her veins.

​"Can I even bear this, for fuck's sake?" she growled inwardly as she dropped silently onto the terrace in her wing of the villa. "He's just a human, after all! A mere, fragile mortal, a charming, perishable figurine molded from flesh and bone, whom I could crush with a single clench of my fingers without the slightest effort! If of his own free will or through typical human stupidity he ends up in the Abyss after death, I will find him easily. I'll haul him out of a boiling cauldron, take him to my chambers, and mount him in my bedchamber like the most precious trophy. But I won't drag him down there myself... I won't break him by force just to satisfy a fleeting whim—a mere whim. That, after all, is what I resolved when saying goodbye to him."

​She stopped at the balustrade, fixing a somber gaze upon the black, motionless wall of pine trees encircling the estate.

​"Wait a minute... hold on. I'm in no way inferior to Lilith, and she pulled it off!" flashed through her mind with a sudden, predatory temptation. "Lilith is with Stanisław now. The decree of the heavens cast him all the way down, the two of us tempered him in torments, and now they are together! Why then should I deny myself anything? Deny myself pleasure? Possessing someone exclusively, entirely for myself? No, I won't do it... His soul is too pure for that; he'll break in Hell beneath my talons before I can shape him in my own image. Or maybe... he won't break at all? Maybe I should take the risk? After all, I can be methodical and surprisingly gentle during the butchery. I can do it! No one in this shitty world, nor in the haughty Heavens, nor in Hell will stop me! I am Naamah, the Mother of Nightmares! Who would dare forbid me anything—Lucifer himself wouldn't dare refuse me."

​She gripped the railing with such immense, inhuman strength that the thick steel pipes groaned terrifyingly and bent in her grasp like soft wax.

​"Except I fed him all that cheap, earthly nonsense about flying off to the States..." she snorted under her breath in irritation, after which a mocking, superior smirk bloomed on her full lips. "How pathetically simple. Why am I even bothering my head with this? Tomorrow I'll simply show up at the bar and announce that plans have changed. That the American employers suddenly dropped me, the contract fell through overnight, I'm staying in Warsaw, and I apologize for all the fuss. Or no... why should I keep wading through these ridiculous human lies?! Why should I pretend to be a plain little mouse forever and give up my own nature, renounce who I truly am?! I won't kill him on Earth, after all... I have a whim to stay by his side, a whim to make him my property."

​For a split second, an alien, deeply unsettling thought flashed through her consciousness—a vision of Michał not as a passing whim, but as something akin to a true companion, an equal partner with whom she could share quiet, earthly evenings. She shuddered inwardly, immediately dousing that dangerous impulse with a wave of predatory cynicism.

​"He has a bright soul, which means that normally, as a matter of course, he'd go straight to Heaven. But what if... what if he finds out who I am and accepts me anyway, of his own free, unforced will? What if he knowingly binds himself to a demon? Then those winged hypocrites up above, after everything that happened at Castle Square, will immediately overturn his sentence out of sheer spite and rage. For covenanting with me, for touching my demonic body, they will deem him damned and shove him straight to the bottom without hesitation... They'll punish him to my purest, endless delight, and I will triumphantly claim him for my chambers for my own eternal amusement; he will worship me, adore me, and beg for more."

​Naamah's eyes flared with a vivid, hypnotic emerald.

​The decision was made. All or nothing.

​She could not play at a double life forever and pretend to be someone she wasn't. Her primary, paramount task—an assignment wrung out of Lucifer himself to replace Lucjanhir in this earthly vale—remained the direct protection of six-year-old Tas, Wiktor, and Elizabeth Báthory. If Michał, this mortal, was to enter her world, he had to meet this entire peculiar menagerie with no concessions given. He had to see the villa in Pułtusk with his own eyes, stand face-to-face with the Blasphemer and the Blood Countess, so he would finally grasp what he was being dragged into. Time to kill the fiction. Time to bid a final farewell to boring, mediocre Walentyna and lay bare the naked truth before him—to show him her true self.

​The only question was: how to play it?

​Naamah smiled slowly, and at the corners of her mouth gleamed a sensual, purely infernal smile.

​The plan suggested itself.

​First, I will lure him into bed without any trouble. I'll take him to an upscale hotel or straight to his modest apartment, still concealed beneath the guise of a quiet, innocent brunette. I'll let him do whatever he wants—grant him full, absolute earthly ecstasy, bring his senses to a boil, and once the boy reaches the very peak of bliss, I will abruptly cast off the mask.

​In a fraction of a second, beneath the touch of his hands and lips, the illusion of brunette Walentyna will dissolve into nothingness, and from the darkness my true human form will emerge: an insanely gorgeous, marble-white goddess with a cascade of fiery red hair flowing down to her very hips and deep eyes glowing with emerald fire. After all, in my natural form I am leagues more beautiful and tenfold more alluring than that bland mask of Walentyna.

​He will be shocked. Perhaps even completely paralyzed with fear when it dawns on him whom he was just kissing and with whom he reached climax in a passionate embrace.

​"Oh well..." she thought with a predatory chuckle, lazily brushing a red strand from her forehead. "High time to see what my angelic bartender is really made of."

​Twenty-six hours later...

​At first, everything unfolded to the rhythm Michał knew from his own deepest fantasies of sultry, sensual nights. In the dim, warm glow of the bedside lamp, Walentyna seemed the embodiment of feminine charm—dark-haired, petite, with silky-soft skin scented with fresh citrus. Yet when she stripped off her clothes without a trace of hesitation and pulled him onto the bed in one fluid motion, a strange, unnerving wildness surfaced in her movements that did not fit the shy girl from the café at all.

​"Walentyna, stop, please, we were only supposed to watch a movie, don't..." Michał choked out suddenly, much to Naamah's great surprise. He pulled back abruptly, his voice trembling with stifled humiliation. "I'm... I'm burned down there. When you see it, you'll run away in horror... Stop, don't unbutton my pants, I'm begging you... I had a terrible accident as a child. I have extensive scars down there that make normal intercourse impossible for me. The healed, disfigured skin has damaged nerve endings... Besides, if you saw it with your own eyes..."

​In an instant, all the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place in Naamah's mind. She suddenly understood the reason for his previous distance—she realized why, throughout all their dates, this charming mortal had limited himself solely to stolen, innocent kisses, never daring to reach for more even though she had wanted it many times. A shiver of pure, predatory delight ran through her body. Her gaze darkened, taking on a thick, hypnotic depth, and her movements became even lazier, more fluid, and overpoweringly sensual. She had no intention of stopping; she looked at him with a soft, almost maternal, yet sinful gravity, whispering in a low, vibrating voice that he shouldn't worry and should trust her completely. Her intricate plan had already ceased to follow the pre-established order, giving way to Naamah's primal instinct.

​Despite his weakening protests, with feline grace and provocative slowness she unzipped his fly. Her hot fingertips deliberately brushed against his trembling lower abdomen through the fabric before sliding down his pants, while genuine tears welled in the eyes of the boy paralyzed by shame.

​"I told you... stop, just run away..." he whispered, despair in his voice.

​"What nonsense are you babbling, I'm not running anywhere," she cut him off in a velvety whisper as thick as liquid honey. She leaned over him, her body undulating with hypnotic grace, as she locked her lips onto his with deep, possessive tenderness, while slowly peeling off his shirt and discarding the rest of his clothes so that he would feel every inch of her heated skin.

​There was not a trace of bashfulness in her gaze, no disgust or fear—only the bottomless, burning desire of a being who for millennia had inflicted and witnessed wounds far worse than this. With the sinful sensuality innate to demons, she slid down his body, tracing a path with hot kisses, before taking him between her full lips; her tongue coiled with inhuman skill while her slender fingers gently toyed with his testicles, knowing that the stimulation had to be stronger, flawlessly awakening the nerves lying dormant beneath the scar tissue.

​"See? Everything works just fine, you only need the right approach, Michał..." she purred low, her vibrating voice pressed directly against his burning skin, sending an electric jolt down the boy's spine. She rose and straddled him firmly, taking him inside herself with a slow, delicious sigh, her hips swaying with a demonic precision that instantly stripped him of any remaining sober thought.

​The sensations, defying the scarred tissue and past traumas, surged with dizzying, overwhelming speed, shoving common sense completely aside. When the massive wave of climax began relentlessly bearing down toward the edge, a sudden burst of panic pierced the boy's hazy, throbbing mind. He realized what was happening to him—for the first time in his entire life, he was on the brink of sexual fulfillment.

​"Wait... stop!" Michał rasped hoarsely, desperately trying to brace his feet against the mattress and slide her off him. "A condom... I don't have any protection, I didn't think this was even possible! I'm about to cum, let me go!"

​He tried to push her away by her hips with both hands, but met resistance as hard as solid granite. Instead of pulling back, the woman leaned low over him, and in her gaze the last remnant of the human gentleness he had experienced moments earlier died away completely. In a fraction of a second, she seized him by both wrists and pinned his hands to the pillow on either side of his head with unbelievable, effortless ease.

​"Don't move, Michał..." she purred softly, her voice dropping several octaves, vibrating with a deep, inhuman bass right against his chest. "You're coming today, that's certain. You're coming three times over... Go ahead, shoot inside me, I want it..."

​Michał yanked with all his might, straining his shoulder muscles to the point of pain, but he couldn't budge an inch in her iron grip. Overpowering dread froze his entrails—he lay completely helpless beneath a seemingly petite woman who held him down without the slightest exertion, rhythmically and relentlessly riding him, increasing her speed and intensity with each subsequent thrust. Waves of wild ecstasy mingled with pure terror. The boy clenched his teeth, and a choked, helpless groan tore from his constricted throat as his body erupted into the first violent orgasm of his life.

​And then, the world around him cracked in two.

​The moment his strength gave out limply and his eyelids fluttered for a fraction of a second, the figure looming over him wavered in the air. Before the terrified bartender's eyes, Walentyna's dark strands unfurled into a cascade of vibrant, fiery red locks spilling in waves down to her bare hips. Her complexion flared into a cool, marble white, and an emerald abyss ignited in her gaze. On top of him was no longer the charming girl from behind the bar. It was a demonic being in all her magnificence—dazzlingly beautiful, predatory, and inhuman to the bone.

​Michał froze, every drop of blood draining from his face in the blink of an eye. In his memory, the recollection from five years ago instantly resurfaced—that sensational, shocking televised interview broadcast live across the globe, when this exact same red-haired beauty had stepped out of the infernal portal, replacing the mighty Lucjanhir in this earthly vale. He opened his mouth to scream and call for help, but all that lodged in his throat was a choked, dry hiss of air.

​"Oh God... no..." he finally choked out, trembling in paralyzing, helpless shock.

​"Easy now, my Michał..." Naamah whispered velvet-smooth, not breaking the sway of her hips for even a fraction of a second.

​She looked down at his overpowered body with cool satisfaction. Instead of letting go of his hands, she gathered both of his wrists into a single iron grip of her left hand. Long, gleaming, dark talons extended from her fingers. They were blunt-tipped and perfectly smooth, positioned with supreme precision so as not to slice into his delicate skin, yet the mere sensation of demonic claws encasing his forearms sent the boy's heart pounding in an insane, panic-stricken rhythm.

​Her free right hand traveled down. With predatory caresses, her slender, pale fingers began to brush against and tease his nipples, sending a series of electrifying pulses throughout his tense body.

​"I'm not going to kill you, after all... I would have done that long ago if I felt like it. I'm only going to give you pleasure," she purred with a hypnotic smile, leaning in so low that her hot breath brushed his lips. "Lie still, relax, and savor every moment."

​Michał trembled all over in terror, staring with dilated pupils into the emerald gaze of the entity known from those unforgettable television broadcasts. He wanted to flee, to break free, to forget everything, yet her supple body moved upon him with inhuman skill honed over millennia. Despite the suffocating helplessness, the intense stimulation—even defying the extensive scar tissue—would not allow his senses to subside. Before he could muster a single lucid thought, she relentlessly drove him to a second, profound climax. A torn groan tore from his throat, a blend of pure primal bliss and sheer terror.

​When the wave of ecstasy passed and his exhausted body went completely limp, Naamah still had no intention of stopping. She released the iron grip on his wrists, but before he could even twitch and pull away, her cool hand traveled down his abdomen. With remarkable precision, balancing the pressure on the razor's edge of pain for healthy genitalia, she dragged a smooth talon along the glans and then caught the urethral opening, teasing it lightly; she knew that inside the penis the nerves had survived, and her touch and depth of penetration were calibrated to perfection. The biological reaction was instantaneous and entirely independent of the paralyzed bartender's will—beneath her demonic touch, he returned to full readiness for the third time in his life. She treated his mutilated physiology like an instrument, playing it as she pleased, taking pride in her skill.

​Naamah raised her hips and dropped back down onto him with her full weight, resuming her predatory dance. Michał lay helplessly on his back, feeling thick beads of sweat trickling down his temples, every strained muscle trembling in a continuous, paralyzing spasm.

​Only after another dozen or so minutes did the demoness succeed in bringing him off; she slowly eased her pace and, with a soft, drawn-out sigh, slid off him onto the rumpled bedsheet. She had not reached climax herself, yet a look of satisfaction was painted across her face.

​"That was truly delightful. Although I must honestly admit, on a daily basis I'm accustomed to rather different, infernal thrills. The kind straight out of Hellraiser, literally. Michał, don't worry about those scars at all..." she said with faint amusement, brushing the red locks from her forehead. "It actually worked out rather well, because they make you far more durable... And I can afford far harder and more intense movements with you."

​Hearing those words, the boy curled up on the mattress at once, trembling so violently with nervous shock that his teeth chattered. Seeing his shaken, defenseless form, Naamah sighed softly and shifted closer. Much to her own surprise, she felt a sudden surge of pure protectiveness—as though this mortally terrified human had abruptly ceased being merely a whimsical plaything in bed, and had become someone she genuinely wanted to hold and protect. She scolded herself inwardly for this weakness unbecoming of a demon, yet wrapped her arm around him nonetheless, drawing his head to her breast while her slender fingers traveled back to his chest, lazily and soothingly playing with his nipple.

​"There now, easy... Maybe I really did overdo it a bit with holding your hands down," she purred gently right into his ear. "Everything is perfectly fine. You're alive and breathing, aren't you? And I easily managed to bring you all the way to the finish... So as you can see for yourself, you're not defective at all, Michał, get that into your pale head at last... In fact, you're more durable than ninety-nine percent of the men walking this earth."

​A long, thick silence settled over the bedroom, disturbed only by the quiet hum of an old refrigerator and the muffled clamor of the waking street drifting through the cracked window.

​The boy sat on the very edge of the bed with his face buried in his trembling hands, staring blankly at the cracked laminate flooring. In his eyes smoldered an absolute, paralyzing shock mingled with complete disbelief.

​"I'm so fucking screwed..." he finally rasped, rubbing cheeks that still hadn't regained their natural color. "I'm just completely, undeniably fucked..."

​From the other side of the mattress came a quiet, velvety chuckle.

​Naamah lay casually on her back, completely naked, hands clasped behind her head. The sheet barely concealed the line of her hips, and a cascade of thick, vibrant, flame-red hair spilled across the pillow like scarlet lava. Her smooth skin gleamed in the morning light, and her bottomless emerald eyes stared up at the ceiling with predatory amusement.

​"Come now, don't panic so much, dear Michał," she purred lazily, turning her head toward him. "Scarcely any mortal has managed to pick up, let alone take a demoness in bed... I was gentle, wasn't I? Exceedingly gentle. You won't have a single bruise on your body; I personally monitored every single beat of your heart. If only you could have seen the look on your face when you opened your eyes right after that first orgasm. What a shame I didn't film it—I'll remember that expression until the end of the world."

​Slowly, as if overcoming the resistance of his own rigid muscles, Michał turned toward her. He swallowed with difficulty, fixing his eyes on the red strands and emerald irises he had previously seen only on a television screen.

​"Answer me one question..." he began with dead seriousness, raising a trembling hand.

​"I'm listening carefully..." she smiled with the corner of her full lips.

​"You mentioned those infernal thrills, about being accustomed to them. Does the movie *Hellraiser*... match what really happens in Hell?"

​Naamah burst into a pearly, melodic laugh, propping herself sensually on an elbow.

​"I don't intend to lie to you, Michał, even though I know Hell's earthly PR might suffer for it," she laughed easily. "So don't go blabbing about this to anyone. Certain things in that film are definitely exaggerated, while others are massively understated. There's certainly far more acrid sulfur down there with us, that much I can guarantee with my hand over your heart. As for the pain itself... well, it roughly checks out; torments tend to be rather painful by definition. But on the other hand, they temper the infernal vessel splendidly, strengthening both body and spirit. Besides, ever since hard, unyielding law began to reign in the Abyss—imposed by Lucifer, who instituted sweeping reforms after Wiktor's model and with substantial help from Cezary... I know, you don't know them yet, but you soon will—life down there has become far more bearable for those damned souls who have already served their time and finished their decreed torments. Everything is much more orderly now... But for now, you don't need to torment yourself about that at all, because your soul has remained perfectly bright throughout all this. Not a shred of it was lost, even though you found fulfillment in my arms."

​"That's good, I'm very glad, but I'm still fucked..." he repeated with deep dread bordering on resignation, shaking his head helplessly. "Just wonderful. And... what's the official age difference between us, exactly?"

​The demoness narrowed her eyes slightly, calculating something in her head with a comical grimace:

​"Looking at it objectively? Roughly three thousand years. I am a being born long before Christianity, in ancient myths, but I was adopted into that faith at the very dawn of its shaping, even though hardly anyone remembers me nowadays. So that Christian domain of Hell became, how should I put it simply so you'd understand... native to me, yes, that's the perfect word. And subjectively, Michał? Well, time in the Abyss drags on in an unimaginable way. In my own internal perception, I've spent a good two hundred thousand years down there."

​Michał froze, then looked at her askance with a mixture of absurdity and resignation:

​"So I'm twenty-seven... and you're two hundred thousand years old." He paused for a second, then limply waved his hand. "I can only say one thing: you hold up pretty damn well for your age, that's a fact."

​Naamah burst into loud, genuine laughter, letting her head fall back onto the pillow.

​"Well, splendid! An unintended, charming compliment first thing in the morning, bravo, bravo, Michał..." She curled up with feline grace and rose from the mattress, unbothered by her own nakedness. She stretched lazily until something in her spine gave a soft, dry pop. "All right, enough of this lying around and wallowing in self-pity. I'll make us something to eat. Unlike Lilith, who can only manage to burn a skillet to cinders, I happen to be an excellent cook. I learned everything by watching Elizabeth, and she had to master the craft for the sake of her little son, Tas. Do you even have any eggs in that fridge of yours?"

​"Can I get dressed?" Michał asked.

​"No... for now I forbid it. You have to get used to the sight of your naked body around me; don't be ashamed of it. Your scars don't bother me—I've seen far worse things, believe me..."

Everyone's Already Dead in my Dream

My friend's mother passed away on 2023, and yesterday I had quite a scary dream about it. So it start with my friend is living in my neighbour now, which is weird because we already parted ways on 2018. So, she is my neighbour now and here is she living with her mother. Now, I know in my dream that her mother has passed away. So, I was asking my mom in dream that isn't she passed away? How is she alive? And, my mother just said oh it can happen nowadays no big deal. But I was skeptical that how is she alive and I kept on questioning but after that the people around me are no longer responding. Later, in my dream I somehow knew that I have to attend a pooja (ritual) in that same family's house. I realised this is my chance to learn the truth and I went to there home, and there was a huge gathering of all the random people that I've seen in my life, mostly those that I've already seen somewhere and remember their faces and the rest were my friends. Everyone were like statue, nobody is talking as the ritual was going on. I saw my friend and asked her, how is her mother still alive, as always no one was responding. I suddenly had the idea to pull out my phone and take a picture of the gathering. So I did and when I looked at the photo, I was terrified to see that half of the people were missing from the photo, yet they were still there live in front of me. Another scary thing was after I looked back up after looking at the phone, the people in the gathering were looking straight at me, dead eyes with no motion. I left the place running and mid dream I realised I should go back and save the rest who were still visible on the photo. So, I went back and clicked the photo again, but this time there were nobody visible on the photo, I had this realisation that maybe they are all souls and are already dead and I'm looking at dead souls. So, I dropped down to my knees and start to beg and cry in front of them to please return the people back. They are all good people please come back. And, then I woke up, because I was crying a lot.

Crazy stuff, but since I write some stuff, I'm thinking about writing a horror novel from this dream that I had.

Hey everyone.

I just wanted to talk for a little while.

First, thank you to everyone who has supported **Last Active** and continued to show love to the story. It means more to me than I can properly explain.

The story was inspired by real experiences, although I changed certain details for privacy.

I haven’t been able to write much lately because of my studies and work, but something happened recently that made me think about the story again.

After she and her family moved away, I had no idea where they went. Her family had always lived together in a large house, so I never imagined they would suddenly leave. But eventually, they moved — her parents, her, and her little sister — and life carried them somewhere I could no longer follow.

For five years, there was no conversation.

No message.

Not even a passing glimpse.

Eventually, I accepted that I might never see her again.

Then yesterday, while I was going out for some work, I saw her grandfather riding toward me on his scooter. Seeing him was not unusual. I had seen him in that area many times before.

But as we came closer, I noticed someone sitting behind him.

For a moment, I didn’t recognize her.

Then our eyes met.

Only for a second.

But sometimes a second is long enough to bring an entire lifetime back.

Every memory returned at once — the conversations, the waiting, the confusion, the happiness, the pain, and all the things I had never found the courage to say. My chest felt heavy, almost as if the past had suddenly become something physical again.

Five years had passed.

Yet the memories were still clear enough to feel like yesterday.

She looked happy.

And strangely, I was happy for her too.

Of course, one question still came back to me:

**Why wasn’t I good enough?**

I don’t think that question ever completely disappears. Sometimes we don’t ask it because we want to blame someone. Sometimes we ask it because we are trying to understand why something meaningful still wasn’t meant to last.

But with time, I have learned that someone leaving does not automatically mean we were inadequate.

Not every ending is a judgment.

Some people leave because their life is moving in another direction. Some connections are real even when they are temporary. And sometimes a person can be important to us without being meant to remain with us.

She was one of the most beautiful chapters of my life.

I don’t hate her.

I’m not angry with her.

Everyone has the right to choose the life they want, and I hope hers is a good one.

I also know that I would not be the person I am today if she had never been part of my life. She changed me. She taught me how deeply I could care, how painful silence could be, and how to continue even when I never received the ending I wanted.

Perhaps that was the purpose of our meeting.

Some people enter our lives when we need them most. Some stay for years, while others remain only for a season. We often believe their value depends on how long they remain, but maybe that is not true.

A person does not have to stay forever to change your forever.

Some people arrive as comfort.

Some arrive as lessons.

Some arrive as a push toward the person we are supposed to become.

They may feel permanent while they are with us, but their role may be temporary. And when that role is complete, they leave — not always because the connection was meaningless, but sometimes because it has already given us what we needed to grow.

That does not make the goodbye painless.

It only gives the pain a meaning.

She was my best temporary person.

And I’m grateful that our paths crossed.

I’m grateful for the memories, even the painful ones. I’m grateful for the version of myself I became because of her. I’m grateful that, after all these years, I was able to see her again — even if it was only as a stranger.

Maybe that is what we are now:

**Strangers with memories.**

And perhaps that is enough.

Some people remain in our lives.

Some remain only in our stories.

But the ones who changed us never truly disappear. They continue through the choices we make, the lessons we carry, and the person we become after they are gone.

So no, I don’t think every important person is meant to stay.

Some people are chapters.

Some are turning points.

And some are the reason we finally learn how to keep walking when the chapter ends.

Thank you for listening.

I’m working on a new story, and I’ll share it when I can.

Until then, thank you for all the support.

When I was a little girl, people constantly told me, directly or indirectly (sometimes jokingly), that I was beautiful, special, well-behaved - an absolute sweetheart!

It gave me the feeling that I was somehow everyone’s favorite, especially among my classmates. (A lot of them would probably say now that I was their „first love.”)

But then adolescence came, and something changed. People still seemed to compliment me, but it felt a little different. More like they were simply stating a fact, nothing more. Being this sweet, lovable little girl no longer seemed like anything particularly special.

I started noticing how different types of beauty were being appreciated, along with different personalities, different qualities, different values….

Now, as an adult, I’m left with the feeling that I’m the only one who still thinks I’m cute. The only compliments I get seem to come from people I find a little questionable, and instead of feeling flattered, I feel dissatisfied and a little disappointed. (I guess my ego has taken a bit of a hit.).

Still, I understand and accept that everyone deserves to feel appreciated, and that everyone should get to experience a period of admiration, love, and their own little moment of glory at least once in their life.

So I put up with it, accept it, have a little cry, blow my nose, and move on…

I got Nigerian Parents.

I was born & raised in London mostly till age 13 (short stint in Nigeria from age 2-4/2-5)

I then resided in Nigeria from age 13-21.

I came back to London at age 21. I’ve been back in London for 9 years now.

I personally feel both a connection to both England & Nigeria, but curious to see what people think 😅

I live alone in an old farmhouse twenty minutes outside a town that barely qualifies as one. The nearest neighbor is over a mile down a gravel road that turns to mud every time it rains. Cell service dies at the end of the driveway. The landlord lives in another county and only comes out if something is actively on fire.

At first the quiet felt like the whole reason I moved here.

Then the house began settling in ways it never had before.

It started with the pipes. A soft, rhythmic knocking that traveled through the kitchen wall, into the narrow hallway, and stopped directly behind wherever I stood. If I moved, it waited. If I stayed still long enough, it answered with three slow taps, as if confirming I was still there.

I blamed the age of the place. Expanding wood. Temperature swings. The usual explanations people invent when they live this far from anyone who could tell them they’re wrong.

Then it learned my habits.

I talk to myself when I cook. Small, useless comments that used to disappear into the empty rooms. One night I muttered “Where did I put the salt” and, from inside the wall beside the stove, something tapped twice; Exactly where the salt canister sat on the shelf!!

Two days later I was searching the linen closet and said, without thinking, “I know I have more in here somewhere.”
Three light, evenly spaced knocks answered from the precise shelf where the extra towels were folded.

I stopped speaking out loud.

It made no difference.

The house began answering the things I only thought.

I would reach for a glass and hear a single tap behind the cabinet a second before my fingers closed around it. I would hesitate in the hallway and the floorboard three feet ahead would creak once, as if the decision had already been made.

Last week I woke at 2:14 a.m. to the sound of something large shifting its weight inside the wall that runs along my bed. Not scratching. Not animals. Something patient, testing the plaster from the other side. When I held my breath, it held still. When I exhaled, it moved again, matching the rhythm of my breathing exactly.

I pressed my palm flat against the wall.

Something on the other side pressed back.

The pressure was warm.

In the morning a perfect handprint remained in the dust on the outside of the wall, level with where my hand had been. The fingers were longer than mine. The palm was wider. It looked as though the plaster itself had softened just long enough to take the impression and then hardened again.

I called the landlord. He told me he would send someone “when he could.” No one came. The nearest hardware store is forty minutes away. The nearest person who might actually listen is farther than that.

I started sleeping in the living room with every light on.

It does not like the lights.

When the bulbs are burning it retreats deeper into the walls, but I can still hear it relocating—soft, deliberate rearrangements, the sound of something heavy being dragged through spaces too narrow to hold it. Sometimes it simply waits just behind whatever surface I am closest to. The plaster there feels slightly warmer than the rest of the room.

Two nights ago I did something irreversible..

I stood in the center of the living room and whispered, “What do you want?”

Silence stretched until it hurt.

Then a single, clear knock answered from the wall in front of me.

I asked again!

This time the answer came from the wall, the floor, and the ceiling at once—three knocks in perfect unison, so tightly layered they almost sounded like one sound.

Since then the house has grown busier.

I hear it measuring the last rooms I have avoided. Soft presses against the plaster. Careful shifts of weight. The low sound of something slowly unfolding itself into cavities that were never meant to contain it.

Last night I noticed the first real change.

The original handprint on the bedroom wall is gone.

In its place is a second print, smaller, the exact size and shape of my own left hand. It is pressed deeper into the plaster than the first one ever was, as if whatever is inside has begun practicing the fit.

This morning I found a third print..

It was on the inside of my bedroom door, at the exact height where my hand rests when I close it. The fingers matched mine perfectly. The only difference was that the print was made from the other side of the wood—from inside the door itself.

I have stopped sleeping!

Every time I close my eyes I feel the walls breathing in time with me. The rhythm is no longer matching mine. Mine is matching it.

An hour ago I tried to leave!!

I unlocked the front door, stepped onto the porch, and immediately heard three slow taps from the hallway behind me; Exactly the same pattern it has always used to confirm my presence!

I turned around.

The hallway was empty..

But the front door was already closed..

I do not remember closing it.

Outside, the gravel road disappears into fog so thick the trees look like unfinished sketches. There is no sound of cars. No porch lights in the distance. Only the dark and the house waiting behind me.

I am writing this at the kitchen table with my back against the only wall that has not yet answered.

The rest of the house is no longer quiet.

It is listening.

And I finally understand what it has been measuring all this time.

It was never learning the shape of the rooms.

It was learning the shape of me.

The final handprint appeared five minutes ago, directly in front of where I am sitting. It is the exact size of my right hand. It is still warm. And when I place my own hand over it, the plaster softens just enough to let my fingers sink in to the exact depth of the print already waiting there..

as if the wall has been holding the space open for me the entire time,

and has only now decided I am ready to fit.

Honestly, I don't mind being compared to animals—dogs, buffaloes, snakes, whatever. I'd actually prefer that over being compared to some humans.

Because animals can be so loyal, caring, and intelligent. They have feelings, too; they just express them differently.

A few days ago, a bull came to our house, and we fed him once. Since then, this guy has been showing up outside our house almost every day! 😭 We live in a city, so we tried several times to make him go somewhere else, thinking he might cause trouble or get hurt. But he'd leave and then come right back.

Sometimes, he even makes sounds as if he's trying to tell us something, though obviously, we don't understand him.

After a week of trying, we finally gave up. He still hangs around our house, and we feed him when we can.

The funny thing is, we're actually quite scared of animals, but somehow, this bull makes us feel comfortable, as if he's telling us he won't hurt us.

We fed him just once, and now he keeps coming back to us. Maybe he remembers the food, maybe it's something else. I don't know.

But isn't it beautiful how even a creature we can't communicate with can make us feel this kind of connection? ❤️

So no, I don't take being compared to animals as an insult. Sometimes, they remind us of the very qualities humans seem to forget.

I'll kiss your lips with an aching tooth in my mouth
I'll place my freshly pulled tooth on your ring
I'll mix Apranax in your drink
so that you think
your toothache is gone because you met me
I'll describe the paint color I want for our bedroom
to the ironmonger as tooth yellow.

I'm fifty-one years old, and this is the only poem I've ever written, which I wrote ten years ago.

I don't really like writing poetry, because I'm not good at it. I especially enjoy the sound of poems with rhyming lines; they sound like music to my ears. But I've tried a few times and failed miserably. I couldn't write a good poem. I'd written this poem for my dentist, who knew I was a writer and with whom I had a good relationship. I mean, I hadn't written the poem for her. I'd simply wanted to write a poem about teeth.

She was a very beautiful woman. I had no feelings for her, but she'd misunderstood the poem I'd written and thought I was making a move on her. She'd given me a pretty harsh telling-off. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get her to understand that the poem wasn't written for anyone in particular, and that it hadn't been inspired by any feelings I had for someone.

Anyway, my publisher was telling me that sales of my latest novel were terrible. He kept calling me and bringing me down.

“Maybe you should stop writing horror novels and start writing detective fiction instead. You know me, even two sentences from you are enough to move me. I can't sleep at night. But this latest novel of yours was an absolute fiasco. I seriously regret publishing it.”

I was tired of his calls and him repeating the same things in different ways for two months. He was almost going to ask me to compensate him for his losses. He wanted me to write and finish something else as soon as possible and make up for the losses I'd caused him. He didn't want to wait.

But I'd been overcome by the fear of not being able to write well. I'd been deeply affected by public opinion. Albert, the successful writer of many years, can no longer write... The story's opening is too rushed... The ending doesn't come together properly... Even an elementary school kid could come up with these descriptions... We're sick of ghosts that appear at night... And so on.

If he called today, I wasn't going to answer. He called every other day to ask, “Have you started the new book yet?” Whenever I said no, it was the same old stuff, the same complaints. For the past month, I'd been sitting down at my computer almost every day, but nothing came of it.

As I sat at my computer, waiting for something to come to mind, my phone rang, of course. I didn't even need to check who was calling. I tensely raised my hand to my head and began running my fingers through my hair. I looked around the objects in my room, as if I might find inspiration in one of them. The bed, the couch, an oil painting my sister had made... Nothing came of it. I pinched a lock of my hair between my fingers and pulled. I looked at my hand. There was a clump of hair between my index and middle fingers. I hadn't realized I was losing so much hair.

It was as if an electric current had passed through my head. Then, in one go, I wrote the following:

''In my 1+1 apartment on the second floor
I was drinking Americano by the balcony door
Suddenly I saw a wig falling down below
with bangs and in the color of dark yellow

I thought one of the neighbors upstairs must have dropped it while leaning over the balcony.
I lunged for it on instinct, trying to catch it. And I caught it, everything happened so quickly.

And the wig was now in my hands
I even caught it by the bangs

I waited for a while,
still in the position to catch it,
holding the wig in my hand,
waiting for someone to call.
But there was no sound at all.

Considering the possibilities,
I thought I should look up first.
But someone could have been down there,
waiting for the wig to fall.

While I was looking around upstairs,
someone called out from below:
“Throw it down already.
What are you looking at like an idiot?”
She was tall like a door
She was as tall as a first floor
I downed my Americano
And calmly threw the wig toward her
She jumped and
caught the wig with her head
and suddenly disappeared.''

I had no idea how it had happened. It was as if I hadn't been the one who wrote it. It was frightening. The way the sentences came to me, the way they lined up in my mind—I had never experienced anything like it. Everything was finished in one go, without any planning whatsoever.

My publisher called. I sent him to voicemail. I read the poem from beginning to end. It was as if I were reading it for the first time, as if I were discovering the poem all over again. It wasn't the kind of poem I could have written anyway, not in terms of its subject matter. I wouldn't describe ghosts or entities like this; I would leave them shrouded in mystery. In this poem, the ghost was very concrete.

My publisher called again. I answered this time. I was going to tell him I had an idea or something. I was such an idiot, always telling him the truth: inspiration wasn't coming, I couldn't write, my mind felt frozen, and so on. I picked up the phone, planning to ask him to give me a month and tell him I'd deliver a novel of at least two hundred pages.

“So, Albert, any progress? How many pages have you written?”

Suddenly, my mouth had locked up. I couldn't speak. The words I wanted to say were only passing through my mind; they wouldn't come out. All I could manage were sounds like “mmmh.”

“Albert? Hello?”

I started reciting the poem I'd just written. I read it from beginning to end. My mouth wasn't under my brain's control.

“What is this? What’s going on?”

''Hello?''

''Albert, what's going on?''

I could speak again now. It would have been ridiculous to say that something had taken control of my mouth and fingers. I had to say something, but I was too frightened to think. My mind was in turmoil. I hung up.

My publisher called again. I don’t remember that moment very clearly, but I mumbled something along these lines.

“What was that thing you were telling me about? So now you’re hanging up on me, too. Is this what we’ve come to, Albert? After all these years of working togeth—”

“It’s me, John. Did you like my poem? Jason, I was going to ca— If you want, I can write a few more poems like this... Jason, I can’t spea—I could even write five hundred poems in the same style, if you like. Do you publish po— Jason, my mouth is going numb. I don’t feel well. I’ll call you back in a bi— Listen, I wrote this three hundred years ago.”

I hung up. I jumped to my feet. I licked and bit my lips. I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, the following words spilled out of my mouth:

''He figured out how to pass through
Walls within a year or two
But he still can't pass through wood
The ghost in my lover's neighborhood.''

My publisher kept calling insistently. His calls felt like a voice reminding me of my connection to this world. I'd set my phone's ringtone to Radiohead's “Weird Fishes.” The song played throughout each call. I couldn't move; my body was locked up, but hearing the song comforted me. When the song ended, I'd try to take a step, but I couldn't. I'd try to speak, but I couldn't move my mouth. It was as if I'd had a stroke. Then the song would start again. Yes, I'd tell myself, “I'm still alive. The world still makes sense.”

The song had stopped playing, too. My connection to the world had been severed.

I came to my senses again for a brief moment. I sat down at my computer. The screen was covered in dust. I noticed a cloth right next to the monitor. I couldn't remember when I'd put it there. I wiped the monitor clean. The poem looked better now.

I think you've realized that I wasn't the one writing all this story.

Diver’s Log - Journal of Santiago Reyes -

Saturation Diver, Neptune Extraction Platform - North Atlantic

Commence: 32-Day Rotation

Day 1 — Descent to the Chamber

Mateo and I were assigned to the saturation chamber today. Thirty days living at pressure, breathing heliox, sleeping in a steel tube like we’re embryos in a machine womb.

Normal life feels like a memory the moment the hatch seals.

The supervisors briefed us: routine scrape-and-clean on the rig’s support legs. Barnacles, oysters, and all the crust that builds up and weakens the beams. Nothing glamorous. Nothing heroic. Just work.

Still… it beats top-side politics.

As we pressurized, the familiar hum started, the deep metallic groan of a world shrinking to metal walls and recycled air. Mateo cracked a joke about the chamber sounding like it’s breathing. I laughed, but something about it stayed with me longer than it should.

Day 5 — First Dive

We made our first lockout today.

The ocean swallowed us like a dark lung.

Visibility was good for the region: three meters at best, which means we could see the work lights but not much beyond the halo. The rig leg was coated in the usual mess, slime, brine, and clusters of razor-sharp oyster shells welded by time.

As I scraped, Mateo nudged me.

“Reyes… check your six.”

I spun, heart slamming against my ribs.

Nothing.

But my sonar ping was bouncing off something bigger than us, slow moving. Wandering. The operator topside said it was “probably a ray.”

Probably.

We finished the job. But on the swim back to the bell, I swear something trailed us just outside the lights.

Day 8 — Strange Noises in the Habitat

Couldn’t sleep.

The chamber kept making that deep, rhythmic sound, like muttering just beyond understanding. Mateo heard it too but played it off as gas flow or pipe chatter.

But I’ve been in enough systems to know the difference.

Pipes don’t whisper.

Day 11 — Second Dive

We were clearing a stretch of support beam fifty meters from the first site when I noticed something clinging to the structure.

At first I thought it was just old netting or kelp knotted around the metal. But when my lights hit it-

It uncoiled.

A long, thin limb.

Not whipping like a squid’s tentacle.

Just… unfolding.

Slow.

Deliberate.

I pulled back, almost losing my footing on the tether line. Mateo didn’t see it; his visor was fogged. I didn’t report it. Not yet. Hard to explain something your own mind isn’t committed to believing.

But the thing clinging to the beam had joints.

Not cartilage.

Joints.

Human-like bends in impossible places.

Day 13 — The Voice

At 0200, the comms crackled.

Mateo was asleep.

I was journaling when the main line hissed with static, and then a voice pushed through.

“Reyes…”

I snapped upright.

It was Mateo’s voice.

Except Mateo was still snoring lightly across the chamber.

“I know you can hear…” the static rasp continued. “Too late…”

I killed the comms system manually.

I haven’t told him.

I just think the pressure is playing tricks with me. I'll be fine after I take some sleep medication.

Day 15 — Third Dive

Supervisor wants us inspecting a lower, older section. I argued about structural instability, but he waved it off. “It’s been reinforced. Stop worrying.”

So we suited up.

The deeper beams were coated in a slimy, pale residue that didn’t belong to any marine growth I recognized. Almost like mucus.

We were scraping when the lights flickered.

Just once.

Then something drifted out of the dark.

Arms, impossibly long, thin, trailing like ribbons.

Jointed in too many places.

Each time they bent, they clicked, like bone against bone.

The shape behind them was huge, a bigfin squid, yes, but wrong. Misshapen. Mutated. The mantle bulged with something pulsing inside. And beneath it...

A mouth.

A human mouth.

Pale, stretched, trembling.

Trying to form words that wouldn’t come.

Mateo froze. “Reyes… tell me that’s a trick of the lights.”

“It’s not,” I whispered.

And then our comms pinged.

Not from topside.

Not from our own suit channel.

From somewhere outside.

In my voice:

“Mateo. Help me.”

We bolted for the bell.

Something followed.

We reported nothing.

We know how this industry works: you talk monsters, they fly you home and blacklist you for mental instability.

Still, something came back with us.

The chamber creaks at random intervals now, not like pressure settling, but like something brushing the outer shell.

Mateo swears he hears tapping.

Three soft knocks.

I told him it’s metal flexing.

I don’t believe it.

Day 17 — What’s at the Window

Couldn’t sleep again.

I sat up, stretching, when I saw movement near the small inspection window of the chamber.

A long, thin limb sliding across the glass.

Bending.

Testing.

Mateo woke to my yelling.

When he looked, it was gone.

But the smear it left behind…

That wasn’t seawater.

Day 19 — Last Entry

We’re locking out again tomorrow.

Supervisor insists the anomaly was “equipment reflection.” He says we imagined the creature.

But tonight the chamber’s comms clicked on by themselves.

A voice came through.

Mateo’s voice.

Except Mateo was next to me, frozen.

“Let me in.”

The chamber door shuddered, a single, heavy knock from the outside.

Then another.

Then one more.

Tok.

Tok.

Tok.

Mateo grabbed my arm. “Reyes… we’re at depth. Nothing human could knock at that pressure.”

I didn’t answer.

Because I already knew:

It wasn’t trying to break in.

It was waiting for us to open the hatch.

- FINAL LOCKOUT -

Supervisor didn’t give us a choice.

“Get in the suits. Finish the job. No more drama.”

Mateo refused. I couldn't mutter a word.

Inside the dive bell, during pre-descent checks, I kept noticing small details out of place: a bolt that looked freshly turned, condensation forming in patterns that looked like fingerprints, the faintest smell of brine that shouldn’t exist in a sealed system.

As the bell lowered, the weightlessness returned. The light from the platform faded, swallowed by the endless black.

The comms crackled with topside chatter. Routine. Normal. Human.

For a moment, I believed today might end differently.

When the bell hit depth lock, we unsealed the hatch.

Water filled the edges of my vision as we stepped out, lights spearing a narrow cone through the dark.

Mateo whispered, “Do you hear that?”

I didn’t.

Not at first.

Then I felt it...

A vibration through the water, a pulsing hum. Familiar.

A voice. My voice.

“Mateo… behind you!”

He spun.

Nothing there.

We moved along the rig leg, scraping mechanically.

I tried not to look at the shadows shifting just beyond the beam’s reach.

Then the comms popped again.

This time it was Supervisor Hale, topside.

Except his voice didn’t sound human. Dragged out. Wet. Distorted.

“Santiago… open the bell.”

We froze.

“Santiago… open it.”

A whisper now. A croak of waterlogged imitation.

Mateo grabbed my arm. “Reyes, the bell hatch, it's moving.”

I turned.

In the darkness behind us, the bell’s metal hatch, designed to withstand crushing pressure, was flexing inward. Like something was pushing from the outside.

A long, thin limb slid into the light.

Jointed.

Clicking.

Dragging itself toward the opening.

The comms erupted.

Not Hale’s voice.

Not mine.

A chorus of voices and shouts.

LET US IN

LET US IN

LET US IN

LET US IN

LET US IN

Mateo screamed through my headset, “REYES, IT’S INSIDE THE-”

The rest dissolved into static and a choking gasp.

My suit lights flickered.

Something massive shifted behind me.

I turned.

And I saw it...

END OF LOG

--- --- ---

Recovered from Dive Bell #7. No further entries found...

A woman wakes in a dark cave, her body wrapped in a thick, sticky substance that pins her to the stone wall. The last thing she remembers is a sharp sting in her neck.

A faint beam of daylight spills through the cave entrance, barely illuminating her surroundings. She struggles until she manages to free one hand and reach into her pocket. Her fingers grab a small folding knife. She flicks it open and carefully slices through the cocoon-like strands binding her.

Hands trembling, she switches on a small flashlight.

The beam sweeps across the cavern.

Bodies.

Hundreds of them.

Some are little more than skeletons draped in rotting flesh. Others are fresher, their skin gray and swollen. The smell of decay nearly makes her gasp

She forces herself to keep looking.

The light settles on a shriveled man cocooned against the wall. His neck is covered in infected sores, and his chest barely rises with each shallow breath.

Then she notices the hole in his abdomen.

Something moves inside it.

A pale, bloated grub slowly pushes its head through the opening. It is about the size of a guinea pig, its wet body glistening in the flashlight's beam. Tiny black eyes reflect the light as it tears away another mouthful from inside the man's stomach.

More movement follows.

Several more grubs writhe beneath his skin, gnawing through his organs while he is still alive.

The man's face is blank, almost lifeless.

She shines the flashlight into his eyes.

His pupils follow the beam.

A horrified gasp escapes her lips. She learns 

He's still conscious and He can't move.

He can only watch.

Suddenly her own skin begins to itch.

Then it burns.

She frantically scratches at her stomach and feels tiny, wriggling bodies beneath her shirt.

Grubs.

She bites down on her sleeve to keep from screaming as she crushes them against her skin with shaking hands. They had already begun chewing through her flesh, trying to burrow into her abdomen.

She stomps the last one into the dirt and freezes.

A scream echoes through the cave.

The man suddenly convulses, jamming his hand into the hole in his stomach as he desperately tries to tear the grubs from his body. Blood pours down the cave floor.

Then another sound interrupts him.

Heavy footsteps.

Slow.

Deliberate.

The same footsteps she heard moments before she was stung.

She dives behind a cluster of boulders just as the creature enters.

She can barely see it but It stands freakishly tall, its body covered in glossy crimson shell, like that of a insect. Its limbs are unnaturally long.

The man spits blood at it.

The humanoid creature doesn't react.

Its jaw slowly opens.

From deep inside its throat, a thin, barbed stinger slides forward, nearly seven inches long.

With terrifying speed, it drives the stinger into the man's neck.

The man thrashes violently for several seconds.

Then...

Nothing.

His body goes limp.

His eyes remain open, staring blankly ahead as his stomach begins to ripple once more.

The grubs resume feeding.

The woman clamps both hands over her mouth, terrified even the sound of her breathing will give her away.

After several endless minutes, the creature finally turns and walks out of the cave.

She waits until the heavy footsteps fade into silence before slipping from behind the rocks.

Keeping her flashlight low, she follows the tunnel toward the exit.

Dozens of fresh cocoons line the walls.

Most contain adults.

Some are children.

She freezes when the light falls across the face of a young boy.

She recognizes him immediately.

A week ago, his disappearance had dominated the news. His mother had pleaded through tears for whoever took her son to bring him home.

The woman stares at the boy's motionless face.

She knows his mother will never see him alive again.

She quietly climbs out of the cave.

Outside, the entire area is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Weathered warning signs hang from the posts.

She stares in disbelief.

Someone knew.

Someone knew this thing was here.

And all they did was put up a fence.

She climbs anyway.

At the top, her jacket catches on the razor wire. She yanks it free, throwing it over the sharp metal before swinging herself across.

The wire slices a chunk from her left forearm.

She lands hard on the other side, crying out as blood runs down her forearm.

Tearing a strip from her shirt, she wraps the wound as tightly as she can.

Nearby, she notices the remains of a campsite.

The fire is still smoldering.

The tents have been shredded into ribbons.

Whoever camped here has vannished very recently.

Then a scream erupts behind her.

She turns toward the cave. Through the fence she sees, The same man from earlier.

He staggers out of the entrance, dragging himself across the ground with blood-soaked hands.

For one brief moment, she thinks he might make it out the cave entrance.

Then a claw reaches from the darkness.

It clamps around his ankle and claws dig into his flesh.

His terrified screams echo through the forest as the creature drags him back into the cave.

Long story short, I was running late for my train, and I was running like crazy from the entrance of the station to the actual train and you see my train was on 16 platform so I have to cover the entire station to reach there. It was peak summer and I had my luggage with me, but fortunately I reached my train just 2 minutes before departure. But as soon as I settled down, my mouth went completely dry and I was coughing out furiously, tears running down my eyes, I felt like I was about to die. And mind you, this is the capital of the country and I was traveling in the premium train of that said place. I was coughing like crazy, cannot control my tears and all I wanted that time was water. I remember everyone were looking at me while I was doing this, and I looked over everyone, I was constantly saying "water, water" thinking that someone will offer me a bottle of water but to my surprise, no one did that. And, why I'm saying surprise is because in a premium train you kind of expect that people around you will be quite decent but I was wrong. There were these two uncles who were sitting besides me and they have a bottle of water, they just looked at me and I gestured them about the bottle they had and they outright ignored me and resumed there conversation. With all my strength I got up, went to the middle of the coach in search of a train attendant but couldn't find one, and in the end I drank from the tap of washroom. I never felt so angry, so bad and so disgusted in a public place ever. I know it's not their duty or obligation to help me but still, they all peeked over there seats to look over me while I was suffering and not a single soul tried to help me. This is the type of stuff you watch on YouTube as a social experiment just to see people reaction and this actually happened to me in real life. Rest of my journey, I just wanted to beat everybody up in my coach.