The gunman walked into the classroom. Everyone froze. He was too quick for anyone to receive a hero's death. All I remember were screams, the sound of bullets slicing through bodies, and the realization only a minute later that the shooter hadn't noticed I wasn't dead yet. He walked into the classroom to examine the bodies. Once he turned his back on me, I ran out. I was gone, and I was the only survivor in my college class.

I ran in the hallways. The intercoms blared for a complete school shutdown.

"Let no one in."

As I ran in the halls, I realized I was bleeding out. Death was coming for me. I was banging on the doors of my classmates and friends, and they rightfully ignored me. I was well and truly alone.

It was terrifying.

I would not wish that fear on my worst enemy.

I knocked on so many doors begging for help. Eventually, the blood loss got to me, my energy faded, and I passed out alone and waiting to die.

Of course, I was eventually rescued; of course, I was given therapy; of course, I was forever changed.

I would do anything not to have that feeling again. I decided I'd never be alone. So, I became everything to everyone. The wealthy always have friends, so I switched my major to engineering. Good people always have friends, so I created charities to honor the lives of my dead friends, and I was at every service opportunity possible for most other charities on campus. The adventurous and degenerates always have friends, so I joined the wildest frat on campus.

Of course, the truth about life is that you can't have everything, but through a mix of energy drinks and other substances, I tried. I tried until my heart couldn't take it. For all my efforts, I would still face my worst fear: I would die alone.

I had a heart attack. I grabbed my chest, looked around, and I was alone in my room. I knew I was going to die. I didn't want to die alone. I didn't want to die and have no one find my body.

That was the day I realized, after moving to a new city upon graduation, I hadn't made genuine friends. I was still alone. I thought I had surpassed solitude. I thought I would always have someone around when I needed them.

If I died on my apartment floor on the first day, surely no one would come; on the second and third, the same. On the fourth, my body would bloat and distort, an unrecognizable change from the man I was. On the fifth day, my neighbor might ask to borrow a board game for the game nights he never invited me to. But if I didn't answer, he wouldn't care. The fifth, sixth, and seventh days, my bloated dead body would turn red. Maybe the smell would draw somebody.

If it didn't, in a month my body would liquefy, and all my life would equate to is a pile of mush, a stain in my rented apartment.

I hoped I'd left my window open so perhaps a stray cat would come in and lick me up so I wouldn't be a complete waste. The thought made me cry.

Thank God, that time it was just a scare caused by energy drinks and poor sleep. But once I got out of the hospital, I was determined not to die like that: alone and vulnerable.

Back in my apartment, I was lonely. Soul-crushingly lonely, and I didn't think it would stop. Working remotely didn't help. I hadn't been touched by a person in... what was my record, like a whole month? I hadn't had an in-person conversation with a friend in two months.

Life is hard in a new city. I needed more than a friend. I needed more than a girlfriend. I needed a wife.

I would do anything for one. I tried Hinge and Tinder and was either ghosted or dumped. It all ended the same. So, please understand I had no other choice.

I dug through the internet to find advice on how to get a girlfriend.

I found somewhere dark, a place I don't suggest you go. They were banned from Reddit and banned from Discord. This group was dedicated to good men—good guys, who weren't jerks, who didn't want to hurt anyone, who wanted true love—to find cults they could join to find wives.

They said the women in cults were loyal, kind, and really wanted love. That's the point of all religious beliefs, isn't it? Love.

Hell is mentioned 31 times in the Bible, but love 801 times. It's not the fear of Hell that drives them; it's the ache to be loved. I ached too, so why couldn't we help each other?

And in whatever cult we'd join, we'd be good too. We'd make sure there was no bad stuff like blackmail and child abuse. We were just looking for someone who would love us for us.

Someone who wouldn't leave.

After a couple of months of helping other members find cults to join and patiently waiting for my assignment, I was told there was a new cult I could join. But I needed to wait for another one of our members to come back who was already in the cult. They said they'd lost communication with him. I couldn't take the emptiness of my apartment anymore, so I begged and pleaded to go. I even said I'd take two phones so if one didn't work, I'd always have the backup.

I was persistent. They relented.

This is what they told me:

"Joseph, the Cult of Truth appears not to be an offshoot of any of the three major religions, nor of any minor ones we can find.

It really seems to have come from nowhere, so you're in luck; easy come, easy go. My guess is the cult won't last long, so find true love and get out.

You'll be in the remote mountains of Appalachia, known for general strangeness. Be careful—I wouldn't leave the commune if I were you.

There are only two guys you need to watch out for: one named Truth (we know he's massive and in charge) and another named Silence, his second in command. The rest of the thirty-person cult is all women, except for our guy.

The danger of the cult is the two men since we don't really know what they want yet. In general, it could be death, sex, or human sacrifice.

Remember Rule #1: Be Kind—no one has ever joined a cult who wasn't hurting on the inside.

Remember Rule #2: It's okay to lie for the service of good.

Remember Rule #3: Know the truth, do not believe what you're told in a cult.

Good luck, man. We're going to miss you."

He gave me the location of the city, and with that, I moved to join a cult.

I arrived 20 minutes late to the shack on the hill in Appalachia. The plan, in general, is to look flustered, nervous, and desperate to be accepted in any cult. But clean-cut enough not to be dangerous.

With a shaved head and a black suit, I stumbled into a church shack. A sound like muffled screams erupted from the doors.

No one sat in the pews. Beside every row of pews was a bent-over woman crying into the floor as if she was worshipping.

The man or thing they worshipped stood on stage. I was not aware humans could have so much bulk. He would have won every bodybuilding contest; his muscles pulsed on top of his other muscles. It was grotesque; his body almost looked like it was infected with tumors.

The man was a pile of bulky, veiny flesh that looked immovable. A creature to the point of caricature in two layers of white robes.

His eyes locked on me, but his face did not move. It was frozen; I would never see it move. It was locked in a permanent scowl.

Fear, that feeling in my gut that I fought against now. That must be how he controlled them. The reality was that he could break their necks in seconds. Yes, that could do it.

It was important he felt he controlled me. That I was under his control. So, I played the part.

I was not terrified, but I played the part. It was easy to let fear win. It was easy to let fear make me drop to my knees to worship. It was easy to let fear stir me and shake me like the rest of the women. It was easy to pray to a God because—excuse my sacrilege—I felt as though I faced one right before me.

Eventually, the impossibly muscled priest clapped his hands. It sounded like thunder. We all rose and got into our pews.

The great priest walked away, going behind the curtain behind him. The rest of the women gathered in their pews and said nothing. They instead read the material provided for them.

In front of me was a composition notebook. I opened it, and in it, I saw scriptures from something I had never heard of.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped. A man, who I assumed to be Silence, with hair down his back and wearing all white stood behind me. He was the opposite of Truth: beautiful, slim, and his perfect teeth flashed a grin.

"You're not supposed to be here," his grin vanished.

"Um... I thought all were welcome."

"To Heaven maybe. Does this look like Heaven?"

"I guess not."

In a flash, he moved to the other side of me. I flinched. Silence put a shockingly strong hand on my shoulder and said, "Stay."

I obeyed, and he examined me from side to side, moving like lightning, so fast a literal breeze formed behind me. I looked forward at the women studying the word of Truth. This was true fear: being examined by a strange man and not understanding where that giant Truth was.

I panicked as he examined me more. Silence patted my shoulders, put his hand in my front pocket, and pulled at my ear. I did nothing in response; I froze. Mentally, I begged for my only ally in this group to come rescue me from this humiliating examination.

The women didn't seem to care; they just read the notebooks. I examined the room for my only ally in the mountains of Appalachia, the other guy. Where was he?

"What's your greatest mistake?" he asked me, loud enough for the church to hear. I turned to look at him. He palmed my skull and faced me forward again. "You don't have to look at me to answer a question. What's your greatest mistake?"

I did as he said and looked forward. The question did cause a reaction from some of the other churchgoers; they flashed glances back. I saw it in their eyes and posture—they were thirsting for an answer. Obviously, I wanted to leave then. But I thought about that heart attack. I thought about being alone. I answered his question.

"My first-ever girlfriend died because a school shooter killed her. We were sitting right beside each other. I should have saved her. I should have been more aware." I hadn't said that aloud in a long time.

A few women made no effort to turn away from me now; they were invested.

"When has a friend hurt you the most?" Silence asked.

"It was after I was in the hospital recovering from my heart attack. The room was filled with balloons and cards from my friends delivered by strangers; my phone was filled with texts, but not a single person came to visit. I wanted a friend in there with me, not random gifts. Why doesn't anyone want to be around me?" The last part came out spontaneously and with a real tear.

"Newcomer," Silence said. "What's one thing you hate about yourself?"

The whole church stared at me. I was unsure if they were concerned or if I was their entertainment. I answered the question anyway.

"I will do anything to not be alone."

After a while, my examiner stopped.

"Would you like to join us?" he said.

"I... what are you?"

"Does it matter? If you want in, let's have a chat," he said and walked away. I got up and followed.

We walked outside, I assume in the direction of another shack. He was hard to keep up with.

"We're not from around here, Truth—the guy on stage—and I. My name is Silence, by the way."

"What do you want, Joseph?" he asked.

"Community... Something to believe in."

Silence shrugged, "Okay."

"Okay."

"Give me both your phones."

"I only have—"

"You have one in your pocket and another in your back pocket."

My blood went cold. I stuttered a reply that didn't make sense. Silence had no patience for it.

"Two phones or don't return; it's simple."

I cursed. I sweat. My heart banged. I really questioned: did I want this? I would lose all contact with the outside world. How bad did I want this? I looked away from him and down that long mountain path. I could go that way and be alone again.

Like I was alone in that hallway in the shooting.

Like I was alone suffering through a heart attack.

I brought out both phones. He took them without touching my hands. An air of arrogance that fit his name.

He held the phones in one hand and sprinkled a strange dust on them with the other. A dust that seemingly came from nowhere. The phones melded together. They cracked, they buzzed with electricity; the noise was sharp and powerful. Blue light flickered from them and made me take a step back. They then died in silence.

Then they became pink flesh. A Cronenberg abomination of two heads and bird feet and large baby-ish hands. He dropped the thing on the floor.

It hobbled forward, a new bastardized life. It sprouted two eyes and looked at me.

Silence stepped on it. It exploded in a sad burst of blood and flesh.

"Welcome to the Cult of the Truth."

I swallowed hard.

"Hey, wait. Come here." Silence said and beckoned me with his finger.

"Closer."

"Closer."

He struck me.

He laughed; I reeled backward, landing on my backside. I rubbed my eye to try to smooth the pain away.

And it was gone. My eye was gone. In its place was smooth flesh—a painless impossible operation done with only a touch.

I looked up at Silence. At that moment, he was a god to me. He just laughed.

"Everyone must make a sacrifice to enter here," he said. "I thought the eye was fitting because of the expression. Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see. So, I took half your vision because I need you to believe everything you see is very, very real."

I backed away from him, shaking my head. Sweat poured down my face; my legs tensed and fell beneath me, a crumpled mess. My hands clawed at my face. I felt it. My eye, my eye was still in there—it wanted to see but whatever magic Silence had done changed everything.

Silence left me laughing as I flinched at every sound, fearful of what else could come next.

Ollie (the only other male) approached me that night at dinner. I was more or less recovered and just wanted to keep my head low and accept my new flaw and new life under Truth and Silence.

"They're not what they seem," he said.

I shook my head at him, not brave enough to speak against the two. Ollie, who I noticed was also missing an eye, leaned in closer to me, and closer, and closer as if I had some secret, something of any importance to tell him.

"They're really gods," I said.

"We'll see."

That would be hard for us in the future. Silence always appeared to hear us whenever we wanted to meet, probably some strange godly power.

But eventually, he would pass notes to me on his phone. It was small, some variation of Android that could fit in a palm. That last note he sent was what got us in trouble.

I suppose we each have that memory, that one thing which reminds us of our childhood, our innocence. Perhaps it's a beloved campsite, or playing baseball mid-July with your dad, or the sweetness of your grandma's cherry pie. For me, that thing was Adam's Apple Sauce.

Every year, as far back as I can remember, my hometown held an end-of-summer harvest festival. There were games to play, music to enjoy and homemade goods to buy.

One of those was Adam's Apple Sauce.

Crafted by one guy, it was sold in little glass jars with a label on which a comically long pig ate fruit from a wicker basket.

Quantities were always very limited and people would line up at dawn just to purchase some. This included my parents, and in the evening, after we'd returned home, we would open the jar and eat the whole delicious sauce: on bread, on crackers or just with a spoon. It was that good.

The guy who made it was young and friendly, although no one really knew much about him. He was from out of town, he'd say. Drove in just to sell his sauce.

Then he'd smile his boyish smile and we'd buy up all his little jars.

//

When I was twenty-three, he stopped coming to the harvest festival.

Maybe that's why I associate his sauce with my childhood so much. Mind you, there were still plenty of homemade goodies to buy—tastier than anything you might buy at the store—but nothing that compared to the exquisite taste and texture of Adam's Apple Sauce.

//

Three years ago, my dad died. When I was arranging the funeral, I went to a local funeral home, and to my great surprise saw—working there—the guy (now much older, of course) who'd made Adam's Apple Sauce.

“Adam!” I called out.

He didn't react.

I tried again: “Adam, hello!”

This time he turned to look at me, smiled and I walked over to him. I explained how I knew him from my youth, my hometown, the harvest festival, and he confirmed that that had been him.

“How long have you been working here?” I asked.

“Ever since I was a boy,” he said.

“Do you still make the sauce?” I asked, hoping I could once again taste the innocence of childhood.

“No,” he said. “Although I guess I could make you a one-off jar, if you like. Especially given the death of your father. My condolences, by the way.”

“I would very much appreciate that,” I said.

He smiled.

“Thank you, Adam.”

“You're most welcome,” he said. “But, just so you know, my name isn't Adam. It's Rick.”

“Rick?”

I thought about the sauce, the label on the jars with the pig and the three words: Adam's Apple Sauce. “Then who's Adam?” I asked.

He cleared his throat.

And I—

I felt the sudden need to vomit—followed by the loud and forceful satisfaction of that need, all over the floor.

“Still want that jar?” he asked.

I am a good man.

I know I'm a good man, but I've got a gun and I'm going to kill a man who meant a lot to me, who at one time was my pastor, my mentor, my uncle.

What's the saying about when a good man goes to war?

When I arrived at the church I work at after my two-day absence, it looked like the whole church was leaving. From some distance away, the perhaps one hundred other workers pouring out of the grand church looked antlike compared to the great mass of the place.

Their smiles leaving met my frown entering, and they made sure to avoid me. No one spoke to me, and I didn't plan on speaking to them.

I made my way to the sanctuary, hoping to find my uncle, the head pastor here. He would spend hours praying there in the morning. Today he was nowhere to be seen. No one was. I alone was tortured by the images of the stained glass windows bearing my Savior.

I'm not an idiot. I know what religion has done, but it has also done a lot of good. I've seen marriages get saved, people get healed, folks change for the better, and I've seen our church make a positive impact on the world.

My faith gave me purpose, my faith gave me friends, and my faith was the reason I didn't kill myself at thirteen.

Jesus means something to me, and the people here have bastardized his name! I slammed my fist on a pew, cracking it. It is my right to kill him. If Jesus raised a whip to strike the greedy in the temple, I can raise a Glock to the face of my uncle for what he did. I know there's a verse about punishing those who harm children.

"Solomon," I recognized the voice before I turned to see her. Ms. Anne, the head secretary, spoke behind me. Before this, she was something like a mother to me. A surrogate mother because I never knew mine. Her words unnerved me now. My hand shook, and the pain of slamming my hand into the pew finally hit me. Then it all came back to me, the pain of betrayal. I hardened my heart. I let the anger out. I heard my own breath pump out of me. My hand crept for my pistol in my waistband, and with my hand on my pistol, I faced her.

"What?" I asked.

She reeled in shock at how I spoke to her, taking two steps back. Her eyebrows narrowed and lips tightened in a disbelieving frown. She was an archetype of a cheerful, caring church mother. A little plump, sweet as candy, and with an air of positivity that said, "I believe in you," but also an air of authority that said, "I'm old, I've earned my respect."

We stared at one another. She waited for an apology. It did not come, and she relented. She shuffled under the pressure of my gaze. Did she know she was caught?

"I, um, your Uncle—uh, Pastor Saul wants to see you. He's upstairs. Sorry, your Uncle is giving everyone the whole day off except you," she said. With no reply from me, Ms. Anne kept talking. "I was with him, and as soon as you told him you were coming in today, he announced on the intercom everyone could have the day off today. Except you, I guess. Family, huh?"

I didn't speak to her. Merely glared at her, trying to determine who she really was. Did she know what was really going on?

"Why's your arm in a cast?" Her eyebrows raised in awe. "What happened to you?"

She stepped closer, no doubt to comfort me with a hug as she had since I was a child.

These people were not what I thought they were. They frightened me now. I toyed with the revolver on my hip as she got closer.

Her eyes went big. She stumbled backward, falling. Then got herself up and evacuated as everyone else did.

She wouldn't call the cops. The church mother knew better than to involve anyone outside the church in church matters. Ms. Anne might call my uncle though, which was fine. I ran upstairs to his office to confront him before he got the call.

Well, Reader, I suppose I should clue you in on what exactly made me so mad. I discovered something about my church.

It was two days ago at my friend Mary's apartment...

It was 2 AM in the morning, and I contemplated destroying my career as a pastor before it even got started because my chance at real love blossomed right beside me.

I stayed at a friend's house, exhausted but anxious to avoid sleep. I pushed off my blanket to only cover my legs and sat up on the couch. I blinked to fight against sleep and refocus on the movie on the TV. A slasher had just killed the overly horny guy.

Less than two feet apart from me—and only moving closer as the night wore on—was the owner of the apartment I was in, a girl I was starting to have feelings for that I would never be allowed to date, much less marry, if I wanted to inherit my uncle's church.

Something aphrodisiacal stirred in the air and now rested on the couch. I knew I was either getting love or sex tonight. Sex would be a natural consequence of lowered inhibitions, the chill of her apartment that these thin blankets couldn't dampen, and the fact we found ourselves closer and closer on her couch. The frills of our blankets touched like fingers.

Love would be a natural consequence of our common interests, our budding friendship—for the last three weeks, I had texted her nearly every hour of every day, smiling the whole time. I hoped it would be love. Like I said, I was a good man. A good Christian boy, which meant I was twenty-four and still a virgin. Up until that moment, up until I met Mary, being a virgin wasn't that hard. I had never wanted someone more, and the feeling seemed mutual.

The two of us played a game since I got here. Who's the bigger freak? Who can say the most crude and wild thing imaginable? Very unbecoming as a future pastor, but it was so freeing! I never got to be untamed, my wild self, with anyone connected to the church. And that was Mary, a free woman. Someone whom my uncle would never accept. My uncle was like a father to me; I never knew my mom or dad.

Our game started off as jokes. She told me A, I told her B. And we kept it going, seeing who could weird out the other.

Then we moved to truths and then to secrets, and is there really any greater love than that, to share secrets? To expose your greatest mistakes to someone else and ask for them to accept you anyway?

I didn't quite know how I felt about her yet in a romantic sense. She was a friend of a friend. I was told by my friend not to try to date her because she wasn't my type, and it would just end in heartbreak and might destroy the friend group. The funny thing is, I know she was told the same.

"That was probably my worst relationship," Mary said, revealing one more secret, pulling the covers close to her. "Honestly, I think he was a bit of a porn addict too." Her face glowed. "What's the nastiest thing you've watched?"

I bit my lip, gritted my teeth, and strained in the light of the TV. Our game was unspoken, but the rules were obvious—you can't just back down from a question like that.

I said my sin to her and then asked, "What's yours?"

She groaned at mine and then made two genuinely funny jokes at my expense.

"Nah, nah, nah," I said between laughs. "What's yours?"

"No judgments?" she asked.

"No judgments," I said.

"And you won't tell the others?"

"I promise."

"Pinky promise," she said and leaned in close. I liked her smile. It was a little big, a little malicious. I liked that. I leaned forward and our pinkies interlocked. My heart raced. Love or sex fast approaching.

She said what it was. Sorry to leave you in the dark, reader, but the story's best details are yet to come.

She was so amazed at her confession. She said, "Jesus Christ" after it.

"Yeah, you need him," I joked back. Her face went dark.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"What? Just a joke."

"No, it's not. I can see it in your eyes you're judging me." She pulled away from me. The chill of her room felt stronger than before, and my chances at sex or love moved away with her.

"Dude, no," I said. "You made jokes about me and I made one about you."

She eyed me softer then, but her eyes still held a skeptical squint.

"Sorry," she said, "I just know you're religious so I thought you were going to try to get me to go to church or something."

"Uh, no, not really." Good ol' guilt settled in because her 'salvation' was not my priority.

"Oh," she slid beside me again. Face soft, her constant grin back on. "I just had some friends really try to force church on me and I didn't like that. I won't step foot in a church."

"Oh, sorry to hear that."

"There's one in particular I hate. Calgary."

"Oh, uh, why?" I froze. I hoped I didn't show it in my face, but I was scared as hell she knew my secret. Calgary was my uncle's church.

"They just suck," she said, noncommittal.

Did she know?

"What makes them suck?"

She took a deep breath and told me her story—

At ten years old, I wanted to kill myself. I had made a makeshift noose in my closet. I poured out my crate of DVDs on the floor and brought the crate into the closet so I could stand on it. I flipped the crate upside down so it rested just below the noose. I stepped up and grabbed the rope. I was numb until that moment. My mom left, my family hated me, and I feared my dad was lost in his own insane world. The holes in the wall, welts in his own skin, and a plethora of reptiles he let roam around our house were proof.

And it was so hot. He kept it as hot as hell in that house. My face was drenched as I stepped up the crate to hang myself. I hoped heaven would be cold.

Heaven. That's what made me stop. I would be in heaven and my dad would be here. I didn't want to go anywhere without my dad, even heaven.

Tears gushed from my face and mixed with my salty skin to make this weird taste. I don't know why I just remember that.

Anyway, I leapt off the crate and ran to my dad.

I ran from the closet and into the muggy house. A little girl who needed a hug from her dad more than anything in the world. It was just him and me after all.

Reptile terrariums littered the house; my dad kept buying them. We didn't even have enough places to put them anymore. I leaped over a habitat of geckos and ran around the home of bearded dragons. It was stupid. I love animals but I hated the feeling that I was always surrounded by something inhuman crawling around. It hurt that I felt like my dad cared about them more than me. But I didn't care about any of that; I needed my dad.

I pushed through the door of his room, but his bed was vacated, so that meant he was probably in his tub, but I knew getting clean was the last thing on his mind.

I carried the rope with me, still in the shape of a noose. I wanted him to see, to see what almost happened.

I crashed inside.

"Mary, stop!" he said when I took half a step in. "I don't want you to step on Leviathan." Leviathan was his python. My eyes trailed from the yellow tail in front of me to the body that coiled around my dad. Leviathan clothed my dad. It wrapped itself around his groin, waist, arms, and neck.

And it was a tight hold. I had seen my father walk and even run with Leviathan on him. Today, he just sat in the tub, watching it or watching himself. I'm unsure; his mental illness confused me as a child, so I never really knew what he was doing.

I was the one who almost made the great permanent decision that night, but my dad looked worse than me. His veins showed and he appeared strained as if in a state of permanent discomfort, he sweat as much as I did, and I think he was having trouble breathing. The steam that formed in the room made it seem like a sauna.

He was torturing himself, all for Leviathan's sake.

"Dad, I—"

"Close the door!" My dad barked, between taking a large, uncomfortable breath. "You'll make it cold for Leviathan."

"Yes, sir." I did as he commanded and shut the door. Then I ran to him.

"Stop," he raised his hand to me, motioning for me to be still. He looked at Leviathan, not me. It was like they communed with one another.

I was homeschooled so there wasn't anyone to talk to about it, but it's such a hard thing to be afraid of your parents and be afraid for your parents and to need them more than anything.

"Come in, honey," he said after his mental deliberation with the snake.

And I did, feeling an odd shame and relief. I raised the noose up and I couldn't find the right words to express how I felt.

I settled on, "I think I need help."

"Oh, no," my dad said and rose from the tub. So quick, so intense. For a heartbeat, I was so scared I almost ran away. Then I saw the tears in his eyes and saw he was more like my dad than he had been in a long time.

He hugged me and everything was okay. It was okay. I was sad all the time, but it was going to be okay. The house was infested, a sauna, and a mess, but life is okay with love, y'know?

He cried and I cried, but snakes can't cry so Leviathan rested on his shoulder.

After an extended hug, he took Leviathan off and said he needed to make a call. When he came back, he told me to get in the car with him. I obeyed as I was taught to.

We rode in his rickety pickup truck in the dead of night in complete silence until he broke it.

"I was bad, MaryBaby," he said.

"What?"

"As a kid, I wasn't right," he said. My father randomly twitched. Like someone overdosing on drugs if you've seen that.

He flew out of his lane. I grabbed the handle for stability. The oncoming semi approached and honked at us. I braced for impact. He whipped the car back over. His cold coffee cup fell and spilled in my seat. My head banged against the window.

It hurt and I was confused. What was happening? The world looked funny. My eyes teared up again, making the night a foggy mess.

"I wasn't good as a child, Mary Baby. I was different from the others. I saw things, I felt things differently. Probably like you."

He turned to me and extended his hand. I flinched under it, but he merely rubbed my forehead.

"I'm sorry about that," he said, hands on the wheel again, still twitching, still flinching. "You know you're the most precious thing in the world to me, right?"

"Yes, I know. Um, we're going fast. You don't want to get pulled over, right?"

"Oh, I wouldn't stop for them. No, MaryBaby, because your soul's on the line. I won't let you end up like me."

There was no music on; he only allowed a specific type of Christian music anyway, weird chants that even scared my traditionally Catholic friends. The horns of other drivers he almost crashed into were the only noise.

"What do you mean, Daddy?"

"I was a bad kid."

"What did you do?"

"I was off to myself, antisocial, sensitive, cried a lot, and I wasn't afraid of the dark, MaryBaby. I'd dig in the dark if I had to."

His body convulsed at this, his wrist twisted and the car whipped going in and out of our double yellow-lined lane.

I screamed.

In, out, in, out, in, out. Life-threatening zigzags. Then he adjusted as if nothing happened.

"Daddy, I don't think you were evil. I think you were just different."

This cheered him up.

"Yes, some differences are good," he said. "We're all children under God's rainbow."

"Yes!" I said. "We're both just different. We're not bad."

"Then why were we treated badly? We were children of God, but we were supposed to be loved."

"We love each other."

"That's not enough, Mary Baby. The good people have to love us."

"But if they're mean, how good can they be?"

"Good as God. They're closer to Him than us, so we have to do what they say."

"But, Daddy, I don't think you're bad. I don't think I'm bad. I think we should just go home."

"No, we're already here. They have to change you, MaryBaby. You're not meant to be this way. You'll come out good in a minute."

We parked. I didn't even notice we had arrived anywhere. I locked my door. We were at a church parking lot. The headlights of perhaps three other cars were the only lights. He unlocked my door. I locked it back. Shadowy figures approached our car.

"It's okay, honey. I did this when I was a kid. They're going to do the same thing to me that they did to you."

BANG

BANG

BANG

Someone barged against the door.

"They made me better, honey. The same thing they're going to do to you."

My dad unlocked the door. Someone pulled it open before I could close it back. I screamed. This someone unbuckled my seatbelt and dragged me out. I still have the scars all up my elbow to my hand.

Screaming didn't stop him, crying didn't stop him, my trail of blood didn't stop him.

"And that's it. That's all I remember," she said and shrugged.

"Wait. What? There's no way that's all."

"Yep. Sorry. Well..."

"No, tell me what happened. What did they do to your dad? Does it have to do with the reptiles? What did they do to you?"

"I just remember walking through a dark hallway into a room with candles lit up everywhere and people in a circle. I think they were all pastors in Calgary. They tried to perform an exorcism. Then it goes blank. Sorry."

"No, that's not among the criteria for performing an exorcism."

"Excuse me? Are you saying I'm lying?" she said with a well-deserved attitude in her voice because I might have been yelling at her.

I wasn't mad at her, to be clear. Passion polluted my voice, not anger. My church had strict criteria for when people could have an exorcism, and suicide wasn't in it. You don't understand how grateful I was to think that our church was scandal-free. I thought we were the good guys.

"No," I said, still not calm. "I'm just saying a child considering suicide isn't in the criteria to perform an exorcism."

"Oh, maybe it's different for Calgary."

"No, I know it's not."

"And how do you know that?"

"No, wait, you need to tell me what really happened."

"Need?"

"Yeah, need. It's not just about you; this is important." I know I misspoke, but for me it was a need. I could fix this. I could take over Calgary in a couple of years; I had to know its secrets.

"It's never about me, is it?" she asked.

"Well, this certainly just isn't—"

"It's always about you because you're good, you're Christian, and you're going to make this world better or something."

"What? No, come on, where is this coming from?"

"It's always okay because you're Christian."

"That's not fair. I just want to know what happened because it wasn't an exorcism. What happened?"

"It's getting late. I think I want you to leave."

"Hey, no, wait. I'm doing the right thing here. Let me help you..."

"Oh, I do not want or need your help. You think you're better than me and could somehow fix it because you're Christian."

"No, I think I could fix it because I have the keys to the church."

"Oh..." she was stunned, and that mischievous grin formed on her face again. "Well," she swallowed hard and took a deep breath. "They took something from me, something that's still down there. And I'm not being metaphorical; I can feel it missing."

"If you lost something, let's go get it back."

There was another possibility I hadn't thought of between sex or love that I could have tonight: adventure.

That night we left to have our lives changed forever.

Mary and I waited for the security van to go around the church, and then we entered with my keys. Mary used the light from her phone and led the way.

Mary rushed through our church. It is a knockoff cathedral like they have in Rome with four floors and twists and turns one could get lost in. With no instructions, no tour, no direction, Mary preyed through the halls. Specterlike, so fast, a blur of light and then a turn. I stumbled in darkness. She pressed on. Her speedy footsteps away from me were a haunting reply. I got up and followed, like a guest in my own home.

How did she know where to go?

Deeper. Deeper. Mary caused us to go. Dark masked her and dark masked us; everything was more frightening and more real. We journeyed down to the basement. A welcome dead end. As kids, we had played in the basement all the time in youth group. Maliciousness can't exist where kids find peace, or so I thought.

"Could you have made a wrong turn?" I asked, catching my breath.

Mary did not answer. Mary walked to the edge of the hall, and the walls parted for her in a slow groan. This was impossible. I looked around the empty basement which I thought I knew so well. Hide and seek, manhunt, and mafia—all of it was down here. How could this all be under my nose?

Mary walked through still without a word to me. She hadn't spoken since we got here. Whatever was there called to her, and she certainly wasn't going to ignore their call now. She pulled the ancient door open.

Mary swung her flashlight forward and revealed perhaps 100 cages full of children... perhaps? I couldn't tell. The cages pressed against the walls of a massive hall, never touching the center of the room where a purple carpet rested.

Sex trafficking. A church I was part of was sex trafficking. My legs went weak, my stomach turned in knots.

Mary pressed forward. I called her name to slow her down, but she wouldn't stop. She went deeper into the darkness, and I could barely stand.

"Oh, you've come home," a feminine voice called from the darkness. "And you've brought a friend."

I do not know how else to describe it to you, reader, but the air became hard. As if it was thick, a pain to breathe in, as if the air was solid.

"Mary," I called to her between coughs. She shone her light on a cage far ahead. I ran after her and collapsed after only a few steps. I couldn't breathe, much less move in this.

Above us, something crawled, or danced, or ran across the ceiling. The pitter-patter was right above me, something like rain.

"Mary," I yelled again, but she did not seem interested in me.

"Mary," the thing on the ceiling mocked me. "What do you want with my daughter?"

"Daughter?" I asked, stupefied, drained, and maybe dying. She ignored my question.

"Mary, dear," she said as sweet as pure sugar. "Don't leave your guest behind."

And with that, my body was not my own. It was pulled across the floor by something invisible. My back burned against the carpet. My body swung in circles until I ran into Mary.

We collided, and I fought to rise again because this was my church. A bastardization of my faith. This was my responsibility.

I rose in time to see Mary's phone flung in the air and crash into something.

Crack. The light from the phone fled and flung us into darkness.

I scrambled in blackness until I found her arm to help her rise.

"Mary," I said between gasps for air. "Have to leave... They're sex trafficking."

"Sex trafficking!" That voice in the dark yelled. "Young man, I have never. I am Tiamat, the mother of all gods, and I am soul trafficking."

By her will, the cage lit up in front of us, not by anything natural but by an unholy orange light. Bathed in this orange light was the skeleton of a child in the fetal position. The child looked at me and frowned. At the top of it was a sign that read:

MARY DAUGHTER OF ISAAC WHO IS A SERVANT OF NEHEBEKU

FOR SALE.

"Wha-wha-wha," it was all too much, too confusing.

I didn't get a break to process either. An uncontrollable shudder of fear went through my entire body, as if the devil himself tapped my shoulder.

I lost control of my body. My body rose in the pitch black. I was a human balloon, and that was terrifying. I held on to Mary's arm for leverage, anything to keep my feet from leaving the ground. She tried to pull me back down with her. It didn't work. That force, that wicked woman, no creature, no being, that being that controlled the room yanked my arm from Mary. It snapped right at the shoulder.

I screamed.

I cried.

That limp, useless arm pulled me up.

This feminine being unleashed a wet heat on me the closer I got, like I was being gently dripped on by something above, but it didn't make sense. I couldn't comprehend the shape of it. I kept hearing the pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter of so many feet crawling or walking above me.

And how it touched me, how it pulled me up without using its actual hands but an invisible fist squeezing my body.

I got closer, and the heat coming from the thing burned as if I was outside of an oven or like a giant's hot breath. I was an ant ready to be devoured by an ape.

I reached an apex. My body froze in the air just outside of the peak of that heat. It burned my skin. The being scorched me, an angry black sun that did not provide light, nor warmth; only burning rage.

"Did you know you belong to me now?" the great voice said.

I shook my head no twice. Mary called my name from below. Without touching me, the being pushed my cheeks in and made me nod my head like I was a petulant child learning to obey.

"Oh, yes you do. Oh, yes you do," she said. "Now, let's make it permanent. I just need to write my name on your heart."

The buttons on my flannel ripped open. The voice tossed my white T-shirt away. Next, my chest unraveled, with surgical precision. I was delicately unsewn. In less than ten seconds, I was deconstructed with the precision of the world's greatest surgeons.

All that stood between her and my heart were my ribs. She treated them as simple door handles, something that could be pulled to get what she wanted. One at a time, the being pulled open my ribs to reveal my heart; the pain was excruciating, and my chest sounded like the Fourth of July.

The pain was excruciating. My screams echoed off the wall like I was a choir singing this thing's praises. Only once she had pulled apart every rib did she stop.

"Oh, dear, it seems you already belong to someone else. Fine, I suppose we'll get you patched up."

Maybe I moaned a reply, hard to say. I was unaware of anything except that my body was being repaired and I was being lowered. I landed gently but crashed through exhaustion.

"Daughter, get him out of here. It's not your time yet."

I moaned something. I had to learn more. I had to understand. This was bigger than I was told. I wasn't in Hell, but this certainly wasn't Heaven.

"Oh, don't start crying, boy. If you want anyone to blame, talk to your boss."

Oh, and I would, dear reader. I stayed home the next few days to recover mentally and to get a gun to kill that blasphemous, sacrilegious bastard.

"Come on Nathan, shooting practice! We gotta start explodin' some brains!" Nora casts a judgemental side eye to Jared.

"'Exploding some brains?' Really? Like they even have brains," Jared attempts a flippant gun spin, failing horribly as it drops to the ground, "What're you s'posed to say then? Explode some mush? Doesn't roll off the tongue as much as explodin' your mother, ohh!" Nora groans while Jared high fives himself. "Come on Nathan, let's get this over with already!" A loud shout is heard from the end of the bunker, "Coming!"

Nathan huffs as he hurriedly slings over the shotgun to his front, gingerly reloading it. He is a small figure just like the rest of his gang, as he had to adjust his tiny grip on the gun multiple times to get a good hold of it. As Jared said; 'Us tiny folks get bigger slices than taller folks!' He chuckles at the quote. It is more of dealing with bigger 'struggles' than 'slices' really, being forced to survive the aftermath of an exploded world, which is not in the criteria for certain people who were only good with being there for each other, especially when these people lacked any characteristics that could amp their survival. He forcefully closes the receiver on the shotgun with a loud snap. He takes one last glimpse of himself in the broken mirror.

"Nathan!" An impatient voice echoes from the metallic hallway. Nathan huffs, standing on the tiled floor. "I know, I'm coming!" He maneuvers swiftly, swallowing, feeling the nervousness and adrenaline seep in as he braces for gun practice today. Or was it yesterday? Or weeks before? Or even years? He stops his hollow steps, unable to remember when it was. Looking back and forth didn't help, he wouldn't find his answer. Nora always knew how to keep track of time. Jared on the other hand, didn't care, he always said to let it run as it is. Nathan wonders if he should have listened to one of them.

"Nathan!" The voice continues to linger in the putrid bathroom, growing more desperate, more louder. "Wait." His voice never reaches the hallway. No, he should have listened to Fred. Fred didn't want to get attached to the gang, always isolating himself from everyone. If he had done what Fred did, would it make a difference then? Lastly, he should have done what John taught him, and everyone else, to do; If you hear something outside the bunker, immediately arm yourself with a gun, along with being hyperaware of your surroundings, because it can be anywhere. Jeanette was the closest to the entrance. If she were to be hyperaware and had a gun ready rather than turning her back against the entrance door and listening to them singing happy birthday down the stairs, would it make a difference then?

"Nathan!" The plea splits into multiple ear-splitting wheeze, getting more eerie, getting uncannily familiar, getting angrier.

It was the anniversary of the short folks surviving, those short folks who would get bigger slices than other folks. Nathan is a small figure, just like the rest of his gang, as he has to adjust his tiny grip on the gun multiple times to get a good hold of it.

"Nathan." Their voices are placed right beside his ear.

The muzzle itches at the back of Nathan's throat, trembling heavily on his tongue.

Focus, Marty. This is all about focus. 

Think about Alice. Keep driving. Eyes on the road. 

The hitchhikers will step out eventually. They always do. 

Just don’t look back at them. Don’t ever look back, for that matter.

Don’t think, just drive. 

—-----------------------------------

I have a lot of love for my parents, having the generosity to take Alice and me in after her leukemia relapsed, but goddamn do they live far from civilization. Or maybe there just ain’t a lot of civilization in Idaho to go around - not in a bad way; the quiet is nice. I’ve been enjoying the countryside more than I anticipated. That being said, they could stand to spend some taxpayer dollars on a few more Walgreens locations. 

Feels like I’ve been driving all night; must almost be morning. They have to be worried sick. Alice may actually be physically sick without her antinausea meds.

I shook my head side to side in a mix of disbelief and self-flagellating shame. Took a left turn when I should have taken a right - a downright boneheaded mistake. The price for overworking myself, but I mean, what other option do I have? Chemotherapy ain’t exactly cheap. 

For a moment, I forgot where I was and what I was doing and looked in the rearview mirror at the five hitchhikers in my backseats. Silent and staring forward with dead and empty eyes at nothing in particular from the back of my small Sudan.

Furiously, my eyes snapped forward, not wanting to linger too long on them - wasn’t sure what I’d see. 

Can’t be doing that on this road. Maintaining focus is key. 

—-----------------------------------

Despite my near-instantaneous reaction, I did see the new hitchhikers, but only for a moment. No surprises this time, thankfully. They wore suits like all the others, monocolored with earthy tones from head to toe. Same odd fabric, too - rough and coarse-looking, almost like leather. Honestly, never seen anything like it before tonight. 

But I haven’t ever been in a situation like this before, either. Whatever backwoods county I got myself turned around in, it likes to follow its own rules. 

For example, I didn’t pull over to pick up these hitchhikers. Somehow, they just found their way in. Or maybe I did pull over and let them in? Been so tired lately; who could even be sure. And they don’t say much, no matter how many questions I ask. Would love to know where I am, but I guess it isn’t for them to say.

My gaze again drifted, this time from the road to the car’s dashboard, and I let myself see the time. Big mistake.

7:59PM.

Nope, that ain’t right. I rapidly blinked a few times, adjusted myself so I was sitting up straighter, and then looked back to check again.

Now, it didn’t show any time at all. 

Marty, Jesus. Focus up. 

I blinked once more, this time for longer. Not sure how long, couldn’t been longer than ten seconds. If I close my eyes for too long, they become hard to open again. Requires a lot of energy.

4:45AM. 

See, there we go. Now that makes sense. By the time dawn arrives, I’m sure I will have found a gas station to pull over in. Ask for directions back to…whatever my parent’s address is. I’ll figure that out later, right now I need to focus. 

—-----------------------------------

Funny things happened in this part of the country when you didn’t focus. Sometimes, the yellow pavement markings would change colors - or disappear entirely. Other times, the road itself would start to look off - black asphalt turning to muddy brownstone at a moment’s notice. 

At first, it scared me. Scared me a lot, come to think of it. Made me want to pull over and close my eyes.

But Alice needed her nausea meds, and judging by the time, I had work in two short hours. I needed to make it home soon so I can check on her, give her a kiss before school. Hopefully, I’ll have time to brew a pot of coffee, too. 

But my eyes, they just don’t seem to want to stick with the program. Dancing around from thing to thing like they don’t have a care in the world. They have one job - watch the road for places that might have a map or someone who can tell me where I am. Well, two jobs. Watch the road and focus on the road. 

At least the road wasn’t treacherous. It has been pretty much straight the whole night after the wrong turn. 

—-----------------------------------

Initially, Alice was nervous about starting at her new school. And I get it - that transition is hard enough without factoring in everything she has had to manage in her short life. We’d been lucky though, finding a well-reviewed sign language school - in Idaho, of all places.  

She’s amazing - you’d think that the leukemia and the deafness from her first go with chemotherapy would have crushed her spirit. Not my Alice. She’s tough as nails. Tough as nails like her dad. 

I smiled, basking in a moment of fatherly pride. Of course, you can’t be doing that on this road. You’ll start to see things you don’t want to see. 

When my eyes again met the rearview mirror, I noticed there was now only one hitchhiker now, but he had transformed and revealed his real shape.

His face was flat like a manhole cover, almost the size of a manhole cover, too, but less circular - more oblong. He was staring at me with one bulging eye. It was the only one he had, the only one I could see at least. No other recognizable facial features. Just the one, bloated, soulless eye. 

What’s worse, I saw what was behind him. Behind the car, I mean. 

I closed my eyes as soon as I could, but my mind was already rapidly reviewing and trying to reconcile what I had seen behind the car. There was a wall a few car lengths away. No road to be seen, just an inclined wall with tire tracks on it. The atmosphere behind me had a weird thickness to it. Lightrays shone through the thickness unnaturally from someplace above. The ground looked like dust, or maybe sand, why would the ground look like -  

FOCUS. Think of Alice, and focus

When I finally found the courage to open my eyes, it all looked right again, and I breathed a sigh of relief and chuckled to myself from behind the wheel. Straight road in front of me, framed by a starless black sky. Everything in its right place. Until I saw something snaking its way into my peripheral vision. 

The hitchhiker was now in the passenger’s seat.

He turned to me and leaned his body forward over the stickshift; his lips were pursed and nearly pressing against my ears, rhythmically opening and closing his mouth but making no sound. I could have sworn he was close enough to touch my ear with his lips, but I guess he wasn't because I couldn’t feel it. Instead, I felt my heartbeat start to race, or I imagined what it was like to feel your heartbeat race. 

Why did I have to imagine...?

Don’t turn. Don’t look. Don’t think. Just focus. 

But I couldn’t. Something was wrong. I thought about closing my eyes. For a while, not just for a little. To see what would happen. I was curious what would happen. Had been all night, actually.

But then, like the angel she was, Alice’s visage appeared on the horizon. She was standing at her second-story window in my parent’s home, watching and waiting for me to return from this long night. I wasn’t getting closer for some reason, but she wasn’t getting any further away either. 

She was far, but even at that distance, I could see her doing something in the window. When I squinted, it looked like maybe she was waving.

Alice was waving at me. Alice could see me.

Must mean I'm close.

Eyes on the road. Focus

—-----------------------------------

Every night around 8PM, Alice would stand and watch the road from her bedroom on the second story of her grandparents' home. What she was waiting for didn’t happen as often anymore, but her birthday was a week away - the phenomenon seemed to be more frequent around her birthday. As the clock ticked into 8:03PM, she saw a familiar sight - two faint luminescent orbs traveled slowly down the deserted road in her direction, creating even fainter cylinders of light in front of them. 

Like headlights from an approaching car.

The first time this happened, Alice was nine. To cope with her father's disappearance, she would watch the road at night and pretend she saw his car returning home. One night, she saw balls of light appear in the distance, and it made hope explode through her body like fireworks. 

The balls of light turned into the driveway. And when they did, Alice noticed something that made her hope mutate into fear and confusion.

The headlights had no car attached, dissolving without a trace within seconds of their arrival.

For months, this was a nightly occurrence, and only she could see it, which scared Alice. But when she formally explained to the phenomenon to her grandfather for the first time, how they looked like headlights without a car, a weak and bittersweet grin appeared on his face, and he carefully brought up his hands to sign to her:

I’d bet good money that’s Marty making his way home, sweetheart. He just loved you that much.

From then on, the orbs comforted Alice and made her feel deeply connected with her long-lost father, wherever he was. But in the present, at the age of nearly seventeen, she had modified the purpose of her vigil.

Originally, she liked the idea of her father’s endless search for her. It made her feel less alone. But as she lived life and matured, she realized how alone he must be looking for her from where he was. Now, all she wanted was for Marty to stop looking. She wanted her father to finally rest. 

Now, when the orbs passed by, she would sign to them from her window, desperately hopeful that even from where he was, he could see her hands move and communicate an important message to him:

I love you, and I miss you. But please, Dad, let go. 

More stories: https://linktr.ee/unalloyedsainttrina

The Miracle of the Burning Crane

In the divided city of Machiryo Bay, corporate giant Sacred Dynamics makes the controversial decision to seize and demolish sacred temples and build branch offices. Two agents attempt to do their jobs amidst protest. Two politicians discover they have a lot more in common than they know. Two media hosts discover the consequences of radicalization. In a divided and polarized age- what is the price of industry? Of balance?

Part One: Of Prophets and Protest
Part Two: And to Kill a God

Part Three: What is the Price of a Miracle?

Part Four: Please Restrain Your Enthusiasm for Divine Sacrifice

Part Five: Let our Legal Beliefs Cloud our Religious Judgements

Part Six: The Great Black Pyramid of Justice

TMBC 1.7: This is a City That Forgot the Stars

[Machiryo Morning Media - The Lind Quarry Show]

Lind Quarry: “Listeners- a new, fateful day is upon us. Last night, the Grand Court of the Peace met to discuss what we know to be a controversial case: an Old Faith Coalition against the State for government overreach. Listeners, you know my thoughts on this case; it is a tool being used by far-faith elements to sow discord and chaos in the name of progress.

Listeners, it is with great shame and disdain to tell you that the Court has reached a dark decision no doubt bought out by radical fundamentalist elements. The city has ruled giving back three of the seven old-faith buildings that are still standing back to the old faith coalition that brought the lawsuit.

Once again, the radical fundamentalists have halted progress. These new structures, these sacred factories would have brought jobs. Would have fed our people.

All of you listening know you do not want our city’s future stolen by radical extremists. By people like my former cohost Ami Zhou. And these people are in our government guiding the hands of the court and our institutions.

Can you really believe this city doesn’t want to move forward? I don’t think so. Something is afoot here. There is a rot and a madness and it is there in the heart of the city.

A couple of the council has come out with statements condemning the decision- a couple have even embraced it. But our City Speaker- Councilor Aspen Lowe has not said anything. In fact, he’s been rather quiet this past couple of weeks.

Once a shining beacon of progress- has he been corrupted with the vile faiths of the past?

My children of the airwaves- the government has pandered and ignored the will of our people. The Miracle of the Burning Crane was not held accountable- where are these perpetrators who engineered this attack? Where are the fugitives and the Nick Kerry they blast on all our screens? Any rightful government would have caught him by now. And right after a devastating terrorist attack by a highly dangerous Battle-Angel in the same Hallow Square- the enemy strikes into the very heart and soul of our city.

And the government does nothing. Instead, they continue to pander to the fundamentalists and refuse to hunt them down- instead- rewarding them with this recent ruling!

We cannot believe this false government’s promises any longer. The people continue to toil on the streets- their wages lowered to sacrifices- and no doubt the Fundementalists and their party is to blame.

We cannot allow this radical group of people to take over our city. We must drain the rot from our systems,

So listeners- join me today- let us stage our very own protest! If the fundies can bitch and whine- so can we! We’re gonna fight like hell!

We’re going to show the People’s House of the City that there’s a reason it’s called the People’s House. So let’s walk down there and show them the people they so claim to represent.

May the stars bless Machiryo Bay. Thank you for listening, faithful friends, listeners- and may the Gods bless our City.”

Patriotic Machiryo City Anthem plays.

𐂴 - Orchid Harrow

Officially, the City Council building that rests dead-center in the political district is called the People’s House of the City. But the government, interested only in supporting themselves and our ‘economy’, has lost that title.

I believe we don’t serve the people anymore. I continue to believe the government panders equally to fundamentalist prophets and board executives. And that is why we’ve lost our name. 

The drive from the Meadowland to the city council building is tense. My summoned cab driver requests a higher sacrifice than usual- on account of all the protests.

My companion, Olive, even tells me not to go to work today. That she fears for my safety- but I have a duty in these trying times, and my party, the Unification Party- I hope, will restore stability when so many are disappointed. 

But I know the Industrial Progressives still maintain their hold. I know the Fundementalists will continue to believe in their ways and refuse to even consider what any side has to say. 

There’s too much blood and hate to change the minds of the many, I fear. But I feel safe, because I don’t see any of the chaos Olive warns me of. 

I’m confused- but Meadowland is a calm and richer place, and the protests do not start here. The Meadowlites, always, turn to posting injustices and crimes on social media to raise attention- though its effectiveness has always been questioned.

But once we’re outside the gates of Meadowland, the world takes a darker turn. There are people protestant the court, the city council, and the miracle events. They are angry. I would be too. 

“WE WANT PROGRESS! WE WANT CHANGE! FIGHT AGAINST THE ENEMY WITHIN! SAVE THE CHILDREN FROM FALSE-FAITHS!”

I don’t know why I’m not angry. I think it’s because it doesn’t affect me. Not really. Meadowland is too far up the chain for these things. 

There are counter protestors- fundies who wear cultural-religious masks and signs that scream and twist. 

“RETURN OUR CITY TO THE FAITH! OLD SACRIFICE BENEFITS THE PEOPLE- NEW SACRIFICE BENEFITS THE RICH! WE WANT MIRACLES!”

My car, and many others pass by, dividing the two protests. They stick to their sides, fearing an escalation. 

I turn away and stare at my phone, scrolling past news article after article after radio show condemning or praising the council, the court, and the miracles. 

This city is killing me slowly. Killing everyone. 

Whether it’s through the prisons and then sent to the sacrifice chambers of the old faith- or the time sacrifices which are still just miniscule blood sacrifices, taking off minutes that add up into hours that add up into days from our lives.

I switch on the radio all the same. Lind Quarry is staging some sort of protest- and as we eventually make it through the streets and into the city center, then into the political district, I see his protest.

I spot Councilor Lowe trying to calm them down, speaking from a podium. I can’t believe I used to hate him. I thought him to be the worst of them, the speaker of the IndProgs.

But ever since we’d spoken, ever since the miracle happened- he’s been quiet. Neyling stokes the flames, now. 

I realize this is the first time I’ve ever seen Lind Quarry’s face since we’d parted in high school. Not that I’d seen him often- we were in different social strata, anyway. His face is reddish, and he’s screaming something I can’t quite make out. He seems older. 

Angrier. The protestors, his faithful listeners shout something back.

That, I can hear. “WE WANT PROGRESS!” they shout. “WE WANT CHANGE!”

The clouds gray overhead, and a light rain begins to pitter-patter. I read an internal memo- the rain gods have been given an emergency sacrifice by their respective department. I curse to myself. 

I wonder who approved it. I don’t really need to think about it. I know that the rain won’t have their intended effect- that the protestors won’t leave all the same. I’m cold. I shrug my cardigan closer to me.

My cab drops me off, and I enter the hall, doing my best to avoid the silvertongued newsboys and the protest groups. 

“Orchid,” one of my friends greets another member of the Unification Party. “We need to talk.” My friend- Renee takes me to a back corner among the pillars before I can say anything. “I have a friend who works in the Justice Department.”

“Right. Has the Free Orchard case developed?”

She shakes her head, and darts around, nervously. “She noted something odd. Did you know we’re on a government watchlist?”

I laugh, nervously. “Why would we be on a watchlist? I haven’t done anything- I think?” I manage.

“Not us, the Party,” she clarifies. “She says anyone who’s voted for the party is on some sort of watchlist.”

“Interesting,” I murmur, quiet. “I mean I’m sure they’re keeping an eye on us, right?”

“Even so,” Renee mutters. “And another thing- I just overheard this new bill some of the more radical councilors were discussing?”

“The *Assisted Sacrifice Draft?*” I guess. I hadn’t heard much, but there were rumors. “That thing won’t pass.”

“Right- that was when only Neyling was pushing it,” Renee informs, “but Councilor Bienen was discussing it with her earlier. A coalition between some of the extremes on both sides.”

“The people won’t call for it,” I argue. “I mean- really- we can’t ship off our elderly to get sacrificed? Right?”

“The people don’t matter,” Renee points out. “It’s all about the *city.* About the benefits we get in return as a whole.”

“I don’t think it’ll pass,” I whisper. “It’s a ridiculous act.”

Renee wants to say more, but the bell is called, and we walk away, to the seats of the house of the people we claim to represent. We are called to order. We discuss the events. The controversies. 

And what we can do to mitigate what’s going to happen next. 

[Machiryo Morning Media - The Old Faithful Wave]

Ami Zhou: “Listeners- this is a joyful day and I’m joined once again with the Prophet Lark. Prophet- we’ve been handed a major victory- and while I must condemn radical elements such as the Free Orchard, we have to remember what are the circumstances that make them act.”

Prophet Lark: “This is true. It’s this unfaltering hammer of so-called progress that’s really hurting our people. And it’s forcing people to drive them to extremes. So really, when you’re faced with being crushed by gears of industry and lashing out- the fact is- that’s not extremism. That’s fear. Fear of an unjust and culture-destroying society which doesn't reflect our city values.”

Ami Zhou: “Well put, Prophet. While the damage done by these Miracles and attacks are hurtful, it should not take away from the institutions of pain these new gods are forcing down our throat. ”

Prophet Lark: “Exactly. And we really need to move away from these new gods and their time sacrifices. Giving up a minute or a year isn’t doing anything. You’re just praying to a wall. You need a good old fashioned sacrifice to get something truly awesome in return.”

Several gunshots- then screams.

Rioter: “That’s for the miracle! Down with the radical old faith!”

Prophet Lark: “Oh my god-”

Gunshots. Sound of footsteps from the studio.

Josie Koski: “My Prophet- and Ami, are you-”

Rioter: **“**Lind Quarry is right! Root out the-” gunshot, he collapses.

Josie Koski: “My Prophet- my Prophet- I’ve got him. Are you okay?”

Prophet Lark: sigh. “Cantor Koski- Josie- thank you. Listeners- we’ve just been attacked by a radical element, no doubt sent by the New Faith’s false leaders and-”

Ami Zhou: “They shot at us- they tried to-” deep breath, “I can’t fucking do this anymore. Cut the radio.” Click. 

Prophet Lark: “Ami, are you okay? This is a historic moment- and thank my assistant Josie for saving our lives- bless her heart. We need to call our listeners to action- if Lind and his fools can do this? So can we.”

Ami Zhou: “I’ve had,” she sighs, “enough.”

Josie Koski: “Uh. You have the Prophet booked for about thirty more minutes. Should we reschedule?”

Ami Zhou: Sobbing. “Lind Quarry used to be my best friend. Oh my- oh my god. What have we done? What have we become?”

Prophet Lark: “Ami, are you okay? I can take over, or we can reschedule.”

Ami Zhou: “I can’t fucking pretend to be this person? I can’t pretend to support this cause anymore. It’s just making people angry. I just- I- I can’t. Sometimes you’ve gone too far, right?”

Prophet Lark: “Do you not believe?”

Ami Zhou: “No! Of course not! This just makes me money! I liked doing this with Lind- am I even friends with him anymore? It used to be so simple. Just two best friends covering politics with slightly different views. We made money and we could live happily as companions and-and- and that was all that mattered. Until the Miracles.”

Josie Koski: “You’re a heretic. A false faith-”

Ami Zhou: “I’ve had enough of you people. Get out of my studio! Get out!” a pause. They are confused. “Did you not hear me? I’m done with this old faith shit! Get out!”

𐂴 - Orchid Harrow

It’s an eerie reflection of the videos I’d been shown. The videos that depict the violence at the Cairn Keeper’s temple. 

Because I’m looking on from the second floor, staring out while the Councilors behind me joke and laugh, on break. I stare out into the pouring rain, listening to muffled words from a radio show host turned unofficial candidate.

The House Templars- armed security twitch nervously, clad in white priestly armor and carrying an ornamental ritual staff in one hand, a rifle in the other.

He’s screaming and ranting into a microphone. And the people are screaming back. 

And then it’s a blur. I don’t know who attacks who- but I see a rock thrown at a House Templar- they fall, stunned. The templar next to him drops the staff- and the bulb at its end explodes in light.

They raise the rifle and point it. The other templars raise- but Lind refuses- he continues to cheer on the battle.

The head templar, dressed in red, shouted and order the protest to cease. I see Lind turn and shrug. Nobody listens. I am paralyzed.

Someone from the crowd draws out a gun and fires- and crimson explodes from the head templar. And the others respond by turning, aiming and firing. I am paralyzed to see this happen- to see more and more of the public reach for pistols and strike against the templars.

The templars retreat. A shot shatters the glass window I’m staring out of. My trance is broken. 

“They’re storming the House!” I shout. Everyone silences- not by me, but the gunshots. “We need to run!” The temple of the house to a god of democracy shakes, and more templars arrive to defend us.

A bullet whizzes past my ear. My eyes and Lind meet for just a second. “Orchid!” a voice shouts. It’s Councilor Lowe. “Orchid Harrow!”

I turn, just as a bullet shatters the rest of the glass. “Aspen,” I reply. “We have to-”

I’m drowned out by gunfire on the first floor. “We need to hide!” he shrieks. “Now!”

It registers in my mind that there’s probably not even a lot of gunmen out there. It’s probably just a few- but the might is just the same. The uninvited guests have come to shake things up- and they do, overturning chairs and shaking kneeling, trembling.

I see Councilor Neyling slip out back, two templars with her.

“Look! It’s the faith-traitor!” an angry shout snaps. A man in a mask is pointing at us. “Councilor Lowe!”

Me and my friend run, we run fast and hard through the columns of the building, the halls and mazes of the records on the third floor. 

A templar stops us. “You’ll be fine-” and he raises his staff, a shield covering the three of us. “You will not come to harm.”

Two angry rioters emerge, storming the floor. “Leave, now,” the House guard orders.

“No!” the one with a gun shouts. “No!” and he shoots. The templar tells us to leave, and we do. 

And then we run into another man with a knife- and he stares Lowe in the eye and plunges his carved ritual-knife straight into his stomach. Lowe gasps, not capturing the full brunt of the damage.

Blood spurts all over me. I scream. Lowe reaches for his assaulter’s throat- but fails, too weak, his strength sapping away. And he falls forward, taking his assaulter- oddly as shocked as me, onto the floor.

His attacker slides away, and slips, and the knife, now bloodied trembles away. He reaches for the knife- but I reach for it first- and when my attacker reaches towards me I-

It’s an instinct. Our universal instinct to survive. To live and pursue our lives.

There’s blood all over my hands. All over the white ornamental council robes I am wearing. I cry- or am I laughing. And I hear a scream and I react quickly, dragging a confused, bleeding Lowe into an archival room and lock the door.

“Orchid,” he moans, quietly. “I’m sorry. I should’ve never sold out to the industrialists when I was younger. I could’ve been kinder to you and your people, at least.”

“Shut up,” I plea. Someone rattles the door, but then moves on. “You’re turning away from them. You’ve been quiet.”

More blood leaks away. I don’t know what to do. “I wish we could all be like you, Orchid. I wish we fought for the hearts of the people instead of- instead of…” his voice trails.

“Okay, it’ll be okay,” I press. “We’ll get through this.”

He stares awfully into the distance, into the skies. “All animals return to water,” he remarks. I don’t understand. “And so we will return to dust.”

[Radio Dials In]

Reporter: “What are your thoughts on human sacrifice as part of the judicial process?”

Anti-Sacrifice Protestor: “I think sacrifice in general, you’re putting a high cost of human life that way? And we shouldn't be having human sacrifice that much at all. And I’m voting against these prison sacrifice buyouts you know. I voted against them. So don’t put that controversy on me. I think we need to focus more on reform and rehabilitation rather than putting people behind bars. That’s just not going to really address the root causes of crime and poverty and injustices in our society.”

Reporter: “Listeners- these are the words of a radical new ideology forming in our time. Without human sacrifice, how will we receive our blessings from the gods?”

Anti-Sacrifice Protestor: “We shouldn't even have to rely on gods in the first place. We are the creators of our own destiny. If we want change- it’s through the people and democratic institutions. You can’t just kill people off for prosperity and progress- you need to actually do that yourself. And in cases- sacrifice is necessary- but we cannot hold ourselves to sacrifice every day- the word sacrifice means to make sacred. And when we sacrifice every day- we lose the value of what makes it sacred.” 

𐂷 - Arbor Moss

Machiryo Bay is a city that can only be truly united in disdain and division towards its own government. Towards each other, too. I’m so tired of our city. Of our state and territories.

The marks of the industry have spread too far. 

I woke up to the radio switching from the calm music-ritual radio show hosts to an emergency broadcast. The city council has been attacked.

Stormed by radical protestors angry at the pandering towards the old faith. Everybody is scared of sacrifice. One side asks you to give up a life for blessings. The other side asks you to give up your time, portions of your potential, your future to feed its god.

One side kills you quicker. The other side wrings you out to try. I am so tired. I’ve made enough sacrifices for my city, and I’ve received nothing in return.

The city is no longer safe, I don’t think. The attack on the City Council chambers has been quelled, stopped even, but it doesn’t prevent the wound from rotting. I no longer believe in the industry- and I do not believe in the old faith.

Some of Tanem’s radio spills over to our side of the border, and I hear a reporter asking the people of a new movement- one against mass sacrifice, against the labor camps and false promises.

I want to leave. 

I know things are not better across the border- but honestly, the amount of propaganda our city puts out against Tanem is enough for me to wonder how it is on their side of the hidden territories.

I make a decision. I check my wallet- my citizen ID card is still in there, untampered by the Department of Justice. 

My phone has a series of voicemails from Maren. I click on one. “Hey Arbor? You didn’t get back on the train with me. Just calling to make sure you’re safe.”

I click on the most recent one. “Did you see that- they attacked the People’s House! Honestly- our councilors do need to be accountable to what we want. Progress. Anyway- the new boss wants everyone for a meeting for lunch? Something about general security. Where are you?”

She’s worried for me. But our paths have diverged. I know that I won’t be satisfied with returning to my job, returning to seizure and domain. 

I refuse to be a notch on a long list of reasons my city is divided.

I refuse to give up my life to an uncaring god of corporations. 

I refuse to work myself to death in the service to a cause I no longer believe in. 

So I leave Pineways and walk myself all the way to the border. I walk through the roads and observe the hulking machines and angels strapped to larger machines working and drilling in search of deep things in the earth.

The smoke in the air leads me to the border, thick and foul-smelling. 

I walk past holy, old farmland growing strange fruits and herd animals in fences.

I walk past screaming victims in a blend of prison clothes and ritual robes strapped to tall altars in the fields. 

I walk past agents of the Department of Sacrifice and their constructions as they remove a farmer from a field and build some strange monument, complete with a deadpan angel on a hook. 

The Machiryo border agent lets me past, and I arrive onto the Tanem side of the crossing. Their border agent looks at me with a small element of disdain. “Your name and citizen identification?” they ask.

I produce it onto the scanner. “Arbor Moss.”

“Quite literally, Tree Moss?” he inquires. “Reason for crossing into Tanem?”

I laugh. “Sure. I don’t know,” I remark, “I think I’m going on a break. Using up that vacation time.”

“Fair enough,” the Tanem agent decides, etching a tiny mark into my citizen card. He gives me another card. “Tourism card,” he informs. “Should separate you if you’re unlucky enough. The govvies don’t want to start a reason to have more drama with your city.”

“Interesting,” I note, inspecting the card. “Any recommendations?”

The border guard shrugs. “Here-” he hands me a map, “all the touristy things should be highlighted.”

I thank him, and I turn to see the territory of the bay area one last time- and turn back. I’m so tired. It’s time to take a break. Time to put my mind away from division and be something new.

And so, I cross the border.

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

We sow our land with our bodies,

And we give them up to gods.

We pray to an unjust government,

And they strangle us with love.

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

Author's Note

That's the end of ACTS ONE: The Miracle of the Burning Crane, a special set of fragmented stories set in the more realist places in the Aster world! Send me a message! Leave a review! What do you think? This is the end- at least for now. To those of you who've made it this far- many thanks for indulging me! May your sacrifice make the angel-gears continue to turn, everlasting.

Check out all of the chapters laid out in order- as well as a peek into the second part of this series in my exploration of Contemporary Sacrifice. And if you're in Houston, Texas on the 22nd this week- check out the Midtown Arts and Theater Center for an addendum to the Miracle in a small piece as part of the Rose Street Saxophone Room. A piece called- The Crane Devouring, exploring sacrifice in our pursuit for ideology.

And check out this personal experiment on the meaning of contemporary sacrifice.

a broadcast- human sacrifice.

Best again,

Hagen Lu.

see you soon for ACT TWO: A Kaleidoscope of Gods

Alice was the most beautiful girl I ever laid eyes on. She was sweet and kind with confidence that shone brighter than the stars in the night sky. She had the milkiest, white, skin. Her hair was jet black, and her emerald green eyes and natural blood-red lips could light up a room when she smiled.

When I first laid eyes on her she took my breath. It was as if the words to describe her flawless beauty didn't exist. The day she walked into my life I knew we were meant to be together forever. It took me months to work up the courage to say hi to her, and when she said hi back, I was hooked.

I did everything to make sure she knew how much I loved her. When she was sick I would watch over her all night to make sure she was alright. I would spend hours just stroking her hair. She loved it. I made sure she started every week with a smile, with a fresh bouquet of flowers sent to where she worked. She was loved and she loved me back.

But then things began to change, she started becoming withdrawn. She stopped leaving the house and wouldn't go to work. She was constantly looking over her shoulder, which left her mentally exhausted. It killed me to see her like this. The longer it went on the more distance it felt like had come between us.

Alice was terrified, but also deeply confused. She questioned everything. Was it how she dressed, did she say something to offend them? Was she too friendly? If you ask me, the guy was just obsessed, which I kind of got. She just had an aura about her.

She wasn't going to tell me what was wrong so I had to find out for myself. I found out she was getting unwanted calls from a guy claiming to be madly in love with her. He was bombarding her day and night with phone calls sending her creepy letters saying if he couldn't have her, no one could. He was full on and I think the turning point was when he started turning up at her job, waiting outside her apartment. The guy was dangerous, I don’t think anything was going to stop him from getting what he wanted.

It was my job to keep her safe and I promised her I would protect her. So I decided to stalk her stalker, and it didn't take me long to find out where he lived.

He lived in a dingy apartment in a place known as Skid Row. I watched his movements. I watched his obsession grow. I learned everything I could about him. He had done time in prison for rape. He had a history of stalking women and it never ended well. It was then I knew I needed to act.

I broke into his apartment knowing he was busy watching Alice. As I looked around his apartment his obsession was a lot greater than I expected. He had pictures of her all over the place. He dedicated a whole wall to pictures of her taken from afar. I was surprised he had none of me, but it wasn’t me he was obsessed with.

That night he came back to his apartment not knowing I was lurking in the shadows.

"Watching Alice must be tiring work," I thought to myself as he passed out on his bed. I crept out from the shadows. I stood over him as his chest heaved in and out. I picked up a pillow and placed it over his head. By the time he knew what was happening, it was already too late. He struggled hard for air before his body went limp and lifeless.

It didn't take long for Alice to get her life back on track. She was back to her bubbly, happy, self again. The distance between us had been restored and we were closer than ever.

As I watched over her as she slept, I couldn't help but think, did she know how lucky she was? I stroked her hair as I leaned in to whisper in her ear.

"Soon, my love, you will finally notice me and realize how much I love you.”

They’ve been down there too long.

I keep telling them they just need them to come upstairs, to leave that cramped, dark room of packed dirt and come into the light. 

We all need to leave this place while we still can.

I'm still clinging to the hope that it's not already too late.

Did you know that in Connecticut, sellers aren't required to disclose that a death occurred in a home unless you submit an inquiry in writing? I sure as hell wasn’t aware, not until after we'd already moved in – until it was already too late.

I wonder if whoever buys this place after we’re gone, will think to ask.

I did later learn that the realtor regretted selling to us. That if he had known our ‘situation’, he never would've shown us the place.

I can't help but imagine what our lives would've been like if we'd never bought the small fixer upper off of Lakeshore Drive.

That's all moot now, of course. 

If it weren't for the price, we'd never have looked at it in the first place – especially since it'd been a foreclosure. 

I hated the feeling of building our lives on the shattered remains of someone else's, but Gideon and I needed to move, we had to. We couldn't stay in our old house, its recently vacated bedroom dangerously close to becoming a shrine.

We couldn't keep going to the same grocery store in our tiny town, where everyone knew and regarded us with looks of pity.

Once we moved to Bridgeport, we were just two more people amongst a hundred thousand.

We could mourn in peace and anonymity, lost in the throngs.

But living in the city doesn't come cheap. 

So, that's why Gideon and I were looking at a fixer upper that had sat vacant before the bank eventually reclaimed it.

I should’ve trusted my gut when I thought something about the place was off. The new cheery welcome mat seemed at odds with the rest of the house, which gave off an aura of a deep – almost crushing – sadness. It hit me like a wave when we first walked in – a split second before the scent of rot and decay followed in its wake.

The realtor apologized and said that they'd found fridges full of rotten food from when the prior owners left the place abandoned. He assured us that he’d dealt with something similar before, and with a few windows left open it'd air out in no time.

The house was outdated in parts, yet remodeled beautifully in others. It seemed the prior owners had apparently begun the process of painstakingly restoring it before they abandoned the place – leaving behind a new kitchen, but upstairs bedrooms that were missing flooring and plastered with faded, mildewy wallpaper.

As we approached the door to the basement the smell intensified to eye watering levels.

There was something else that gave me pause, too – something about the basement. 

The space was cramped, all unfinished dirt floor and exposed brick beyond the small area that had been set up for a washer and dryer.

Right at the edge of where the faint light from the single pull-string lamp faded, was a small wooden ladder leading down into a darkness that soon swallowed it up.

Despite the realtor's best attempts at leading us away from it, I found myself subconsciously drawn to it – unaware I'd even approached until I was standing at the edge.

“What's down there?” I felt that wave of sorrow and longing the closer I got to the packed dirt floor leading down to the blackness.

“Nobody.” For a brief moment, his salesman’s smile slipped off of his face, and after an awkward silence he quickly added “Just a crawlspace.” The smile was back. “Just a little extra storage space.”

As my husband and I stared at the dark expanse beyond the ladder, we discussed plans to install some lighting to make that space, that took up the majority of the basement, usable. 

We planned a lot of things, back then.

We wanted to place Brie's belongings in one of the bedrooms like we had at our old home, even though part of us knew that their presence only served to highlight her absence. But the rooms upstairs were a mess – riddled with holes through the subfloors, mold behind the walls – so we reluctantly agreed we needed to complete the renovations before the space would be usable.

It didn't feel right to put Brie's things in a storage unit during that time, though. Yes, I knew they were exactly that – just things, just objects, but no matter how many times I told myself that, it felt like we'd be leaving her in a storage locker. 

So, we wrapped up the rocking chair I'd read to her in, in cellophane, lovingly packed the stuffed animals and Barbies, and with the rest of the house being in the state that it was, we tucked them neatly into the only place safe from construction – the crawlspace. 

Close by, and protected while we made a safe, more permanent place for them.

At first, I expected us to spend all of our free time down there, like we used to in her room at our old house, but something about that place alarmed me as much as it called to me.

I think that even before we'd finished placing her belongings down there, we realized that we'd made a mistake. Some part of me knew – maybe it was the look of that place – the black dirt that seemed to swallow up any light we directed at it from headlamps and flashlight beams – or the overpowering smell of lingering rot mixed with old earth. Maybe it was that feeling – the one of emptiness I'd felt when we first moved in had been replaced by something far worse. As we placed the final box, the stale air down there was thick with a sinister sort of excitement.

Even then, I had a vague feeling of no longer being alone.

It didn't take long for the noises to start.

I was running a load of laundry when I heard it over the rumble of the machine – a prolonged shriek, the sound of something sharp being slowly dragged across cellophane. It was my first time alone in the basement, and to hear that emerging from the claustrophobic space… at first I thought it was Gideon down there, opening the rocking chair and I smiled sadly at the thought of him leaving work early, succumbing to the need to feel close to her again. I too had felt the burning desire to go down there, despite myself.

“Couldn't resist?” I called down to the space.

The sound abruptly stopped, and I heard shuffling along the hard dirt.

I put a foot on the old wooden ladder, figured I'd join him so he wouldn't be alone. It felt right, going down into the darkness. No one should have to be alone, especially in a place like that.

That's when I heard footsteps from upstairs, followed by Gideon's voice, announcing his arrival home from work.

I sprinted up the basement steps, out of breath and nearly tripping as the only thing running through my mind was that if Gideon was upstairs*, who the hell was in the crawlspace?*

As I was about to describe what I'd heard to Gideon, I suddenly felt silly. I was in a new place, with our past wounds still so fresh – of course I was imagining things.

The next morning, I was working from home when I heard it echo through the previously silent house – a giggle, a familiar sounding one, coming from outside the kitchen window.

I didn't remember leaving the window open, but when I went in to check, it was closed. Still, the laughter continued. 

That's when I realized – it wasn't coming from outside, it was coming from below, floating up through the grate under the stove.

It went on like that – every so often, the sound of her soft laughter would float up from the basement. 

But there was a wrongness to it – it was laughter in name only, hollow and joyless, lacking the light my daughter had always carried.

Gideon never mentioned hearing it, so I never brought it up. At the time I thought maybe I was just losing it due to stress – the stress of losing Brie, of starting over in a new city.

Looking back now, and recalling the circles under my husband's eyes, the grimness there – he must have been in the same boat.

The first time she spoke to me, I'd been bringing down a box of Christmas decorations.

“Mom?”

I nearly choked on the air I'd been breathing.

I never thought I'd hear Brie's voice again. For a moment, I thought I'd dreamt it.

“Are you coming?”

The voice, song like, floated up from the dark.

From the crawlspace. 

A dry little cough echoed out. 

I lost my shit. I ran upstairs, and I finally told Gideon.

My husband gave me a look when I did – a look that said he understood, and if what I needed from him in that moment was to go into the basement and duck into that dark little crawlspace so he could tell me everything was okay, then he was going to do it.

The little room was pitch black as I followed him into it. All of our attempts to install lighting down there – temporary and otherwise – had failed – and the dim glow from the single bulb in the basement was swallowed up before even descending the ladder.

We clicked on our flashlights.

I wondered if he too had heard the sound of something moving across the packed dirt that echoed out seconds before we directed our beam towards the darkness.

The sound of…Scurrying?

Gideon gasped, and a moment later turned to reveal what he'd seen.

A blanket has been placed across the hard dirt, one of Brie's, adorned with smiling characters from her favorite animated movie. Stuffed toys were strewn along it, a single book lay open off to the side. I didn't even need to see the impression left on the blanket to know that someone had been sleeping down there.

Gideon shot me a questioning look

“I didn't open the boxes,”  I whispered. 

He stared into the empty space for a long time before he nodded absentmindedly. Insisted we leave the house, call the police to seek out whoever had been living in our home.

It was a long night. We gave statements to one officer as the other searched the home.

I don't know what was worse – when the first officer said there was no evidence anyone else had entered the house, or when the second officer stayed back to speak to me in hushed tones.

“You've lost someone.”

I nodded in surprise – even though it was a statement and not a question.

He leaned in, “Whatever you think you hear down there – it isn't real. Nothing good could come from a place like that.”

“You’ve been in the crawlspace?”

“I got called to do the wellness check on the Makowskis, and…” he stared off into space for a long moment before he quickly shook his head, as if trying to escape from his own thoughts, "Well, I found ‘em. They were down there.”

The Makowskis – it took me a moment to place the name as that of the prior owners – I'd seen the name on some mail we still received for them and brought back to the post office. 

“What were they doing down there?” I asked, even though the look on his face had me questioning if I truly wanted to know the answer.

“They weren't in a position to tell me…” he stared past me, towards the house,  “There wasn't enough left of them.”

That night, I couldn't sleep. I dreamt of the prior owners who never left this place, I dreamt of Brie.

I dreamt of the crawlspace.

I awoke to the feeling of eyes on me.

Gideon was sitting up in bed, giving me a concern-laden stare.

“We need to talk about last night, I don't think you should go into the basement by yourself.”

My response was silence, confusion.

“You don't remember what you said to me?” he whispered, as if he thought someone else could be listening.

I shook my head.

“That you wanted to go down there to be with her. That –” he choked back a sob, “You didn't want her to be alone in the dark.”

My horrified expression seemed to mirror his own.

“You know she's not down there, Nettie. She never was.” 

I knew that, I mean rationally I did. “Then who – what – is down there?”

I've never seen my husband look more afraid than when he softly said, “I don't know.”

The longer I stayed away from the basement, the louder her laughter got, the more persistent the pleading whispers.

When the hushed pleas turned to crying – god, I couldn't take it anymore.

I had to go see her.

“Are you coming?” The weak voice interjected between wracked sobs.

I found myself drawn to the sound, parental instincts still there – a mental phantom limb.

I knew I made the right decision, as I descended.

Well, until I looked at her.

Eyes glinted up at me from the well of blackness beyond, and the sobbing ceased instantly, like someone had flipped a switch.

“No baby.” My mouth was dry as the rational part of me desperately screamed at the rest of me – reminding me I was not talking to my daughter. “I can't”.

I fumbled for my phone for the light, half expecting to see her staring up at me – big brown eyes wide – half  afraid of what I'd see.

As light flooded the room, I heard a soft movement, something wet sliding across the packed dirt of the ceiling. 

But I saw nothing – the little storage room was empty.

As soon as the light went off, though, those eyes were back, regarding me from higher up along the wall, moving steadily downwards.

Never once blinking or darting away from my own.

“Please?” her voice repeated.

My stomach dropped as I felt a chill at my proximity to the thing mimicking my daughter's voice – something I'd apparently just caught in the act of crawling down the wall.

“I don't like the dark,” she croaked out.

That's what broke me. That's what led to my husband finding me broken down, bawling at the kitchen table.

I begged him not to go back down.  

But he insisted. 

This was our home, he'd said. If we couldn't feel safe here, then where could we?

So, we went down into the basement, me with my phone light, and him with the emergency flashlight.

It was bold of me to assume that the situation couldn't possibly get worse. 

By the time I’d descended the little ladder, he’d already walked into the room. He had his back to me, standing in the shadows.

“Gideon, where's your flashlight?”

“I turned it off. She… doesn't look like I remember,” he whispered. “Annette,” he added slowly, never turning to look at me, his broad frame blocking whatever he was seeing from my flashlight beam. “Can you please go upstairs, pack a bag for us?”

“But –”

“Now? Please.” he begged, his voice calm in tone, but shaky in delivery.

He told me to leave without him if he didn't come back up within ten minutes. To leave the house if he didn't come out of that basement, and to never come back – call movers to get our things.

I nodded, numb. 

So, I waited.

I waited 10 minutes.

After an hour had passed, I went down to the basement, and the ladder was gone. He must have pulled it down to keep me from coming after him. I felt a wave of unease, but infinitely worse, a sick pang of jealousy. 

Jealousy that he was down there and I wasn't.

I whispered Gideon’s name into the dark.

“Why haven't you left yet?!” his voice was weak, heavy with desperation.

“Babe, it’s time to go,” I replied as firmly as I could. “We need to leave. All of us”

Gideon’s voice was choked, muffled, “No, Nettie. It's too late for me.”

A day has passed since then. 

I'm still here.

I can't force myself to leave. 

How do I get them to come out? I just want us to be a family again. 

This morning when I went down to check on them, the only response that emerged from the crawlspace sounded like a low, wet, gurgle. 

They’ve been silent ever since.

I called the police, but they didn't seem to think that my husband and daughter refusing to leave the basement ‘constituted an emergency’.

I know Gideon told me to leave, but I can’t just leave my family – him and Brie – down there in the dark. I'm out of ideas. We need to be together, the three of us.

Please help me.

If I can’t figure something out soon, if I still can’t get them to come to me, well, there’s only one option left.

JFR

You kids got your perspectives all fucked up from too many games. Not just video games, those board games with the graph paper an' funny dice, too. That's not all though. Movies certainly fucked up your concepts, too. You hear werewolf and you imagine this huge thing that can't even fit through a door. How is that scary? A wolf with a human's smarts. That should terrify you. A wolf isn't just a big dog. Wolves are big, sure, but they are lean enough they can squeeze into all sorts of places. A werewolf wants you, a werewolf will find you. Then, their fangs will find you. Me and my gang, we all made a pact with the dark lord. Changing into wolves is only one small part of the magic we were given. The wolf skin belt is just a fucking bonus. Our hogs are fueled by Satan. We never need to hit the pumps. Just some blood every week or so. A pint or two. Any kind will do. We're traditional though, so we go for kids, just like you. You and your buddies are gonna be a real treat. You saw our warning signs and came right on in. You drank our whisky like it was given to you. That was really dumb, but I'm sure you figured that out by now, kid. We're going to let the bikes rest. We'll get you on foot. You get a head start, even. Don't worry, you'll know when we're a-coming. You'll see us before our fangs find you. You'll dance with the devil tonight, pal. Now, RUN!

The breeze picks up. We stay inside. Behind shut doors, watching as it passes, hearing it snarl, we pray, Dear Lord in Heaven, spare us, your humble servants, for one more night, so that we may continue to give you thanks and praise, and protect us from the world's apex predator: the wind. (The prayer continues but I've forgotten the words.)

We light a candle.

Sometime during the night the passing wind will force its way inside the house and snuff it out.

We'll light it again, and again—and again—as many times as we must, for the symbol is not the flame but the act of lighting, of holding fire to the wick. This is the human spirit. Without it, we would long be disappeared from the Earth, picked up and filled, and detonated by the wind.

I saw a herd of cattle once made into bovine balloons, extended and spherized—until they burst into a fine mist of flesh and blood, painting the windows red. A rain of death.

I saw a man picked up, pulled apart and carried across the evening sky, silent as even his screams the wind forced back down his throat. His head was whole but his body dripping, distended threads hanged above the landscape. In the morning, somebody found his boots and sold them.

We don't know what caused it.

What awakened it.

Some say it came up one day from the depths of Lake Baikal before sweeping west across the globe. Others, that it was released by the melting of the polar ice caps. Perhaps it arrived here like life, upon a meteor. Maybe somebody, knowingly or not, spoke it into existence. In the beginning was the Word…

The wind has a mouth—or mouths—transparent but visible in its shimmering motion, gelatinous, ringed with fangs. What it consumes passes from reality into nothing (or, at least, nothing known,) like paper through an existential shredder.

The wind has eyes.

Sometimes one looks at us, as we are huddled in the house, staring out the window at the wind's raging. The eye most resembles that of a great sea creature, considering us without fear, perhaps thinking our heads are merely the pupils of the paned eyes of the house.

We do not know what it knows or does not know.

But we know there is no stopping it. What it cannot penetrate, it flows around—or pushes until it breaks: into penetrabilities.

What's left to us but to pick up the pieces?

By mindful accelerated erosion, it sculpts and remakes the surface of the planet—and, we believe, the inside too, carving it and hollowing, cooling it, and, undoubtedly, preparing—but for what? Who has known the mind of the Lord?

As, tonight, the wind hunts in the darkness, the trees convulse and the glass in the windows rattles against their frames, the candlelight begins to flicker, and I wonder: I truly, frightened, wonder, whether it would not be better to go outside and cease.

#Mother's Dress

No, no, officer. Wait right there. Before you tell me why you’re here, I do hope you’ll forgive me for keeping you waiting. I thought I heard a knock but wasn’t entirely sure. I was...occupied. Tidying up a little mess in the kitchen. But now that I’ve opened the door, what seems to be the trouble? Or perhaps—how delightful—there’s no trouble at all. Not for me, at least. My life is a pristine, trouble-free zone.

You, on the other hand—have you looked in a mirror lately? You’re glowing. Truly radiant.

Oh, this? You mean the dress? I see your eyes lingering. It’s hard not to, isn’t it? I’m wearing mother’s dress today, and I’ve never felt more alive. You really ought to try it, officer. The fabric is exquisite—a featherlight satin that clings like a lover. It doesn’t just cover you; it caresses you. A quiet, radiant power seeps into your bones, filling the hollow places you didn’t even know existed.

No, it’s not my dress—don’t be ridiculous—it’s hers. Is that a problem? Will you arrest me for finding myself? For stepping into beauty in its purest, most unapologetic form?

I know what you’re thinking. People love to sneer at a man in a dress. They clutch their pearls, whisper about normalcy—decency. But where is that written? Is it etched in stone, handed down from some trembling mountaintop? Is it in one of the books of lies that skipped the Nazi burn piles? An ancient text saying the earth was flat and burning witches made crops grow? Because let me tell you something, officer—those books, even the Bible—all written by men and we are wrong about so many things so much of the time.

But then we open up our eyes.

I’m stunning in this dress, aren’t I? Admit it. I’m radiant. In fact, I am unstoppable. You can feel that can't you? I bet you’ve never done this—worn a dress. You don’t seem like the type—but they never do, do they? Trust me. Try it. Your whole life will flash before your eyes, and you’ll say to yourself:

“All I ever wanted was freedom...why did I wait so long?”

This isn’t just fabric you know. What I'm talking about is liberation. When I wear it, the world shifts on its axis to accommodate me. The air tastes sweeter. The ground is softer beneath my feet. I’ve never walked taller. And you—you, officer—what’s stopping you? Imagine slipping into something with a little shimmer, a little swish. Something like this. Maybe with some lipstick, something bold and luscious. What shade would you choose? Something vibrant and tested only on the most brilliant, sophisticated chimpanzees, their tiny faces radiant, painted with blush and mascara–with enlightenment. If you're gonna go, go all in! Am I right?

Can’t you picture it?

This dress, these pearls—they belong to my mother, but they’re mine now, too. They belong to anyone brave enough to step into their power. Anyone can wear a dress, officer. Man, woman, both, neither—something altogether untethered and golden—like the yolk spilling from an egg, freshly cracked. Life comes from eggs. Once cracked the things inside are free to become so many things: Omelet. Sunny-side up…Scrambled.

Mother always said there’s many ways to crack an egg…

Do you dream, officer? I dream often. I dream of towering stilettos—seven inches high—no, eight! Strutting through the aisles of the grocery store, turning every head and breaking every heart. You know I would too. I'd let you see how it looks from behind—but, well...

I know I'm sexy because when I'm dressed in this, the mirror doesn't show me a reflection—it's a revelation...

And we literally just met. Maybe I'll show you. Maybe. Not yet.

I dream of spreading a picnic blanket in the park, dining under the sun in this very dress, eating watercress sandwiches in the company of the ghosts of those bold enough to take this path before—live their truth beneath the sun—to walk so I could run!

I dream of living—truly living—without fear, without shame, without restraint. Do you? Do you dream of liberation? Of feeling the world yield to your authenticity? Or to you is it just another word? Liberation. Liberation isn’t just a word; it’s a reckoning.

Do you dream of walking into a room and not shrinking—expanding? Can I ask you, have you ever done drugs, officer? If you have, you really should try this. I have. Don't arrest me. Drugs are illusions; an escape. This—this is more powerful than any escape.

Exhilarating.

It's reality turned up to 11.

I understand your hesitation. I felt it once, too. Before I found this dress. Before I found myself. It’s not just clothing. It’s transformation. It’s stepping into a version of yourself you never knew existed. It’s shedding the weight of expectations like a shawl and discovering you can fly.

I can see it in your eyes—you want to understand, don’t you? A man in his mother's dress. There’s a flicker, a glimmer of curiosity. That’s where it begins. Curiosity is the gateway to freedom.

But you wouldn’t understand, would you? No. Not yet. You haven’t taken the first step.

What’s that? Why am I wearing the dress? I told you—I’m wearing mother’s dress because she gave it to me. Her final gift. She told me I could have it. “Take it, darling,” she said. “Take it all. Take whatever you want!”

It was the last thing she said.

Her last gift to me was permission. Permission to embrace myself. Permission to be unafraid. And now, here I stand, wrapped in her final words. Her dress. Her pearls. Not because I have to—but because I choose to; and officer, that’s the secret.

It’s about choice. It’s about walking into the world as the most audaciously, unapologetic version of yourself. It’s about breaking every rule that tries to break you and then, the people that made those rules? You break them too.

I can feel you hesitating. I told you, felt it, too—before I slipped into the silk, before I slipped into myself. It’s terrifying, isn’t it? That first step? But after that, the world becomes yours.

So no, officer, I won’t put down the weapon or the dress.

No–no. Keep your hands right where they were. I’ve already cleaned up one mess today. Don’t make me clean another.

I really don't want to but I think we both know I willlllll.

I won’t stop wearing it. I can't. Don't you see? Not now or tomorrow; not ever. All I had to do was take a leap of faith. As it falls around you for the first time you realize: it’s not just a dress. It’s freedom and if you’re brave enough—and bold enough—it's all yours. I'm telling you, you could feel this too. Trust me. You'll see. Once I put it on, My God! I’ve never felt more alive!

Now, come inside. I won't ask you again.

I see the irony of all this, I really do—it’s almost funny, isn’t it? Freedom, up here, for your mind. Enlightenment. That’s what this is. It’s just a shift in states—how you see the world and then how you see yourself. We always think that taking the first big step toward change is a threat. But look at me! Look at me now. I’ve done it. I am proof. You can be too.

The first step is hardest, but it's the way everything begins. You just have to take the first step. Then the next. And look at that—you’re already inside. See? You’re doing it! Doesn’t it feel exhilarating? Each step afterward gets easier. I promise.

Aren’t you happy you’ve decided to embrace this—to let me show you? Don’t worry. You will be. Right this way. Keep going. Can’t you feel it? Each step you're physically getting lighter. See, I wasn’t lying. Your true freedom awaits.

Mother’s closet is just upstairs.

I never knew she was hiding so much inside.

Wait till you see.

When you do, you’ll literally die.

ss

The Miracle of the Burning Crane

In the divided city of Machiryo Bay, corporate giant Sacred Dynamics makes the controversial decision to seize and demolish sacred temples and build branch offices. Two agents attempt to do their jobs amidst protest. Two politicians discover they have a lot more in common than they know. Two media hosts discover the consequences of radicalization. In a divided and polarized age- what is the price of industry? Of balance?

Part One: Of Prophets and Protest
Part Two: And to Kill a God

Part Three: What is the Price of a Miracle?

Part Four: Please Restrain Your Enthusiasm for Divine Sacrifice

Part Five: Let our Legal Beliefs Cloud our Religious Judgements

FINAL: This is a City that Forgot the Stars

TMBC 1.6: The Great Black Pyramid of Justice 

[Radio Dials In]

Reporter: Every civilized government still uses sacrifice in the form of execution through judicial means.

Anti-Sacrifice Protestor: I'd say it's a coping mechanism for fear of what human value is. They want to make humans have value to higher beings and so they sacrifice them because that makes them feel like they actually did something. But in reality, they're all useless, nobody cares about them, and they're all individuals in this very large world. And therefore, human sacrifice is actually useless. 

Reporter: Right now, prison labor is one of the most efficient forms of human sacrifice. We are removing the unclean from our society and cleansing our city with the purification of the gods. How can we make this process more sustainable and not target the marginalized communities of our time? 

Anti-Sacrifice Protestor: Okay, so when you say human sacrifice, do you mean, like, death or slavery? 

Reporter: I mean execution. Judicial means. 

Anti-Sacrifice Protestor: Well, I feel like that's just a waste of potential free labor if we want to be like a bunch of bitches. 

Reporter: Sounds like you're avoiding the question. 

Anti-Sacrifice Protestor: I did not avoid the question. I answered your question. I don't know how to make it more sustainable simply because I don't agree with it in the first place. I'm not gonna tell you how to make it more sustainable because I don't want you to do it at all. Why would I make it easier for you? 

Reporter: Exactly. It sounds like the woke liberals of our time have no sustainable solution to human sacrifice. Therefore we should continue- as we should.

𐂴 - Orchid Harrow

I’m not thrilled. There’s a terrorist attack on Hallow Square and I am freaking out. But I am freaking out internally because I don’t know what this means and what I can do about it. 

I am in my house, and I cut my finger as I mindlessly cut carrots as I’m entranced by the live feed of the Battle Angel attack- I swear as the pain catches up to me, yelping.

My companion, Olive, asks if I’m okay. “Yeah,” I reply, “just cut my finger.”

She comes over. “I can take over making breakfast if you’d like.”

I accept the offer, withdrawing the nursing my bleeding hand. I find the first aid pages and rip off a sigil, wrapping it around my hand. I cast the words, and I feel a bit better.

On the television, the Battle-Angel shrieks and slams itself against a building, then reaching to crush a handful of people. Cranelings emerge from its feathers, swarming hapless agents.

“This is terrible,” Olive remarks. “That’s probably what? That Free Garden folk?”

I sit down on the sofa. “Free Orchard,” I clarify. “Likely is.” I pause, thinking of what to say. On-screen, a newsman berates our society from not shunning the old faith far enough. It’s not even Lind Quarry, it’s some lookalike, a wannabe capitalizing on the division. “I don’t know if I’ll get re-elected.”

“Aw, Orch, don’t say that,” Olive soothes. “You’ll do fine.”

“Let’s be real,” I start, “we live in *Meadowland.* Only people here are rich enough to care about industrial overreach or old faith expansion. Everyone else just wants a candidate that’ll tell them what they want to hear, to assure them that they’re one step closer to stability.”

“But that doesn’t stop you from trying,” she reminds, “because that’s what you do best. You win our hardest battles.”

I smile and come over to her. “Oh I’ll try alright,” I assure, “but with this attack on our city? Even the Meadowland people will shun the old faith. They’re going to want a candidate that validates these fears, and I- I can’t bring myself to be that candidate.”

“I think it’ll turn out all well,” my companion hopes, collecting the carrots. “We’ll see how it goes. You still have a month– and if not, the university offered you that job, right?”

I nod. “I hope so, Olly,” I reply, trying my best to keep up a smile. But I’m not so sure things will go well. Not at all.

On the television, the agents draw a massive sigil upon the square- and they cast it, sacrificing one of themselves in the center. Heavenly light comes down- the angel is incinerated.

“It’s over,” I whisper, unsure what, exactly, is. 

The screen cuts to Lind Quarry. He’s campaigning and spewing hate against the old faith, attributing the entire terrorist attack to the entirety of the old faiths. It's vile. It’s cruel. 

I went to high school with him, right here in the center of Meadowland. He used to be kinder, I think. I didn’t really know him. But still, he’s changed. And there are two spots in the Meadowville candidacy up for grabs, when the official thirty-day campaign in December rolls in.

Right now, those two councilors are me, and Councilor Lowe. There’s a bias coming. There’s going to be demands. There will come a reckoning. 

I sit in silence until my phone snaps me awake. It’s a phone call. “Hello?”

“Hey, Orch,” it’s Daniel Mardes- the judge I’d campaigned with, “it’s me.”

“Daniel,” I greet, “I assume this is about the attack?”

He makes a noise. “No, not really- but sort of?” he questions. “It’s about a ruling. A lawsuit. I’m not sure what to do.”

“All ears.”

“There’s been a big lawsuit this week,” he begins- I’ve read about it everywhere, though overshadowed by the miracle, “a bunch of the temples Sacred Dynamics seized with approval from the government from a coalition and sued the corporation- and the city for damages. All that relocation controversy and stuff. It’s real scary stuff.”

“Then make the right decision,” I suggest, “do what your heart says is right.”

“Sacred Dynamics offered me a payout,” he blurts out, anxious. “And I don’t like that- Orch, they know where I live, where my daughters go to school-”

“We can handle that,” I assure. 

“I know- but that’s not it,” he continues, nervous, jittery. “Before the attack- I wanted to rule in favor of the old faiths, right? Because they’ve had their entire livelihood disintegrated. But in light of the attack?” there’s silence. I understand. “There’s going to be backlash- it looks like the city is allowing these radical elements to run wild- and that we’re rewarding them by also taking down New Faith by a peg.”

“I see- and if you rule with SD,” I theorize, “the far faith people like Neyling can continue to spin and justify these miracles and attacks and continue this narrative that makes these radicals more prone to action.”

“There’s no good option,” Daniel sighs, defeated. “The other judges have made up their mind. It relies on me. I can’t abstain. I don’t know what to do.”

There’s a tense silence, again. I fall back onto the sofa. “I don’t know what to do either,” I confess. “I’m scared.”

We don’t speak for two minutes after that. One of us hangs up- I’m too broken to know who it is. Olive tries to comfort me, to get me to eat breakfast, but I don’t care. She tries to tell me I’ll be fine, everything will be okay, and I nod, I smile.

But I don’t believe it. Because this ruling has come at a perfect storm.

There’s going to be protests. There’s going to be riots. Not all of us will survive this. Our people are being swallowed up by the media and the government and there will soon be nothing left but rot.

So I say, “Yeah,” distantly, afraid, “yeah, Olive, I think it’ll be fine.”

[Machiryo Modern Media - The Lind Quarry Show]

Lind Quarry: "I’m coming to you straight out from the crisis at Hallow Square. And let me be the first to tell you- this attack was planned. This attack was orchestrated. This was intentional. And sure, the so-called government hasn’t released a statement yet, sure, they’re under investigation.

But the truth is clear. What we saw just now was a calculated, ruthless, display of hate, of- evil by radical far-faith activists unleashing a Battle-Angel on civilians, on a non-military target, striking at the very soul of the city.

This can be classified no less than as terrorism.

Who’s behind this? Who benefits when our streets run red with blood? It’s the old faith radicals, people like Neyling, people like Zen and his radical Free Orchard ideology.

They want to play god. They want to cling to their ancient rituals and bloodshed. Our government refuses to condemn these radical elements, all while they step up their game, attacking and exterminating our people. When will we learn that we need to be better than them- and we need to stamp them out before all of us- are next. These hateful zealots need to be stopped- if they want blood- let’s give to them!

And I’m not alone. I’ve got whistleblowers calling in, councilors ready to endorse my run for councilor, people on the ground. And they’re afraid- we’re right to be afraid. If we let these heretics continue- we’re strapping ourselves down to the altar and plunging the knife.

This is war in our own city. 

The old faith has doubled down and rooted themselves in every aspect- as I’ve said before: the enemy isn’t at the gates. The enemy has rooted themselves into our government, our schools, our teachers, and our minds. 

The Free Orchard likes to talk about cleansing the orchard. I respect that- but I think they and their kiln is the rot in our society- and it’s high time we clean it out!

This is a modern crusade, folks. The time for neutrality? Time for people like Councilor Harrow? That time is over!

So pick a side, listeners. And hope to the stars above you’re right. It’s time to choose.”

☈ - Cameron Bell

The bookburner is sitting across from me. The faithless have me cuffed to a table somewhere in their great black pyramid dedicated to their god of justice, a changed, cruel, thing, far changed from how it once used to be.

“Our records,” the woman begins, “tell us your name is Cameron Bell. You are a priestess to the Weather Bird, Mae’yr, but was displaced during one of the government sponsored industrial projects when,” she pauses, and says the next few words with disgust, “*you people,* refused to leave. Am I right?”

I roll my eyes. “Correct. And let me guess- you’re going to ask me *why* I consecrated the man? Why I fell in with the Free Orchard. But I think you know the answer already.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” the Justice Agent demands. “I’m here to hear you out. I want to know why, and how.”

“So you want to be friends?” I mock. It’s clear how this is going. 

She nods. “In a way.” She reveals a badge and slides it over. “My name is Mabel Song, and I work for Sacrificial Crimes.”

I shrug, annoyed. “A bookburner all the same.” She sighs, disappointed. “I don’t care what the Justice Department labels its divisions and sections. But we remember,” I shun, “we remember the government burning the books of our faith in the name of reform. We remember the justice department bringing the old, weak Prophet Layling and setting him-”

She cuts me off before I finish. “Those books called for sacrifice!” it’s struck a nerve. “Prophet Layling- he refused to surrender- he made his people hide behind their families- and he let them burn when he refused to open his doors-”

“Better to burn with faith than submit to heresy!” I snap. “You say those books called for sacrifice- but it was sustainable- rarely used, and the blessings- they were bountiful and great! And that’s a lie- you people went after the prophet- you forced his hand with nowhere to go!”

She slams her fist on the table. “Is that what the Old Faith teaches now? That Prime Director Layling was a beacon of light?” she grimaces, angry. “That he wanted peace- let us not forget he and his cronies caused the great university massacre. Let us not forget the mass chime-sacrifices of that age! All in the name of a god who’s sacrifices never gave us hope.”

I practically hiss at her. She’s young, like me, too young to have really recognized the reform era, just the end of it, from when the rightful faith was beginning to be cast out twenty years ago. 

“Is that what they’ve taught you?” I snap. “How the victors control the truth. How they lie.”

“Oh no- I recognize the reform era had mass atrocities on both sides,” Agent Song growls. “And I recognize that sometimes- the government goes too far. That industry goes too far. But Layling? The books we burned? Those,” she sat down, “those went too far. Incompatible with our society.”

“You say those sacrifices went too far,” I argued. “But you’re unwilling to recognize that those sacrifices helped our society. We had superior protection- limits on magic, a lower crime rate- and the cost of living was six times lower.”

“But is a society moral if it relies on the sacrifice of a few?” she snarls.

“Isn’t all society like that?” I question. “You’ve just moved the sacrifice away from your field of vision. Our society isn’t sacrificing people right-front-and-center anymore. We’re sacrificing our faith. We’re pushing them away. Until they have nowhere to go but to die. And that, in the same way, is a sacrifice. A sacrifice of culture. You can say you’re sacrificing your time in exchange for blessings- but you’re not. At the end of the day: people are still dying- not in temples or altars, but on the streets, in our prisons, in our alleys.”

“That’s the problem with your folk,” Agent Song rants, “you’re single minded. You don’t want to change. You don’t have to consign yourself and die in the streets. It’s this rejection of progress, of even touching what’s new that makes you like this. It’s not hard. Get with the times. It’s time to evolve. You can’t keep defending outdated old institutions and actions in the name of culture. In the name of faith.”

“Change doesn’t always mean it’s good,” I fight, “you can’t ignore that the New Faith bottles up and consumes the old faiths. Changes them into something abhorrent. Something cruel. And you ignore the fact people in the old sacrifice communities and poverty stricken areas caused by the industry are unfair targeted by-” 

I look hard into her eyes, before she can cut me off, “the Justice department and sent to prisons- where hard labor is still being kept- a sacrifice of time- to show the gods we love them in exchange for our angel-powered temple-factories spewing goods at twice the speed. And if any unfair prisoner so much as dies- well that’s just a sacrifice, isn’t it? That’s just something that comes with the god-stricken territory! And if that makes the angel-factories and their gears spin faster, that’s okay, isn’t it?! And we don’t need to change that! Nobody’s seeing it happen! Do you not see how cruel that is? At least the old age had the guts to show people what their sacrifices meant.”

We stare at each other in silence.

She breaks it. “We won’t get anywhere like this,” she admits. But she doesn’t admit her defeat, there’s always one more talking point, one more defense. But we’ve been taught different things. A falsehood, and a truth. And I’ve been taught its impossible to argue with someone who’s already made up their mind. “Let’s get back to the Free Orchard.”

I think back to my god. To my family, cast out in the name of industry. I’d never voiced my thoughts before. I guess I didn’t have anyone to scream it out to.

But here she was. A face of the government who’d allowed my family to be banished. And no doubt one of the Justice Department agents who’d enforced it, too. I had a target. I had a face. A face in a faceless department to host the blame.

She began to ask me some questions about Nick Kerry and the Free Orchard. I didn’t even know enough about the Orchard. I didn’t care. They just told me what I knew was right, that the anger at our society that had been bubbling up inside me was true.

I sit back as she continues to interrogate me. I promise myself one thing. One thing, at least, that could change the world by one small, impartial cog.

I am going to kill this face of heresy. I am going to kill this so-called Agent of so-called justice. I am going to sacrifice Mabel Song.

Or, I think, I’m going to at least die trying.

𐂷 - Arbor Moss

I am in a waiting room somewhere deep in the great pyramid to our city’s god of justice. I feel safe here, safer than I’ve felt anywhere in the city. The terrorist attack, no doubt, has already enraged the people.

But I don’t know. I can only guess. Mabel had rounded me and Maren up into a black van with the initials of our city and the initials of the Sacrificial Crimes department.

“MCB-SC.”

So many of their cars rolled out of the inner city and out, into the border between the Tanem’s Grace farmland and our fair home. To the great Pyramid to Justice where our largest prison lay, where the hunters of unlicensed faiths lay in wait, holding up the spirit of our home-grown god of the peace.

But yet, as I stare mindlessly into the television screens and scrying pools of the waiting room, the city is quiet. There are no protests, not yet.

It’s a quiet mourning, because we all know we can’t go back from this. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re a fundamentalist or an industrial progressive. There are too many people at stake, too many people to blame. Was it the fundamentalists, sitting on their old thrones- or is it the industry and their hierarchies and margins?

Who forced the radicals to act? Was it directed? Had they been goaded, taunted into feeling their anger? Did they feel as if they had no choice but to revolt?

Mabel brings in one of the truthsayer priests and extracts what useful information I have. His voice echoes in my head. “Where did you first meet the figure we know to be Nick Kerry?” 

It repeats over and over. I answer. 

“Have you had any dealings with the Free Orchard in the past?” It squirms in my head. I stare into the blank spiral mask with a slit for a mouth. He asks me several more questions.

I answer. His voice seems far apart and close at the same time. “Are you part of the anti-sacrificial movement growing in our city?”

I begin to answer, but Mabel cuts in. “Don’t answer that- Quinn-” hazy through my vision, she confronts the truthsayer priest, “that’s not what we need to know.”

“We have orders to keep an eye on the movement,” the priest informs. Mabel shakes her head. “Orchid Harrow and their people are under watch.”

“Yes, but he has nothing to do with that.” I blabber something about seeing Harrow on the television. 

The truthsayer priest shrugs. “Okay,” the words rattle in my head, all weird. “We’re done.”

I can barely hear him. “What?” I ask.

Mabel claps her hands. “We’re uh, finished,” she tells. She turns to the sayer. “Just move him to the waiting room.”

“Right.” 

And then I’m back in the waiting room. My head clears. Maren is right next to me, clearly going through the same effect. 

“You’re free to go,” Mabel informs, handing us a business card, “if you see or hear anything unlicensed- feel free to call me and the Department of Justice.”

“Right,” Maren agrees. “We got it.”

Mabel hands the two of us some cash. “Enough and a bit more to set you for rent for the month, probably.” She smiles, and we take it. “Compensation for the uh, extreme truthseeking.”

“Right,” I murmur. “Extreme.”

She points over to a map. “We’re on the borderlands,” she informs. “There’s a train station about ten minutes directly from the exit.”

I stop listening as she continues to direct us out of the great stone temple and outside. My head hurts.

And then we’re at the train station. I didn’t realize how long we were in the temple. It looms darkly in the distance. A train arrives, promising to take us back to the city.

Maren scrolls at her phone, tired. The sunset casts a warm brown glow over everything, making the world dance awkward and depressively, ablaze. 

The train stops, and the doors open. A few people exit, marked by the symbol of the Justice Department. 

I hesitate. “You coming?” Maren questions, not looking from her phone, slowly making her way onto the train. She seems disinterested.

I stand, but then I wait. I am far from the city now, on the great farmlands hidden from the non-believers of the rest of the world. But even still entrenched in magic, it is quiet, adrift in a sea of solitude.

I sit back down. The train doors close. Maren doesn’t seem to notice. The train disappears into the horizon.

The city is too stressful right now. I don’t want to return. I get up and start to walk away, and I pause briefly to look at a corkboard. The city of Tanem is different, culturally homogeneous and quieter, compared to the hellscape of Machiryo Bay.

It’s a city of quiet harvest gods of grain and nature, a simple point, a collection of peoples andtemples from the farmlands that exist as the buffer zone between Machiryo and Tanem. 

I decide on it. I raise my phone to call Doug, to tell him I’m not coming to work- but I sob lightly, as I realize he’s dead. I don’t know why I feel so strongly- I didn’t know him. 

But I was the last person he’d seen. Someone he recognized. His words- a final plea for help- recognizing me plays incessantly in my head.

I go up to a thin altar on the side of the road. I press my finger onto an indented point, and it withdraws some of my blood. A car arrives soon after.

It opens its doors. I slide in. “Where to?” the taxi driver asks.

I pause and think about it. “The closest inn to the border. I want to be as far away from the city right now. Preferably somewhere with a nice view.”

“Thank you for your sacrifice,” the driver- a construct of ragged bone and flesh murmurs. I shiver. A god-marked offering to one of the weirder, industrial gods, now forever forced to be bound to this work, this job. 

Until death. A sacrifice of time. At least perhaps, a few days a week.

I haven’t been to the borderlands, much less the city of Tanem, since I was a child. But I have good memories. It was a whole trip with the orphan-temple I’d grown up in. 

The great mother of the temple, Nana El, had managed to fund a trip for the some of us interested in other cultures. I’d signed up, interested, and the six of us- and Nana El got onto a bus and we headed out.

I remember the fields being great and bountiful, and I remember talking and cheering us on as Nana El drove us all the way. Back then Tanem and Machiryo were on better terms, and the farmlands grew tame and calm.

That’s why the farmland is called Tanem’s Grace. It’s the Grace, a shared sacred land of farms and ranches, blessed by both sides. A grace to keep, a sign of peace and connection.

But while Tanem’s Grace is still the official name on both sides- things are no longer as it were. 

Relations on both sides degraded years ago, and five hours into the journey the great shield wall is visible, a light pink haze in the sky, the symbol of the border shield large and threatening in the air.

This is not how I remember Tanem’s Grace. I wonder to think how the city of Tanem itself has changed.

I’m at the border town of Pineways, now. It’s peaceful, calm, and people seem to keep to themselves. I thank my metaphysical cab driver as he lets me off on the nearest, largest hotel.

“One night- I think?” I ask, finding the cash Mabel had given. 

The attendant nods. The technology is different here, and he stares into a scrying pool. The thing fetches me a key. “Room 338,” the attendant says, monotone. “Enjoy your stay at the Pineways Lodge and Breakfast.”

I take it, and head to my room. Everything seems the same, layers upon layers and rows and rows of rooms, each separated by gathering lounges or dining rooms. It’s folded and unfolded, a spell cast to make it bigger inside than the outside.

I find my room and settle down. The moon is visible outside. It casts the room in a liminal, timeless place. 

I walk up to the balcony and stare out at the pine lathered town. I stare out beyond into the farmland.

Nana El stopped us at Pineways on the trip- she had family here, and they welcomed us, briefly. They were farmers, and I thought of this as I observed the distant fields.

They’d changed, far from what they’d once been. Great industrial idols now dot the landscape- and the land itself was changed, patches barren, and in others- the orchards grew large and twisted.

Great totem-towers dot the distance, smoke rising above, the wind carrying it past the border shield. 

This, evidently, was not the sacred farmlands I’d remembered. This place had been laid out and made sacred to other gods. Gods of smoke and churning mills and wealth.

This- was quite literally- a *sacrifice zone.*

[Illegal Courtroom Transcription - Old Faith vs The Sacred State]

Daniel Mardes: “It is with great deliberation and struggle that I must make this decision; a decision that will no doubt have lasting impacts. But it is one I must do. There have been forces at play who have tried to sway the votes of justice- and that’s not to say they haven’t been successful- sounds of discontent -I’m not finished. But in the end no matter what- we are a free city. Our city on the water was founded to be a city of freedom, a city of culture, and a city of sacred belief.”

Gwen Kip: “He’s stalling. Is he? Is he afraid? He stared at us.”

Jan Korsov: “We found his sacrifice. It’ll be alright.”

**Daniel Mardes: “**In light of recent events- this decision may be controversial. But justice is not controversial. Justice is universal and must not be tainted by biases or wealth. And so it is with that I rest my decision to break this stall, this tie.”

Gwen Kip: “I don’t like this-”

Daniel Mardes: “I rule in favor of the Old Faith Coalition.”

Jan Korsov: “Oh my god-”

[Crowd erupts in anger, chaos. The judges call for peace. There will not be peace for a long time.]

Plot Synopsis: In an unknown location, five unrepentant souls - The Pastor, The Sinner, The Captive, The Surgeon, and The Surgeon's Assistant - have gathered to perform a heretical rite. This location, a small, unassuming room, is packed tight with an array of seemingly unrelated items - power tools, medical equipment, liters of blood, a piano, ancestral scripture, and a small vial laced on the inside by disintegrated petals. With these relics and tools, the makeshift congregation intends to trick Death. Four of them will not leave the room after the ritual is complete. Only one knew they were not leaving this room ahead of time.

Elsewhere, a mother and daughter reunite after a decade of separation. Sadie, the daughter, was taken out of her mother's custody after an accident in her teens left her effectively paraplegic and without a father. Amara, her childhood best friend, convinces her family to take Sadie in after the tragedy. Over time, Sadie begins to forgive her mother's role in her accident and travels to visit her for the first time in a decade at Amara's behest. 

Sadie's homecoming will set events into motion that will reveal her connection to the heretical rite, unravel and distort her understanding of existence, and reveal the desperate lengths that humanity will go to redeem itself. 

Chapter 0: Prologue

Chapter 1: Sadie and the Sky Above

Chapter 2: Amara, The Blood Queen, and Mr. Empty

Chapter 3: The Captive, The Surgeon, and The Insatiable Maw

—------------------------------

Chapter 4: The Pastor and The Stolen Child

“I’m not your fucking daughter, Lance” 

Marina Harlow’s declaration was barely more than a whisper, yet the words seemed to fill the volume of the room in its entirety, leaving no physical space for anything else to be said. Her defiance expanded and reverberated in The Pastor’s ears like tinnitus. He felt a single bead of sweat trickle down his right temple and splash against the hinge of his glasses. Lance Harlow would have never admitted it, but he felt himself starting to unravel.

In a few short hours, the heretical rite had been completed. Five individuals had entered, but now only two remained intact.

The Surgeon was the most dead. Holton Dowd lay motionless at the halfway point between Marina and The Pastor. His limbs were contorted around his torso unnaturally on the tile floor due to the awkward way his lifeless body had fallen. He looked like a marionette that had been haphazardly discarded by a newly disinterested child. 

Damien Harlow’s cadaver had nearly finished its caustic dissolution in a barrel located in the darkest corner of the room, furthest from the door and directly behind The Pastor. A significant portion of Damien still remained, however, in a saline-filled jar on the periphery of the makeshift surgical suite. Dissected brain tissue still alive and breathing due to the tubing that fed it oxygenated blood from the complex machinery situated at the room's dead center. The apparatus shackled a part of Damien’s consciousness, his heavenbound soul, to this unholy chamber. 

Like Damien, The Sinner had been split asymmetrically. His exchanged soul resided in a ghost-white flower petal in the vial that Marina had pocketed moments before she pulled the trigger that killed Howard. The Sinner’s body was still alive but comatose, thanks to the respirator that was rhythmically pushing and pulling air from his lungs. Keeping his body alive prevented his earth soul from leaking out his brainstem. Finally, The Sinner’s heavenbound soul had been cast away into the next life the moment the piano’s strings had wholly stilled, tethered briefly to the divine frequency and, subsequently, the mortal plane, in accordance with the heretical rite. 

Undeniably, there was a certain mechanistic elegance to the blasphemy at hand. 

—------------------------------

The congregation’s goal was simple in theory - they intended to harvest The Sinner’s exchanged soul for eventual transplantation. Doing so, however, was against the intended design of the universe, and the gods had erected guardrails to keep the system functioning as designed. 

The exchanged soul and the heavenbound soul were identical copies of a person’s consciousness - but they were twins of differing purpose. Although they both arrived at the same place after death, the exchanged soul was recycled for new life, and the heavenbound soul was sent to live on in the next life. Thus, they were created in such a way that if one was released from the brain, the other would always follow. 

K’exel, the god of exchange, was responsible for making sure this design was maintained. They were perpetually accounting for and cataloging what arrived at their doorstep, making sure it was in agreement with what should have still existed in the land of the living. 

Death releases all three parts of an individual -  their earth soul, exchanged soul and heavenbound soul - which is then delivered to K’exel as a merged, but complete, set. If K’exel only receives a portion of that required tithe, however, they would then be tasked with locating and retrieving the missing portion, utilizing whatever divine violence was necessary to do so. 

But in an effort to highlight something important, there were rare exceptions to these rules. In extreme circumstances, some individuals only had two parts of their soul to give away when they passed, having lost the third part at some pivotal moment in their life. 

—------------------------------

For The Pastor, the problem became this: the Cacisin red flower could absorb and imprison the exchanged soul if it was excised from a person, but only the exchanged soul. And if it was excised and captured, the heavenbound soul would inevitably be released from that person as well, but with nothing to imprison it, the heavenbound soul would return to K’exel. And when it arrived to K’exel without its twin, they had been known to mercilessly correct this disorder - as with The Blood Queen and The Red Culling. 

The Pastor, however, had theorized about a potential loophole. 

Years before the heretical rite came to pass, Lance Harlow realized that he may be able to orchestrate a trick so elaborate that it could even deceive a god. From their position in the next life, K’exel was watching vigilantly to receive complete sets of the human spirit: one earth soul, with one exchanged soul, with one heavenbound soul. As long as they received that full set, Lance thought they may overlook some concerning discrepancies in the contents of that set. 

Such as if that complete set had been derived from two separate people. 

When the system was designed millennia ago, this wouldn’t have been considered an oversight. From K’exel’s perspective, humanity in its primordial form was incapable of subverting the system in such a grotesque and duplicitous way. 

Technology, however, had allowed The Pastor eclipse, usurp, and defile the bioreligious blueprints that served as the foundation for human existence. 

The congregation had excised Damien Harlow’s earth soul and exchanged soul, leaving his heavenbound trapped in the tissue unwillingly kept alive in the jar. They had also excised The Sinner’s heavenbound soul but had left his body, his brainstem, and thus his earth soul intact and trapped, all kept alive via the ventilator in his lungs. They had also imprisoned his exchanged soul within a petal of the Cacisin's special flower.

The notes played on the piano held these excised spiritual components motionless in the air, temporarily tethered to the spiritual frequency that was emanating from the instrument. When Damien Harlow’s earth soul, exchanged soul and The Sinner’s heavenbound soul had all finally been liberated from their respective tissue, The Pastor muted the notes. With the tether cut and with no other spiritual components available, they were magnetically drawn to one and other. Once merged, the souls invisibly phased out of the mortal plane, materializing at K’exel’s doorstep. 

Busy with a universe continuously exploding with both of birth and death, K’exel did not notice the subtle inconsistencies present in the amalgam generated by the heretical rite. Having passed through undetected, Damien’s exchanged soul and earth soul were recycled, and The Sinner’s heavenbound soul entered the next life.

They had tricked a god. 

—------------------------------

“You’re right, my love” The Pastor cooed, having quickly regained his composure and control.

He straightened his spine, stood taller, and confidently remarked: “We’re something much deeper than family”

He said this while meeting Marina’s trembling gaze, making sure that she saw him slowly trace a surgical scar present on his skull above his left temple with an index finger. The Pastor’s irises were composed of a smokey blue-white frost, which matched her left eye, but not her right, which was chestnut brown. 

The Pastor grinned hungrily and took one long, slow step in the direction of Marina. She realized what he meant, and very quickly had to recalculate her next move. 

“And please Marina, call me Gideon” The Pastor boomed, stepping over Howard Dowd’s corpse in the process.

—------------------------------

As mentioned previously, there were a few notable exceptions to K’exel’s cosmic structure, and the Pastor was one of them. 

If an individual had committed a heinous, unspeakable moral transgression, their heavenbound soul would reflexively wither and die within their brain, which would then helplessly evaporate into the atmosphere around them. K’exel intended this to be a punishment. Without a heavenbound soul, that individual’s consciousness would never get to know what lay beyond, in the next life. 

That being said, if a person had been left with only an exchanged soul, it would be very simple to transplant that soul into someone else. Without an associated heavenbound soul present to arrive concerningly twinless in the underworld when the exchanged soul was removed, K’exel would be none the wiser to the abominable disequilibrium. 

It would be as easy as taking it from one person, and finding a way to put it in another. 

This, in comparison, was a significant oversight. 

—----------------------------------

Thirty years prior to the heretical rite, outside a Honduran airport, Lance Harlow shook hands with Leo Tillman, a fellow graduate student of the University of Pennslyvania’s fledgling neurotheology program. He had left his wife, Annie Harlow, and his two-year-old son, James Harlow, back in Philadelphia. This research trip eight miles into a nearby jungle was no place for a child. His colleague commented on the strength of his grip, which Lance verbally chalked up to nervous energy. 

Which was not a lie - Lance could hardly contain his excitement.

Leo had made an international call to him only two days prior. Through an intensely staticky connection, Leo had informed Lance that he had located a small sect of aboriginal people who he thought were direct descendants of the Cacisins. Not only that, but they apparently still practiced some diluted iterations of Cacisin rituals that were previously thought to be lost to time.

His colleague knew this because he had witnessed the rituals, and that was all Lance needed to drop everything to join Leo in South America. Lance’s father had made an ungodly fortune as a TV evangelical preacher, so this impromptu getaway was no financial strain. 

He was so close to something earnestly divine, Lance thought to himself. When Leo’s head pivoted away from him while stepping into his Jeep in the airport parking lot, Lance’s expression metamorphized almost instantaneously from playful and exhilarated to cold and emotionless. He leered imaginary bullet holes through his colleague’s chest and abdomen the second his back was turned. 

The former pastor had no intention of sharing whatever they found in that jungle. 

—-------------------------------

Lance Harlow had always been an embodiment of the phrase: “the exception that proves the rule”.

He stood in stark contrast to Damien Harlow and Howard Dowd, those empty templates etched and molded by pain. They did commit horrific moral transgressions, but those transgressions were directly downstream of significant abuse and neglect. A prime example of cause and effect - a predictable chemical reaction. Lance, in stubborn defiance of this relatively generalizable chain of causation, was somehow born corrupted - without explanation or impetus. 

Genetically, he was an abhorrent, godless megalomaniac. 

Damien and Howard’s insatiable maw had arisen from the black pits of suffering. But that maw was born within the confines of their character, which left them somewhat human. A battle for morality that they ultimately lost, but they did still fight that battle in a lot of ways. 

For Lance, there was no battle, because there was nothing conflicting to reconcile. He didn’t develop an insatiable maw, he was the maw. 

—-------------------------------

He chose to express his megalomania through religion, but that was for a very simple reason - it was what he knew. Religion was his entire childhood. That being said, his megalomania could have just as easily been flavored by animalistic violence if his father was a boxer. Or unquenchable greed if his father was a banker. The maw did not care about the means, it cared only about the ends

Seminary school and life as a pastor disappointed Lance Harlow. It afforded him some meager control of the people in his flock, but he never was able to rise to the level of infamy his father had obtained. That was the cancer he desired to be, Lance reflected to himself days before leaving his parish. He desired to be a ceaseless, malignant expansion of himself and his image, undoing and overwriting everything that came before him. 

This was his catalyzing epiphany. Cancer was a biological concept. Faith and belief were concepts mostly of the mind and the conscious. Perhaps the intersection of those processes, he thought, was his destined divinity - if he could control both, he could control all. 

—-------------------------------

After a six-hour hike into the humid wilderness, Lance and Leo arrived at their port of call - a secluded village situated on a clearing that overlooked a steep and treacherous cliff face. Leo had been living in South America for the better part of two years, so he was also able to serve as a translator for Lance. It was through his relationships with the locals that Leo was able to be cautiously introduced to this sequestered tribe of less than fifty people. 

Overtime, Leo had even gained their enough trust to bring Lance into the fold. 

The outsiders had arrived for a very specific purpose - to witness a ritual. One of the matriarchs of the tribe was dying from complications of childbirth. Days before, the village’s doctor had assessed the damage and had determined that there was nothing additional to do and that she was likely going to die of blood loss. If death seemed inevitable and imminent, it was Cacisin tradition to enter death on your own terms. 

But not before briefly excising your own spirit in passionate spectacle as a means to honor K’exel and his designs. 

Lance and Leo stood in the doorway of a large tent in the center of the village as the ceremony began. The entire tribe was in attendance, standing in a circle around the dying mother, bearing witness to her strength and endurance. The crowd was quiet but reverent, save Lance, who had already spied a tiny patch of odd-looking red flowers in soil closest to the cliff’s edge on their way into the village, and was doing his best not to make his ensuing intentions obvious. 

The dying mother put on a smooth, almost plastic-looking crimson-red mask, obscuring her features from chin to forehead. The homogenous appearance symbolized the wearer's unification with The Blood Queen. More than that, however, it focused the onlooker’s attention on the person’s eyes. 

There was a hole cut around the right orbit, revealing the dying mother’s pale and languid eye. Her left eye was covered by the mask, but a blood-red flower had been hewn to the area over where her left would have been, picked from the holy garden perched above the cliff face minutes before the ceremony started. 

Lance’s concentration was refocused on the ceremony when a high-pitched, flute-like squeal started to radiate from somewhere in the back of tent, behind the dying women. He stood on his tiptoes in an attempt to see over the entire crowd. The sound was coming from a young man situated next to the village elders. The young man was using a tool that looked like a fireplace billow to blow air through a long, slender wooden tube propped up at the tube’s midline by a stand. 

The ceremony had begun. 

The dying woman got down on her knees and extended prayerful arms in a pose reminiscent of Catholic genuflection. In her left hand, she held what appeared to be an oversized brass sewing needle at least five inches in length. 

Without warning, the dying woman smoothly pierced the tissue in the upper corner of her orbit closest to her nose, until the needle was about halfway in. Then, she paused and waited patiently for confirmation from the village members that she had performed the ritual correctly. For a moment, there was only the sound of the dying woman’s labored breaths and the high note radiating from the tube. 

As the petal closest to where the dying woman had punctured began to engorge and change color from red to white, however, the tent became wild with noise - the villagers had started chanting, clapping, and crying. 

One of the elders looked towards the young man, wordlessly instructing him to stop billowing. When he did, the engorged petal withered, turning black and necrotic within seconds. 

In response, the dying woman slumped onto her left shoulder from her kneeling position and stopped breathing. 

Lance, ever the opportunist, suggested they stay the night instead of starting their trek back to civilization as planned - he had noted that there was rain on the horizon. He stated that this may make the hike treacherous. The safest thing to do was to stay where they were.

—-------------------------------

That night, under the cover of a starless sky, The Pastor performed the following cardinal sins, in this order, and without a shred of hesitancy or remorse: He slit Leo’s throat with the edge of a box cutter he had secretly brought with him. He set fire to the tent where the ceremony had taken place using some tribal alcohol and a lighter. In the chaos of the rampaging fire, he absconded with all of the unburnt red flowers that were unique to the village. Finally, and this sin was a last-minute improvisation, he kidnapped the newly orphaned child of the woman who had died earlier that day. 

He could not perceive it, but as he left the burning village, his heavenbound soul withered in his skull, turning black and necrotic, leaking out of his pores to meet and adjoin with the thick smoke that filled the night air. 

—-------------------------------

The child very nearly died en route back to Honduras, as Lance Harlow had neglected to consider that the four-day-old would need some milk to safely survive the six-hour hike back to civilization. Lance and this child spent two weeks in a local hospital recovering from the infant’s almost fatal dehydration.

When questioned by the police, The Pastor explained that he was a graduate student researching a local aboriginal tribe, and there had been a wildfire that, at the very least, killed his best friend and close colleague, Leo Tillman, if not more people.

Lance Harlow, through a nauseating mix of charm and bribery, ended up legally adopting that child before they even left the hospital. 

On the day they were discharged, as The Pastor held the stolen infant, he looked into her two, hazel-colored eyes, grinned hungrily, and named her Marina. 

More Stories: https://linktr.ee/unalloyedsainttrina

New York City buzzed with anxiety. The string of murders had begun two months ago, and five bodies—all male—had been found carved up like grotesque sculptures in alleys, apartments, and parks. Kyle Burch, a man of quiet confidence and sharp intelligence, relished the media’s attention. “The Carver,” they called him. The name stuck, and it thrilled him to know he haunted the city’s collective consciousness.

But Kyle wasn’t careless. He knew the thrill would end if he slipped up. After all, even a man with his talents could fall prey to human error. Tonight, though, he was hunting again. A fresh victim to add to his gallery of work.

Kyle chose his targets carefully—lonely men who wouldn’t immediately be missed. His process was methodical, his execution surgical. This time, he followed Ted Durdan, an unassuming man in his early forties, into a dimly lit bar.

Ted sat alone at the counter nursing a bourbon, his demeanor calm and detached. To Kyle, he was perfect. A quiet man with no friends in sight. Kyle watched him for an hour, carefully noting his movements. When Ted finally left, Kyle followed at a distance, blending seamlessly with the bustling crowd.

Ted lived in a nondescript brownstone on the Upper West Side. Kyle’s adrenaline surged as he waited in the shadows, watching Ted fumble with his keys at the door. It was time. He slipped behind Ted, pulled a knife from his jacket, and pressed it to his target’s back.

“Inside. Quietly,” Kyle whispered, his voice smooth and cold.

Ted froze, then nodded, his movements slow and deliberate. He opened the door and stepped inside, Kyle close behind. Once inside, Kyle pushed Ted against the wall.

“You’re going to scream for me,” Kyle hissed. “But first, we’ll have a little—”

Before he could finish, Ted spun around with surprising speed, a jagged blade suddenly in his hand. Kyle barely had time to react as Ted slashed at his arm, forcing him to drop the knife.

Kyle stumbled back, clutching his bleeding arm, his eyes wide with shock. “What the hell?”

Ted smirked, his calm demeanor now replaced with something darker, predatory. “You’re not the only one with hobbies, friend.”

The realization hit Kyle like a freight train. He had chosen the wrong victim. The ensuing struggle was brutal but brief. Kyle, caught off guard, barely managed to escape the apartment, his wounded arm throbbing. He ran into the night, his confidence shaken for the first time.

Ted, however, was exhilarated. He locked the door, cleaned up the blood, and sat in his favorite armchair. For eight years, he had flown under the radar, his kills meticulous and untraceable. Fourteen victims, each carefully selected and disposed of with precision.

But now, The Carver had found him.

Ted knew he couldn’t let this stand. Kyle Burch wasn’t just a threat; he was a challenge. And Ted loved a good challenge.

The days that followed were tense. Kyle kept a low profile, avoiding his usual haunts while nursing his arm. He couldn’t stop thinking about Ted—the man who had turned the tables on him so effortlessly.

Who was he? How had he stayed hidden for so long?

Meanwhile, Ted began his own hunt. He researched The Carver’s murders, piecing together patterns and potential hiding spots. He knew Kyle wouldn’t stop. Men like them didn’t just walk away.

Ted tracked Kyle to a run-down apartment in Brooklyn. He waited until nightfall, then broke in with ease. The place was sparse, with only a few personal items scattered around. Ted examined everything, noting the knives carefully arranged on the counter, the map of New York pinned to the wall with red Xs marking each kill.

Ted smiled. He understood Kyle now.

Kyle returned home late, the hair on his neck prickling as he entered the apartment. Something felt off. He checked his knives—one was missing.

A note lay on the counter, written in elegant cursive: “You’re not as clever as you think. – T”

Kyle’s blood boiled. Ted was taunting him.

The next few weeks were a deadly game of cat and mouse. Kyle tried to track Ted, but the man was a ghost, always one step ahead. Meanwhile, Ted began planting subtle clues to draw Kyle out, leaving hints about his identity and past victims.

They crossed paths twice more, each encounter ending in a violent standoff. Both men were skilled, ruthless, and determined, but neither could land a killing blow.

As the bodies piled up—Kyle killing to vent his frustration, Ted tying up loose ends—law enforcement intensified their efforts. The media frenzy over The Carver had reached its peak, and the NYPD was desperate for leads.

Detective Marisa Grant, a seasoned investigator, began connecting dots that others had missed. Ted’s victims, though seemingly unconnected, shared subtle similarities. A pattern emerged, one that pointed to a second killer operating in Kyle’s shadow.

Grant’s investigation put pressure on both men. Ted began covering his tracks more carefully, while Kyle grew increasingly reckless. The tension between them was palpable, each encounter more dangerous than the last.

The game reached its climax on a stormy night in an abandoned warehouse in Queens. Ted had lured Kyle there with a carefully planted clue, and Kyle, blinded by rage, took the bait.

The warehouse was dark and silent, the air thick with anticipation. Kyle moved cautiously, his knife glinting in the dim light.

“You think you’re better than me?” Kyle called out, his voice echoing. “You’re just another monster, Ted. Just like me.”

Ted’s voice came from the shadows, calm and amused. “Oh, Kyle. I’m nothing like you. You kill for attention. I kill because it’s necessary.”

Kyle spun around, searching for the source of the voice. “Necessary? You’re delusional.”

Ted stepped into the light, a gun in his hand. “Delusional or not, this ends tonight.”

Kyle lunged, but Ted was faster. A single gunshot rang out, and Kyle collapsed, clutching his chest.

Ted stood over him, his expression cold. “You were good, Kyle. But not good enough.”

Kyle tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. He died with a look of disbelief on his face.

Ted cleaned the scene meticulously, erasing any evidence of his presence. He knew the police would find Kyle’s body eventually, and with it, the end of The Carver’s reign of terror.

But Ted couldn’t stay in New York. The pressure was too great, and Detective Grant was too smart. He packed his belongings, destroyed any incriminating evidence, and disappeared into the night.

A week later, news broke of The Carver’s death. The city breathed a collective sigh of relief, unaware that another killer had slipped through their fingers.

Ted Durdan boarded a plane to Europe, his new identity carefully crafted. As the plane soared into the sky, he stared out the window, a small smile on his lips.

The game was over. And he had won.

When I was probably 9 or 10 we were on a road trip up the east coast headed to Connecticut. We stopped at a rest stop and my family members were grabbing snacks and I decided to head to the bathroom. The rest stop was off of a highway, I do not remember at all what state but somewhere in between PA and Connecticut. The rest stop was extremely big but still normal. There were different places to get food like subway and ect in the inside.

I was trying to find the bathroom and I found myself in a totally different section of the rest stop. Things started to look older and a little vacant. I was walking through doors and then I went into this door in a weird empty room and what I walked into was unexplainable. But here I go..

I remember when I walked into the room it looked like a disco show sort of? All of the lights were going with rainbow colors, waiters were walking around serving drinks and there were a bunch of round tables with people playing bingo. The floors were like the old speckled bowling alley floors. It almost felt like I walked into a completely different time period.

The weirder part is, the only people making any sort of movement were the waiters. Everyone sitting at these tables were in wheel chairs like mechanical wheel chairs that looked like Abby Lee's.. The people in the wheel chairs were mannequins. Or at least they looked like mannequins. They looked like frozen rock hard people although they were very realistic looking. The image of these mannequins is ingrained in my head and explaining it to people is so hard. It was almost like these "waiters" were playing with the mannequins like dolls? But it was the craziest set up.. The mannequins had over the top makeup and wigs on. all of there arms were propped up on the round tables with bingo cards placed in some of there hands.

I know what I saw, I know this happened, this was not a dream. As a kid this scarred me for some reason and I never stopped thinking about it. I walked out and went right to the car because my family had already gotten back in the car. I never said a word to my family about it at the time. This is still something I don't understand. I posted this in a different subreddit and got SO much hate for it. I know this sounds crazy but it is still something to this day I cannot explain. What do you guys think I saw? What was that? Has anyone heard of anything similar?

I thought it was harmless at first. Just a little phase. Everyone gets into weird stuff online—especially my husband, Andrew. He had always been a deep-dive kind of guy, the type to research conspiracy theories with the same passion he had for surfing or fishing. So when he stumbled upon something about “reptilians” lurking among us, I just rolled my eyes and laughed it off.

But it got bad. Fast.

He started staying up all night, going through endless forums, watching videos with grainy footage and people spouting nonsense. Then he started looking at me differently. His smile grew strained, his glances paranoid. He’d ask weird questions, like what my favorite color was as a child, what animals I liked, if I’d ever had strange dreams about the desert. He kept telling me he was “seeing signs” everywhere.

One night, he whispered in bed, “You know, Roxie, I always thought your eyes looked a little… cold.” I tried to brush it off, but the way he looked at me—like he was seeing something alien—it left a chill.

Then, a couple of weeks later, I woke up to find him and the kids gone.

I searched everywhere. Called everyone I knew. Then I found his laptop, still open on the kitchen table. I guessed his password, typing in "desert dreams," remembering his odd question. The screen unlocked instantly. The things he’d written… twisted thoughts about “purging” our family, about “protecting” the world from us. He ranted about “lizard DNA,” that I’d “infected” our daughter Emma and our son Henry with it. I couldn’t breathe. My hands shook so badly I almost dropped the laptop. He’d really, truly believed that I—and our innocent, beautiful babies—were monsters.

I called the police, barely able to form words.

They found him a couple of days later, just across the border, holed up in some abandoned ranch in Mexico. He was raving when they got to him, talking about “doing the world a favor” and stopping us “before it was too late.” But by the time they got there… God, he’d already done it.

My sweet, two-year-old Emma. She had this laugh, this beautiful, pure laugh that could make anyone smile. And Henry, my ten-month-old boy, with his big eyes and chubby hands, always grabbing at me, wanting to be held. Andrew… he used a speargun. A fucking speargun! He’d said he had to rid the world of the “Serpent Queen’s spawn.”

I had to see his confession on video. The way he said it, like it was something noble, righteous. He looked right at the camera, unblinking, hollow, and cold. I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again, knowing that I’d loved a man who’d done this.

Now, it’s just silence. A silence that fills every corner of my home, where toys still lie scattered, where tiny clothes still hang in their closet, waiting for children who will never come back. The world went on after that day, but I feel like I’m just… frozen.

Have you ever wondered what it's like to attend your own funeral?

Well, I had a front-row seat.

Six feet underground.

Lying in my grave, listening to my parents say their tearful goodbyes, I was struggling through Mario 64, the flickering light of the screen my only saving grace. The last time I played it was as a kid, so I was a little rusty, especially on an outdated Gameboy.

With one arm pinned behind my back by thick rope and my body chained to the coffin, I could barely get through the first few levels with one hand.

There wasn’t time to process my death—or that I didn't really feel anything.

I didn’t need to breathe because my lungs no longer craved air, and my body was more of a shell. I was dead, and that was that. My coffin was cramped, my feet crushed at the bottom.

Our funeral had been going on for almost six hours.

Six.

Sure, there were four of us. Four bodies. Four grieving families.

But six hours?

What else was there to say except "Goodbye?”

Let's back up. First, I guess I should introduce you to Chaos Head.

We didn’t even like each other.

Imagine that.

A band who could barely tolerate each other's existence.

Well, we were a high school band, for one. The four of us all had our reasons for being there. I was in it for extra credit on college applications and to find some semblance of friendship.

We were like a dysfunctional little family.

Sam and Maddy were bitter exes after a messy relationship junior year, and Jordan was the unwanted comic relief.

Sam was a bit too loud, and obnoxious.

He was a good singer, and needed everyone to know it.

Maddy was insufferable, sticking around just to torture Sam (and herself), and Jordan was the quiet kid who used sarcasm as a coping mechanism, hiding his awkwardness with comedy at the worst times.

For example, Sam’s dog died, and he went on to strum The Dog Days Are Over on his guitar, toe-tapping and head-banging to the beat.

Jordan was lucky our lead singer had some semblance of a sense of humor.

I wasn’t perfect myself. I put exactly 0.1% into band practice, because we sucked…

And I mean we sucked.

Our first (and only) concert pre-death was at the sophomore's homecoming dance.

Reminiscent of an embarrassing set from Guitar Hero, we got booed off the stage.

Sam’s vocals were all over the place, Maddy was constantly off-beat on the drums, and Jordan was purposefully awful.

I knew he could play. It was rare, since he could barely get through a performance without laughing and screwing everything up, but when he did, I found myself in awe. He was probably our best member.

Jordan’s voice was unique, and I personally thought he’d make a better lead singer. That's not to say Sam was bad.

Sam was a great vocalist and leader, but Jordan brought something different to the table. Instead of using his skill, though, Jordan hid away.

Not to mention his crippling stage fright, which meant taking a step back and only offering mumbled backing vocals that sounded like he was singing against his will. But I digress.

My last day as a human was mediocre.

I headed to practice early. The band room was our safe place.

We did our best to decorate the room, but we were four eighteen-year-olds with zero savings. We stuck posters on the wall and made an attempt at paintwork.

Maddy tried to paint the walls loud yellow, but Sam preferred a mellow pink.

So, our decor ended up looking like a bad Fall Guys skin.

With conflicting hobbies, personalities—conflicting everything, we were a powder keg gearing up for an inevitable explosion. The Breakfast Club, but without the wholesome bonding. Sam was our jock, Maddy our princess, Jordan our weirdo.

The four of us barely spoke outside of band practice.

Madelaine Belle was head of the school newspaper, Jordan was a household name on the basketball team, and Sam fit into the popular sphere by default because of his looks. I used our music room as an escape.

I was a pretty introverted person who avoided social interaction, so it was nice to find silence away from the suffocating noise of the cafeteria. That particular morning, I didn’t feel great.

A headache brewed between my brows, and a twisty feeling in my gut wouldn’t go away. The day prior, I'd taken a bottle to the head.

It was supposed to hit Sam, but he had good dodging skills.

That morning, I prayed band practice would go smoothly. I had a crummy headache, and the idea of just vibing with them, picking songs to play at the festival, and going over our track list sounded like a chill morning.

Those types of hangouts were rare, but they did exist. Maddy would bring cake, and we’d chat or freestyle. I found myself clinging to those moments. I could almost even convince myself that I had friends.

However, these were the same people who got into a heated argument over the existence of life after death.

So, I wasn’t surprised to walk straight into a screaming match between my bandmates. I didn’t even have to ask what it was about.

Maddy and Sam were inches from each other, the air prickling with tension. Jordan sat on a speaker, legs crossed, gaze glued to his phone, earphones plugged in like a kid whose parents were fighting.

Lifting his head, he caught my eye, his lips curling into a smirk.

On the long list of things our bass guitarist couldn’t take seriously, fighting was at the top. The first thing I saw was Maddy’s dark red ponytail bouncing up and down as she waved a sheet of paper in Sam’s face.

The school concert sign-up form.

There was only one name on the dotted line.

Sam Brightwood.

I rolled my eyes. Of course.

It was Sam’s worst-kept secret that he was trying to go solo.

Despite his stubborn attempts to prove otherwise.

“You’re leaving us?” Maddy ignored my entrance as usual, her eyes daggers on our lead singer. “It's our last year together, and you want to bail early?”

If we lost Sam, we lost our band. The school had a strict policy requiring at least four members for a club. I didn’t exactly like our band or my bandmates, but it was all I had. I didn’t fit into any group or clique, so this crummy high school band we’d built from scratch weirdly meant a lot to me.

Sam folded his arms, defensive as usual. Sam Brightwood was what I liked to call a football reject.

He had the physique—broad shoulders and toned muscles.

His face was attractive enough, though he was more Labrador retriever than sex symbol. His thick head of reddish curls was his best feature. Sam had girls (and guys) running their fingers through it every day. His hair routine was impeccable.

“No.” He rolled his eyes, running his hand through his hair—a nervous tick.

We all had them. Jordan chewed his nails, Maddy bit into her lip, and I was told I blinked a lot. Sam shrugged.

“I’m just going solo for the music festival.”

“That sounds exactly like you're leaving us,” Jordan piped up from across the room. Jordan Anzai was half-Japanese on his mother’s side, with handsome features and thick brown hair. He didn’t look up from his phone, but from the slight hint of seriousness in his tone, it was clear Sam had pissed him off, too.

Sam shot him a pointed look. “Relax. I’m not leaving the band, I'm just…” He shrugged. “Broadening my horizons.”

“Tell us the truth,” Maddy pushed. “You want out of the band.”

Sam pulled a face, but he didn’t deny it.

Jordan actually stood up, pocketing his phone. “She’s right,” he said dryly. “Sammy can’t wait to get away from us.”

The guy was smiling, but like Maddy, he looked equally hurt.

Usually, he used humor to avoid expressing feelings, but this was a rare moment when I was seeing raw, unfiltered Jordan. His lips were not fashioned into his usual joking grin. Jordan had been wary of Sam and Maddy’s relationship causing trouble from day one.

During our first practice session, he’d grabbed the mic and gone on a long, winding rant about staying together no matter what. Jordan had emphasized his words, spitting them into his mic.

“Till death do us part, am I right?” he’d finished with a grin, cementing his place as the joker of our little group.

But his gaze never strayed from the ex-lovers.

The thing with Sam and Maddy was a convoluted mess.

They dated in junior year. Sam proposed they have an open relationship so he could date guys too, and that kind of broke her.

Maddy wanted him to herself. They fell apart and met new people.

Maddy was dating some random guy whose name I couldn't remember, and Sam was having casual hookups.

Maddy was an insane drummer.

When she wanted to be.

When she auditioned, Sam couldn’t say no.

He had a sparkle in his eyes, a smile on his face, that was reserved for Maddy Belle, regardless of his sexuality.

Sam let out an exaggerated sigh, crumpling up the flyer.

Sam Brightwood, lead singer of Chaos Head, was very different from the Sam Brightwood who walked around school with his headphones in and a dopey smile on his face. I guess we all showed our true colors in the band room, but Sam was remarkably different from the facade he put on. “Can we just practice?”

He took his place at the main mic, twisting to the two of them. “I am so sorry for trying to be better than—”

“Better than who?” Maddy demanded.

“No, that’s not what I—”

“Yes, it is,” Jordan cut in. “You think we suck.” His lips broke into a grin, a darkness in his eyes I didn’t know existed.

Jordan usually smiled with his eyes, not his teeth. This was a different side of him.

He threw down his guitar. “You think you're fucking better than us.”

I expected our lead singer to stubbornly argue. And I could tell he wanted to, what with the creases in his brows and red blush spreading across his cheeks.

This tension had been building for a while, manifesting in ways that ranged from passive-aggressive smiles to verbal sparring with biting comments.

A silent war through the power of raised eyebrows and scoffs.

Surprisingly, though, he let out a sharp exhalation of breath.

“Okay, yes. We suck. And I’m sick of sucking. We were booed off the stage.” Sam twisted to Jordan.

“You may have found it funny because you can’t take anything fucking seriously—and let me tell you, it is a chore trying to get anything out of you that isn’t some pretentious movie quote or a shitty joke because you have the personality of a cardboard box - actually, no, that's an insult to cardboard boxes.”

“You can talk,” Jordan quipped back. “At least I have a personality. You just wear a mask.”

“And you don’t?!” Sam exploded, sputtering. “You accuse me of wearing a mask, and you hide behind this pretentious, I'm-better-than-you shit, because you're scared of actually making friends and showing your real self. You use humor to hide how painfully boring you are, and to avoid actual feelings. You’re a sociopath.”

Jordan was clearly hurt, but he just snorted derisively and tipped his head back, laughing. “That’s a big word, Sammy. Have you been reading a dictionary?”

Sam’s lip curled. “Stop calling me that.”

“Why? If the shoe fits...”

Maddy was next in his firing line, and Sam didn’t hold back.

“And you. You are fucking stalking me, Mads. I don’t want you here because it clearly hurts you. But I don’t know what to say! Do you want me to tell you I feel uncomfortable that my ex-girlfriend won’t let me have a life?!”

Maddy opened her mouth to speak, her eyes wide, a scarlet smear blossoming across her cheeks. But he continued before she could respond.

“I don’t like you, Mads.” He spoke through his hands. “I don’t like any of you. You want the truth? Fine.”

Sam threw his hands up. “I want to go solo because we’re not even a band. We barely know each other, or like each other. We’re pretending for the sake of keeping the band together, and it's tiring. I am fucking tired of trying. It’s like neither of you even want to try and hang out and get to know each other.”

He turned to Jordan. “You need to get over your stage fright shit. I’m sick of covering for you when you freak out on stage. Maybe if you actually opened up, I’d understand you more. Mads, you’re always on your phone and constantly late. Not to mention the songs! Where do I even start?”

I could sense months of pent-up frustration bubbling in his words. “I’m sick of singing indie shit. It’s boring. Our songs suck. We need to be different. You want the crowd to like us? We should give them something to like!”

He turned to me, finally, red-faced and pointing. I would have laughed if it wasn't for his next words. “And who the fuck even are you?” he spat at me.

“We could replace you with a plant, and the plant would be more entertaining!” Sam folded his arms, lips curled with spite. I realized then, that I really was delusional. These kids weren't my friends. They just tolerated me.

“Do any of you even know his name?”

“Nick,” I spoke up, my face on fire.

Sam mocked a look of shock. “Holy shit, he talks!”

“Well, of course you never noticed Nick,” Jordan rolled his eyes. “You’re constantly fucking singing over everyone. You drown the poor guy out.”

He sent me a sickly smile. “It’s not your fault your voice doesn’t stand out, dude.”

Ouch.

Sam clucked his tongue. “Well, at least I can actually sing.”

Jordan was biting his nails, nibbling on the stubs. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you can sing, can’t you? Some might say you’re the best singer here, so why don’t you sing? We all know you’re playing it down to not upstage me, so why not fucking sing?”

Jordan, for once, was speechless.

Our lead singer wasn’t finished. “And to make it even better, why don’t you lead?”

Sam laughed. “Oh, wait, you have stage fright! You’re the one who hides behind me when we’re performing, and I have to face the crowd that treats us like shit. But do I step down? No. Because, weirdly enough, I actually want to protect you.”

“Sure.” Jordan snorted, muttering something under his breath.

Sam curled his lip. “I’m sorry, what? Are we preschoolers now?”

“I said, oh, here we go,” Jordan shot Sam his signature grin. “The master manipulator is at it again.”

He straightened up, though I could see the creases in his expression, the frustration and anger in his eyes. Our bassist’s mask was slipping. I had never seen pain in his eyes, but he was struggling to keep it on. “I could play in front of a huge crowd. And be better.”

“Do it, then!”

Sam made a show of stepping away from the mic.

The boy didn’t move, his gaze dropping to the ground.

He was so stubborn.

Refusing to be wrong, and then backing down.

At least Sam had a backbone.

Sam’s outburst left an awkward silence, only for Maddy to break it with a laugh.

“Please.” She threw her sticks in the air and caught them. I thought she was going to use his face as target practice, but she just sighed and leaned back with a smile. Like all of us, Maddy Belle also wore a mask. “We could replace you in a heartbeat, Sammy.”

“That’s enough.”

The new voice caused a rift in the room, and the four of us twisted around.

Maddy dropped her sticks in a panic, bending down to pick them back up.

I hadn’t even noticed the man standing in the doorway.

If the men in black were real, I was pretty sure he was one of them.

Dressed in a perfectly pressed black suit and matching Ray-Bans, he stepped inside, holding a briefcase. “Are the four of you finished acting like children?”

He looked down his nose at us, lips curved in distaste.

When he slammed the door and strode forward to take a seat on a plush chair, Sam shot Jordan a what the fuck? look.

Jordan shrugged, mouthing, How am I supposed to know?

I caught Maddy’s wry smile.

At least they shared a mutual enemy.

“Well?” The stranger folded his arms. I wasn’t a fan of him hiding his eyes. Eyes were the best judge of character for me, and the fact that I couldn’t see his was a major red flag. He cocked his head, taking us in through tinted lenses. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Sam frowned. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Yeah,” Jordan kept his distance, scooting over to Sam, who didn’t push him away this time. Progress.

“Dude, you can’t just walk into a school.”

“I’m a talent agent,” the man said with a sigh. “I’m looking for a band to play at my boss’s kid’s birthday party. Thirteen years old. He wanted Taylor Swift, but I’m not a miracle worker. It’s short notice, so you could say I’m…”

He seemed to hate his own words, sucking on his teeth. “Well, I guess you could say… desperate. I need an act for tonight.”

Maddy frowned. “You’re a talent agent for some big-shot company, and you think you’re going to strike gold in a high school?”

The man shrugged. “Prove me wrong.”

We did exactly the opposite.

Our first song wasn’t even finished, and this guy was waving his hands for us to stop.

“You’re bad,” he said. “No, you’re fucking awful. You’re the worst excuse for a band I’ve ever met.” He pointed to Maddy. “Who taught you to drum?”

The girl shrunk back into her seat, gripping her sticks. “I taught myself.”

He nodded, pressing his lips together. “That makes sense. You are terrible.”

The man turned his attention to Sam, who, for once, looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. “You can’t sing. Who told you that you could sing, kid? You’re all over the place! There’s essence of a voice. But you’re not reaching your potential. You’re the worst kind of singer—a coward who steps back, refusing to bypass limits.”

“Limits?” Sam repeated in a breath.

“Limits!” the man thundered, and the four of us jumped. “Breaking your voice! Singing until you’re bleeding from the lips, until your chest is aching! I expect you to scream until you are mentally and physically tired and beg me to stop. That is what being a singer is. I work with vocalists who would laugh at you, kid. And I would go as far as to say you could be better than them.”

Sam had been humbled at last.

Before the boy could reply, the man moved on to Jordan. “You can sing.” He stood up. I noticed Jordan stumble back. “Sing the chorus for me. Not backing vocals. Escaping into the background. I want your raw voice. Right now. Chorus, and then the first verse."

When my classmate turned to us for help, the man snapped.

“Did I tell you to look at them? Look at me! If you want to stop running away from your own talent, I suggest you start singing.”

Jordan’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Wait,” he started gnawing on his nails, his voice shaking. We called it Jordan Mode during performances.

It was like going into shock. Jordan lost the ability to string sentences together, his eyes glazing over. Sam had to rescue him until he caught hold of himself. This time, though, he was in too deep. “You really want me to sing?”

“That’s what I said.”

Jordan shook his head, stepping away from the mic. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” he gestured to the rest of us. “You’re all friends, correct?”

“Well, yeah, but…” Jordan was shaking.

“But what?”

Jordan didn’t respond, bowing his head.

“That is exactly what I thought,” the stranger tutted. “You’re running away.”

He inclined his head at me, after smoking my bandmates. “You’re neither good nor bad. You’re painfully average. Your voice is mediocre, and your stage presence is awkward.”

I swore Sam snorted behind me. “You’re too stiff,” he said, striding over to me, pushing my shoulders down, and adjusting my guitar strap.

He stepped back, still with that distasteful curl in his lip. The man directed his question to the four of us.

“Mmm bop,” he said loudly.

For a moment, I thought he was having a stroke. I caught Jordan’s slight smirk.

“By Hanson,” the stranger continued. “Do you kids know it?”

We just stared back at him, exchanging looks.

“Teenage Dirtbag?” he pushed. “Wheatus?”

Silence.

I raised my hand, eager to get away from the awkwardness. “Could I go to the bathroom?”

The man’s expression didn’t waver, nor did he look at me. “If you want to miss my climaxing words, go ahead.” His lips quirked into a smile. “It’s your funeral.”

I already knew them.

Sam couldn’t hit high notes.

Jordan could barely sing without freaking out.

Maddy was offbeat.

And I was an inanimate object.

We sucked. We were shattered beyond repair, and you can’t make diamonds out of glass bottles. I placed my guitar down and made my way to the door.

“Nick, wait.” Sam twisted around, shooting me a panicked look. I knew from his wide eyes, his parted lips, exactly what he was trying to cry out.

Get help.

“Get a teacher,” he whispered, careful not to be overheard. “For that… thing.”

Jordan nodded, snapping out of it. “I need my meds,” he paused, his expression crumpling. “My insulin. If I don’t take it, I'll, uh, I'll pass out.”

“Right,” Sam spoke through gritted teeth. “Get Mrs. Simons. The nurse.”

As the so-called house plant of the band (their words, not mine), I ignored the two of them. My voice was too low, I was invisible, and could easily be replaced by a household object. But now they needed help, and suddenly they noticed me?

I wanted out of that room.

Out of the band.

So, I ignored them, slamming the door behind me.

I wish I could take that back.

I didn’t notice anything strange until I reached the end of the hallway. It was far too quiet for a school day.

At first, I thought I was seeing things. There was something shimmering at the end of the hall, like a translucent barrier, hovering in mid-air. I stepped closer, feeling a chill run down my spine.

I reached out, fingers brushing against it, when I saw her. Mrs. James, my math teacher. The first thing I noticed was the red—blood pooling across the marble floor.

Then, I saw what was left of her head, her corpse strewn across the floor, her eyes… or where her eyes had been.

They’d been burned straight out of her skull, leaving deep, hollowed-out cavities.

Bits of bone and what looked like charred fat clung around the edges.

I stumbled back, dropping to my knees and heaving.

My mind was spinning as I scrambled to my feet and bolted back to the band room.

I left them.

I left them with that fucking psychopath.

The world didn’t feel real, my footsteps echoing on the marble floor. The air reeked of blood. Inside the barrier, time had stopped at exactly 8:38 a.m.

Almost there.

By the time I reached the band room, I could hardly breathe.

“Nick!” Jordan’s voice split through the silence, a cry rattling my skull.

“Nick, open the door!” His cry collapsed into gasping sobs. “Open the–”

It was one singular crash, followed by the unmistakable thud of my bandmate hitting the floor. I pushed open the door, stepping into a spreading pool of blood.

The band room was no longer ours. Everything was red. Sam was crumpled on the floor, no longer recognizable. His body was barely a body, his burned shirt clinging to what was left of him.

Panic clawed at me as I took in the scene. Bits of flesh dangled from the ceiling.

Were we that bad?

Did we suck enough to be murdered?

Stepping over what was left of Sam, I staggered. Jordan was next to him, a twisted, headless torso, his limbs scattered across the floor like discarded doll parts.

A stringy piece of his intestine clung to my shoe.

“Nick!”

Maddy’s strangled sob yanked me from my horror. She was crawling across the floor, drenched in blood—blood that wasn’t hers.

Trembling, she clawed her way forward, her eyes rolling, blood seeping from her nose and ears. She’d already been struck, barely clinging to life.

“Nick, run!” Maddy’s voice was desperate, her fingers scrabbling across the carpet.

She couldn’t see me anymore.

The man in the black suit loomed over her, expressionless.

With a single, merciless blow from Jordan’s bass guitar, he finished her off.

I couldn’t look away. I saw bone and fragments of flesh spray across the room, turning Maddy into nothing more than a smear on the floor.

As I stumbled back, he turned to me. He was impossibly fast, closing in on me in the blink of an eye. I tripped over Jordan’s body, dropping to my knees before managing to crawl forward. Sam’s remains smeared across my hands, staining my clothes as I fought to reach the door. Behind me, he was taking his time.

Did Jordan feel his death?

Was it quick enough not to register?

I was on my feet, weightless, my hands slick with blood as I gripped the door handle. Then, something pierced the back of my head. I knew instantly what it was—Maddy’s drumsticks.

One stick lodged deep in my skull, sending me crashing to my knees.

The second one finished me off, puncturing my brain.

There was a flash of white-hot pain, too brief to grasp fully. Then, nothing. No breath, no sound, just the world fading into darkness.

But death didn’t feel like I thought it would. It wasn’t slow or drawn out—it was instant. I felt a moment of searing agony, and then… stillness.

Then I woke up.

Chained inside my own coffin.

But I wasn’t… scared.

I didn’t feel fear at all. I think that part of me had been cut away.

When I opened my eyes, the world looked different—duller but strangely vivid. I could see every dust particle, every stitch on the suit I’d been buried in. My arms were bound behind me, cold chains wrapped around my wrists and torso. Near my feet, wedged in a corner of the coffin, was a battered Gameboy.

It took a lot of stretching and struggling, hearing my mother's sobbing from above. I managed to tear one wrist free, though the other was stubborn. After a few hours of playing Mario 64 and the silence that quickly blanketed the world above, I concluded my funeral was over.

The Gameboy ran out of battery soon after, leaving me stuck in the dark.

Until footsteps.

I shouldn't have been able to hear them, and yet they were in perfect clarity.

I heard the sound of a shovel hitting the dirt.

“Nicholas Sinclair Cartwright,” the voice was familiar.

The man who murdered me.

The shovel hit the ground again, and this time he quickened his pace.

I could sense his slight panic. He was digging me up.

“It is 11:58 PM. Two minutes to midnight. You died exactly 248 hours ago. When the clock strikes twelve, you will be faced with a choice that will determine your afterlife.”

I opened my mouth to respond when the chains wrapped around my torso began to tighten, and I swore my coffin jerked. In a single breath, the ground rumbled, and I felt myself being pulled…

Down.

“Nicholas, can you hear me?”

I could see them filling my coffin, creeping up from the ground like bugs and twining themselves around my arms, snaking across my neck—rusted chains that seared my flesh. As if they were sentient beings, they skittered across my face, burrowing into my flesh and bones.

I found my voice when my coffin was thrown open, and I found myself face to face with the man in the black suit illuminated by unearthly moonlight. “Yes,” I managed to grit out.

“Yes! Get me out of here!”

I was dragged further down, straight through my coffin this time, and into the earth. The man didn't move, and phantom church bells began to ring in my head, signaling midnight.

The chain secured around my ankle pulled me again, and my vision blurred.

I could sense it, feel it, burning into my back.

Heat that was so intense I couldn't move.

“You have a choice,” the man said. “Freshly deceased souls cannot escape the core,” he continued. “It is neither heaven nor hell, but a purgatory where young souls who meet an untimely end are judged and sentenced, and become bound to Him.”

I lost my breath when something white-hot licked across my back.

"However, I can help with that. I just need you to agree to these terms, and I will free you. Once I pull you from the ground, you will have a thirty-second head start to run away from my contract. Succeed, and do as you please. Fail, and you are mine. In fact, I have your first concert booked for tomorrow night. Chaos Head is headlining.”

Straining against the unearthly restraints trying to drag me into the ground, I heaved out a breath. “What?”

He reached out his hand for me to grab. “Just say you accept, and I’ll get you out. Oh, and do not look at the moon. Without my protection, her light will command you back to your grave.”

Whatever these terms were, fuck them.

He was giving me a chance to run, and I was taking it.

“I accept,” I said in a breath, as my body was yanked deeper. “I accept!”

He nodded, and with a simple click of his fingers, the chains binding me to my grave were gone. When I lifted my head, the man was true to his word. He stepped back, gesturing for me to run.

Climbing out of my grave was easier than I thought. My body felt lighter than I remembered. Under the dull light of the moon, I was surrounded by tombstones.

I didn't know where to run; fight or flight catapulted me forward.

I didn't stumble or stagger; my bare feet skimmed easily across the uneven ground.

Until it hit me in waves of ice water that I was dead.

Not just dead.

I was shackled to my murderer, bound to an afterlife of hell if I didn't escape.

That was when I started to stumble, dropping onto my knees and then diving back up. The suit my mom had buried me in felt too heavy. I threw off the silk jacket and yanked off the tie. I could see it.

In front of me were the cemetery gates. And beyond that, my freedom.

I was going to make it.

Something tugged at me, though—a presence creeping down my spine.

I could still sense that phantom chain binding me to my grave.

I reached the gates.

No sign of the man in the black suit.

I should have registered his words more carefully.

The man said he would give me a head start.

But he never said he would be the one hunting me down.

I was pushing through the cemetery gates when I heard them. Sensed them. Running footsteps treading through dirt and leaves.

I didn't move when heavy bouts of breath tickled the back of my neck.

“Where the fuck do you think you're going?” the voice stung. I saw his corpse. I saw his brain leaking out of his skull.

So, how exactly could Jordan Anzai be standing behind me?

Maybe the man was fucking with me.

My so-called judgment wouldn't be being dragged into hellfire.

It was facing my bandmates I had left to die.

His fingers leached around my neck, forcing me to face him.

Chaos Head looked a mixture of horrifying and unearthly beautiful.

Maddy, dressed in a long white dress torn up and smeared with filth, her hair curled, ghostly white skin illuminated under the moon’s glow. Sam and Maddy’s parents must have been playing a sick joke, making them match. Sam’s tux was already ruined, torn straight down the front. Jordan's tie was loose around his collar, his blazer hanging off one shoulder.

“Hey, Nick.” Jordan was inches from my face in half a second. “Nice to see ya.”

The three of them had a certain glitter in their eyes, a curl in their lips that wasn't anger. Sam’s jaw twitched, and Maddy cocked her head, dragging her tongue across her bottom lip. Hunger. I knew that because I had it too. But these guys definitely weren't up to par with human meat. Chaos Head smelled… like rotting.

Jordan's grip tightened around my neck, his mouth splitting into a grin before a voice stopped him.

“He's not food,” the man in the black suit chuckled. “He’s your friend. And besides, even if you do eat him, you would spit him out. He is old flesh, already dry, separated from the soul. Condiments may help, but I would advise against eating your colleague.”

“I’m not going to eat him,” Jordan snarled. I really did not like his new teeth.

Or his attitude.

Gone was the classmate who hid behind sarcasm.

This guy didn't give a fuck.

Being dead meant all of that was gone.

All those barriers stopping him from reaching his potential—stage fright and finding his voice—were gone.

But I don't think a human was there, either.

His eyes were drowned in darkness, moonlight bleeding around his iris.

I realized then that I was staring at our new lead singer. He tightened his grip, but I found myself unable to suck in air.

Because I didn't need it anymore.

“I'm going to fucking strangle him.”

“That's not necessary,” the man spoke with a sigh. “Refrain from the urge to murder your bandmate, please. If we’re going to build your reputation, you need chemistry.”

His lips curled into a smirk.

The asshole was laughing at us.

“He left us.” Jordan spat, shoving me back. “The asshole is out of the band.”

“That's not for you to decide,” The man said. “As of now, I control Chaos Head. I will be taking over as your new manager.”

Sam’s expression crumpled. “You're serious.” he deadpanned. “You kill us, and then you bring us back to fucking serve you?”

He stumbled back, but our manager was already whipping out his hand, wrapping narrow fingers around his neck. “I believe I can do what I want. Because as of twenty minutes ago, you signed with my label.”

Jordan tried to run. When he got the chance, he attempted to escape, and was surprisingly fast, only to be yanked back.

“Your lead singer just tried to get away, and you're just standing there.” The suited man sighed, dragging Jordan back to us, and like a dog on a leash, he was forced onto his knees.

“Your chemistry is painful. Really, it's hard to imagine you as best friends– and I have no idea how we are going to sell your friendship to your fans.” he sighed. “I expect civility at least. Hate each other all you want off stage, but on stage? You are four high school best friends.”

He had to be fucking joking.

Our boss may have made us think our chains were gone, but they were still there, still binding us to him. Still, though, my band mates were as reckless as they were alive, undead. Somehow, our two lead singers were actually agreeing with each other, signalling through mutual nods.

It only took them DYING for them to finally see eye to eye. Sam attacked the man, diving onto his back, and Jordan attempted to rip out his throat.

Both of them failed, being knocked onto their backs. This time, our new boss didn't play around. With a single movement, he twisted around and ripped out Sam’s voice box, a long, slithering red string pulsing through his lips.

The man teased him, pulling it from his mouth, taunting and severing it. When Sam dropped to his knees, choking on his own entangled voice, he was granted mercy. But if he tried to escape again, he was out of the band.

And if he was out of the band, Sam would be nothing but a lost soul craving human flesh.

Jordan, being the coward that he is (still), stepped behind me.

When our new boss turned to him, he threw up his hands.

“Do what you want, man!”

Asshole.

One thing about being both dead, soulless, and bound to an organization specializing in entertaining demigods: our bodies always stitch back together.

So, we could be burned, ripped apart, tortured until we begged for a human death, our souls tormented beyond pain, our flesh and bone impenetrable.

There was no escape.

On the way to our first concert, we were briefed.

Human concerts were rare and underground.

If a human looks at us, their soul will be burned and carved directly from their body.

Demigods, however, hold their parties between heaven and earth—a world especially for them. If you want a mental picture, imagine a never-ending party held between the sea and the sky, filled with insufferable teenagers with no respect and a literal God complex.

Our first official concert was for a kid named Pollux.

Nineteen years old and a brat. He spent the entire time throwing bottles of soda in our faces and yelling, “You suuuuuuck!” while his friends shouted a multitude of insults.

It’s not like they were wrong. They called us feral, disgusting excuses for humans, and monsters with human faces.

But we were feral. We were yet to feed, and our faces were haggard and pale, our eyes sinking into our sockets.

We might have looked beautiful to a human, in a ghostly way. To a demigod, however, we were grotesque. Jordan was told that he sang with his teeth, and that was a major turn-off for the audience.

He argued that he couldn't help it. He was hungry.

We all were. Our last meal was a woman we were forced to feed on.

Still, we couldn't complain or argue. We were physically bound to the stage. A boy threw his beer bottle at Sam’s face, and he finally snapped.

“Dick!” he coughed into his mic.

Jordan, who had been verbally assaulted through our whole set, lost it– slightly.

“If you hate us so much, why not go watch another act?!” he spat into his mic.

When he was met with more booing, Maddy, the only professional one, dragged him off stage.

We found Sam a few hours later hooking up with a demi-god, where anyone could see him. Seriously, Sam had zero shame, his head buried in this guy's chest, half naked, legs wrapped around this guy.

Maybe he was suicidal. The guy seemed nice. Until Maddy introduced herself as Sam’s girlfriend.

Then things got awkward.

We got a warning for that incident. Sam was told to stay away from demi-gods.

Jordan was put on anger-management meds.

Though, on that particular night, a girl tapped me on the shoulder while I was packing up my guitar.

She was my age, and yet I knew she was only part human, almost painfully beautiful.

Her hair was velvet black, skin luminescent under a sun that never seemed to set.

“You're a Feral,” she remarked, offering me a drink. She nodded at the shackle around my ankle. “Human children they kill and fashion into entertainers.”

Feral was, admittedly, something I would call myself given my new eating habits.

“It's Nick,” I corrected her, exhausted. I kept an eye on Jordan, who was sitting on the edge of the stage, legs dangling.

He was staring a little too intently at the crowd, fangs slightly slipping from his upper lip. Oh, God.

If he attacked and fed on a demigod, we were finished.

Maddy seemed to read my mind, grabbing the disheveled boy and pulling him off stage.

“Do you need help?” the girl lowered her voice. “I know someone who can get you out of your… ” Her smile faded, eyes darkening. “Your predicament.”

“Nick, we’re leaving!” Sam grabbed and pulled me away before I could reply. I twisted around to at least say goodbye to her, but the girl was gone.

So, here I am on my free day on Earth.

I don't have a home to go back to, so I’m just chilling in Five Guys.

Glasses on, obviously.

We’re performing tonight under a new band name.

It's an underground concert.

Demigods like to play around on Earth too.

The real world is different from what it was when I was human.

The moon calls to me even in broad daylight, and every so often, a skeletal hand will erupt from the dirt I stand on and try to pull me down.

My boss was right when he said I'm being lured into the core, and only his presence will scare those voices away.

Sam was caught by the moon a few nights ago.

He got so close to his grave, clawing into the dirt with his fingers, the moon in full control. The idiot forgot to wear his protective glasses, his mind captured by her glow, unblinking eyes skating the sky. We almost lost him.

Luckily, he was pulled back.

But I'll never forget that mindless look in his eyes, a whimsical smile, moonlight taking what was left of his will.

Maybe I should try finding that girl, wherever she is.

So, it’s nighttime, and I’m at this massive university, the kind with long corridors and cold lighting that gives everything this weird A Cure for Wellness vibe. I’d just gotten out of some classes, and suddenly, it’s like I blink, and I’m alone in these dark, unsettling alleyways. Here’s where things get crazy: I’m completely naked. No idea how or why it happened, but there I am, frantically trying to find something—anything—to cover myself up. It’s dark, the walls seem to close in, and every turn feels like some strange dream logic is pulling me deeper.

Somehow, I end up stumbling into this gigantic classroom that feels like it’s bending reality. Imagine a classroom so big it almost feels like you’re in another dimension, with posh seats arranged on an incline, rows upon rows stretching into infinity, all hovering like they’re defying gravity. As I’m scoping the place, some guy mocks me, and I don’t even hesitate—I hit him. He starts chasing me through this impossible space until security finally drags him off.

Then, something weird clicks. I realize…they were expecting me. The seats feel like they’re all focused on me, and these glowing words, “Tata Labs,” keep lighting up around the place. It’s like I’ve just been admitted into some secret society, but everything feels off-kilter, like it’s right out of a fever dream. An announcement echoes through, and suddenly, the seats invert, like we’re on some anti-gravity thrill ride, but somehow no one falls. I look around, and this older girl beside me just…reaches out, touching my forehead like she’s testing me or reading something in me. She gives a nod, and there’s this weird sense of approval.

Then, the “mission director” hands me a phone. My parents are on the other end, freaking out, saying it’s been days since they last heard from me. I tell them I’m okay, and it feels like they’re forced to accept that. But that’s when it hits me: I’m here because I’m being chosen for something bigger. Something like a deep-space mission—an exploration where everyone here might not come back. I don’t even remember what I’m good at, but I know I’ve been picked for it.

“You’re a fucking animal, Tom.” 

Cassandra, volatile with rage, tossed her husband’s cell phone to the floor of their bedroom, intending for the device to clatter and crash melodramatically when it connected with the wood tile. It landed screen-up and spun towards Tom’s feet, gliding smoothly against the ground like an air hockey puck. He hastily bent over to stop his phone’s forward motion, pocketing it without looking at the screen. Tom already knew what pictures would be opened on his messaging app. Instead, he went silent and did not argue, turning his head away from her and submissively placing his hands in the air. The motion was meant to represent a white flag of surrender, but more than that, it was a way of admitting guilt without asking for forgiveness. 

Wordlessly, he pushed past his wife to grab a pillow from his side of the bed and then paced quickly out of the room. Tom turned right as he exited, carefully stepping over a few unopened moving boxes to make his way to their new home’s staircase. With a sound like rolling thunder, he stomped and pounded each foot against every step on his way up. Every petulant boom reverberated and echoed in Cassandra’s mind. When Tom reached the attic, he bellowed something that was clearly meant to be a defamatory finale to his boyish tantrum, but she couldn’t make out exactly what he said from where she still stood motionless in the bedroom. At that moment, any lingering regret about dosing her husband for the first time that morning with the Curandero’s poison evaporated from her, remorse made steam by the molten heat of her seething anger. 

—---------------------------

“If I’m an animal, you’re a goddamned blood-sucking leech, Cassandra!” 

Tom’s retreat from his wife had been both unanticipated and expeditious. To that end, he could not think of a retort to her jab until he was three steps out of the bedroom, but he held onto the retort until he reached the safety of the attic’s doorframe. He knew he could belt out his meager insult from that distance without fear of an additional counteroffensive. As soon as the words spilled from his mouth, he tumbled past the threshold into the attic and slammed the door behind him. 

It wasn’t his fault Shiela was swooning over him, Tom smugly mused. She had volunteered those digital pinups of her own volition. That said, he had been actively flirting with the young secretary since the couple landed in Texas two months ago. Their marriage had been in a death spiral for years, in no small part due to Tom’s cyclical infidelity. The cross-country move had been a last-ditch attempt at resuscitating their relationship, but of course, Maine was never the problem to begin with, so the change of scenery mended nothing. In his middle age, Tom developed a gnawing desire to feel warm-blooded and virile. Cassandra’s despondency had the exact opposite effect. She made him feel undesired - sexually anemic. That night was not the first time he had called her a “blood-sucking leech” for that very reason. However, if Tom had been gifted the power of retrospection, he may have noticed that his wife’s frigid disposition became the norm after the discovery of his second affair, not after his first. 

—---------------------------

“I want something that will make him feel even a small fraction of the insanity he’s put me through”

Cassandra whispered to the Curandero, visually scanning the entire antique store for possible interlopers or undercover police officers before she asked the purveyor of hexes standing behind the counter for anything definitive and incriminating. Multiple family members had recommended this unassuming shop on the outskirts of downtown Austin for an answer to Tom’s beastliness. The apothecary grinned and asked her to wait a moment, turning to enter a backroom concealed by a red silk curtain. The witch doctor was not what Cassandra expected - she couldn’t have been older than thirty, and she certainly did not present herself like a practitioner of black magic. No cataracts, scars or gemstone necklaces - instead, she sported an oversized gray turtleneck with part of a floral sundress peeking out from the bottom. 

She returned seconds later, tilted her body over the counter, and handed Cassandra a vial no bigger than a shot glass. Inside the vial were innumerable tiny blue crystals. They were slightly oblong and transparent, looking like the illegitimate children of rock candy and fishfood. The Curandero cheerily instructed Cassandra to give her husband the entire ampule’s contents over the course of about three days. As she left the store, the shopkeeper cryptically reassured Cassandra that her husband would be thoroughly educated on his wrongdoings by the loving kiss of retribution. 

—---------------------------

“Why is it so fucking cold up here”

Tom mumbled to himself, doing laps around the perimeter of his makeshift sleeping quarters in the attic. It had been approximately three weeks since their argument and his subsequent relocation. At first, he didn’t much mind it. The cold war between him and Cassandra was taxing, but he had his phone and Shiela’s escalating solicitations to keep him company. But as of the last few days, he had begun to feel progressively unwell - feverish and malaised. Then he noticed the small lump on the underside of his left wrist. 

It was about the size of a dime, skin-colored, immobile, and profoundly itchy. Tom felt like he spent almost every waking minute massaging the area. The irritation then became accompanied by white-hot burning pain, gradually extending up his arm as the days passed. One night, as he scratched the area, the lump moved a centimeter closer to his palm. He paused to inspect the change, assuming the vexing cyst had finally been dislodged and neutralized. After a few seconds, however,  it moved again - but in the opposite direction and without Tom’s help. And then again, slightly further up his forearm. Revitalized by panic and confusion, he began clawing recklessly at the lump, until the skin broke and a small black button was liberated from the wound, only to scurry away to an unseen sanctuary. Tom thought the button looked and moved like a deer tick. 

—---------------------------

“Sure, Tom, come back down. But to the couch, for now, okay?”

Cassandra had accepted many empty apologies from Tom before, but something about this most recent one felt slightly more sincere. By this point, she had completely forgotten about the Curandero and her vengeful prescription. Cassandra had gone through with slipping the contents into Tom’s coffee over the course of three days, but that was over a month ago. At the time, she did not really believe it was black magic - she assumed it was a military-grade laxative or some other, ultimately benign, poison. 

The more she thought about Tom’s behavior, however, she came to realize that she may have been mistaking a sincere apology for what was actually fear and need for comfort. Cassandra had not interacted much with Tom in the past few weeks, but now that she was, he was certainly acting off. Seemingly at random, he would slam his palm down on himself or something else in front of him and then would be unwilling to give an explanation. He slurred his words like a drunken sailor, but as far she could tell, he hadn’t been drinking. When she looked into Tom’s eyes to find that his pupils were rapidly dilating and constricting like black holes on the verge of collapse, the realization hit like a lightning strike up her spine. Cassandra remembered the vial with the blue crystals. 

She was at the Curandero’s shop within the hour, catching the witch doctor right as she was locking up her store. Cassandra pleaded with her for an antidote to whatever magic or venom was now in Tom’s system. In response, the shopkeeper produced another identical vial from her jacket pocket, twisted the cap off, and dropped a few of the crystals into her mouth:

“It’s dyed salt, my love” the Curandero said, then pausing to tap out a few fragments onto the backside of Cassandra’s hand as a means to corroborate her claim. “I don’t sell power, just the idea of power. Whatever you made manifest, I only provided the inspiration”

Confused and without clear direction, Cassandra returned home to check on her husband. 

—---------------------------

Tom had never been thirstier in his entire life, but he could not drink. Every time he poured himself water, he carefully inspected it through the transparent glass, only to find it contaminated with hundreds of ticks - an entire galaxy of black stars drifting aimlessly through the liquid microcosm. Sitting at his kitchen table with his head in his hands, Tom cried out in agony, only to have his wail cut short by his vocal cords unexpectedly snapping shut. 

What had started as an infestation had become a plague. 

The gentle touch of a hand on his shoulder nearly scared him half to death, causing him to jump back off his chair and knock the infested glass off the table and onto the kitchen floor, shattering it instantly. He took a breath, seeing that it was only Cassandra, but that relief was short-lived when he looked back down to see an armada of nymphs moving on his position. He yelped and scrambled on top of a cabinet. His wife moved forward, seemingly to comfort him. When she held his hand, Cassandra noticed the open wound where that first tick had sprouted, and she rushed into the other room to procure bandages. For a moment, Tom felt safe. His wife began attending to his wound while he was still perched on the cabinet. But then he felt a pinch on his left wrist, followed by an intense lacerating sting, and then finally, the sensation of warm fluid gushing down his palm. When he looked down, his wife looked up at him in tandem. 

Cassandra’s mouth had mutated into a pulsating arena of hooked teeth, with plasma delicately dripping from the barbs she had just used to bite into him. In one swift motion, Tom pivoted his torso, unsheathed a blade from a nearby knife block, drove it deep into the creature’s abdomen, and sprinted out the house and into the street. 

—---------------------------

Cassandra nearly bled out on her kitchen floor, but a neighbor heard the commotion and had called the police. 

She awoke in the ICU surrounded by family. When she asked them what happened, they paused awkwardly and traded solemn expressions with each other instead of explaining. When Cassandra pressed for information, they flagged down her doctor from the hallway.

The physician did not mince words with Cassandra. Tom was dead - he had been picked up by the police fleeing the neighborhood but had been delivered to the same ICU she was currently in when he started to wheeze violently and turn blue.  

“Do you have any pets, dogs especially?” The doctor asked. “Where in your house do you and your husband sleep? Have you ever seen any bats in your home?”

Cassandra explained that they had bought their home recently, that Tom had been sleeping alone in their attic after a particularly nasty argument, and that she had seen a bat fly out a window once when they were moving in. She then detailed her husband’s odd behavior in the time leading up to her assault. 

The physician frowned and then elaborated on their suspicions:

“The dilating pupils, the hallucinations, the fear of water, and the inspiratory spasms - they all suggest that your husband contracted rabies while living in your attic. Most of the time, people in the US contract the disease from a dog bite. However, bats are known to transmit the disease, too. What’s worse - if bats are in your home, they can bite you in your sleep without you waking up. If contracted, the disease is universally fatal, and there is no known treatment. 

Tom died from his airway spasms. 

You nearly died, too - from blood loss. Did you know you have an extremely rare blood type? AB negative. Only 1% of the population has this blood type, and unfortunately, the hospital has been critically low on replacement blood that is AB negative for almost a month now. 

We were initially very concerned - you needed more AB negative blood than we had, but as serendipity would have it, Tom was AB negative as well. Imagine that. 

Thankfully, rabies cannot be contracted through the blood - only through saliva. That’s why it is contracted through bites. Although it was unconventional, our administration gave us the green light to give you a large portion of his blood. In essence, Tom’s blood saved your life”

The doctor paused, waiting patiently for whatever questions Cassandra had. 

But she had none. Instead, there was an eerie, uncomfortable silence for almost a minute.

Then, Cassandra tilted her head back, closed her eyes, wept, and had a very long laugh. 

More Stories: https://linktr.ee/unalloyedsainttrina

I’ll never forget the day we ventured too deep into the Amazon.

It was supposed to be just another expedition—a group of us researching rare wildlife, cataloging plants, and recording every bizarre sound the jungle had to offer. The air was thick with humidity, and the forest around us seemed to whisper, shifting as though it had a life of its own. But on that day, something changed.

We had been out there for hours, trekking further than planned, when someone—Carlos, I think—heard something off in the distance. It was a low, guttural growl that didn’t belong to any animal we recognized. The noise rumbled through the air, vibrating the ground beneath our feet. At first, we all tried to brush it off as some weird noise from the jungle, but the hairs on my neck stood up.

“Maybe it’s a jaguar,” said Maria, trying to reassure us.

But as the growl echoed again, this time closer, there was something unmistakable in it—something… wrong.

We decided to circle back, but that’s when we saw it.

At first, it was just a shape—a hulking mass moving between the trees. But as it stepped into a patch of sunlight, I felt my blood freeze. The thing that stepped into view wasn’t an animal. It was… something else. Huge, covered in matted, dark fur. Its eyes were wild, glowing red, and its body was twisted in a grotesque way. The air around it felt thick, suffocating. And then, it opened its mouth.

The sound that came from it wasn’t a roar or a growl—it was like a scream, but with no real shape, just raw, primal anger.

“Run,” I heard Carlos whisper before turning to flee, but it was already too late.

The thing lunged at him faster than I could comprehend, knocking him to the ground with a sickening crack. I saw it tear into him—huge claws and a mouth like something from a nightmare. Blood splattered everywhere. The screams were… deafening. Carlos didn’t stand a chance.

We ran.

In the chaos, I lost sight of the others. I don’t know how long I ran for, but the jungle seemed endless. The mapinguari—if that’s what it was—was fast, its growl following me like a shadow. I stumbled, tripped, but kept pushing forward. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it over everything else.

But it wasn’t just the growl that haunted me. There were footsteps—thick, heavy footsteps crashing through the underbrush. And then, suddenly, I felt it.

The air shifted. A massive hand grabbed my shoulder, spinning me around, and there it was again. The mapinguari. Its face was so close, I could smell the rot on its breath. Its eyes were wild, but there was an intelligence behind them—a knowing, almost mocking look.

I tried to scream, but my throat went dry. The thing snatched me up with ease, its claws digging into my skin like knives. I struggled, but it was no use. As the thing lifted me off the ground, I caught one last glimpse of the jungle, of my friends… of their blood.

But then, a sudden, desperate idea flashed through my mind. With every ounce of strength I had left, I slammed my boot into its leg, aiming for a joint. The mapinguari staggered, just for a moment—just long enough for me to break free. I hit the ground hard, scrambling to my feet.

I didn’t look back.

The jungle seemed to swallow me whole as I ran—branches clawing at my face, my legs burning with exhaustion. I could still hear its growls in the distance, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. If I stopped now, I knew I wouldn’t make it.

Eventually, I broke through the treeline and found myself on the edge of a small river. There was no sign of the others, and the jungle was eerily quiet. I don’t know how I survived, how I outran that thing, but I did. And for the first time since I stepped into this hellhole, I felt the weight of the forest lift off my chest.

I don’t know what happened to the others. I don’t know if anyone else made it out. But I’m alive.

And I’m never going back in. The mapinguari is still out there, and it’s waiting.

But I’m not the one it’s going to catch next.

Mary and I have been married for the better part of a decade now. She is the love of my life, and I wouldn't trade her for anything. The only problem is, the woman who mothered my son is no longer here. I don't mean that in a literal sense; she is alive and well. At least, as well as she can be considering the recent trauma she's been through.  

About three weeks ago, she received terrible news from back home, one that shattered her entire existence. Her parents had died. It was some freak accident, carbon monoxide poisoning. The grief overtook her to the point that she could no longer function. I thought that she would get better after the funeral, but there she was, rocking back and forth in the corner of the living room. I tried to give her as much support as I could, but no matter what I did I could not find a way to quell her pain. It finally got to the point that I feared leaving our three-year-old with her. I needed to get her professional help. 

One day when she seemed in better spirits, I decided to share some news with her. I had booked a therapy appointment at the local counseling center. As she looked at the living room's blank white wall, I pressed a hand on the middle of her back, jolting her out of whatever fascination she had with its white facade.  

"Honey?" I said in the sweetest tone I could muster. Surprisingly, she didn't spit fire into my face like the last few times I tried to speak with her. As her eyes looked at me from behind her puffy eyelids, she gave me the first genuine smile in a long time.  

"Hey you," she said; a loving way she so often addressed me. I took a seat next to her on the ground, crossing my legs as I gathered the courage to send her into an inevitable fury. I took a deep breath and spit out my confession.  

"Honey-- I'm really worried about you." My voice cracked as the words fought me on the way up.  

"I want to help you but no matter what I do, I can't find a way to take your pain away," I said as she tried to process what I was saying. To be honest, after seeing her blank expression I was sure it was falling on deaf ears. That is, until her gaze dropped, and she opened her mouth, giving me a gut-wrenching response.  

"No one can help me." Her response was monotone and cold. I've never seen anyone experience as many contradicting emotions as she did in that instance. Her eyes signaled sadness, her brows anger, and as she returned her stare to the wall, I swear I saw a sense of hopefulness.  

"Only he can help me." I turned my gaze to whatever her eyes were glued to, but the wall's empty void did not instill confidence in my wife's sanity. I knew then that she was far beyond any help that I could render. I took her hands grasping them with love.  

"Honey?" I questioned cautiously, but she did not return her gaze to me. Placing my hand under her chin and tilted her face back over to me, cautious, almost timid that she would chomp down on my fingers if I strayed too close. When her face was pointed towards me, but her eyes remained glued to the white walls, twisted, her irises half hidden behind the edges of her eye sockets. The sclera of her eyes webbed out with long skinny streaks of blood vessels. No matter what I said to her now it would not be registered, she had retreated into her state of extreme grief. My heart filled with dread, but for what it was worth, I was going to vent my concerns, even if they would go unacknowledged.  

"So, there's this doctor that was recommended to me by a friend, down at the counseling center." As expected, the words just decorated the air around her, but I pressed on anyway.  

"He specializes in grief counseling, and-- I-- think he could help you." Once again, the words did not register, or so I thought until I saw her eye twitch. I took that as a sign of piqued interest.  

"His name is Dr. Robinson. I-- I know this is out of the blue, but I need to get you seen by a proper professional. You need help. Honey, this-- this isn't normal." Her eye gave another twitch, only I finally noticed that it wasn't her eye, but something swimming around behind the little blood vessels that gave the impression of an eye twitch. 

'What the hell' I thought to myself, taking to my knees and inching my face closer to whatever was crawling inside her eye. Upon closer inspection, something wiggled in this grotesque fashion, burrowing a path through her eyeball.  

The little figure inside crested its tiny little head and began chewing towards the surface of her sclera.  

'Wha-- what the fuck?' The little voice in my head said, trying to comprehend what it was seeing. A little white insect poked its head through the newly dug hole before it fell completely out of her eye like a fallen tear. It now lay on the fabric of her jeans, flopping about like a creepy crawler from hell. I pinched it with two fingers and held it up to the light. It was a maggot.  

I jumped back in disgust. Falling back onto my palms, the bug flung to some far-off corner of the room. In shock, my eyes were planted firmly on my wife. Just then my son called out.  

"Daddy?" This wasn’t the time to indulge my son, so I returned a dismissive statement.  

"Not now buddy," I responded in a shaky voice, still in shock of my wife’s eye maggot. Retaking to my knees I reexamined my wife's face, the little hole the maggot had crawled out of was no longer there. Regardless, I kept my eyes planted behind the little red blood vessels in anticipation of another wriggly figure swimming about.  

My wife suddenly darted her face towards mine at lightning speed, chomping her teeth onto my cheek. I felt my skin give way until the flesh freed itself from my identity. The shock of the ordeal made me wince in pain, forcing me to close my eyes. When they opened, my hand draped over my fresh wound. I held my palm out in front of me examining the blood.  

"Daddy!?" My son signaled his growing impatience. I ignored his whining, returning my eyes to Mary. A trail of blood dripped off her chin as the wall continued to hypnotize her. 

"Daddy! Can I eat this little jellybean!?" Tommy blurted out his question.  

"Yes, yeah whatever you want buddy," I said. He returned with an excited,  

"Yay!" I sat there for a split second before the realization hit me. 

'Little Jellybean?’ The fucking maggot. 

"NO! STOP!" I turned to see my son dropping the slithering insect down into his gullet. Running over to him I clutched him by the cheeks, forcing his mouth ajar. 

"Spit it out," I commanded, and so he did. The maggot now lay in the center of my palm, its body cut in half by my son's milk teeth.  

"Aww, Dad." My son whined.  

"But mommy lets me have all the little white jellybeans I want when you're at work." My skin broke out into pimples, borderline hives, as the words left his mouth. Just then I heard my wife mumbling something with a steady cadence.  

"Little white jellybeans, little white jellybeans, little white jellybeans." She repeatedly rocked there singing the same song. 

"Little white jellybeans, little white jellybeans, little white jellybeans." I knew then that my wife could no longer be left alone with my son.  

I had no choice but to send my wife away to an institution; It was too dangerous to have her near my son, and, well, the help she needed would be given to her around the clock at this mental hospital. She, however, did not go quietly. I told her about the reasoning behind why the men in scrubs were wrapping her in a straitjacket. Her sickly mind could not comprehend the logic.  

"So, you think I'm a bad mother! How dare you. I hope they come for you. I hope they choke you in your sleep. I want you to know that I traded you for them. He can have you I don't give a fuck!" Mary blared out as they carried her off, at the time I thought it was all nonsense, but now I wished her words were some psychotic delusion.  

The coming days were seemingly calm. I had taken a few days off work to care for my son while I arranged for someone to babysit Tommy. For the most part, I just scrolled through my phone while my son watched cartoons. But everything changed when I saw my son whispering to the wall. The same wall my wife had prayed to for weeks on end. I shot to my feet in a slight panic.  

"Buddy? What are you doing?" I called out but he didn't answer, he just kept talking to the wall in a hushed tone. I took to my feet and slowly made my way over to him. When I was inches from him, I could finally hear what he was saying.  

"Yeah, they're really good." He said with a chuckle. His eyes trained on the wall as if it were speaking to him. He produced a response to a seemingly one-sided conversation.  

"I don't know if he likes them. I can ask." He looked over his shoulder and posed a question with a grin.  

"Daddy, do you like jellybeans?" My heart dropped as my gaze crested over his shoulder. In his little hands, were palms full of squirmy little maggots. He finally spun around and offered them up to me. I slapped the bugs out of his hands.  

I grabbed him by the shoulders, trying to force him to answer my questions.  

"Where did you get these? Where did you find the little jellybeans?" He wiped away tears and pointed at the wall.  

"The man told me that they were from grandma and grandpa." I looked over at the white wall.  

"What man Tommy? There is no man." I said almost trying to convince myself that there wasn't something nefarious happening here.  

"There is. There is a man. He said that he was here to bring Grandma and Grandpa back. He said he promised my mom, but we just had to give him one thing." Tommy paused, thinking of whatever this imaginary man told him.  

"What? What does this man want." I commanded with wide eyes while shaking him with impatience. Tommy returned his eyes to me and simply stated,  

"You." 

Just then, a shadowy figure lifted its darkened tinge from the wall, disappearing into a dark passageway. I saw it move into my bedroom, but it paused as if it were waiting for me to follow it. Tommy cowered behind my legs.  

"It's okay Daddy. The man said we wouldn't be apart for long. He said that all of us would be together again soon." I looked down at Tommy, who bore a hopeful expression. With a grin, he said ecstatically,  

"The man told me about this place called hell. He said we would all rot together very soon." I don’t think he understood that sounded more like a threat, rather than a message of hope. The Shadowy figure disappeared behind the door frame.  

“Daddy? What does rot mean? Tommy questioned but I didn’t answer. 

“Are you going with him, Daddy? So we can all rot together.” He said with mild giddiness. 

 There was no fucking way I was going to follow whatever was waiting for me in the bedroom. Just as I was going to grab Tommy and run out of the house, he darted off towards the bedroom. I tried to make him come back to me, but he quickly dismissed my command as an option.  

When his little body stood at the entranceway, his eyes filled with wonder. I saw him outstretch his arms and run in for a hug, disappearing into the darkroom. I stood there frozen in fear, but the need to protect my son eventually inched me forward. As my eyes peered around the door frame, my heart stopped.  

Silhouetted in the dim moonlight, shining from the window, stood my two deceased in-laws. My little boy clung to his grandmother's leg. However, she did not return the gesture. Instead, she and my father-in-law kept their eyes planted directly on me. I could not get a good look at them, but I could tell that they were not okay, I'd seen them in their caskets a few weeks ago after all.  

The shadowy figure stepped into view from behind the recently departed couple. Whatever it was, it was tall, standing high above my in-laws. It outstretched a hand and as it met the moonlight, I could see that no flesh clung to its person, rather, the hand was pure ivory.  

I reached a shaky finger for the light switch. When it clicked on, the shadowy figure vanished. What remained was the horrific sight of my rotting in-laws. In the shine of the bright fluorescent bulb, I saw their skin literally crawling. It wasn't till a few bits of flesh dropped to the floor that I realized the little white jellybeans feasting on their flesh.  

Tommy looked at the bugs with a twinkle in his eyes.  

"You see Daddy. The man wasn't lying. They're back. They're really back!" Tommy exclaimed with excitement. Curiosity overtook him and he picked one of the jellybeans off his grandmother's leg, plopping it into his mouth. At that moment, my mother-in-law's eye fell out of its socket. It dangled there as more 'jellybeans' crawled out from inside her cranial cavity. Tommy caught wind of the spectacle, but instead of retorting in fear, he hopped in place with giddy excitement. He found the dangling eye hilarious. His excitement quickly vanished as something caught the corner of his eye. He looked in my direction, but not at me, at something towering behind me. His little face contorted as if he were trying to comprehend something. A look of understanding washed across his face before he looked into my eyes.  

"The man says you have to go with him now."  

Suddenly, I felt a sudden draft chill the air behind me. From the corner of my eye, a bony hand crept into view. It caressed my shoulder, gripping it with ferocity almost cracking my bones under the pressure. I forced myself from its grasp, swiveling violently around to see my aggressor.  

In front of me stood a tall skeleton, cloaked in a black shroud. In its hand was a massive scythe; the blade glistening in the lighting. No matter how bright the fluorescent light was, the two holes where its eyes should be appeared as black as midnight. It outstretched a hand, pleading for me to go with it. I stammered back on my heels, trying to comprehend the situation, but bumped into cold flesh. A few bugs fell on my shirt, as the smell of death hit my nose. Over my shoulder, stood my burly father-in-law, his eyes devoid of life's spark.  

I had to get away. I grabbed Tommy, prying his hands away from his grandmother's corpse. We managed to make it to the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind us, though I think it would do little to keep the shadowy figure out. We now sit here waiting for daytime, though Tommy informs me that I belong to the man now, no matter what I do. I'm asking for help. What do I do? I'm pretty sure that my wife's made a deal with death. I'm screwed. Fucking screwed. 

.Part 1.

________________

I glide through the dark water, the shore a distant shadow that grows slowly as I swim back to it. The moon’s reflection feels heavy in my stomach, churning contentedly, radiating its alien heat from within, moving through every inch of me, surging through my veins and arteries on the backs of my blood cells.

I'm halfway to shore when I see them–two pinpoints of light with a faint green cast, hovering on the surface, cold and distinct. They burn strange and mesmerizing, like matchsticks struck to life in shadow. I can’t tell what I’m looking at, but The Hunger, which has drifted on the edge of sleep since drinking in the moonlight, stirs now, awakening in me. I begin to swim toward the pair of beacons, floating patient and silent in the darkness.

I slow to a stop suddenly, treading in the water as a feeling of primal awareness rushes over me–a sense of being watched. The spots in the distance are two glowing eyes. Realizing this, I remember the dangerous things lurking in these waters, especially after nightfall.

Hesitant, I stare at the eyes, and they seem to stare right back, unblinking. The Hunger’s impulse presses me forward, pulling toward the lights, but this time it doesn’t compel me. It holds back, almost as if waiting to see what I will choose of my own accord.

“They are drawn to what glimmers in darkness, as they were drawn before. Draw closer, Astravor.” The whisper speaks again, dense and heavy in the silence, as though the darkness itself has found a voice. “The light within them: stronger than any creature that stirs after sunset.”

The voice seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. I hear it surrounding me, yet I know it makes no sound at all. Chilling clarity settles over me–I recognize it now for what it must be: the voice of The Hunger, echoing from somewhere deep within me, urging me forward.

As the distance between us shrinks, I realize that whatever owns those cold, green eyes has begun moving toward me as well.

The outline of its head breaks through the water, only yards away now, and I recognize the alligator for what it is. Its broad, flat skull glides just above the surface, so close I almost expect the icy weight of its unblinking gaze to seep into me, to steal the heat pulsing beneath my skin. But when this doesn’t happen, I am unsurprised.

We are close enough now for it to lunge, for those jaws to clamp down on any part of me it chooses and drag me beneath the water, spinning, pulling me down into the mud, holding me beneath the surface until I drown at the bottom. I know exactly what it will do if it chooses to strike. Yet it holds still, eyes on me, cold and assessing, as though waiting for the moment its instinct spurs it into action.

I am not afraid as I stare back, meeting its gaze. I feel the excitement of The Hunger inside me lurking, waiting, humming from anticipation within. We are two apex predators, suspended in silence, each sizing the other up. Then, as the alligator’s body shifts, The Hunger surges inside me, and I let it loose, letting it pull me forward with a speed I didn’t know it was possible to move–a speed charged with swallowed light stolen from the moon itself.

The next moment blurs; it happens in a single, electric instant. One second, I am waiting at the water’s surface, watching the alligator tense. In the next, I’m beneath it, my hand curled into a fist and thrusting upward, breaking through the soft, pale underbelly and plunging straight into its chest.

When my hand emerges, it does so with a fistful of heart. I watch in fascination as its pulse slows in my grip; slowing, slowing and slowing…until it stops.

I find dragging the lifeless body by its tail to the shore is easier than expected. Sitting there at the water’s edge with my toes splayed in the soft mud, I open my mouth wide–wider, impossibly wide. As I’m about to begin devouring the gator's heart, my reflection catches my eye in the dark surface where it glimmers faintly in the sparkling water.

My eyes, lit from within, burn like headlights, the stored moonlight spills from them like a pair of white hot stars. The raw power of the light taken from the lunar reflection pours from my open mouth as well, a blinding beam projected down onto the heart in the palm of my hand. In my spotlights, I imagine it standing on a stage surrounded by a multitude of onlookers in a darkened auditorium. Each member of the audience waits with bated breath for the show to begin. I see my jaw, unhinged and hanging low enough to swallow the entirety of the thing in a single bite, and a strange, prideful thrill hums through me as I place the still-warm organ on my tongue.

I swallow it whole, feeling it slide down into me in a single, smooth motion.

Remembering the true prize I’d swam toward, I reach for the alligator’s eyes. One by one, delicately pinching each between my fingers I pluck them free. I pop these then into my mouth, savoring their texture; a pair of grapes, precious and rare…forbidden. I crush them then, between my teeth savoring the energy that splurts out from them to coat the inside of my mouth. The juices are rich and thick as honey as they seep onto my tongue…

The taste is exquisite, a dark sweetness almost as intoxicating as the surge that swirls within me, commingling with the moonlight already coursing through my veins. I feel warmth expanding outward, heating me from the inside, and The Hunger’s earlier words rise in my memory, echoing through me like a truth, newly uncovered:

…life a morsel and light a feast…

A morsel, perhaps, when the life is small–a firefly or a moth–but the lifeforce of this eleven-foot carnivore is something else entirely. The heart, paired with the creature’s luminous eyes, radiates a different frequency, a stronger, brighter wavelength of energy, surging through me like nothing I’ve tasted before. Though it pales against the potency of the moonlight, the energy absorbed from the reptile is incredible, settling into my bones, sinking through my skin. I feel powerful and deadly. Predatory. Boundlessly alive.

What exactly had those men done to me?

________________

Never leaving the room where they kept me chained, the two men spent hours–and then days–making endless adjustments to the luminous machine in the corner. They worked with countless tools that were strange beyond description, as if from some place unknown, a mix of both the mechanical and the organic. Robotic insects, as big as fists, whirred and buzzed, equipped with saws that moved in fine precision, while others wielded white-hot welding torches, each tool responding to the smaller man’s commands in an unknown language I'd never heard in my life. Some of the tools appeared to be alive, their surfaces glistening with layers of what looked like living skin stretched taut, twitching and pulsing faintly as they worked.

As the days passed, my stomach grew louder, the empty ache sharpening to an angry rumble. They had piles of bottled water–crates of it, in fact, gathered who knows how. I drank one after the next, and each time I finished, they provided another. But no food ever came. At first, I demanded it, loudly, my pleas echoing off the walls, but by the third day, when every plea went unheard, I gave up. I accepted that I would starve here, chained to the support beam in this dark, decaying boathouse. From where I sat near the edge of the wooden platform, I could see the murky water beyond, lapping at the posts that kept this structure afloat. In moments when I wasn’t watching the men work, I would fixate on the darkly shifting water, imagining it swelling, the boathouse sinking slowly into the swamp, collapsing like it was meant to on the day its rotting beams finally gave in.

On the third or fourth day, the smaller man knelt in front of me, and in his sickly pallor, he looked more like a corpse than the gaunt figure who had first dragged me from my tent. He was shockingly skeletal now, his skin gray and paper-thin, his eyes once a gleaming shade of orange, had faded now to the sickly color of dijon.

“Soon. They accommodate. Soon,” he said, his voice thin and exhausted, barely a croak. The glow in his eyes had dulled to a dim, bleary haze, an emptiness that seemed to stretch on without end. “Adjustments soon completing. After, They accommodate more. One more.”

“I’m not accommodating shit for you, you bastards,” I hissed, spitting on his cheek, aiming for his eye and missing by just a fraction. “Food! Do you understand that word? Food!? I need to eat, you sick fucks!”

Whatever energy I had left for outbursts drained from me then, leaving only a hollow ache. “Can’t you see I’m starving?” I whispered, my voice cracking as I fought back tears. “I don’t want to die here. Just let me go…please.”

“Go? No. Accommodate? They will…yes,” he rasped, wiping the spit from his cheek, his high-pitched voice wavering, sagging as if every word threatened to crumble. “One more. Xyrax Coil places. Remember it? They will not. No. No memory. After, They gather. They nourish.”

He spoke to me very few times over the course of my captivity and his limited grasp of English kept him from ever fully explaining their intended purpose for me. Reason told me this much: if it were something I might ever agree to, they wouldn’t need to keep me chained. The same words fell from his mouth again and again, rearranged in endless, cryptic orders. His health, seeming to decline more and more as each day passed made the weight of those words grow heavier, each repetition more grotesque, as I was left to continuously imagine what they could ultimately mean. By the fifth day, I still couldn’t fully grasp their intentions, but with each passing day, I became more certain that I had been singled out for a purpose–that they'd chosen me deliberately.

That was the day they put the headband, a strap of strange material, almost like leather, connected to the machine by a series of coiled wires across my forehead and everything after and much of what happened before went dark.

________________

Removing my damp clothes, I discard them atop the mud and clumps of algae that float at the water’s edge. I can sense the creatures in the night now, their reverent fear thick in the air. The crickets and frogs have ceased their songs of darkness, and I feel the eyes of countless hidden things falling upon me. Every nearby creature lurking close enough to see me on this shoreline has turned its gaze my way–watching, quiet and unmoving in the endless darkness.

"Astravor, if such power moves you, let Them claim the starlight of any in the sky above–They will know the limits of the limitless.”

“What is this word, Astravor?” I ask the Passenger within, “you repeat this word each time you speak but I do not know it. Is it a title? A name?”

“They discover Their true purpose as they drink.”

Above me, in this place so distant from civilization, every star glows with unbridled radiance, sharp and fierce against the black sky. As I stare up at them, the light churning within my eyes beaming outward, I choose a star at random–and in an instant, I know everything about it, as though I’ve held the knowledge of its secrets all along:

The red dwarf named Beglios sits 8.7 light-years from Earth, approximately 2.79 times the mass of the yellow dwarf you call “the sun.” Four planets circle it.

One of these planets is nearly equal to the mass of Jupiter. Its orbit is too close to be sustained; in 4,732 of Earth’s years, the star’s gravity will pull it from its path, tearing it apart with enough force to scatter it to dust. The remnants will fall into Beglios and be absorbed, but this increase in mass will be so insignificant that the event will go unnoticed–not only by those who search the skies here, but by any being on any planet close enough to observe.

Two others, nearly indistinguishable in shape and size, are roughly the mass of Mars. Their orbital paths are so close to each other that, in 1.53 million years, once again measured in the passage of time on this planet, they will become locked in one another’s gravity, pulling themselves into a deadly spiral. The resulting collision will scatter them into an expanse of debris–fragments of planets drifting, silent, in orbit.

The final planet, a molten thing nearly 1.5 times the mass of Earth, circles within the habitable zone, the place where life may one day flourish. For now, it remains a dead, violent place, the host of extinction-level weather patterns and volcanic eruptions, still in its earliest stages of formation. 25,397 years after the twin planets shatter, life may begin here.

None of these things–absorption, collision, creation–will ever come to pass.

For I have chosen this star to die.

As with before, I purse my lips and begin to suck it towards me, drinking its light into the abyss within. As promised by the Passenger, as I begin to swallow the light from this single star above, I understand so much more about myself. Devouring Beglios, a different kind of completeness fills me.

I am nothing yet I am many things.

My experience is fluid. In a constant state of flux or change.

I do not fight the shifts; the changes. I embrace them.

I am woman. I am man.

I am Astravor, Drinker of Starlight. I feed upon the life forces and light forces shining in the night.

I am the emptiness, hollow within, the carved-out vessel made to accommodate more. With this new addition, I am whole.

I am Elara Knox, botanist, human being.

I am something else: otherworldly.

I am something new.

I gather.

I nourish.

I am the vessel that carries the nectar, the fount of power to revive the fading light of the Xyrax Coil. The machine on which Drixar and Ry’ath depend, here stranded on this planet with no means of escape. This planet whose star is poison, radiates in wavelengths fatal to their kind. This star above emits a light they are unable to collect themselves, making it utterly useless to them.

As I drink the radiance of Beglios, every piece of myself, every aspect once hidden, aligns and crystallizes within me, revealing knowledge that expands without end.

When the final light of that star flickers into darkness, I hold the remnants of it within my void. I move across the swamp like a cosmocrat of the night, returning to the boathouse that hides itself: an alien structure, a shelter disguised to appear as a relic abandoned long ago.

This time, I enter it by choice.

Naked, moving through the darkness inside, the damp air wraps around me. I know now what I must do to sustain Drixar and Ry’ath until their promised rescue team arrives, and when they leave this place, I have already decided–I will join them.

Crossing the shadowed space to the Xyrax Coil, where it pulses unsteadily in the corner. The beaming of it dimmer now and on the verge of flickering out, I open the lid of the basin that sits at the top. Tilting my head forth, I open my mouth, and from within me pours the essence of the night's collection: the rare orchid and moth, the fireflies and moon’s reflection, the alligator’s heart and eyes and the most powerful fuel I carry: the starlight I consumed. All of this is converted now into a liquid state that glimmers brightly with the light of stolen life and the expansive cosmos, and it flows out from me like a torrent into the machine.

I will collect such glimmers as lie lurking in darkness and feed the machine nightly if the Coil should require. Drixar explains collections will not be needed with such frequency. He tells me this in his native tongue and I understand him fully with the knowledge of his speech seated amongst the endless assortment of other knowledge awakened within.

As I finish nourishing the Xyrax Coil, I turn the knob that opens the basin’s aperture and watch the liquid, glowing ethereally as it spirals down, down, and down into the fuel chamber. Almost immediately the turquoise flicker that emanates from the surface of the machine ends abruptly, replaced by the steady, blinding white glow created by the power of life and light stolen from the swamp and the brilliance I’ve swallowed from a distant sun.

ss

For the past week, I’ve been one of many detectives assigned to the case in Ashmont, South Carolina. A small, quiet town with a population of exactly 5,147, or at least that’s what the road sign used to say. Now, it’s a ghost town—every last soul gone without a trace, as if they’d vanished into thin air. The police department was at a loss, and state authorities were scratching their heads. So they brought us in, hoping a few fresh eyes might uncover what they’d missed. At first, I’d convinced myself this would be another dead-end case, something that would baffle us for a while, and then we’d all be called away to more “pressing” matters. But that was before I found the journal. It was stashed under the floorboards of the Twist family’s farmhouse, concealed like a hidden treasure. I remember dusting off the cover, noting the rough, calloused handwriting etched deeply into the paper. A journal kept by Jack Twist, the local farmer, his wife Maria, and their children, Ethan and Jessica. Reading it felt strange, invasive even, like I was peeking into his life through a veil that was too thin. But I had to know. I had to understand what happened here, no matter how strange or impossible the story might seem. “Go ahead, tell me why everyone vanished,” I whispered to the empty farmhouse as I opened the journal, flipping to the first date that caught my eye. The words seemed innocent enough, the daily thoughts of a farmer who’d lived the same routine for decades. But there was a subtle tension—an unease threading through his words, hidden in the margins. Journal of Jack Twist – April 21 I woke up at six a.m., just like every other day. Had flapjacks for breakfast, coffee on the side. Syrup was thick and sweet, just how I like it. Got me thinking it’d be even better with chocolate chips, though. Maybe I’ll surprise the kids with some tomorrow. That thought was enough to get my mouth watering. I can picture him—Jack, a man who worked with his hands, his life defined by the rhythm of planting and harvesting, season after season. I imagine him at the breakfast table, savoring a simple pleasure, his mind half on his family, half on the long day ahead. By six-thirty, I was out in the fields, preparing the soil. Spread some fertilizer and mixed in the compost. Maria joined me after she got the kids off to school. She’s got a good hand for this work, that woman. Always knows just how much to give to the earth to make it yield what we need. In his words, I could hear his admiration for Maria. Not the sentimental kind, but the practical, respectful admiration of a man who knew his wife’s worth in a quiet, unspoken way. A family bound not just by love, but by work, by shared purpose. By seven, the kids were off, and Maria was at my side in the field. We finished prepping the soil by seven forty-five and took a well-deserved break, sipping water and looking over our work. There’s something comforting in the pattern of the rows, each line straight and true. I paused, picturing the neat rows stretching out across the farmland. There was a rhythm to his life, a sense of order. But life in a place like Ashmont was often quiet and simple, right until it wasn’t. Around nine, we started planting—corn, soybeans, a few other vegetables. Just enough to keep us through the season and maybe sell a bit extra at the market come harvest. By noon, we stopped for lunch. I had a salad, though I’ll be honest, it wasn’t as good as Maria’s cooking. But work doesn’t wait, and soon we were back to it. He wrote with a blunt simplicity, a straightforwardness that felt like him. No pretension, no drama—just a farmer doing his job. I admired the way he took pride in his work, though he didn’t exactly say so. We fed the animals after lunch, kept an eye out for any pests and weeds that might creep in. Spent the rest of the afternoon moving from one chore to the next, checking on each crop, every animal, till it was eight in the evening. Then came the first sign of something out of place. My eyes widened as I read his next words. When I went outside after dinner, I saw something strange. Lights in the sky. Bright, almost too bright, moving fast—faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Too close to be a shooting star. At first, I thought maybe it was some military aircraft, though I’ve never seen one come this close to the fields. I could picture him, standing in the cool night air, the warm glow of the farmhouse behind him, staring up into the darkening sky as those strange lights passed overhead. It must have felt like an omen, a signal that something was coming, though he couldn’t know what. After that, I didn’t think too much about it. Just went to bed like always. I closed the journal, leaning back in my chair. It was just an ordinary day on the surface, but beneath the routine, there was a tension building—a feeling that things were about to go very wrong. Jack’s words were plain, unembellished, but they carried weight, a creeping unease that was beginning to settle over me. Back in the farmhouse, I took a deep breath, glancing around the empty rooms. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. It was silly, of course, but the sense of abandonment here was overpowering. This had been a family’s home, filled with life, warmth, laughter. Now it was nothing but hollow silence. “What did you see, Jack?” I murmured, running my hand over the rough wood of the table, imagining Jack and Maria sitting here with their children, talking over breakfast, planning their day. The empty town, the silence, the mystery—it was unsettling in a way I couldn’t put into words.

The journal continued, its pages now feeling heavier in my hands, as if they held secrets that were waiting to burst out. Jack Twist’s words from April 22 left me with a chill that I couldn’t quite shake. His life had followed a strict rhythm, like clockwork. But these entries were different—raw, scattered, his words grasping for something beyond his understanding. I flipped to April 22 and began to read. Journal of Jack Twist – April 22 Tonight something very weird happened. I saw something tall, human-like, skinny, just standing there in the dark outside. It made strange noises, like nothing I’d ever heard, something almost animal, yet more… calculated. I only got a glimpse, though. When I stepped out for a closer look, it was gone. Very, very strange. The image of Jack standing on his porch, the night wrapped around him like a heavy blanket, took shape in my mind. I could almost feel his unease—the way his pulse must have quickened as he strained to make out that figure in the dark, watching his every move. It was more than just an intruder; he described it with the kind of dread that seemed to go beyond logic. Why would someone—something—come all the way out here, in the dead of night, just to disappear the second he came near? The thought gnawed at me. This was more than a routine break-in. Whatever it was, Jack had sensed that this visitor wasn’t of the usual sort. Journal of Jack Twist – April 23 Today was strange, too. Got up at six a.m., had eggs and bacon with some coffee. The usual. By seven-thirty, I decided to head into town. I needed a few supplies, and, well… I figured I ought to tell someone about what I saw last night. Jack didn’t say much here, but I could feel his reluctance. In small towns like this, everyone knew each other’s business. To step out of line, to admit you’d seen something “strange,” was almost like asking for trouble. I could imagine him rehearsing his words on the drive, carefully choosing each phrase to sound reasonable. When I got to the police station, I told the officer, “Someone was on my property last night. Tall, skinny, and that’s all I could make out in the dark.” It must have taken him a while to get those words out, each syllable feeling heavier than the last, his mind racing with the memory of that figure in the shadows. I could picture the officer looking up, surprised but trying to keep his expression neutral. The officer nodded, and his response caught me off guard. “It’s strange,” he said, “we’ve been getting a lot of reports about people like that—tall, skinny, trespassing on properties around town. But we can’t figure out who they are.” The conversation must have left a pit in Jack’s stomach. He hadn’t been the only one to see this figure—or figures. Whatever was happening wasn’t isolated to his farm. There was an undercurrent, a creeping pattern that was starting to emerge, and yet nobody seemed able to make sense of it. After that, I left the station and headed to the store for supplies. Just before I walked in, I noticed the community board by the door, covered in missing persons posters. It was strange—too many faces looking back at me, too many families with no answers. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was all connected. Jack’s words were casual on the surface, but they hinted at something darker. Missing people in Ashmont wasn’t unheard of—sometimes people got into bad situations, fell on hard times, or even chose to leave. But this many, all at once? And now the reports of figures moving around the town at night, silent shadows with no clear intention? I closed the journal and sat back in my chair, tapping my fingers against the table. This case had gone from strange to unsettling in a way I hadn’t quite anticipated. There was a pattern here, a thread that tied everything together, though it was frayed and barely visible. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jack had seen something that no one was supposed to see. And whatever it was, it wasn’t done with him yet. Standing alone in the Twists’ farmhouse, I looked around, half expecting one of those tall, dark figures to be lurking in the shadows. The silence was so thick it felt oppressive, as if the whole house were holding its breath, waiting. Outside, the fields stretched out under a gray sky, the crops waving gently in the breeze, indifferent to the troubles brewing around them. “What were you thinking, Jack?” I murmured, almost hoping for an answer. The journal was my only connection to his world now, each page a glimpse into his mind as the events of Ashmont began to spiral out of control. And I had the sinking feeling that, in the coming days, Jack’s accounts would only get stranger.

Chapter Three Jack’s journal for April 23 had a new sense of urgency, a kind of dread that only seemed to grow with each sentence. I could feel his frustration, his helplessness as he tried to make sense of a town that was slowly slipping out of his control. I began to read, feeling the weight of each word as he grappled with the realization that something was very wrong. Journal of Jack Twist – April 23 I thought yesterday was strange, but today… today was different. I woke up at six a.m., like usual. First thing I noticed was the darkness—thicker than normal, like it was pressing down on the house. I went to flip on the lights, but nothing happened. Tried again, thinking maybe I’d just missed the switch in the dark. But no, it wasn’t me—the power was out. Jack must have felt a prickle of unease then, even if he didn’t say it. A simple power outage would have been one thing, but out here, without lights, the familiar farmhouse must have felt different, almost hostile. So, I figured, alright, I’ll go turn on the generator. That should get things back to normal. But when I tried it… nothing. Not even a hum. I pictured him standing there, in the dim morning light, a flashlight clutched in one hand as he went to inspect the generator. Jack was a man who understood machines, who could usually find the problem and fix it. But this? This was something he hadn’t anticipated. Then it got weirder. I pulled out my flashlight, clicked it on, and… nothing. Just dead. The frustration in his words was clear, and I could almost feel his hands tightening around the useless flashlight, his mind racing as he tried to make sense of it. It wasn’t just the power in the house. Nothing with a battery, nothing electric, was working. Not even his car. Not even the damn car would start. I tried a few times, just in case. Even hit the hood, as if that would do something, anything. But the engine just sat there, silent, not even trying to turn over. Nothing was working, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t just a regular power outage. There was no damage, no storm, nothing to explain it. So how? Jack’s mind was analytical; he wanted answers. But what do you do when you can’t even guess the question? That was the feeling he was wrestling with now, the unsettling realization that he might be in over his head. I knew what I had to do. Had to get into town, see if anyone else was dealing with the same thing. So I grabbed an apple and a protein bar, the kind of breakfast you eat when you’re in a hurry and don’t have time to think about it. And then, well… I hopped on my old bike. Hadn’t ridden that thing in ages, but with the car out, I didn’t have much of a choice. I could picture him pedaling down the empty roads, the farmhouses he passed equally quiet, almost abandoned-looking without any signs of life or light. It must have felt eerie, his familiar world transformed into something strange and silent. When I finally got into town, it was as if the whole place was holding its breath. The streets were empty, people huddled in small groups, all whispering to each other, their faces tight with worry. I spotted John and went over. “Hey, what’s happening?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. I could imagine the look on John’s face, the uncertainty there, as he glanced back and shook his head. “We don’t know,” he replied, his voice low, almost as if he were afraid to say it any louder. “How is this even possible?” I asked, though I already knew John didn’t have an answer. “I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be,” he said. And that was when the mayor stepped up, calling for everyone’s attention. In his description of the mayor’s announcement, I could hear the disbelief and fear mounting in the crowd. There was a growing sense of urgency, of people searching for someone to blame, or something to hold onto. But the idea of riding fifty miles to the next town, of having to rely on bikes and foot travel just to get help, was almost absurd. The mayor spoke up, his voice trembling just a little, though he tried to keep it steady. “It seems the radios aren’t working, either. No way to contact anyone. Our only choice, if we want help, is to ride out to the nearest town.” I pictured the townsfolk, murmuring anxiously to each other, a few gasping when someone reminded them how far the nearest town was. For most people in Ashmont, that fifty miles might as well have been an ocean. Someone in the crowd yelled out, “The closest town is over fifty miles away!” The hopelessness in Jack’s words here felt almost contagious, as if the entire town was sinking under the weight of a problem they couldn’t even define. What could they do, really? Who would volunteer to make that journey with no guarantee they’d come back with answers? A small group finally stepped forward, determined to make the trip in the morning. Chris, one of the volunteers, turned to me and asked, “Wait, don’t you have any horses, Jack?” I could picture the forced, hopeful smile on Chris’s face, the faint glimmer of optimism, as if a horse might make all the difference. I shook my head. “No, sorry. Only livestock I’ve got are cows and chickens.” Jack’s words felt hollow. There wasn’t much comfort to be had in a situation like this. He watched as the group gathered what little supplies they could manage, while he headed back to his bike and began the ride home. I could imagine him pedaling down that empty road again, his thoughts swirling with unanswered questions, each one more unsettling than the last. When I got back, I told Maria and the kids about the plan. “Tomorrow, we’ll head into town. We’ll stay at a hotel until the power comes back on.” I tried to sound confident, like this was just a temporary inconvenience. But there was an edge to his words, a hint of desperation. Jack was trying to reassure his family, but he couldn’t even reassure himself. He must have felt it, that creeping sense of dread as he fed the animals, noting how quiet they were, as if even they sensed something was wrong. As I finished up the chores, it hit me that the fridge wasn’t working, either. And I couldn’t help but think—if all this food goes bad, I’m going to be furious. Just one more damn thing to worry about. There was an almost resigned tone in those last words, as if Jack had no choice but to laugh bitterly at the absurdity of it all. He’d been preparing for this new season, planting crops, making plans, only to have everything thrown into disarray by something he couldn’t even understand. The feeling of isolation hung heavy in the air as I finished reading. The situation was spiraling out of control, and Jack’s voice reflected a mix of anger and fear as he clung to the normal routines of his life, even as they were slipping through his fingers. The small-town world he knew was changing, becoming something unfamiliar and dangerous, and he was powerless to stop it. I closed the journal and stared at the empty fields outside the window, imagining them under the heavy, unnatural darkness that Jack had described. The silence around me felt more oppressive than ever, as if something were waiting, just out of sight.

Chapter Four This final entry from Jack Twist’s journal was perhaps the most chilling thing I’d read since I’d arrived in Ashmont. The desperation in his words, the panic, the sense of inevitable doom—it all made the hairs on my arms stand up. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Jack writing those words, alone and frightened, knowing he’d likely never leave that town alive. Journal of Jack Twist – April 24 Nothing much happened today. The group left on their bikes, and I can only hope they’ll return tomorrow with help. Maria, the kids, and I spent the day in the hotel, watching the hours tick by. The water’s out too, so we’re drinking from water bottles. Another problem we don’t have a solution for.

Jack’s frustration felt almost tangible here, as if he were forcing himself to stay calm despite knowing that everything around him was falling apart. Journal of Jack Twist – April 25 They didn’t come back today. I keep telling myself it’s probably just slow going, maybe they’re camping out for the night somewhere along the way. Still… something doesn’t feel right. Journal of Jack Twist – April 26 Another day, and still no sign of the group. People are starting to get nervous—supplies are running low, and the mayor’s been pacing around like he’s got some sort of plan, but none of us believe him. The town’s starting to feel different, like it’s… shrinking. Journal of Jack Twist – April 27

This was the last entry. Jack’s handwriting was shaky, as if his hands had been trembling as he wrote. I took a breath and continued reading.

If someone finds this journal, please believe me. Please. I know how this must sound, but I have to tell the truth. I went outside this morning, looking for news, hoping to hear that maybe the group had finally made it back. But instead, all I found was frustration, people shouting and pacing, arguing over what little food we had left. And then, suddenly, one of the radios turned on.

Jack’s words were almost frantic here, his sentences choppy, as if he were reliving the moment as he wrote.

It started with static, just a hiss that filled the room, but then we heard something else. The sound. The same horrible noise from the other night. It was like… like nothing I’d ever heard before, some sort of garbled language, or maybe just noise, but it made my skin crawl. Everyone in the room just froze. We didn’t speak; we didn’t even breathe. The sound went on for five minutes—five long, horrible minutes—before it cut off again, leaving us in a silence that felt too heavy to bear. In the afternoon, things took a turn for the worse. Chris came back. He was alone, staggering into town, and he looked… broken. He wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing, and he was bleeding. His face was pale, his eyes vacant, like he was somewhere far away. He was muttering, mumbling words none of us could make out, and he looked so hollow, like something had taken every ounce of life out of him.

Jack’s description of Chris painted a haunting picture. I could see him standing there, barely recognizable, his face a twisted mask of pain and confusion. I continued reading, captivated by Jack’s raw fear.

John ran over to him, trying to get some answers. “Oh my God, Chris—what happened to you?!” he asked, his voice trembling. But Chris just kept muttering, as if he couldn’t even see John. His lips were cracked, his hands shaking. Half of his fingers were missing, and so were his teeth. The doctor finally came over and led him away, but none of us knew what to do. None of us knew what could have done that to a man. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing things outside—whispers, maybe, or footsteps, I wasn’t sure. But then… then I heard it. A loud hum, like a plane, but lower, heavier. I looked out the window, and what I saw…

I felt Jack’s terror here as if I were there myself, staring out into the night.

It was a UFO. Just floating there, silent, like it was waiting for something. I thought maybe I was dreaming, but then I saw the others coming out of their houses, one by one, drawn to the light. We all just stood there, staring up at it, until the doors of the ship opened. What came out of that thing… they weren’t human. They made that same horrible noise we’d heard on the radio, a language that scraped against my mind. Jeff, the town’s mechanic, was the first to step forward, his fists clenched. “Hey! We don’t know what you’re saying,” he yelled, his voice bold. “So either start speaking English, or I’ll kick your ass!” One of them moved toward Jeff, fast, reaching out with a hand that looked more like a claw. It grabbed him and pulled him into the ship, just like that. He didn’t scream. He didn’t even struggle. It was like he was in a trance. And then his son, ran forward with a knife, screaming. He stabbed one of the creatures, and when he pulled the knife out… there was no blood. Nothing. The creature didn’t even flinch. One of them took out a device—a metal rod, sleek and strange. It touched Will with it, just for a second, and he… he melted. Just collapsed into a puddle right there on the ground. They scooped him up and put what was left of him into a jar, like he was nothing more than a specimen. People started screaming, running in every direction, and I did too. I ran, as fast as I could, leaving behind everything—my family, my friends, my home. I don’t know why. I just knew I had to get away. I looked back once, and I could see buildings collapsing, the sky filled with smoke. The screams… I can still hear them. I don’t know how long I ran, but I ended up here, hiding, hoping they won’t find me. I know it’s only a matter of time before they do. I’m leaving this journal here. If anyone finds it, please… tell my story. Tell them what happened here. Love, Jack Twist. I sat back, the weight of Jack’s words pressing down on me. Could this really be what happened in Ashmont? The rational part of me wanted to dismiss it, to chalk it up to psychosis, to fear, to anything but the truth. But as I looked out over the empty town, the eerie silence felt heavier, as if the truth of Jack’s story lingered in the air, in the empty streets, in the abandoned buildings. There was no evidence of an earthquake. No signs of a mass exodus, of struggle, of anything that could explain the disappearance of 5,147 people. Nothing but Jack’s journal. And that might just be the most terrifying part of all.

There’s a hush that hangs after midnight in the waters of the Everglades–a silence that isn’t truly silent, threaded with the constant, murmuring chorus of crickets and frogs. They keep time, measuring the slow, rhythmic breath of night as it passes.

I wake, but not in the boathouse where I remember being chained... bound to a support beam by rusty shackles that scraped my bones each time I moved. I glance down, rubbing my wrists where the soreness still lingers. My skin feels bruised and raw and...different, somehow.

Did I escape? How? Or was I…left here?

I look around. The air is thick, dense with warm, damp dark–a wet heaviness I swallow down with each slow breath, tasting faintly of ancient bark and earth. My clothes are soaked, clinging to me, heavy with muck from the water that lies everywhere around me. My arms and legs are streaked with mud.

Did I swim here? Drag myself across these waters, using the last shreds of strength I didn’t know I had? The thought is impossible–but then, so is waking up alone, unbound.

For days I grew weaker–given only water to drink. But soon that wasn’t enough, and my limbs trembled as hunger gnawed at me. They ignored my hoarse pleas:

"For the love of God, I need something to eat."

They ignored me most of the time, absorbed by working on their–thing. I don’t know what to call it, whatever it was. They didn’t speak to me much, but the one that did seemed to have a limited grasp of English and the other one…he didn’t speak to me at all.

Now here I am, on this tiny island, as if I’d crawled up from the mud like some swamp creature, my back pressed to the knotted roots of a cypress to keep from sinking into the soft earth below.

There’s something strange that has been bothering me since I opened my eyes. Of course the fact that I’d been held captive for a week by two thin swamp hillbillies with hollow, sunken eyes bothers me…and that I woke up here, on this muddy island bothers me too; but that’s not what I mean. Something else entirely has been bothering me–it’s a feeling that has been persistently gnawing at me, telling me that something is different–just a little bit off from how it’s supposed to be–changed. Something’s changed.

It’s been there since I opened my eyes, and only now can I place it: there’s plenty of moonlight, the stars uncommonly bright, but beneath the arms and leaves of the canopy above, so little of that light reaches me...yet, in the dimness all around, where every shadow should be shrouded and vague, menacing...I don’t feel anxious or afraid, because despite the darkness, I can see perfectly.

How strange.

Should I feel this calm? The only feeling that seems to have any hold over me is hunger, and that feeling is strong. So, so strong, and I've only just noticed it now, when the thought of it was brought to mind. I think I should be traumatized, maybe? Something like that? After being kidnapped and held for over a week without being given anything to eat, shouldn’t I feel damaged? Out in the open in the Everglades without any sort of camping or survival gear, shouldn’t I be feeling something? Anything but hunger?

Has being in the swamp after nightfall ever bothered me? No. I don’t think it has. Not the endless press of black water or the sound of ripples as things move darkly, dangerously, just beneath the surface. Even the strange chorus of voices in the night closing in around me fails to be a problem.

Before those men–stretched out as long and elastic as rubber bands, with their smoldering, flame-like skin and reed-thin, bony arms–took me to their little lair, I’d come out here to stay. I’d come here for a reason–a purpose. I’d been meant to do something out here at night.

Why? What was I doing?

A sound rises faintly, and I realize immediately how uncommonly quiet it is. I shouldn’t hear it at all above the shrill twitching of crickets or the discordant croaking all around me. A wall of sound penetrated by this whisper of movement, like feathers brushing paper. It should be hidden and I know that I shouldn’t hear it–but I hear it anyway, even pinpointing that it’s coming from somewhere to my left. I turn my head.

It’s a moth. Why does it seem so familiar? Do I know this moth? Have we met?

No, that’s not it at all. Close. But that’s not it. Something about it is connected to the thing I’d been trying to recall before I heard it.

The memory is there, lurking on the frayed edges of my mind like a nightmare, quickly faded and forgotten. It’s still half-asleep in my mind, and I want to shake it awake so it can tell me the secrets it keeps–the things I want to know. But it’s just out of reach.

The moth moves toward me, stopping to hover. Waiting. Watching. I feel the urge to follow it rising like an instinct that belongs to someone else, so I climb to my feet. As soon as I do, it flutters further. I pause, so as not to startle it, and it circles back to face me, waiting again, so I release any hesitation and follow. The moth doesn’t stray far; it leads me to the edge of a small clearing, where a gnarled, twisted, and rotting trunk rises from the damp ground, its roots knotted in thick coils reaching down into the mud.

There, clinging to the trunk just above my head, is a fragile bloom. A small white flower, the roots reaching down, coiling into the bark and holding it aloft so it seems to float midair, swaying on the breeze. The contrast of the white petals glow like a specter in the gloom of the night.

Ghost orchid.

Giant sphinx moth.

The memory is finally awake. This is why I’d come out here. Before those men found me, I’d come out here alone with scent traps and night-vision cameras to track these orchids and these moths, to study how often the insects visited to pollinate, to find out if any factors in the environment were disrupting their patterns. It was work for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

My name is Elara Knox. I am a botanist. There are between 1,500 and 2,000 of these orchids left in the wild. This flower is endangered.

Wait–had I forgotten all of that and only remembered now? Even my own name? What had those men done to me? Everything I should remember–things I should know about myself–it’s all still there. I can feel it. But it teeters, misplaced on the edges of forgetting. Rearranged into corners where it doesn’t belong. Making sense of the fragments as I discover them and pull them to the surface is a daunting task. Daunting, but not impossible. Everything I am is still here, trapped in the clutches of forgetting and I just have to jar it loose…

________________

When they found my tent just before dawn, I was lying down to sleep. Their skin had been so hot it scorched the nylon when they snatched the tent’s doorway seam and yanked the zipper open. Their hands were like burning skillets when they grabbed me from my sleeping bag and dragged me out into the growing purple of dawn as it crawled to life on the edge of the horizon. The shorter one was in charge. He wore muddy overalls without a shirt beneath, and he made the taller one put the rust-pocked shackles on my wrists.

I screamed and screamed, and neither one of them ever said a word to me. The taller one just slung the opposite end of the chain over his shoulder, the bony blade attached to it as large and round as a serving platter. It stuck out beneath his stained undershirt with a striking, strange prominence. A strange smell hung in the air around them–familiar, yet I didn’t have the words to describe it at first–but then, it began to remind me of something I knew. It smelled like the frayed cord of something that should have been unplugged immediately…of melting microchips. They smelled like a pair of electrical fires.

The taller one, with one hand plunged deep into his pocket and the other clutching a fistful of corroded chain links, moved with the casual posture of a man on a leisurely walk with his small dog as he pulled me. He followed behind the shorter one leading the way deeper into the swamp.

*The taller of the two made no sound as we traveled through the swamp, yet the smaller one spoke excited and animatedly the entire time. He kept his voice low, the sound of it like the speaking whisper of a rat. Quietly, so as to prevent me from hearing he muttered strange things to other as they walked. Most of those things sounded like words in an unfamiliar language. In truth, I'm unsure of that assumption because I never heard a single syllable clearly enough to make sense of it, screaming at the top of my lungs for help as they pulled me along. I knew there was nobody around for miles to hear, but I screamed my head off anyway. *

________________

The moth flutters over the orchid, as though allowing me to take in its details before it will finally alight and I accept its strange invitation.

The thin white petals stretch outward, yawning open in thin, ghostly curls. It sways almost imperceptibly, breathing with the night, its pale petals drinking in the hints of moonlight until it seems to glow with it. The air around it carries a fragrance of sweet decay, something once dead, hauntingly brought back to life.

The moth lands, folding its wings, painted in patterns like shattered glass. It reflects against the dark like distant starlight as its silvery, soft body shimmers and finally settles. Its mirrored black eyes seem to stare back at me, and the feathered antennae on its head flex, feeling the texture of the orchid’s surface.

Unbidden and moving without my command, I watch in indescribable horror as my hand moves through the darkness with the silent speed of an owl descending from above. My fingers wrap quickly around both moth and orchid, tearing the flower away from the tree trunk, roots and all. The movement is quick, yet so delicately precise that I’m able to clutch both the flower and the moth in my fist without crushing either, feeling the insect squirm against my palm.

My mouth opens in a wide, hungry yawn, and I stuff both the moth and the orchid into the back of my throat, swallowing them whole.

I’d searched for one of these ghost orchids for over a week before the men found me. This was an important find: a rare and delicate endangered species, I’d come out here to study…

…and I’ve just swallowed it instead.

I don’t know what came over me. The Hunger was so strong, I couldn’t help myself.

The eerie calm I felt when I first awoke has fled–but it also still clings to me, like a strange duality. A part of me wants to vomit. But another part, a second self, seems to have watched all of this happen from within, uncaring. I feel both because I am both, perhaps?

I would never have done this willingly, yet I just watched my hand do it on its own, following the command to feed, given by something wordless and unknown in the dark. This hunger isn’t mine, but it is inside me. It doesn’t belong to me–it feels like a passenger, something with no name or shape, existing in all directions at once.

It is endless. Boundless.

Limitless.

And just like it, I feel boundless too. The Hunger takes no single form because it needs none. Just as I need none…

The act of consuming the orchid fills me with an odd lightness, a release of pressure, and the heaviness that I felt in the pit of my empty stomach seems to lift. But then, a moment later, it returns twice as strong. I am moving again, toward the water’s edge without telling my body to move, drawn to the soft light of fireflies gathered in the reeds.

This time I watch without horror, only detached fascination, as my hand darts through the air, snatching and swallowing them one by one. The Hunger ebbs and flows, like a pulse, each time I catch one and swallow. The memory of the orchid drifts from my mind, and I become consumed by the need to feed.

Eating the fireflies affects The Hunger differently somehow.

“They sate themselves on both: life a morsel and light a feast, Astravor…” a ghostly voice whispers from somewhere close by, startling me. Is there someone else out here? One of those strange men? Both of them?

Watching me?

“Hello?” I call out, my voice cracking slightly. It couldn’t be the voice of the shorter man. His was high pitched and the voice I've just heard was like a low rumble–an avalanche of stones rolling off the face of a cliff in the dark. It may be the taller man; I never heard him speak.

Two feelings strike at once: I am both calm, oddly unafraid, and horrified by the thought that someone might be out here with me in the dark. The sensation of both is a strange dichotomy, and I find the commingling of these states slightly soothing yet also deeply unsettling. These emotions–conflicting, binary–cohabitate within me, existing together in a quiet, alien harmony.

I wade into the thick mud at the water’s edge, drawn by the instinct of the Passenger within me, out into the dark, glittering water where the reflection of the moon floats distantly, waiting.

________________

They dragged me behind them, the shorter one quickening his pace as the sun begins to crest the horizon, and the tall one matches his speed with a fluid, eerie ease. I realize our destination is a boathouse, hidden deep at the swamp’s edge. Layers of faded paint peel from its warped walls, curling in thin strips that mimic the bark of the cypress that surround it. It’s camouflaged, forgotten, nestled in the swamp like something waiting to be uncovered.

When we reach the door, the shorter one stops and turns to me, his orange eyes gleam with a strange excitement. They seem to hold a light of their own, burning in his hollow, sunken face. He reaches out to touch my arm, and his fingers press against my skin with unbearable, scorching heat. I flinch back instinctively, and he withdraws his hand immediately, raising it as if in apology.

“They are one. They? One. Yet, also many,” he says, his high-pitched croak of a voice jarring against his appearance. He says it without breaking eye contact, and the words hang there, cryptic and strange, as though they have a meaning I am meant to understand. Something in his voice, and those seemingly random words feel deliberate. I don't understand what he's trying to tell me but those words feel violating, as though he’s intentionally reached into a part of me I hadn’t intended to share.

He glances at the tall one. “They are perfect. A vessel,” he murmurs. He pulls the door open on creaking, rusty hinges. The first pale shaft of morning sunlight breaks over the horizon, slanting through the trees, and casts the faintest glow across the door’s surface. I watch, confused and dazed, as the light stretches toward the short man’s hand where he grips the door, and the moment it makes contact, he hisses, jerking that hand away.

A thick plume of smoke rises from his skin where the light touched him, curling into the air. Staring, wide-eyed and bewildered, I immediately link this phenomenon with the unsettling length of their torsos and limbs. This is the first moment I consider that these men might be something other than human.

“Inside! Quick! Quickly!” he snaps to the taller one, voice sharpening with urgency. “The star awakens!”

________________

At first, I entered the swamp only because my feet were moving through the mud on their own, as if controlled by something else–the Hunger, my Passenger. It pulled me toward the moonlight, and something strange about that distant reflection haunting the water stirred within me like a shadow, dark and unsettling. I couldn’t put my finger on it right away, but I felt the other parts of me drawn to it too, unable to say why. When my curiosity took hold of my thoughts and the desire to keep swimming toward the light rose within me, The Hunger released its grip on my body, and I found my arms and legs freed to move by my own will. I kept drawing closer to it then without being forced.

After crossing the water of my own accord for several minutes, I understood what felt so wrong. That elusive, unsettling quality I’d sensed was finally clear: getting closer to the reflection of the moon wasn’t physically possible, and yet here I was, defying logic and science, watching that pale circle of light swell as I drew nearer.

I understand physics well enough to know this: the reflection of the moon should follow the same laws of perspective as everything else, shifting as I move, always receding, just out of reach. Any glimpse of it on the water’s surface is only an illusion. It doesn’t actually exist where I see it–that’s just a trick of light and distance. No matter how close I try to get, it should remain a fixed distance from me, mirroring my every move toward it, slipping away.

And yet, within minutes, the image of the moon sits buoyantly on the black surface of open water at the center of the glade, and I find myself treading water within its circle of light.

“They are hollow, and hollow things must fill themselves, Astravor. Drink the glimmer.” The voice, like a tremor in the shadows beneath the surface, low and laden, churns up as if from the mud deep below.

I put my lips to the water, drawing in a mouthful of foul, stagnant muck.

The voice laughs, a mirthful murmur that bleeds forth from the marrow of the night. Reverberating through the shadowed trees, echoing, rippling across the water like distant thunder.

“The water is a darkness drink. They drink of the glow for the glow is theirs alone.”

I try to speak, to tell the voice I don’t understand, but the only part that escapes my lips is the beginning of a word before The Hunger takes hold of me again. Demonstrating, it purses my lips, drawing in breath, slowly–deeply, slurping at the open air around me. My chin moves slowly from left to right, and as it does, the light begins to rise from the surface of the water. The reflection of the moon’s luster, in thin tendrils, passes between my lips, warm and slightly damp. I feel it slide down, down, and down my throat as I swallow in long, successive gulps, each one feeding the warmth into me, like sunlight wrapped in silk.

The taste is full and deep–swallowing the incandescence of pure energy, melting through me in a slow, simmering pleasure that spreads outward from within, tracing warmth along my veins.

Within moments, the moon still shines above, but its image, once cast against the waters of the Everglades like a talisman to fend off a little of midnight’s shadow, is completely gone. The water around me has transformed into a pool of endless ink.

I feel full. As I swim towards the shore, I feel the power of devoured light surging through me.

________________

Inside the boathouse, I’m struck by the oddness of the atmosphere, the unsettling way it defies the rot I’d seen outside. The building’s exterior had looked barely standing, condemned to the verge of collapse, warped boards peeling, waiting to sink into the swamp. Yet, inside the walls are seamless–no cracks, no gaps between the boards for daylight to seep through. The place has no windows, and though the day should be fully dawning outside by now, not a single sliver of light breaches through.

Instead, everything is steeped in a strange, teal phosphorescence, dim and pulsing eerily. The men drag me to a beam in the center of the room, attaching my chains with a quick series of metallic clinks. I cough against the thick, noxious stench. Smelling just as metallic and fetid as my captors, the air has the hot, rancid breath of an overheating machine in a constant state of exhale. I try breathing through my mouth, but even then the taste in the air is tinny, bitter. It’s somehow better than the smell, but not by much.

As my eyes adjust to the gloam within, I glance around the space and notice the source of the glow: in the far corner sits a strange contraption, some kind of machine unlike anything I’ve seen before.

The light pulses from it in rhythm, breathing out a turquoise haze. Tubes and wires twist around it at odd angles, looping and knotting, some diving back into the machine’s body, others disappearing into the walls and floor. Various pipes gleam with condensation, dripping in steady intervals, as though carrying something cold and viscous within. Its blue-green light radiates from no particular spot, but instead seems to diffuse across the entire surface, rising and falling as if in the act of breathing. The diaphanous movement radiating from it makes every shadow move and menace. Seemingly, they stalk the darkened spaces all around me, the edges of them reaching out from where they crouch as though they might devour me whole.

The shorter man notices my gaze lingering on the device. His jaundiced, carroty eyes gleam with an eager, unsettling excitement, and he steps into my line of sight, gesturing back to the machine behind him. He grins, eager, baring a mouthful of mismatched, crooked teeth in a way that makes my skin crawl.

When he speaks, his voice that same high-pitched trill incongruous with his form; a croaking squeezed from the throat of something drowned:

“Xyrax Coil dims. We dim. Stranded, yes? We wait beneath bad star. Poison star. Burning. Retrieval? They understands, yes? We wait. We fade.”

Fear rises from my stomach, twisting as his words coil through my mind, their meaning alien, indecipherable, though I feel certain he’s making an earnest attempt to explain something–but what exactly? Am I meant to understand and forgive them for kidnapping me from my tent? I stare at him, bewildered, a faint sob rising in my throat. The words are in English, but they’re impossible to parse. I look to the taller man, searching his face for some sign of familiarity or recognition, but he’s silent, his gaze is fixed on his partner, nodding along, as though agreeing with something unspoken.

The tall man meets my eyes, his lips twisting into a strange, wild grin that spreads far too wide, pulling, stretching, stretching and stretching until his mouth is as taut as rubber, skin pulling over his cheeks, distorting far past any human limit. For a horrifying moment, I think he may be trying to comfort me with that smile. A scream rises, raw and unbidden, tearing its way out from my stomach and clawing up my throat, a jagged, ragged sound that scrapes through me endlessly like shards of broken glass. It goes on, and on, and on until my lungs empty, the sound finally dwindling into a series of breathless, heaving sobs.

When I finally look up at the two of them again, the tall man's face, skin thin, nearly translucent and carved in shadows, looks down at his partner with an expression of shock and confusion.

“I don't understand.” I say quietly between the sobs. “I don't know what you were trying to tell me. I don't know what you want.”

The tall one, still looking at the shorter, furrows his brow and seems to raise his hands in an irritated gesture silently conveying: See? I told you.

The small one moves closer to me until his face is inches from mine. Looking over his shoulder he makes his own gesture to the other, as if telling him to shut up, though he hasn't spoken once.

“Weak,” he says, his putrid breath as hot as his touch. He points to himself, then to the strange machine, repeating the word: “Weak.”

Shrill and sickly, his voice seems to drone like the high pitched buzz of insects swarming over bones not yet denuded fully, still clinging to rot.

“They gather.” He says, pointing at me. “They nourish. Yes?”

“No,” I whisper timidly, “gather what? I don't understand what you're trying to–”

He presses his fingers against my lips to silence me, and the searing heat of his touch makes my skin crawl. I wrench my face away, disgust curling in my stomach, but he doesn’t seem bothered by my revulsion. Instead, he raises his finger, pointing to my temple.

“They are one. Also many. Fluid aspects inside. Yes?” I don't know what expression passes over my face but it must tell him something I don’t mean to and he begins nodding wildly.

“They–accommodate?” His infection seems to indicate an uncertainty whether this is the word he means to say.

“Yes. Accommodate. They accommodate more. Yes?”

“No!” The word chokes its way out of me. Bile rises in my throat. I feel sick, violated. The implication of his words is too horrifying to consider, too intimate, and I can’t bear the thought of what he seems to mean.

With a growing tremble of fear, I stammer: “They–they do not accommodate more! No accomodate–no more!”

How could he know? How could he–

“They accommodate more,” he repeats, a faint, twisted satisfaction in his tone. “More aspect. One more.”

A shiver courses through me, sharp and predatory, slithering through my body like something clawing slowly to life. Inside I feel it burrowing, intent to carve out space within me for itself.

________________

.Part 2.

ss

‘Aisling, have you actually listened to a single fucking thing she’s said?’

Aisling’s friend Orla asked her the question with all the thinly veiled cattiness of her new friends - the girls that she was slowly but surely ditching Aisling for. They congregated at the other side of the mob of classmates, squashed up against the exhibit on human evolution deep within the varnished wooden halls of the Scáth Ghleann Museum.

It had been happening for quite some time now, these moments of cattiness. Orla had been Aisling’s only friend since they had started secondary school together, and the two had felt as if they could take on whatever school could throw at them, followed by college and life itself beyond. The two would daydream, making grandiose plans for the things they would accomplish. Idle teenage fancies of success and fame, with no true thought put into them, daydreams which would become painfully clear had no place in the real world. Worlds away from expectant teachers, strict parents and judgmental classmates.

It used to be easy to daydream like that around Orla. In a world that seemed fake and disappointing, their dreams were as real to them as the air they breathed.

Orla didn’t daydream anymore. She had been stricken with the dream-killing disease: the fear of missing out. She never took her eyes away from the more popular girls for fear of missing even a fleeting opportunity to curry favour with them with vapid bloviations on Love Island or whatever other shite they were into that week.

Between needful glances in their direction, Orla had been picking fights over the most asinine things, things which they both knew were just excuses for Orla to eventually jump ship once she had worked up the nerve.

‘Take a guess, Orla.’

Unable to stomach Orla’s anxious glances, she turned her gaze towards the museum exhibits before them.

‘That one’s a… caveman.’ she said, as she pointed lazily at a Neanderthal. ‘And that one’s… also a caveman.’ She turned to look at Orla with a chipper smile that did not reach her eyes. ‘Not sure on the names but all of them are as fake and boring as your cool new friends. So why don’t you go and be fake and boring with them, and leave me the fuck alone, yeah?’

Orla looked at her with an expression that was at once deeply hurt, but also relieved. She considered responding, but walked away wordlessly with heavy steps.

‘Go get em, whoo!’ cheered Aisling in a whisper, her venom felt by those within earshot as they grimaced with second-hand embarrassment.

Aisling turned and allowed her smile to fade, while the popular girls cast judgmental glances and mocking smiles. She stood and looked into the eyes of humanity’s ancestors, their murky eyes uneven and their hair as bristly as a discount store brush.

Fake and boring.

She began to drift away again, dreaming of what it must have been like to live in ancient times. Would she have been valued then? Would she have had a place? Even now the school tour sauntered away and left her behind, either not realising or caring that she was absent.

‘Boring, isn’t it?’ came a voice from beside her.

A well-dressed man in his late thirties stood beside her, hands clasped as he stared idly at the exhibit with her. She didn’t hear him approach while she was lost in her reverie.

‘I tried to make it as interesting as possible to look at but… the youth of today are seldom interested in what came before us.’

He seemed to snap himself out of a daydream of his own, before offering his hand to her.

‘I’m the owner, pleased to meet you.’

Aisling shook his hand.

‘Aisling, nice to meet you. It’s not that bad honestly - I’m just having a bad day.’ she gave a weak smile as she realised briefly that she could not recall the last good day she had had.

‘No need to be so polite - it’s an awful exhibit, I know. They can never quite get the eyes right, can they?’

He asked those words with a strange sincerity and an amused exhale, referring to the eyes as if they were the subject of some private joke.

‘As I said, the youth of today are seldom interested in what has been before us humans… they are more so interested in what could have been.’

‘What could have been? I’m not quite sure I follow.’ inquired Aisling.

‘For all these exhibits we have… in every museum on the planet… all our collective knowledge and theories on the origin of our species… it’s all just a drop in the ocean.’ His eyes glazed over as he stared into space, before rapidly refocusing and turning to her with a mischievous grin. ‘Would you like to see something not boring?’

Aisling studied the man with narrowed eyes, trying to discern his intention. He seemed genuine enough, and certainly looked the part. Whether this was a prank or not, seeing what this man had to offer was certainly leagues more appealing than enduring another moment with her class and traitorous ex-friend.

‘Alright, lead on.’ she said with a less-than-chipper sweep of her hand.

‘Right this way madam.’ he replied with a sparkling grin.

He led her through exhibits she had seen already, towards a fire exit door and down some concrete stairs. After three full flights, Aisling reckoned they were deep underground.

The museum owner produced a ring of keys, and unlocked the door first with a key, followed then by a long key code.

‘This is the retired exhibits room.’ he said as he opened the door into darkness. He flicked a switch, and old yellowed lights flooded the room that looked as if it was built right into a natural cave formation.

‘We keep all the exhibits that we no longer display here. What people don’t know is that we also keep items that are not fit for display. I like to think of it as Scáth Ghleann’s second museum.’

‘What makes an item not fit for display?’ inquired Aisling, as she ran her hands along the chipped paint of a model pachycephalosaurus.

‘Not boring enough I suspect.’ replied the man with a charming wrinkle of his nose.

Aisling gave a half-hearted laugh as she wandered around, peeking under sheets of tarp as she went.

‘Where do you get them all?’ she asked.

‘For the model displays, we usually commission artists with government funds. It pays to have models that are aesthetically pleasing as well as scientifically and historically accurate. Well… as accurate as we think we know them to be.’

‘You make it sound like it’s all made up.’

‘That’s because… it is. Almost every book, every theory, every artefact… all just a snug little blanket of ignorance.’

‘And you know this for a fact?’

‘Mmmm, partially. Many avenues of truth have been lost to time, and others kept under lock and key. Except for one, that is.’

He approached a sheet of tarp which was draped over a small pillar-shaped object half his height.

‘Not all of the items in this room are for the museum. Certain items are part of my own private collection. In fact - I acquired a very special one today… one that may might show you just how made-up things really are.’

He took hold of the sheet of tarp, and gently lifted it away.

There was a plinth of basalt carved into a hexagonal shape. It looked as if it could have been lifted straight from the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Antrim. Sitting on the plinth was what appeared at first to be a helmet of a suit of armour. As Aisling drew nearer, she began to see that it was entirely different from any armour she had ever seen.

It was a bizarre thing, an oblate dome of bone ridges and a number of resinous lenses that gave the impression of eyeholes, but far too many to be practical for human eyes. Between the bone ridges were desiccated bundles of what she thought might have been lacquered wood, reddish-black and pressed into ovoid divots in the bone. Upon closer inspection, they seemed to be knots of striated muscle, though long since withered and dried solid, but remained somehow undecayed. She gave a hollow laugh as she was curiously reminded of beef jerky.

Aisling had once been to salt mines in Poland during another of her dreaded school trips, and had seen timber beams preserved by the salty air of the mines. They were as hard as stone to the touch. The ridges of this helmet reminded Aisling of those beams now, as she traced her finger along the brown bone which made up the helmet’s forehead.

‘It was found in a salt mine not far from here - just down the coast in fact. Reckon it’s organic, and the salt preserved it, stopping any bacteria from having their way with it after however long it was down there.’ said the man, studying Aisling’s reaction to the strange artefact.

‘How old is it?’ she asked, unable to take her eyes from it.

‘We don’t know. We don’t even know if it was just an ancient art piece made by us humans, or if it belonged to something else. As of this moment, you know as much as I do.’

Aisling stooped and looked into the helmet’s lenses, wondering what sights those eyes must have seen - if they ever saw anything at all, assuming it wasn’t some bizarre ornament or totem piece.

‘I need to take care of a few things. I won’t ask you to endure the rest of what my museum above has to offer, so you may stay here in this one if you wish. Judging by where your class left off, I’d imagine there is around half an hour left, so I’ll return by then. Enjoy.’ he said with a polite bow, and left at a brisk pace.

Once she was sure he had left, Aisling lifted the helmet from it’s plinth, holding it up in the light to study it closely. Motes of dust danced in the light and settled into the finest pores in the bone ridges, and the lenses possessed a curious iridescent quality as the light caught them at certain angles. They reminded Aisling of a pair of night vision binoculars her uncle showed her once, the eyes glinting red under certain lighting like the eyeshine of a cat.

She turned it around and, with only a second of hesitation, decided to place the helmet over her own head.

It did not sit comfortably. It’s width was nearly twice her own, and it wobbled awkwardly as it rested on her scalp.

Definitely not designed for humans… so what was it for?

As she began to muse on what the helmet’s purpose may have been, she suddenly felt a series of sharp pricks all across her scalp and neck.

She gave a yelp of shock, and immediately attempted to cast the helmet aside. To her horror, she discovered that the helmet was now anchored to her head via the same needles she felt pierce her. The ones in her neck undulated like a wasp’s sting, and she screamed in disgust as she tried in vain to pull the helmet free which even now, was closing around her neck like some predatory plant.

Frenzied thoughts of betrayal ran though her mind, that the museum owner was some human trafficker or abductor that was using some weird new device to inject her with poison. A more wishful thought ran through her mind that this was all some cruel, elaborate prank, and that she would be left with nothing but prick marks afterwards.

But the needles were in her neck, they were in her fucking brain. She did not feel pain or faintness beyond what had already befallen her, but as she clawed at the helmet, she could feel it grow warmer, softer and suppler. With that, her frenzy was renewed as she realised the needles in her neck were not injecting her - they were drinking from her.

Curious visions began to dance across her own, sights and colours which did not match what little she could see through the alien lenses of the exhibit room around her.

A part of her began to wonder if she were suffering delusions. If she had finally gone insane due to this ordeal on top of her already frail mental state following the loss of her only friend after years of judgement and ennui. Any thoughts on the state of her mind were washed away by the visions that followed; for it was no longer her mind alone.

Another’s mind pressed against hers, crushing it against the inside of the helmet with the vastness of it’s alien intellect, a sentience that fought for room inside the synapses of her already overworked brain.

Her vision filled with bizarre sights like spilled paint on a canvas. It bled across her consciousness until she was merely an observer in another’s body.

She was no longer in the museum. She was no longer in Scáth Ghleann. She wasn’t even on Earth anymore.

She stood on the precipice of another world’s mountains, observing the far-flung vistas below. Vast mountains that dwarfed anything seen on Earth spread across the world, their peaks crested by clouds of floating purple gel. The gravity of this world allowed them to float, and each cloud was like an ecosystem in itself. The peach-coloured sunlight caught the gel clouds and cast dancing caustics across the planes below where the distant forms of spindly bovines grazed.

Glints of amethyst could be seen darting between clouds. They were like dolphins, with much longer fins and iridescent feathers of silver scales. They belched small gusts of gas from secondary gills, the spitting action serving as propulsion through the air between clouds. They danced between clouds in pods of five, their expulsions filling the air with flecks of gel like cherry blossom leaves falling in the breeze.

I can join them.

Aisling’s thoughts were her own, but they were not. They were the thoughts of another that ran through her mind, the alien thought processes and language as compatible with her own as opposing computer operating systems and hardware. Only the barest meaning could be discerned, along with certain emotions that most closely aligned with human experience. In that regard her mind was flooded with boundless wonder and curiosity. All fear and panic that her human mind felt was washed away by the vastness of the alien’s joy.

She ached to swim with the amethyst dolphins, and the means with which she would do so were revealed to her as she looked down with many more eyes than she was used to.

Her form was arachnoid, with four legs attached to a rotund thorax, and four more limbs that would be used in the same manner as arms. Encasing this alien form was the armour that formed the complete set along with the helmet she wore. She flexed her arms, assured by the coiled strength contained within the dense bundles of artificial muscle and tendons of elastic metal. A quick mental impulse summoned an alien rune along one of the eye lenses, a confirmation that the jump jets and actuating sub-jets adorning the limbs and thorax were in perfect condition, ready to send her soaring through the low-gravity skies where other worlds would allow only brief jumps and aquatic propulsion.

She leapt from the mountain, a split-second burst of propulsion sending her into a gel cloud hundreds of meters ahead.

She darted through the cloud, every sub-jet firing in sequence until she swam as dexterously as she would with her own human limbs.

The lenses of her helm recorded every moment as organic memories, the very same memories that she watched now through the medium of her own brain in the museum that felt as if it were a million miles away.

Locking pace with a pod of amethyst dolphins, she darted between clouds, watching as they lapped up small golden fish that frantically darted towards the safety of towering anemones.

This alien she shared a mind with now was a being living a life of pure self-actualisation. It existed for this one purpose – to dive into a sea of stars. She searched it’s alien memories for anything resembling a name, some hint at the alien’s identity. It’s name was a concept that took time for her mind to digest, to find the right words for. The absolute barest meaning was made clear, devoid of alien culture or context.

FAR-DIVER.

The feelings of exhilaration and boundless curiosity were suddenly shot through with emotions more difficult to process, as her vision became blurred and the world bled away into a glitched impression of it’s former beauty.

Now dominating her sight was an ocean of toxic sump, the remnants of a species that squandered their time on a once-breathtaking oceanic paradise. Waves of sooty sludge crashed against the rusted skeletons of towering industrial factories, and the sky was a grey-green soup of radioactive smog.

She felt the boundless curiosity of the Far-Diver extend to all oceans, regardless of beauty and purity. The secrets of the deep places would not remain so for the Far-Diver, so long as it was blessed with long life and vitality afforded by it’s wondrous armour. Beside the ocean of it’s curiosity, humanity's own was a mere shallow puddle by comparison.

She dove into the murky depths, the artificial muscle and jets working all the harder to power through the sump. The suit’s lights activated, piercing the dark. A fleeting glimpse of brackish scales was seen, stirring on the edge of her light’s radius. A surge of adrenaline coursed through her body, fear and excitement flooding her mind in equal measure.

She activated a weapon on her right arm, a flute of bone connected to a small network of muscle bundles and chemical sacs.

The creature darted for her, it’s milky eyes and grimy teeth telling of a tortured existence in the caustic waters of this world.

She fired a barrage of bone flechettes, the muscles spasming them forth like a sneeze while the chemical sacs imbued each flechette with a chemical charge, enough to power their trajectory through the sump like miniscule torpedoes.

The creature fled, it’s face made into a pin cushion as it leaked half-clotted blood into the gloom.

Over a ridge lay the sunken remains of an old facility detected by the suit’s scanner arrays. Each rusted husk was picked out as a three-dimensional map overlaid on the helmet's lenses in a ghostly green.

The scene faded before Aisling could uncover the facility’s secrets as another scene came into view, heralded by the same visual glitch as before.

Many more sights were revealed to Aisling then, more than she could count.

She watched the Far-Diver travel the stars, diving into the oceans and lakes of worlds uncounted. Protected by it’s armour, and kept vital by it’s ageless mechanisms, it spent the centuries sating it’s boundless thirst for sights unseen.

Fluorescent gas nebulas. The crushing depths of high-pressure worlds. Turquoise waters with cities of coral, their inhabitants hospitable, and passionate about diving as the Far-Diver was. Entire oceans held within freezing asteroids.

It never remained in one place for long, ever seeking the next thrill, the next grand sight to add to it’s mental galleries of wonder. She watched the last world fall away beneath her through the viewing port of the Far-Diver’s ship as she set sail for the next. Stars drifted by like snow as decade-long journeys flew by like a film on fast forward.

She stood now on the viewing port again, her tedious journey at an end. Below here was an oceanic world, a storm-afflicted sphere of blue and green. One colossal continent dominated the face of the planet.

The part of her that retained dim awareness through the dominance of the Far-Diver’s consciousness was stricken with the sudden realisation that the world was none other than Earth, as it had been in the deep past.

With a swift input to the command console, the ship began descending towards the south-west coast of Pangaea, the viewing port soon covered in heavy sheets of rain.

Impossible sights assailed her mind when the ship broke through the clouds.

Hundreds of miles of dense forest, broken up by massive stone citadels. They looked like castles from medieval times, only miles long and hundreds of meters high. They loomed over walled cities that dwarfed even the capitals of modern Earth. Surface scans revealed heat signatures of several forms of predatory wildlife, with some defying any of the scanner’s attempts at classification. Smaller forms battled them frantically within the depths of the forests, with smaller groups breaking away to flee to the safety of the walled cities.

Lightning illuminated the silhouettes of what Aisling thought were mountains in the distance. Another flash of sheet lightning, longer this time, revealed the outline of many branches reaching into the clouds. They were trees, mountain-sized and indomitable against the endless storms. Entire towns and woodlands nestled between roots so vast that they reached into the foundations of the planet.

The mind of the Far-Diver was taken aback at the sheer size, impossible even among all the worlds it had been to. Aisling’s mind reeled at the sight of the apparently human architecture of the giant castle.

Surely there were no humans back then? Was it some other species? Another race of aliens not unlike the Far-Diver?

Her own mind and the memories of the Far-Diver competed for her brain’s resources, and she felt her head throb with the mental strain. She cast the thoughts aside and watched, her own curiosity overcoming her shock.

She set the ship down on a beach of black sand, surrounded by towering rain-slicked cliffs beneath clouds black with rain.

A flash of lightning revealed the scales of a massive serpent breaching the water, visible from miles away even through the driving rain.

A deep sense of trepidation filled the mind of the Far-Diver, as it wondered for the first time in it’s existence if the exploration of this world would be worth the risk. Aisling felt that something was profoundly wrong with the world, even beyond the revelation that it’s history was not what Aisling knew it to be.

Steeling her will, she waded into the crashing waves, the stabilisers in the Far-Diver’s legs bracing against the crashing foam.

Down she dove, into the oceans of a world all too familiar and yet, completely unrecognisable.

Forms swam into view that bore distant resemblances to the ocean life of Aisling’s time, the proto-forms of things that would one day become sharks and turtles. As she dove deeper, forms made themselves known that were more bizarre and unsettling, dark cephaloid things whose forms radiated and shifted in ways that caused Aisling’s eyes to ache.

Many frightening scenes were committed to the Far-Diver’s memory in those stygian depths. Flooded civilisations. Titanic creatures lying dreaming in the furthest places from all light and heat. Legions of disturbing aquatic forms, which more than once attempted to assail the Far-Diver. They were narrowly driven off by the armour’s weapons, but ammunition and energy were beginning to dwindle.

Exhausted and frightened, Aisling considered turning back. Just then, a signature was detected, a doorway to another place. Driven on by the Far-Diver’s timeless curiosity, she swam onwards towards the source of the signature.

Jutting out from a rocky cliff overlooking a black trench was a massive stone portal. It was made of a glassy black crystal, etched with hieroglyphics that the armour’s memory had no recollection of. Unable to restrain herself, she swam through against her better judgement.

Whereas the oceans of ancient Earth were filled with the ambient sounds of sea life and drifting currents, the water surrounding her now were possessed of a profound and unnatural silence. A blackness surrounded her that was nothing short of endless. The portal above her connected with rock that faded into nothing, and all around her was an inscrutable abyss.

The armour began to shiver and hum as it’s metabolism began to kick into overdrive, a warning rune on a lens showing temperatures of extreme cold.

Just a few seconds. There must be something. I must know.

She swam forward, extending the scanning range in a bid to find something, anything in this strange abyss.

Surely the portal must serve some purpose?

Against the backdrop of impenetrable black, Aisling felt her vision suddenly strain. Glitches crackled across the vision of the Far-Diver as it noticed something in the black. A sudden surge of frenzy overcame the Far-Diver, it’s alien heart hammering as it saw something so horrifying that it’s curiosity was blasted away, replaced by an atavistic panic for pure survival. Aisling felt herself grow faint, though she could only experience a diluted fraction of the Far-Diver’s true fear through the imperfect connection to her human brain.

In her haste to escape, she activated an emergency release of buoyancy gel, flooding the armour in specialised pockets that, when coupled with the thorax jets, could allow rapid ascent while the armour guarded against the sudden change in pressure.

She flew towards the portal, feeling her escape just within reach.

A brief and sudden spike of agony stole Aisling’s breath, and her sight began to wobble uncontrollably. As her sight tilted to one side, she saw the brief image of her body as it was taken away by some great aquatic thing, a momentary flash of dozens of silvery eyes being the only sight she ever saw of it.

Emergency seals preserved the Far-Diver’s head from the pressure of re-entering Earth’s oceans, and Aisling watched all the horrific sights she had seen before fly by her as the helmet of the Far-Diver rocketed towards the surface.

The helmet used the fading consciousness of the Far-Diver to record it’s last moments, it’s alien metabolism cursing it to retain consciousness for a significant time after decapitation.

The time it spent bobbing on the turbulent oceans went by in a series of glitchy blurs.

Finally, the beach of black sand where she had left her spacecraft came into view, surrounded by dark figures. One of them pointed towards the water as the helmet washed ashore.

The figures drew closer; dark, osseous things of bone plates and sinuous muscle. Silvery eyes were seen in the dark through the rain, eyes so very much like those terrible eyes seen in the unknown black. A flash of lightning revealed the thing’s face - the face of a human man, exhausted but stoic.

Aisling watched the scene breathlessly as the man lifted the helmet, examining it closely. His eyes were stern, and as he stared intently into the many eye lenses of the helmet, a curious light formed on his forehead. A silvery tattoo-like pattern formed, not unlike a Celtic knot, four-cornered and glowing softly. Aisling felt a third mind now, a human mind press against her’s and the Far-Diver’s, but with the gentleness of a nurse assessing injury.

A sadness hung over the eyes of the man as he seemed to understand the Far-Diver’s fate. He handed the helmet to one of his men, ordering him to do something with it. He spoke with a language that sounded like Gaelic, but was possessed of a syntax and vocabulary that Aisling did not recognise from any variant she had ever learned of during the course of her education. She could discern no meaning from the words.

The scene began to bleed away now as the Far-Diver’s consciousness ceased completely.

The knowledge of what became of the helmet, of where it travelled during the course of deep time and how it ended up in the museum so well-preserved, was lost to the eons.

Aisling’s mind expanded as her brain suddenly felt relieved of a massive burden, her mind now her own once again. She ripped the helmet from her head, gasping and shuddering with fear. Her nose was drenched in blood, and her head felt as if she had been bludgeoned.

No longer caring about attendance of her school trip, she ran out of the room, up the stairs and straight out of the building, clutching her nose as she went.

As she cast fleeting glances at the exhibits she passed on her way, a thought kept repeating itself with frantic insistence.

Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake.

-

Three days later, Aisling sat by a jetty, looking out to sea. It was a clear night, serene and cool, illuminated in silver by the light of a full moon.

Aisling had been thinking deeply on the things she had seen through the eyes of the Far-Diver. It had taken her days to process it all, to try and find some semblance of sense in those alien vistas, both wondrous and terrifying in equal measure.

She had no way of knowing how much of it was real beyond what she felt was real - that was to say, all of what she had seen. The powers that be saw fit to cover up Earth’s true history with lies about our evolution. Lies about life on earth and beyond. Lies about everything, the very foundations of all that is known. As to why was completely unknown to her. She had no idea on where to even begin her search.

Aisling had always felt that she was born in the wrong time, the wrong place. That she was not long for this world. A part of her mind was irreversibly changed by her experience with the helm of the Far-Diver. She was stricken with a deep and gnawing curiosity, cursed with an insatiable need to know and explore everything.

But alas, she was born too late to live through the dark and wondrous struggles of humanity's true history. Born far too early to have the means of exploring the stars in the way the Far-Diver did.

Land-locked on modern Earth, and with no way to sate her curiosity, she turned to the mysterious museum owner, in the hopes that she could experience the visions of the Far-Diver once again.

When Aisling told the museum staff of her experience with the owner and the helmet in his private collection in the retired exhibits room, she was regarded with the same judgmental gaze and mocking tone that she had endured for her whole life.

‘The owner is a man in his seventies, and he’s been residing in his holiday home in Spain for the past year.’ said the receptionist, as if she were a teacher explaining something to a hated student. ‘And we certainly don’t have a retired exhibits room, nor do we have any helmet matching your description.’

‘I hate to ask but could I please just take a look-’

The receptionist answered a phone call, ending the conversation.

I’ll just find out myself so.

Aisling entered the museum, loitering around the exhibits closest to the fire exit door where the supposed owner had taken her. They would likely have CCTV. Someone would surely see her. But if she could get to the bottom, if she could just get a glimpse or find some other way in…

She walked briskly, trying to appear as if she were simply looking for a restroom, but she was too anxious to maintain the façade. The second she touched the door, she ran, bounding down the stairs three at a time.

She reached the door of the retired exhibit room, locked tight.

‘Hey! Come back up here now or I’m calling the guards!’

The security guard would be there in seconds. The door was locked tight, with no other avenues of access. Peering through the dusty window in the door, Aisling was met with the sight of the retired exhibit room as she knew it. This time however, the room was drenched in the harsh light of several floodlights. They were focused on a central point, and she recognised the basalt plinth that held the helm of the Far-Diver. Milling about the room were official-looking men, adorned in dark green suits and wielding scientific-looking instruments and tools that she did not recognise.

Before she could observe any further, she was seized roughly by the security guard and dragged up the stairs by her forearm.

‘Who were they? Who were they!?’ she demanded, desperate to know what other secrets she had now stumbled into. Her demands were met only with silence.

The guard marched her to the front door, and with a simple statement of ‘You’re barred, leave now or I’ll call the Gardaí.’ left her standing in the rain-soaked street.

Her mind reeled with what she had seen. She had sought answers in coming to the museum, but now she was left with more questions than ever before.

Who were the men in the dark green suits? What did they want with the helm? And why were the museum staff being so secretive about it all?

As she walked in the rain, she observed the town all about her. She looked to the nearby sea, to the cliffs around the town’s valley, into the blackness of the Scáth Ghleann wilderness.

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, she began to wonder just how much of it all was truly real.

The Miracle of the Burning Crane

In the divided city of Machiryo Bay, corporate giant Sacred Dynamics makes the controversial decision to seize and demolish sacred temples and build branch offices. Two agents attempt to do their jobs amidst protest. Two politicians discover they have a lot more in common than they know. Two media hosts discover the consequences of radicalization. In a divided and polarized age- what is the price of industry? Of balance?

Part One: Of Prophets and Protest
Part Two: And to Kill a God

Part Three: What is the Price of a Miracle?

Part Four: Please Restrain Your Enthusiasm for Divine Sacrifice

Part Six: The Great Black Pyramid of Justice

TMBC 1.5: Let Our Legal Beliefs Cloud our Religious Judgments  

TELEVISION - CHANNELS BEING FLIPPED - ARBOR’S ROOM- HE PLAYS LIGHT MUSIC WHILE SEARCHING FOR A GOOD CHANNEL

[Machiryo Morning Media - The Old Faithful Wave]

Ami Zhou: “Welcome back to the show- I’m Ami Zhou. And this the Old Faithful Wave. 

We as a society are coming to a crossroads. Something is going to happen. The Old Gods are calling for it- and make no mistake. They will act. The miracle proved that.

There are those who will claim that the miracle was engineered by far-faith activists. This is a lie- I was at the miracle when it happened and I saw the wrath of our old gods shunning our far fallen society.

We need a return to the old faith. We need to bring back our old values. And then the gods will be pleased and the blessings will come like rain.

Today we have an inspiring guest—a figure in our city who’s showing what it really means to live out one’s faith amidst changing times. Let’s welcome to the show again, Prophet Sabian Lark. Welcome, Prophet.”

Prophet Lark: “Thank you, Ami. It's a pleasure to be here.”

Ami Zhou: “Prophet, so many out there soften their messages, talking about congregants like ‘customers,’ bending their teachings to the corporate world. It’s disturbing, truly disturbing. But you’re not up there with your name flashing on some huge sign. It’s just you, your faith, and your children of the sky, living her word. And here you are, not afraid to speak on issues like the importance of sacrifice, on standing up against these...these creeping, disgusting influences, these new gods of industry. Tell us, Prophet, why do you speak out, even knowing some might be uncomfortable?”

Prophet Lark: “That’s the right question, Ami. Why take a risk? I’ll tell you—it comes from a place of conviction. Just a few years ago, I was praying, reflecting on the election two years ago, looking at these platforms. And what I saw was an affront to our faith on one side and, frankly, what felt like salvation on the other.”

Ami Zhou: “So you looked at the state of things—these corporate ‘new gods,’ as they call them, with their power and money, creeping in and tainting everything. What stood out to you as you prayed on this?”

Prophet Lark: “When I looked at the corporate creed these companies are pushing, it read like scripture from something sinister. A dark prophecy of the sun. And there were those like Neyling standing for our traditional values. It came like a beacon, a reminder of where we should be going as a people. Our shepherdless people need leaders who will remind them of what we stand for and what we reject. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why I’ll keep speaking, even as the false-faith media attempts to silence me and my people.”

Ami Zhou: “There you have it, Machiryo. A voice of strength against the industrial tide. We’ll be watching and listening. Thank you, Prophet, for sharing your truth with us today.”

TV clicks.

[Machiryo Modern Media - The Lind Quarry Show]

Lind Quarry: "Folks, you can turn off any doubts you might have, because it’s all quite clear—there’s only one choice for our future. There’s no confusion, no shadow of a doubt about who deserves your vote. In fact, by the end of this message, you'll know why in the next election cycle next month- I will be running myself.

When you look at the two parties, two paths for our city, it’s not simply about politics and gods anymore; it’s about preserving the very soul of our society. We’re not dealing with two parties of equal morals here- no, listeners, that would be far too simple.”

Sound of a drumroll.

Lind Quarry: “They are not morally equal. Not by a long shot. 

The old faiths? Their followers may call it tradition, call it reverence. But what we’ve seen creep out from their ranks is far more than just outmoded beliefs- it’s a dark, crawling rot. It’s demonic in nature. Yes, listeners- demonic. They undermine the future of our families, our prosperity, everything we hold dear, and call it ‘sacrifice.’

They embrace the very bloodshed that these new gods of industry seek to purge. If you believe, as I do, that there’s no place for blood sacrifice in our society, then your choice is clear. 

If you believe that our children deserve a future free from these ancient false-faiths, the decision is obvious.

Neyling and the old faith stand for everything that we reject. And so, if you stand with our gods, our industry, our prosperity- then this coming election will be the easiest choice you’ll ever make.

Our city has no place for the blood-soaked idols of old- nor the mediators who only slightly appeal to the true path like Councilor Lowe. It’s time to act. It’s time to take a stand against the enemy within, and I know you’ll make the right choice.”

Machiryo City Anthem plays.

[Harrow’s Home District - Press Conference - Meadowland]

Orchid Harrow: “We as a society? We have failed our people. We have alienated our citizens, our voting base, our friends and our family. And for what? To keep the ruling base suffocating us as they stand about our shoulders?

The protests continue to rage and we are choosing to ignore them. We continue to push state sanctioned media and propaganda and hope things will turn up a-okay. And sorry folks- that’s just not going to happen.

The fundamentalists continue to push an expansion of the sacrifice districts. The industrialists continue to push for the expansion of their domain- kicking people out of their homes, destroying our livelihoods.

There’s no good option here. We are too divided and too pushed into these two little boxes that it’s easier to stay home and ignore the problems facing our society than act and fight for change.

To those of you who feel as I do: how much self-sacrifice are we willing to do before we realize- we are getting no blessings in return?”

TV clicks.

𐂷 - Arbor Moss

I am starting to empathize, more so than ever before. I think I’m starting to understand the protests, more so than ever before. It felt like a fight for the soul of our city, not a misguided annoyance against economy and progress.

I felt wrong. I felt weird. I didn’t want to change. Because that would mean admitting I was wrong. It was wrong to shun the old faith’s fears of cultural destruction. It was unfair of me to generalize all of the old faiths as cruel, sacrificial, as dark as the true blood faiths of old.

I am upset at myself. I am conflicted. There are limits that I am starting to recognize now- both in the industry and in the old faiths. Surely there was some middle ground- the one preached by the young politician I’d settled my channel to.

A reduction of expansion. A reduction of unfair sacrifice. 

I finished selecting my outfit for the day and yawned, tired. I went into my apartment’s kitchen, heated up a waffle and ate it. I made sure to break off a piece for a little personal god, its idol, a little porcelain fish-wolf. I placed a piece upon its offering basket and finished my own meal. 

A little god of luck, a god of the little moments to aid me in trying times.

I checked my watch. It was time to head to Hallow Square- I texted Maren, and I made my way downstairs, then down the street, and following stairs that traveled downwards into the subway system of the city.

I paid for my tickets in blood, a pinprick against my palm as I entered. A small sacrifice we paid every day. A minimal one. 

I waited for the train, anxiously checking my watch. The trains had been known to come late on days like these, days of unrest. Once, the industry bosses of the subway had attempted to decrease the salary of the workers, so they went on strike.

The city was essentially closed for the week. Eventually, the richer folks up in the Meadowland decided that they had gone too far and called to fire the workers. They were fired, and the train system, instead of being handled by the traditional road and horse deities, were handed over to the new industry gods.

My train arrives.

A man, old and ragged, taps my shoulder. “Hey. Hey you,” he snarls, “the end is nigh! May the false-faiths be CRUSHED!” The soapbox preacher shoves a dirty pamphlet in my hand and brushes past me to accost riders getting off the train.

I get on. I find a seat. There are eye-signs everywhere, glowing little things to watch the passengers, stop crime.

One swivels and peers at me, then the end-times booklet, then pivots away. I glance at the pamphlet- ‘THEY CANT REPLACE US’, I flip through it, ‘THE OLD FAITH WILL BE BACK’, and again, ‘BURNING CRANE IS A MIRACLE- WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR THE UNFAITHFUL?’

I toss the hate-speech pamphlet into the nearest trashcan when the train arrives at the station. A little god of rubbish devours it, a nervous, oil-covered thing deep in the pile.

But the words don’t end there. It’s becoming more evident. The newspapers all are starting to sound a little too real, too scary. ‘OPINION: OLD FAITHS UNDERMINE OUR CITY VALUES’, and ‘FACT: BURNING CRANE MIRACLE AN ATTACK ON OUR SOULS?’

There are conspiracy theorists plaguing the alleys, illegal idols of connections and spiders openly starting to be displayed. I approach the south of Hallow Square, the societal center of the city.

Yellow tape and investigators cordon off the site of the miracle, still under investigation. I sight Maren towards the east, sitting down. She’s pretty, there, against a backdrop of old German-style folk buildings.

“Maren!” I shout, walking up to her. 

She looks up from her phone. “Did you see the news?”

“What?” I ask. 

She shows me- Lind Quarry has begun a sort of campaign, a late campaign for the election in December, one unheard of. “I think he’s right, you know,” Maren comments. “His show is also one of the biggest out there.”

“I hope that goes… somewhere,” I wonder. I’m unsure. “How are you doing?”

“Pretty good. I dreamt of a drowning star,” Maren glances, “pretty weird stuff, right?”

“No totally,” I affirm, “I dreamt of, well, I’m not quite sure.” It had something to do with festivals and bloodshed. As most of my dreams always were. Something to do with odd experiences, probably. 

Maren stares at the site where the government is documenting the miracle. Some of the investigative agents are starting to spread and ask people questions. 

“I think the old faith went too fair with that one,” Maren comments, shaking her head. She sticks her hand in her coat disapprovingly.

“There’s always a couple bad eggs,” I reckon. “I heard it was engineered?”

She shakes her head. “Engineered or not- this goes to show the old faith is a tool of the past, something we can no longer abide with. To hell with them all.“

“I mean, I get blood sacrifice is a bad thing,” I begin, “but we’re headed towards a reduction of all blood sacrifice into animal sacrifice in the next two decades. And those faiths- they are integral to our culture- and you have to admit,” I falter, just for a moment, choosing my words, “we are destroying culture by taking away some of their temples.”

Maren disagrees, shaking her head. “There’s a point where they’ve gone too far- like Lind says- we need to choose sides. Choosing nothing just means a point in their directions.”

“I think a lot of people would disagree with that- there’s limits to what we can do, how much of our old culture we should shed, and how much the industry should go,” I argue. “And we just don’t see that in today’s parties- except for Councilor Harrow.”

“We all need to work, Arbor, don’t be ridiculous," Maren points out. “The industry provides the economy. Harrow represents the *Meadowland District-*” I understand her point, feeling a bit defeated, “only the rich folks up there have the time to think about these things- they aren’t being impacted when we start losing our jobs.” 

I want to rebut her argument, to say that allowing ourselves to be swallowed up is not a method of thinking at all. But I don’t. Because I’ve changed too much, and I’m scared to let her know. 

I like her too much. There is a tense silence between us. 

“I don’t really want to talk about politics,” I decide, cutting the thick air of silence. “Can we go look at that restaurant?”

I extend a hand, and she takes it. “Let’s do it,” she agrees, joyful. And cheery, we set out. 

The newly opened restaurant was a strange little place, traditional. Not something new and franchised, not a running chain of fast-food temples but something different, something older.

“A restaurant to the harbor-lady of the docks,” I say aloud, reading the side. It’s pretty, old, and conical. I smelt the roast fish, caught fresh from the bay, the crab and lobster. I licked my lips. “Um,” this was already quite awkward, “what do you like to eat?”

She laughed awkwardly, with me. “I quite like lobster.”

We found ourselves sitting at an open air booth on the second floor. I stared out into the square, watching the ever-bustling city square move and go about their day, even as agents of the investigative bureau crowd around and spread, asking around and watching us all.

We order, and we kind of stay silent. I don’t really know why its so awkward. We’ve been on sort of dates before? I’m unsure. It must be something in the air. I bring up my phone and start to scroll mindlessly. 

She does the same.

An investigative agent comes up to us. “Hey guys!” she cheers, a bit falsely. “My name is Agent Mabel Song with the Sacrificial Crimes division, and we have some questions for you.” 

She retrieves a badge from her stark red robes, and displays it to us. We read it. “Sacrificial Crimes?” Maren inquires. “Not Unsanctioned Miracles?”

Agent Song shrugs it away. “We’re all pretty spread thin. The head office needed everyone onboard in this case.” I nod along. “We suspect a cell of a radical old-faith terror group may be responsible- the same responsible for the Verne Company Massacre a few months ago and the recent illegal sacrifices.”

Maren looks taken aback. “Illegal sacrifices?”

“We elected not to release this to the general public due to the potential for provoking unrest at that time,” Mabel answers. “But now- spread their dangers. We suspect this group is the same Free Orchard, a radical old-faith coalition hell bent on destroying the New Gods and returning the earth into the hands of the old believers.”

I nod. She continues. “Now- we’re looking for a possible magician we suspect may be responsible for the miracle.” 

She brings up a glass box of sand with one hand, the other atop it. She focuses, and the sand shifts, turning into half of a face, only a side-view. “Eye-sigils flagged this man acting quite suspiciously on the day of the miracle. Does he look familiar?”

I feel a chill go up my spine. He does seem quite familiar. Oddly familiar. “I think so?”

Her eyes seem to light up. Maren gives me an odd look. “Yeah, he looks like-” I think back- trying to find his name, “this journalist I keep seeing. Nick Kerry.”

“We suspect he’s a priest of an illegal and disallowed sayer-god. An illegal god of words not allowed by any of the main news sources. Did he ask you anything?"

I think back- I had told him a lot. Too much. And now that I was thinking on it- I was normally able to resist the speech sigils and faiths. But he’d lulled me in so easily. “Yes- he asked me thoughts and my- oh my god,” I realize now, sort of. He’s asked me for a name, someone to ask more of. “He asked me for someone who’d support an opposing viewpoint.”

I find my phone and immediately text my boss, Doug. I’d never talked to him- and if I was wrong, I would most definitely be looked at strangely. ‘DOUG ARE YOU OKAY’.

Maren shrugs. “I don’t really know what’s going on.”

Mabel nods confusedly. “What’s this name? The department can help-”

“Doug,” I blabber. “Doug Medea- he’s a good man. I don’t know what’s going to happen-” I continue to text- then call him, “he’s not picking up.”

There is a charge in the air now. This feeling is only darkened with the next few words that come out of the radio on Agent Song’s waist. “We’ve just received a report regarding a disturbance on the Hallow Square defense perimeter. I repeat we’ve just received a- hold on-”

Mabel picks it up. “What’s going on?”

Another agent on the other side pauses. “That’s odd,” she murmurs. “I’m at substation fourteen,” there is a distant pinch of fear in her voice. “Hey, there’s no one here. None of the protective sigils are active.” There is a pause. “I see signs of battle but no bodies- I’m requesting backup.”

“On my way,” Mabel remarks.

But more came. “I see a note- it’s,” there’s a tense pause. “Oh. We’ve been betrayed. Oh my god. It’s inside me- it’s transforming me- it’s- it’s-”

There is silence. Me and Mabel stare at each other. I am clearly not meant to me hearing this.

And then, across the restaurant on the far end of the square, right along the bay, near the docks there is a humming. And then it begins to grow. Mabel tells us to stand. She tells us to look away. 

There's no time. There’s only an explosion. 

☈ - Cameron Bell

I watch the explosion from the Dirty Bird Ink van. It’s beautiful- and the tattoo artists’ ritual handiwork is clear, and the same signature of a burning crane rises into the air. An engineered miracle or not- it's a step in a hallowed, sacred direction, a direction our society so desperately needs to return to.

Nick opens the van door and the two artists step inside, laughing, sweating. “Good work,” he congratulates. “Were you spotted?”

Andy shakes his head while he laughs, sweat running down his face. His tattoos glow under the heat. “But does it matter?”

“Not really,” Nick confesses. In between the four of us, the heretic struggles, voice muffled through the gag. “Oh, shut it.”

Andy flicks a security badge off his uniform. “To think they thought I was giving them all free protection sigil tats,” he remarked, laughing it off. “Finally set them off. Fire.”

“How- exactly?” I asked, a bit confused.

Andy shrugs. “I worked in security. Offered some of my shift-mates tattoos on the house-”

Clarissa finishes his sentence, “a while. Transfiguration sigils, really- and we left the false faith bureau a little surprise to set that whole explosion off.”

“Just a little convincing- Nick’s Sayergod came in handy with that,” the other Weyhound explains. “And now,” he directs my attention back to the company boss, bound and gagged, "it's your part.”

Of course. We’d been over this. I was the only one who knew how to exarchify an offering to my god, the Mother Flying Above. Mae’yr of the River and the Sky. The Cycle of Crane and Fish.

The Weyhounds had their talents in faking miracles- but this- this was something that only a high priest could do. And this was my part. 

“It’s high time we show the false-faiths what true faith is!” I declare. The heretic boss looks at me with fear in his eyes. Nick claps a little. Clarissa offers me her tattoo gun, hacked to allow the marks of the faith.

Nick pulls back the gag. He invokes the name of his god. “Tell me- heretic- do you believe in your cause?”

“Yes!” Doug snaps. “I do- we’re trying to stop people like-” he puts the gag back on. 

Andy opens the doors- we’re ready.

I ready the tattoo gun. I place it upon his chest. “Oh sacred one above,” I begin, “let this offering come onto us as a vessel of your holiness. May the river,” his head shakes back and forth, “flow through this offering in your name.” He struggles, but the others hold him down. “May your skies welcome him into your arms. Let him take flight and crush the unbelievers. Let the path of the Crane take him- and crush the fish amongst us!”

And then I set the gun and draw the mark of the Heavens Devouring the Fish, the holy angel-mark of the faith.

I draw the sigil of Mae’yr to call upon her sacred power. I draw the outline of the grand cycle around it. I draw the marks of the Crane, the Fish, the Sailor, the Climber, and lastly, the Riversky.

And then it is done. I recite the prayer in her holy tongue. I see the light in his eyes go out. I take the gag off. 

“What did you do to me?!” he shrieks. “I feel it inside me!” I cut the straps away. 

“Make it stop-” he coughs up a feather, “change me back!” 

He coughs up a fish. “Too late,” I shrug. “Your insides are her insides.”

Nick cuts through the rest of his binds. “Go,” he snarls, “you’re free.”

I recite the prayer of the Riversky, this time, in English. “The open sky misses the river,” Doug gets up and trips, falling off, “her waters long gone astray,” he looks back, confused, scared, “her heart grows old with hunger,” he runs, “to devour those who’ve gone away.”

The open sky misses the river,

her waters long gone astray,

her heart grows old with hunger,

to devour those who’ve gone away.

𐂷 - Arbor Moss

We’re evacuating. Mabel is shouting at everyone to go, to leave immediately and evacuate the area. Something is going to happen. Something is happening.

Me and Maren get up. “Wait!” Mabel shouts. “You’re coming with me- I need to know as much about this journalist fellow before-”

I cut in. “I don’t really know any more-”

A couple rushes past me. Mabel grabs me hand and pulls me closer. “I need to know what else to told him.” She 

Maren catches up to us and the three of us head down stairs, struggling through the crowd of exiting members. It’s a four story restaurant, and it’s taking too long- someone slips, falls, and this delays us some more.

We squeeze through, “I never,” Mabel begins, “got your names.”

I make it outside the building first. “Arbor Moss,” I say, “and she’s-”

“Maren Duval,” my partner answers.

The two get outside, panting. Other agents are everywhere, evacuating the rest of the square. “So did I interrupt your date?” Mabel asks.

I shrug, unsure. “It wasn’t going too well.”

“Yeah,” Maren notes. “Not well.”

“We’re coworkers,” I explain.

“I don’t care,” Mabel decides. “We’re leaving- now.”

And then I hear a familiar voice. I look towards the direction of the explosion, and there’s a man in the middle of the square, walking aimlessly, confused. He’s shouting for help.

“Is that Doug?” Maren questions, confused. I squint my eyes. “Doug!”

“Doug?!” I shout. He seems to notice us- and he runs, a limp with him. There’s something wrong- his movements feel freer, almost floating. “That’s not- something isn’t-”

He’s near us now. Too near us. “Arbor?!” our boss shouts. There’s something on his forehead. It's some sort of mark. “Help me- I can feel it- inside- it’s-” 

Two deafening shots come out from beside me. “Quick-” Mabel hisses, pulling me away, a pistol in her other hand. It glows bright, sigils reforming, “it’s not going to last.”

Maren, in front of us, falls to her knees, confused. “You killed Doug!” she screams. “You killed-”

And then Doug begins to stir. He begins to shake. “Get away from him!” Mabel warns. She raises her gun, readying herself. “I need backup! We have a miracle!”

Doug begins to shift. His flesh begins to mold, to change. He screams in pain- snapping Maren out. She retreats, and we slowly back away. Mabel tells us to run- but it’s too late.

Doug’s ribs have sprouted into wings. His flesh has been transformed into a thousand squishy feathers. He’s somewhere beyond human now, a consecrated mass of changed, sacred flesh.

The Agent’s eyes widen. “Dear sacred stars above,” Mabel swears. “We have a goddamned Battle-Angel.”

The hulking creature shrieks, Doug’s face visible in its pale flesh underbelly, crying. It rushes at us- but Mabel fires again- and it takes to the skies. 

“Battle-Angel!” she shrieks, now into her radio. “I repeat- they’ve set off an exarchification- we have a Battle-Angel!” 

The Angel shrieks and descends upon an agent directing a family to safety- he turns- and the Angel grabs him by a five-toed claw. He is crushed, blood pouring from the skies.

The agents of the city have given up on evacuating the people. The Angel descends upon a group, and people rush away- back onto Hallow Square, trampling the agent.

The others load and speak their prayers, and fire upon the creature. I am unsure what to do.

“Okay, okay,” Mabel begins, out of breath. “We need somewhere to hide you guys.”

The Angel descends upon the restaurant we’d been eating just moments before. It screeches and shakes, feathers flying like knives everywhere. Two landed nearby us, and the sprouted into small, cruel, hissing cranes. 

They chirped and attacked- Maren kicked them away. “The docks,” she suggested, “the smoke from the explosion can hide us from the Angel.”

Mabel bites her nails, but she nods. “Good idea,” she affirms. “On my mark.”

She counts down- and we run. People scream. I think I see the upper half of a body land near me. Mabel turns back and fires- saving the life of another agent. 

I trip and fall. A dozen cranelings hiss and bite at me- the pain stings, corrosive. Mabel utters a spell and they melt into dirt. “You can thank me later.”

And we enter the smoke. “Do you think,” I pant, “we’ll be-”

A bullet whizzes past me, from deeper in the smoke. “Down!” Mabel orders. “Get down!”

I can barely make out a van, an open door. There’s figures inside- and Nick- he’s shooting at us, all while admiring the Angel murdering the innocent. 

We get down. Mabel fires back at the van. Someone from inside shouts something. It begins to move- but Mabel shoots out the tires. “In the name of the God of Justice- surrender!”

They obviously do not surrender. 

We are trapped between gunmen and an angel. There’s no good solution. But I’m not defenseless- I scratch a sigil into the dirt and cast it- and I launch several knives of earth upon the van. 

Maren does the same, a bolt of energy. 

Mabel shouts into her radio. “I have the perpetrators- on the harbor- near the security station!” 

The gunmen get out and attempt to flee- but Mabel prays- and she wounds one, and the woman falls. I cast another spell, and a bolt strikes a fleeing man. 

Mabel continues to fire- but the other two are gone. The smoke is too concentrated, and they’ve split up. 

Gingerly, she walks over to the two wounded people. “Free Orchard scum,” she growls. I trail behind her, hesitant.

The first is a man I don’t know, a man with Salamander faith tattoos across his body. “May the orchard-” he coughs, “be forever free.”

And before Mabel can interrogate him, he’s immolated himself. He’s nothing but ash. 

She turns to the woman, the younger one. She seems almost familiar to me. “False faith heretics!” she shouts. “I made that angel- go ahead and kill me!”

Mabel kicks the gun she’s dropped. “My name is Agent Mabel Song with the Sacrificial Crimes division,” she kneels and casts a spell, binding the criminal, “and you’re under arrest for collaborating with the Free Orchard.”

“False faith heretic!” she growls. “You can’t stop the old faith from returning! You can’t stop this old wave from crushing your precious factories, your precious-”

“Oh, shut up,” Mabel snarls. “I’ve heard this Free Orchard nonsense way too many times.”

Maren is shaking her head, disgusted. I am horrified. I’m scared. 

Behind us, the Angel shrieks.

What I am about to describe about my life and my current circumstances will beggar belief. That being said, you don’t need to believe me to help. If it all seems too outlandish to justify your time, consider this post to be a hyperspecific thought experiment instead. Whatever allows you to put yourself in my position, because I have no one else to lean on for guidance. 

Here is the thought experiment: in twenty-four hours, you are going to kill the person you love most. Involuntary but inevitable murder. That’s option A - the default ending to this thought experiment. Option B would be to kill them before the twenty-four-hour mark. There doesn’t seem to be an option C, but I don’t know that for sure. 

If you choose option A, you will die, too. But hey, that’s maybe not the worst thing. You won’t have to live with yourself afterward, unlike option B. In that scenario, you don’t die by default but you do have a say in how things will transpire. Option B’s appeal is control, I suppose. Oh also, in option B your loved one definitely dies - option A may instead leave them in perpetual agony for who knows how long. But you won’t be alive to know about it, I guess. One more caveat - if option C exists, i.e. you both live, you only get there by going with option A and effectively doing nothing while hoping for the best. Not to complicate things further, but option A is theoretically one more step towards an apocalypse. 

It’s convoluted, I know.

That being said, if you already have an answer, feel free to let me know. No need to read further and your service to myself and mankind is very much appreciated. If you need more information, keep scrolling down.

Let’s start with this: I was born into a secret cult isolated from society somewhere in the West Virginian wilderness. We worship nature and the gods therein. Our leaders are known as the “Red Vassals”, and they are trying to eliminate the cancer of humanity via the cultivation of an ancient, preternatural tree, letting nature reclaim and regrow the world.

Their words, not mine. 

Of course, they would live through that armageddon because of their unyielding devotion to nature and its regrowth. Normal cult stuff, to my limited understanding.

Again, if it helps, consider this all make-believe. I’ve always thought it was bullshit, unlike my peers. Don’t know why they are able to gulp down the metaphorical Kool-Aid like its water on a hot day, while I’ve found myself vomiting it back out after a sip. I’m just skeptical down to my DNA, I suppose. I certainly wasn’t taught any skepticism from the Vassals, and I don’t have parents in the traditional sense. None of us do. 

In our cult, there are two groups of people: the Vassals and the Gemini. The Gemini are further divided into two subgroups: essents and attendants, also known informally as roots and resins. Functionally, the Vassals raise, educate, and sacrifice us Gemini. The resins are taught that sacrifice is their only purpose, the roots are left blissfully unaware of their impending end. You would think it’s better to be born a root, but I think the cruelty of not knowing, only to have the rug pulled out from under you, is actually much worse. I still haven’t had the heart to tell Grace the whole truth. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell if that's what I actually want for her or if that's my attendant conditioning puppeting me from the shadows. 

Both groups live together at the “reservation”, our compound in the deep Appalachian woods. The Vassals inhabit a large church in the center, with many smaller cottages surrounding it. I don’t think the Vassals built the church themselves; I think they just refurbished it. Based on some Google image comparisons, it looks Christian in nature, but I’ve never asked the Vassals directly. I believe the people who founded the cult happened across this long-abandoned place of worship and selected it as HQ because of the oak tree sprouting from the top. Whoever built the church in the first place designed it around the tree itself, creating a narrow shute in the ceiling to accommodate its growth. On the inside, all you can see is the massive tree trunk erupting from behind the pulpit. From the outside, you can appreciate the canopy resting on the roof. I think the choice to build the church around the tree was originally just a pragmatic one, an efficient and elegant way to use the landscape. In comparison, the Red Vassals clearly chose it because of the perceived symbolism. A primordial tree older than sin growing and enveloping a secular “house of god” very succinctly sums up the cult’s vision for the world. 

Young Gemini live in the church with the Vassals, with all the essents and attendants intermixed and coming to know each other. There's usually about fifteen or so young ones living with the Vassals at any one time.  At some point, usually around the age of eight, however, Gemini are officially “coupled” - one essent for one attendant, one root for one resin. They then move you out to one of the cottages, where you’ll live together till your “germination” ceremony. I.e. the part where they sacrifice us to the earth. 

But I am getting ahead of myself. Moreover, looking at the road signs from the bus window, I am running out of time. Need to speed things up a bit. 

In the beginning, there was Father Ludwig and his three daughters. During his upbringing, he reluctantly watched industrialization defile and destroy his birth-land. When he could no longer watch, he moved his family out into the woods, where they would happen across the place that would become the reservation with its symbolic chapel. For a few years, they lived a simple and peaceful life. But as he aged, Father Ludwig wondered what would become of his daughters when he died. He did not want them to stay and die on the reservation, effectively ending his bloodline, but he did not want them to return to modern society, either. He labored over this dilemma every night until exhaustion finally put him to sleep. That was until he had a spiritual vision that serves as the basis for this cult and, moreover, my existence.

The Vassals tell us Father Ludwig communed with the earth itself that night. In the vision, the earth told him they had been searching for someone pure of spirit to serve as a conduit for nature's divinity, allowing it to simultaneously exterminate and rewrite humanity. When asked if he was willing to be anointed the land’s avatar and the new father of humankind, he accepted and asked the earth what to do next. 

Yes, it is all batshit.  Bear with me, it actually gets worse. 

So, apparently, he woke up the next day, found a specific plot of land, and had his daughters bury him there alive. Before his face was completely covered with dirt, he told his children to come back to his grave in two months. When they did, he proclaimed that his daughters would find a small tree resembling a red maple. They would know it was his new form because they would be able to feel pulsations when they placed their hands on the trunk, almost like a heartbeat. 

His daughters, the original Red Vassals, successfully found Father Ludwig and his oaken heartbeat two months after they had buried him alive. Thus, they unquestioningly followed his instructions on how to grow their cult and bring about the world's end.

To do this, they would need to “cultivate” the land, which is where us Gemini come in. Now is a good time to mention that we are an entirely female society. Any male children are taken away at birth - either killed out of sight of the colony or just left to succumb to the elements in the woods, it's unclear. All men, excluding Father Ludwig in his tree-form I guess, are without a womb. They cannot create and bear fruit like the earth, so they have no home in our cult.

I think the next question most would have is: how the fuck do they propagate? Well, one of three ways, if you believe the Vassals.

Vassals are responsible for all the births on the reservation, and your place in the society is dependent on the circumstances of your conception. If you are an attendant, you were conceived from an outsider. Obviously, the Vassals need to leave the reservation for supplies on a regular basis. When they do, some of them come back pregnant from one-night stands. 

If you are an essent, you were conceived from the “sap” of the tree that used to be Father Ludwig. God knows what that actually means, and I think this is absolute horseshit - I believe the Vassals just decide arbitrarily who is who. But then, what's left? How do they make more Vassals? Simple, they just replicate themselves in a budding ritual, of course. Sometimes a new young woman will just appear among their ranks, and reproduction by budding, an immaculate conception, is the only explanation we have ever been given.

So like I mentioned before, essents and attendants are coupled together right before puberty. From that point on, you are each other’s only family. Outside of daily educational sessions, Gemini who are coupled are forbidden to talk to anyone else, excluding Vassals, but only if they address you first. Co-dependency develops pretty much overnight. 

Once you are coupled, your education becomes segregated, too. Everything I detailed above is taught before segregation. From then on out, however, attendants learn one thing, essents learn something else entirely. Sharing of information, if discovered, is punishable by excommunication and death. 

Attendants are taught the remainder of our so-called glorious purpose. Throughout our adolescence, we take field trips with the Vassals to a remote plot of land. From a distance, it just looks like a patch of red maples. They are all relatively uniform in size and appearance, excluding one in the center, which is significantly larger and taller - apparently, that one is Father Ludwig. Still alive, still growing. The other red maples are buried essents, young women that we all used to know - also still alive, also still growing. 

If there are any attendants who have never been to visit Father Ludwig before, we are treated to an additional spectacle that day. A Vassal will be present at the forest's perimeter and waiting for us to arrive with an honored guest - an outsider, in handcuffs, naked as the day they were born, usually screaming and cursing at us. Since they’re so close to Father Ludwig, they’ll already start to look unwell - their faces purple and swollen with clotting blood. 

The attendants then watch as the outsider is dragged by their arms closer and closer to Father Ludwig. This is where the screaming starts to get to me. The helpless, confused outsider’s arms and legs will start to become unnaturally distended with fluid, doubling in size over the course of a few minutes. If you have good eyesight, you’ll be able to see outlines of blood vessels appear, bloated and congested with coagulated plasma on practically every inch of their body. At a certain point, the screams will stop, and the Vassals will drop the victim’s arms and leave them to decompose where they now lay. Typically, they are still a quarter of a mile from Father Ludwig when they die. 

According to the Vassals, Father Ludwig and the buried essents release a start of pollen that is responsible for the outsider’s horrific transformation. When inhaled, it rapidly clots human blood, causing the vasculature to completely solidify when exposed to it at a high enough concentration. We are all immune, of course, as we are all descendants of Father Ludwig. His blood shields us. 

That was the first time my disbelief was really tested. To my peers, that was definitive confirmation that everything we are taught is true. But how easy would it be to poison an outsider right before we arrive and then drag them toward that patch of red maples while the poison is at maximum effect? Sure would look like something supernatural was taking place. 

As a point of clarification, The Vassals don’t plan on dragging everyone out to Father Ludwig one by one. That apocalypse would be a little inefficient. What we are told, however, is that the pollen travels on the wind to nearby outsider settlements as far as thirty miles away. The people in those settlements have a life expectancy half the national average. They die of all sorts of clots - in the brain, in the lungs, in the heart - and apparently, no one understands why, but the Vassals attribute it to consistent, small doses of Father Ludwig. And as the patch surrounding him grows, the radius that the pollen reaches grows too. They say it will take a few hundred years, but they are confident that they will win the war of attrition in time. 

Of course, they need our help to do that. So, on an attendant’s seventeenth birthday, we will be delivered to Father Ludwig with our essent in tow. Not in a large group like the field trips - just a coupled Gemini and one Vassal. When we reach the patch of red maples, we will find an empty grave on the periphery, pre-dug before our arrival. Wordlessly, we are expected to incapacitate our essent, our only family, with physical violence. The accompanying Vassal will assist in this. Then, we will tie the essent’s wrists and ankles, they will be thrown in the grave, and we will bury them alive. At no point should we speak to our essents to explain. The only way they will germinate into a red maple, like Father Ludwig, is through desperate confusion and deep betrayal. It “cracks their spirit open”, allowing his roots to take hold within them. 

That’s the whole premise - the only way the essents will grow and produce the deadly pollen, as told to Father Ludwig in his vision, is if they are subjected to uncompromising, mind-shattering betrayal. They are seeds that need the right conditions to germinate, otherwise they remain dormant indefinitely. The coldness of profound despair ripens their holy blood for communion.

Father Ludwig senses their vulnerability once an essent is broken and buried in the ground. In response, he pushes the ends of his roots through the soil and into their skin, providing the necessary oxygen to keep their tissue alive as well as catalyzing their metamorphosis. But they still need nutrients, of course. So after an essent is no longer visible in their grave, an attendant lies down on top of the disturbed earth. The Vassal present proceeds to bury us, too. The essent will then quickly grow into and through us, utilizing our blood and tissue as fuel to project themselves towards the surface. Once they are through the topsoil, the sun does the rest in terms of nutrition. 

Essents are seeds, and we are their fertilizer. 

As I alluded to before, essents learn none of this. I suspect they aren’t taught much of anything, other than they are special and that one day, they will be able to grow beyond the confines of the reserve, out into the world like so many essents before them. I don’t think most of them even know there is a world beyond the reserve. That is only speculation, though.

Attendants, on the other hand, are very much aware of the world beyond us. We are given a full and detailed education on the history man-made genocides and atrocities. We are even allowed to utilize laptops during certain free times over the course of the day. I think the Vassals need us to believe that humanity is corrupted beyond repair and that the state of the world is beyond saving; otherwise, we might try to abscond with our essents to try to live a different life, with a different purpose. To me, allowing us to use the internet feels like they are saying: “what, you don’t believe that everything has gone to shit? Okay then, spend a few hours on the internet. Let me know what you think.”

It’s a clever system, I’ll give them that. They create dependency, which turns into love, and then they use that love to install guardrails that keep us in line. For example, there is a roll call every morning. If one part of a Gemini isn’t present at the roll call, the other is killed on the spot. Thought it was a hollow threat till I saw it myself. It wasn't a quick death, and I would never allow Grace to be put through it.

Leaving as a couple would be viable, except the Vassals figured out a way around that too - essents are fed an extremely high dose of sedatives every morning. If they go a day without the medication, the withdrawal is supposedly so intense that it effectively fries their brain. So, to leave together, you would need to have the medication as well, and a lot of it, which is naturally kept under lock and key. 

The Vassals go out of their way to make it seem completely hopeless. Even if we were to get away, they said, our “divine training” would eventually kick in. They told us that we have no choice in delivering our essents to Father Ludwig. We could not reject our purpose even if we wanted to, and thinking we could is a delusion and a cardinal sin that has no equal.

But let’s say you were still willing to try to escape - even if you got a few days' supply of the sedatives, only the Vassals know the routes back to civilization. Could we use the Internet to contact the rest of the world for help? Sure, but no one would believe us, and again, we have no idea where we are. Well, we used to have no idea, but explaining that discovery starts with what happened to Holly. 

Holly was the only other attendant I’ve ever known who didn’t seem to buy into all of this at face value. She was a few years older than me. We weren’t friends, per se, but we were aware of each other’s doubts. The biggest difference was our perspective. She was hellbent on getting herself and her essent away from the reservation. As much as I love Grace, my essent, I fell victim to paralyzing apathy for a few years. In my mind, we had both been unlucky enough to have been born into this unwinnable situation orchestrated by a coven of murderous lunatics, but at least we’d get to die together, close to each other. I wasn’t worried about Grace being reborn or mutated into a fucking red maple tree. Not till Holly. 

So, it’s between classes one day, and Holly covertly slips a note into my hand. It says to sit down at a computer next to her and to listen closely to what she has to say but to not look at her or raise suspicion. She tells me that she spent some time getting close to one of the younger Vassals, promising her unsavory reimbursement if she were to take her to visit Father Ludwig, just the two of them. Normally, we are blindfolded when we visit on our field trips, but Holly was able to convince this younger Vassal to not only take her there, but to take her there unobstructed. Holly’s plan was to watch for some sign of civilization on the way, memorize whatever she could, and then google the location upon her return. A distant water tower with a county name on it allowed her to make a reasonable guess of the reserve’s location. 

But in the process, she got more than she bargained for. The young Vassal was zealous and overexcitable, so when they arrived at the plot of land, she was dead-set on showing Holly something. She took Holly to the most recently germinated plot of land, where a fledgling red maple had begun to sprout. The Vassal asked Holly to wait a few yards away, and then out of nowhere, she took out a hand shovel from her satchel and started digging a small hole aside the tree. After waiting for almost an hour, The Vassal waved Holly over, turned on a flashlight, handed it to her, and then directed her to point the light into the hole.

I think the Vassal assumed this was why Holly had requested to bring her to Father Ludwig in the first place - to see the vengeful benediction of nature in real-time. 

Holly started gagging from the smell of decay before she could visualize what the Vassal was trying to show her. She covered her nose with a hand and part of her shirt and then was able to look inside, only to see a rotting human hand pierced by at least ten, red-brown pulsating worms. At least, that is what she thought at first, because she could see them twitching and throbbing. But upon further inspection, they had a splintered, wooden complexion. Like roots.

She stepped back in stunned horror, but the Vassal then indicated that there is another, greater miracle she wanted Holly to observe. Reluctantly walking forward and placing her head closer to the hole, she finally saw it - between the tendons and bone of the hand, an eye was looking back up at her. At first, she thought she was seeing things - like it was an optical illusion created by fungus and dirt. 

After a few seconds of watching, however, the eye blinked. And after another few seconds, it blinked again. And again. Apparently, it almost looked like it was tearing up, but Holly admits she may be superimposing her own feelings on the traumatic memory. 

Her story roused me from my fatalistic catatonia, and I finally was no longer sleepwalking - I was reignited. I became genuinely fearful for Grace, that she could possibly be put through such abominable suffering. But even more than that, now that we knew approximately where we were, I was hopeful that there was something more than this for us in the cards. 

Holly then pulled me into the chair she was sitting in. In the process, she stood up, turned around, and began keeping watch. She asked me to quickly review and memorize the map she had pulled up on her computer. 

To make a longer story short, Holly and her essent died trying to escape. But I learned from her mistakes, and a year later, Grace and I made it out of the woods in one piece. In the months before we left, I was able to slowly pilfer the supplies we needed to make it on our own - food, water, medication, a few hundred dollars, and the night before we left, a backpack and a laptop. Originally, I had given up completely on the idea of escape after Holly's death. But as my seventeenth birthday approached, I found myself unable to cope with the idea of Grace existing in a state of perpetual undeath in the cold hard ground, comforted only by the lecherous roots of Father Ludwig. 

It felt like a happy ending at first. We have been away from the reservation for two whole weeks. Grace didn't understand what was happening, but she trusted my judgement. When we hit a major highway, and then a bus station with trips as far north as Maine, I thought it was all over. But now, I’m not so sure. 

Initially, we made it as far as Pennsylvania. We slept a night in a shitty motel, and then I bought us a bus ticket to Vermont the following morning. Grace and I slept most of the ride, but when I woke up, we had gone South, not North. I looked at my ticket in disbelief, and it revealed our destination was the town closest to the reservation - the first bus station we arrived at a few days' prior. A coincidental mistake made by my exhausted mind, I thought. That rationalization soothed me until the same coincidental mistake happened a second time. And now, a third. Each time I was convinced I had purchased a different ticket, but each time it eventually became clear that I didn’t. And now we are out of time.

My so-called “divine training” kicked in. I suppose. 

It seems my subconscious is doing everything possible to drag Grace back to West Virginia and Father Ludwig. I’m still not sure I believe it all; everything I have to work with is secondhand experience. Even my subconscious overriding my free will could just be psychosocial conditioning and not a sign of an inescapable supernatural trajectory. 

But is it worth risking it? What if the clock ticks over into my birthday, and I go from having partial control of my actions to zero control? If I kill Grace now, I can at least assure myself she won’t be buried in proximity of Father Ludwig. But maybe this is something I just have to keep fighting, and eventually, its hold will break over me. 

Killing Grace is still the safest bet, though. It wouldn’t be violent or painful. An overdose of her medication could cause her to peacefully drift off to somewhere much better than this. 

So tell me - what’s worse, killing your only family involuntarily or of your own volition? 

More r/nogreatanswers and other stories: https://linktr.ee/unalloyedsainttrina

It was cold, these days. The bones Lucius ate were picked clean, no stray troll wandered this side of his mountain for him to consume. No, all he knew was the gnawing, the ever incessant gnawing in his gut, prodding at him, devouring him from the inside. And he cursed his frail form for being so weak, for not being able to overcome these mortal ailments. He was a wizard and he had to be stronger. 

The shadows spoke to him sometimes. They had wet fingers, acidic tongues that smooched him silly. They stung and all the more they pressed upon his lips a siren’s kiss. 

Sometimes he didn’t know whether he had casted the shadows or if they weren’t really there. The scariest thing was that he had began to stop caring. Hoping to get out of here, bursting onto the stage with a gentleman’s flourish, like momma had always wanted him too! 

They whispered. The shadows whispered. They sang. It sounded like his voice. It sounded like momma’s voice. Wait, that was wrong? Momma was gone. Long gone. She was too weak. He was about to follow in her stead. 

Well, at least if he was to be a corpse his skin wouldn’t be blackened. 

Only gray. 

Oh Lucius, author of your own defeat 

A wayward living corpse tripping over his two left feet 

The moon has set, your story is done 

What a shame that this child learned to fall before he could ever run 

He rose, and a bout of purple flame reduced the shadows to cinders, and he was about to cut the flame off when he noticed something. 

Over there was his bookshelf. Not the one behind a glass case containing his tomes of magic lore. No, a smaller one, fit for a child, with drawings and drafts for stories that never were, stories that never would be. Play scripts half finished, hastily written underneath a dim light and a shaky hand. 

It was almost. Nostalgic. 

But his not quite smile became a sneer. 

“Oh, I remember you well, papers of my youth! Because when you’re a child, oh so quite ignorant of how the world really works, you construct fairy worlds because you like to slip away for a bit! School seems awfully dreary when you can find a random wardrobe and galavant off to some quest with knights butchering their usage of thee’s and thou’s if the quality of modern fantasy is any indication!” 

He cackled, “Ha! Believing children can save the world, that’s fucking hillarious! Let it be said that children are dimwitted creatures with no survival instincts, and if they didn’t have a lusus around to save them they’d get themselves or their guardian killed!” 

He bit his lip, eyes narrowing, and blood ran down his chin, “So maybe children should believe in a fairy land. Because if they actually found one maybe they’d get lucky they’d have the grace to die, as they should have from birth.” 

And one drawing of that fucking necromancer stuck out. Where had you gone, Voldy? How did you escape Lucius’ prison? Do you think you could hide forever, when Lucius would put you back in a cage where you belonged? 

And maybe, dearest sibling, if you behaved he’d let you out. 

Lucius let his childhood burn. He felt colder as the heat rose. He smiled all the while. 

And there, in the wake of the cinders, untouched by the flame, was a little wooden door behind the shelf. 

Lucius’ eyes narrowed. 

“If this is the case of the greatest irony known to troll I solemnly swear-” 

He tiptoed, as if he ran the door would disappear forever. 

He pulled the latch open. 

And there was a tunnel, with a light at the end. 

“My, oh, my, perhaps cliches are cliches for a reason.” 

And he started crawling, so tall he was and so cramped the tunnel was. He had to squeeze and his body screamed, but that was okay. He was used to it. 

At the end of the tunnel, he could see the swirling sands of a desert, and a little rickety town not that far away. Not far away at all. 

And as Lucius slipped out onto the sand, the door behind him vanished as fast as it came, the troll stood up, his shadow casting a trench in the sea of sand underneath the blazing sun. 

He leaned on his cane for support, as he hobbled to town. 

Lucius was a stranger in a strange land. And for the first time in his life, this was absolutely fine. 

If only he noticed the little child necromancer watching him with binoculars. 

“Big bro made it! I was bored without him here, there were villain's going rah rah rah I’m the bad guy look at me and worship me or diiiiiiie. But no one is a villian quite like you!” 

Voldy pumped a fist in the air. 

“LUCIUS AND I ARE GOING TO HAVE SOME FUN!” 

I've always been an avid outdoorsman. Hiking, trail running, mountain biking, I love it all. There is just something so soothing about being out in nature that makes the stresses of life drift away. I could spend my life out in the wilderness and never get tired of it. That is, until I hiked Sweet Connie trail.

The terrain on this hike was pretty difficult, a near-constant incline up the face of a rocky mountain slope. It would take about eight hours to complete the hike in each direction. With a hike so hard it is reasonable not to see many people undertaking this daunting task, and frankly, I like it that way. The more secluded the better. On my way up the mountain, I only ran into a few other hikers, but there was something strange in their demeanors. I would give each of them a cordial 'hello, hi, how's it going?' but none of them returned the sentiment. Instead, they just looked at me in shock. I gave each of them a polite smile and continued my way up the trail. Soon all other hikers disappeared and I was the only person on the trail.

As I rounded a sharp corner, I heard the rustling of leaves coming from the underbrush off to the side of the path. I didn't think anything of it. It isn't uncommon to hear sounds off in the brush while you're out alone. Most of the time it's just the wind, but as I came closer, the brush thrashed around rather violently. Like any other logical person, I ran through the list of possible culprits.

'A squirrel?' No, it was too large to be a squirrel.

'Rabbit?' A rabbit would've already darted away in search of cover.

Suddenly a laugh drifted out from the foliage. The laugh was innocent, high pitch... young. A little girl stepped out into the middle of the trail, her back toward me. She was wearing a pink dress, dirty and torn. Her feet were bare—her back tense. I stood there for a second or two, trying to wrap my mind around what I was seeing. She looked hypothermic, her skin icy and pale. She caressed her own arms as if trying to get warm. The little girl's head was slumped down, looking at the path beneath her exposed feet. When the sight before me finally registered, I stepped forward.

"Are you okay?" I asked, in my best non-threatening voice. There was no response, but the little girl did acknowledge my question. She lifted her head, looking at the long trail ahead of us.

"What's your name?" Taking another step. The girl's chest began hiccuping, and she huffed in spurts as she started to sob.

"Hey, hey don't cry. I'm going to help you." I said while taking off my jacket, readying myself to drape it against her back. But as I placed the jacket against her exposed skin, she didn't reach for it. It now lay haphazardly across her shoulders, ready to fall to the ground with the slightest movement.

"What are you doing out here alone?" I asked, concern filling my voice. Suddenly the little girl's sobbing stopped and an uncanny silence fell around us. Nothing made a noise, not the wind, the birds, the trees. It was as if time had stopped. The silence was broken when the little girl began giggling once again. It started slowly as if she was trying to hold it in, but giddiness engulfed her and she started giving a cheery laugh. The little girl lifted a hand to her hair.

Her little fingers grasped a handful of her messy black locks, twirling the strands around her grip, and slowly pulling away from her head. Her scalp stretched as her hand pulled harder. I took a step back in horror when a few hairs unrooted from her head, my jaw dropping when the handful was yanked free. Her other hand lifted to her head, this time she wasted no time in ripping the hairs from her scalp, my jacket falling to the floor as she did. The hairs hadn't touched the ground when her hand returned to her head. She now frantically ripped her hair free, her giggle morphing into a maniacal cackle. It hadn't been more than a few handfuls and her head was looking more like a sarna-riddled dog's.

"Hey! Stop that," I said as my stiff limbs finally moved. I gripped the little girl's wrist, stopping her from tearing out another clump of hair. When I did, her laughter instantly stopped the fingers on her hand balling in apparent anger. I felt her muscles tense before she thrust her hand out of my grasp. Her hand returned to her head.

"Stop!" I said with more conviction, stopping her from yanking more hair out. The little girl didn't take kindly to it this time, and she swung her arm back in a sudden burst of supernatural strength. I was shoved back, my backside meeting the exposed earth. I returned to the path ahead, but the little girl was gone. I looked around, expecting to see the girl running through the trees, but my gaze was only met with the dimly lit pine forest.

The hairs on the back of my head stood as a familiar laugh drifted through the woods. It sounded distant and muffled, but as I frantically searched for the little girl she was nowhere to be found, her giggle mocking me from the darkness. Looking at the path ahead, I saw a figure standing in the distance. She wasn't there before, yet there she stood, the little girl yanking her hair in handfuls. When there was no more hair left to pull, she started sobbing again.

Freaked out by the situation, I motioned to stand, trying to avoid garnering the attention of the bald figure off in the distance, but as I took to my feet, a few rocks crunched under my weight. The little girl instantly stopped crying as the sound met her ear. Her hands which once plucked at her head, now fell to her side. My heart thudded in my chest as the silence lingered for a beat or two. She craned her head back catching a glimpse of me from the side of her gaze and for the first time, I looked into her eyes. Fluid streaming from her ducts, only it wasn't tears, it was the distinct deep red of blood. She pivoted on her feet and faced me, my senses screaming 'Run' as her face came into view.

Her skull was partially sunken in, like someone had taken a rock and bashed it against her cranium. She studied me, looking me up and down, unimpressed. I wanted to say something, anything, but I was in shock. The little girl noticed and a creepy smile slid across her lips, her mouth parting, producing that sweet innocent laugh. But this time, her laugh got deeper with each inhale. Horror drifted into my body, as her eyebrows furled, looking at me like prey. I found my courage and I started to slowly back away, but with each step the little girl mirrored my pace.

"What do you want?" I asked quiveringly. The girl didn't answer and continued chuckling manically.

"Please don't hurt me." I pleaded, desperation evident in my tone.

The little girl picked up the pace. I found myself stumbling on my heels, but as I turned around, facing the path that led back to the trailhead, the little girl stood in front of me in the distance. The red fluid still oozing from her eyes.

My feet slid across the trail as I came to a screeching halt. I eyed the little girl up and down, stopping when I got to her feet that no longer touched the ground. They now hovered ominously a few inches above the trail, the blood draining from my face. Words festered on my tongue but caught in my throat, spilling out as a frantic mumble.

"What-- the hell are you?"

The little girl stopped her deep demonic chuckle and looked at me mildly offended. Her mouth started to gape open, revealing a larger-than-normal void in her face. With one long inhale, her chest expanded and she let out an ear-piercing roar.

"Leave!" She screamed, my ears yawning at the bass in her voice. She lifted a gnarled finger and pointed behind her instructing me to run back down the mountain. Without a second thought, I shot to my feet and scurried around her. The little girl's witchy cackle followed me back down the trail, but when I looked over my shoulder no one was giving chase.

Eventually, the laugh stopped and the only noises I was hearing were the normal rhythmic chatter of nature and my anguished breathing. But the dread of the situation still played in my mind. I quietly made my way towards the trailhead, but my heart stopped when I saw a lonely figure walking toward me in the distance. My heart was shoved to the pit of my stomach thinking that it was the little girl again, but to my relief, it was a tall burly hiker making his way up the hill. His hiking poles dug into the soft ground as he worked his way in my direction.

It dawned on me that he was making his way toward that demonic little girl, I needed to say something, but as my warning built up in my chest a familiar sweet voice slithered from the trees.

"Shhh-- leave." It said.

My skin broke out in gooseflesh. The burly man huffed his way around me, giving me a polite smile as he passed. I stood there frozen as he rounded a corner and disappeared from view. I darted my gaze around the woods, realizing that the little girl still watched from the darkness.

It is safe to say that the rest of the hike back down the mountain was the fastest I'd ever hiked. When I reached the trailhead, I looked at the sign marking the beginning of the hike.

'Sweet Connie Trail:

This is a memorial trail dedicated to Connie Renner who lost her life on this same hike on 04/15/2016'

At the bottom of the sign was a picture of the little girl.

It's been a few months since this happened. I haven't been outdoors since, and to tell you the truth I never want to go outside again. Fuck nature, fuck hiking, and fuck Sweet Connie Trail.

[r/Odd_directions is a creative writing subreddit]

Every year, we have this cabin trip, and every year, each of us writes a secret and puts it in the hat. After dinner we dump all the secrets out and start guessing whose is whose. It’s a fun activity that always teaches us new surprises about each other. Whoever guesses the most secrets correctly wins a basket. What the basket contains is different every year—everyone donates a gift.

This year, for example, my wife donated a box of fancy chocolates, “So that Kim stops eating yours,” she joked to me.

Dan often was the winner. A jovial extrovert, he was the glue that kept our friendships together long after college.

Melody won the basket nearly as often. An analytical thinker, she kept samples of our handwriting, and she usually spent quite a bit of time analyzing the slips of paper to try to ascertain who wrote which secret.

Then there was Zuri, who always made sure the basket had a bottle of (very) expensive wine. She didn’t even drink herself, but she liked the rest of us to have a good time. She was a terrible guesser.

Kim was our resident joker, always donating something silly to the basket, like “the world’s spiciest chip” or a giant gummi bear. He won the basket only once before.

Steve was the blandest guy imaginable, and usually donated something boring—bath products or pistachios or coffee. He never really got our in-jokes or quite fit in with the group.

Our tradition’s been going on strong ten years now. We’ve always had a good time. And that’s why what happened makes no sense at all.

My wife dropped me off at the cabin on a Friday evening. Kim, Steve, Dan, and Melody arrived, each putting slips in the hat. Zuri couldn’t make it this year but wine came with a note for us to enjoy ourselves.

After dinner, we pulled the slips out of the hat. Five slips of paper with our five secrets that read:

I have a secret crush on someone.

I spent fifty-two cents on the prize I bought for the basket. :)

I have a star named after me.

It’s a girl!

I’m going to murder one of you.

We read them all aloud, laughing and shouting guesses until we got to the last one. Everyone went quiet. Someone wondered if it was a joke—we all looked at resident joker Kim, but he said his was the fifty-two cents one. Everyone began snatching their slips, until each of us was holding a slip except me.

“It’s Mia!” They all said. “Mia’s planning a murder!”

“No I’m not!” I sputtered. “I wrote ‘I started a new diet’!”

Who had swapped my secret for the murder one?

To say that tensions were high would be an understatement. In the end, Dan suggested we skip the game and share the basket. But everyone’s mood was sour except for Kim, who happily ate all the chocolates and drank half the wine bottle himself. I wondered if he really did put that murder slip in there as a prank, just so we’d wind up splitting the basket and he’d get a share.

But the next morning, we woke up and found Kim lying blue-faced and wide-eyed in the bed, vomit staining the pillow and sheets beside him.

And suddenly we were all screaming, panicking, wondering which of us had done it. We hurled accusations while waiting for police.

“The wine,” said Dan. “He was obviously poisoned. It must’ve been the wine!”

“Maybe it was the chocolates,” said Melody.

“But they weren’t even out of the plastic wrapping!” I said.

“It was the wine,” Dan insisted. “Think about it. One of us wrote that incriminating secret, right? But Zuri’s got an alibi because she’s not here. The police look for someone involved in the game. And she gets away with murder in the perfect crime.”

“Okay, but how does she get the slip of paper into the hat if she was never here?” said Melody.

We reviewed the secrets again. Steve had a secret crush, Dan’s wife was having a little girl, Melody had a star named after her (“You know those are scams, right?” I told her). Mine was still missing.

That’s how all suspicion suddenly turned on me. When police arrived, everyone was interviewed. I was the prime suspect, even after I told police someone swapped out my secret slip about a new diet before we drew them from the hat. I even searched the trash cans and recycling but couldn’t find mine to prove my innocence. The remaining papers were turned over to check for fingerprints. The authorities took the wine bottle and what was left of the chocolate box too.

My friends all thought I was a killer. I knew one of them was.

Later that evening, when I was finally back home and still wondering who had lied, the dog was whining to go out, so I grabbed a coat and took him out. And suddenly everything clicked horrifyingly into place. We had all been right. Dan was right about the perfect alibi. Melody was right about the chocolates—not the ones in plastic wrap in the basket, but the ones in my bag that were supposed to be mine, that Kim stole like he did every year. And I had been right that my slip of paper had been switched.

Fear coursed through me as I pulled a crumpled slip of paper from the pocket: I started a new diet

I'd put on my wife's coat by mistake.