Hi, hello: ‘tis I, Night Librarian extraordinaire, Adam Ward. Gather round for a tale that’s sure to chill you to the bone about how I’m a fuuucking idiot.

So, first and foremost, to address the proverbial elephant in the proverbial room, no, we’re not just ignoring the events addressed in my last post. I don’t have a ton to add right now, but we’ll get to what little there is. Matt keeps talking about things none of us remember and we’re all just doing our best to go along and not slip up bad enough that he catches on. Can’t decide whether losing the tangible or the conceptual time is worse, so I’m honestly trying not to dwell too much on it while I don’t have any immediate leads on reaching an enlightened (hah, get it? …too soon?) conclusion.

Anyway, for now, let’s shift our focus to other replay-worthy instances—i.e. one in particular that I’ve been promising to talk about for a while but haven’t gotten around to until now because it was, evidently, sick of being ignored and determined that today was as good a time as any to rear its nasty fucking head again.

Yep, you heard right. This shit went down today, so. Forgive me if I’m less eloquent than you, my esteemed guests of Reddit, have grown accustomed to.

It’s been a hot minute, but I believe it was in the post where Matt was giving Wiley and I the rundown of the library’s lore that I mentioned in passing that the coffee pot had put a personal hit out on me.

For the emphatic purposes of reiteration: it did do that. Not one of my finest moments. But, not to worry! Because today, I had a shot at redemption. I had a chance to show that fucking hunk of plastic and glass who was boss. The opportunity to tell the world’s most motivational comeback story fell into my lap.

And I absolutely fucked it.

But let me back up a minute first.

I’m gonna speed-run the recounting of the first offense, for the sake of brevity and also because, let’s be so incredibly fucking for real, you want to hear about how stupid I just was so much more than you want to hear about how stupid I was one time a million years ago. Also, the first one wasn’t really my fault, so. Markedly less entertaining, probably.

Anyway, to re-set the scene, in case you’ve forgotten (which I’m sure you have by now) it was the night of a power outage, which, in this case, was caused by a snowstorm. However, the showcase situation at hand went down pre-power outage—I’m a dumbass, but not quite a monumental enough one to try to make coffee without the ability to turn on the coffee pot.

So, early evening. Lights were still kicking. Wiley had just accidentally Opened A Door (fifth rule) and we were attempting to recover from the mess that had brought down upon us (involving a colorless, odorless substance that mimicked baby powder in appearance but caused a reaction reminiscent of anaphylaxis when inhaled) while also attempting to prepare for the inevitable death of the building’s electricity. It had flickered a couple of times already, and we all knew it was just a matter of time.

Matt and I had already dragged out the generator and two moderately functional battery powered camping lanterns we managed to scrounge up from the depths of the “supply” (that means bullshit) closet, but I had the brilliant idea that maybe, if I made a pot of coffee, it would retain enough heat to help keep us a little warmer throughout the night.

The coffee pot, in this particular instance, was full of sludge. That, in and of itself, was fine—it’s full of sludge about ten percent of the time, and, true to the rules, all we have to do is dump it out and give it a good rinse before we use it again.

However, I, in this particular instance, was still battling the effects of baby-powder-anaphylaxis.

The reason it’s written into the rules to plug our noses when we’re emptying the brackish, phlegmy substance into the sink isn’t related to breathing—it’s about the scent.

I don’t know exactly how to explain the phenomenon, but I’ll do my best.

Think of it as almost opposite, in concept, to smelling salts. If you’ve never experienced them before, the idea is that they wake you the fuck up. They promote better, deeper air passage to the lungs and raise your heart rate and blood flow just enough to give you a nice headrush, effectively like an instant energy boost.

This shit does…not that.

It would be less dangerous, probably, if all it caused was loss of consciousness. Which it does do, of course—but also it slows your heart and, respectively, all of your other fucking organs to the degree that you essentially become, if you’re lucky, temporarily comatose.

I started coughing. That was what did it. It was just a tickle in my throat at first, and I tried to ignore it, tried to swallow it back until I could finish the task at hand, but on my next inhale, thumb and forefinger still clamped dutifully over my nostrils, I choked.

You can use your imagination, probably, to fill in the blanks of that one.

It wasn’t cute. Fin.

Wiley found me on the floor and, ironically, did use smelling salts to wake my ass up. Took me a minute to catch my breath, but afterwards I was ultimately fine, if exhausted.

That’s pretty much that on that one.

Now, back to the present.

Jenny was on the desk when I came in, and she beckoned me over to her with a wave of her hand, holding onto the corner of the cover of a poor, battered copy of Don Quixote with her fingertips.

“Ew,” I remarked as soon as I was close enough to get a solid visual. It had certainly been subjected to some manner of liquid damage, and there was some wear along the top edge of the spine that looked suspiciously akin to teeth marks.

“It’s moldy,” Jenny announced, popping her gum. “You want it?”

“No,” I told her, circling the counter and plucking the book from her grasp. “The trash wants it.”

“By all means,” she said, bending to pull the small waste basket out from beneath the desk, “feed him.”

I dropped the book with an unceremonious thump into the can, kicking it back into place and booting Jenny out of the way of the computer with my hip.

“Rude,” she accused dully, plopping down in the chair next to me as I pulled up the record for the item to delete the holding. “You gonna tell Alice you’re yeeting that or does she just have to figure it out on her own?”

I shrugged. “She doesn’t need to know. Nobody reads that shit. No use reordering it.”

Jenny tipped her head in a fair enough manner and pulled open the top drawer of the cabinet to her right, extracting a nail file. “Hey, so, have you been having, um…”

“Nightmares?” I guessed, because I had.

She popped her gum again.

“I’m having a hard time remembering them,” I admitted. “It’s kind of like every time I wake up I know I was just scared shitless but I can’t figure out exactly why.”

“Yeah,” she said. She was filing her pinky nail to a point, tapping the tip of it with her thumb. “I keep waking up and, like…still seeing stuff? Like, writing, all over the walls. But I can’t read any of it. And then I blink a few times and it’s gone.”

I turned to face her. “Does it look like the…the runes or whatever? That were in those books? The ones that…”

“Yeah,” she repeated. “I mean, I don’t remember them that well. But I guess”

We’d gotten off too easily, really. I knew we were both thinking it. Even if we’d lost the last year—or, at least, the memory of it—it still felt as though we’d made it out with far too few wounds to lick.

I didn’t have an opportunity to continue chasing my doom spiral for much longer, though, because Sam was suddenly next to me, having cropped up from seemingly out of nowhere.

“Jesus,” I said.

“I want donuts,” he greeted.

“And I want to know why that’s my problem,” I countered, stepping away from the computer and indicating to Jenny with a sweep of my hand that it was all hers again.

“Are you kidding me? Look at me. Look at my face.” Sam pushed his lower lip out into a pitiful, exaggerated pout. “I’m so sad. How could you force me to go on like this?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Your Highness. Let me just drop everything and cater to your whims.”

Sam scoffed. “Don’t pretend you were actually working. Come ooon, come wiiith meee.”

“I literally just got here,” I complained. “Can’t you just make some, master chef?”

For a fraction of a second, Sam hesitated. “I can’t. I’m—I don’t have any eggs left.”

I was fairly certain, actually, that we’d just received a donation of surplus eggs from a local farmer a couple of days ago, but I didn’t think too much of it—just figured maybe Sam didn’t feel like cooking for once. “Fuck’s sake, fine,” I groaned. “Jen, if Matt’s looking for me, tell him it’s this shithead’s fault I’m gone. I told him I’d be in at eight.”

Jenny saluted me, mid-bubble blowing, and Sam and I headed out.

There’s a bakery just across the street and a couple of doors down called Charmed Confections that prides itself in its expansive open hours—six a.m. to midnight—so, naturally, we frequent it, given that our little strip of town is essentially desolate outside the standard nine to five.

When we pushed our way inside, bells above the door jingling a jovial welcome, Ash, a regular evening shift employee, greeted us with a bright smile.

There was something comforting in their presence, and I realized absently that it was likely because I couldn’t have been sure they’d still be there. Their hair was a little longer than the last time I’d seen them (or, the last time I remembered seeing them) but nothing else seemed to have changed much. Similarly to the way Matt (and all of our patrons thus far) had been acting, we certainly weren’t received by them as though we’d just resurfaced after a year-long disappearance.

“Hey, guys. What’s it gonna be tonight?” they asked, tapping the screen of their payment terminal to wake it up.

“Donuts!” Sam trilled, skipping up to the bake case. “Pretty please. Is what’s in here everything you have left?”

“No, no, I just pulled three batches out of the fryers,” Ash assured him. “I’ve got chocolate covered strawberry, sour cream, and cinnamon cider in the back. And then those are, uh…I can’t remember if the long johns are Boston crème or s’mores, but the other ones are plain glazed and blueberry.”

“Oh my god,” Sam drooled, “give me everything. Two of each.”

“You got it, boss,” Ash chuckled. “Give me just a sec to finish up the ones in the kitchen and I’ll have ‘em right out.”

“Literal love of my life,” Sam professed, planting himself in a chair at the closest table to the counter to wait.

I sat down across from him, deliberately placing one foot on a black tile square and one on a white.

The white one, as soon as the weight of my heel came to rest fully atop it, wiggled.

“Damn,” I remarked, deliberately shifting it back and forth with my toes. “They really let this place go to hell while we were…gone.”

Sam swiveled downward and snorted when he found the source of my commentary, kicking my foot away. “Leave it alone. They’ll have to shut the whole operation down if you make the one whole loose tile looser.”

I kicked his foot back, intending to reclaim my rightful place, but it quickly became a battle, both of us warring valiantly for purchase, until, finally, we disturbed the tile enough to shake it loose.

“Oh, shit,” Sam laughed in a whisper, casting a quick glance up to make sure Ash hadn’t returned. “Put it back, put it back.”

I leaned down, fingertips grazing the cool, smooth surface, and pushed it forward, attempting to slot it back into its fixture.

The problem was, it wouldn’t quite sit flat.

I furrowed my brow, slotting my finger under the edge and peering beneath.

Was that a—?

“Alrighty, boys,” Ash called, startling me enough that I dropped the tile, shooting back up in my seat. “Ready to go.”

We traversed back to the library hastily, and, once inside, Sam held up his bounty for Jenny (and now also Horace and Alice) to see. “I come bearing gold,” he announced. “Who wants in?”

“Ooh, oh my god, you know what sounds so good?” Jenny asked, and then, to the others, “Oh, it’s donuts. They got donuts. Okay, but what sounds so good? Coffee. We can’t eat donuts without coffee.”

“Yooo, so true, bestie,” Sam encouraged, plunking the bag down onto the desk. “Nose goes.”

“I’ll do it,” I volunteered, before the game could take off. “I was thinking it anyway.”

“My hero,” Sam swooned, blinking rapidly at me. “We’ll be awaiting your swift return.”

My return was not fucking swift. Yeah. Bet you never could’ve guessed that one.

Everything started off fine.

The coffee pot was clean, I thought, when I picked it up. Usually, when it’s full of sludge, it’s full of sludge. So I wasn’t particularly concerned with the probability that there was anything inside.

It’s okay, we’re all thinking it. Everyone should be concerned with everything here at all times. This is not news. But I am criminally stupid.

I took it to the sink with the intention of filling it up with water, but when I removed the lid, I took note of something. My passive perception being absolutely off the charts as it is, I came to find that there was a thin, black layer of…something caked onto the bottom of the glass.

In my mind, the logical explanation for this was that someone had made coffee, consumed the majority, and left just enough in the bottom that it had congealed and solidified.

So, naturally, I went to clean it out.

Based on the story at the beginning of this entry, I bet I can guess what direction you expect this to go in.

But don’t fret; I didn’t give myself an opportunity to smell it—I just stuck my hand straight in.

Evidently, according to Matt, afterward, no one had ever been enough of an all-encompassing train wreck to touch the sludge before, so basically I’m a trendsetter.

It started its ascent up my arm with such immediacy that I didn’t have time to process what was happening. My entire mind short-circuited. Which, probably, is why I started trying to wipe it off with my other hand.

But, Adam, wouldn’t that cause it to—

Yeah. Yes. That did cause it to spread. Gold stars for everyone.

It was faster than a motherfucker, too.

I felt the panic setting in too quickly to even attempt to ascertain what I should be doing—what might be a reasonable course of action—because in seconds it had encased both my arms and was crawling up my neck.

I opened my mouth, intentions set on calling out for help, but before I could make a sound, the sludge sloshed its way upward further and it was all I could do to clench my jaw in time to keep it from spilling inside.

The entire upper-mid section of my body was encased in black, tar-like goop, and I was coming fairly swiftly to the determination that I couldn’t move my arms, which meant that when it inevitably spread to my legs, I likely wouldn’t be able to move those, either.

I swear to god, I at least had the common sense to run. What I didn’t have, however, was the coordination.

I expected, when I fell, to hit the ground and stick to it, the way I had when the robodactyl had covered me in her slime. That wasn’t what happened, though. This muck, whatever it was, was acting as more of a full-body cast than an adhesive. When I kicked my feet, my legs, even the sections of them that were fully coated, still rose from the floor—it was just that I wasn’t able to move them independently above the knee.

Or, soon, below the knee.

If it feels like I’m rushing through relaying this, I promise you, I felt like it was happening in 2x speed.

By the time I felt it oozing down my calves, it started to register that I couldn’t breathe.

Or hear.

Or see.

My best advice, probably, if someone ever came to me in the condition I was in at the time, would be to remain as calm as possible. But that really, truly is easier said than done.

I was sure, in that moment, that of all the stupid shit I’ve gotten myself into in this godforsaken fucking place, this was it. This was the one that was going to take me out.

I couldn’t even hyperventilate. The shit had sealed up my mouth and nose like plaster and every inch of me was frozen solid as stone. I’d never had a panic attack without the ability to physically express my anxiety before, and let me tell you: a million fucking times worse.

So I did the only thing I could.

I lay there and waited to die.

If I had, my last thought would’ve been that I didn’t even get a fucking donut.

But Horace had other plans for me.

I pride myself in the amount of time I can hold my breath (it’s not actually very impressive, but it is two minutes, which feels like a lot when you’re doing it) but I was on the verge of losing it. There was a softness creeping into the edges of my consciousness, almost as though sleep was petting my hair like a child, inviting me to drift peacefully away. If I’d passed out, that would have been the end. The body’s reset is to force-start breathing again, and there was no way for it to do so. It was over. I was done.

And then I was…drenched.

When my vision returned to me, Horace was standing over me, as frantic as I’d ever seen him appear, holding a large, blue bucket. His shirt was soaking wet, as was the floor, as was I.

I inhaled and sputtered and coughed and he bent to the floor, knees crackling like Rice Krispies, to help me into a seated position, smacking my back as if I was a toddler who’d just swallowed a Lego.

“Fuck,” I managed, once I’d caught my breath. “Jesus Christ. Thank you. I thought…thank you. How did you—what did you do?”

Horace, who was panting about as heavily as I was, nodded to the bucket he’d abandoned on the ground next to him when he’d stooped to help me. “Water,” he said. “That’s how we always get rid of it when it’s in the coffee pot, so I just figured maybe…and I guess it worked.”

I blinked back at him for a moment, processing. “You’re telling me if I’d just turned on the sink this shit would’ve disappeared like it always does?”

He shrugged.

I’ll be honest, chat, I really just wanted to lay back down and will myself to die for like a full ten seconds.

Instead, however, I pushed myself to my feet and headed to Della’s closet to grab a mop.

So there you have it. Dumbfuck Supreme, Adam Ward, signing off.

Until next time.

P.S. I did get a donut. Best fucking thing I’ve ever tasted, coffee be damned.

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

Soupy descriptions from fathers seeing their child for the first time were de rigueur, so you’ll kindly excuse me mine. My daughters looked like wet aliens. As I peered through the glass into the NICU, It wasn’t just that I loved them with every vibrating molecule. There was a gravity to them that would never allow me to leave their orbit for the rest of my life. Each new dad in the maternity wing of St. Brendan’s Memorial Hospital felt he was the luckiest man on earth, but I knew it was me. I’d come too far.

As my eye muscles loosened, I caught sight of my reflection in the glass. White bandages with tufts of hair sticking out. Dried blood soaking through underneath my eyes. I was a ghoul. My exterior finally matched my interior.

I escaped outside for fresh air alongside smoking surgeons. One of them—the one with the menthols—was a lung transplant surgeon. Sing about that, Alanis. We watched the tow truck drag away my totaled vehicle.

“Poor bastard,” Dr. Menthol exhaled.

“No way he made it outta that,” another added.

In a way, they were right. But then I noticed something else – the windshield in front of the passenger seat was fully intact. Didn’t the Doppelganger fly through the window?

We spent a week recuperating. I’d say we did it together, but Emma made it clear I had work to do before she’d trust me again. I’d have judged her if she didn’t. Emma and I stood at hospital reception as the woman tallied the astronomical charges of an uninsured mother giving premature birth to twins while her casually suicidal-man child husband occupied a hospital bed for a week. I had already emptied Ted’s Uber balance into my bank account, but a fleck in the ocean of what was surely owed. The receptionist’s keys clacked away, each stroke dashing hopes of financial stability. She punched a final key with a flourish that made me hate her children. She furrowed her brow. Maybe her screen wasn’t wide enough to display the number. Maybe she didn’t know the proper terminology for a number with four commas. Either way, the 16% chance of both of my daughters surviving birth at twenty-four weeks had panned out, and I was okay with anything else after.

“It’s been covered,” she said, surely in jest.

Doing our best impression of our newborn twins, Emma and I grunted together, “Huh?”

“There’s no balance. It’s been paid.”

I just couldn’t help myself. I called Dr. Lukavic. He answered and I asked,  “When you ran the paternity test, did you test both of my daughters?”

“Why would we do that?”

“To make sure they’re mine.”

“We only test one. If one’s yours, they both are.” There was a long pause. “Are you okay, James—”

“Who are you talking to?” Emma said wheeling in. I stuffed the phone into my pocket and turned to my girls napping in her lap. Emma could tell I was up to something but didn’t pursue. She didn’t ask questions she didn’t want the answers to. We waited curbside for the ride home arranged by hospital  transport.

An UberXL.

I helped Emma into the vehicle and settled our daughters into their child seats. It seemed impossible that such a cacophony of straps and buckles could come together in a configuration beneficial to our babies’ safety, but with an unexpected click, they did. An apt metaphor for parenthood, I suppose. We would make it work. I settled in next to Emma and looked back at our daughters. In that moment, I remember being furious with myself for thinking everything was going to be okay. Complacency makes the devil’s work easy.

“Quickest route or fewest turns?” a graveled voice inquired from the front seat.

My heart sank. My palms sweat. When I met the black eyes of the driver in the rearview, I knew it had to be him. The Doppel. Fucking. Gang—

When the driver spun around, I was never more relieved to see a Korean man in my life.

I breathed a sigh of relief, “Fewest turns. Don’t wanna wake the babies.”

I reached out to Emma, and she accepted my hand. We were embarking on the most uncertain journey of all, and I’d never felt more certainty in my life. I watched my daughters share the unconflicted dreamless sleep of newborns, and I was happy. I even tried to shake off the half-smile parting the lips of my second-born daughter.

“You okay?” Emma asked.

“Perfect.” I knew she saw my eyelids flutter, but she didn’t follow up. I should’ve learned to not ask questions I didn’t want answers to. But I did anyway. As the car rolled forward, my gaze rose to my reflection in the rearview mirror.

And there I was, looking back with black eyes, a half-smile at my lips.

I was finally in control.

In a small town there lies a crooked house on a hill in which a crooked man lies. The people no wonder how or why. In fact, the man himself knows not why or how he is there or what he is. He simply knows people are fond of him and no longer question his odd and quite frankly horrid appearance. He is just that crooked and can't stand straight, Let alone hold the same posture. Only one detail remains the same. Just like the rest of him his head isn't quite right. It can never seem to stand upright. Always cracked, laying on his left or right shoulder. When you hear this, you probably default to horror. Just as the villagers did before accepting him.

But time moved forward, and he showed them how to live when it got colder. How to plant crops and the knowledge of what soil was older. People grew older and over time less cold. Old as a concept itself did not pertain to the crooked man's knowledge nor did he understand it. He would however see the end of it. When the first resident passed away in their sleep. He would experience grief for the first time along with the villagers. Thinking of them he would get to work. The next day the villagers awoke to a fresh cemetery.

The fact it was built in the blink of a single night was unfathomable. Just as bewildering the appearance invoked no sadness despite being attached so close to death. The crooked man encouraged the townsfolk to step in. They were greeted to a celebration of the man who passed. They all laughed and cried and upon the time of the burial one detail could not go unnoticed. Inscribed on the man's tombstone was no generic quote or holy scripture. But a direct address to everyone the man loved. The people who knew the townsman couldn't even make the accusation of fabrication as the words matched the man too well.

Time has moved on since then and the Crooked man has continued to be considered as family. From helping others to be a shoulder to cry on. After all he does have only one reliable one as if made for this purpose. Even then in the few instances of crime he has turned the other cheek. The perpetrator was exiled and promised no harm. As well as the proclamation that they would never return. The laws of logic and realism are absent. No matter what method the man tries to return will prove faulty. As if something the human mind couldn't comprehend acted as a lock.

As I write this at the end of my life and can rest knowing this is a place of peace. I will be celebrated, my children and theirs will be in good hands. No moss or dirt, let alone any filth will cover my grave. The man remembers every name and person that lies in the graveyard. So, for my last night I could feel death creeping and as the man visited me, I asked a simple question.

​

What is your name? I got my answer, it was not what I expected and yet made perfect sense.

​

What is the need? I am simply what I am and no name can perfectly describe or inform the listener what that individual is? Good,evil or what they have been through. A name only has meaning to those who choose to spend their time alongside it and what that individual does with the time they have.

​

​

So as I close my eyes knowing this will be my last sleep, I have but one last thing to say that everyone in this village knows. Something does not have to be understood to be treated with decency and acceptance.

​

​

You ever heard of a game called "Kontrol" ? I had played it as a kid, maybe when I was 10 in the late 90's at a friend's house. He's pretty chill, and we still talk. It was a PC game having just a floppy disk. No box, manual or anything. It was strange, considering floppies weren't that popular, as CDs were the cool thing at the time. The game was pretty weird. The sounds were all chip tune, straight out of the motherboard itself. It had those early 16-Bit era games quality, and was pretty ugly. The stages were very... strange. They seemed random to me. There wasn't a connection between one and the next. It just displayed your objective, and you were thrown in the level.

The first level gave us the plain text "Rob the Store", and so we did it. The map was a sort of convinience store, and our character a generic robber. It still used the arrow keys for movement and the spacebar for interactions. I remember it playing like a overhead view, but maybe it was point and click. It's been 20 years, I can't recall every detail.

We opened the door and walked in. The cashier of the store welcomed us, with basic text at the bottom of the screen. I think it wen't very casual, something like "Good morning, how can I help you ?" I moved the robber to the register and a single prompt appeared. "Rob."

This kind of stayed with me, because what was strange is how the sound was like. It was all beeps and bleeps. After pressing space, the robber pulled out a gun, and shot the cashier. It didn't make a bleep noise. I remember it clearly being an echoey sound of an actual gunshot. It was very strange. Why have the whole game make chiptune sounds if it can produce actual sounds ?

We made the robber take it all from the register and run to the end of the level. It just gave us a black screen, with the text "Concluded." No high scores, no continuing, nothing. We reset the game and we were at the title screen again. The level was different though. The objective: "Escape."

In this level you played as a Spider I think. It started on what I believed to be a basement, and we made it crawl all the way to the living room. I remember at this point a lot of noise downstairs becoming overwhelming. I'll never forget his mum's screams of fear. I think a bug, maybe a dog had walked in dowstairs. That's what I told myself at least.

In the living room screen, there were two people running around. We decided for the fun to approach them, and the prompt "Bite." showed up. We thought some funny animation would happen. The spider did bite the person, but it got squashed and died. We got a level concluded screen, same as before.

We might've reset once more, but I wouldn't be able to tell what happened after. All I remember after this is going home because his family was annoying me with all that racket. I recently got in touch with him, his name is Toby. He was telling me he was at his mum's death anniversary, to remember her. He was catching me up on things. Apparently she died 26 years ago, a bit after we stopped seeing each other. She had become horribly sick and died within a week of the sympthoms starting. He spared me the details of the cause, seems like it was too much for him to talk about that. I wonder what caused it.

He told me his dad had moved out of town right after that, as crime was rising. The retailer they always went to was shut down because of a murder, so his dad got scared and decided to move. No wonder I hadn't heard of him for a while after that day.

We talked about the game and he said he should still have the copy somewhere, and that I can drive out there to fetch it if I really want to. It's been eating up my mind thinking about it, remembering all these things. I want to know... How does that game end ? I'd love to see it. I'll check about this meeting.

Has anyone else played this game ?

“Hey Nick, can I have some of the popsicles!? Pleaaase!?” Asher yelled out to me while I was laying on the couch with an icepack resting on my chest.

It was a hot, humid day in the middle of the rural outskirts of upstate New York on a Friday afternoon. Me & my younger brother had just gotten home from school, bored as hell while we boiled alive indoors and outdoors.

“No, we have to wait until Wednesday.”

“But it's MY Birthday so I should be able to have one.” Asher said in an annoying entitled tone.

“Not your birthday till Wednesday, dude! Plus Mom and Dad said!!”

I was annoyed, uncomfortable, sweating, and felt like a husk. I was 14 while my younger brother was turning 11. We were home alone until Sunday morning while our parents were out on a business trip.

Asher closed the freezer door after peaking inside and lazily walked over to the couch where he fell over and landed on top of me.

“Dude what the hell, get off me!” I yelled out.

“I'm boreddd.” He groaned.

“Yeah okay, I literally don't care!” I said.

I shoved him off the couch, and he got up, looking out onto the porch.

“Can we go look for snakes outside?” He asked.

“You can. I'm tired.” I closed my eyes, wanting to take a nap.

“You're always tired.” He said as he walked over to the glass sliding door.

I watched him looking out the window, feeling too weak to move. It was so hot it felt like I was melting into the couch. Mom and Dad had all this time to go on dinners, trips and visits, yet they didn't have time to get someone to fix the damn air conditioning.

A Knock from the front door echoed through the house, catching Asher's attention. He stood up and went to answer it.

“Don't answer it” I said in a weak monotone voice.

“Why?”

“Cuz it could be a serial killer waiting to make you his next victim.”

“Shut up Nick, you're not funny.”

The knock then evolved into multiple fists pounding at the door.

“This is the FBI, Open up you're all under arrest!!” yelled Jacob’s muffled voice from the other side of the door.

“Okay open it.” I said, annoyed.

Asher raced to open the door, letting Jacob and Trevor inside. They were the two closest friends we had, both of them in the same class as me. They raced inside, the disgusting odor of hot sweat permeated off of them.

“Nick, you'll never guess what we found in the woods!” Trevor excitedly yelled out.

“We found an abandoned tree house!” Jacob followed after.

Trevor elbowed Jacob, and they both looked at me, ready to run back outside. My interest piqued as I sat up on the couch.

“Where at?” I curiously asked.

“It's further past the quarry.” Jacob said, trying to catch his breath. “Like a 15 minute walk past it.”

“I wanna go! Please Nick let's go check it out!!” Asher yelled aloud.

I sighed, getting up off the couch. I looked at the time, as though I had something important coming up. 3:16pm. The three were staring at me excitedly waiting for an answer.

“Yeah, alright I guess.” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“Yes!!” Trevor yelled out. “Alright let's go quick!!”

Trevor ran out of the house followed by Jacob and Asher. I jogged towards them and exited the house. They all hopped on their bikes that were hastily thrown on the messy toy covered lawn. Mom and Dad had told us that we needed to clean the front and backyard, but our logic was to wait until the last second before touching anything. We were two geniuses competing with Tesla's IQ.

Our house was completely surrounded by miles of woods on a small quiet road. The nearest neighbor was a half mile away so if anything were to happen at home then we were on our own. I honestly don't know what our parents were thinking during that point of time, always going out.

We drove about a mile and a quarter down the road on our bikes, the wind feeling amazing against my sweaty face. Afterwards, we drove onto a trail off to the side of the road and continued through the forest. The sun was beaming through the trees, most of which were just barely growing their leaves back.

When we finally got to the quarry, Jacob and Trevor slowed down and got off their bikes. Me and Asher shot each other confused glances.

“Why are we stopping?” I questioned them.

“The treehouse isn't on the trail.” Jacob said, panting as though he'd been running the whole way here.

“How the hell did you guys even find it?” I asked.

“We were looking for new spots to catch water snakes.” Trevor yelled out as he dropped his bike and quickly walked towards the thick forest.

Asher and Jacob along with myself quickly followed behind, all eager to see this treehouse. Me, Trevor, and Jacob had always dreamed about having a treehouse or something of that matter to hang out in and have sleepovers inside, like a headquarters for our group. Since this was out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, it would most likely need some touch-ups which we could easily do over time.

“ughhh I'm tired” Asher whined.

“Quit being such a baby” I said, not wanting to deal with his crap. “You knew it was gonna be a long walk.”

“I know but still. Can we stop for a second?” Asher said, trying to sit down.

“No, we're literally like 5 minutes away.” Trevor said, not turning to look towards Asher.

We continued on, Asher continuing to whine the entire way. He'd always been whiny and entitled, but I still felt bad for him since he didn't really have a lot of friends because of it. But unfortunately that's what happens when mommy and daddy don't know how to say no.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited out of my mind to see the treehouse though, but I wanted to look cool and kept calm on the outside. After about 20 minutes in total of traveling through the forest, leaves crunching after every step, birds singing and chirping accompanied by the noises of a bratty little brother, we finally arrived.

A very tall skinny oak tree sat there in a small clearing, about 50 feet away from any trees. It was a strange sight but it made sense why whoever built the treehouse chose that particular tree…

The treehouse itself was decent size, providing enough room for about 5 kids our age to sit comfortably inside. it wrapped around the tree about 30 feet in the air and a singular ladder led inside. It seemed as though it had been there for so long that the tree started to morph around the edges of it like it was clay. The treehouse was in amazing shape. A little dusty, but no rot, overgrowth, nothing at all.

“Dude this is fricken amazing!” I blurted out. “Have you guys gone inside yet?”

“Nah.” Trevor said, shaking his head. “We wanted to get you guys first.” He looked over at us with an excited grin.

It was an amazing sight for sure. The wood of the treehouse was a light colour, almost a whitish yellow. Fine details were all over the outside of the walls and windows, painted red and dark brown. This was the kind of treehouse that was made by a father who had a passion for craftsmanship, made specifically for his young children to make wonderful memories in. Yet, for some odd reason, it was out there, almost 3 miles deep in the woods.

We didn't question it. I wish we would've, but we were young, stupid, and naive. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

I went up next to the ladder and rested my hand on the tree, however I instantly pulled it back. The bark of the tree felt off. In fact, it didn't feel like bark at all. It was somewhat warm with a soft nubuck leathery feel. I slowly went to feel again. It definitely was not bark. I couldn't even keep my hand on it longer than 2 seconds without feeling disgusted. I honestly thought the tree was rotten, which made me hesitant to climb up the ladder.

I didn't say anything so as to not spoil the mood, so I stood back to look back up at the treehouse again. Trevor, Jacob, and Asher blabbed about their ideas of what they could do with the treehouse. Trevor and Jacob always tried to include Asher in stuff which was nice, but I still always felt annoyed with his presence most of the time.

Jacob asked who should go up first. Trevor and Asher both instantly said they would, so they did rock paper scissors to settle on who would be the lucky number one. Trevor won, making Asher a bit upset. Trevor smiled and told him that it's best he goes up first just to make sure it's safe. Asher surprisingly shut up, finally understanding the concerns of someone else's viewpoint other than his own. I was a bit annoyed since he never listened to me, but whatever.

Trevor started to make his way up the tall skinny ladder, all of us waiting in anticipation for what he would see up there. The subtle wind caused the tree to sway in a strange way, like it was doing its best to blend in with the other trees around it, but didn't know how. That's the best way I can describe it.

When he finally reached the top, he didn't say anything at first. We Couldn't see him, as he had entered the treehouse.

“What's it look like up there!?”Jacob yelled out.

“It's pretty empty, only a couple cobwebs!” Trevor yelled back.

Asher then started to eagerly climb up the ladder. I stopped him and he looked back at me with an annoyed expression.

“What!??” He whined.

I was about to say something, but I tripped over my tongue and couldn't remember what I was going to say.

“Just let him go, bro.” Jacob said with a face of pity.

I motioned for him to go, and he continued up the ladder. In that moment, a strange gut feeling washed over me, like a primitive instinct was kicking in. I didn't say anything, but I felt sick to my stomach. I didn't want my brother going up there, but what was I gonna say? “You can't go up there cuz I said so.” Yeah right.

After Asher got up there, him and Trevor called out to us to join them. Jacob started climbing up the ladder next, and I was debating if I should follow after. My turn came, and I began to slowly make my way up the ladder. It felt much higher than what it had seemed from the ground, the soft wind blowing against my face. The sounds of the branches swaying and brushing up against each other echoed through the trees, almost sounding like a deep groan of a sleeping giant.

When I finally reached the top, I rested on the floor of the treehouse, looking around at the interior. The tree was in the center of the room, with what looked to be faint vomit stains covering the wooden floor. it even kinda smelled like vomit. Jacob pointed out the smell, and said that they could bring in some air fresheners when they came back with some decor.

the feeling in my stomach got worse. looking out the windows seeing the seemingly infinite void of trees around us, instead of the nice cozy backyard of a small home made me feel uneasy. something was off and it was eating me alive, my excitement slowly diminishing. Meanwhile, The others were still geeking out over the place.

“So what should we name this place?” Jacob asked.

“The Kool kids klub, with three K's.” Trevor snickered.

As they went back and forth, I noticed something on the tree itself. a strange mark about 3 feet wide. It was like a seam carved into the bark but instead of the bark being scraped off, it was curved inwards into itself. Very similar to a flap of fat. I've seen some pretty strange tree formations so I brushed it off.

I tried keeping it cool but this pit in my stomach was forming into a black hole, so I made up an excuse for us to leave.

“Why don't we go back to our place to get some stuff to bring back here?” I said, having no intentions of returning. “We can bring snacks.”

“Yeah alright.” Trevor said. “We could also stop by my place to get my backpack to fit more stuff.”

Asher was clearly upset.

“But I don't want to go!” He whimpered.

“We're literally gonna come right back.” Jacob sighed.

“So I can stay here and wait for you guys!” Asher argued.

“No, Mom and Dad told me to keep an eye on you at all times.” I argued back.

“Well it's almost my birthday!” he said, folding his arms.

After a little more pointless arguing, he begrudgingly agreed to come back down. I was relieved to finally get out of there. But when we got to the bottom, I saw Jacob look at Asher with a guilty expression. It's not his fault, He felt bad for him even though we were coming right back. To cheer him up, he handed Asher a small army knife he got from boy scouts and told him that he could carve all our initials into the tree at the top, so that way people would know it was ours. Asher lit up with excitement and his mood instantly shifted.

“Why don't I come with you?” I said quickly.

“I can do this by myself, I'm not a baby!” Asher said, annoyed with me.

I wish I had stopped him. I wish I could have done more. Something. Anything more… But I didn't. I watched as he eagerly made his way up the ladder carrying the knife and honor of marking our territory.

Jacob and Trevor cheered him on, as I nervously watched.

“Hell yeah, Asher!” Trevor yelled.

“You got this, birthday boy!” Jacob followed after.

I didn't know why I was nervous but I just was, like my guardian angel was screaming at me to go and get him. Unfortunately, that would be the last time I ever saw him again.

The tree groaned with the wind. Something was definitely off. Asher got to the top, and went to carve the names, but I lost sight of him.

“Yo, is everything okay, man?” Trevor asked me.

“Yeah, yeah I'm good.” I replied back.

My eyes were dead focused on the treehouse and I could feel Jacob and Trevor looking at me for a few more moments before turning their gazes back to the treehouse. I was imagining Asher struggling to even leave a mark in the tree with his little noodle arms. Usually a thought like that would make me laugh internally, but I only felt sad. The type of sadness when you see someone who hasn't had a good life or is struggling physically spill their drink everywhere or trip on a treadmill at the gym, as silly as that is. I shook the thought off and looked back up at the treehouse. We waited for a few minutes with no callouts from Asher.

“Do you need help up there!?” Jacob called out.

Jacob and Trevor chuckled, waiting for a response. A few seconds went by only to be greeted with nothing.

“Asher!” I called out.

We were all waiting for a response but nothing came. I wanted to assume that he was dead focused on carving those initials, but after we called out some more, we still got no response.

“Asher, stop messing around, man!” Trevor yelled out.

I then grabbed a hold of the ladder making my way up, anticipating Asher jumping out at me at the entrance. As I made my way up, I could have sworn I saw movement underneath the bark, like there was something trying to escape from it. It reminded me of when a snake swallowed a rat or something of that size and you see that lump moving down its throat. However I only saw it for about a second so I assumed it was the tree swaying in the wind or something like that.

I got to the top and looked around, but saw nothing.

“Asher?” I said allowed, assuming he was behind the other side of the tree.

I crawled inside, the smell of vomit and bile assaulted my nostrils, causing me to tear up. I made my way all the way around but he was nowhere to be seen. My stomach dropped. Where could he have gone? I looked at the floor and saw the army knife lying there in a puddle of what looked like greasy yellow slime. I took a good look at it and then turned my attention towards the tree.

The same mark I saw before had slime dripping down from the tight crevice with a new small mark above it, looking like a little scab. The sight reminded me of the closed mouth of a toothless old person, saliva running down their lips. It looked like Asher started carving but didn't finish. I just sat there, trying to process what I was looking at. Jacob and Trevor were calling out to me but it didn't register with me. A thousand thoughts raced through my head. I wanted to throw up.

It was at that moment when the screams of Jacob and Trevor yelling out for me to come down finally got through to me. I nearly fell all the way down as I quickly hurried down the ladder. As soon as I reached the bottom, I saw why they were screaming for me. The tree was breathing. it wasn't the wind. it wasn't an illusion. It was literally breathing, letting out a soft, deep gurgled groan with every breath. I couldn't believe it. It felt like a dream. but it was real. as real as you and me…

The treehouse was alive, and It had made a meal of my baby brother. The strange movement I saw when climbing up the tree was Asher's silhouette trying to kick and escape from its throat as it swallowed him. The thought made me shake in fear uncontrollably, I thought I would pass out. Trevor and Jacob ran for it, but I sat there for a few more seconds with my thoughts racing.

I could only imagine the fear Asher had been experiencing at that moment. Screaming out in terror. Calling out for someone to save him, his cries unable to be heard. Not being able to escape his claustrophobic fate. Being digested alive with no one to help him. Knowing that Mom and Dad didn't know where he was.

He had gone up there excited thinking that he was finally part of the friend group. Instead he had been eaten alive by a treehouse, or at least, something pretending to be a treehouse.

The bark of the tree was squirming like there was muscle twitching and contracting underneath it. The branches started moving in an alien-like way, something I'm unable to describe further than that. The sounds of a deep monstrous, wet gurgling noise echoed through the forest as I followed behind Jacob and Trevor. We made it back to the quarry where we hopped on our bikes and road to the nearest police station about 5 miles away.

What happened after that was a blur. I don't remember much, but what I do remember is that we told the cops that my brother got eaten by something through incoherent cries. We came back to the same spot with the police, but the treehouse was now gone. Not without leaving a giant crater in the ground. Although they were presented with a strange hole in the ground, that didn't explain why my brother was missing. We were taken to the police station for questioning where we were separated into different rooms to explain ourselves.

The police were stumped. All three of our stories matched up perfectly with each other, so we were either great at lying, or we did in fact, witness something supernatural. They gave a call to my parents explaining the situation and they rushed over as fast as they could.

My Mom and Dad were heartbroken. They never believed my story though. They rarely went on trips again and if they did they brought me along. I'm pretty sure Mom and Dad think I did something to him and I don't blame them. Asher remains missing to this day.

I feel so stupid. It's my fault I didn't stop him. I want to blame Jacob for giving him that stupid army knife, but deep down I'm still drenched with the guilt of thinking that I could have prevented everything, all by not having him answer the door. Maybe then Jacob or Trevor would be missing. Perhaps both. But at least my brother would still be here as selfish as that sounds…

17 years later, I have a child of my own now, turning 9 next week and a beautiful wife. I rarely speak to my parents. These events linger in the back of my mind like a parasite. I live about 7 hours away from where my old childhood home was since my wife didn't feel comfortable leaving her hometown.

I've decided to write all of this down the best I could remember, because when I got up this morning to complete my daily ritual of making my coffee to stare out the backyard window, I saw something that took me back in time. Far out in the treeline, past the family of deer eating the grass, stood something unnatural that did not belong there.

The same treehouse from all those years ago…

Hello, my name isn’t important but my story is. What I will describe today will depict what will happen to everyone on this planet. There is no escape, I thought I could but they found me and the worst part is that they let me. I’ll do my best to start at the beginning and then hopefully you will all realize the doom that haunts our world.

I joined them when I was 19 or 20, they were an extremist group but they sort of accepted me which no one else would. I thought I found my group, my tribe, I was very wrong. They manipulated us and hurt us psychologically for the longest time. Finally things didn’t add up so the people I met through them all slowly left one at a time. Finally it was my friend and I, he went pretty deep into it all but I was able to get him out with me.

One of the things they were big on were these people who were descended from giants who are more like gods. It’s strange to describe but you’ll see soon enough what I’m talking about, you just need to understand that they may be giant but they could take you without anyone knowing. They knew people who could make it so you never existed just no one would know or care. Remnants of an ancient world that would soon watch everything fall and take back the world they sought to conquer thousands of years ago.

One day, some friends and I went on a hunting trip deep in the woods of the Midwest in the US. We all had rifles and pistols, we were prepared to be in the woods for a few days and defend ourselves from anything. We weren’t thinking people were coming after us but maybe a bear or a few coyotes but I didn’t tell them, people were after me. It was a late night, we’d been there only two days so we had just caught a large buck and my friend, Bill, was gutting and cleaning while I helped. There was a loud snap in the woods that startled Bill and I, it was not quite 2 am so we didn’t know what it could be.

Bill grabbed his rifle and I kept my pistol out as we began to slowly move forward towards the disturbance. As we kept walking, we heard nothing and I mean nothing like no bugs, no animals, even the wind was eerily quiet. There was one sound I could hear as we stalked forward, a slow and even breathing from something large. I spun around and I saw it, my eyes went wide in fear as I realized what we were walking into. Bill spun and pointed his rifle at it, he shot it between the eyes but it stayed stock still and just kept breathing like nothing happened.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, it smelled like they told us like a forest mixed with that scent of a dog. The creature was a giant, it had to be, it stood almost as tall as the trees around us but for some reason it was kneeling down like you would to speak to a child. Its skin was a strange blue as if it was frozen not too long ago, the worst part was that its eyes glowed blue in the darkness. I pointed my pistol at it and told it to leave, they told me I’d be safe, as I spoke I realized Bill was gone.

I looked around, his rifle was gone and his footprints weren’t gone like he was standing there but now nothing is there. Bill was huge like 6’2 with about 200 lbs of muscle, he couldn’t have just disappeared without a noise or anything. As I looked around I saw more glowing blues in the woods, they weren’t as massive as the giant who still only breathed. They were taller than most people but still their silhouettes were huge like they were all bodybuilders to rival Arnold.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, they promised me we’d be safe. Next thing I knew I was being grabbed but I pointed my pistol at it, near its eyes but I wasn’t really aiming. I was too scared and I felt the calm settle in, the kind that comes on when you’re already dead. Suddenly, two shots rang out which came from my pistol and a rifle; my friend, Zach shot the thing holding me in the arm which made it drop me.

I ran, I never looked back. I just ran through a spot where the eyes were further apart than normal. I heard Zach follow then I heard nothing, just nothing, I couldn’t stop hyperventilating as I ran. I just kept running till I left the woods and got in my car, I drove home, there was a note on my door. I my breath felt cold, the area felt cold and it was the middle of summer. The note read as such, “Thank you for the sacrifices. We knew you’d comply after what we put you guys through, now keep doing as we asked. See you soon, Snout.”

It was signed, the Bears.

Guess who has a personal laptop now and doesn't have to subject themselves to strange looks at the library?

Now I'll be able to post here more frequently and maybe properly answer your comments.

If you missed my last post I strongly suggest you read it.

If you are completely lost, start from here.

A lot has happened this past week. I almost lost a finger trying to open a frozen pack of meat with an old knife, got enough money for a crappy computer, and even a proper, slightly used bed! But before I delve into my horrible memories covered in sulfur, there are a few things I need to clarify.

It was brought to my attention that even though I talk a lot about myself, I kind of forgot to say anything about me, so yeah, I guess a little introduction is long overdue.

You all can call me Nate, short for Nathaniel.

When I died, I was 35 years old. After that, I remained 35 for a few centuries.

The concept of age kind of loses its importance when you die, one of the few positives, I'd say.

Without beating around the bush, I'm not a good person. If I were, all these posts wouldn't exist, after all.

Before I died, I would have never admitted to this. I was blinded by greed and pride. I probably would have said some bullshit like, "I'm not evil, just realistic. In today's world, to stay on top, you must keep others down."

I ask not to be glorified in any part of this. I remember several occasions that would make you realize what a shitty person I am, even though I'm currently trying to change.

Anyway, we'll have plenty more time to talk about me after we get the important things out of the way. Today's post is important, so pay attention, and remember:

When the moon dissapear in Lust, Beware the one who sings in the dark.

The Circle of Lust is considered by many as the vestibule to the abyss. Almost all newcomers, with very few exceptions, fall into it when crossing the thin veil of reality upon death.

It is essentially a mixed zone that combines small samplings of everything the 9 circles offer, an area mainly populated by low-caste demons, small fallen angels, and newcomers, most of whom are desperate for an exit and have no idea what to expect there.

Therefore, Lust is used as a hunting ground by various things, from demons to even humans.

Perhaps if I had known how low humans had to sink to survive in that place, I would have been more cautious and wouldn't have suffered so much.

It had been some time since I was taken from the clutches of my captor; some flashes came to my mind: the recurring torture sessions, that person appearing without any indication, the descent down the spire wall, where I was tied to their body like a backpack.

The path I was being led through was tortuous, ahead of me lay plains of obsidian covered by a thin layer of ashes. In the distance, a chain of twisted mountains stretched toward the sky.

For a moment, I allowed myself to falter. I thought I was being rescued and taken to some kind of refuge. I imagined myself filling my belly with succulent meats, sleeping on a soft bed, and quenching my thirst with pure, crystalline water.

Friends aren't tied up.

When I noticed the tightly twisted wire in my hands and feet, I tried to protest, to throw myself off their back, to cut myself free. But I was terribly weak. The person carrying me noticed that I was awake.

I still remember perfectly my first interaction with that sneaky son of a bitch:

"Look who woke up! You're very unlucky, you know? Angel's plaything in the first few days, huh! And they say I don't stand a chance in this place."

I couldn't see his face behind all the cloths, but I had the feeling he was smiling.

"Who are you, where are you taking me?"

"My, my, such rude fresh meat, not even a hi or hello, shit I would accept a how was your day!"

"It's not like you're being very polite now."

"Hey, I'm a veteran so I get a pass."

"Do you want to tell me where the fuck you're taking me already? I'm not playing games with you man!"

"Neither am I, young fella. You, my friend, are Jack's property now! You were on his turf, you know, so now he gets to do whatever he fucking wants with you!"

"Turf? I was being eaten alive by some horse-monster creepy hybrid all the way up that giant thing! How does that constitute as his turf? Please, I just want to go home and see my wife."

That dirty rat let out a laugh, interrupted by a horrible dry cough.

"Home? This is your home now, buddy. Haven't you realized yet, poor thing? That's why you became an angelic snack. There's not a single good screw in that empty head of yours! But don't worry, even useless ones like you have a place in Jack's empire. Just wait until I deliver you. He'll be so proud! Maybe he'll even give me my own wife, a little plaything just for me!"

No matter how much I struggled, I couldn't free myself. Fatigue and hunger took their toll. All I could think about was this Jack character. I had no plans of being taken so easily, but until I recovered, there wasn't much I could do.

For hours, we walked beneath the turbulent clouds of Gehenna. Occasionally, a cacophony of deep, uninterrupted cries would emerge in the distance. During these moments, my new captor would lay still on the ground and cover himself with dust.

Something was following us.

My limited experience with infernal beings told me that we couldn't stay still. My heart raced every second we stayed there, exposed, motionless on the ground, but I dared not express my discontent. I feared that whatever that thing was, it could hear me and find us.

At that moment, I was in a sea of emotions, part of me relieved to have left the spire, another part terribly scared of not knowing what fate awaited me at the end of our journey.

It felt like I was out of the frying pan and into the fire.

As we resumed our path I noticed that, for the first time, the sky was clearing.

We were far enough from the cursed city to escape its influence. Looking back, I could see the perfect, unnatural circle of clouds covering Gehenna and the surrounding areas. I could see insect-like beasts flying towards the city, drawn to it like moths to a flame, making it their lair, their hunting grounds, and forever home.

But for some reason, I felt that going that far off the metropolis was equally dangerous. Maybe it was the stillness in the air, maybe the messed-up situation I've found myself in, but all of my senses were on high alert and didn't seem to want to calm down anytime soon.

The clear sky gave me my first ever vision of the moon, or if you wanna follow the locals, the eye of behemoth.

A gigantic globe of flesh up in the sky, stare at it too much and you figure out why they call it an eye. It seems to watch your every move once you're out of the city bounds, like some kind of twisted guard.

My captor didn't seem to mind its presence, but I couldn't take my eyes off it, the way it pulsated every once in a while.

It felt alive and conscious.

After some time walking, we got to some kind of camp made in haste, a few big loose rocks put together in a tent formation, an unlit bonfire, and what seemed to be beds made out of black leaves and ragged clothes.

Didn't look comfortable at all.

That rat threw me on the ground by the bonfire and sat inside the "tent."

"Now, my dear fella, we will wait for the other collectors, which might take a while. So behave, and no loud noises, got it? Or else your one-way ticket to the Silver City will have to be revoked, 'cause you'll be dead. I'll cut your throat and eat you right here."

"Eat me? What kind of sick bastard are you?"

"The kind that stays alive no matter what. And if you keep on babbling like that, I won't be the only problem you'll have to face."

As if following a cue, the loud and deep cries of some creature echoed in the distance.

I made sure to lower my voice after that.

"What the fuck was that?"

"Shut up if you don't want to find out!"

I wanted to ask about Jack, the Silver City, the collectors, but my fear spoke louder than my curiosity, so I just gave up and waited, not knowing what was hunting us in the dark.

The Eye was growing ever so slightly by the minute, its vision a constant reminder that safety was but an illusion, bound to break anytime soon.

As if confirming my fears, the eye once again began to change, this time growing darker and darker, as if its flesh was spoiling before my very eyes.

"Oh crap, not now!"

That moment, I knew we were in some deep shit.

The sinner looked at me, considered something on his head an gave up.

"Well, you're in luck, pal. I can't afford to let you die after all the trouble I went through just to get you here."

He said, getting up in a hurry and pushing me inside the tent.

"What is happening? Why is the moon... gone?"

Looking up, I couldn't see the eye anymore. I felt like it was still there somewhere, just so embraced by darkness it was impossible to find it.

Bit by bit, a strange shadow descended from the sky and into the land. Everything was engulfed in a cold void.

I couldn't see. I tried to speak but was unable to hear my own voice. I couldn't even feel anything other than that cruel presence.

I don't think I will ever forget it.

It was like I could feel its sadness. Something was circling the camp, taking gentle steps towards the middle. I was quivering, it was so cold that it hurt to breathe. I could barely think.

And then, I heard it sing.

The circle of Lust houses one of the most dangerous of the seven deadly sins, one of the biggest hunters of man and corrupters of heart.

The succubus.

Not a succubus. I'm talking about the original one, the primordial being that gave birth to the whole species.

The one that still haunts the human plane and was the inspiration for dozens of tales across the globe.

The mermaid, the Huldra, the Liderc—all but facades of the same unholy being.

the same one that choose us as prey.

When it sang, I felt like I was using cocaine for the first time again ; the high was immediate and powerful.

It came in waves, lifting me up into the sky only to let me fall into despair.

I needed her.

I was nothing without her.

I tried to fight, to free myself and run towards endless joy and pleasure, but something kept me from doing it.

It started to sing louder and louder, getting angrier and sounding less angelic with each passing second.

Suddenly, that dreamlike, almost orgasmic in nature state I was in changed into a complete nightmare.

It was no longer asking, It demanded my surrender.

My senses came back to me, only to bring me more pain.

The first thing I saw was fire, covering my body and burning me alive. My skin was melting before my very eyes, my mind froze trying to understand the creature standing outside the tent.

The torso of a woman, hips and legs like those of a spider. Where its arms would be, two bat-like wings extended several feet in length. Its head reminded me of a perfect genderless mannequin, except it had no eyes, no ears, or nose, only one big circular mouth covering its entire face.

"Don't look at it! It will break your mind!"

But it was already too late.

It was getting tired of waiting; I could feel its wrath. It no longer wished to toy with us; now it was going in for the kill.

My mind was buzzing, I felt a killer migraine getting worse and worse. I felt the urge to vomit, blood coming out of my nose.

We were about to die.

But then, I heard a weird chant followed by a deafening shot.

The succubus screamed in pain, breaking the spell and rushing toward the newcomers.

"You guys took your sweet fucking time, didn't ya?"

With my blurred vision, I could barely see the group standing on top of the hill. I was able to distinguish black robes and torches; some were carrying rifles adorned with weird flowers.

"Shut up and get your ass over here, Mice! We need to go, now!"

Once again, I was being carried away from danger, the buzzing of shots still roaring in my ears.

I could see other naked sinners, probably newcomers like me, chained up on top of an old modded pickup truck, with spikes and plates of metal all around it.

The last thing I remember before blacking out was the cry of pure rage from the succubus and a wave of pain passing through my body.

I really need to start getting ready for my shift now, so I guess I'll stop here for today.

In any society, communities exist to create hope, a better future, and security for all. People get together to do the things they aren't able to do themselves.

But in hell, as well as any other place, the corruption at the heart of humanity eventually breaks down every society, turning it into a play where only a selected few control the strings, and make sure everything works towards fulfilling their sadistic dreams.

Somehow, in the Silver City, things can get even worse. I was about to learn that.

|I|II|

We wandered around the halls till we found our way out. A secret entry way to the elevator in case of emergency or for a quick-stop. The gate is closed shut, blocking our exit. I was going to scan the key, until I saw the scanner is far beyond repair. Just as I’m about to lose hope, Brock ripped the door open effortlessly, reminding me how much I forgot how strong he is.

I sighed in relief, and we strolled towards the elevator on the other side. I'll tell you; the room is refreshing. A room where there is no corpse, blood, monsters, or any sorts of nightmarish things. There’s nothing in this room but the scanner standing beside the elevator door, fresh and clean. I stepped to the scanner and swipe the key card through the slit of the machine. When the screen glowed an emerald light, the doors opened for us.

Brock is the first to walk in. When I took the card out, it sparked into flames. I dropped it due to the flaming heat burning against my skin. Baffling, once the card dropped to the floor, it melted into a small mountain of dust. Clueless as to what to think of it, I just stared at the pile, completely shocked of the unexpected. Nothing from the reports in the compendium said anything about it turning into ashes. Neither have I’ve ever heard that from anyone who had used it once in a while. Maybe it has something to do with the event we’re in. But moreover, we'll just take our leave.

I went inside the elevator and browsed the buttons labelled in numbers. Level 1 is displayed at the top amongst the other levels on the list. By pushing the button, the elevator ascended to our exit. Honestly, never have I've once used this elevator for anything. I thought we'd just teleport somewhere or something, part of the mystery of this place. But we ascended so fast that my legs are starting to tremble, which shock me to the core.

Just as I’m about to get squished to the floor, Brock wrapped his arm around me. My lungs begin to grow heavy, slowly sinking down to my belly.

Suddenly, the elevator halted immediately, sending me crashing my skull against the ceiling. For some reason life still clings to my soul! I wriggled over the floor in excruciating pain! It felt like my head is being slowly squeezed by two boulders! The only thing I can hear is the ringing in my head!

Mercifully, the ringing in my brain lessened, and the immense headache dissipated. I gasped, inhaling the air around me desperately. Black spots blur my vision, which adds disgust to my discomfort. "Phil! Are you alright!?" Brock picked me up, sounded anxious of my most horrible headaches I've ever have in my life. "Yeah… I'm good." I groaned. The black spots in my vision dissipates as I breath in the air around me.

Looking up at the screen on top of the door, it labelled Level 22 instead of level 1. "What the fuck?" I muttered.

"What is fuck?" Brock asked curiously. For some reason, the way he asked like a kid triggered parts of myself to slowly twist my head to stare at him. For a while, silence enveloped our senses until he spoke nervously. "What does it mean?"

I turned away, pinching the bridge of my nose with a sigh of exhaustion. I shake off Brock's question and focused on the screen. Why did we stop at level 22? Did it got stuck or did the power system fail to cooperate. SHIT! There’s still a small spike of pain in my brain!

"Did the elevator just got stuck?" I muttered at nothing. Then, the elevator opened, which answered unexpectedly to my concerns. My jaw dropped as I watch the doors spread apart to show the tunnels of hell. The darkness from deep within the tunnel of Dante’s inferno breeze against my skin. The dim torches on the walls reveal scribbled quotes marked on the floor in blood. Purgatory

My whole body trembled. I looked deeper into the darkness. I swear I caught sight of a pale creature smiling at me, fidgeting its slender fingers. I told myself that it’s all my imagination. But then I remember that this place holds monsters from many worlds. Imagining those creatures just builds up the fear inside my mind.

Shutting my eyes closed and breathing as if nothing has happened, I turn around, imagining myself in a summer vacation.

“We will conti- “Before Brock could ever finish his sentence, I twist around and start frantically pressing our exit button.

"NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! THIS HAS TO BE A MISTAKE! THE ELEVATOR JUST GOT STUCK!! IT JUST GOT STUCK, THAT'S ALL!!" I kept frantically pressing again and again and again. The privilege key we had just found was burned away, which means we can't get out of here unless find another key. The thought of having to find one in this dungeon just makes me keep hoping the elevator could still work.

Suddenly, someone propped their hand on my shoulder. The cold and hard surface touch makes me jolt up in alert. I was about to scream before Brock shut my mouth with his palm. His hand smelled and tasted like pearl stone, and felt cold and smooth against my lips.

He shushed me and looked into the darkness. "We must be silent. Stay by my side, Phil." Easy for him to say. But at least I can count on him for safety. We’re going through this together anyway. But then, if he knew what we needed to escape, then why is he still walking by my side? I couldn’t really tell. Someday later, I think I may find a reason.

He drew his hand away and walked out of the elevator. I followed him, beginning our scavenge into the darkest depths of whatever horrors that await. Albeit, I’m scared. Because at any time an entity will pop out of nowhere and kill us without a trace. But with him around, I felt a bit safe.

Despite working here for 2 years, I've never visited anywhere else but the lobby, gym stations, and level 30. The reason was that I was prohibited from visiting other levels. That makes me wonder what other levels would look like, since this level had a different look to it than the level I was designated. And what will level 36 even look like. Hell? Tartarus? The centre core of the earth? And what if there was another level nobody mentions? The priest did say something of deepest depths of the prison.

Wandering through the maze of the tunnel, we found rows of empty rusted cells. We checked inside every cell we find to have discovered nothing but rotting mice, bandages, coffins, chains, and of course blood stains. One of the cells have a scent mixed with shit, rotting flesh and the worst junk being dumped in the world. You can already tell that I was going to vomit, but I didn’t, saving my coat with no stain. Except my own blood stain.

“Where’s the key?” I wondered.

“There should be a good pair of jeans I could wear.” I stopped walking to stare at him with absolute shock like I heard someone said the n-word. “Excuse me.” I said with my eyes squinted and eyebrows high. He turned around curiously. Silence have consumed the sounds of dripping sewer waters. “WHY JEANS!!?”

I can feel my eyes widen and brows furrowed deeply between the bridge of my nose. My hands are jittering as he looked down at his jeans. “They are stained of filthy smell. I don’t want to have a bad hygiene.” The tone in his voice made my tongue tie itself that I had to have the voice in my head say it for me. Oh my god.

I shut my eyes closed, relaxed my brows and took a deep breath before again feeling like my face is about to combust. “WE’RE IN HELL, BROCK!! There IS no jeans here! There IS no Pants here! And there sure ISN’T a single CLEAN JEANS in this Prison!!

He shrugged. He just shrugged his shoulders like it didn’t matter. “Maybe there is clean jeans. We have not yet explored everything.” I was about to choke him myself until I realized I’ve completely forgotten that he’s not human. This side of him is making me forget that he’s an alien, which really make me question about the universe.

Suddenly, an animalistic scream echoed from our direction. We snapped our eyes towards the source to find darkness. The torches didn’t really help lighten up the tunnel nor the mood. My shock melted down beneath my foot. My eyes widen as I stare at something running towards us. It looked pale. A bit wrong like watching a naked man running away from the devil. But as it got closer, my heart dropped to my stomach.

It’s the Legend of the White Cannibal. The name sounds ridiculous but its features destroyed it. Its elongated lanky arms flail around wildly. Its 7 feet legs dashing within 15 steps per second. Now, the face can be easily described to be from whenever you close your eyes in the shower alone at night: Close your eyes and you’ll imagine a face with its jaw dropped to its collar bone and empty eyes wide enough to fit your cup in.

While being unable to move a muscle, Brock stepped forward to guard me from the White Cannibal. I don’t know if I’m imagining things but it’s running a lot slower than the compendium have stated. It can run for about 145 miles per hour. The compendium doesn’t lie, well sort of. Then why is it running at the speed of a car travelling 40 miles per hour.

It was almost 30 feet away before it vanished. Something crushed a hole in the wall at our right. The screaming disappeared. The sound of colliding rubble echoed from the hole. I looked at Brock with the same thought. What happened? We were going to investigate but a bulky humanoid stomped out of the hole before us. I thought it was just another random entity. But when I looked at him closer, 300 volts tazed my entire body.

He holds his own basketball: the head of the White Cannibal. He threw it at the torch, scoring a one. This looked ridiculous but it didn’t help calm down the fear rooting through my muscles. He turned his head towards us. The torch next to him revealed his blank expression. Then his face turned into an unpredictable mood: Eyebrows raised, squinting eyes, joking grin.

“Caught a score.” Samson said.

I remain frozen. “What?” I heard Brock speak out confusingly. At least he’s got more balls than I do.

Samson chuckled, taking steps towards us. The daggering eyes of his violet coat monster glared into my soul, holding me still with its invisible hands. “You never heard of basketball? Come on. Everyone in the omniverse knows Basketball. Even my tribe knows it while surviving in the jungle.”

“Basketball? I may have heard that before.”

“Of course you have. You’ve lived for billions of years.” They remained silent for what felt like hours, until gratefully, Brock immediately jumps back to the subject.

“We don’t mean to harm you.” I wish it can be that easy. Just tell him we don’t want to fight and he’ll go away. But of course, direct orders from the priest himself. There’s no crawling out of this one.

“Tch. Do I look like I give a shit.” Samson said back calmly. Abruptly, a mixture of explosion and collapsing debris ring my ears. I immediately turned to find Brock disappeared, only to display Samson in a football tackle pose, smoke flickering out of the muscles of his arm. I turned again to find only darkness deep in the tunnel. Then, shooting out of the curtains, a bright flash smashed into Samson under a second, sending him soaring back. The bright flash was none other than Brock, fist raised. I couldn’t see a single bruise nor a sign of injury. He’s completely unfazed. I can see the trail of light, as if I’m watching an aurora within the darkness.

Before I could react, the hunter returned to give Brock a knuckle sandwich, catch him by the shoulder and launched him away into crashing multiple walls. It’s a lot worse than I’d ever thought. Watching Samson’s body fade into nothing, a frightening question burned into my mind: Could he be as fast as the priest?

At first, I thought Brock can handle just fine on his own. He could beat him, right? And I can go find the key. I turned around only to stop. Part of myself reminded me of the risks I’m taking. If I go alone, there’ll be entities that could be as powerful as Brock, Samson and the rest of his crew. I’m not strong enough to defend myself, with only the ability to… I don’t really know what I could do at all. And I need Brock’s wits in order to get through this mess.

I take deep breaths before running through the holes on the walls. I ran past 32 walls until I found Brock crashing to the ground, causing an earthquake. The room is some sort of dark hellish arena, enough to have thousands of audiences to join together and watch the opponents kill each other. The walls are pieced together with skulls that looked to be from 3600BCE.

I couldn’t process what was going on, because I’m watching lines of violet light darting all over the place! Then, the sound of crashed metal bashed my brain. I cupped my ears and watch an explosion of wind breaking down traces of light. At the centre of the arena, both of them wrestled against each other: Their hands closed together, pushing against each other.

“Holding back won’t do you any good!” Samson said as he knocks Brock’s gut with his knee. He then wrapped his hands around his neck and headbutted him in the face. Brock stumbled back by the strike. With no intention on wasting time, Samson cupped his hand on Brock’s face and crashed his head into the ground. Branches of cracks spread all around the arena. Clouds of dust exploded in every direction. As weird and non-logical as it sounds, the debris are floating in the air as if time have slowed down.

My heart sank. As the cloud dies out, Brock is being brutally beaten by Samson’s barrage of fists. For the first time, I witness Brock’s defeat. I can tell he was already getting tired from the fight. Standing here, I couldn’t help but feel a knife in my chest. I don’t stand a chance against him, nor could I help Brock fight this psychopath. I wanted to do something, anything to stop him from killing him.

I scavenged around to only find rubble. Rubble…

I picked one up and threw it at Samson’s head. He stopped. His blank face stared at me as he stands straight up. He raised his eyebrows, offended of my abruptness. “A piece of rubble. The priest expected more of you.” He started to walk towards me, leaving behind his completely injured foe.

When I take a step back, a loud roar echoed from the ceiling. He stopped in his track, chuckled beneath his breath in satisfaction. “Sounds like lunch break. I’ll leave this one to the two of you. Or just you.” And with that, he turned and strolled away, disappearing into the darkness.

Then, something landed down from the ceiling.

She wanted to meet me alone. On the beach. No one else around.

Definitely a good sign.

Tinder was supposed to be a wonderland of discreet, anonymous fun that awaited me after an extremely painful divorce. Instead, I found the opportunity to churn through more rejections in an hour that I could hope to tally after a year of social events and bar crawls.

Then Tabby swiped right.

I couldn’t believe it at first. Cute, funny, employed, capable of driving herself – pretty much everything that I was looking for in a Tinder match. And I won’t lie, I have the same needs that everyone else with the app has.

So she wanted to meet me on the sand at Hollywood Beach near Ventura, alone, far from prying eyes.

It was the perfect match.

Of course, I thought it was too good to be true at first. I was mostly convinced that she wouldn’t be there when I showed up. So when I followed her cryptic instructions to take a specific path between two houses, following a beeline to the water, I expected to find nothing. With my phone flashlight bobbing in front of me, I was quickly surrounded by darkness. There’s about 200 yards of sand between the houses and the water, so I soon felt like I was lost in the middle of a desert. No house lights were on nearby. I was entirely alone.

I was just about ready to turn around.

And then I saw her. She was lying face-up in the sand.

“Tabby?”

She didn’t say anything, but I knew it had to be her. No one else was within screaming distance. So I aimed my flashlight at her and walked straight forward so that I wouldn’t surprise or scare her. Bizarrely enough, she remained lying down until I was standing right beside.

“Um. Hi?” I glanced down and smiled.

She looked as good as her picture and better, which shocked me. She had on a red dress, which was splayed in the sand, that looked ready for a night out. Tabby was gazing up at the stars in an unblinking stare, but she reached for me and beckoned with a wag of her finger.

I sat in the cold sand next to her, setting my phone down to allow just enough illumination so that we weren’t completely blind. I hesitated for a moment before taking her hand in mine. She squeezed my fingers playfully before running her nails up my forearm, leaving a trail of goosebumps in her wake. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I hadn’t had an intimate connection that left me truly happy in longer than I could remember.

I didn’t know why she just wanted silent touching, but decided not to question her motives. So I reached forward to stroke her cheek in the semi-darkness.

Unlike her arm, Tabby’s cheek was lukewarm. Her head turned away from me as I grazed it, continuing to rotate as she broke contact with my fingers. With a sound like pulling a shoe from a puddle of syrup on a wooden floor, Tabby’s head twisted away from her neck and rolled onto the sand. There was just enough light to see the squishy viscera in her ravaged stump.

I froze. For a moment, I could only sense the crashing of distant waves, cold sand beneath me, and Tabby’s dead head. Movie deaths are always profound and dramatic; I didn’t know how to process the fact that a human body can break with all the everydayness of a cracking egg.

Then I noticed that her hand was gripping my arm.

I stared in abject horror as her fingers continued to creep upward, despite her lack of a head. Her other arm reached forward to join it. In fact, Tabby’s entire body was squirming toward me.

The sand beneath her neck moved, and everything made horrifying sense.

Somebody was wearing Tabby’s clothes. They had cut off her head, lay down on the beach, then buried their own head in the sand, placing her decapitated appendage above their own. I would have recognized it immediately in the daylight, but the darkness had hidden just enough.

They wrapped both hands around my elbow and sat up as a cascade of sand rained down from an obscured face. I saw dark eyes looking back at me before pure instinct took over: I grabbed a fistful of sand with my other arm and threw it at those eyes. With an unnatural hiss, the grip on my elbow loosened just slightly, and that was enough.

I yanked my arm away, scrambled to my feet, and raced into the darkness.

Panicked blur settled gradually back into cognitive stability. I could have been running for nineteen hours or thirteen seconds – I truly don’t know. Of course, I hadn’t wasted time grabbing my phone, especially since the bright flashlight was still on and would have made it impossible for me to hide. As a result, in the pitch black of the beach, there was no way to find my car, and in my sheer terror, I had no idea where I ended up.

I found myself on a dark highway with no streetlamps and no idea what direction I needed to go. I felt ready to scream; had the entire world disappeared? Where were all the motorists?

Almost as if an answer to my prayer, twin lights flashed far down the road. Adrenalous joy raced through me as I ran toward the lights, my shoes slapping against the ground as I sprinted forward.

The car forced itself to a screeching halt just before slamming into me; I must have scared the shit out of the driver, but I didn’t care. I raced to the passenger side window. It opened an inch.

“Can I help you?” came a timid voice from inside.

“Yes,” I responded, almost laughing with relief. “I was attacked on the beach and lost my phone. Could you call the police and help me find my car?”

The kindness of strangers really is the best of things. I reflected on this as we moved back down the highway, my tension finally melting. Shit, I must have looked terrible. I looked into the rearview mirror to check.

Dark eyes looked back at me from the rear seat of the car. They were bloodshot, as though someone had just thrown sand in them.

I spun around, convincing myself that it was all in my head, that I would find the seat empty.

Someone wearing Tabby’s red dress was lying in the back seat.

I jumped out of the moving car just as a familiar hand reached for me.

Yes, it hurt worse than anything I’d ever felt to hit the pavement at thirty miles an hour. But it didn’t kill me, which was the only thing I needed to keep going. Fortunately, we’d already almost made it back to my car.

I raced – or hobbled in great pain, if I’m being honest – to my door. I jumped in, slammed on the ignition, and ripped out of there as fast as I could.

I don’t know how I made it home safely, because I spent more time checking the back seat than I did with my eyes on the road. My horror only increased as I realized that I must have been texting this psychopath the entire time that “Tabby” was so intent on meeting me. How much did they know about my life?

Of course, I typed all of this up to let you know as soon as I could. But I don’t know if I’m safe.

I think I just saw a red dress moving outside my window.

While others can find forests unsettling in the dark, I’ve always found that there is something uniquely tranquil about walking through a forest at night. There would be no one but me and the sound of the wind through the trees, the rustling of small animals through the leaf litter and the sound of the forest floor crunching beneath my boots. I had decided to take a walk through the woods of my hometown, I always did this when life got too much and today I needed to clear my head.

“Ahh, peace and quiet.” I said to myself as I began the hour or so walk I had taken countless times before.

The walk ended at a beautiful lake that I used to play around in when I was a child. That’s where I had to be, where I needed to be. The lake always had a way of making me feel great nostalgia for a past life I wished I could back to, a life I would never forget.

The moonlight lit most of my trail and for a while I had no need for my torch. The forest made its familiar sounds. What I wasn’t expecting was a low grumble of thunder in the distance.

“Oh no, please don’t rain.”

I wasn’t dressed properly for a storm but nothing was going to stop me from my destination. I continued. I knew the woods like the back of my hand, every tree, every rock, was like a navigation tool for me. The lake wasn’t far, maybe half an hour or so away and that’s when I heard something that caught me off guard. A laugh. I’m sure it was. It was faint and clearly off in the distance. It was a woman’s laugh, not a maniacal laugh but a playful giggle. This was enough to make me feel somewhat uneasy, however I told myself that it must have just been a sound of the forest or some sort of animal and I continued on.

I made it to the lake and found a place to sit. The moonlight bounced of the water, illumining the whole lake. I grabbed a stick and moved it through the lake, listening to the sound of the water gently ripple. I sat there for long time and had completely forgotten about the giggle I heard earlier. I didn’t want to leave but the hour was growing late and I thought it was about time I get back, so I stood myself up and then…..

I gasped! Across the lake there was a woman. She caught me by surprise. Why was she out here this late? I noticed that, strangely, she was naked. She wasn’t horrifying but beautiful, however, It was a cold night, so my immediate thought was that she was in danger.

“Hello! Are you alright?!”

She didn’t respond. Just stood there looking at me…and smiling. There was a low rumble of thunder again and the approaching clouds started to cover the moon. I couldn’t see her anymore. All I heard was a quiet giggle echo across the lake. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I didn’t know why. I wanted to go around the lake and try to help her but something was telling me that I needed to leave…now.

I turned around and started to go back the way I came. But every step I took I heard the unmistakeable sound of footsteps behind me. I felt eyes on me like daggers on the back of my head. I didn’t turn around, I was scared. Was it her? What did she want? I didn’t turn around, I carried on walking …until I heard a whisper from behind me.

“Turn around.”

I jumped out of my skin and quickly turned around to find her behind me, standing with her arms straight down by her side, like a soldier standing to attention. I turned on my torch and pointed it at her. There was something not right. Her teeth were black and her eyes…they had no iris just two white eyes with a pair of tiny pupils. Her grin stretched across her face and as she smiled and black liquid seeped from the corner of her mouth.

“Don’t forget!” She said, followed by yet another playful giggle.

With this she slinked back slowly into the forest and disappeared behind a tree. I didn’t follow. I turned around and walked as quickly as I could. I knew that if I ran I would lose my way and it was beginning to rain. It was so dark now that all I could see was what my torch was illuminating.

I finally came to a clearing where the path diverged into two. I recognised the tree that stood between the two paths, I had seen it countless times before.

“No…what…I…was it….is it left or right? Shit!”

How could I not remember! I’ve walked this trail a hundred times, it was like muscle memory to me.

“Okay think…think! Its left. It’s gotta be left”

I walked quickly down the trail to the left and almost as soon as I did I heard that fucking laughter again but this time it was loud and hysterical. I shone my torch through the trees. The laughter sounded like it was coming from all around me until it stopped abruptly. I turned my attention back to the path… and there she stood.

She wasn’t smiling anymore, just staring at me. Her appearance seemed to have changed once again. Her arms had become unnaturally long almost touching the floor and her skin was deathly pale and grey. She took one step forward towards me and I took one step back.

She whispered “Don’t forget.”

The smile reappeared on her face and the black liquid poured out of her mouth again, this time like a river of blood flowing down her neck and chest. I was frozen in fear, watching her as she bent down on to all fours and crept slowly around me disappearing once again. It took me a while to snap back into reality. I scanned the forest in front of me. I couldn’t remember anything. The path ahead, the trees, everything looked alien to me. All I could do was follow the path ahead of me and hope to God that it leads me out of the woods.

The forest was quiet now, the rain had stopped, no wind, no rustling of leaf litter, no crickets, no birds…nothing. I tried to remember how long I had been on this path but I seemingly had no memory of anything besides the woman. I didn’t even remember how I got to the forest or why. I stopped in the middle of the path, desperately looking around for anything that would jog my memory, all the while the deafening silence continued. Not a damn thing could remind me where I was or how to escape. As my eyes glanced around they fixed to something irregular. There seemed to something calved on a tree. I slowly walked forward and realised they were words. When I got close enough I could read those words.

‘Don’t look at it…don’t listen to it’

My torch started to flicker.

“No no no no no, please no”

I hit it against my palm until mercifully it sprung back into life and then…the forest wasn’t quiet anymore. I could hear breathing. Heavy, laboured breathing. Almost like someone having an asthma attack. I shone my torch toward the noise and saw a hand clutching the side of a tree. I couldn’t see the body just the hand but it was so far up the tree that this thing must have been at least eight feet tall. The breathing didn’t stop and my torch began to flicker again as whatever this thing was began to move. It tilted its head slowly around the tree to look at me. Two huge white eyes gazed into my very sole. I wanted to close my eyes and press my hands over my ears but I was frozen again.

“Look at me.” It said.

It then took a slow giant step out from behind the tree to reveal itself to me. The smile had returned to its face and it never looked more unnatural then it did at that moment. It was huge. It was even taller then I thought, almost as big as the trees it moved through. Its arms were long and bony and its spine was twisted and contorted. It struggled as it moved slowly towards me, as if its body was being controlled like a puppet. It then stopped in front of me and slowly bent down to walk on all fours, its body clicking and snapping as it did.

“listen” it said.

It was inhaling its words as it spoke as if it was gasping for air. Its smile stretched further across its emaciated, grey face and its cold white eyes didn’t blink. As if nothing could get any worse at that point, my torch gave in and died. I was in complete darkness, I couldn’t see a thing. I could hear it getting closer as my legs began to tremble and give way. I fell to my knees. The air smelt more and more like decaying flesh the closer it got to me and the sound of breaking bones as it moved itself across the floor was getting louder and louder until I could feel its breath on my face. I closed my eyes as tears started to roll down my cheeks. I braced myself for the end and then I felt a cold hand brush my cheek, wiping away the tears from my face.

“Goodbye.” It said and the all the sounds were gone once again.

That was the last I saw of it. I’m still here. I don’t remember my name. I don’t know this place. Why am I here? How do get out? I don’t remember…I don’t remember.

“Hey, remember the time when you were three and almost burnt your hand when you touched the ironing machine?” My mom says while chopping tomatoes for dinner. “Yeah. I was stupid back then.” I say while I iron her clothes out. “Well, you still are.” she retorts wittily. I let out a chuckle.

I love being here. I grew up here as a kid, and so the folks here are pretty warm towards us. And although the apartment is awfully small, it feels comfier than my bungalow. I try visiting Mom as often as I can after cancer took Dad away a couple of years ago.

The rain outside intensifies.

“You know, my doctor says that having almonds with honey is good for memory.” Mom explains.

“So, you’ve included it in your diet?”

“Nah I always forget about it.”

We both laugh. Over the years, we’ve both developed a friend-like bond, which helps us in sharing things we otherwise wouldn’t have shared.

“I’ll be back.” She says as she nods towards the bathroom.

I give a slight nod and continue with my ironing. As time passes, I realise that it has been almost fifteen minutes since she had gone to the bathroom. She should’ve been back by now. I set down the machine and make my way to the bathroom, knocking gently on the door.

I don’t get a reply. The light inside and the sound of water running are enough for me to assume that she’s still in there, but I knock again. I hear a single knock back.

Assuming everything is okay inside, I come back to the living room. To my utter disbelief, I see my mom sitting on the couch and still cutting tomatoes. She looks up and flashes me a smile.

“…what?”

That is all I’m able to say. She doesn’t answer it.

I calm myself down. I don’t reason with myself right away; I look for more information. Trying to keep my voice steady, I ask her, “Weren’t you in the bathroom right now?”

She looks up from the chopping board, with a face as confused as mine. “Huh? No? I was here chopping tomatoes.”

I try to find some logic in the situation. Perhaps she didn’t go to the bathroom after all? But that doesn’t explain the light being on and the water running. Perhaps while I was outside the bathroom, she had already come back but forgotten to turn the lights and the tap off? But I would’ve seen her come back had this happened. And none of this explains the knock that I heard.

I go back to the bathroom to check for a potential intruder. The rational part of me argues that no intruder can come in through our tiny bathroom window. But I push that thought aside for a while as I enter the bedroom and make my way towards the bathroom.

I am left perplexed when I see the bathroom door open and the lights and the tap turned off. None of it makes sense. I feel my t-shirt clinging to my skin, drenched in sweat. The air feels too stuffy now.

Like a thunderbolt, a thought hits me. Mom. I need to go check in on her. With a rush of adrenaline, I jump across the bed and dart through the hallway to the living room.

I don’t see her on the couch where she was sitting before. I check the kitchen. The sound of silence receives me. I return to the bedroom once more, knowing deep down that I will not find her there. I call her cell phone in despair. I hear it ringing outside in the living room.

I dash out of the apartment, not bothering to put on shoes. I feel the wet floor against my bare feet. Within seconds, I’m at the apartment’s parking lot, manoeuvring my way past every parked car, looking for Mom. I am greeted with nothing but silence and darkness.

As desperation starts to creep in, I feel increasingly helpless. I run out of the parking lot and into the empty street. I see families at their homes, enjoying their dinner. I see brothers playing video games, couples watching movies. I move past them towards the end of the street, scanning every square inch of my surroundings. I don’t see Mom anywhere.

I call the police. Initially, they suspect me for the disappearance of my mother. Over time, they realise that I’m not guilty.

I don’t talk about that incident with anyone, not even my wife or my daughter. All of it is still too raw, too fresh. I need to know if Mom’s ever going to come back. Every day I wake up hoping I’d hear something about her, and every day my heart shatters into a million pieces when I don’t. Her case has already been put with several other missing persons cases, where eventually it will be forgotten.

And today, nearly four months after the incident, I knock on my daughter’s bathroom door after she’s been in there for too long. I hear a single knock back.

I need to write this down because I have begun to question my sanity.

I cannot really say how long I've been stuck on these mountains. My friends tell me that it has been a week, but I know it's been more than that. I'm not sure how much I can trust them either. They've been altered in some way. They aren't how they were when we first left.

I have gaps in my memory. My friends have tried to explain what went on within the gaps, but they keep telling me things I already know.

​

But perhaps I should start from the beginning.

​

There were four of us: Jake, Sarah, Marcus, and myself. It was a stupid impulsive plan. Marcus's grandfather had a cabin on the Rocky Mountain range, somewhere in Colorado. I wasn't entirely sure where in Colorado, but I trusted Marcus and he seemed to know where we were going. So, on the first of October, we took to the roads, exchanging drivers every few hours. From Connecticut to Colorado, we made the journey over several days. Finally, on October 5th, we reached the foothills of the mountains.

"We need more supplies." Marcus started.

"I'll come with you!" Jake said, a bit too excited, and the pair left. Sarah and I shared a knowing look: Jake had been pining over Marcus for a few months now, and Marcus had been in love with him for a year. The two were waltzing around each other, waiting for someone to make a move while Sarah and I were left watching this sad dance.

Sarah and I were never particularly close; I always got the feeling that she never let down her walls with me in the same way that she did with the others. At first, I always chalked that up to my overthinking. However, after an incident, I realized that maybe one of my closest friends doesn't see me as a close friend. It used to put a damper on me, but I had come to accept that our friendship would never be what I had wanted it to be.

"Have you ever been hiking?" Sarah asked, leaning back in the passenger seat. I took a piece of the chocolate raspberries that she packed. She was a health nut.

"Well, not like this. I've been on hikes closer to home, and those were more trails than hikes. Also, we never went during the winter months." She nodded, falling back into silence. I could only remember all the times I would try to fill the silence but found it to no avail.

I looked out the front window and fell into old patterns of thinking. I didn't even realize that I had started to pick at my nails when Sarah manually intervened. I sighed softly and pulled away.

​

Jake came in before Marcus did. He was carrying two bags of canned and packed food, that he began to unpack into one of the empty backpacks we brought. "Marcus is coming in with the rest and then we can start again." I nodded and started up the car again. Marcus came bustling into the back seat, carrying some more basic necessities: flashlights, some lighters, and a shotgun. "You had your license on you?" I asked.

"Funny story, I told the shop owner where we were planning on going and he gave me this."

"He gave you a loaded shotgun?"

"Yes, now let's go before it gets dark. It's already 2!" I stopped the car and looked at him for a second. Perhaps I was a coward, but a man gave him a shotgun after telling him where we were going. I had a right to be suspicious.

"Marcus, did the shopowner tell you anything else?"

"Nah, man just turned around and left." Sarah and Jake were looked back and forth between us. Did they not see the obvious signs?

"Have you been to this cabin recently? I mean, is it safe?" I questioned, as Marcus was stuffing the things into his backpack.

"Aren't these questions you should have asked before we decided to come?" Sarah asked and I tried to not let it annoy me.

"That was before the shop owner decided that it was appropriate to give us a gun because we were going there. Come on, there can't be any more obvious signs that maybe we shouldn't be going here!"

"Shreya has a point," Jake spoke out. "He did seem pretty spooked. Why don't we just go back and ask him why?"

"We could do that, or we could go up. We are losing daylight!" Marcus complained. I sighed loudly.

"Asking him won't take that much time! Maybe we missed something that he knows about."

"Are you scared, Shreya? I know you don't like mountains that much, but you can't let your paranoia get to the rest of us!" My mouth snapped shut, and my brows furrowed. Of course Marcus the idiot would blab something I told him in confidence.

"Wait, what do you-" Sarh began, but I couldn't handle her asking any questions.

"Fuck it, let's just go."

White nonsense, I bit back from saying.

I started the car, but not without saying that if I came out of that cabin with so much as a scratch, I would make sure he bought me food for the rest of his life. I pulled out of the small convenience store parking lot and drove up.

​

It didn't take us long to get there. We had reached around five, but I hadn't accounted for the sun setting so fast. The sun was already sunk halfway across the horizon by the time I parked on the driveway. Having seen it in real life, it was far less creepy than the image I had been painting in my head. Jake was the first to get out, retching until he vomited in a nearby bush. His motion sickness and those hairpin bends did not make for a good combination. Marcus, Sarah, and I unpacked the bags in the meantime.

The cabin was made of some old wood. It was darkening from rotting and damp from the rain, and last year's snow. Despite the smell and rot, it wasn't that creepy of a sight. Perhaps I was overreacting, but there was still a sense of unease and tension. The tension in question was between Marcus and me. The car ride was nothing but unpleasant, with Jake trying to lighten the mood and failing at every hairpin bend until eventually had no choice but to rest his head on Marcus' shoulder and be quiet. Sarah remained silent for the most part, but from the corner of my eye, I could see her glance my way now and then.

​

Marcus fumbled with the keys, the cold numbing his fingers. He finally managed to insert the right key into the hole and twist it open. There was a resounding sound from the cabin, a creaking that seemed to echo within the entire house.

Yeah, this was starting to get too creepy for my taste.

The inside wasn't particularly creepy either. It was rather normal to be honest. It wan entirely made of the same type of wood, a rosewood if I had to guess. Despite the fact that it was externally rotten, the inside was perfectly intact. There was furniture: a sofa, a coffee table, a dining table, and a kitchen. However, the most interesting thing was the paintings. There were about three that I could see from the entrance. They all seemed to be painted by the same painter because they looked like paintings in a series. They were very intricate paintings, all of them having many components to them. As we stepped inside, I was able to get closer to one of them. There was one hung over the sofa. It was rather difficult to tell the subject of the painting. This one was of many people, hundreds, running from something. Some of them were pointing, and some of them had looks of terror on their faces, but they were all running.

Except for one person. There was a singular person in the right corner who was just standing and staring blankly at the audience. It was pointing to the left corner, where I saw a tendril of a black blob.

What an odd choice for a painting.

The others were equally similar. Each had the same setup, a group of people running, a single person pointing at a black blob. In each picture, the blob was getting bigger and bigger.

I wondered if there was a single picture having just the blob. It would make sense given the series.

​

"Marcus, was your grandfather a painter?" I asked, still observing the painting.

"Yeah, he used to paint in his spare time."

"What's this one supposed to be though?"

"Gramps was kind of weird, okay? I'm not really sure what he painted half the time. It could just be another weird one." I nodded, turning away and helping the others unpack.

​

There were only two rooms in the cabin. Sarah and I shared one, while the other was shared by the men. The rooms upstairs were monastic: a single cot with a cleaned mattress on top, and no furniture, save a single night table and a painting. It continued the same theme as before, this time the blob making up most of the painting.

"Sarah, did you notice the weird paintings?"

"What?" She glanced up from her gaze. She was glaring at the bed, which was quite small. I frowned slightly.

"The paintings, Sarah. Did you see them?"

"No, I don't know why I would. This entire place gives me the creeps," My frown grew deeper. "I don't know why we came."

"I asked that in the car. You seemed fine with coming here. Why are you backing out now?" She sighed, sitting down on the bed. "I don't understand why you didn't say anything then."

"Look, I'm sorry. I was fine with it then. It's just that when we reached here, this entire place felt... off. I don't want to be here, and I don't think we should spend the night here."

I understood what she meant. Everything was off here. The choice of decor, to the pristine condition of the house. There wasn't even a speck of dust despite it being locked up for a year since Marcus' grandfather's death.

I sighed loudly. Sarah looked me in the eyes for what seemed like the first time in a really long time.

"Why don't we ask Marcus and Jake if we can head back? I'm sure we can convince them." She nodded solemnly.

We made our way down the stairs and to my left, I saw a painting that I missed the first time I went up them. That in and of itself was odd, because how do you miss a canvas hanging off the wall? I couldn't have missed that. But I did.

It was the painting I assumed was part of it: a canvas painted fully black, save for a little speck in the corner. The little person pointing was now just blankly staring at the audience. It was so detailed, and I could make out its features. Black hair, tan skin, dark eyes, and a little sliver of a scar on the eyebrow.

I stilled for a moment. My blood went cold, and I could feel my heart stop, and then start once again. My heart pounded against my ribcage with such an intensity that I was in pain. Goosebumps erupted on my skin and I felt myself ache all over. I gasped suddenly and sharply for air.

It was just a fucking painting.

No, this place was weird, I decided for the final time. It didn't matter how much Marcus wanted to stay here. I was going to leave his ass right there if he didn't get into the car.

"Are you alright?" Sarah reached out, holding me steady. I had forgotten she was there for a second. I held her hand, trying to calm myself a bit, so that I don't straight up lash out at Marcus and Jake.

"Dude, that person in the painting looks just like me."

"What painting? There is nothing there." My head cranked to the left and there and behold, there was no painting. I couldn't have imagined it. There was a painting right there.

"Don't fuck with me, Shreya. I'm already super freaked out."

"I'm not fucking with you. There was a painting right there. It was... What did you think I was looking at?"

"You were just staring at the wall."

My mouth went dry. Fuck all this shit, I thought. I am not staying here for a single second.

"Marcus, Jake, let's go!" I bellowed, reaching the bottom of the stairs. The two men were just staring outside. Marcus was staring in awe, while Jake, more pragmatically, looked concerned.

"What's going on?" I asked, hints of apprehension creeping in.

"It's snowing."

"What the fuck? It's October!" Sarah exclaimed, pushed herself to the window, and saw. A thin layer of snow peppered the entire background.

"Hell no, pack your shit. We are not staying here." I shouted, getting our bags and stuff and cramming our food and supplies back in.

"What the fuck? Stop that, Shreya, we can't go anywhere. We already checked," Jake came to my side and stopped me. "The ignition isn't starting. We can't go anywhere. Plus, it's already dark and this place has a population of mountain lions. We can't leave right now. We can try again in the morning." Jake's voice held a tremble, and I tried to ignore it. It only aggravated the deep rolling anxiety that was building up. I could feel the jitter in my bones.

"We can't stay here, Jake. This place is weird. I would rather be eaten by a mountain lion than stay here." I whispered. I was no hero, I knew this within myself. I was a fucking coward, and this place was only making it worse. Every creak in the wood made me snarl, ridden with paranoia.

"Okay, why don't we check the car again?"

I nodded furiously and he pulled me towards the door. Marcus silently handed me the keys and I slipped into the front seat.

The ignition wouldn't start. This car was perfectly fine an hour ago.

My breathing was becoming more shallow.

This car was fine a little while ago.

I leaped out of the car and opened the front. Maybe something had frozen. Maybe the gasoline had frozen.

"Do any of you know anything about cars?"

Sarah came to my side and began looking at the front. She went to the back. She took the flashlight and inspected every part.

"The car is fine. It should run. Let me try."

For ten minutes, each of us came in and out of the driver's seat, trying to start the car. Every failed attempt only made my breathing worse.

I am a grown woman, I shouldn't be this scared, I thought to myself the entire time.

​

"We need to stay in the cabin tonight," Marcus said, his tone low and steady. I could tell he was trying to calm me down, but no amount of soothing was going to bring me any comfort. "We need to go inside."

I wasn't going insane. I was mentally clear. I saw that painting. I saw all of them. I wasn't going mad. The cabin light seemed harsh and yellow, as if mocking me, mocking everything I saw.

But there was nothing I could do. Not now, anyway. I let Marcus take me inside and sit me down on the couch. He handed me a bottle of water, which I downed in seconds. I was still frazzled, but far clearer.

"Sarah and I want to leave."

"We want to too, but right now there is nothing we can do. We have no way out and it's snowing. They won't send anyone up here." Marcus sat down beside me.

I thought to myself, while Jake pulled out dinner: canned refried beans, corn, and several bags of tortilla chips. It was quiet, except for the sound of chips and chewing.

"Do you still have that shotgun?" Marcus nodded, pointing to it on the coffee table. "It's loaded?"

"Yes, so if there is anything weird, I got you." He had incredible charisma, I had to admit. It was part of his charm, why everyone grew so close to him. He had a way of making you believe that he was there until the end and that everything was alright.

Of course, that was until I realized that that was a desperate defense mechanism that he used to hide the fact that he didn't really know what he was doing either.

However, I bit my tongue and relished the warm feeling that the words brought. It kept everything else at bay, for now. But the cabin seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting. I know they wouldn't believe me.

We didn't go back up to the rooms. Instead, we split up: the living room was where Sarah and I slept and the kitchen was where Jake and Marcus slept.

I sat on the couch, the nerves still biting, but not with the same force as before. I was picking at my nails, something I did often when I was nervous. Sarah ran her hand across mine and held it. "Stop that."

I scoffed and turned away. "Nothing about this is fine, Sarah. Being here feels wrong."

She nodded. "I know. We can leave in the morning. It's going to be fine. We don't have to sleep. We can just talk."

I wasn't going to get any sleep anyway. I glanced over into the kitchen. Marcus and Jake seemed to have gone to sleep right away. The lights were off and I could see their feet poking out from the covers they placed down.

I leaned back into the chair and looked at her. "Okay, fine."

"Good."

"Why aren't you comfortable with me?" I blurted out before I could contain it. I didn't even realize that that was something I wanted to ask. It wasn't even on my mind that much.

"Wh-what? I am comfortable with you."

"No, you are always nervous, and you talk more with those two. That's fine, but I just want to know why. We've been friends for a long time and I don't like that you haven't been as close with me as you are with them." I could feel the deep resentful emotions that I had kept bottled inside suddenly rushing out.

"Look, it's not what you think it is. I am close friends with you, Shreya. It's not that I'm not. It's just... I can't... I don't know what to tell you." She sighed, her head in her hands. When she looked up again, I could tell her face was flushed. It was always hard to tell with her deeper complexion, but I had known her for too long to not notice.

"I don't understand."

"I don't want to fuck up what we already have. I am really sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel like this like I didn't like you enough. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"But you did, and I just want to know why."

"I am close to them, but a lot of the time, I'm talking to them... about you," My eyes widened a bit and I started to get an inkling of where this conversation was heading. "Not bad things, of course. We weren't gossiping."

"Do you like me? Like in a romantic way?" Her eyes shot open fully, and she was so visibly embarrassed that it was cute. She didn't even need to say anything. I giggled a bit and she hid her face in her curly hair.

"I'm sorry, I really didn't want to tell you like this."

"Were you ever planning on telling me?"

"Honestly, no. But I guess, now there isn't a choice, right?" I looked up.

I spend a lot of time in my head, I thought. I could have just asked and cleared it up sooner.

"When we get out of here, let's go on a date," I said, sliding my hand on hers. She looked surprised and then grinned really widely. I couldn't help but mirror it as well. She grasped my hand really hard, and I leaned on her shoulder.

​

Maybe this was a good thing, coming to the cabin.

​

I don't know when but I had fallen asleep. I could have been during the conversations I had with Sarah, but I honestly can't remember. But I do remember getting startled awake. There was a loud groaning. At first, it sounded like the groans accompanied by sexual pleasure. I jolted away, pissed off and ready to tell someone off for waking me up.

However, when I rubbed my eyes and sat up, a bit more clearly, it was very clear that they were not groans of passion. There were deep low groans, accompanied by the sound of crunching. It was a disgusting metallic sound, and it was rhythmic: a groan then a crunch.

Bile rose in my stomach as an odor wafted into the room. It was unlike any smell I have ever smelled. It smelled like carrion and shit, and industrial waste products. It wafted from the kitchen in waves, and even after covering my nose, I could feel the heat of it on my face. My eyes burned and I could feel the return of the dinner.

When my stomach was no longer strong enough, I turned and vomited, tears pouring down my face and I spilled my guts onto the wooden floor. My eyes pried open: the floor was no longer a pristine rosewood but a rotting termite-infested mess. I could see the worms turn in the wet and soggy wood. It looked like it was seconds from decomposing. My heart lurched and I turned to wake Sarah when I realized that Sarah was no longer there. In her place was a mound of swarming worms. They writhed and swallowed. I could hear them moving against each other.

My heart pounded, and it almost drowned out the slippery sounds, and the deep groaning.

There was a small gap that they didn't touch. I could see it from where I sat. In the darkness, I almost didn't see it, but I recognized the features: eyes, nose, mouth. They were being eaten away.

I wanted to scream, but there was nothing.

That was the same person I had been kissing just a few hours ago.

It was as if I was bound with some invisible rope. I couldn't control my body, and I couldn't even move. I just sat there, watching worms eat away at her.

The groaning suddenly crescendoed in volume. The sudden sound jolted me into action. I grabbed Sarah, or what was left of her. I reached into the worms, but I only felt pain in my arms. I could feel the tearing of my flesh as I bit down my tongue from screaming.

I tried to touch anything that was left of her, something to anchor my hands onto so that I could pull, but I only sunk my hands deeper and deeper until I touched the floor.

Biting my cheek, my eyes pouring out with tears, I pulled my hands out only to find them covered in red and black clots. It was as if her body had completely liquified. Tears were cold on my face.

There were a few worms attached to my skin, which I pulled out, taking pieces of my flesh with them. Shallow breathing was starting to hurt my chest.

The groaning stopped and my breathing seemed to echo across the cabin. My eyes widened.

I need to get out of here.

I need to check for Jake and Marcus first.

​

I crouched and crawled my way to the opening of the kitchen door, anticipating a gruesome sight like I had seen before. It was far too quiet. I could hear only the sounds of my blood rushing in my ears with every beat of my heart.

I peeked into the kitchen, ever so slightly so that I was not seen by anything that may be in the room.

​

It was immaculate. There was nothing out of place, cleaner than it had been before. There was nothing that I could have expected: there was nothing at all. It was the same kitchen, stripped down to its four walls. There was no blood, no guts, or worms. Jake and Marcus weren't there either.

There was just nothing.

At this point, I felt like I had lost my mind. I stood, uncaring of how much in danger I was. I just wanted to get out of here as fast as I could. I spun on my heel and ran to the door, leaping over the rotting pile of worms and bounding towards the door.

The moment my hands touched the doorknob, I could feel the world slipping away. It was strange to describe but it felt as if something was being removed from me, and I was overcome with darkness, the feeling stopping as quickly as it came.

​

"Shreya!" I felt myself being shaken and I jolted.

There were three people above me, my friends. They were alive and well.

"You okay? You were mumbling and started crying in the middle." Marcus asked, handing me some water.

I shut my eyes and breathed out a sigh of relief.

It was just a nightmare.

"I had the weirdest dream," I said, taking the water and downing it immediately. "You guys were there and we were in the cabin. It doesn't matter, it wasn't real-"

​

"It wasn't a dream." They said simultaneously, their grins wide enough to show gums, mirroring each other.

The feeling of slipping away overtook me faster this time, and I blacked out.

​

​

Part 1

The wooden boards covering the windows of my apartment were easily broken by the Jesus statue, as it effortlessly made its way into my apartment. I quickly got out of bed and grabbed my shotgun, that was already loaded and laying next to me. The statue advanced towards me, the hooks it had used to climb to my apartment on its hands. I pointed at it and shot. The statue flew back towards the wall, and I shot it again and again and again, until only pieces of it remained. I immediately had to change my pants afterwards. There is something in the absolute fear of facing death that throws your dignity out of the window.

So, I had survived the first attack. It would only get harder from then on, I thought, as the police officers put me inside their car. I didn’t even protest when they took my shotgun and apprehended me for reckless usage of firearms. Welp, telling them how statues of Jesus had been trying to kill me would result in them locking me in a place for mentally ill patients, which are usually full of Christ imagery. I wouldn’t live for much longer, anyway.

They locked me in a small individual cell in the back of the police station, and told me to sit tight for the next two days or so as my case was being processed. I didn’t have a lawyer, and I did not care enough to try to hire one at that point. It would be pointless. There was a small crucifix with a small Jesus on the corridor of my cell. It was a matter of time before that inanimate object became very animated and turned me into an inanimate object.

So, you must imagine how surprised I was when one of the officers told me my lawyer was there to see me. I informed her I did not have a lawyer, but the policewoman told me someone had probably hired him for me. I asked her if she wasn’t sure the lawyer wasn’t a Jesus statue in disguise, but she just laughed. Trembling, I went to the meeting room for my possible doom.

Luckily, the lawyer wasn’t a disguised Jesus, but a priest, who also happened to have a law license. Father Abraham Hudson (no, this is not his real name). He was an Englishman who seemed to be in his late fifties and yet on a great physical condition, and spoke perfect Spanish, with no English accent at all. While talking to him, I discovered the priest was also a polyglot and a scholar, he spoke French, Czech, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, German, Portuguese and some basic Greek. Hudson told me the Vatican had been informed about my case, and had discreetly sent him to investigate and figure out a solution. The curse that had been affecting my family, he told me, was extremely rare, but not unheard of. There had been three other known cases in the past, and in one of them, they managed to almost break the curse, and he was the one leading that effort. He showed me a Polaroid picture, dated from 1991. It depicted the body of a teenage boy, full of fractured exposed bones and contorted limbs, being removed from the Seine River by the French police.

He then gave me a copy of the file he had written when he worked on that poor boy’s case in the 90s. I asked him if I could share it here, and he allowed me to, provided I change all names to fake ones. According to him, this file is the key to save my life.

“I’m writing this report to help us deal with future instances of this particular curse, should the need ever arise again. What we are dealing with is a terrible curse that eliminates entire lineages, and uses figures of our sacred faith for nefarious purposes. Before we proceed, I must say that we failed on protecting Philippe Desólé, and that our failure in doing so costed him his life. However, his sacrifice shall not be in vain, as the knowledge we acquired with his case will certainly help us deal with similar matters in the future.

The curse manifests in a simple yet dangerous way. Statues of certain saints come to life and attempt to murder members of certain bloodlines in any way they can, which are often very gruesome, before leaving a message written next to the body and seemingly vanishing. The statues can be of any size, and it appears that each statue has different abilities or strategies. These statues can still be destroyed, however, and there appears to be a cooldown between attacks from the possessed objects. If a attack fails, for any reason, be it destruction or containment of the attacker, this cooldown occurs. It can range from two days to a month, or years, in earlier stages of the curse.

Before we get to Philippe Desólé, we should discuss the reports about this curse that came before him, that I managed to locate in the Vatican confidential files. These were very old reports, and their states of conservation were far from ideal. The first instance occurred in the late 16th century, and there is not much detail, apart that it occurred in Portugal in the late 15th century, and resulted in the annihilation of a small village. I and other priests, several of them Portuguese, spent a lot of time looking for information about this one, but we couldn’t find anything. Probably the documents, if there ever were any, are long lost or destroyed.

The second known instance of the curse occurred in Prague during the early 17th century. The report simply says that a cardinal specialized in dealing with dark sorcery was dispatched from Rome to Prague to help deal with a curse that been terrorizing a family of bakers, involving statues of Jesus coming to life. We have a bit more information about this one, but I had to do a bit of in loco research. I went to Prague and spent several weeks in local libraries searching for information. The tale had become something like an old, forgotten legend. There were only a handful mentions, in very old books. The most recent was a book of kid’s fables published in 1914. I found, in total, four versions of the story. I analyzed all versions and attempted to find common elements, prioritizing the oldest versions, and hopefully I could get as close to the truth as possible by doing this.

The curse was inflicted upon the family of a baker called Pavlíček, from the neighborhood of Nové Město. The reasons for this are not well known, but I found mentions of sawdust bread being sold in his establishment, although it’s improbable someone would be cursed to such a harsh fate because of this. Pavlíček was found roasted in his own oven, and someone wrote on the bakery’s wall “fata haereticorum”, The Fate of Heretics. Notably, a notorious stone statue of Jesus that resided on the square next to his bakery disappeared, and eyewitnesses claimed they saw the statue entering the bakery around closing hours. It’s my personal theory that he could be a Protestant, which could be the reason for him being cursed, as Protestantism was on the rise during the time but was extremely rejected by the Habsburg Dynasty, but this is just a theory, a religious theory.

Regardless, Pavlíček was the first victim of the curse that time, but not the last. Pavlíček’s son took over his bakery. That is, until circa fifteen years later, when he was found dead on the bakery. Sources diverge on how exactly he was killed. Some say he was simply found strangled to death with a rosary inside his bakery, others that he was also quartered with a cleaver. Regardless, the new statue of Jesus, that was installed after the first one went missing, was also lost.

Then, the Pavlíčeks moved their bakery to another neighborhood, believing it was the location of their shop, and not the family itself, that was cursed. They moved their bakery to a the neighborhood of Staré Město, but the street they reportedly relocated to, podvodníkova cesta, seems to no longer exist, as I found no record of it.

There, the Pavlíčeks would find out that it wasn’t their old bakery that was cursed, but their family. Seven years after the previous murder, the widow of the last baker was found brutally murdered in a local church. The statue of Jesus was missing, and the poor woman had been nailed to the crucifix on the wall. One of my sources claim she had also been decapitated and her head exposed on the church’s altar, but the others do not confirm this information. What all sources do agree is that “fata haereticorum” had been carved on her chest. The statue of Jesus of that church was nowhere to be seen.

At this point, the family came to a local church and begged for help. People had been avoiding them, afraid of being cursed too, and their business was drowning in debt, as no one wanted to sell them wheat or meat, and no one wanted to buy anything from the cursed family. The archbishop asked the Vatican to send a specialist in curse-breaking, and the Vatican sent a cardinal. Although nothing else is confirmed, there is indeed a letter in the Vatican files from the archbishop of Prague requesting help to deal with a curse of statues afflicting a family, so even if we can’t verify the veracity of most of the history, we do know at least the call for help existed.

Now, the end of the story gets messy, and we do not know with certainty what happened. The newest sources claim that the Vatican priest was able save the family, spending seven days and seven nights in a exorcism ritual, that costed him an eye. No other members of the family perished by the hand of a Jesus statue, but they were so traumatized by all the events that they decided to leave town, and no one saw any of them ever since. In my personal opinion, this ending is probably untruthful, as I’m certain that the cardinal would write a detailed report if he had indeed lost an eye in an exorcism. Aggression against priests during exorcism rites is somewhat common, but almost never to such an extent.

The end of the Pavlíčeks, according to the older sources, was a bit more tragic. Even before the cardinal arrived in Prague, another statue of Jesus came to life and brutally murdered another member of the Pavlíček, this time by defenestration. The population then decided that the Pavlíčeks were not only cursed, but they were infecting the city with evil, and then they lynched the family and burned their house and bakery down. Sadly, I think this is way more probable, and the reason that the Vatican has no further reports about this case, I reflect, it’s because there was no one left there to save, as the Pavlíčeks had all been murdered.

In the case of Philippe Desólé, I was able to observe the case in person. The whole reason I spent weeks in Prague was because I wanted to save him by studying the previous iterations of the curse. However, even if I wasn’t able to save him, I have reason to believe I was very, very close to doing so.

Desólé’s ancestor, Jean-Michel Desólé, was one of the top lieutenants of Jean-Baptiste Carrier during the height of the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. He was personally responsible for rounding up catholic priests and nuns, and anyone suspected of aiding the pro-monarchist Vendée Insurrection, or even related to anyone who rebelled. These people were subsequently either drowned en masse in the Loire River, shot or guillotined. Reportedly, Jean-Michel and his men also committed extremely deplorable sins against the the female prisoners. After the fall of Robespierre, Jean-Michel Desólé was tried along with Carrier for war crimes, and guillotined. Fearing reprisals, his family moved away from France and only returned during the last years of the reign of Napoleon. Apparently, one of the reasons that made them move back to Paris was when, around 1813, one of their family members was found brutally murdered in the city they were currently living, but I wasn’t able to find many details about this death.

Then, in 1821, another member of the Desólés was found dead. In this case, I was able to locate the original report in the files of the Police Prefecture of Paris. Clotilde Marie Desólé, daughter of Jean-Michel Desólé, was working by selling flowers on the street, when was stabbed to death by a person that was reportedly disguised as the Blessed Virgin Mary. This aggressor wrote “iustitia pro Vendée” using Clotilde Marie’s blood, before jumping into the Seine River and disappearing. Eyewitnesses were so shocked and scared they didn’t do anything, probably suffering from some form of Bystander Effect.

In 1826, another member of the Desólé family was killed by a person reportedly disguised as the Blessed Virgin Mary in a lavender field in southern France, although this time I wasn’t able to find the cause of death and where it took place exactly.

Then, the timespan kept getting shorter. In 1828, another Desólé was found dead, this time drowned in a puddle after a night of heavy rain. Iustitia pro Vendée had been written with chalk on the door of his house.

And in 1829, another death occurred, when Marinette Desólé was murdered by a person dressed as the Blessed Virgin Mary, who killed her with it’s bare hands by breaking her neck. However, this time a policeman, called François Delacroix, was there. The officer went after the murderer, but to his shock, when he hit it with his baton, he discovered he had hit a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that was moving like it was alive. The statue ran away, and Delacroix chased it, but when the statue turned into a corner, it disappeared. Delacroix wrote a detailed report to the Paris Police Prefecture, but he was deemed insane and his license was revoked.

In 1832, three more deaths had occurred, one of them extremely brutal, involving two of the Desólés being dismembered and then sewn back together in a single horrendous human corpse. The police tried to investigate the case to no avail. But it appears that Delacroix decided to conduct his own independent investigation. Most of the information concerning Jean-Michel Desólé had been lost after an angry mob invaded the National Convention and either stole or burned the files concerning the Desólés trial in the Insurrection of 12 Germinal, in 1795. The information that I gathered about Desólé being a top lieutenant of Carrier and participating in the atrocities of Vendée was actually uncovered by Delacroix after he interviewed people that had lived through these tumultuous times. The fact is that the Desólé family, which was very large, as Jean-Michel had thirteen children, and each of these children would end up having at least one child, did not know the involvement of their ancestor with the Reign of Terror. This information had been hidden by the late wife of Jean-Michel Desólé, who was also probably the first victim of the curse.

Then, Delacroix, who over the course of his investigation involved himself romantically with a member of the Desólé family, and feared that he was himself now a possible victim, sent letters to the church asking for help. The church sent an Italian exorcist, who Delacroix simply identifies as Father Giuseppe, to aid in solving the curse.

After several failed exorcism attempts, and four more violent deaths, Father Giuseppe found a way to save the family. Once a year, the family would have to visit the place where the victims of their despicable ancestor had been laid to rest, and apologize. They managed to get there and do so, but during this voyage, the curse struck as never before, and five family members were killed in the span of a week. After the apology, however, the murders stopped. Delacroix himself was murdered, but his now widow kept his diary. It was stored in the Desólé’s cellar.

Fast forwarding to the 1970s, for some reason, the Desólés stopped doing the ritual of visiting the Loire River. Most of the information in this part comes from interviews I conducted with Philippe Desólé. Maybe after the May 68 protests the family decided that it was an outdated tradition derived from a forgotten legend. Regardless, when I discovered how to stop the curse, Philippe was already dead.

In 1977, Jeanne Desólé, the grandmother of Philippe, was found hanging from her ceiling. She had been brutally mutilated, and the statue wrote “Iustitia pro Vendée” on the floor among her remains.

Then, on 1985, Maurice Desólé, the father of Philippe, was found frozen to death. He had been put inside the family’s freezer, and the door had been chained. The phrase “Iustitia pro Vendée” had been written with chalk on the freezer.

And in 1989, Christine Desólé, mother of Philippe, was found headless in her bed. The phrase “Iustitia pro Vendée” had been written with her blood on the wall above her bed.

Until that point, Philippe and the police were treating the case as some kind of murderous cult or serial-killer. The case of Issei Sagawa was still fresh in the mind of the Parisians. When Philippe barely survived an attack by a small wooden figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he came to the church for help.

At the time, I was studying unrelated subjects in the Catholic Institute of Paris, and one of my superiors sent me to help Desólé. We put inside our most secure room in the basement of one of our churches near Paris, that was used as a stronghold during the Middle Ages, and I personally hired a security team to protect him while we looked for a way to save him from the curse. But I must say, that I made a grave mistake, and utterly failed in assisting Philippe. I went to Portugal and then to Prague, and spent months looking for ways to save him by looking into the past. I focused so much in the past that I did not see what was right in front of me all along. After spending two months, surviving attacks from crazed statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, including some very close calls, Philippe decided to head back home and die in dignity. He had given me a key to his house, so I could search it for clues. But I didn’t. I believed that his family would hardly have something which could help me. And when I came back and finally looked around his house and found the diary, he had already been murdered.

As I finished reading the report, I looked at father Abraham Hudson, and thanked him. I now knew what I had to do, and where I had to go. I just needed to wait two more days now, and I would be free to do it.

///

This was my last mission in Special Operations. Here’s why.

“I need you to start at the beginning Marcus.” The way he spoke shook me to my core. Everything about him, from his slick-pressed gray suit, to his black top fedora. I could tell he had no background in Special Operations. I could also tell he was somebody you didn’t want to upset, so I did as I was told. 

The mission towered before us like a shadow in the night, a recon of what we believed to be a terrorist organization's base nestled deep within the dense woods of the Appalachian Mountains. We were briefed thoroughly, equipped meticulously, and trained extensively. But as we approached the seemingly abandoned compound, an unsettling feeling lingered in the air, like a premonition of impending doom. I led the reconnaissance unit, my voice steady as I issued orders over the radio.

"Stay sharp, everyone. Eyes peeled for any signs of activity. We don't know what we're walking into."

The crackling of radio static filled the tense silence as my team spread out, cautiously advancing through the overgrown foliage surrounding the perimeter. Private Ryan Hayes, the youngest member of the team, kept glancing nervously at the dense forest that seemed to swallow the feeble light of the moon.

"Sir, I've got movement to the east," Corporal Lisa Alvarez reported, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Possible hostile activity." I nodded grimly.

"Stay hidden and observe. We need to gather as much intel as we can before making any moves."

As the minutes stretched into hours, the tension mounted with each passing second. The forest seemed to be holding its breath, as if anticipating the inevitable. Then, a sudden noise shattered the stillness, a low twig snap that sent Ryan into a cold sweat..

"Did anyone else hear that?" Private Hayes asked, his voice trembling.

"Negative," I replied, my grip tightening on my rifle.

"Stay focused, people. We're not alone out here."

I paused briefly whilst recounting the stark beginning to mission BlackHawk but it was enough to get the man's attention. The look he gave me alone struck fear in my soul.

"Continue,"

he said in a deep, raspy voice. I remember the still taste of the damp air. It reminded me of the calm before a storm. Then it happened. Gunfire echoed through the night as unseen assailants ambushed us from all sides. We were prepared for this and shot each body down one by one until only lifeless bodies on the ground remained. Amidst the chaos, Private Hayes found himself separated from the group, his heart pounding in his chest as he darted into the darkness of the appalachians.

"Sir, I'm being chased by 3-4 hooded attackers! Requesting immediate backup!" Hayes shouted into his radio, his voice laced with panic.

"We're on our way, Hayes. Hold tight," I responded, my voice strained with urgency.

As gunfire ceased, I noticed Hayes’ labored breathing through the radio, his next words caught us off guard as he spoke,

“I’m navigating through a maze of dilapidated buildings now, I’ve seemed to have lost them”, a sense of foreboding washed over us.

“The air is growing thick, and there’s a stench unlike anything I’ve ever smelt. I see strange symbols covering the walls. Captain.. I’m.. scared.” Hayes said, his quivering voice barely audible over the crackling of the radio. 

As we continued to follow Haye’s tracker we had also started to catch a slight scent of the decaying smell he had caught earlier but this was to be expected I thought. A few minutes later and nothing from Haye’s we had decided to enter the maze of collapsed and crumbling buildings. A flare burned dimly near a building so we decided to leave the other 2 men to stay watch outside whilst we went inside.

“Take a look at this” I said pointing to the runic symbols that covered every surface. We surveyed the area with caution, only for the 2 others with I and Lisa to start arguing.

“Those are more magic the gathering lookin symbols” Apollo said.

“No it definitely belongs to dungeons and dragons” Nexus argued.

At this point I was just wanting to go back home but we had a job to do and by the time I looked back after my train of far away thoughts I found them wrestling each other to the ground over what the runes had looked to come from.

“Would you two fuckwits get off each other and shut up, we have to find Haye’s and finish the mission” I half yelled to not give our position away but enough for them to hear clearly.

"Who are you talking to?" Lisa asked. "The two idiots attracting unwanted attention." I snapped

"Marcus, they're out front.. where you wanted them." Lisa responded.

My blood ran cold as it suddenly came back to me. I ordered Nexus and Apollo to stand watch outside the building complex while we went in to look for Hayes. The radio suddenly crackled to life.

“I found a back entrance to a building since it’s starting to rain hard out where I am, I can barely hear you over the static” Haye’s voice chirped through our radios.

"Permission to enter, sir?" Hayes asked, his voice trembling.

"Granted. Enter cautiously and keep your eyes peeled.. This is now a retrieval and extraction." I replied, my voice a lifeline in the darkness.

“I’m walking up to the building's back entrance now and I see.. I see something, wait, that looks like hooded figures up ahea-” His voice cut out mid sentence as he presumably entered the building.

“Shit shit shit” I said aloud and started jogging in the direction of the back entrance, hoping to get to a possibly hurt Haye along with Lisa following my pursuit.

"Stay calm, Ryan. We're coming for you," I replied, my voice strained with determination.

As our reconnaissance team Delta rapidly approached the flared back exit, we noticed a slight electricity in the air as our hairs stood on end. When we first stepped foot into the building’s back entrance it was almost as if we had been put straight into a humid freezer, the kind you’d find at my Uncle Mickey's house and boy it was freezing. The second thing we noticed was Hayes’ rifle. Empty. This made no sense as we had heard zero gunfire moments before. Me and Lisa were confused but we had to move on and make the extraction successful.

“Apollo, Nexus, report in.” I said over the radio, got nothing but crackling silence in return.

“Shit.” I muttered,

“Signal must be too weak.”

Me and Lisa traversed the building's interior. Our steel toe boots hitting the wet floor. There was a tension in the air, and I knew why. Lisa doubted my ability to lead us. I swear I caught her eying me a few times. As we continued our imperial march down the hallway we had encountered the dog tag of our boy Haye’s, not a good sign at all.

”Haye’s come in, are you injured?”, nothing except total static but a slight slur came out of the radio like someone trying to speak for the first time.

“Haye’s, Nexus, Apollo, is that you. Come in”.

To our horror the room we ended walking into whilst distracted by the radio was well, there’s no good way to put this.. It was filled with bones of all sizes, some ranged from carrot sized while some were the size of an oversized frying pan.

“Holy shit…” Lisa muttered under her breath.

“This wasn’t on any of the intel we had.”

She was right. Nothing could have prepared us for this. The radio crackled to life.

“Turn around.”

We immediately swing around towards the door and I’m not sure how nor do I really care but there was Apollo. I looked at Lisa and she shot me a look of approval. She saw him too. “I told you to stay outside!” I said.

“I’m sorry, our position was compromised and we had to get the hell out of there.” he explained.

"And where is your great dungeon master buddy Nexus?” I asked with a touch of annoyance and concern.

“I don’t know, we ran in two different directions.” he said.

“They could’ve got to him for all we know.”

That’s when I noticed it. It was slight and any average person would’ve missed it. His eyes. I was shining my flashlight straight at his face, yet I saw no reflection in his eyes. At first I chalked it up to delusion but the more I examined his physical appearance the more irregularities I saw. His hair was a slightly darker shade of gray, His skin was paler than usual. He even seemed taller at one point. The teeth when he showed a grateful grin looked irregularly sharp, almost dagger-like. It appeared that Lisa didn’t see what I did because she gave him a firm handshake and they started to set off to find Haye’s along with Nexus. He also had a tinge of blood smeared on the toe of his steel toed boot. As they left the room, I trailed behind, making sure to keep an eye on Apollo.

“Hellooo” a familiar voice said on the radio.

Ryan sounded.. Off. I didn’t know how to describe it. He prolonged every word he said as if he was unsure that was the word he wanted to use.

“Ryan, is that you?” I asked.

“Yess,” he responded.

“Tell us where you are. We need land-markers.”

“Goo past…” he said.

“Can you repeat that?” I asked, Silence.

As if he were choosing his next words very carefully.

“Ryan, we need you to be more specific on your coordinates” I ordered in a stern monotone voice.

When he didn’t respond I ordered Lisa and Apollo to follow me deeper into the building we had entered into. I was trying to rationalize it by telling myself Haye’s was probably slurring his speech due to the fact it was super cold and he could have hypothermia I thought to myself.

“Is it just me or is it getting colder the further we go into this crumbling wreckage of a building?” Lisa murmured to nobody in particular.

“May I take a minute to collect myself?”

I said to the old agents that were collecting my memories like bees on a flower. They nodded and I took a sip of a water glass that sat on the metal table in the room we lingered in. After half a minute I continued my account. So, we rounded a corner and we saw a figure just standing there in the dark hallway. It nerved the shit out of me since it stood like a statue and as quiet as an asylum chamber. By the looks of it the figure had a uniform the same as the ones we were wearing which made it seem odd.

“Hey, is that you Haye’s?” I called out toward the unmoving figure.

It didn’t respond nor move an inch to the sound of my command. Just as a precaution I ordered the others to check their ammunition and point it forward just in case it got messy. And just then I noticed, Apollo didn’t have his rifle which greatly confused me.

“Apollo, where is your rifle?” I ordered in an angered tone.

“I lost it in the scramble me and Nexus had earlier when the terrorist ambushed us whilst waiting outside as you ordered us to.” He replied looking pale as he probably recounted it in his head.

I gave him an angered stare but shot my gaze back at the still unmoving figure. I held my hand up to tell Lisa and Apollo to stay back as I slowly closed the distance between me and it. As I came within a few feet of it I poked the figure in the back with the tip of my rifle. It promptly fell over with a deafening dull thud.

“Holy fucking jesus on a skateboard” I half yelled when I realized it was Nexus’s uniform with his dog tag around the mannequins neck.

 It was a god damn mannequin which scared the shit out of me and the others. How in the hell did his uniform and all get around a mannequin that just so happened to perfectly fit his clothes. This shit show was already making no sense but now I felt like this was a low budget nightmare.

“They must have gotten him and done this as a sick joke to toy with us.” Apollo said in a shaky voice.

“We don’t know that but it is indeed a grim possibility. But we must remain on point and hope for the best, even though this job is never always a happy ending” I told them with sadness in my tone.

It was a while and in that time I thought Lisa was giving me multiple side glances which really set the idea in my head that she might try something with opposing my authority of the mission at hand. We were checking and sweeping every room we came across only to find nothing but dust and static on the radio until we either heard a response on the radio or came across our other lost teammates. About 12 rooms down the hallway we found a door slightly ajar which we found all the other shut tight. I halted the unit and made a hand signal to proceed with guns drawn into the room.

“Three, Two, One” I counted quietly.

When I hit zero we entered the room with a slight pace in our stealthy entrance into the room. To this very day I wish we had left that room alone but we had a job to do. What we found was Nexus, well, what remained of what you could barely call a human.

The mangled remains of Nexus lay sprawled amidst the surrounding ruble, an art piece of carnage. His form resembled a pulpy chaos, with flesh torn into ribbons and organs strewn about as though crafted by a butcher catering exclusively to Bundy and Dahmer themselves.

Limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, bones protruding through torn skin like jagged spears. Chunks of flesh had been ripped away, leaving gaping wounds that ooze crimson blood onto the ruined floor. His face, contorted in betrayal, was barely recognizable beneath the mass of ripped tendons and muscle.

Eyes stared lifelessly, wide with terror, while lips peeled back in a silent scream, revealing broken teeth protruding from the back of his throat and neck as well as partially and having his own tongue bitten off, hanging out of his mouth like a dog with its head out a car window. A rusty piece of rebar was protruding through the back of his head and out of where his left eye should have been in a bloody fashion.

It was a scene of unimaginable horror, a testament to the merciless brutality of whoever had done this upon Lieutenant Gabriel Nexus. And as we stood amidst the carnage, the realization dawned upon us that in the darkness of the crumbling labyrinth, something merciless lurked, its bloodlust insatiable and its thirst for harm unquenchable.

“Well, whoever did this should have left us some flowers too because this is a very fucked up art piece it made out of him.” I remarked with a frigid chill running through my veins.

 I was promptly punched in the arm by Lisa for making that remark and as soon as Apollo came through the door the after us to where we stood he froze like a statue and doubled over a few feet away from us from the fucked sight of Nexus.

“We need to get the fuck out of here” I thought aloud.

Apollo and I shared the same unspoken thought, a lingering question that danced on the edge of our minds until Lisa voiced it aloud, cutting through the tense air,

"Do we radio home base and request the dreadnoughts?"

"Even if we do, which we should, I doubt they'll send them. It's not disastrous enough for them to intervene. Plus, those guys are just muscle, they'll shred everything they see," I replied, my confidence tinged with uncertainty.

"It's worth a shot. And if they refuse, we can always bail in the armored truck we arrived in," Apollo suggested.

"We'll be toast if we bail, whether or not the base agrees," I countered, my voice edged with a sneer.

I thought over our options, and it became clear there were no good choices. Stay and risk further danger, or call for extraction and face potential consequences. Calling in the dreadnoughts wasn't viable either, as they were essentially a last resort.

"Unit Delta to base, do you copy?" I asked sternly into the radio receiver.

"Base to Delta, copy. What's the situation?" The man on the other end asked with curiosity and professionalism.

"Delta Unit to base, we've got one KIA, another MIA. Multiple hostiles surrounding the compound. Requesting immediate backup!" I conveyed, a hint of panic evident.

When the base hadn't responded right away, worry gnawed at my mind. Had we lost connection?

"Base to Delta Unit, backup denied due to current situation. Be advised, we are detecting multiple signatures around the area you are located in" He told me with confidence and a touch of empathy.

"Delta Unit to base, roger that. We'll be on site until the threat is neutralized," I confirmed before signing off.

With no backup en-route, we were left to fend for ourselves. As I straightened my back, I saw Hayes limping toward us, his condition shockingly worse than imagined. His skin drooped in some areas and stretched thin in others, a grim sight that made my skin crawl.

"H-Haye's, is that you? Where have you been?" I asked, a mix of relief and anger in my voice.

Hayes barely acknowledged my presence, his demeanor unsettling. But before I could dwell on it, I spotted a few flashlights in the distance coming from a group of 3 people patrolling the area it seemed. I’ll grill his brains out when we get back to base after we finished the mission I thought to myself. 

I was about to brief the team on our next move when I realized Hayes was missing again. Alarm bells rang in my mind. Hadn't I just seen him moments ago?

"Did anyone notice Hayes is missing again?" I asked, a chill creeping up my spine.

"Yeah, he said something about scouting a vantage point down the hall," Apollo replied, his tone nonchalant.

"Check on him, make sure he's okay," I ordered, my unease growing.

"That directive will haunt me forever, Agent... Wait, you never disclosed your first name," I said, addressing the agent from the FBI, ATF, or whatever damn organization he represented.

"I suspect you're delaying what you must disclose, eager to return to your solitary abode and share this tale with your online acquaintances. But should you do so, I'll have no choice but to imprison you for violating the NDA I'll provide once this story concludes. So, refrain from inquiries and proceed," the seasoned individual growled, their voice resonating with the weight of years and authority, leaving me shaken to my core.

“Apologies,” I murmured.

So, when Apollo had ventured off to check up on Haye’s I had noticed a few figures tentatively crouching alongside the building just a floor below us. Those terrorist fucks were going to try and get the jump on our unit if we stepped a foot outside of this building we were located in. 

“Hey guys, I have spotted 4 armed figures crouched on the east wall just a floor down from the window I am closest to.” I spoke firmly into the radio.

Before I could lose myself in the recedes of my mind I witnessed Apollo barrel through the open doorway and nearly crash through a closed wooden door before he could stop himself. He looked white as a ghost and out of breath like he just ran a full marathon. "

Hey, watch where you're going Apollo” Barked Lisa as she had a near miss with Apollo colliding with her head on.

“C-C-Captain, I f-found Haye’s..” He shakely said in a tone that was barely audible.

“Okay, is he alright?” I questioned.

“H-He’s.. His b-body is gone.”

“What are you talking about Apollo, is he alright and still there?” I demanded with unease.

“His body is g-gone, only h-his skin is l-left..” Apollo said whilst his knees were buckling and shaking under his weight.

I hadn’t realized it at the time, it took me a few seconds to process what he said until it just clicked. When I figured out what he meant I bolted towards the hallway to find the room where Haye’s went to find a good vantage point. When I finally found the room I gagged as the sight was horrific.

 Before us lay Private Hayes, or rather, what remained of him, a ghastly shedded skin draped over the cold earth. His skin, once a canvas of life, now hung in tattered shreds, a macabre tapestry stretched over a devoid room. With only his skin remaining, the flesh was only shedding strips like shedded snakeskin. 

Beneath the shredded remnants of his flesh, there was nothing but emptiness, a void where muscle and sinew once pulsed with vitality, now emptied by, well. Nothing. Blood, thick and viscous, seeped from the shredded remains, mingling with the badly scented room in a sickening display. His face, a face of surprise and pain, bore the brunt of the humanities fury. Eyes, wide with horror, stared sightlessly into the abyss, their once vibrant hue now dulled by the chill embrace of death. Lips, torn and mangled, were frozen in a silent frown, a testament to the unspeakable damage he had endured. But amidst the desolation, one thing was clear Private Hayes was beyond salvation. In this forsaken place, the darkness held sway, and the horrors of man that lurked within were beyond the normal man’s eye.

Apollo appeared behind me suddenly with a surprisingly calm expression. What I hadn’t noticed before was that the hunting knife situated in his waistband was missing when I saw it a few minutes ago..

“Apollo, where is your knife?” I asked with concern.

“Oh, I had probably lost it from the ambush we had earlier.” He said in a nervous tone.

“You better be right about that, don’t lose weapons the terrorists can use against you again, yes?” I barked.

At this point Lisa tried to look through the doorway but we had subdued her efforts and forced her away from the room, for her sake. We need to radio in base and leave with or without their permission I thought to myself. I don’t care if I get my head put onto a stake in my boss's office. At that point I entered the room and noticed tossed furniture and blood stains leading towards a closed closet door.

“Apollo, watch my back, I’m going to check out the closed door.” I told him with conviction.

As I crept closer towards the door the smell I caught earlier got stronger, it was heavy with copper and a slight hint of decay. I stood before the door and in one swift motion I swung open the creaky old battered door and with deep sorrow in my soul I unfortunately found the insides and bones of the insides of Haye’s slouched in the dark abyss that the closet held in a tight grasp. The detail that turned my blood from ice to boiling hot rage was a knife protruding from Ryan’s sternum, a knife with Apollo’s bloodied initials on the handle of the blade..

Next thing I knew my temper exploded like Krakatoa erupting after thousands of years, a rage that I thought to be impossible to fully radiate from a human.

“APOLLO, YOU SICK SON OF A BITCH." I screamed at him not caring if the bogeys outside could hear or not.

Before he could rifle his gun at me I pulled my service pistol from its holster and fired a shot that ripped through Apollo’s shoulder like a frenzied rocket. He managed to pull a shot off at me too but the bullet only grazed my thigh. His agonizing yells and moans of pain echoed throughout the building with Lisa bursting into the room where I shot him and where the remains of Haye’s skin and innards were strewn about. 

“Marcus, put your gun down. Why the fuck did you shoot Apollo?” She demanded from me.

“Do you not see the remains of Haye’s behind me? When I checked on the body I found a knife with Apollo’s initials on it protruding from Haye’s sternum.” I sternly said with my teeth clenched.

I sincerely thought I was losing my mind but that thought was pushed aside when Lisa confirmed what I saw only a few moments ago. She looked down at the now profusely bleeding Apollo and gave him a look I could only describe as pure hate and disgust, so before I could tell her to handcuff him and not cause any more damage to him she grabbed her handgun and shot him square in the temple.

“Jesus fucking christ Alvarez, why did you do that? We could have taken him in and put him in prison for life or even the death sentence!” I yelled at her for the unprofessional actions taken to get rid of Apollo.

“Let’s just get the fuck out of here, I just need to radio base on what our next move is.” I thought aloud

.“Unit Delta to Base, come in” I spoke into the radio.

“-Static-”

Shit, I guess the concrete building is blocking the radio signals so we have to leave on our own accord then. I peeked outside the window the crimson walls had to offer and had not seen any hostile enemies around or approaching our current location, perhaps they left the compound in fear of more officers being called down to take the rest of them out for a date with the reaper.

“Let's just get out of here and back to base, I just can’t stand seeing any more death tonight.” Lisa told me with desperation in her eyes. I had the same idea but refused to say it until she did that for me.

We trudged down the stairs and peeked out the front entrance to find the corpses of the terrorists we had shot down from their high horse just a few short hours ago. We proceeded with rifles drawn along with a swiftness that was questionable considering that stealth was a good sized priority when traversing the labyrinth of crumbling cobblestone buildings. When we were about 100 yards away from the armored truck Lisa had tripped on a root that stuck out of the ground which made her stumble and fall in an awkward angle so that she sharply hit her head on one of the many rocks the size of yoga balls that littered the area.

“Shit, Lisa are you alright?”

I said in a consoling tone. She wouldn’t respond as I assumed she was either unconscious or dead from her untimely fall. So ultimately I had to carry her a hundred or so yards and into the truck. When I put her in the back and I hopped into the driver's seat I noticed the keys were still in the ignition, my dumbass had left them there so I am lucky nobody decided to steal our only escape. I turned the ignition and the vehicle rumbled with steady intensity, ready to take us far far away.

“So that’s my adult only fairy tale you wanted out of me, agent.” I spoke to him in an overall tired tone.

"And how is Lisa holding up sir?"

“She is braindead since the blow to her head gave her major brain damage so she will never remember this mission and will need to live in an assisted living home until she ends up dead.” The agent said like it was the most normal goddamn thing he’s ever said.

In the end the agent made me sign an NDA which he promised my sorry ass earlier and sent me on my way. So, that’s my story and I’ll put my bets that the agent will be super fucking pissed when he figures out that I recorded our entire conversation on this recorder I have used for your interested mind.

I’ll leave you with some advice, humanity will always be the apex predator to what it can conjure up against you. At least you can hide under the covers from the monster under your bed, but when you are faced with someone with true horrific intent all you can do is watch the fight unfold.

I got into Urbex at an early age, middle school to be exact. This was long before it became popular on YouTube or TikTok. I was never outgoing, academically advanced, or particularly good at sports. Neither me nor any of my friends had much extra money to throw towards spending afternoons at the mall or arcade. My first experience with urbex started when some friends and I had a sleepover at Katelyn’s . Katelyn lived in a trailer in a rural village. A lot of the houses nearby were large and expensive, not quite mansions but pretty close. We were eating popcorn and watching a movie when Katelyn mentioned an abandoned home behind her house. She explained that the couple who lived there had a nasty divorce and the house was up for sale as a result. Katelyn had never seen the inside of the house but her mom had mentioned it being really nice.

I had an idea to liven up our night. “Why don’t we go see it?”, I asked. They all looked at me like I was crazy. “We’ve snuck out before… why not just go over, take a look then come right back?”. Katelyn shrugged. “I don’t see why not”, she said. Katelyn distracted the family dog with a treat while the rest of us crept out the back door. It took less than five minutes to reach the house. We tried unsuccessfully to pick the lock but luckily Jessie found an unlocked window.

The interior of the house was magnificent. The floors were all marble and there was an extravagant fireplace in the living room. We began to look around. Each room seemed more luxurious than the last. One of the more notable spaces was a hot tub- oddly placed at the landing of the stairs in the front room. After an hour or so of exploring we headed back to Katelyn’s. Luckily we got back in without waking her parents.

Since that night, urbex has been my passion. Katelyn and I explored many abandoned places together. Our selection of locations to explore expanded over the years as our curfew got later and we got our liscenses. Although Katelyn was adventurous, there was still one destination she avoided.

Oak River school was one of the most insidious yet least known scandals in my hometown. It seemed to be a typical high school. It boasted average academic scores and a great football team. But below the surface, something wasn’t right. A record number of graduates from Oak River were diagnosed with cancer-particularly leukemia. Some were diagnosed only a few years after graduation and others not until decades later. The school was abruptly closed and students were sent to temporary sites to continue classes while a new school was quickly rebuilt-several miles away from the old one.

Eventually the truth came out. The soil Oak River High was built on was used as a dumping ground for nuclear waste in the 1940s. The cancer rates weren’t a coincidence. The old Oak River was never torn down. My aunt, Cora, was one of the many unfortunate alumni who developed Leukemia. She passed away when I was 17. She was the stereotypical “cool aunt” who let me watch R rated movies and served me Pepsi in a wine glass whenever I visited. More than that, Cora was the only one in my family I could truly be myself around. From holding me as I cried when I wrecked my bike at six years old to helping me through my first breakup at fifteen, I could always count on her.

Losing Cora was the worst experience of my life. I’d always wanted to explore Oak River but for some reason her death made me fixate on it even more. I had to see what it looked like- the radioactive school frozen in time. I felt like if I walked through the same hallways or stepped into the classroom where Cora had been so many years before she would be there with me. Of course I was smart enough to realize this was just a morbid fascination from grief and that nothing would change once I left. But I still couldn’t let go of the thought of going to Oak River.

“Come on, Jess agreed to go and she’s bringing all her photography equipment”, I begged Katelyn during our phone call. “No!” She responded. “You know that’s the one place I won’t go”. I accepted her answer and called Jess to let her know we would be going without Katelyn.

We met at the back entrance of Oak River at eight that night. The school wasn’t as hard to break into as I expected and we quickly found ourselves in the hallway. Some old trophies and metals were still on display behind the dusty glass. “Why didn’t they take those?”, I wondered out loud. “They’re probably all covered in radioactive dust”, Jess laughed. Ron, Jess’s boyfriend, met us shortly after we found our way in. He’s into paranormal investigation and wanted to try out some of his equipment as the school was rumored to be haunted.

They proceeded to the gym and were messing with the EMF sensor for a while so I decided to look around on my own. The first few classrooms I looked at weren’t as bare as I expected. They still had posters on the wall and other equipment out. I found a globe and spun it, instantly regretting my decision as dust flewht into the air. Luckily we had worn masks and gloves to try to limit our exposure as much as possible. I heard a rustling noise. I turned around to see where it was coming from. Next to the boarded up window, I noticed a mostly wilted potted plant. But the plant wasn’t dead. It was moving. Very subtle movements, I had to do a double take to be sure of what I saw. “What the hell”, I whispered. The only way I can describe the movement is almost a sort of twitching. I got out my phone to record and picked up a ruler to poke it. The plant coiled around the ruler tightly, almost yanking out out of my hand. I yelled and jumped back.

Jess and Ron came running. I tried to explain what happened but they didn’t seem convinced. Ron found a pointer by the chalkboard and poked the plant again. It didn’t move. I stammered, trying to explain what happened. Jess and Ron exchanged glances. “Maybe you shouldn’t be walking around here alone”, suggested Jess. Ron nodded, “Let’s all just stay together”, he suggested. I reluctantly agreed. We took a look in a few other classrooms. Jess photographed each as we went along.

Eventually we made our way into the cafeteria. We found some old trays, glasses, and even unopened cans of food. As we ventured further into the kitchen, Ron halted, almost causing Jess to run into him. “Why’d you do that?!”, she snapped. “Shh, listen”, whispered Ron. Through the silence I could hear a faint chewing noise. It continued for a few minutes then came the clang of a can hitting the ground. A light rustling followed. We stood there, frozen. Ron involuntarily coughed. A figure emerged from the darkness. Jess turned the flashlight to it. It definitely wasn’t an animal… but it also couldn’t be human. It stood on two legs, was almost seven feet tall, emaciated, with yellow-tinged skin speckled with red boils that looked like they were about to pop. The figure let out a groan that sounded equal parts terrified and angry. Jess screamed, dropping her flashlight.

Ron and Jess took off in one direction while I ran in another. I ducked into a janitor’s closet. I tried to quiet my breathing as much as possible, even taking off my mask, trying to catch my breath. I sat against the wall, head in my hands trying to stave off a panic attack. I looked around the closet a bit, seeing if there was anything I could use for self defense. All I found was an old broom. I stayed quiet for a while then hesitantly stepped out of the closet when I was convinced the creature was nowhere close. I began looking for Jess and Ron. I tried calling Jess but my phone had no service. I heard labored breathing and trudging down the hallway. “Damn it!”, I thought. I noticed a door on my left. It was glass but was fogged up to the point where I couldn’t see through it. The hallway was a dead end & I could hear the figure getting closer. I opened the glass door and stepped into the room, the air was thick and humid. I struggled to keep from coughing. I put the broom through the door handles to barricade myself in. I hopef the figure would pass me by but then I heard a pounding at the door. I wasn’t sure how much force it would take to break the old glass and I had no interest in finding out. I panned the room with my flashlight, looking for another way out. My flashlight passed over a dark, reflective abyss. This was the old pool. The walls were covered in a mixture of black and green molds. I remembered Cora had mentioned being on the swim team years before. There was a door on the other side of the room. I began making my way to the other side, but quickly realized my way was blocked by some overturned bleachers. I tried lifting them up but it was no use.

“Harper!”, Jessie yelled from the door on the other side of the room. Noticing the predicament I was in, Jessie and Ron attempted to move the bleachers but weren’t able to either. At this point, the glass door was splintering from the humanoid monster pounding on it. “ You know how to swim, right?”, asked Ron. I nodded. “Are you crazy?!”, screamed Jessie. “She can’t swim through that radioactive bullshit!”. I’d already accepted my fate of having to wade through this disgusting abandoned pool and tried to reassure her I’d be fine.

I found a piece of wood to set my backpack on, trying to keep it as dry as possible. I stepped into the cold, dark, water. The water felt thicker than I expected, it was like moving through jello. The smell was a repulsive combination of decay and metallic. I swam as fast as possible. I’d almost reached the edge when the water began rippling. My right leg stopped moving. It was caught on something. Jessie and Ron noticed my struggle. Ron jumped into the water and tried to pull me forward. He shined a flashlight through the dark waters, revealing a labyrinth of dark green limbs. “What the hell…” Ron whispered. The water began to move rapidly. I felt the slimy substance tighten around my leg and screamed. Ron began thrashing around, cursing and yelling. I frantically grabbed for my backpack, retrieving my pocket knife out of the front pocket. I took a deep breath, went under water and hacked at the slimy substance trapping my leg. It began to twitch as the grip loosened and I got myself free. Jessie was pulling Ron out of the water on the other side, crying frantically. Something most people don’t know about Jessie was that she had an extreme fear of water and couldn’t swim. A near drowning experience when she was four had left her traumatized. I pulled myself up to the surface and we all ran out the door. Ron was limping. He had a nasty gash on his left calf. Once we got some distance from the pool, we stopped and Jessie tied her jacket around it to slow the bleeding.

Jessie’s phone rang, startling us. “Katelyn?”, she answered, placing it on speaker. A grainy FaceTime call lit up the screen. The background was dark but looked familiar. Katelyn was in the classroom closest to the entrance. “Katelyn, listen to me. You need to leave! There’s some weird shit happening here”, Jessie tried to explain. The connection wasn’t good. The call cut out every few seconds, making it difficult to understand. Jessie, Ron, and I all tried to explain what was going on but Katelyn clearly didn’t understand. The connection continued to get worse the further into the school Katelyn got. Eventually the call dropped completely and none of us were able to dial back out.

“Jessie, you and Ron get out and go find some help. I’ll find Katelyn and meet you guys on the other side”. Ron tried to protest. Luckily, Jessie was able to convince him that the bleeding was too serious to continue. As we parted ways, Jessie and I agreed that if Katelyn and I weren’t safely out in fifteen minutes she would call for help.

Katelyn!”, I called out as I reached the front of the building. “Help!”, I heard her yell frantically. I ran towards the sound and saw her. We sprinted towards each other but she tripped over something in the process. A figure donning an archaic gas mask emerged behind her, grabbing her ankles and dragging her away. “No!” I yelled. I tried to run towards the assailant, but someone grabbed me from behind. As I tried to fight my way out I flailed, slamming my head into the wall. I felt dizzy and everything went dark.

I saw a light. I knew what people always said about going into the light. Was this death? “She’s awake!” I heard. A paramedic was kneeling over me. I jumped. As I regained consciousness, I started stammering. “W-what’s going on? Where’s Katelyn?”. The EMT tried to calm me. My mom and Jessie were nearby. My head hurt a lot and my arms and legs were bruised. I was transported to the hospitial. That night, the only answer I could get as far as Katelyn’s whereabouts was that they were looking for her. The next day, I was informed by police that Katelyn’s body was found in the school. The stairs had collapsed, crushing her. I tried to tell police about the man in the gas mask but they clearly didn’t believe me. They pretty much nodded then had a social worker follow up with me with information on trauma counseling. What bothers me the most is I’m not even sure Jess and Ron believe me. Something sinister is still happening in that school. I’m going back. River Oak won’t take anyone else from me.

Part 3

Maribel collapsed into a chair, sobbing. I called 911, the details spilling out of me in incoherent fragments of sentences. “He got into an accident. Brady Esposito… on the highway… near the toll, near Belleville…”

Then I sat next to Maribel, wrapping my arms around her, starting to cry too. The tinny voice on the other end of the line asked “Sir? Are you still there? Stay with me on the line, please…”

But I couldn’t pick it up. Couldn’t do anything but hold Maribel and cry.

This can’t be real.

It’s just a stupid photo.

Maybe he didn’t die. Maybe he’s okay.

But I knew. Deep down, I knew he was dead. That was the deal from the start. The camera was going to kill us, one way or another. It had never been said, but it was obvious, wasn’t it? The camera didn’t just tell us our fates. It made them.

And Casey… Casey had willingly brought it to us.

Taken pictures of all of us.

Did she know this would happen?!

I ran up the stairs.

“Brady’s gone!” I screamed, banging my fist on the door. “So you better tell us where you got this camera!”

A light pattering of footsteps sounded behind me as Maribel joined me. She grabbed me by the shoulders and nudged me away from the door. “Hey—”

“The photos haven’t changed!” she whispered, shoving them in my face. “Casey might still come out of there and murder us all!”

“You think she would really…”

“I don’t know. But the photos didn’t change.”

I backed away from the door. Slowly, we walked to the stairs. I looked back over my shoulder, but the door didn’t open.

Maybe Casey had already fallen asleep.

Or maybe she’d snuck out, and gone back to her dad’s house to get a gun.

Emotionally volatile. That’s what Maribel had said. And she was so, so angry at us. If she could get her hands on a gun…

“What do we do now?” I whispered, as we got back downstairs.

“If we try to leave, we’ll die on the road,” Maribel replied, her voice wavering. “But if we stay here…” She glanced down at the photos in her hand. The photos of us by the tree, lit by the bonfire.

The last photos of us alive.

“Wait,” I said. “What if we destroy the photos?”

It hadn’t occurred to me before. But now, in fight-or-flight, in the darkness, death staring us in the face, it seemed obvious. Destroying the camera would be better, except we didn’t have that. The CVS had disposed of it or whatever when they developed the photos.

Maribel looked at me. “That could work. Maybe. I don’t know.”

I ran into the kitchen, yanking on the drawers, searching. Finally, I found it: a little book of matches. I ripped one off—and on the third strike, the flame sizzled to life. Illuminating the kitchen in relief, flickering orange tones.

I grabbed Maribel’s photo first. Touched the flame to the photo. For a few seconds, it didn’t take; the glossy photo paper seemed to repel it, almost. “Come on,” I muttered, holding both the match and the photo as still as I could in my shaking hands.

The flame finally caught. The corner of the photo began to curl up, the base of the tree distorting as if it were melting. My heart pounded faster—something like hope bloomed in my chest—

And then Maribel screamed.

She fell to the ground and began thrashing on the floor. Screaming, shrieking, in pain. “Maribel—what—” I started, but then I stared at the photo. The flame, distorting the lines of color, turning it to ash.

I raced to the sink. It extinguished with a hiss.

And immediately her screams quieted.

I dropped to the floor next to her. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she looked up at me. “It hurt… so much…” she choked out, blinking away more tears.

Thumps sounded on the stairs. First Casey burst into the kitchen, her hair wild, her eyes wide; then Brady’s mom behind her. “What’s going on?” Mrs. Esposito asked, rushing over to us. “Is everyone okay?”

My heart sunk.

“Brady was in an accident. I don’t… I don’t think he made it.”

***

The photos changed again.

As we sped down the highway, in the backseat of Mrs. Esposito’s car, they changed. I’d been staring at my photo the entire ride, expecting it to change to CCTV footage of us on the highway at any second. The inside of the car was dark, but I could see it every time we passed underneath a streetlamp, lit in the orange halogen glow. On, then off, like a monster lit by a strobe light in a haunted house.

As we passed over the next streetlamp, it was no longer the photo of me against the tree.

It was instead a photo of me, Casey, and Maribel.

Dressed in black. Standing outside a church.

Next to Brady’s parents.

His funeral. I knew he was dead—but seeing the photo made it real. I nudged Casey and Maribel. “Look,” I whispered.

Their photos were the same.

Why did they change now? Right now, on the way to Brady?

Had Casey actually been planning to kill us, but now couldn’t?

“Where did you get the camera?” I whispered to Casey.

She looked back at me in the dark with wide, blue eyes.

“Casey…”

“I didn’t know it was going to kill anyone, okay?!” she whispered, the corners of her mouth twitching.

“Yeah, we know, Casey,” Maribel whispered. “But where did you get it?”

She glanced between us fearfully.

“Ezra Schmidt gave it to me.”

“Who?” Maribel asked.

“Emma’s brother. You know, the um… the girl who was hospitalized last year for a suicide attempt.” She took in a shaky breath.

“You mean the girl you bullied all through middle school,” Maribel snapped, glaring darkly at Casey. “The girl you called ‘Preggo Emma’?”

Casey nodded sheepishly.

“I ran into Ezra at the grocery store, right before the party. He gave me the camera… said it was a really cool camera one of his friends had found.”

“So you took a camera… from the brother of the girl… you drove to suicide,” Maribel said, very slowly.

“I didn’t drive her to suicide. I haven’t even talked to Emma since eighth grade.”

“Those kinds of wounds don’t really heal, Casey,” Maribel replied. “Like, ever.”

“But Ezra was always nice to me. I think he even had a crush on me—he’d follow me around sometimes at school—”

“Okay, none of this matters,” I whispered, cutting her off. “We need to find Ezra and ask him what’s going on here. And how to stop it.”

“It won’t bring Brady back.”

A heavy silence fell over us. I glanced at the windshield, the dark highway stretching out in front of us. The back of Mrs. Esposito’s head, as she quietly sobbed.

The minutes stretched on, the three of us in uneasy silence. And then, finally, we saw it: red and blue lights puncturing the darkness. Police cars parked in the middle of the highway, obscuring the battered remains of a car.

Mrs. Esposito parked on the shoulder and, without a word to us, ran towards the police officers. The three of us slowly approached after her, my heart hammering in my chest.

Between the police cars, I could see slivers of Brady’s car: twisted gray metal. Shattered headlights. A white airbag pressed against a cracked windshield. I didn’t need to fight through the cluster of cars to see how bad it was.

And, as we approached, I noticed something on the ground.

Something small and white, face-down, among a few stray shards of glass and twisted metal.

I walked towards it, the voices and sirens fading out of my consciousness. All I could do was stare at the photo, face down on the asphalt.

I reached down and picked it up.

My heart plummeted.

It wasn’t the final photo of Brady going through the toll booth. Instead, it was all blurry, muddy streaks of gray, bleeding into each other. Like the photo had been corrupted. Or like the camera had been moving wildly.

But there was… something… I could see.

Two lights in the upper right corner. Thin, jagged lines of light descended from them, as if they were also affected by the blur.

Headlights?

Is this what Brady saw, right before he died?

I stared at the two dots. There was something about them that unsettled me. I couldn’t look away.

Two lights…

Almost like eyes, staring back up at me through the glossy photo paper.

I have a good friend named Jessica, who I've known since high school. She was very enthusiastic about all the media she liked, being able to talk about any of it for hours on end.

One day, her interests changed. She went from talking about movies and music to astral projection, quantum immortality, and premonition through meditation. She told me she thought she could see the future by closing her eyes, then imagining a mental circle representing the idea that one couldn't see the future. According to her, the circle had a free space in the center. She would put most of her focus on the circle, so she could see the future through the space. None of it made sense to me, and it kinda came as a surprise, but I let her air it out. She was pretty enthusiastic about these concepts, and it was normal to switch topics.

After talking about her new obsessions for about a week, she stopped talking to me. She wouldn't answer my messages, I no longer even saw a single ‘seen’ receipt under any of them. She wouldn't even answer my phone calls either. I went through two years of anxiety attacks with some sleepless nights here and there. Was she okay? Did I do something shitty without realizing? She was the only friend I had, as I was a bit of a loner with no more avenues to make friends. The biggest downside of her ditching me was me not having anybody to talk to about my daily stresses or anxieties.

Some hours ago, there was a knock at my front door. Upon answering it, there was a dark gray laptop sitting on my doorstep. There was a note taped to it. This is what it read:

“Hello, Heather. I have no time to address the past couple of months. I wanted to look for something interesting and I can say for sure I found it. Sorry if you felt abandoned, especially with how much of a loner I know you are. I am giving you this laptop to warn you about what is to come, so you can prepare and be safe. There are a bunch of video files on there. Watching the videos will give you a small taste of what's to come and what I've discovered. I'll be happy to go into more detail in about a month. Also, do not put anything else on this computer.”

I brought the computer inside, expecting there to be some videos by untrustworthy psychics, or guys in robes speaking nonsense. Jessica wasn't like that though. She always called those people out. I set the computer down on my coffee table, then booted it up. There was one icon on the home screen. A folder. The folder's name was a bunch of numbers: 5181195

I double clicked the folder, then a list of files popped up. Each of them had a calendar date as their title. I double-clicked the first file, July_26_2000.mp4. A grainy view of a cornfield began to play. The camera operator zoomed in, then out as a woman spoke in a bold tone.

“There. We're here. What do you want me to look at?”

The camera was turned to film a taller man with dark hair and a tank top. He looked like he was in his 30s. He spoke with a shaky tone.

“I just need you to look. Don't stop looking.”

“At what?”

“The field! There's-”

The woman gasped. The camera was turned to the field, but shook and fell into the grass. Painful screams erupted from off-camera. They sent chills far down my spine. What was happening? Was I watching a video of two people's last moments?

Something dark and round hovered around within the nearby patch of corn stalks. It made a sudden jolt to the right, making my stomach sink. The thing hovered off camera, then the screaming got more intense. The video ended. All I could do was sit still and wonder what any of that meant. What was that thing hovering around in the field? What did it do that made those people scream?

The next file had October_10_2001.mp4 as its title. Upon opening the file, the footage began to play. This footage was grainier. It began in your average small living room. A lamp provided a little bit of light to the room, until someone off-screen switched the lamp off. The room went dark, then a beautiful transparent orange and yellow orb formed in the center of the room, emitting a dim glow. It was calming to look at. A welcome change from the previous video.

The next video was July_15_2002.mp4. Dozens of horses gathered around in a circle on an open field of green grass. They stared at the area of grass in front of them as if something was there, then the grass flattened. Like an invisible force punched down on it. The horses took a couple steps back, then, seconds later, they hurried away. Some ran in circles. It was an odd video. Nothing much to understand, but seeing a bunch of horses looking genuinely terrified still set off an alarm. Something happened, but I don't know what.

The videos that came after had a similar inexplicably weird tone. Some showed phantom orbs of light. Others showed people and animals running from invisible forces flattening and pushing things. Why did my friend want me to watch these? Despite how confusing, and at times somewhat silly, these videos were, I grabbed a USB stick and copied the files from the computer onto it. I lost a year's worth of photos last September, and I wasn't going to let that happen again. Every time I receive videos from someone I care about, I back them up, then put them on a USB I lock away in a box.

Anyway, I made it to a file titled January_30_2016.mp4 when I looked at the time. 1 AM. This was the first technical interaction I had with Jessica in a long time. I also wanted to know what she wanted me to prepare for. With that, I decided to stay up for another hour.

The 2016 footage began with a young boy, probably around the age of 10, red-faced and bawling his eyes out on a couch. He screamed.

“Get it out!”

A ball was held up to the kid's nose. Then, a long thin insect with long legs began to crawl out of the boy's left nostril. Chills ran all over me. They got worse as the insect seemed to have no end. More of it kept crawling out of the boy's nose as the boy shut his eyes and continued to scream. Even when the insect reached the floor, it still hadn't left the boy's nose. I wanted to look away. I was terrified of insects and what they could do to the inside of one's body… and this was most definitely not an exception… but my curiosity got the best of me. The ball was placed on the floor, then the insect wrapped itself around it. Even when it had covered the ball, it still hadn't left the boy's nose. If I saw that thing myself, I wouldn't know what to do with it. An image popped up, showing a similar long insect on a kitchen floor. It managed to cover half of the floor. I gagged. The video ended without showing the insect completely leaving the boy. Not that I wanted to see any more of it.

There was a loud banging on my front door. When I answered it, a middle aged male police officer stood at my doorstep. He asked me if I had received a new laptop. I told him yes. He then asked me if the laptop had a file containing inexplicably weird videos. I told him yes. He then asked if he could see them. I offered to show him, then ran downstairs, grabbed the laptop, and carried it up to him. Hopefully this man had answers about Jessica. Watching one of the videos, the officer's eyes widened. He took out a phone and started texting. Some seconds later, he slid his phone back into his pocket and looked me in the eyes.

“You are about to be searched. Don't move.”

He walked away. I leaned out of my door and watched as he walked off down my gravel driveway. Before I could utter a single word, men and women in dark tactical gear marched around the corner. Once they reached me, three of them grabbed me by the shoulders. I was gripped by the arms as well. A woman’s voice ordered the agents to search for any reproduction or notes taken of the footage, and so a dozen of the agents stormed inside. I was padded down, even scanned, then I was held tight with rifles aimed straight at my face. My legs were trembling. What in the hell was going on? Who were these agents? What did they want with the videos?

Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw a woman with dark hair wearing a suit. She walked up to me, then gave me a deep stare before speaking.

“Tell me your name.”

“Heather Wilson.”

“We traced a personal computer containing footage you're not authorized to view. Can you tell us where you obtained it?”

“It was given to me by my friend, Jessica Rowan. We've known each other since high school.”

“We're going to have you sign an NDA. Do not resist or you may face jail time.”

“I understand.”

After about an hour, the agents left. I looked for labels and agency logos, but there were none. These guys were unmarked. I shut my door, then locked it. I was almost limping as I walked back to my living room, wondering why the hell that happened. I removed the rug, lifted the carpet, grabbed the box, then opened it up. To my relief, the USB stick was still sitting there.

What was there that I wasn't allowed to see? I plugged the USB into my laptop and the files loaded up. As I scrolled through the files, I noticed the file names had dates post-dating April 2024. The last file had 2026 in its title. I dread finding out something terrifying I cannot prevent will happen to me. Although, maybe it will be something I can prevent. Or maybe my friend got a hold of some test videos she wasn't supposed to see.

(Nevermind. As I wrote that sentence, I saw what I thought was a centipede crawling out from under my couch. My heart sank, but what made it worse was that the thing was too long. It kept crawling out from under the couch, then, at one point, it turned to me, then sped at me. My guts sank, then I sprinted around then away from it. That thing isn't crawling inside me and causing a mess with my organs. I hid in the bathroom, and eventually fell asleep. Then I woke up to the fucking thing digging into my nose. My head was tingling too. The pit in my stomach was like an electric shock. I grabbed the insect, then I pulled it, attempting to yank it out. Big mistake. I went lightheaded, then woke up on the bathroom floor with a tingling all over my head and the constant feeling I'm about to vomit. I called my doctor. I have no idea what this insect is or what it's going to do to me. Honest to god, I hope this won't have any long lasting effects. I need to watch those videos. Fuck, I wish Jessica would answer my messages again.)

Part One

The spider in my room won't stop talking to me. I don't even know when it started. Once it did though, it became more and more frequent. At first I thought, maybe I was going crazy. However I had always been a bit on the mentally unwell side, to put it lightly. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression in six grade. The psychiatrist said it was like I was put together wrong. Not just my insides, but like something deep to the core of my very atoms was wrong. Was gross. Was nasty. Then when I met Dr. Peterson is when he told me I have a thing against people. He wasn't wrong of course, but he could never figure out why, and I could never tell him. When you tell doctors the truth, they try to hurt you. They try to send you away to the bad place. I will NOT go to the bad place. So, I lied. Said I didn't know what he meant, and that I like to keep to myself. Of course, he was correct though. I did have a disdain for the humanly figure.

When I was diagnosed however, I wasn't surprised though, even then. Sickness, disease, and torture seemed to follow members of my family wherever they went. Take my grandmother for example. She had led a very good life. A modest, God fearing life. Ya know where that got her? Laying six feet deep, after a years long struggle from oral cancer. The woman never chewed tobacco in her life, never so much as laid a finger on any drug, and never did anything bad to anyone in her entire life. Yet, she still died. Now I'm alone. I'm alone, and that spider knew it. It knew when I was watching it. It knew when I was thinking about it even. It knew. It always knew. Maybe to understand better, I need to bring you in on a few things. Bring you in on the things that it knew, and knew it needed to know.

Most people think of me as an outcast. I never cared. I always thought that the best thing I could be, is alone. I was always sick everyone said. No one knew quite how sick I was, or what type of illness I bear. People told me I had my weaknesses, like my immune system. My immune system has always been somewhat confused, it seems to think that I am the foreign body. That mere consumption provide enough reason, to rid the body of itself. This caused me much pain, mentally and physically. However, no one told me I also had my strengths. I had to find that out for myself. See when no one bothered me, my brain could be set free. I could see anything I wished. Feel anything I wanted to. It all started when I was very young. I used to sit in my room for hours and talk to my friends, some of them more real than others. I had a friend named Koby. He was my most real friend.

I met Koby at elementary school, a private school where everyone except me was laced with hundred dollar bills. Koby’s family was also wealthy, but he was different from other people too. He didn’t understand when people made fun of him, why people made fun of him. He was naïve. Me on the other hand, I watched everyone. Judged everyone, just like they judged me. I got a cheaper entry in to my school due to my grandmother working at the school office. After summer ended people would come into class and the teacher would inevitably ask “What did you do this summer class?”. Everyone else either went to Greece, Italy, Rome, Japan, or some other foreign country. They were different than me, and they made sure I knew it. Not Koby though. Koby never asked me about my money, and we liked some of the same things. People would tease us and call us gay, because we liked “girly shows on the Disney channel”. We both came from a perspective of liking what we like unapologetically, at first.

We did indeed have a close and personal friendship, the kind young boys who care not about societal boundaries have. We would throw each other over one another’s heads in his pool mimicking wrestling moves. Imitating Randy Orten, and Brock Lesnar as if we were lumbering monsters of flesh and bones. Sometimes we would get hurt, bang our head in to the wrong object, or hit something too hard; only to console each other as to not cry and get in trouble. We also would make short films that ranged from comedy to action, and we replicated the bad language we saw online. We loved choreographing fake sword fights, and I always loved living as a swordsman in my head. Imagining chopping apart opponents, limb by limb as I dismantle their world and build my own. I also always wanted to act. I thought I was quite good at keeping on masks. Never relenting on an unending character, the likes of which only I know are fake. Koby and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot though. He was a huge fan of childish games, while I liked things to be a bit more advanced and difficult. He thought random curse words were funny, while I felt my taste a little more sophisticated. Did I feel superior to him? In some ways yes. It didn’t matter though, what mattered is they didn’t like him almost as much as they hated me. That helped us bond.

Then one day something changed. Koby changed, he became one of them. Koby began to play into their jokes. Tried to be what they wanted him to be, a clown. The bullying got worse, and worse. It started with calling us gay, use the f slur towards us, and other homophobic slurs. It then turned in to physical violence. People slapping us, using us as punching bags. I was a big kid. I think they enjoyed the idea of having power over someone larger than them.

One day during basketball, we were playing knock out. During Koby’s turn, one of the kids James went up to him and punched him directly in the eye. He did this due to being “knocked out” moments prior in the game by Koby. Having had enough, I immediately threw my basketball at the kids head, and moved to begin smashing his skull with my bare knuckles. Gnarling, and utilizing years of frustration I lunged at James. Rather than joining me in fighting him, Koby stopped me. He stood between me and James. He apologized to James profusely begging for his forgiveness, and scolded me. Told me how evil I was for simply fighting back. I had never felt more embarassed. More betrayed. The person I called a friend, would stop me from protecting him, and make me look like a weak fool in front of everyone. He cared more about his image to them, the people who didn’t like him to begin with than the will and anger his own “friend”. I would never stoop so low as to let the people who berated me, who hurt me choose who I become or what actions I take. That’s when I realized my “real” friend, wasn’t so real at all. I gladly accepted that I would never protect another being again.

After he stopped me, he became close with the people we once loathed. He would go on to spend time with them, join their clubs, go to their birthday’s. He was no longer the Koby I was once tolerated, and was now something very different. I hated him, at first. That was until he became comfortable enough with them, so comfortable he told them my deepest darkest secrets. The boys that had been scolding us, making us feel like nothing for years, he told them of my abuse. He told them of my desires, and of my fears. He told them who I enjoyed spending time with, what kinds of media I enjoyed, and what goals I had. He told them. That is what matters, and that is unforgivable. When I told him that what I thought about him, when I let him know how small of an ant he truly was to me, that’s when the voices around me became more than real. In a way they were the truth. They never lied to me. They always told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. They never judged me when I was wrong. So, when I was by myself… I was never truly alone. Some of them have names, others are a faint whisper. An echo of the wills of the past. A presence, that is not quite understood.

See I grew up in a trailer park. That is why the rich kids would never like me. I wore the same tattered uniform to school every day. Never having enough change to purchase a hot lunch, always begging the school for free food just to eat for that day. I never really thought much of my family’s money, or lack thereof. I somewhat liked living at the trailer park. I had acquaintances of all backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities, languages you name it. However, people knew of me, but no one knew me. I would put on a front, and call myself by different names just to toy with people. Sometimes I would do different accents, to see how long it would take for someone to realize how fake it was. I always liked playing tricks on people, it’s one thing that often alienated me more than anything else. I didn’t care. I saw it as more of an art than anything. Plus never letting anyone in on the joke, made it all the more special. Only I could control what others knew of me. I was the bottle neck for that pipeline of information.

One trick I used to play on my neighbor Darren was exceedingly hilarious, but he didn’t like it much at all. He had a cat, it was a black and white cat named Moo that loved all the kids in the neighborhood. Except me. It would always scratch at me when it saw me, hiss like I was some monster. One thing that no one liked however, is that this cat meowed as loud as a Bostonian woman in the middle of an orgasm. Every single night, throughout the neighborhood it would whale on. It kept me up at night as a child, and made my dog anxious too. I always prayed that cat would get hit by a car, or smashed by a falling anvil. One day my wish must have come true. One day, the cat stopped meowing. Some say the cat got skittish, ran off, and got lost. I think differently. I think someone killed that cat. Someone took matters into their own hands, and good for them. When there is an annoyance, I say end it. People always get so sentimental over things like death. I find death to be peaceful, inviting. Warm.

However, even with Moo gone Darren and I still didn’t get along. He hated my dog, and blamed me for his cat going missing. So, one night I found an old recording on my phone. It was the cat meowing in the backyard. So I took my speaker over to Darren’s house, and played it at just the right volume to make it sound like the cat was at his gate. He got up moments later, and ran downstairs, searching for his cat. The way his face shimmered with mere glimpses of hope, and happiness only to give way to utter defeat and despair really put a smile on my face. The deep smile he had, turning in to a frightful scowl made my night perfect. His misery for some reason provided me with a level of comfort, knowing I could control someone’s emotions with such ease. It felt right. It felt like a power, that I deserved. Darren later that week would tell all the neighbors, and the neighbors started keeping an eye out too. The cat was never found, so they say. I think differently.

These days I don’t play many tricks on people at all. These days I’ve lost my power. I stay inside, away from those who can harm me. Free from everything of the societal world. Free to roam the mind that I so desperately aimed to understand in it’s entirety. Voices, that need to be satiated with conversations only I can have with myself. This is the only way to truly escape. The only way to be truly, and utterly free.

Day 3

I sit here on my couch. Staring at a blank screen ahead of me. Thinking not of the future, but of the past. I look fondly on my childhood memories. Moments with my parents where we would go on glorious adventures, filled with frights and delights all the same. One I recall is going to Bodega Bay with my father. We were roaming through beach caves, as the tide began to rise. I was with another child I met on the playground, and at a moments notice we were nearly trapped in the cave unable to get out. Luckily the other child’s father was able to get in the cave, and get us out. I hate to think what might have happened, had that man not been there on that day.

I think fondly of my school memories. While I had some friends, I mostly stuck to my studies. I was able to move forward, and at least pass my classes with relative ease. I always procrastinated, which gave me a lot of anxiety. I continued to do so anyway. By the time I reached high school I was able to graduate at 16. This made me ecstatic, because I no longer had to attend the high school that bored me so deeply. I was then able to take online classes for school, limiting my contact with others. Most see this as negative, I loved it dearly. I always felt I excelled when I worked on my own, rather than in teams. They always slowed me down anyway.

Today I sit quietly, in silence. Except for the sound of a child. The neighbor downstairs keeps a little brat that begs for attention all day long. Sometimes that baby reminds me of my neighbors cat when I was a child. It’s a long story, maybe we’ll get to it some other time.

- Nicholas Anderson

When I moved out of the trailer park, and started going to high school is when everything really changed. We went from living in a place with a community, to living in an apartment where no one knew their neighbors. Not that I cared for the people in my community much anyway, but having something to interact with seemed helpful. That was now gone. My father traveled for work, and my mother was usually getting high somewhere. So I would often stay by myself, in my home, alone. Listening to nothing but music, and the voices I had come to love so much. The voices that I began to see as more real, than reality itself. Even when one of my parents were around, I still just wanted to be left to my own devices. I’ve never liked interacting with anyone much. I don’t think I ever will.

Considering this to be the case, I was also still what you might consider to be anti-social. I did not like people, and most people did not like me. Once I learned how much I loved spending time with myself, this seemingly just got worse. Once I entered high school I realized how different I still was. No one here was significantly richer than anyone else, but I still felt a barrier separating me from them. I did find a small group of misfits however, to waste my time with at lunch. Even then I often still sat silently, while everyone else clambered on. Even in this group, I still felt utterly alone. What I did enjoy however, was that my mere presence to them was somewhat of a trick. I did not care for these people. Yet they seemed to believe that simply because I was there, that I somehow cared about them. They also seemed to enjoy the embodiment of mystery I took on. I would rarely provide any information about myself, and when I did I would still commonly lie. Lie about who I had been with, what I had done, what I accomplished, what I had faith in. They believed it, for a time.

It all started to come apart, when Jada came around. Jada always seemed to take an interest in me. I didn’t really understand why. I never paid her any attention, and when I did it was always quick, simple, and to the point. Maybe my lack of interest in her, is what caused her interest in me. Either way, it wasn’t a good decision for her. I never have cared much for how my actions effected others. Nor have I ever really considered what would happen, if my lies were to be discovered. It just doesn’t matter to me, and typically I don’t stay around others long enough to be figured out anyway. Jada however, stuck to me like glue. Anywhere I would go she would follow, with sad puppy dog eyes. Begging for attention. To be honest on some level I thought it was quite adorable, but also relished in the idea that I might be able to exert some sort of romantic power over someone. She was going to provide that to me. So, I fed in to her ways. I told her what she wanted to hear. I told her that she made me feel ways no one else ever had, which was completely fabricated. Pulled from thin air. I did not love this girl. I loved what she could do for me. I loved how I could make myself feel with her, and now that I had a taste of it I loved that power. That was, until she started to push back.

For a while I thought I was untouchable, I thought no one could break the spell I had on Jada. Any time I would ask her to be somewhere, she would be in an instant. It did not matter the time or the place. I could tell her any lie, ask her to complete any task and she would believe it or complete it. I had her fully in the palm of my hand with a firm grasp, until others in our little group started to get in to her head. They started to realize that some of my stories, didn’t quite add up. They saw how Jada spent her time with me. How she was at my every beck and call. That she would give up anything for me, yet I would give up nothing for her. They were jealous. They wanted to have that control over somebody, but they never could. They were never smart enough, never talented enough to do so. They told her that I was no good for her, that I was using her.

Make no mistake, I was using her. Isn’t that what love is? One using another person, to find some bliss. Some happiness which they can’t find elsewhere? Why am I wrong for doing the same. She provided me pleasure, I provided her with some in return. Sounds like a fair transaction to me. Besides, who are they however to interfere with my life. With my people. With my toys. When she finally told me she never wanted to see me again, I knew she was lying. She wanted me more than ever. Wanted to fix me. Wanted to make me hers, but she would only ever be mine to toy with. I was unfixable, because I wasn’t broken. It was everyone else that needed fixing, I was simply playing the game. Not long after Jada said that to me, I was excised from our group. They thought of me as a dirty liar, who they couldn’t trust. It’s not my fault I played with those who are easily fooled, preyed on what made them weak. I was simply showing them what they were doing wrong. What they could do better. I knew from then on that the only person who understood me was the people I spoke to when I as alone. They knew me better than I knew myself. They knew what I wanted, what I could do. They had faith in me. That’s when I knew I needed to keep myself low. Put away. Kept neatly in a box, so that way I could ascertain my full potential. Once again I realized, only then could I be free. People, even as my toys were more detrimental to me than anything else. I loved being alone, but more importantly I thrived in it.

Once I started staying away, keeping to myself. I realized love was not what I had been told. Love was not for others, but for the feeling one can attain from the power it provides. With other humans that power is fleeting, but with one’s self it remains until your eminent death. With only myself in my home is when I found my first true love aside from loneliness. Cutting. Utilizing a blade to make the marks on my skin which I now define as art. A knife’s place is meant to be against the skin of a being. It fits so fluidly down the fold of one’s figure, like a figure skater dancing around an icy path with the blades on their feet. Leaving behind trails of love, despair, pain, and joy.

I swear it was an accident at first. I was in the kitchen one day, angry that I couldn’t understand myself. Why I felt the way I felt about life. Angry that I felt abandoned, without a mentor to assist me in both my strengths and my weaknesses. That’s when I instinctively took a knife angled it directly downward with both hands grasping it, and I slammed it straight down in to a cutting board. Little did I know that my hand would slide on to the knife as the impact was made with the board. My white tendons on the left side of my inner right palm, sliced open. Bleeding profusely. My anger swelled in that moment, and manifested in immense pain that synergized and gave me something I had never quite felt like that before. Euphoria. Pure, and utter bliss. In that moment I felt aroused, excited, ready for something to happen. Nothing did. As my feelings of euphoria began to fade away, I was left with the slide in my hand from the blade. Blood dripping all over the cutting board, and the counter beside it. Crimson red splattered behind the board, leaving a bloody mess to clean up. I quickly applied pressure, and got a bandaid from the bathroom sink. Applied it, and sopped up the red stained tile with paper towels. As I did so it occurred to me, that feeling can be replicated again. All I needed was a knife, and a will to achieve nirvana. With blood spilt, it would be far easier the next time.

Day 5

Today I find myself on the floor of the kitchen. Staring at the ceiling, thinking of past relationships. The wrongs, the rights. What I did, what I didn’t do. What could have been, and what never will be. These things I find fascinating as a self-exploration exercise. What could I have done wrong to the woman that I once said I loved, so much so that she deems it necessary not to speak to me again. Did I do anything wrong to begin with? Is it true that she will never speak to me again? I find it doubtful, although I do not put myself in high regard on this situation either. I called her my baby doll, because that is what she is for me. I just want her back. Sometimes. However, I want her back for me. She wants me back for her. Maybe we can meet in the middle.

I think of my parents and what they didn’t do for me as a child. They weren’t model citizens, but they also weren’t terrible parents. They just didn’t know how to raise a child, and honestly who the hell does? I fault them not for what they did, but for allowing themselves to have a child in the first place when they were not ready. Bringing a child in to a world you are not

Did you know that whistling can be used as a form of therapy? That's right, for people with anxiety or respiratory problems, this can be a relaxing technique, but for me, definitely not. I hate whistling, whether it's for dogs, humming songs, or any other variation of that blowing sound.

All of this started about four weeks ago when I moved to my current apartment. I'm a small-town guy, and the search for a better job brought me to the chaos of the big city. Don't get me wrong, but it's too much information for my head. Since money is tight, I live in a small flat at the back of the building, very close to a busy street, crossed by a highway. Cars, people, noises, all of this left me mentally exhausted for a while. And that's why I didn't find it strange when it happened.

You see, I would go to bed around 01:00 AM when things became pleasantly quiet. This obviously made me sleep for only a few hours, and the next day, I used to look like a zombie. During that particular day at the office, Richard, one of my colleagues, recommended using earplugs when I explained to him the reason for my dark circles:

"You can trust me," he said. "I use them whenever possible." I saw him take out a small transparent plastic package with two small yellow foams inside. "Take these, I have plenty at home."

Thanking Richard for the recommendation, I took the earplugs, eager to try them out that night. I really needed some peace and quiet to relax and recharge my batteries, or I would definitely go mad. I spent the rest of the shift daydreaming about an 8-hour night of complete silence and peace, almost not noticing the time passing by.

Then, the moment to go home finally arrived. The way back was a relief after a stressful day at the office. I arrived at my apartment, took off my shoes, and took a shower, ordering food from an Italian restaurant down the street since I hadn't unpacked my kitchen stuff yet, and prepared for the eagerly awaited night of sleep.

After dinner, I put on the earplugs Richard had given me. They were comfortable, soft foam that molded to the inside of the ear canal. It was the first time I had used earplugs, and I remember finding funny the feeling they caused. I don't know if you've ever used these or those earphones with earbud tips, but they give you an isolation that, at least for me, gave a certain feeling of imbalance.

That didn't matter, as I was going to lie down anyway. I lay down on the bed and covered myself with my sheet, and for a moment, everything seemed perfect. The silence was comforting, and I felt as if I were floating in a sea of tranquility. However, this feeling of peace was abruptly interrupted by a sound that seemed to come from the floor above, like something being dragged, scratched.

"It can't be, just today they decide to move," I commented after nearly 20 minutes of almost uninterrupted noise.

I got up, annoyed, struggling to remove the earplugs and about to call the front desk to complain when I realized something:

The noise wasn't coming from the floor above. It was probably part of the confusion the earplugs caused, making me misjudge the sound's origin. In fact, it came from the side, specifically from one of the walls. I approached it, still in disbelief, trying to perceive that it was just a mistake, an auditory hallucination on my part, but no, it came from behind the wall. The external wall. And here's another point: I live on the fourth floor.

It was like a scraping, something sounding dry and agonizing, sending a shiver down my spine when it hit higher notes. I thought to myself, trying to find a logical explanation for what was happening. Maybe it was a bird? Or perhaps some object caught in the wind? Yes, it made sense to be some animal; I remembered seeing a video of rats climbing vertical walls a while ago, and even in the countryside, it was common to see them climbing barns.

I decided to try to scare whatever it was away with a simple tap on the wall. With a nervous sigh, I gently punched the wall, hoping the creepy noise would stop. And surprisingly, it did. Complete silence filled the space, leaving me with a momentary sense of relief.

"Okay, I guess that's it," I thought, but before I could finish reasoning, my stomach was churned by a new element.

It started softly, then picked up speed, the sound of a whistle, coming from behind the wall, was... a Christmas carol, "Silent Night," but out of tune... it was discomforting. It was as if someone was trying to sing the song but failing miserably, creating a distorted and eerie melody.

With each out-of-tune note, my discomfort grew, and the feeling that something was not right intensified. The whistling seemed to be getting closer, moving slowly along the external wall of my building, as if something or someone was walking back and forth, just messing with me.

Was it a prank? It had to be, right? My legs trembled as a thick, oily drop of sweat trickled down my forehead. I felt embarrassed for being afraid of something like this; I wanted to reassure myself, so why not look out the window and just put an end to it once and for all?

I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and cautiously approached the window. I had the earplugs in, which now seemed to amplify the pounding of my racing heart. With a quick movement, I pulled back the curtain and looked outside.

I saw nothing, at least not initially. The whistling still echoed eerily and uncontrollably, growing louder and more piercing when a shadow briefly passed through the window's reflection—a slim, white figure. I couldn't say for sure what it was, but it was definitely something.

I was overwhelmed by a crushing fear and a sense of imminent danger. Instinctively, I took a step back, moving away from the window while trying in vain to close the stuck curtain. I ripped out the earplugs, hoping that would somehow bring me back to reality.

The whistling abruptly stopped, and the shadow vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving me in deafening silence. The weight of the experience hit me full force, and I felt completely disoriented. I sat on the edge of the bed, still trembling and full of adrenaline, trying to process what had just happened. Every shadow in the corners of my apartment caught my attention, and any subtle noise made me jump. I was alone but didn't feel safe.

The following days were torture, going through the same ritual: the scratching and the whistling. I didn't even tap on the wall like I did initially, and the sound would start. My performance at work plummeted; I felt stressed, and I think it showed on my face because Drake, a guy from work, approached me on a Friday:

"Hey, you look really bad, are you okay?" He asked, with a genuinely concerned expression on his face.

At that point, I didn't care if I was called crazy. I told him about the noises, the whistling, and everything else. Drake listened attentively, without interrupting, but with an increasingly concerned look as I detailed the events. Honestly, now I realize he must have thought I was going crazy.

"And you talked to the building's management about this?"

"I did, but there are no cameras in the back, and it seems like I'm the only one reporting this whistling."

"So, no one else hears this noise, just you? And someone is scratching your window from the fourth floor?" he said, raising an eyebrow.

"I know how it sounds..."

"Look, Ethan, I know you're not used to all this hustle and bustle, so here's the plan: today we leave here, buy some drinks, and go to your apartment. I'll stay there until the time these whistles happen, and we'll see what happens. What do you think?"

I hesitated for a moment, weighing the proposal. He had a point; I'd never heard this with anyone else, and maybe company would distract my mind.

"Okay, Drake, let's do it. But drinks are on you," I replied with a smile, met with a salute.

That night, Drake came to my apartment after work carrying a large paper bag filled with bottles. We sat in the living room, drinking some beers as we waited for the usual whistling time. The atmosphere was thick with tension and anticipation, and I could feel my hands sweating.

As time passed, the silence in the apartment was almost deafening, interrupted only by the distant sound of the city outside and the commentary of the sports games we were watching, punctuated by the occasional loud remark. The atmosphere was palpable, and I found myself constantly looking at the external wall, anticipating the sounds that would come from there.

Finally, the time came. Midnight. I was utterly terrified. We had now muted the TV and were attentive to any noise. Nothing. I began to question my own sanity.

Drake noticed my anxiety and tried to reassure me.

"Look, Ethan, maybe it's just some strange noise from the building or something. You don't need to be so tense."

"But... I'm sure it was real."

"That's what hallucinations mean," he commented jokingly.

We waited for another 10 minutes in total silence until he stood up.

"Well, problem solved, I guess. Time to head home."

I saw him dialing his phone to order a ride as he walked towards the door, which he had already opened when I placed my hand on the wood and closed it again.

"Look, man... please, just wait a little longer. I don't want to be alone here."

I realized how childish my complaint sounded and felt embarrassed instantly. Drake looked at me, clearly startled and now certain of my madness. But that certainty didn't last long; before he could protest, the scratching began. We both stood there, paralyzed in front of the door, as the scraping sound continued, growing more frenzied and erratic, moving from one side of the wall to the other.

"What the hell is this?" Drake whispered to me.

"I told you, man, I told you!" I replied, my heart now pounding fast, the presence of another person doing nothing to ease my fear.

He began to approach the wall as the vibrations were transmitted.

"What are you doing?" I almost let my voice rise when he pressed his ear against it and stayed like that for a while.

I jumped in surprise when he, clasping his hands in front of his mouth, began to mimic a bark. The noises quickly stopped; he continued barking, and a heavy silence settled in until, miserably, that accursed whistle started again, the melody making me tremble, reminding me of that shadow as the off-key notes made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Drake stopped, but the whistling didn't; it continued like this for a long hour until everything stopped.

"Look, man... I... I'm sorry for doubting you, could I, well... sleep on your couch?"

I laughed at the irony of it all.

"Okay, okay, just hope you don't snore."

I arranged a pillow for him and locked myself in the bedroom, still wondering what could be causing this, now more apprehensive knowing it wasn't just in my head. The next day, I convinced Drake to "return the favor" and let me sleep at his place. It was a good experience, something I hadn't had since I arrived in town. His fiancée prepared some snacks, and we played some board games. At bedtime, I shared the couch with a big white Labrador named "Doodles," and I felt much safer. I thought maybe adopting a dog would be a good idea. I remembered one I had left in the countryside with my family when I moved, a shepherd dog named Todd. I even missed him a bit.

In the late afternoon, Drake was giving me a ride home when it struck me:

"Turn down this street!" I yelled, startling him and nearly causing him to miss the turn. "Sorry, I just thought this time we could come through the back of the building, where my apartment is, where... you know, the noise comes from."

Drake looked at me with a serious and concerned expression. He hesitated for a moment but then nodded.

"Alright, let's do it. But I hope this clears things up because I'm not in the mood for anything supernatural today."

We drove slowly down the street that bordered the back of the building, offering a clear view of my window, where I had seen that thing. However, before we got close, I noticed something:

"Look, up there," I said, pointing to something. I counted the windows from bottom to top. "1, 2, 3... 4."

"What is that?" he said, squinting.

As we got closer, the twilight allowed us to absorb more details: etched next to my window, where the scratching came from, was a simple drawing that still makes me shudder when I think about it: a pair of eyes and a smile. They seemed to be carved into the outer layer of plaster, the result of continuous friction.

"Has that always been there?" Drake asked, puzzled.

"No. I mean, I hadn't taken this route before, but it definitely wasn't there when I rented it."

"Isn't it... well... a prank from the building's residents? Teasing the newcomer?"

"Ah, sure, their prank is to damage their own property?"

We fell silent as the wheels slid over the asphalt, leaving the smile behind. I thanked Drake when I got out of the car, and he said I could call if needed. I walked into the lobby and saw the building's owner, Vincent, leaning over the counter, one hand hanging inside while the other scratched his beard. He's an older Italian gentleman, around 50, bald with a protruding belly above his leather belt. I approached him to discuss the damage at the back of my apartment, but he seemed to want to talk to me first:

"Hey kid, come here! I don't know how things are where you come from, but here we don't allow pets."

This statement caught me off guard. I put my hand to my forehead, mentally laughing at the fact that he had guessed my intention to get a pet.

"Look, I don't know how you guessed, but I haven't adopted any yet, and now that I know, I won't-"

"Lying will only make things worse!" he interrupted. "No use hiding it, young man, I already know you have an animal in the apartment."

"But what?" I asked.

He raised the hand that was hidden, holding a red collar.

"The doorman gave me this in the morning. You can get rid of it or get out of the apartment, but either way, I hate lies, okay?"

He left before I could say anything. I looked at the collar he had left in my hand and noticed a folded piece of paper tied to it. I opened it to reveal its contents, a handwritten note with terrible handwriting:

"I didn't know you had a dog :)"

A shiver ran down my spine instantly. I looked around, feeling watched, even inside the building's lobby. Vincent had moved away, and the other residents seemed too busy to notice me. I went up to my room, grabbed the most basic things I could think of, wrote a note to Mr. Vincent saying I was leaving, and left an advance payment for the next month to cover any issues. I passed by the doorman and handed him the sealed package, bidding him farewell. I loaded my things into my car and sped away without looking back. That collar I had received was Todd's.

We never found out what happened to the shepherd dog, and to this day, innocent whistles meant for a dog are enough to make my stomach turn, while that damned smile still burns behind my eyelids.

Video games used to be so fun. Me and my friends would play all the time and rarely ever got sick of gaming. But nowadays gaming makes you feel numb in a certain way, the repetitiveness is depressing and theres no joy in it anymore. Thats what i said to myself after a short hour of playing the latest call of duty with the boys. Dave suggested we look for a new game to download so we all looked through all the new releases but nothing really caught our attention. Either cheap games with no effort put into them or overpriced ones. Until we found a game called “CHOOSE CAREFULLY”. It seemed like one of those games where the story is based on the choices you make for your character, and it was a multiplayer game. We all got a bit of hope that maybe this game could actually be good after Brian pointed out that it was released a couple days ago so we immediately downloaded it. The game took a couple hours to download so we all decided to go to bed and that we would play during the weekend.

A FEW DAYS LATER

Once it was Friday, we all texted in the group chat and said that we would be on in 10 minutes. I booted up the game and was met with a screen so dark i could see my self in the reflection. the screen and a small text in red that said “CHOOSE CAREFULLY”. I put on my headset and joined the voice call and was met with giggles of excitement. “What are we waiting for boys? Let’s start!” Isaac said.

We started the game and the screen displayed a character selection tab. I cycled through until i found one that weirdly resembled me. it didn’t have the same name but physically kind of looked like me and had similar personality attributes. I told my friends and they all said the same thing. each one of us had a character that were kind of like clones of us in a way. We chalked it up to a weird but cool coincidence and started the game. The way the game was made was sort of like a movie, we didn’t get to control the movements of our characters but we decided all their choices and actions. A text appeared saying that the point of the game was to get these 4 characters successful in their lives. It started off with the 4 main characters sitting in a living room hanging out.

We got our first choice, get up and do something productive or sit on the couch and play video games. We all laughed and decided to do something productive. We pressed the select button and our characters got up and decided to go to their jobs and work harder. Brian’s character ended up getting a promotion for the hard work. Dave’s character got a “good job” speech from his boss and Isaac’s boss gave him a one dollar raise. My character ended up getting a promotion as well. We all thought in agreement that even though the theme of the game seemed boring something about it was cool, maybe it was the fact that we could relate to our character or something but either way we enjoyed it. We ended up going to bed not long after because we wanted to spend some time with our family’s instead of just playing video games.

MONDAY

I woke early and made myself a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee. There must have been something in the air that day because i was feeling very joyful, maybe that video game inspired me to do better because i was actually happy to go to work. I work as a customer service provider for a well known company in Quebec. I usually have to deal with a lot of entitled people or just flat out mean and rude customers, but something told me that today was going to be a good day.

When i got to work, i put my headset on and started taking calls and doing some paper worked i hadn’t finished the week before. Most of the calls i got we’re pretty good. The customers we’re nice and patient and as was i. The day was coming to a end and i was getting ready to leave before my boss signalled to me to go talk to him in his office. I grabbed my stuff and walked over to his office and sat down.

“Listen Mike, i just wanted to tell you that you’ve been doing a great job and you’re working very hard, and i want you to know that we’ve noticed that and appreciate it. We’ve decided to promote you to supervisor of customer service, which includes a pay raise.” When i heard those words, i immediately got a flashback of that game we played. i thought, “this is just a coincidence right? It’s got to be”. I thanked my boss and left my workplace. On the drive back home, i called my friends and told them what just happened and they replied with the fact that they all had the same thing happen to them. It was like whatever happened in the game, happened in real life. We all thought it was crazy, but the only way to know for sure was to play again and see if it would happen again.

LATER THAT NIGHT

I got home and waited for the boys to get home as well. In the meantime i just that there and dreamt of all the things i could do for the better if it was actually true that whatever happens in the game, happens in real life. I also thought of all the bad that could happen, but i tried not to focus on that. Once the boys got home, we made a FaceTime call and loaded up the game. As the game started, we we’re met with a new choice to make, this one a bit weirder. The screen displayed two choices, invest a lot of money into a small business, or dont spend any money and do nothing. We all exchanged uncertain glances, hesitating between caution and boldness. Finally, after a moment of deliberation, we decided to take the risk and invest in the business. The Months that followed after playing every week were marked by a series of unexpected events. The businesses we had invested in started to thrive, our projects coming to life before our eyes. We received praise at work, opportunities unfolded before us, and our lives seemed to be changing in a radical way.

5 MONTHS LATER

Life was going great, we were successful, had loving family’s, and happy. but all of sudden things took a dark turn. One night, we were playing the game like we normally do to keep being successful. But this time, we had a very unsettling choice. “Rob a bank, or suffer the consequences”. The call went silent. We didn’t know what to say, but Brian just laughed and said “what is the game gonna do? we should just not rob the bank and nothing will happen because its just a game, sure its been helping us be successful but it wont kill us”. We still weren’t convinced that the game wouldn’t cause us harm but we listened to Brian and chose “suffer the consequences”.

The next day was when everything went to shit. I was mowing the lawn outside and, i cant even think about it without throwing up, i ran over my cat with the lawnmower. i cant describe how much blood and guts were splattered all over me. But that isn’t all, Isaac’s, sister got into a car accident, she survived but was severely injured. Brian was playing basketball and when he jumped, he landed on the side of his foot and broke his ankle. Dave lost his wife that day cause by an unexpected heart attack. It was a terrifying and tragic day. We tried deleting the game but it wouldn’t work, so we tried just not playing anymore but every day we didn’t play terrible stuff happened to us so we were forced to keep playing. All i could think was that i wish we would’ve never downloaded that game, but it was too late, our fate had been practically decided for us.

ONE MONTH LATER

Today, was the worst of all the days we’ve been playing. We had to make the hardest decision of our lives. As we we’re playing, A big text appeared on the screen and we all got a bit of hope in our souls. The screen said, “ FINAL DECISION”. We assumed that meant that we finally reached the last choice of the game, and that after we would be free. But just as we got excited, our hearts sank. The choice we had to make was, “KILL ONE OF EACH OTHER, OR YOUR FAMILY’S PERISH”. Under the text was another smaller text that said “ ONE OF YOU MUST DIE BY MIDNIGHT”. We started panicking and didn’t know what to do, but just then i got an idea. My plan was to pretend to kill one of the boys. I knew it was a dumb plan, but it was the only plan that had a chance to work without anyone dying.

We set the scene up and once 11pm came we did the best acting we could do. i pretend to stab Isaac in the chest with a retractable knife, and Isaac had a plastic bag of fake blood under his shirt. It looked real, but i had a feeling it wouldn’t work, so i went into the kitchen and grabbed a real knife. i waited in the kitchen for 10 minutes trying to bring myself to do it. I needed to save my family, OUR family’s. I walked back into Isaac’s room, and stabbed him 3 time’s in the chest to make sure he was really dead. i covered my tracks and went home, horrified and disgusted with myself. I didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, we all checked on our family’s and everyone was all right. we checked the game on our consoles and the game had deleted itself and we had a feeling that it was over. I came clean to the boys and we we’re all in agreement that one of us had to actually die in order to end this. We tried to move on as best we could with our lives and ended up not talking to each other as often. Even though we lost our best friend, life seemed to be coming back to normal.

ONE YEAR LATER

Im sitting at my desk writing this down because something terrifying happened again, otherwise what happened to us would have never been revealed to the public. Earlier today, i opened up my console because i wanted to play call of duty, but i got a notification saying a new game was available for pre-order. I opened up the store what i saw made my jaw drop. “COMING SOON: CHOOSE CAREFULLY 2”.

Part 1

After completing my first task for King Creole I couldn’t leave my room for days. I was lucky that he didn’t seem to have another task for me right after retrieving his lost axe-murdering voodoo doll. That left me time to rot in my room and frantically clip at my nails with a nail clipper, something I did whenever I was in an especially horrible mood. If my dad hadn’t entered my room, I probably wouldn’t have had any nails left to clip.

“Hey sweetheart,” he said as he entered my room. I could tell just from his tone of voice how exhausted he was. He’d gotten two jobs to cope with the loss of his factory job, but these jobs were hard work for barely enough pay. He was working himself to the bone for me and my mom, and yet he was still here trying to check in on me. “What’s the matter? You haven’t left your room in days,” he asked and sat down beside me in bed, quickly taking my nail clippers before I could destroy any more of my nails.

“I did…something really bad, Daddy,” I said as I tucked my knees under my chin. I couldn’t begin to figure out how to tell him that my now-dead friends and I had pissed off some evil voodoo man and know I was forced to do his bidding until he decided that I had sufficiently served him. And I still wasn’t convinced that he wouldn’t kill me at the end of my tasks.

“Judging by your expression you can’t really find a way to explain it to me, huh?” he asked me as he put an arm around me and pulled me close to him. He could read me like an open book and always seemed to be able to read my mind. Although I doubt he couldn’t even begin to understand my situation. “Whatever you’ve gotten yourself into sweetie, I know you can get yourself back out of it. And if not, I will always be here to help you no matter what, understand?”

It was just the kind of thing my dad could always tell me to make me feel better. Just that simple affirmation that he would always be here was enough to keep me going. I pulled my face out from my knees and offered him a small kiss on the cheek and a smile.

“Thanks, Daddy. You’re the best.” I told him as I wiped the tears in my eyes. He nodded wrapping an arm around me again and pulled me to him, kissing me back. He left soon afterward to collapse into bed until he had to wake up for another shift. I sat in bed for a few minutes before standing up and leaving my room for the first time in days. And as if on cue my phone began to ring in my hands.

I looked down at it and felt my blood freeze as I saw who was calling me. ‘King Creole’ was the contact who was calling me. And yet I had never given him my phone number. I hesitated to answer and contemplated even hanging up on him or letting it go to voicemail. But I wasn’t about to bring whatever voodoo powers he had on top of my family, so I answered it after a few seconds of indecision.

“The marvelous Miss Mace! I was beginning to think I had the wrong number.” Creole’s southern accent came pouring out of my phone. That didn’t make much sense to me since he somehow knew my phone number and had even somehow gotten my phone to know it was him. So I chalked it up as some kind of joke he was making.

“What can I do for you, sir?” I asked him how a minimum wage worker might respond. If he was upset by my lack of laughter or joy in his call he certainly didn’t let it show as he continued with his cheery call to me.

“Drop by the shop, and I’ll let you know what I need returned to me. Take your time!” he said with a chuckle as he hung up on me before I could answer him. I sighed as I let my phone drop to my bed and groaned loudly. I shoved my face into my hands and felt like ripping it off. But I needed to do these favors if I didn’t want to end up like my friends. So after a couple of slaps to my cheeks, I left my room and quickly ran past my parents and into the street.

The walk to the shop was uneventful and soon I was again standing in front of the shop. It felt strange being back here. I had a horrible feeling about this place now that hadn’t existed when I had first broken in. But I didn’t have a choice. So sucking it up as much as I could, I entered the shop, the sad rusy bell heralding my arrival.

“Mace! So lovely to see you again!” Creole was waiting for me at the register and had his hat on the counter in front of him. “Come, come.” He quickly waved me over as he stood back up and quickly placed the hat back on his head. Underneath the hat was a small voodoo doll. It didn’t appear to be anyone specific and it was staring up at me with a stink eye. It clearly wasn’t happy to see me at all.

“What’s my task this time, sir?” I asked, trying to keep my disdain for him at a minimum. It was hard to be enthusiastic around him, especially with what I had already done for him. But whatever enthusiasm I lacked he made up for it in spades.

“I’m so glad that you asked, Mace!” He said as he put his arm around me and pulled me into his chest. He didn’t have much of a sense of personal space. I went practically limp as he pulled me behind the register and sat me down on the chair behind it. “I need you to break into another house, but this time you’re going to get me something I want, instead of something I lost.” Once his sentence was done he let out a little hum at the end, his excitement just pissed me off.

“What exactly is it, sir?” I asked him, losing the battle of making it look like I gave a shit anymore. He held up a photo between his fingers and flipped his wrist to show me the full photo. Staring back at me was an ornate clock that seemed to be made of gold and encrusted with rubies. “Are you asking me to break into a museum?” I asked sarcastically. This clock looked like something that belonged at Versailles and certainly not something that would be so easy for me to steal.

“I can assure you it’s not. If that was the case I could easily find an easier way of getting it. No, I got a tip about it selling on the underground art market, and I’ve wanted this here clock for quite a while. So be a doll and go get it for me?” he said with that creepy smile still plastered on his face. I couldn’t get used to him. His overly cheery demeanor, his stitches, his button eyes. Everything about him just screamed at me to run away. And yet I couldn’t. I sighed and reached out for the photo. But before I could take it he quickly pulled his hand back and produced his other gloved hand to me. In that hand was a pair of earplugs.

“What are these for?” I asked him hesitantly. I took them and examined them. They appeared to be just normal earplugs.

“Something special about that clock. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be too interested in it,” he told me through a large smile and chuckles. “It’s in your best interest that once you break into this house, you put these on.” He twirled his fingers at me and produced the photo which had been in his other hand.

“What if there’s someone there? I wouldn’t be able to hear them.” I took the photo from him and looked down at the address which again appeared magically on the photo. It was in the same neighborhood as the axe-murdering voodoo doll had been in.

“I doubt there’ll be anyone left to worry about.” He said with another hummed-out melody. Just as I was about to turn and exit the shop, loud banging began emanating from somewhere behind Creole.

“What the fuck?” I said as my heart nearly exploded from the startlement. The look on Creole’s face just further chills up and down my spine. I was so used to seeing that stupid smile on his face that seeing the scowl that crawled across his face as he turned his head toward the source of the banging nearly caused me to shit myself.

“Mace, be a doll and go out and do your task, please? I have some other business to attend to,” he said as he produced his cane from thin air and began walking toward the backroom. I thought he was going towards his office but instead, he headed straight down towards what I figured was the basement.

I wasn’t about to be around to see whatever he was going to do, so I quickly shoved everything into my jacket pocket and exited the shop as quickly as I could. I was halfway down the street before I realized that I had left my house so quickly that I hadn’t even bothered to bring my lockpick kit. Groaning I made a U-turn and started jogging back toward my neighborhood. I got there just in time to see my dad leave for his next shift. I waved bye to him as he drove away and quickly entered my house.

“Mace, honey?” My mom called out as I entered the house. She poked her head out of the kitchen and waved at me. She looked just as exhausted as my dad looked since she had also had to start working for the first time since I was a toddler.

“Hey Mom, I’m not back for long, I just forgot something,” I said as I started up the stairs toward my room.

“Have you seen Jess lately? Her mom is worried sick about her.” I froze at the entrance to my room as I heard my mom ask me this from downstairs. The memory of seeing Jess turned into a human puppet was still seared into my mind. Her missing insides and that fucking smile that he had forced her to wear.

“N-no. Not since we last hung out.” I told her, not technically a lie. I quickly entered my room, swiped my lock picks, and shoved them into my jacket pocket. Just as quickly I made my way back downstairs to find my path to the front door blocked by my mom.

“You sure you haven’t seen her?” She asked me, clearly not believing me. I could understand her suspicion since me and Jess had such a close friendship.

“No, Mom. I haven’t seen her since we last hung out together,” I reiterated. I don’t really know what my face looked like at the time but my mom was moved by whatever it looked like. She nodded and moved out of the way for me.

“Are you okay?” she asked me. I wanted to tell her no I wasn’t. But just like with my dad I had no idea where to even begin with that story. I wish I could’ve told them both. It would’ve made things so much easier in the long run. But I just wasn’t able to do so.

“Yea, Mom. I’m okay,” I lied to her, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek and leaving the house. Out of the corner of my eyes as I turned to walk down the sidewalk I saw her make the sign of the cross on herself and towards me. It made me feel a little better, but I wished that God could just strike me down right then and there instead.

Walking toward the target neighborhood again, it felt like something was watching me. The paranoia was getting to me as I flinched with every single noise that came my way. When I crossed the street towards the target and a dog started barking at me I thought that was it and I was getting the K9. Instead, I was just faced with an especially cranky dog staring at me from behind a fence. Tossing him a stick to calm down I quickly walked past him and toward my target.

The house looked pretty much the same as the last house. Especially in a suburb like this one, pretty much every house looked the exact same. The main difference was the lock before me. It was another easy one for me, but this time there were two of them and there wasn’t anything to hide me from plain view. No pants to hide me or anything out on their front lawn either. Creole just had to call me for this job in the middle of the afternoon.

I looked around quickly and sure that no one was watching me quickly went to work. I knelt right before the door and tried to be as small and inconspicuous as I could possibly be. The locks were simple enough, but my sweaty palms and shaking hands kept the process slower than I would’ve liked. The sound of an approaching car nearly sent me into a panic attack, I quickly stood up and shoved myself up against the corner of the door. Lucky for me it was a passing car and took no notice of me.

“Fuck…” I sighed as I stood there like some lame Halloween decoration for a few seconds to get my heart to calm down. Going back to work the second lock was quickly dispatched and the door opened. Putting my tools back in their pouch I quickly dug into my jacket pockets and pulled out the earplugs. I smushed them into my ears and with a few quick breaths I entered the home.

The first thing to strike me about this house was the amount of dust in the air. It was like this place had been abandoned for 40 years with the amount of dust up in the air. The next thing to strike me was the horrendous smell. It was like a strange mixture of citrus and pork and it instantly sent my stomach into a revolt. It didn’t make any sense, this house looked just as prim and proper as all the other houses, there was no way it was just left here to rot.

Making my way through the entrance hall, I looked around for the clock, wishing that I could just take the earplugs out and follow the ticks it would be making. But remembering how Creole’s advice and trinket had saved me from the ax-murdering voodoo doll, I quickly pushed my earplugs in deeper just to be sure.

It didn’t take me long to find the clock. It was prominently displayed in the large living room that the homeowners had. What was more shocking was the scene that I discovered in the living room itself. The source of the dust had been from there and so was the smell, the smell which I discovered had been rot.

Several people were present in the living room, though by the look of them not a single one of them was alive. Those further away from the clock were slowly rotting away. Their bodies bloated and putrified. That was enough for me to throw up on the floor and sit there gagging for a few minutes as I desperately tried to cover my mouth and nostrils. As you went further toward the clock the decomposition spread, some were skeletons or fragments of skeletons. And closest to the clock was nothing but piles of dust and bone shards. All of the bodies had their arms stretched out towards the clock as if there had been a mad dash towards it.

I was left speechless. If it hadn’t been so horrifying it might have been strangely beautiful, like some weird Renaissance painting or something. The trouble for me now was twofold. Getting to the clock and somehow sneaking it out of the neighborhood. It was decently sized maybe about a foot tall and two feet across and there was no hope of me just shoving it under my jacket and walking nonchalantly down the street with it. Thinking it over, I elected to wrap my jacket around it and carry it down the street as if I was just holding my jacket.

“Good enough,” I shrugged as I took my jacket and took a few nervous steps toward the clock. I half expected to begin turning into dust along with however many people had been in this living room. But I figured that for it to have power over you, you had to hear it ticking. Stepping in the piles of dust and sending them airborne I quickly held my breath to avoid breathing in the skeleton particles. I swiftly wrapped the clock up in my jacket and lifted it into my arms.

I looked back behind me, expecting to see zombies or ghosts or fucking bigfoot for all I knew. But the haunting scene remained the same. Seems as though it was a permanent fixture once you heard the clock. I didn’t even want to fiddle with my earplugs, terrified that if I did they would fall out of my ears and I would hear the clock’s mechanisms.

Without any more thought toward it, I quickly made my way toward the door and out into the neighborhood. I let out a long and cathartic sigh and quickly began to walk towards the voodoo shop. It was the longest walk of my life and not just because I had a cursed clock with me. I was scared about what other horrible things King Creole would have me do. This was only his second favor and the first one had nearly killed me, and this second one had me carrying this cursed clock out in the open.

Arriving at the shop was like taking off your bra on an especially hot summer day, quickly opening the shop I saw Creole at the register sewing one of his eyes back on. He turned the button in his hand towards me and smiled that stupid grin of his again. I was almost glad that I couldn’t hear whatever bullshit he was saying.

He motioned for me to bring the clock over and allowed his partially sewn-on button eye to dangle on his face. He was clearly more excited over the clock over the wound that he had received. I placed my jacket lump on the register and opened it up for him to look at. He was giddy with excitement and flicked the clock’s face with his fingers. He then motioned for me that it was safe to remove my earplugs.

I was worried he was tricking me, but remembering I still owed him three more favors I removed the earplugs slowly and waited for my ears to adjust to the sudden influx of sound that had been denied to them.

“Excellent work, Mace!” Creole was giddy with excitement as he examined the clock. He did tsk with annoyance as the dangling button eye kept softly patting him on the cheek with every movement. He quickly placed it back against his eye socket and with impossible speed quickly sewed it back on. “That’s much better.” He sighed in contentment.

“What exactly is this clock, sir?” I asked him, honestly and genuinely curious about it. I took a better look at it and realized that it was sort of in the shape of a crucifix.

“This is a Monstrance Clock. In more ways than one.” He giggled which got me to roll my eyes at his dumb pun. “This particular clock has an aging curse on it. As long as it ticks, anyone who can hear it will die and begin to go through the process of decomposition. What stage you are depends on how far away you are from it.” He was using his gloves to polish the clock and I could tell he was very excited to have it.

“So…who were all the people in that living room?” I asked him, pulling him away from his clock care routine. He stared at me for a moment with a blank expression before he seemed to process what I was saying.

“Some cult I believe. They thought this clock would usher in the return of Christ or something. I guess in a way they did return to him.” He made himself laugh uncontrollably at that. I groaned and turned my head towards the wall of voodoo dolls. They were all staring back at me and I couldn’t help but get the goosebumps from that. That was until I noticed two familiar-looking voodoo dolls on the wall. The dolls were exact matches to what Jeff and Tom had been wearing.

Quickly snatching them from the wall I placed them down on the counter next to the clock and stared at Creole as he continued to giggle to himself. “Let me buy them,” I told him as I slid them closer to him.

“No.” He told me straight up. Any sentiment of laughter and happiness was gone from his voice. That southern drawl had gone from annoying to terrifying in an instant. He was being serious.

“W-why not?” I demanded to know, reaching out for the Tom and Jeff voodoo dolls but before I could grab them they disappeared before my eyes.

“Your credit’s no good here, Macedonia.” Creole’s voice had grown hoarse and he was clearly in no mood to listen to whatever I had to say to him. “Ya’ll are already in my debt, and I wouldn’t want you going any further just to save your stupid friends. In fact, you should count yourself lucky that I don’t place you on that wall with them. Or, have my fun with you like with Jess.” He stood up and reached a hand out to me, gripping my shoulder tightly. “Go home, and wait for me to call you again. Because if ya don’t leave now, I might lose my temper.” He shoved me slightly and I quickly got the message.

I reached out and grabbed my jacket from the register and ran as fast as I could out of the shop. If Creole had eyes there would’ve been murderous intent in them. As I walked home dejected, I began to think back on what had just happened. A few weeks ago me and my friends were just breaking into abandoned places to steal some things and help our families through this hard time. Now? I was indebted to some evil voodoo corpse and one of my friends was dead while to other two were turned into voodoo dolls.

My life is fucked and there’s no other way to look at it. Maybe I should’ve gone to college after all.

Everyone says my hometown doesn’t exist. I’m beginning to believe them. But that doesn’t mean that was always the case.

Let me back up.

The first time I encountered this bizarre denial was after my first semester at college. I trekked to the Amtrak station, luggage in tow, and asked the attendant for one ticket to Casey Falls, Michigan, please. She looked up from her desk and blinked. “Where?”

“Casey Falls, Michigan,” I repeated, a smidge slower this time.

After she performed a search on her computer, then sought counsel from her manager, they determined that, if Casey Falls was a real place, it wasn’t a stop on any of their lines.

“How can that be?” I protested. I could see its train station as clearly in my mind’s eye as their bewildered faces before me. Every spring break, I took the train with my family into Chicago, boarding at seven o’clock in the morning at the platform just east of Berry Street. Dad would hand me two dollars to buy a Coke and a bag of pretzels from the vending machines before the train arrived. My younger sister Janey and I sat impatiently on the benches waiting for our journey to begin.

But relaying this memory to the exasperated attendants did little to correct their system, which omitted Casey Falls from its available destinations.

I spent that Christmas alone in my dorm, desperately trying to get ahold of my family, but none of them answered. Mom, Dad, sister, phone, email, text, Facebook — nothing. Even stranger was that, overnight, their online presence vanished. Erased socials, bounced emails. When I called again, a recording informed me that the numbers I was trying to reach had been disconnected.

What is going on?

The following two weeks — ordinarily spent opening presents, reconnecting with high school friends, ringing in the new year — were instead subsumed under my intense investigation. I scrubbed the internet for any mention of my hometown. I came up empty-handed. Despite endless hours scouring Google, Yahoo, even Bing, I found no mention of the central Michigan burg, ensconced in forest, home to Casey Falls Army Training Camp and the defunct, collapsed copper mines. Even Google Maps erased Casey Falls from its records. Where ordinarily I would see the cluster of homes and farms and Main Street, there was only a green swath of forestland.

My hometown had literally been wiped off the map.

Worse yet, it was beginning to disappear from my own memory.

As break rolled on and my ceaseless search failed to yield a shred of evidence of my hometown’s existence, I noticed my own recollection of it fading. While staring bleary-eyed at the television on New Years Eve, watching revelers crowd Times Square to watch the spangled ball drop, I realized I couldn’t remember any previous New Years Eve. How had I spent them in Casey Falls? Maybe it was common to forget a few, for their memories to bleed into one another, to mix up which party went with which year, but to lose every New Years Eve from one’s personal history? I felt hollow, and in the void where Casey Falls and my preceding eighteen years of memories should have been, something dark and sinister lurked.

When my roommate returned in January and saw that I’d been holed up in our dorm for the entire break, he naturally enquired what happened. “What happened indeed!” was my mad response.

Desperate for a memory of home, even if secondhand, I interrogated Sean. “Surely you remember me talking about home at some point, right?” I asked. And while he agreed that, surely, in our various two a.m. chats we must’ve touched on the subject, he was chagrined to admit nothing specific returned.

The silver lining to this distressing chat was that I now had a partner. Sean, fascinated by my absent origin, took up the cause with me. He caught up quick, performing his own research online before arriving at the conclusion that we had to see for ourselves.

So, on a weekend in late January, he drove us in his junky sedan into the heart of the mitten, to where Casey Falls should’ve carved out a space for itself from the surrounding forest. To my horror, we found only trees. Where Main should have intersected with Blanchard, there was only a dirt drive reaching back into the woods. Sean didn’t think his car would handle the uneven road too well, but after some pleading, he acquiesced. We drove slow along the forested road, tree branches squeezing us into a tunnel of foliage.

“Right here!” I said. “Casey Falls should be right here!”

I leapt out of the car and raced through the woods. I’m not sure why, I don’t think it was rational, just my emotions taking control, a medley comprising anger, grief, confusion, fear, that propelled me through the underbrush until I tripped over something metal. I turned back to find a green box, like a geocache, resting on the forest floor. Inside, pages yellowed with age featured some sort of code scrawled across them, written with only half-decent penmanship. “What the hell is that?” asked Sean when he finally caught up to me.

It was the question we tried pairing with an answer over the ensuing month. Neither of us were real codebreakers, so we shopped the pages around campus, taking it to math nerds and professors in the hopes one of them might crack it. One by one, they tried their best to decipher the documents, but each one met invariably with defeat. One professor called it the toughest code she’d ever encountered while another suggested in all likelihood the pages were rubbish.

But the fact that I’d found it where my hometown should have been kept me from accepting the latter explanation. Something was written in those pages, something that helped explain what happened to Casey Falls.

But I’ll never uncover its secrets. Because, on March 3rd, someone tore our dorm room apart and the only thing they took with them was the coded pages.

Spooked by this flagrant invasion of privacy, Sean told me he would pursue the Casey Falls mystery no further. He believed that by showing the documents around campus, we’d attracted the attention of the feds — CIA, NSA, some other three-letter agency no one had ever heard of, and now we were being watched.

“Whatever happened to your hometown,” Sean said, “they don’t want anyone to find out.”

The next week, Sean transferred out, enrolling in a school on the east coast. He left without saying goodbye, another exit without ceremony.

I’ve since taken a barista job to be able to stay in Chicago through the summer, since I’ve got nowhere else to go. While reckoning with the fact I’ve become an orphan, in every sense of the word, I can’t help shaking the feeling that someone is watching me. Whatever happened to Casey Falls, it wasn’t good. I can feel it in my bones, the unheard screams of family and neighbors vibrating in the marrow. I feel them, and it makes me sick, but I cling to the horror because it’s all I have left of home.

On a godforsaken sea stack, miles offshore, nobody heard my screams.

I didn’t aspire to be a lightkeeper. In this day and age, why would I? Ships rely on modern technology to traverse lightless oceans. However, I was surprised to learn that mariners in some parts of the world still look towards brick beacons for navigational aid. In the summer of 2020, I seized the opportunity to work in a peaceful, secluded place. I wasn’t precious about job opportunities in a world that had stopped working.

I’d been running for a long time. Nothing frightened me about being far from the rest of humanity. A lighthouse in the middle of the ocean felt no different from a flat in the middle of the city. Everywhere was quiet without Rachel.

“Sorry about this,” I shouted as I entered the ferry’s cabin.

“Sorry about what?” The captain yelled in response.

“The choppy conditions,” I said, closing the door behind me.

I nodded at the lapping waves which gnawed at the hull of the small but sturdy vessel. And then I raised an eyebrow at Captain Thompson, the man in charge. I was baffled by his nonchalant reaction to the vicious weather. To my untrained eyes, it had been a gruelling thirty-mile voyage. I was grateful, as Thompson’s boat was the only option for transport to the distant lighthouse.

“This isn’t bad weather, son. The water’s always rough,” The captain chuckled. “I was only worried about making the journey in the dark.”

I nodded apologetically. “Well, I’m definitely sorry about that. I tried to get to the port sooner, but the traffic out of the city was a nightmare.”

“Not your fault,” The captain said. “And you won’t have to worry about things like that for the next two months. No traffic out there. No people. Nothing. Just you and your thoughts.”

“Do you speak from experience?” I asked.

The man shook his head. “No. I’ve just seen the poor souls who left that place. The caretaker seemed particularly rattled last month. He said he’d seen and heard things in that old building. Spirits. Voices. Hope you don’t believe in any of that talk.”

I smiled, not even slightly deterred by the captain’s ominous tone. It seemed a little clichéd for an old, weathered seafarer to caution the outsider. Still, I didn’t want to spoil the man’s fun. I didn’t imagine the job of a sailor in a sleepy, coastal town would be that riveting.

“What d’you think?” The captain asked, nodding his head at the island. “It’s a little clearer now. Changed your mind?”

Atop a skerry, which seemed far larger in photographs, there rose a colossal tower. Its white, glaring eye surveyed the sea with a steady rotation, blinding us when it caught the ship in its gaze. The tower itself was nothing but a black monolith — its features hardly visible at the dead of night. And my mind started to fill in the gaps. Started to imagine the horrors that might be concealed within that place. As the sky darkened, Thompson’s ghost story began to weigh more heavily on my mind.

That was why I doubted myself when, for a moment, I saw a silhouette in the tower’s light room. After the blinding glow passed, and I lowered the arm shielding my eyes, the shape was gone.

“You all right, Caleb?” The captain asked, frowning at my pale expression.

“Yeah, I just… I’m fine,” I muttered.

The man paused before nodding knowingly. “I’ve seen that look before. Most folk wear it after staying on the island. Who knows what things have happened in that tower? You need to have a good think about this. You sure you want the job, boy?”

I shrugged. “Don’t exactly have options.”

“We all have options,” The man said.

We didn’t talk for the brief, final leg of the trip. But minutes later, we shored, and the uncomfortable silence ended. The captain started to knot a fraying, untrustworthy mooring line around the dock’s bollard. I didn’t like the groan that the ship unleashed as a determined wave sought to undock us.

“One last time,” The captain said. “I don’t mind taking you back. And don’t worry about abandoning your post. The LLA would give you a slap on the wrist for breaching the employment contract, then they’d find a replacement in a heartbeat. You wouldn’t get in trouble. They’re all softies.”

“I really don’t look fit for the job, eh?” I chuckled. “I appreciate the suggestion, Captain, but I’m not worried about a black mark on my CV. I’m worried about not being able to pay the bills.”

The captain sighed.

I picked up my bags, steadying myself on the rocking deck, and jumped over the edge of the ferry. As I landed, the soles of my trainers squeaked uncertainly against the slippery dock, and the captain grimaced. I nearly slipped and slid into the water. Thompson had the expression of a wary parent reluctantly sending their child away on the first day of school.

“Thanks, Captain!” I shouted over the roaring weather. “I’ll be fine.”

“Be sure to use the satellite phone in any emergency,” He yelled in response. “No matter how big or small. Okay?”

“Okay!” I called, lifting a thumb of approval as I walked away.

I felt the man’s eyes boring into my back as I skated across the dock on inappropriate footwear. I heaved a sigh of relief when I reached the minuscule rock that would be my home for eight weeks, but I was sure to walk gingerly. Slowly. I didn’t want to face another round of inquiry from the sailor. He might have even rushed off the boat and forcibly dragged me back to the mainland.

Of course, I wouldn’t have allowed that. I needed the job. And I kept reminding myself of that as I scaled the steep, craggy rocks. I felt motivated. Alive. More alive than I’d felt in three years.

But then a piercing shriek filled the air.

Jolted out of my very body, I stumbled forwards. My knees connected with a jagged rock, shredding my jeans, and I cried in pain. Acting on survival instinct, however, I swiftly picked up my bags and my wounded body, wincing at my stinging legs. When I looked down, I saw blood staining the fresh tears in my jeans.

“PLEASE!” The shrieking voice pleaded.

Gripped by a feeling of dread, I eyed the lighthouse's door, only twenty yards away. And I mustered my remaining courage, steadily treading across the uneven limestone beneath my feet. Shoulder-first, I charged into the door, and it gave way.

Panting heavily, I immediately dumped the bags onto the floor of the darkened entryway, and I ran to the fuse box. It was on the left of the door, as the captain promised. And I quickly turned on every light in the building, pausing to frown at the sound of a groan from the basement storage area.

Old machinery awakening, I supposed.

But my mind was elsewhere. It was fixed on whatever I’d heard outside.

Satisfied by the warm glow of the lighthouse, I felt a little braver. Felt a little more civilised. Less like a man stranded in the Atlantic Ocean with an unknown cohabitant. Then, I walked outside and inhaled shakily.

“Hello?” I shouted. “Who’s there?”

But nobody answered. I called repeatedly and searched the island. Nothing. No-one.

And after an hour without luck, I chose to believe that I had imagined the voice. The shrill wail of a sea breeze sounds like a human voice to a frail, lonely mind on a forgotten rock. I ignored the fact that I had heard it within moments of reaching the island. Instead, I made dinner and went to bed.

For the first few weeks, all seemed well. I carried out my duties — maintaining the building and submitting weather data via satellite phone. I forgot all about the strangeness of the first night. And I would’ve likely never thought of it again, but the sound returned. On a night just as ferocious as the first, a voice called outside my window. It woke me from my sleep.

Not this again, I told myself angrily. It’s all in my head. I’m just lonely.

“PLEASE!” A voice shrieked.

A tone that set my hairs ablaze and automatically jolted my body from bed. Dressed in joggers, slippers, and a thin T-shirt, I bounded down the stairs. Face sweating. Heart hammering. A thousand questions cluttered my alert, pulsating brain.

If the woman had always been real, where had she been hiding for three weeks?

As I turned on the light in the darkened entryway, my busy mind distracted me from the slight movement in the ajar door to the basement. The door I was certain I had closed. And when I snapped my attention to it, two yellow lights rapidly extinguished. My entire body twitched fearfully. I raced to the door, every organ tensing in fright, but there was nothing to be found. Only ancient steps leading down to the lighthouse’s storage space.

I closed the basement door and returned my attention to the matter at hand. I doubted my imaginative eyes, but I was struggling to doubt my ears. I had clearly heard a voice outside.

Unlocking the entrance to my fortress, I attempted to steady my heart-rate. I didn’t want to let the captain’s warning infect my mind, but it was too late for that. My thoughts were becoming increasingly superstitious. And the more I hesitated, the harder it became to do the brave thing.

I threw the door open.

It was a bitter, biting night. The wind furiously whistled, and I convinced myself that, once again, I had let loneliness play tricks on me.

After all of that, it was only the breeze. Just like the first night.

But then I felt something. Sensed something. And I became aware of movement in my peripheral vision. I slowly turned to the left and screamed.

A woman with a tear-strewn face was limping towards me. Lit by the building’s exterior bulb, a young lady emerged with frazzled hair and tattered attire. She wore a puffy coat and bootcut, low-rise jeans, which bore rips and bloody marks. Worst of all, her face was hauntingly emaciated. Unthinkably sickly. She was barely clinging to life.

“Who are you?” The woman weakly asked.

“Me? I’m Caleb Fleck. The lightkeeper. Who are you?” I retorted, pitifully attempting to sound authoritative. “You’re trespassing. And–”

“– No, I… I swam here from a shipwreck,” She interrupted, coughing. “When I saw your boat approaching, I prayed you’d be able to help… Are you able to help?”

“Shipwreck?” I asked, staring into the night. “Where?”

The woman looked at the ocean. “I… I don’t know… We saw the lighthouse and swam–”

“– We?” I interjected.

Her face paled, and she started shivering. “It’s not safe here. You need to phone for help.”

Still reeling from the shock of meeting a stranger on an isolated rock, miles from civilisation, I attempted to steady my breathing and process the event.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“I don’t know… I’m sorry. We ate some of the rations, but… Let’s just get inside. He’s getting worse,” She said.

“Who?” I repeated.

“Please,” She moaned, peering into the lighthouse. “I don’t see him, but he’s in there.”

“The other survivor from the boat?” I asked.

The woman paused, hesitating to answer. “No. Well, there was a survivor, but… I… He’s dead.”

My eyes widened. “What? You said–”

“– He’s not the one in there… Or, at least, it’s not him anymore,” She whispered. “Of course, he was always this way underneath.”

I was struggling to untangle the deranged stranger’s riddles.

“I’ll call for help, and we’ll get to the bottom of what happened. What’s your name?” I asked.

“My name is Elsie Artell, and I’m telling the truth,” She tearfully insisted. “I’d really like to come inside now, Mr Fleck… I know I’m trespassing, but it’s so cold outside. Please.”

“Fine,” I nodded uneasily. “But go first, Mrs Artell, and I’ll follow you.”

Elsie nodded dejectedly, hobbling into the well-lit entryway. I hurriedly shut the door behind us, glad to be free from the howling elements of the outer world. Though I quickly felt more frightened of what I’d locked inside with me.

“Upstairs,” I said when the woman looked at me for direction.

She nodded and led the way, turning on lights as we climbed the floors. First, to the kitchen. Then, to the bedroom. And finally, up the ladder to the light room. I began to rummage through the desk drawers, shaky hands becoming more agitated as I searched for the satellite phone.

“Are you okay?” Elsie asked feebly. “Is it… there?”

I sighed, shaking my head. “Where is it, Mrs Artell? Where did you move it?”

“I didn’t move it! I… Oh no,” She gulped. “He took it. Took it to the storage room.”

“Right. ‘He’ took it. Let’s go downstairs then,” I sighed, tiring of what I believed to be lies.

Elsie’s eyes widened. “No. Not there.”

“Don’t you want me to call the mainland?” I asked. “You won’t get in any trouble. I promise. They’ll understand your situation… I’m not mad at you for hiding the phone.”

Elsie clutched my arm as I began to walk towards the stairs. “Please.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to tug my arm free.

“That’s where he lives,” She whimpered.

I groaned. “I don’t understand… Alive. Dead. Which is he?”

“He’s dead,” Elsie whispered, eyes darting around the room as if something might hear. “But he didn’t stay dead.”

At that moment, I finally processed the thought that had been rattling around in my head since I first saw the woman. She was mentally unwell. That didn’t explain everything, however. It didn’t explain how an unstable person had ended up in the middle of the ocean. I assumed that one part of her story had to be true — she’d survived some sort of boating accident. And if she’d been there for months, on her own, it would make sense that she’d become detached from reality.

“I’m going to the basement,” I said. “We’re not living like this for two months. And that phone is the only form of escape.”

“I… I know…” She wept, nodding. “I called to you before the boat left, but then I was too scared to approach you. It’s my fault. If I’d come out of hiding before the captain left, none of this would’ve happened.”

I sighed, placing a tentative palm on the woman’s hand. “It’s okay, Elsie. You can’t change what’s been done.”

“I wish I could,” She sobbed.

“Listen,” I said, leading the woman towards the stairs. “I feel compelled to ask… Where have you been hiding for the past few weeks? How have you been living outside?”

The woman paused on a step, thinking for a long moment before walking again. “In… In the old maintenance shed. There are some blankets in there… And I’ve been… slipping into the lighthouse to grab food whilst you sleep.”

“Flipping heck,” I said. “You were too afraid to approach me?”

“I’m always afraid,” She said. “That’s how I ended up here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked as we reached the kitchen.

“My husband,” Elsie answered. “He wasn’t a good man. I never wanted to be on that ship with him. He wanted us to take a romantic trip on his sailboat. It was a chance to recharge. Reset. He said he’d just been stressed from work. He said he never meant to hit me. But he did it so many times over so many years… Too many years.”

My head dropped, and I shuffled my feet. “Sorry, Elsie. That’s awful. And… I hate to ask this, but your story doesn’t quite make sense, so I must. What happened to your husband? Is he really… dead?”

Elsie sniffled, swerving the question. “We didn’t know what to do when we got here… We were just grateful that we didn’t drown. And when we found the food in the kitchen, Sebastian said everything would be okay. And it was okay for a couple of weeks. But then I pointed out that the food wouldn’t last forever, and he got mad. Said I never appreciated what was right in front of me. That was when he revealed he found the satellite phone on the first night, but he wanted us to ‘enjoy ourselves’ first.”

“Jesus…” I whispered.

Elsie nodded. “I got mad. It was a knee-jerk reaction. Stupid. I should’ve known better. It never went well whenever I stepped out of line. And this time was no different. Sebastian started to choke me… I couldn’t breathe. And then we were on the balcony, and… I don’t know.”

“It’s okay, Elsie,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Did I push him? Did he fall?” The woman trembled. “All I know is that he died. It was all over. But then his body wasn’t on the rocks anymore. I thought he’d been taken by the sea, until I started hearing things. Sounds from the basement. And when I went down there, I… found him. His rotting body was in the store room, and it was moving. He was a walking corpse. Walking and talking. Whispering to something in the corner of the room. Something that told him he needed to free himself of his shackles. Something–”

“– Elsie,” I interrupted. “Take a breath. You’ve been here a long time, and you endured something horrible. But it’s… made you ill. Mentally. Okay? Sebastian’s dead. He’s not in the basement.”

“He made a deal with something, Caleb,” The woman said. “It brought him back. Bound him to this place and told him what he had to do to leave.”

“Elsie, I don’t want to talk about this,” I said, heading towards the staircase. “I want to find the phone and get you some medical help.”

“I know I’m not… well,” She replied, tapping her head. “But I’m not lying to you.”

“I believe that you believe that,” I said. “But your husband isn’t a living corpse. Listen to what you’re saying, Elsie. You’ve been seeing things, and I don’t blame you. However, this is too trauma for me to unpack. Please. Let me get help.”

The young woman reminded me of my late wife, but she also reminded me of myself. A terrible event had splintered her very soul and muddied her view of the real world. Elsie had isolated herself spiritually long before Sebastian isolated her physically. And, in the same way, I had been alone long before the pandemic waged war against mankind. I hadn’t connected with people — truly connected with them — since Rachel died.

When Elsie and I reached the entryway, she became incredibly agitated. Her hand gripped my arm a second time.

“Wait,” She begged. “I’ve changed my mind…”

“It’ll be another month until Captain Thompson returns,” I said. “Look, you didn’t do this maliciously. I know that. But I need to call for help. Don’t you understand? I’m doing this for you, not me.”

“And I’m telling you not to go in there…” She whispered. “For you, not me.”

I didn’t listen.

With a tentative push, I opened the store room’s door. It revealed a stone staircase leading into darkness. The basement. And when I flipped the switch up and down several times, I realised that no light was appearing.

“The bulbs are burst down there,” Elsie explained quietly.

But that didn’t deter me. I snatched a torch from the shelf in the entryway, much to the woman’s disappointment — and fear. No matter how many obstacles she put in my way, I pressed onwards. I still viewed Elsie as a sick woman suffering from severe psychosis.

As I began to descend into the lighthouse’s underbelly, I quickly noticed the squelching of my trainers against the steps. And at the bottom, a shallow pool of water filled the main hallway.

“Was it like this when you arrived?” I asked.

The woman shook her head tearfully. “Let’s just find the phone and leave. It’ll be in the main storage room. On the desk. That was where Seb spent all of his time… Reading. Reading some horrible book he found… Something that became an obsession for him. A book that showed him how to come back. I’m starting to think he might’ve intended to die.”

I nodded, and my forehead gained folds with every step. The pool and my fear only deepened. By the time we reached the main storage room, the water had risen to my knees. My legs were drenched and chilled to the bone.

“I don’t understand how it flooded down here,” I said.

A sudden splash halted me, and my throat shrank. The shadow of a man danced at the far end of the room, partially concealed by boxes and tools on the shelving units.

“Elsie… Who is down here?” I shuddered. “You said he was dead…”

“He is dead,” She cried.

Something seized my lower calf.

And when I looked down, I saw disintegrating fingers in the water — clutching my leg. It tugged, toppling me like a loose domino, and Elsie screamed as I plunged into the water.

Inexplicably, however, I entered an underwater realm far deeper than the shallow puddle. Below me, my decaying captor eyed me with yellow pupils — pupils neither bright nor dim. A colour not of our world, corrupting my soul. Whispering disturbing things to my tired, howling ears, like water-logged vessels. I wrestled with the satanic being as my lungs bloated. And in my final moments of darkness, Sebastian’s corpse wrapped one hand around my neck.

A burst of blackness followed, and the creature unleashed a cry muted by the watery world. Suddenly, he released his grip, and my half-conscious form floated to the surface. As my vision returned slightly, I eyed the terrible, lifeless body with black matter spilling from it — sinking into the depths of the unnatural underworld.

When I reached the surface, Elsie’s hands pulled me to safety, and I was back in the shallow pool of the storage room. The terrifying underwater realm had vanished. Sebastian’s corpse floated on the surface of the water, but it was still. A dreadful sight, but a human one.

Whilst Elsie wailed in terror at the situation, I clutched my swollen neck. My fingers met the necklace I always wore. The one Rachel left behind — it contained a picture of us. I don’t know how, but that jewellery saved me. For the first time in the three years she’d been gone, I felt Rachel’s presence. I realised I’d never been alone. Not really. Not even on a desolate rock miles from the rest of the world.

“Caleb?” Elsie sobbed. “Are you… okay?”

I shook my head. “No. Are… you?”

“No,” She sniffled, before smiling. “But I’m not… not okay.”

I almost mustered a chuckle, and we embraced. Two lonesome souls who healed as much as they were capable of healing. Though neither of us fully understood the pain of the other, we knew what it meant to be alone. Even when surrounded by people. And, in that way, we were kindred spirits.

I stumbled around the shelves, wading through water towards the desk at the far side of the room, and the satellite phone was sitting there. As she’d promised. But no book.

The emergency call was swift. Captain Thompson was horrified by my story, but he didn’t question it. The man set sail, and we waited for his arrival. Leaning against the balcony’s barrier, we watched the sun rise from the top floor.

“I lied,” Elsie eventually said.

I shook my head. “No. I was wrong. I’m sorry for doubting you. Your story just… I still don’t understand what I saw…”

The woman looked at me, eyes welling, then she nodded over the barrier. “Look down, Caleb.”

I was puzzled, but I obliged. And when I looked at the foot of the tower, vomit rose to the top of my throat.

Strewn across the blood-stained rocks were Elsie’s clothes — the same thick coat and bootcut jeans worn by the woman standing beside me. And the clothes on the rocks were worn by a dusty mound of nothingness. A pile of decay that used to be Elsie.

“I fell and died too,” She whispered. “And I woke right here. Staring down at my own body. I didn’t know why I hadn’t left this place… Until I realised what Sebastian had done to stay in the world of the living. I was kept here for a reason. It was to stop him from taking your body. Stop him from ever leaving the lighthouse.”

“Elsie…” I started tearfully.

The spectre smiled, starting to glisten in the red hue of the dawning sun.

“It’s okay, Caleb,” She said. “Thank you. You did what I never managed to do. You rid the world of that monster. I feel… free. For the first time in a long time. I’m ready now, Caleb. And so are you.”

I looked down. “I’m not ready, Elsie. I gave up a long time ago.”

“I don’t believe that,” She whispered. “It’s not over for you yet. Do what I didn’t. Don’t live alone anymore. It’s killing you.”

“The world isn’t the way you remember, Elsie,” I explained. “People are sick. We all live in isolation now.”

She placed a spectral hand on my arm. “Were you alone before that, Caleb? I think you were. And I don’t think you want to be alone forever. Why else are you still here?”

“HEY!” A voice called from a hundred yards out to sea.

My eyes shot to the source of the sound, and I saw Captain Thompson’s ferry traversing the rough waters at immense speed. Approaching under the day’s first light.

“I’m so sorry, Elsie,” I sobbed. “I’m so…”

But when I turned, the dead woman was gone. All that remained of her was a mound of attire on the rocks below.

I sombrely packed my things and made my way to the dock. And when I reached Thompson’s ferry, I expected questions. Questions about the girl I had found. The girl we were supposed to save. But the captain was strangely silent on the journey back to shore. He only said one thing.

“I saw the girl on the balcony, Caleb,” He whispered. “She was there, and then she…”

Captain Thompson didn’t finish the sentence, and I offered the man a nod. A nod that told him the caretaker’s story had been true. But then I wondered whether others found whatever book Sebastian found. After all, somebody had to leave it there for him to find. I started to fear that other things might haunt the skerry. And as we sailed away, I took one last look at the lighthouse. It appeared empty, but I didn’t trust my eyes. I was afraid.

Afraid that, at any moment, I might see a silhouette in the light room.

"Hello? Hello? Please, I need help."

Jerry grasped his stomach, his face contorted in a grimace of pain.

"I, my stomach... I think I have a tummy ache!"

I unsuccessfully stifled a laugh. Then we were rolling around the basement, hooting and hollering. A couple hours into our smoke session, we couldn't help but try a few harmless prank calls.

We exhausted our options of the local restaurants, and calling Jerry's cousin with my phone, before we got the brilliant idea to try 911. I was against it. Jerry's argument was we lived in a small town and the operators wouldn't mind a break from the boredom.

He won.

"AGGH, MY TUMMY!" Jerry wailed. He threw his arms above his head, pretending to gasp for air.

I cackled, slapping my knee. It really wasn't that funny but we were zonked out of our minds.

Jerry had flung his phone across the room during his exaggerated performance. I stumbled toward it, short bursts of laughter firing from my chest.

The call was still connected. No problem, I went to hang up.

A woman's voice droned through the speaker.

"We are sending someone your way."

"No wait-," I brought the phone to my ear. The line disconnected.

"Damn it. Jerry."

He was still writhing on the ground.

"Jerry, I think they're actually coming."

He stopped and craned his neck until he was looking at me upside down.

"For real?"

"Yes, dude, they said someone's coming."

Jerry paused. A confused look passed over his face.

"But. How? We didn't even give them an address."

"I think they can track that shit now."

"Cap," he shook his head. "No way. That's gotta be illegal. Tracking your location?"

He looked at me, grasping for validation.

"It's the police, not some hacker in a StarBucks."

Jerry moved quickly towards the T.V. and plopped himself down on the couch.

"Whatever, they pull up we say wrong house."

He brought up Netflix. The marijuana in my system soon scrubbed the worry from my thoughts. We sat and enjoyed the show until a dull knock from upstairs interrupted.

Jerry jumped from the couch and looked at me wide-eyed.

"Shit."

We were at Jerry's house and both in high school. His parents were out of town for the weekend but if they heard about this, he could forget about summer break.

"I didn't think they'd actually come. SHIT. Hide the weed."

"Shut up, relax. They'll go away after a while," I said. He was starting to really freak.

There weren't any windows; his basement was completely underground.

Another knock floated down the stairs.

Unable to bring his attention back to the T.V. he jumped in the air again.

"Lights! I left the lights on upstairs."

"You are an idiot."

Jerry's eyes were hot red. In contrast, the situation was sobering me up.

I scratched my head roughly. "Alright, I think I can talk to them. Stay down here."

He thanked me profusely and gave me water to chug for my breath. At the top of the steps I looked back. Jerry gave a thumbs up and waved me on from the bottom.

Like he said, the living room lights were on and through the opaque glass of the front door, two silhouettes.

I glanced at my reflection in the mirror and walked nervously toward the front.

That moment with the knob in my hand, I could've made a decision that saved me from the paranoia I've suffered since.

Instead, I let them in.

The porch lights were off. The glow from the living room birthed uncanny shadows through the screen door onto the faces of the two outside.

I waited for them to speak. Soundless and motionless, seemingly refusing to breathe. From each of their shadow-masked faces I could only make out a wide smile with teeth dimly illuminated behind the screen.

That silence was far too uncomfortable.

I started, "He-"

"Apologies for disturbing you," one interrupted. He sounded young. It caught me off guard. Maybe it was the dark, but their smiles never moved as they talked.

"There has been an emergency. We are looking for Jerry."

Alarm bells started ringing.

"You might have the wrong house. Sorry, sirs."

I moved to close the door. We had never mentioned our real names on the call.

"Jeremy!"

That voice sounded familiar. It was enough for me to jump away from the door as if electrocuted. One of the silhouettes outside pressed its face into the screen.

"Jeremy, come here right now!"

"Mom?" Jeremy's voice called limply from the basement.

Air evacuated from my lungs. The screen door was opening. With no thoughts in my head beside to flee; to put as much distance between me and the thing coming in, I scrambled up the stairs to the second floor. It was closer than the basement and I locked myself in a bathroom.

I started to type out a text to warn Jerry. There were muffled voices from the living room.

"You must be Jerry."

Too late.

"Uhm, yes. Where's my mom?"

"She stepped outside. What seems to be the problem Jerry?"

"Oh, that. That was an accident. We butt dialed you I think."

"Hm, yes. Your friend. Do you know where he is?"

I sent a burst of texts to Jerry.

DONT TRUST THEM.

YOUR MOMS NOT HERE.

GET OUT.

"Yea, I'm not sure, he was supposed to answer the door. Uhm... uh..."

He must have read the messages.

"Is everything alright, Jerry?"

There was a pause.

Then Jerry spoke, unsure and slow.

"Yes. Is it okay if I step out to talk to my mom? She must be really worried."

"Why, yes."

I heard footsteps start before the sounds of a scuffle.

"he-, HEY! WHAT THE HELL!"

There was banging and the the sounds of glass shattering.

"Quiet him. Good."

A frantic grunting followed.

The initial fear was beginning to dissolve. The urge to save my friend powered my legs. I crept down the stairs painfully, one step at a time, listening to the voices - the silhouettes from the dark - speak over Jerry's feeble cries.

"I have a rookie here with me today, so please be patient."

Halfway down the stairs, the wall ended. The slowest I've ever moved was right then, creeping my head around the edge until half of one eye was clear.

They were facing away from me, two men in paramedic uniforms standing over Jerry. He was on the ground bound by straps with gauze shoved into his mouth.

One of the paramedics with long hair knelt. He ran a hand over Jerry's face who shook him off and yelped.

"Give him some monoxide."

The long haired paramedic reached into his bag and began attaching tubes to a gas cannister with the big red letters CO scrawled across it. Jerry's eyes widened and he began thrashing even harder.

He attached the other end to a mask and turned a valve on the cannister. A hissing sound filled the room and the gas mask was forced over Jerry's mouth and nose.

"Hold him."

After 30 seconds Jerry's attempts to free himself noticeably weakened. Within a minute he was unconscious.

During all of this I tried to think of someone who could help us. I didn't want to call anyone, afraid they'd hear me from where I was. My parents were asleep. Even if someone was awake they'd probably call 911. That's what brought them here.

"Go ahead. Do the assessment."

The paramedic directing the long haired one was short and stocky. He turned the valve and the hissing quieted. He pointed at Jerry signaling Long Hair to continue.

Once again, he ran his hands over Jerry's face, then through his hair reaching behind his ears down to his neck. Long Hair went over Jerry's entire body, prodding, pushing, and groping every inch of him. When he reached his toes he turned towards his partner flashing a grin.

"Nothing wrong with him."

"That's terrible news. What was the chief complaint?"

"Abdominal pain."

He shook his head.

"We missed our offering tonight. Young, healthy. This one will make up for it. Bag and tag. You'll learn a lot from him."

Long Hair nodded and exited the house. The stocky one rummaged through another bag and pulled out a sharpie. He lifted Jerry's shirt and began drawing a dotted line below the navel.

"I can't see you."

I flinched. Somehow, I knew he was talking to me.

"But I know you're there. I want you to know this isn't any fault of yours. Or his. This, us. You can call it coincidence. Or fate. Whichever you believe. But, believe in it."

He capped the sharpie. The dotted line had become a dotted oval, stretching across Jerry's abdomen and encircling his belly button.

"We're here to help."

Long Hair walked back in with a stretcher. They quickly loaded Jerry up. He was still unconscious with the mask on him. Long Hair wheeled him out the door and the other called after him.

"That's where you're going to cut. Get the tools ready."

Then he looked into my eye. He smiled. When he spoke he used Jerry's voice.

"Does your tummy hurt too?"

I could barely move, but shook my head.

"Goodbye."

When the house was empty, I cried so hard I passed out. In the morning when I woke, I searched the entire house for Jerry - for proof that it was all a nightmare. There was no evidence; of Jerry or the paramedics.

Haven't seen them since.

I called the police, the real ones. The story that stuck was I woke up, and he was gone. I got a ticket for the weed. That's really it. There was nothing to prove my involvement. Nothing that could prove anything really.

Didn't just lose Jerry that day. No one talks to me. Can't even ask for homework answers anymore. All the adults try to hide their conversations about me. Not that I care much.

To be honest, I'm still looking for my bestfriend.

A week ago it was late driving home from work. An ambulance pulled up beside me at a stop. It's lights weren't on but I kept my foot on the brake when the traffic light turned green.

I tried to get a look inside from the back window but it was too dark to see.

Just make sure, that it's really an emergency when you dial that number. And if you do, make sure that it's really them.

Room Nine wasn’t where it all began but it certainly felt like it was all going to end there.

I felt it as soon as I signed my name to the contract, agreeing to be a participant in the study they only referred to as ‘The Conversations.’ And I could still feel the chill scurry down my spine like a hundred migrating cockroaches as Mr. Sweet filed away the papers with a smile slightly too wide for his face.

At the time, I thought he was there to help me.

Despite his pale—almost translucent—complexion and the pitch black irises that felt like they were exposing every dirty secret I’d kept hidden, this tall stranger seemed like a slender angel sent from above when he intervened in my interrogation.

“Your name is Eli Parish,” Mr. Sweet began, sitting rigidly across from me at the cold, stainless steel table. “Confirm or deny.”

It took a moment to process his question. Not because it was a difficult one to answer—hell, it even had multiple choice—but because of the way in which he spoke. So deliberate and flat. So detached from the situation. “Confirm.”

“You have been a commercial cleaner at Obsidn Dynamics for seven months and twelve days. Confirm or deny?”

“I think so,” I said, trying to recall exactly how long I’d been there, but found myself unable to think about anything other than his paralysing glare. “Yeah, seven and a half months. Confirm.”

“You have been stealing company property every day for the past nine days. Confirm or deny?”

I flinched at this. It wasn’t because of the accusation, which were absolutely, regrettably correct, but because he knew exactly how long I’d been pocketing their tech. “Look, I can explain-”

“Confirm or deny?”

“I still have it all, in my apartment. I can bring it right back,” I pleaded, my voice cracking a little more than I’d expected.

Mr. Sweet only continued to glare at me. His eyes unfeeling. Unblinking.

“Confirm,” I said weakly.

Mr. Sweet lingered on my defeated face a moment longer than I’d have liked before finally breaking his gaze to open his briefcase. “The assets you stole have a combined value of three million two hundred thousand dollars. You are in a position to reimburse the Company this amount. Confirm or deny?”

“What?” I almost screamed. All I took were small devices, no bigger than a standard walkie-talkie. I was waiting to figure out what exactly it was they were built for before trying to sell them but if I’d known they’d been worth over three million dollars?

“Confirm or deny?” He repeated, setting up his laptop.

“I… I don’t have that kind of money.”

His eyes met mine, clearly waiting for the specific answer to the very specific question he’d asked.

“But I didn’t sell anything! It’s still right there in my apartment. We can go and get it right now,” I said, knowing that was probably the one way to get out of this. I wasn’t built for a life in prison. I was barely built for a life outside prison.

Mr. Sweet only responded by turning the laptop screen to face me.

That’s the moment I saw my whole life go up in flames.

Right there on the screen. A local news broadcast showing my actual apartment building smothered in flames, with firefighters fighting a losing battle to keep it under control. The audio on the video was muted but I imagined the reporter was basically telling me I was fucked. Though, she seemed to be using a lot more words to say it.

“Mr. Parish, this is your residence,” Mr. Sweet said.

“C-confirm,” I stammered, without realising he hadn’t even asked the question. He was simply telling me, without a single shred of empathy, and yet like a trained monkey, I responded exactly how he wanted.

“Everything you own, everything you achieved in your life up until this point in time, was in that residence,” Mr. Parish said, shutting the laptop. “You have no close relatives, no life partner, and a very small friend group. You are, essentially, alone. Confirm or deny?”

I wanted to punch him. I was never a violent man and any fists I’d thrown in the past had always been in self-defense. But hearing his unfeeling tone and seeing those dark, dead eyes just made me want to leap out of that chair and smack some feelings into his face.

And yet, he wasn’t wrong. I’d left my family behind over two decades ago and hadn’t had contact with them for at least five years now. It wasn’t that I didn’t care for them, it’s more that I didn’t care for the drama they seemed to thrive in. Every day a new problem came and when one didn’t land in their laps, they created one. Every conversation strained and every interaction a minefield. So much history smothered by so much trauma. I just couldn’t bare to live like that any longer, with every breath drawn feeling like a struggle to survive.

I never went to therapy but I assumed it would tell me what I already knew, that my fucked-up childhood prevented me from creating meaningful relationships in my adulthood. Sure, I’d had casual friends, acquaintances, social colleagues. But none of them really knew who I was, what I thought, how I navigated this world. Any that came close to that eventually got too frustrated with everything I lacked and ended up enforcing their own boundaries on me. I’m sure a therapist would have told me that boundaries are healthy but they really don’t seem that way when you’re always on the other side of them.

So, sure. I was alone. “Confirm.”

“This is quite a predicament, Mr. Parish, but I am here to offer you a way out of this on behalf of the Company,” Mr. Sweet said as he pushed some papers over to me. “In front of you is a contract. Should you sign the contract, your theft will be disregarded and your debt of three million two hundred thousand dollars will be cleared.”

I grabbed the papers and began skimming the paragraphs. Lots of legal jargon I couldn’t really understand but a few words jumped out at me. “This is a… a study? An experiment? What is… you want to experiment on me?”

“You would be participating in a study of observation. There is no experimentation on you or your body, though the study itself is—by its very nature—experimental,” he said. “You will not be given the purpose of the study or specific details. You will spend precisely forty-two days in a facility and you will have no contact with the outside world. Contact with other participants is also strictly forbidden.”

“I’d be alone,” I said, suddenly realising why that was such an important thing for me to affirm before. He was prepping me for this scenario, manipulating me towards the outcome he wanted. “I’m nobody’s guinea pig.”

I slid the contract back to Mr. Sweet but he suddenly slammed his hand down on mine. So cold and… damp. The veins running from his skinny fingers were protruding so much I thought the thin skin over them would burst open. And for a man that was basically a skeleton in a suit, he was really fucking strong.

“Mr. Parish, I am not here to coerce you into anything you do not wish to do. Your compliance… your consent is of the utmost importance to Obsidn Dynamics.”

“Sure doesn’t feel like that,” I said through gritted teeth, eyeing his hand.

“Apologies,” he said, finally releasing my hand from under his. He leaned back into his chair and regained his rigid composure. “I must remind you that declining this offer would also mean the Company must pursue a legal path in regards to your criminal actions. You would not only be convicted and incarcerated but you would be paying off your debt for the rest of your natural life. I cannot fathom this being the better option for you.”

“Sounds like I’d be in a prison either way.”

“We are not in the habit of holding prisoners,” Mr. Sweet said. “And it would only be for forty-two days.”

It took about an hour to read over the contract properly while I digested the enourmously fucked up situation I’d found myself in. Whatever his intentions and however much I knew I was being forced into something against my will—regardless of how Mr. Sweet spun it—I knew he was right. If I ever wanted to live a life as a free man, I had to become their property.

Mr. Sweet took the signed contract and filed it away in his briefcase before showing me the first sign of emotion since he’d entered the room. He grinned. It was too wide, too curved, too uncanny. I wanted him to leave immediately so that I wouldn’t need to look at it a second longer but something had been nagging at me the whole time we’d been talking.

“Nine days,” I finally said.

He didn’t lose the grin, only shifted it into a pained smile, like he knew exactly where this was going.

“You knew I was stealing company property for nine days and nobody stopped me before now,” I said, feeling my heart racing as I vocalised it. “I’ve worked here for seven months and I’ve never met an incompetent employee. So either somebody fucked up—every day for those nine days—or… or you let it go on until I’d racked up an amount of debt so huge I could never overcome it.”

He stood glaring at me again. The faintest of twitches trembling under his forced smile.

I kept my eyes on his, defiant. “Confirm or deny?”

Those few seconds of deafening silence felt like they were smothering me. We were locked in a battle I had no hope of winning, yet I still had this urge to see it through, to see where it would lead. For a moment I could see the pressure building in his face as those veins creeped and popped, filling every hollow crevice, slithering under his pale skin like earthworms while he furiously tried to maintain that tortured smile. And when I thought his entire head might actually erupt in a flurry of blood and brain-matter…

He burst into a howling, screeching laughter.

He cackled like somebody who had never actually laughed before, as if he’d only ever seen it on TV and was purely imitating it. He doubled over, stamped his feet on the ground, and bellowed like an old hag.

Until he snapped out of it just as suddenly as it had begun. His eyes met with mine before he waved me away like some foolish child. “My, my, Mr. Parish, what an imagination you have.”

When he left the room, I thought I would be relieved. I wish I had been. I wish I’d just taken a moment to breathe and appreciate that my life—even at its lowest—was my own life. Because that was the last time I would ever feel that way again.

*

The whole time I had been marched through the building and labyrinth of corridors, elevators, and stairs, I was blindfolded. At first, I’d tried to commit our movements to memory.

Left, right, down one level, right, right, up in the elevator for thirty-seven seconds.

But this went on and on for what seemed like an eternity. While the Obsidn Dynamics building was one of the biggest I’d ever worked—and I’d only ever been assigned to clean one isolated section of it—I suspected they were looping around to confuse me.

When we finally stopped, I heard the door behind us aggressively seal and lock, and the only thing I could think of was how much it smelled of oranges and… the local swimming pool?

The blindfold came off and I recoiled from the light as it filled my vision. The lights dimmed with a tint of red, giving my eyes some reprieve. I realised we were in a beige-paneled corridor and this one stretched on for what seemed like forever. On either side were walnut-veneer doors with nothing to identify them but the brass numbered plaques.

Mr. Sweet walked ahead, his movements awkward in their stiffness. I was tugged along by the lone security guard. She was taller than me and clearly hit the gym more times a week than I did which, honestly, given I was like a ninja in the gym—you’d never see me there—wasn’t too hard. Either way, even if I thought I could escape through the locked door behind us, I wasn’t going to mess with her.

“Mr. Parish, I’d like you to meet Ava,” Mr. Sweet said. “She will be your Handler during your stay with us.”

Stay. Like this was some kind of yoga retreat in the wilderness.

“From this point on, your only interactions outside your Conversation Room will be with myself and Ava.”

“Conversation Room?” I asked.

“You have two dedicated spaces within the facility. One will be where you rest—your Quarters—the other is where you will participate in The Conversations,” he said. “You have been assigned Room Nine.”

I’d been so scattered I hadn’t really looked at the room numbers as we walked through the corridor. We were at Room Twenty-Six and were coming up to Room Twenty-Five. Shit. How many rooms had I already passed? How many people were locked up down here?

We stopped suddenly at the sound of a mechanical lock.

Up ahead, another Handler stepped out of a room and into the corridor, his footsteps pounding through the silence. He lifted his head and saw us and while he was quite far away, I could still make out his horrified face upon seeing us. And when a woman appeared behind him, his face only got worse.

She was young, long red hair hiding most of her face, and trailing down to her tracksuit; brown with a single yellow striped running from collar to ankle. When her Handler put his arm out across her chest to stop her walking further, she stopped and rubbed her hands together.

I couldn’t hear what she was saying but I could see her lips muttering something. Just like her hands rubbing, they were slow and steady, until they started to get faster and faster, rapidly and aggressively rubbing against each other. Her hands, her lips, violently smacking, until-

“It won't stop coming!"

I must have let out a sound because Ava tightened her grip on my bicep and shook her head at me with wide eyes. But her glare wasn’t like the one I’d experienced with Mr. Sweet. It was… concerned? A warning?

When I looked back ahead I saw the Handler shuffling the redhead to the room directly opposite the one they’d appeared from. His panicked desperation to unlock the door with his security tag only made me think of how horrifying Mr. Sweet’s expression must be. I thought I’d already seen the limit of how unnerving his face was when he cackled like a deranged witch but I realised then that it’s possible there was no limit at all.

The mechanical lock sounded again as the Handler finally unlocked the door but he must have been so distracted he’d loosened his grip because the redhead broke free and sprinted towards us like a deer escaping her predator.

Ava’s grip remained tight but both she and Mr. Sweet stood firm.

The redhead got closer and closer, her Handler desperately trying to catch up but obviously taken by surprise.

I could see her eyes, filled with tears.

Her hair clung to her clammy face like tendrils.

She pounded the concrete until she got so close I thought she’d barrel right through us. But she didn’t. Instead, she fell to her knees in front of us and looked right up at Mr. Sweet with eyes so desperate I just wanted to reach out with my hand and take hers.

“Please,” she gasped, grabbing Mr. Sweet’s pants. “It’s too much.”

Mr. Sweet remained still as the Handler finally reached us and grabbed the redhead from behind. All I wanted to do was help her. I wanted to break free of Ava’s grip, finally give Mr. Sweet that punch I knew I wouldn’t be able to land properly, and try to make a run for it with her. But I couldn’t move.

I was completely frozen.

And then the redhead finally acknowledged me, her face contorting into some kind of twisted euphoria. It was like the whole world stopped and everything faded away around us until it was just me and her staring into each other’s souls.

She gasped and whispered...

“It’s making me so wet.”

It first started when I was waiting for a train, a Pidgeon flew down and landed on the train platform to the right of me, I blinked, the bird disappeared into thin air just for it to land again, I blinked and once again the bird disappeared and landed to the right of me, in shock of what I had just seen I recoiled and sprung up onto my feet, I blinked, I was sitting down again, the bird landed, I sprung up onto my feet and ran thinking this was the doing of the bird, I blinked, this went on for quite a while, each time I dreaded seeing the bird again, and each time it flew directly at me only changing its course a second before it flew into me, I blinked, until I didn't the bird landed again, I did not blink, I looked at the bird it looked back at me and once again flapped its wings to fly away, I flinched.

Once I realized that it was not the bird that was forcing me to travel back in time and that it was in fact me blinking, I started, blinking one eye at a time, I left the train station, BLINK, I waited for and got on the train, BLINK, I tried asking for help only to end up getting strange looks, BLINK, no matter what I did, no matter where I went each time that I blinked, I was once again sitting on that bench. The Pidgeon landed on the train platform for a few seconds and took off again.

after what seemed to have been a week I gave up, there was only one more possible solution to my problem, as I heard the train approach I leapt onto the tracks only to close my eyes right before the impact, I was back on the bench, my eyes did not feel heavy anymore the tears had disappeared, the bird landed on the platform, I ran, I ran from the station, but again no matter how far I got I blinked and was transported back to the bench, I tried jumping on the tracks over and over again, I laid my head down on the tracks themself hoping that the wheels of the train would crush my head before I had the chance to blink but once again no matter what I did I still ended up on that bench, that fucking bench, it's dark green paint almost seemed to have burnt my retinas from their mundanity, the texture of the wood it was made out of seemed to have slid through my clothes and embedded itself into my skin.

I am typing this as a final message, as I have done many times before, and just like those other messages, I am hoping that what I'm about to do works. After I post this message, I will return to the train platform where this all started, I will cut my eyelids off, and I will once again jump down onto the train tracks. If any of my family members are reading this, I'm sorry that I had to do this, but I don't think there is another way out. Even if I try to keep living while blinking one eye at a time, I won't make it far without sleep. Please do not change your lives because of my death, and live like you would have when I was alive. I do not want you to ruin your lives because of my death and live like you would have when I was alive. I do not want you to ruin your lives over what I am about to do.

I'm sorry.

I didn't know much about my almost-death. Just that it was fast.

Fucking painful.

I know I died screaming, writhing in agony and just wanting it to stop.

Death, or almost-death, is a weird thing. It's like being dragged under water, suffocating in pitch dark depths, and then floating back to the surface.

Breaking through, oxygen returning to your lungs.

Awakening upside down on a sun lounger with no memories but my name was not what I was expecting to be on the other side. I was always curious about the possibility of an afterlife.

I was brought up in an atheist household, but there was a part of me that believed in something after death. Not quite the white pearly gates, but definitely not the suffocating and yet peaceful oblivion my parents believed in. Mom was convinced there was just the dark, while Dad was more accustomed to reincarnation.

Both of them were wrong. Because Heaven resembled a five star holiday resort.

For a moment I was frozen, staring at a perfect blue sky, aware of my ponytail lightly grazing the water. Looming over me was a picturesque building made of pink brick going up, up, up into the air, thousands, millions, of checkerboard windows, an impossible water park hovering above the clouds.

The pool I was half submerged in, and that shimmered above me, was made of diamonds.

The afterlife for young people was spring break.

I was transfixed, hypnotised by this beautiful place, before I slipped into the water, head first. There was a suppressed memory there somewhere, my idiotic child self forgetting I couldn't swim in the deep end.

My initial reaction was to panic, but I didn't need my lungs or my breath anymore.

The water was the perfect temperature, like being embraced in a warm hug.

Still though, that didn't stop me immediately freaking out and clawing my way back to the surface, spluttering.

It was my natural reaction to choke, despite no longer having working lungs.

“You can't drown in shallow water, idiot.”

Behind me, a boy was sitting on the edge of the pool, his toes dancing in the shallows. The kid was my age.

Eighteen, or maybe nineteen.

He offered me a smile, blowing floppy brown hair out of his eyes. I noticed flowers entangled in his curls, a broken crown of roses.

His clothes were an interesting choice for immortal paradise, a short sleeved white shirt covered in blood, jeans rolled up to his knees. Those were the clothes he must have died in.

I noticed his right eye was bruised yellow, a shiver creeping its way down my spine.

Looking down at myself, my clothes were fairly normal.

No blood splatters, at least not what I could see.

Just a plain shirt and jeans, both of which were uncomfortably glued to me.

“I'm Caine,” he said, kicking his feet in the water.

The boy turned his head, and I gulped in air.

I didn't think panic would still exist in heaven. But there it was, twisting my gut into knots. I didn't have or need breath, and yet I found myself instinctively trying to suck it in.

The guy may have looked beautiful, like the afterlife was editing him to fit perfection. But I could see the shallow cavern at the back of his skull, a smear of pinkish red dripping down his shirt.

“As you can see, it's obvious why I'm here.” he prodded the hole, and I winced.

He saw my reaction and laughed.

“Hey, it's cool, apparently, our physical selves don't exist.” His lips formed a smile. “The girl in room 101 told me our real physical forms would freak us out, so we’re our default selves.”

“Default.” I repeated.

“Yeah!” Caine’s eyes darkened. “We look like we did when we, um, died.”

He sighed, his gaze going skyward, tracking a kid plunging into an infinity pool right above our heads. “Speaking of the D word, I don't remember how or why, I uh, d-worded.” Caine turned back to me, offering me a playful shrug, tipping his head back. Like we were meeting for the first time on holiday.

“I dunno man, I was shot in the head, died and then I ended up in a stoned dude’s idea of heaven. I don't know what to say, except this is awesome.”

“Bree.” I managed to get out.

He raised a brow. “Huh?”

I allowed myself to sink into the water, trying to register his words. “It's Bree.”

“Well, it's nice to meet cha, Bree.”

Caine jumped up, holding out his hand to help me out of the pool.

When I tried to grasp his arm, he held up a two fingered salute. “Happy Death Day.”

I found myself laughing, which was ridiculous because the joke sucked.

I let him pull me out of the pool, sopping wet. “How long did it take you to think of that one?”

Caine shrugged, scrunching up his nose. “Longer than necessary.” he said, “Oh, hey, here's a tip.” the boy spun around to face me, and I could almost forget he was clearly a murder victim.

“If you want to get dry, just do this.” Caine clicked his fingers.

“You're not serious.”

He laughed. “We’re in a never ending paradise for kids, and you think I’m joking?”

“Welcome to Paradise Falls!”

The mechanical voice spoke above us, as if on cue.

There were floating speakers in the sky. Everything seemed to be floating.

The only thing that wasn't floating was us.

When I lifted my head, the clouds switched colors depending on my mood.

According to Caine, the whole world was ours, quite literally.

Everything we saw was tailored to our own personal paradise. I asked Caine what he could see, and he shrugged.

“Flowers.” he said with a light smile.

I was given a welcoming in the form of an AI voice.

“Paradise Falls is a safe space for young people whose lives have come to an abrupt end! If you have any questions regarding your death, please visit the help desk. And remember! Paradise Falls remove painful memories to ensure a perfect stay here. If you have trouble remembering how you died, be rest assured there is a reason. Here at Paradise Falls, we believe in moving forwards. If your stay here is temporary..."

The speakers were on a constant repeat, as Caine pulled me further into the resort itself.

The place was 99.9% water, even the floor glistening like the surface of a tropical ocean. I fell into the ground twice, catching the attention of a group of kids walking past us, led by a pretty redhead with a spear through her eye.

The guy walking with her was constantly spluttering water.

“That's Adam and Reia,” Caine murmured. “Adam drowned in his family pool, and Reia…” he trailed off.

“Was shot through the eye,” I said, “It's obvious.”

Caine shot me a grin. “You're learning!” he said, “But, no. She was… strangled.”

I kept walking, narrowly missing falling into another surprise swimming pool.

“Who by?” I found myself asking, breathless.

Caine scratched the back of his head. “Her boyfriend. I know, right? Yikes.”

“Leave the new girl alone!” A girl’s voice trilled.

Caine curled his lip. He didn't even turn around. “Ignore Mina,” the guy muttered, “If we pretend not to see her, she'll crawl back to the infinity pool.”

“You're not, and never will be funny, Caine.”

The girl standing behind us was beautiful, free of flaws and the scars from her death. Dark brown hair that ran like silk down her back, a crown of daisies loosely tangled through.

Another flower crown.

I saw them as a symbol of rebirth.

Mina’s clothes stood out, a white dress, flowers coiled around her ankles.

She was everything I wanted to be and more, immediately giving me butterflies.

Attached to her hip was a shy looking blonde guy, who gave me a shy wave.

Caine’s lip curled. “I see you've been catching strays.” He muttered to Mina.

The dead boy nudged me, motioning for me not to speak, and I didn't.

I couldn't.

Instead, I waved back and tried to smile at this kid whose skull was caved in.

The guy's smile was innocent, and I had a hard time wondering how a human being could do something so horrific.

So inhuman, that they themselves become monsters.

I caught a single red petal in the kid’s hair.

“Don't pity me,” the boy said with a sheepish smile, “I know it looks bad.”

I found my voice. “No, it…”

“Name’s Zach.” He said, before I could choke on pitying him.

Mina must have noticed my face. She passed me the drink she was holding, that was a whole new shade of pink.

“Try this!” she insisted. “They do emotion shakes here. This one is supposed to taste like falling in love!”

I took a sip, and she was right. Like tasting the warmth of a first crush, the butterflies fluttering around in your gut.

Combined with strawberry, mango, and the slightest bit of coconut, it was heaven in a smoothie.

“They have every flavour,” Mina said excitedly, bouncing up and down.

“I even tried depression! And it's surprisingly good, but it's like a rich, chocolatey shake? Like, mix a kinder bar with the euphoria from sex, then the ickiness of a hangover. Combine with the break up with your boyfriend, zero serotonin, and you have the depression shake!”

“Fascinating.” Caine said, in a tone that suggested otherwise. “Please tell us more.”

She responded with a playful shove.

“Relax! I'm just giving them the Paradise Falls lowdown.”

“Yes, because I'm sure the first thing that is on their minds is a double frappe with extra serotonin," He grumbled. “Dude, this isn't a fucking college tour.”

The girl wrapped her arms around me, her flowery scent was sweet.

“Caine is a man-child. He just likes playing in the pool.”

“I'm still technically a kid, y’know!” he said, skipping ahead of us with Zach.

The two guys were standing on a golden bridge ahead, looking out into the expanse of water that bled into the sky.

Mina was still talking, her hand wrapped around my wrist, but I was suddenly far too aware of her smell.

Flowers.

Rich and sweet, like Jasmine.

Dirt.

Filth clinging to her skin, mixed with cheap perfume.

“Oh, and on Wednesdays, they actually sell shots of serotonin. It's like a legal high…”

I was aware of the girl hugging me, her hair lightly brushing my cheeks, but Mina’s face was in my mind, her smell choking my nose and throat. Flowers.

I knew her.

I knew her stink, and I knew my body’s reaction to it.

She wasn't supposed to feel and smell so familiar, so real, because I had never met her before stepping foot in Paradise Falls.

My memories, however, were full of her.

Suffocated with her.

All it took was one splinter of memory, and my Heaven was crumbling.

Paradise Falls faded, like it never existed, and I was back in the real world.

The flower girl was in front of me, draped in a white dress, daisies clinging to matted curls.

The room was made of concrete, one singular light flickering above the two of us.

The girl cocked her head, lightly pulling at her hair.

Her smell was wild flowers and the dirt she ground her fingers in.

“Daddy said you're not ready.” The flower girl murmured. Her eyes were bright, like she was happy. But her lips were drawn into a frown. She leaned forward, her breath stinking of cigarette smoke, and blew in my face.

“That's a pity.”

She pulled a flower from her hair, dangling the daisy in front of my face.

“Aren't you hungry?” the girl mocked a child-like giggle, making the daisies dance.

But I wasn't looking at the flower, or the girl’s dead eyes. I was staring at the bodies hanging from meat hooks, beheaded sacks of flesh swaying from side to side. The walls were painted rich red, the entrails from prior sacrifices used to create cave-like paintings.

The Flower King insisted that our blood stained each brick, our life force fed inside the house and the flower garden.

The bodies on hooks were people I knew.

Lia, who told me she was going to escape.

She was on display for that very reason.

I screamed, agony and pain writhing in my cry, a fear I couldn't comprehend.

I couldn’t stop, screeching until my throat was choking up, my cries gurgling into wet sobs.

Cocking her head, the flower girl’s lips spread out into a demented grin.

If I looked closely, I could see stitches lining her forehead, where her king had filled her thoughts with poison.

I thought I could wake her up, but the flowers were too deep, filling her mind.

“You stupid bitch,” she said with a laugh.

The flower girl cradled my face with her fingers, digging her fingernails in.

Her eyes were wild, like the flowers she worshipped, no trace of humanity left, except the markings on her skin.

She slapped me, and I saw red.

“It's not real!" I whispered through a shriek.

It's not real.

I wanted to tell her that her father was forcefully breeding men and women, murdering their newborns.

For the flowers.

I wanted to tell her she was next, and then so was her ‘brother’.

But all she did was giggle, pressing her hands over her mouth like a little kid.

“You make me laugh!” The girl straightened up, kicking me in the stomach, and I felt every hit, every sharp, agonising pain ripping through me.

“You're so funny!” she spluttered, forcing me to laugh with her.

If I didn't, the flower girl would bleed me out before the harvest.

When she was finished, I was curled onto my side, my mouth full of red warmth that dripped down my chin.

“Urgh,” the girl pulled a face, “Are you coughing up your lungs? That's like, so gross!”

Flower Girl kicked me again, this time in the back of my head.

I saw stars exploding, my thoughts swimming.

Darkness was creeping at the corner of my vision, when she stopped.

“If you're going to kill them, get on with it. They'll just be early sacrifices.”

I felt something move behind me, a body I didn't realize was attached to me, come to life.

His hands entangled with mine trembled, a soft moan escaping his mouth. When I managed to look up, the flower girl grasped hold of my chin, forcing me to look in the direction of the Flower Prince.

I never knew his old self, but there were whispers that he too had been like me.

Just a scared kid needing a home.

The shadow dipping under the light grew a face, and I could already see the flowers entangled in his curls catching the light.

He only wore his crown on the days of harvest.

The guy stood behind her, arms crossed, dark eyes pinched around the edges.

Dressed in matching white, The Flower Prince was stained red, painted like his father.

The markings on his head, stitches cementing his place as a Child Of The Garden.

He wasn't smiling, but my sharp hisses of breath were teasing his facial muscles.

The boy held out his hand, and after slight hesitation, the flower girl pressed a blade into his fist. I watched his fingers tip-toe across the teeth, setting every nerve ending on fire, my body catapulting into fight or flight.

I saw what happened to Adam, and then Lucy, and Theia.

They all died by his psychotic hand, cradling their bodies spewing red in his arms and promising they were making a worthy donation.

The Flower Prince ran the knife down my face, his expression crumpling into a melancholic frown.

“You're scared.” He said, pressing enough pressure to draw blood.

I felt it, a single line running down my face.

I sensed his urgency for it, his polluted thoughts desperate to quench the garden.

“Don't be scared.” the boy said, his lips breaking into a grin resembling his father’s. His human eyes were gone, replaced with hollow caverns filled with an insanity that was physically vibrating him, twitching his body from side to side. I barely felt the blade go in.

As if he could feel my pain, he screamed with me, mocking my pleads for death.

“Please!”

The cry came from behind me. He spoke in heavy sobs, wrenching against our restraints. “Please let us go.”

Swinging the knife between his fingers, The Flower Prince pouted, his eyes darkening, lips curling in disgust.

“But what if I don't want to let you go, huh?” he mocked a child-like mumble.

What

If

I

Don't

Want

To

Let

You

Go?

He struck both of us, emphasising every word, and I felt it, the blade cruel slicing into me, gnawing through flesh and bone. I thought it would stop.

I thought he was taking us to the edge of death, and then let us breathe, let us writhe in agony. But he didn't.

The Flower Prince did not show mercy, plunging his blade into me until I was lying in stemming red on my back, my gaze on the ceiling, imagining water.

Pools of glistening water I could envelope myself in.

Wash off the blood, and sink deep down.

My companion's body was behind me, unrecognisable.

The Flower Girl was singing a melody, dancing around his crumpled form.

The Flower Prince was on his knees, knelt in my blood, lips stretched into a maniacal grin. He dipped his fingers in thickening red, gliding them across my cheek. His voice was incomprehensible giggles and prayers to the flowers, to his father, for sacrificing me too early.

He was rocking back and forth, hollowed out eyes blinking at an invisible God, when the sound slammed into me.

BANG.

I pried my eyes open, rolling onto my side.

So much blood.

It was sticky and wet and warm, slick on my skin.

Thundering footsteps, a blinding light that wasn't Heaven’s pearly gates.

A flashlight illuminated the room, finding the flower girl, who sliced her own throat the second they moved toward her.

“Hands up!” the voice yelled. “Move away from them!”

“Or what?” The Flower Prince laughed. I caught the flash of his grin.

“Are you planning on shooting a kid?”

“I said, put your HANDS on your HEAD! Now!”

Bree?

The world contorted, and I was back under a crystal blue sky.

Now though, clouds were starting to form, a darkness riding on the horizon.

“Bree!”

I blinked, and my murderer was in front of me. “Did you hear what I said?”

I felt his hand wrap around my arm, tight enough to make me shriek.

“I said,” Caine gritted through a grin, squeezing me tighter. The loose flowers in his hair were slowly forming a crown.

His smile was wide, but I couldn't find the happiness and carefree he'd been an hour ago. From the manic look in his eyes, my murderer was living his own version of paradise.

And I think he revelled in getting his memory back every time.

Caine clung to me, the sky turning tumultuous.

Behind me, Zach turned around, his eyes wide, suddenly.

He started forwards, before coming to a stop.

He was too scared. Mina took his hand gently, coaxing him back.

The Flower Girl met my gaze, her eyes filling with tears.

She took Zach, the two of them fading into the distance.

And I was stuck with The Flower Prince.

“Well?” Caine laughed, tightening his grip.

“Isn't this the best fucking afterlife ever?”

Bree? Come on, honey!

I've got a heartbeat. It's faint.

Brianna! Can you hear me?

It felt like being yanked under water, dragged to icy depths.

When I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by paramedics, a mask I was struggling to pant into. Zach was dead.

In the corner of my eye, his body was being gently pulled onto a stretcher.

To my left, Mina lying on her side, her eyes still open.

Her lips carved into a grin.

Caine was crumpled in a heap, his brains staining his flower crown.

“Bree.”

The woman kneeling over me was telling me to breathe, to not move.

I was told I died for 4 and a half minutes.

But I wasn't looking at the paramedic checking me over.

Instead, my gaze found the finger marks still ingrained into the flesh of my arm.

I could still see him, clinging onto me, like my torture was his paradise.

It's been a year, and the shadow of Caine's fingertips are still there.

If anything, they feel like markings.

A branding.

And I'm fucking terrified that when I do eventually die, he will be waiting for me.

In his own personal heaven

PART 1

Jess screamed as the blackened form stepped over the safe. We scrambled to our feet and ran, searching for an escape from the maze-like room. Shrill laughter echoed as the thing closed the gap between us. What little light came in from the streetlights outside illuminated the narrow path forward through decades of hoarded junk. Cardboard boxes crumpled underfoot, things jutting over the edges of tables crashed to the floor as we bumped them. The walkway was too narrow to run side by side, and neither of us wanted to run in the back.

We came to a Tee in the path. Neither of us knew which way to go. Everything looked different in the darkness. I turned to ask Jess which way to go and only saw the dim outline of her face before she screamed as the thing grabbed her.

The handcuff cut into my wrist. I fell to the floor as it dragged us back toward the safe. My boots skidded over the floor. I kicked the piles of old inventory, clawed with my free hand at anything sticking out from under a table, and thrashed against the thing’s grip. I couldn’t stop it from dragging us toward the glowing red portal now swallowing the safe and the trampled remains of the Ouija board.  

At the last second before we were plunged into an unknown fate I felt one of the wrought iron legs of the bedframe.  I rolled underneath it and gritted my teeth as the short handcuff chain caught. I was deafened by Leyland’s chilling laugh, Jess’s cries of pain, and the howling red portal.

 The ghoul grabbed Jess’s wrist with both hands and jerked violently. It shrieked and thrashed against the bed’s resistance. I realized with horror the legs were beginning to slip. I kicked against the movement with my boots, racking my brain for a way out of this when I felt a familiar metallic cylinder roll into my chest.

“The Maglite!” I thought.

Maybe there was another way out of this room. If we could just get free of its grip. Maybe rush past it… we’d figure the rest out later. Right now, this was my last hope of escape. I grabbed the flashlight and clicked it on. Light flooded the ghoul’s face.

Wrinkled fingers shielded sunken yellow eyes. It shrieked in pain from exposure to the bright light. In that brief moment, it lost its grip.

This was our only chance. I scrambled out from under the bed and pulled Jess to her feet. We ran back down the labyrinthine path through the massive room. Wood splintered as loud footfalls thundered behind us. It was too close to risk glancing over my shoulder. Jess screamed again. Wind filled the room, howling with unabated fury. The floor shook. Scythes hanging from the rafters swung back and forth. We were near the stairs. As we reached the end of the aisle, a claw hammer flew past us within inches of our heads. We were mere feet away from the front windows. I glanced at the missing section of floorboards and knew what I had to do.

“Jump!”I shouted.

Jess yelled something in response. She either didn’t hear me or misunderstood because she tried following the path, back the way we came. I had no time to explain. I grabbed her by the waist and hurled us both through the hole.

A cloud of dust and plaster erupted as we crashed through the ceiling and onto the shelves next to the paint mixer. The merchandise buckled under our weight and collapsed to the floor. We coughed dust from our lungs. Ruptured cans of paint gurgled as they spilled out over the floor. The unmistakable smell of paint thinner and varnish assaulted my nose.

Before I could check my body for injury, booming footsteps echoed from the stairwell on the other side of the building.

“Jess! Get up! We gotta get out of here!” She whimpered at my touch as I helped her to her feet, but seemed to understand the urgency of our situation. Limping, flashlight still in hand we made our way past one aisle after another. We were almost at the front door, one more aisle stood between us and the foyer, when the wraith emerged, blocking our path. Jess cowered behind me. We backed away from the slowly advancing form. I pushed the flashlight button, hoping for the same blinding light to deliver us once again from the entity.

Nothing happened. It let out a sinister laugh. Jess buried her face into my arm and sobbed. The thing closed the short distance between us, reaching toward us. With white-knuckled fear, I swung the flashlight as
hard as I could, clubbing the display window facing the street. A spiderweb of fractures consumed the glass as it shattered into the sidewalk. I closed my eyes and jumped through the cascade of falling glass, pulling Jess along behind me.

We landed on our backs on the broken shards of glass. The entity in the hardware store screeched. I opened my eyes, to see it franticly clawing at us, snarling through broken teeth. For whatever reason, it never crossed the threshold of the broken window.

“The Brooks family will pay!”

It let loose ear-splitting howl and rammed the brick column near the window in rage. The ground shook beneath us. Loose bricks toppled from above. One of the mortar-filled cracks on the front of the building split open. More cracks ruptured across the historic storefront, stretching wider as the wraith thrashed against the old building’s supports. The groan of old timbers drowned out the thing’s wild screams as they gave way to the collapsing second floor. Shattered glass and ice melt salt ground against the back of my coat as we kicked away from Old Man Brooks’ collapsing livelihood and into the street. Broken bricks cascaded down from above and the wrought iron façade crumpled onto the sidewalk. The wail of the ghoul we awakened died away and the only sound left on Main Street was the cold autumn breeze.

By some miracle, neither of us suffered any major injuries that night, apart from some bruises and matching, minor lacerations from the handcuffs. It wasn’t the solution we had in mind, but things did eventually work themselves out for Old Man Brooks. The insurance policy on the building was more than enough for Mr. Brooks to retire. While the insurance company did their investigation, Mr. Brooks insisted on renting shop space in one of the other derelict downtown storefronts. I think he did it more out of a desire to keep busy than anything else. Most of the ‘customers’ were actually the Old Man’s friends, the same crowd that used to gather around the kerosene heater in the old store and ‘chew the fat’. He was never busy enough to turn a profit and his wares consisted of what remained in the corrugated steel lean-to behind the ruins of the old hardware store, although I once heard about him rushing into the north side of the store, the one side not completely collapsed to get a .79 cent PVC pipe fitting for a customer.

It also turned out, my time spent working in the run-down store, listening to Mr. Brooks’ oral history hadn’t been in vain either. An essay I wrote, dramatizing the literal and figurative collapse of once great business was impressive enough my English teacher submitted it to the editor of the Henderson County Gazette. One day after class I even got a call from Harold Walters, the editor of the Gazette, offering me an internship the next summer.

I didn’t keep in touch with Jess after the dust settled. The last time I talked to her, she said something about Kathy Connors being pissed off we lost her vintage Ouija board. We both remained with our respective circles of friends, although from then on, I didn’t hang my head when I passed the group of jocks and cheerleaders in the hallway.

A grass lot occupies the block where the store used to be. There are probably still those who whisper around town about insurance fraud and the old man not being upset enough at the destruction of his business. But every once in a while, when I get stopped by the red light next to the vacant lot, I remember something far more sinister was really behind the old building’s collapse.

My name was once Christopher, though my parents regarded me as Chrissy. Now nobody knows my name, except you, reader. I’ve lived my whole life in the shadows, biding my time before it returned for me. Now that time has come.

It happened on a warm summer night, the kind where the heat clings to your flesh in the form of small beads of salty sweat. My family and I were on a road trip, heading to the annual peach festival in Kentucky. The moon cast an eerie glow upon the empty road, as if warning us of the impending darkness that would consume our lives.

As we journeyed in our worn-out Ford Pinto, I slept soundly in the backseat, as my dad played his beloved blues albums. Suddenly, the car jerked to a halt, jolting me awake. The battery had died, plunging us into an abyss of pitch-black darkness. The moon, our supposed protector, seemed to vanish, leaving us vulnerable and in the dark, at the mercy of the wilderness.

My father decided to wait until morning for help, trapped in that forsaken car with no means of communication. We had no way to know that the creature —hanging in the sky like an eclipse, blocking out the celestial— was just watching, waiting. It relished in our isolation, its hunger for its prey growing with each passing moment.

A shiver ran down my spine, reminiscent of the time Amber, my mischievous sister, dropped an ice cube down my shirt. As I reached for my thermos on the car floor, a thunderous crash shattered the silence behind us. It was as if an angel had plummeted from the heavens, though such fortune was not meant for us. "It's just an animal, dear," my father reassured my frightened mother, his voice laced with feigned bravery. But it was no ordinary animal—it was terror incarnate, a harbinger of pain and impending death.

From the darkness the creature approached, its form blending in with the night itself. Its body was covered in matted brown fur, similar in color to decaying earth from a long forgotten grave. As it approached the side of the car, the side my mother and sister were on I looked upon it. The eyes that locked with mine were soulless voids, draining hope from my very being. And its wings—tattered and stained with the blood of what I could only assume was its countless victims—unfurled with a sickening rustle.

My mother let out a gasp, and as Amber, my sister, rubbed her eyes and sat up awakening once again she jumped and scooted towards the middle seat. My father let out a short surprised shout, which sent the creature into action.

It’s long metallic like nails screeched at the window, my father, still stern in his assumption it was some bearlike creature laid on the horn to scare it off. It didn’t seem to much care for that. As it ripped his door clear off and picked him up thought he was nothing but a doll.

My mother screamed out in terror and ran out of the car, trying to cover my sisters door and stop the creature from getting to us. It was futile, in the end she was just an easier catch, out in the open. She screamed “not my children, you motherfucker!” And with that, the chorus of slashed flesh and carnage continued on.

I suppose Amber was left to be its dessert, as she was as sweet and innocent as the vanilla ice cream she always used to get from the ice-cream truck every Saturday evening. She herself made no sounds except muffled sobs still pinned to the door of the back seat in fear. It then peeled off the roof like it was opening a tin can, seizing her in its claws.

I turned away, unable to witness the grisly fate of my family, but also afraid for myself. I slid down to the bottom of the car covering my face with my hands. The stench of death hung heavy in the air as the creature feasted upon the remains of my loved ones, relishing in its macabre banquet.

When it finally had its fill, the creature's massive form stomped away, its every step shaking the very earth beneath it. The sound of its wings filled the air, a cacophony of flapping, reminiscent of the ominous drum taps of an approaching army. Left alone, too alone, I found myself paralyzed with terror, surrounded by the aftermath of unspeakable carnage.

I can still hear their screams echoing in my nightmares—the piercing shrieks of their terror as the creature tore them apart, its claws rending flesh, its jaws dripping with crimson. The visceral sounds of human flesh being shredded and organs being slurped on like a thick smoothie haunt me to this day.

In the aftermath, I travelled from place to place, retreated from the world, living as a recluse haunted by the memories of that night. I believed I had escaped the creature's clutches, but now, as I sit in the solitude of my candle lit home, I hear its ominous presence lurking outside—footsteps like thunder, wings flapping in anticipation. It knows I’m here, and I know it’s there.

These will be my final words. And as I pen these words, my trembling hand can barely keep up with the racing thoughts of my mind. The memories flood back, vivid and terrifying, as I relive the night that forever altered me.

The creature's presence outside grows more pronounced. Its claws scrape against the windows, leaving deep gouges on the double-paned glass. I can hear its guttural hisses, like a symphony of malevolence echoing through the stillness of the night. It taunts me, reminding me that my time is running out.

I have barricaded myself in this house, the only sanctuary left to me. But the creature is cunning, patient. It knows how to infiltrate the darkest corners of one's mind, slowly eroding sanity and instilling paralyzing fear. I can feel its influence creeping closer, like a suffocating fog that chokes the very life out of me.

There would be nights when I woke from fitful sleep, drenched in sweat, my heart pounding against my chest. In those moments, I catch glimpses of its grotesque silhouette outside my window—shadowy wings spreading wide, casting a harrowing specter on the moonlit walls.

I have taken every precaution to ward off the creature, smearing blessed symbols on the doors and windows, clutching a crucifix tightly in my trembling hands. But I know deep down that these feeble attempts are nothing but futile, mere flickers of hope against an all-consuming darkness.

Time grows short. I can sense the creature's patience waning, its hunger growing insatiable. Its presence engulfs the house, suffusing every room with a malefic aura. The floorboards creak under its weight, and the air becomes heavy with the stench of decay.

There is nowhere left to run, no sanctuary to find solace. My fate is sealed, intertwined with the horrors that await me. I have accepted my impending death, for the creature has claimed my family, and now it seeks to claim me, completing the macabre feast.

As I put the final strokes on this testament, I can hear the creature's triumphant screech—a haunting chorus that reverberates through the desolate trees. Its arrival is imminent, heralded by the fluttering of leathery wings and the shattering of glass.

May my words serve as a haunting warning to all who read them. The creature, that was born from the deepest recesses of the darkness, harbors no mercy, no remorse. It is an embodiment of our deepest fears, a relentless predator that lurks in the shadows, preying on our vulnerabilities.

Now, as the creature breaches the threshold of my home, I have no choice but to surrender myself to its nightmarish embrace. I just pray it doesn’t choose you next, as you now know of its existence, but you must know what’s truly lurking about.

I am 79 year old man who lives alone. I don't live a particullarly lavish life, and to say the truth, I do not really care after everything I have lived through. All I want is to be able to wake up everyday without being forced to my feet by recurring night terrors that have my clothes drenched in sweat and my bones threatening to shake out of their sockets. I am an army veteran. I served in the army for a good 25 years. I was 18 when I got packed up and shipped to serve in the Vietnam War in 1963. The things I have seen could make even serial killers do a double take. The things I have experienced are in another realm alone. I would love to just live a comfortable life and have nothing to do all day except listen to the radio and sit on my balcony, taking in the welcoming sun and caressing breeze. But I cannot. They will not let me.

Ever since my wife died last year from breast cancer, everything has changed. They finally revealed themselves, those little bastards. Monsters. All around. Slimy, shadowy, creeping creatures, that want nothing else but to tear out my eyes for even sparing a glimpse at them. They are everywhere. Everywhere. I do not understand why people cannot see them. Only I can. When I walk down the street. At the mall. Even in my own damn home! I can't get rid of them and it drives me half way to insanity. I even got a dog to try and ward them off. A German Shephard. Vicious little thing it is. Fur as dark as dirt and eyes that seem to see. Analyze. Everything watches me. Even my own damn dog.

My family is coming over today. It is my birthday. At least that is what they said. Sometimes the monsters like to mess with my calendar and move my keys and belongings around. I will scour my whole house to find where I- they have placed my stuff. My radio, most of all. Bastards always love hiding it and laughing while I desperately tear my house apart from ground to ceiling searching for it. Curious thing is it's always on my balcony where I frequently sit and listen to on it. I just can't seem to remember. They just enjoy watching me struggle.

I am getting off topic. My family is coming over today. It is my birthday. I have a beautiful daughter, a pesky son in law, and an even lovelier niece. Unfortunately my wife passed from breast cancer last year. They are my joy in this darkness of a life. I need to make sure everything perfect. Perfect for them. I grab my cane and let out a small grunt as I push to my feet, slowly pacing over to my kitchen island. I sigh, looking at the multitude of papers scattered like leaves over a driveway on my table. One arm propped over my cane, I begin sorting through them. Bills. Bills. Bills. Prescription for something called Donepezil. Hm. Can't seem to recall that. I toss them all in my garbage, not bothering enough to go to the garage and place them in the recycling. That's when I notice it. One of Them.

A snarling, mangled creature, hunched over my kitchen floor. I stumbled back, my breath catching in my throat and threatening to choke me like ghastly hands wrapped around my neck. The thing was medium sized and brown, almost as dark as dirt. Blood leaked out of its jaw, gaping white eyes staring at me from behind a bloodied snout. It was horrifying. Limbs far too long for its stubby body, and bent at various, painful angles as to accommodate its form. They look pale brown, a soft layer of what could be comparable to the hairs of a spider up close covering its body. I let out a small curse and grabbed my cane, slamming it against the creatures body once. The thing let out a whimper, almost like an animal begging for mercy. Mercy for a monster. It was almost laughable. The pathetic being let out an almost inaudible growl and stalked backwards, it's limbs twisting and turning at angles like cogs in a clock to push it back. I used that opportunity wisely.

I hobbled over to my living room before slamming the closet door open with so much force I was surprised the door didn't come of it's hinges. That's what years in the military and a junk load of adrenaline does to you. I looked inside and snapped my head from side to side, searching for the one thing I needed. My shotgun. I was sure I left it here. Certain, even. But if I am honest, I cannot remember the last time I had used it. I let out a flurry of curses. Damned creatures! They must've moved it as a pitiful attempt of a joke. I stumbled to my room, willing my feet to move faster, harder, quicker. The creature ran to me, nipping at my heels just as I turned the corner straight to my room and wacked the door shut with all my might. My gun. I need my shotgun. I frantically paced around the room, overturning pillows and crashing lamps in my craze to find it. Where is it? WHERE IS MY SHOT-. Ah. There it is. A beauty. I pushed myself over using my cane and grabbed ahold of it. Even after so many years, the indent of where my hand placement is and the steady feel of the cool metal against my fingers is more than enough to ground me. To give me the confidence I need to kill whatever that thing behind my door is.

I roll my shoulders and let out a small sigh before whistling. "Archie! Archie, come here!" I call out. My dogs name is Archie. Or was it Max? Maybe Archie was the last one. I listen for the tell tale sound of scratching footsteps coming my way before taking a deep breath. Good. Archie- Max- Dog. Dog will be a good sacrifice. Better him than me. Or was it a girl? I wait until the footsteps stop in front of my door before slamming it open and aiming at the deformed monster still perched in front of my bedroom door. Blood coated it's unhinged jaw. It had eaten my cat. A well sacrifice, all in all. Not giving myself a moments leeway, I cocked the shotgun and fired off, straight between the animals hollow eyes. BANG! For a moment I swear I saw something like betrayal flash through the beings eyes, but monsters are not capable of anything of the sort. It fell to the ground in a pool of its own miserable blood, left to die an equally miserable death.

Good. Perfect. Amazing! I killed it! I killed one of them! I cannot be defeated. Now I get it. Now I get it all. I am the only one capable of seeing these monsters because I am the only one able to kill them! I have a duty bestowed on me. An honorable one I will take without hesitation. These things are nothing more than pathetic creatures trying and failing to mimick our life forms. I can do this. I am the chosen one. Knock Knock Knock. I look over to my front door. Another knock, this one louder. If knocks could have emotions, this one would portray panick. Kicking the still bleeding monster aside, I grabbed my cane and sauntered over to the front door, my cane hitting the ground with a rhythmic thump. I cock my shotgun again. Better safe than sorry. And I open the door.

Another monster. This one much, much taller than the one I just killed. If I can put a gender to it, I would say it be female. It is wearing a blue floral dress, much like the one I bought for my daughter for her birthday last year. Unfiltered rage consumed me. Had this beast killed my daughter and come here to do the same to me? Me?! Hah! As if I can allow that. I aim the shotgun at the beasts heart, or where I assume it's heart would be. Fear, betrayal, and sadness all flicker over the things face. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe they do have some semblance of emotion. I don't care either way. BANG. And the creature falls to the ground, bleeding the same as the last one did. A cry filled of pure rage and agony assaults my ears, and I look over to find another creature, this one appearing to be male, sprinting over to the body of the person I just killed. Wait..person? No. Monster. I have one last shell. Cock shotgun. Aim. Right in the middle of his chest. A certain shot. He looks too human in this moment. And fire! He collapses to the floor, immediately lifeless like the other two. I don't feel victory. I feel pain. So much pain. But, why?

"Grandpa...?" A small, child voice calls out. I slowly look over and come face to face with my niece, standing above the corpse of her....no. It is not possible. "MOM! DAD!" She screams. No. It is not real. They are monsters. I am helping. They are man eating creatures. So why...?

Why are those the bodies of my nieces parents?