The Disappearance of the Sauter Children: A Haunting Mystery

https://youtu.be/eb_FG-hrjtE?si=dBTFHkUlwss3HlBH

On a cold Christmas Eve in 1945, Fayetteville, West Virginia, was abuzz with the excitement of the holiday season. The Sauter family, comprised of George and Jennie Sauter and their ten children, was preparing for a festive evening. Little did they know that this Christmas would end in unimaginable tragedy and mystery.

As the clock struck midnight, a fire broke out in the Sauter home. George and Jennie were awakened by the crackling flames and the acrid smell of smoke. Panic set in as they rushed to save their children. They managed to escape with their two youngest children, but five of their children—ages 5 to 14—were still inside. The flames consumed the house rapidly, and despite their desperate attempts to rescue their children, the fire was unforgiving.

As neighbors rushed to the scene, the fire department was called, but by the time they arrived, the house was reduced to smoldering ruins. George and Jennie clung to the hope that their children had made it out. However, as the fire was extinguished and the embers cooled, the grim reality set in: no bodies were found.

In the days following the fire, the Sauters were left in a state of shock. Local authorities assumed the children perished in the flames, but George was unconvinced. He believed that something far more sinister had occurred. There were no remains, no signs of their children’s presence. His instinct told him that they might still be alive.

As the investigation continued, George began to gather strange pieces of information. A witness claimed to have seen a group of people at the edge of the Sauter property on the night of the fire. Furthermore, a mysterious phone call came in a few days later—someone asked for George by name and then hung up. This only deepened his suspicions.

With a fire that took his children yet left no evidence of their bodies, George became increasingly convinced that the children had been kidnapped. His suspicions were fueled by his knowledge of local organized crime. He had previously refused to pay protection money to the mafia, leading him to believe that they might have taken revenge.

In the following months, the Sauter family sought answers. They plastered Fayetteville with posters featuring the faces of their missing children, hoping someone would come forward with information. Their determination was unwavering, but each day without leads added to their despair.

Then, in 1946, the family received a mysterious phone call from a woman claiming to have seen their children. She reported that they were living in a nearby town, apparently unharmed. This revelation rekindled the Sauters’ hope, but it also added to the uncertainty surrounding the tragedy.

As time went on, George and Jennie were bombarded with odd reports. In one instance, a truck driver claimed to have seen their children being loaded into a car by two men just after the fire. Another report suggested that the children were being held by a local family who had ties to the mafia.

With each new lead, the Sauters grew more determined to uncover the truth. They hired private investigators, but the results were often inconclusive. Despite the setbacks, George remained convinced that his children were alive and that someone knew where they were.

In a bold move, George decided to take their search public. He erected a billboard along the highway, featuring pictures of the missing children and the words: “What happened to our children?” The billboard captured the attention of travelers, reigniting interest in the case.

Local media began to cover the story, leading to more tips and sightings. George even took to the radio, pleading with the public for information. He described the children in detail, hoping that someone would recognize them.

As the investigation unfolded, several theories emerged about the fate of the Sauter children. Some believed they had died in the fire, and their bodies had simply never been found. Others theorized that they had indeed been kidnapped, perhaps as part of a larger conspiracy. Some even suggested that the fire had been deliberately set to cover up the abduction.

The Sauters’ persistent efforts led them to connect with other families who had experienced similar tragedies. They discovered a pattern of mysterious disappearances of children across the country, further fueling their belief that their children were still alive.

In 1947, the Sauters received a chilling lead that would haunt them forever. A woman approached them, claiming she had seen the children at a neighboring farm. She described them as being well cared for, which added another layer of complexity to the case. The family investigated, but the trail went cold.

The final piece of the puzzle came when George discovered an intriguing photograph in a local newspaper. It showed a group of children, and one of them bore a striking resemblance to one of the missing Sauter children. George felt a surge of hope, but as the investigation into the photo began, it led to nothing concrete.

The Sauter children were never found. Over the years, George and Jennie continued to search, driven by a mixture of hope and despair. George passed away in 1968, still believing his children were alive. Jennie lived on for several more years, holding onto the hope that one day, the truth would be revealed.

The mystery of the Sauter children remains one of America’s most perplexing unsolved cases. Their story has captivated the public imagination for decades, inspiring countless theories, books, and articles. It serves as a haunting reminder of a family's unyielding love and the enduring questions that can linger long after a tragedy.

The disappearance of the Sauter children is more than just a story of loss; it is a tale of desperation, hope, and the relentless pursuit of truth. The unanswered questions and the shadow of doubt continue to loom over Fayetteville. For George and Jennie Sauter, the search for their children became an all-consuming quest, leaving a legacy of sorrow and an enduring mystery that still resonates today.

As we reflect on their story, we are reminded of the fragility of life and the lengths to which a family will go to seek the truth. The Sauter children's fate may remain a mystery, but their story endures, echoing the chilling reality that sometimes, the past holds secrets we may never uncover.

The sharp thwack of the ruler hitting the desk woke Tom with a start. “Thomas Bathory. Are you sleeping in my lesson?” Tom rubbed his already bloodshot eyes. They stung like a swarm of angry wasps. He looked up at the blurred silhouette of his teacher. “Sorry, miss. I’m just… so tired.” His teacher shook her head. The rest of the class tried their best to hold back their laughter. As much as Tom was in the spotlight, a peal of giggles could cause their stern teacher to turn her attention to them. “This is the third time this week. I believe I’m going to have to have a phone call with your mother.” Tom’s eyes widened with alarm. He spoke with a frantic urgency. “No… please. You… can’t ring my… mum.” Tom’s mind struggled for an excuse. “She works nights… and… she’s been sick. I promise I’ll do better.” His teacher hesitated for a moment. She tried to cast her mind back, but the no matter how far it travelled she could not remember having ever met Tom’s mother. “No, I’m sorry. But I think a chat with your mother is for the best.” It was winter. The pavements were icy and the cold was so intense that even the bravest people in the village would not venture out into the cold without several layers of clothing. Winter also brought another thing, one that worried Tom more than the cold. Nightfall came so much earlier now. Tom had to rush home from school every night just to make it in before it got dark. He had to make sure he was home, with the doors and windows securely locked, before his mother woke. Everyone either laughed at him, or got angry when he fell asleep during the day, but he had to stay up all night. It was the only way. As Tom entered the door to his home, the phone was ringing. He knew it was his teacher, no one else had called since his parents had divorced, so he simply let it ring until the clanging ended. Tom checked all the doors and windows, making sure to double bolt each, before he called to his mother. “Mum, I’m… home. It’s… err… dinnertime.” He knew it was going to be another long night, but he couldn’t leave her alone. He’d ensured the house was a tightly sealed as a submarine, but he wasn’t prepared to take a single risk. He heard the rattling of chains and the sound of metal scraping against concrete from within the basement. He knew his mother was now waking. He opened the basement door, and began to head into the darkness. He made sure to lock the door behind him.

The sharp thwack of the ruler hitting the desk woke Tom with a start. “Thomas Bathory. Again?” Tom rubbed his already bloodshot eyes. They stung like a swarm of angry wasps. He looked up at the blurred silhouette of his teacher. Yet this time he said nothing. He had no excuses left. “I tried to phone your mother, but I haven’t had a single answer.” The harshness of his teacher’s voice softened slightly. “I’d like to speak to you after class, Thomas. Just the two of us.” Tom’s breath caught in his throat. “After class as in… after school?” The class giggled. His teacher turned to them and their tittering instantly stopped. “Yes, Thomas.” Tom shook his head. He tried to hide his panic, but his heartrate had jumped to such a tremendous speed, he felt it might explode. His mouth felt dry and the room began to spin. “Miss, I can’t. I have to be home before nightfall. I-” “No excuses, Thomas. I will see you after class.” The remaining hour was agonising. Tom tried to concoct a plan that would allow him to escape. He tried to excuse himself, to ask to go to the bathroom, but his teacher refused. She could see through his plan, and she was willing to go to any length to talk to the boy about what was happening at home to cause him to be so tired. When the classroom was empty, she sat down with Tom. Her strict demeanour melted away and her eyes shone with kindness. “Thomas… is… everything okay at home?” Tom knew he had to leave. He knew that he had to end this conversation as quickly as possible and hope he still had enough time. But this was the first chance he’d had to speak to anyone about what he was going through and, for a moment, he forgot about the urgency to leave. “My mum… she drinks.” His teacher placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “But it’s not like you think. It’s when she doesn’t drink that she changes. She sleeps through the day and wakes up at night. She’s so thirsty that if she doesn’t drink right away, she just becomes… angry. So, I have to be home before she wakes. I have to be there so I can let her drink.” His teacher sighed a heavy breath. The boy was only twelve, and she knew sharing her personal life wasn’t professional, but the boy needed to know he wasn’t alone. “Thomas, I understand your pain. My father was an alcoholic. I had to struggle with his mood swings for my entire childhood, and often it was when he didn’t drink that he-” “No, miss. She’s not an alcoholic.” His teacher nodded solemnly. “I know it can be difficult to admit, Thomas. Acceptance is the first step to recovery, and even loved ones have to-” Tom banged his fists on the table, startling his teacher. Tears had filled Tom’s eyes and his voice wavered with each word he spoke. “No. You’re not listening to me. I have to be there so she can drink…” He looked his teacher directly in the eye, and she saw a boy who had lived an ordeal way beyond his years. “…me.” His teacher furrowed her brow. “She drinks you?” Without consciously doing so she released a short chuckle, immediately catching it and holding it back. The entire thing sounded ridiculous, but she wanted to maintain a caring stance towards him. “Thomas, I’m not entirely sure what you mean?” Tom, with slow and hesitant motions, slowly began to lift up his sleeves. Littered sporadically up his arms were a series of bite marks. His teacher gasped. “My mum, she used to work a normal job throughout the day. That was before my dad left. One wage wasn’t enough, so she had to take on a second job. She worked as a taxi driver down the city. I spent a lot of time alone, but I didn’t mind. I knew she was just trying to make sure we got by. One night she came home crying. She told me a passenger had tried to hurt her. She didn’t give me details, but I thought I knew what she meant. But then she showed me the bite mark on her neck. She promised she would go to the doctor’s as soon as she could, but within a single day the change started to happen. That was three months ago. After that, everything changed. I had to watch my mum turn from a woman whose only goal in life was to make sure her son had a roof over his head and food on his table, into a monster driven only by its hunger for blood. If she doesn’t… drink… then the evil takes over. It becomes uncontrollable. I’m not sure why her bites haven’t changed me, maybe it’s because we’re related. But that’s why I’m so tired. I have to make sure she doesn’t manage to get anywhere near other people, so I watch her every night. Please, miss. I need to get home. If my mother gets out, she’ll-” “Thomas, wait right there. I’m going to phone the police and we’re going to get you somewhere safe.” His teacher didn’t believe what the boy had said exactly, but she believed the bite marks on his arm were real. She assumed the mother had suffered some sort of mental breakdown, a combination of stress from overwork and the divorce. Tom sat silently with his head buried in his hands as his teacher left the room. He heard the door open, and then close. Immediately he rose from his seat, opened the window of the classroom, and dropped out onto the school field. He sprinted across the carpark and off the school premises as fast as he could. The sun had already set and he struggled to keep even a flicker of hope within his heart. Though his muscles screamed in agony and he tasted blood at the back of his throat, he never slowed down once the entire journey home. He stood outside his home, and looked at the front door. It had been smashed open from the inside. The wooden door was now hanging off its hinges. He was too late. His mother was free.

Marla’s office is the small one at the end of the corridor. Just a room with a green oriental rug, two grey armchairs facing each other and a small desk off behind, near the window. On the same corridor there’s a charity that stopped trading years ago, but somehow inexplicably still keeps an office here, they’re never in of course. Then there’s the man with the folding bikes. He did a Kickstarter or something and the only thing you ever really see of him is when he goes to the kitchenette to fill the large pot he uses to brew the strong coffee. Then five or six times a day he’ll scurry to the toilet and return to his lair. Then there’s the office with the ceiling tiles that all fell in, which I think is waiting for the day that the landlord has enough money to fix it up. Then, at the end, there’s Marla.

Marla likes her office because if you’re really charitable, or an estate agent, you can say that it has a river view. It doesn’t matter to Marla that you can only see the river if you actually physically press your face to the windows (which don’t open), or that if you even do this then all you’ll see is a sorry, brown excuse for a river trudging by. That doesn’t matter to Marla. She says she can hear it and that running water is very important for a therapist because it carries the negative energy downstream. Don’t worry – Marla’s not a flake, she’s a good therapist, but she’s fully invested in this idea about energy. But she’s not a flake.

Just outside Marla’s office are four plastic chairs grouped around a small coffee table, which has held the same copy of Elle since she started here. The magazine is picked up rarely but the quiz at the back has been filled in. Marla times her appointments so that there’s a good window between clients, you’d really have to be dawdling or keen to bump into another client. Marla knows that when it comes to therapists, people prefer anonymity, not just of her room, but of the building itself – it feels like it’s one of those liminal spaces that people only really remember when they think really hard about it. For a therapist that’s good. If they needed to her clients can tell people they bump into outside the building that they were calling in on the charity, or buying a folding bike. Oh, is there a therapist up there too? Huh, I never knew.

Marla tries to treat the people she sees as individuals, she really does. But it would be wrong not to accept the truth that there are patterns. As a therapist, you have to try and fight that instinct to see the patterns and make judgements accordingly. Marla’s phrase to herself is that she needs to leave room to be surprised. One truth about therapy though is that people never really come when they’re well. “I’d like to pre-emptively protect my mental health,” is not a sentence that Marla hears much in her working life. Her clients tend to come around when the shit is already working its way deep into the mechanisms of the fan. “I need to deal with my mental health,” is more the shape and size of things. “I’ve not been feeling very positive.” So, the first part of the pattern is that you can see that there is an inciting incident. He lost his job and it all went downhill from there. She had a baby and it’s never been the same since. They haven’t been the same since the accident/divorce/issue with the fence. There’s usually a spark.

The other thing that’s apparent if you sat where Marla does and saw the things she sees, is that the people tend to fit into a type. They have their inciting point and they have their shared characteristics. For lots of people it’s simply that they refuse to see the obvious problem. “But, of course, you’re gay,” Marla has nearly said on a number of occasions. “You are clinically depressed,” is another thing that remarkably few people realise about themselves. “You should kill your mother,” Marla would like to say that more too, but she doesn’t.

“My mother said that she thought my new job was adequate for my sort of person, what do you think that means?”

“Your mother is a narcissist and you could enter into an ill-fated series of therapy sessions and conversations with her, but ultimately it would be simpler, cheaper and probably better all round if you killed her.”

Marla didn’t say that, but she’d like to sometimes.

Then there are the treatment options. Often just listening is the majority of what Marla does. She hears the people and for the hour that she is with them she breathes and is calm and she really listens. She listens professionally. She notes things. She rarely makes notes these days because she’s perfected the art of listening and remembering – but sometimes she does. She remembers these things so that she can point out things to her clients.

“And of course Devon would be important to you because of the link with your father.”

“My father?”

“Didn’t you say you spread his ashes there?”

“Oh yeah, we did. Do you think that’s important here?”

People are not good listeners by nature and it’s getting worse. Try listening to someone while you’re also trying to complete that day’s Wordle – it looks like it ends -TIC? Sorry did you say something about hitting someone with the car?

Marla likes her job. She’s good at her job. In-between sessions she presses the side of her face to the window and looks at the sliver of river she has access to. She blows out three good breaths and mists up the glass. The energy from that session goes downstream. She never really thinks about what is being delivered to her from upstream.

What Marla doesn’t like about her job can be summed up in seven words.

“I want you to write a letter…”

She hates this part of her job because it always feels cheap. Like she’s pretending to be a therapist in a film. The writing a letter schtick is infuriating. It infuriates Marla, not because it doesn’t work, but because it does. With about 95% of her clients it proves to be one of the most effective interventions that she can do, other than being there, listening, remembering and using her brain.

“A letter about what?”

“I want you to write a letter to your father/mother/uncle/abuser/teacher and I want you to be honest in that letter. I want you to bring it to our next session. During that session we can read through it together, or we can talk about the process of writing the letter, that’s up to you – but I want you to write the letter.”

“I’m no good at writing.”

“It doesn’t matter – this is a letter that’s for you. It’s more important for you to get the feelings down on paper and to build some distance and objectivity from those feelings. Does that make sense?”

Of course, it always makes sense because people have seen this schtick in movies before. Marla hates that it works.

When they come to the next session, they usually seem brighter. Their shoulders are less slumped, the wattage of their smile has increased slightly, their eyes shine a little more. In their hand, or pocket, or bag they have a letter. Some of them are already in the envelope. Some of them are scrawled on line paper. Some are the work of amazing penmanship on blue, fragrant paper. Most are typed. Then they read the letter to Marla and talk about how it felt. They often cry and their voices catch as they do it. Marla gives them time. Gives them space to say these things. It’s rare that people fail in the task and if they do it then it’s rarer still that it doesn’t help. There’s just something primal about the power of trapping these feelings that have been sticking in their ribs, gumming up their lips for so long. It hslps to put these things into words and stick them to a page. Even reading and participating in the process makes Marla feel better – curse it.

At the end of the session Marla gives the client an envelope and a stamp. Together they write down the address of the person who its direct at and they put a stamp in the corner. Marla then opens up an old mail sack that she took from the charity’s room and asks the client to imagine that they were going to the post box and they were going to actually deliver this letter. How would they feel if that was the case? Some of them shake. Others are happy, sometimes deliriously so. They cram that letter into the sack and stand up with pep in their step and glide in their stride. Damn it, Marla thinks – it’s worked again. When the client has gone, she drags the sack into the corner of her room and folds over the mouth. In many ways that sack represents her legacy – hundreds of clients that she has worked things through with – not all of them were successes, but the letters nearly always helped.

Sometimes, like now, a client will cancel their session and Marla will walk over to the gym, or sometimes she’ll drag the sack over to her desk and she’ll lucky dip her hand into the sack and pluck out a letter. She can always remember the client, often she can remember the writing. The looped, cartoonish letters of Malcolm telling his long-dead mother that he was not gay, despite her being convinced that he was and disappointed that he wouldn’t live a fabulous and gay life. Sintha wracked with guilt at the loss of her baby, and laser-like fury with her husband for making her have the abortion. Marla holds them to her chest and then puts the letters back into the sack. She sometimes thinks that in the pantheon of great therapists her name might not be etched on a marble statue, but she is proud of what she has achieved at the end of her long corridor with its sliver of river and bag of letters.

Marla has very little notice that she’s dying. There’s a thump in her chest, which she thinks might be because she’s recently switched to almond milk in her tea and it gives her indigestion. She taps her breastbone to try and burp, but nothing comes up. There is a wash of heat that passes from one side of her chest to another. She coughs slightly and feels some discomfort. She thinks - maybe I pulled a muscle when I went to the gym earlier? And that’s it. Marla’s heart stops beating and she pants and her face strains and goes red and then she breathes out for the final time. It looks like we’ve come to the end of our session.

The next client knocks on the door an hour later. Marla has never been late for a session before. She always opens the door dead on the minute of their session. So, it’s a surprise when there’s no welcome. Jess taps at the door and gingerly opens it a crack.

“Hello Marla? It’s Jess,” she calls, suddenly getting a pre-sentiment that all is not as it should be.

“Marla?”

Jess sees Marla slumped over in her chair and she utters, “Oh God, Marla!” and then routine swings into action. The ambulance is called. Jess tries CPR but it’s academic at this point, Marla is far, far away at this point. The paramedics don’t even bother when they arrive, just note the time of death. Her body is lifted onto a gurney and wheeled with care and some difficulty down the stairs. She is loaded into the ambulance and transported to hospital, where she is housed in the morgue, with five other people – mostly older people, all dead. The police attend Marla’s office and liaise with the shocked landlord to make sure her room is locked up.

“Wasn’t she only in her fifties?”

“Forty-eight,” the policeman replies.

“God, that’s no age is it?”

“No.”

The landlord to his credit takes at least an hour before he starts to think about clearing out her room and advertising the office. It’s bound to be in demand because it has a river view. Just need to make sure that it’s not known that she died in the actual office. That’s fine, there’s nothing that can’t be glossed over, or given a little spin to make it more palatable. It’s sad, she was a good therapist by all accounts. There’s no justice in this life is there?

To make himself feel better he takes the sack of mail that she had to the post box himself. He wonders why she has all these letters, but only in passing. Not enough to wonder if she wanted them posting. He reaches into the sack, over and over and brings out handfuls of letters and crams them through the slot. Then it’s done. He lights a cigarette and takes himself for a pint. It’s important to seize the day isn’t it? He says to the bar woman. Carpe diem, because you never know what’s in store for you and when your entire life might get flipped on its head.

The End

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George and Robert parked their car in front of the facility, it seemed to be some sort of large warehouse. The whole building was covered in leaves and plants in some sort of attempt to better hide it in the woods, somehow it had worked, as the facility had escaped the grasp of the TPA for a while.

George had ginger hair and was of average height, though he (and most people) looked short next to Robert, whose dark curly hair exactly matched the pitch black clothes both were wearing.

The two agents walked from their car to the building's door, miraculously it opened, they both walked inside. The sound of the door opening echoed throughout the room. The facility was dark except for a bluish white light in the distance. They activated their flashlights and started exploring the place. Various peculiar devices/objects adorned the tables strewn around the facility, though they all looked intriguing the two colleagues knew they had more important things to be looking for. Robert briefly turned off his flashlight to rub his right arm with his left hand.

“Does it still hurt?” George asked.

“Yeah a little.” He replied.

George checked his watch. “It’s almost 6:01.” He said.

“Any moment now.” Robert replied.

They walked towards the blueish light, there was an undeniable indescribable eerie and unsettling quality to it that could not be linked with its objective appearance. When they reached the centre of the room they saw the source of the light. There was a massive flat metallic circle on the floor with a diameter of roughly twenty metres, in the centre of the circle was a thin rod about a metre high, on top of the rod was some sort of glowing orb which was emitting the eerie light. Behind the rod near the edge of the circle was some sort of computer screen. The roof was very low, as they could easily touch it with their hands, on the roof was a large ring exactly matching the circle on the floor.

George looked awe struck, “This must be…”

“The Distortion” Robert finished.

Robert stared at the strange sight for another moment, before seemingly shaking himself out of it and returning to the moment. He checked his watch and immediately started looking around the room in anticipation, George was doing the same. The room fell silent, each passing second felt like an hour, the moment dragged on and on until the wait was unbearable.

Suddenly the room was filled with a more ferocious version of the blueish white light, this time it was nearly blindly bright. A sound which sounded like a combination of electricity, crashing rocks and an explosion echoed across each surface, though unlike an explosion the light and sound didn’t immediately disappear, instead, over the next couple seconds the light slowly dimmed and the sound grew softer until it was just a low whistle.

As suddenly as they started, the light and sound also abruptly stopped before they could dissipate completely. George and Robert saw five figures standing near the wall of the facility, they had not been here a moment ago, they had seemingly materialised out of thin air.

“That’s them!” Robert shouted.

George grabbed a small black metallic sphere magnetically attached to his belt and pushed a button on it which began a countdown on its display. Robert suddenly stole the sphere out of his hand and threw it at the five figures.

“Hey! What are you…” George said before diving down for cover behind a table. This time the room was filled with a bright orange light and the more familiar sound of an explosion which cut off an explicative shouted by one of the figures. The duo appeared from their cover to inspect the damage. It seemed as suddenly as the figures appeared they had also disappeared via the bomb. Pieces of what they could only assume were the figures was printed on the floor and even the wall at the back.

“We got them…” said George nearly at a loss for words, as he looked at Robert, who looked triumphant. George’s relief started to turn to anger at what Robert had just done but before he could say anything they heard the door of the warehouse open. They both quickly whipped around while putting a hand on the gun in their holster.

“Is that… oh it’s just Maria” Robert said.

Maria was a bit shorter than George and had brown hair, she also wore the same pitch black clothes as the others.

“How did you… What happened?” Maria asked.

“We got them!” Robert started, “We saw all five appear right in front of our eyes. Then Robert…”

“Blew them up before they could try anything!” Robert interjected.

“Did you get all five? Are you sure?” Maria asked.

“Yeah and he stole the bomb right out of my hand! He’ll do anything for that promotion.” George shouted.

“I did nothing of the sort, you’ll never get the promotion with such baseless accusations.” Robert replied.

“Neither of you two will get it if you keep bickering like children.” Maria said sternly.

“It’s not like any of you three would get the promotion. You weren’t here to stop them.” Robert said smugly.

Maria sighed, “How did you guys even get here first?” She asked.

●

The TPA agents stood huddled around a strange device in their base. The only ordinary aspect of the device was its screen, which displayed the words: “TEMPORAL DISTORTION DETECTED FROM THE FUTURE AT 6:01 15/04/24. NW FROM CURRENT LOCATION. APROX 1832 METRES”. The rest of the device had strange bulbs and panels covering it emitting a blueish white light. The device had three long antennae protruding from its top, one of which was quite badly bent. Besides these features the device was a perfect cube.

“Alright everyone!” Maria began, “Ivan is dead. And in less than half an hour five of his hostile followers are going to distort from their time to ours. We have until then to go to where they’re going to distort and stop them before they can do any harm. We know these guys are from the future but we don’t know how far ahead in the future they’re coming from and thus we also don’t know how dangerous they are, we must be prepared for the worst.”

Each agent looked more than ready, they all had their black uniforms on and their belts all had various weapons attached to them.

“Perhaps Robert should stay behind and make sure our friend in the basement doesn’t escape, considering his injury.” Mark said with a smirk, his blonde hair contrasted heavily with his uniform, precisely the opposite of Robert’s hair.

“You know what? I think I’ll be alright. Stop trying to make your colleagues your enemies.” Robert replied slightly annoyed.

Maria acted as though the exchange had not happened and continued, “We luckily know that they are going to distort in the facility where they keep The Distortion.”

“Perhaps they are planning to quickly do something on this end then distort back to the future.” Clair interjected, she was similar to Robert in stature and hair colour, but she was slightly shorter and greying.

“We can’t know for sure.” Maria replied, she continued, “We know it is in the forest we are in now and thanks to this Temporal Instrument we know roughly where it is but not exactly since its antenna is bent. We’ll take the Instrument with us in the car to help us look for it. Everyone ready?”

George, Clair and Mark all nodded but Robert didn’t, “I think I’ll take the other car.” He said. “What? Why!?” Maria asked a little confused. “I just want to. Clair, could you come with me, I can’t drive with my arm. Well I can it’s just probably not the best for it.”

“There is no way I’m going with you.” She replied slightly confused at the proposal but smug about her rejection. Most of the agents looked at Robert like he was a but mad, but George seemed to sense something they couldn’t.

“I’ll go with you.” George said.

Maria look suspiciously at George and Robert, “I don’t know what you two think you know but the only way to that facility is in the car with the Temporal Instrument. Just remember that you two are now on your own now.” She turned to address the others, “We better go, the clock is ticking.”

●

“Well? Answer me! How did you two get here first!?” Maria asked slightly annoyed.

Robert looked smugly at George, “We took a shortcut.”

Anger welled up in her face, “That doesn’t…” She sighed, she would address it later. Behind them through the still open door walked Clair and Mark. Maria looked at the aftermath of the explosion next to them. “It might’ve been nice to interrogate one of them to figure out what they’re plan was, but I suppose they were potentially really dangerous so it was for the best all five were taken out.” Her gaze shifted to the massive device from which the blueish light came from. Usually she would try to hide their fascination but now it was too great for her to overcome, she stared at it in awe. “The Distortion…” She whispered.

Then she did something the other two wished they had done earlier, she climbed onto the metal circle to investigate. Not to be outdone, George and Robert quickly followed.

“Don’t look at that orb in the middle from up close.” Robert said wincing. “It’s making me feel a little dizzy.” George added.

Mark had by now also joined the others on the circle, while Clair investigated the strange objects on the tables surrounding The Distortion. Maria had walked over to the computer panel near the edge of the circle. Besides the screen the most prominent feature of the computer was a big red button which Maria choose not to press. The screen had the text: “LOCATION SET: 15/04/25 6:01 20 METRES SE”  written on it.

“The Distortion is set to send its next passengers precisely one year into the future, into another spot in this facility.” Maria observed.

“Perhaps the five people were simply planning to ‘fetch’ someone or something from their past and take it back to their future?” Mark proposed.

“That’s possible,” Maria replied, “Although they may have wanted to do something more on this side.”

“Could we perhaps change the date or location of where it distorts to? That could be a real game changer.” Robert asked.

“I don’t know enough about computers, I’m scared I accidentally activate it.” Maria replied.

“Clair! Get over here! You’re the computer girl.” Mark shouted.

●

All the agents immediately stood up and left for the base’s exit. Mark, Clair and Maria started carrying the Temporal Instrument outside, when they exited the base they saw that Robert and George had already gotten in their car and sped off. None of them still had any idea at what they were planning to do, they weren’t even going in the direction the Temporal Instrument thought it might be! 

Their bases was completely covered in very realistic synthetic grass, making it look like an inconspicuous misshapen hill. The three TPA agents saw their car parked in the distance, it had a faded TPA logo on its side with the words ‘Temporal Protection Agency’ written beneath it. They loaded the Instrument into the trunk and turned in such a way that its screen would face the car’s passengers.

Maria climbed into the driver’s seat, Mark climbed in the seat next to her and Clair sat in the back. They drove off with quite some speed, despite the fact that it was early morning and a forest the land was flat enough for her to drive with relative ease. 

Clair was staring intently at the Instrument, waiting for the moment when it finally got a precise location of the facility. “Our entire job is fighting and stopping those who warp and distort time,” She said, “But I’ve always wondered what it would be like to distort through time.”

●

Clair walked over to the great circle, the moment she stepped on it the circle moved down as if it was a scale, it had not done this any time previously. Before anyone could realise what was happening a circular wall protruded from the ring on the ceiling and fell to the ground to separate what was on the circle from what was not, it fell with such a force that it could have easily removed one of their limbs if they were on the circle’s border, they were all now trapped.

Mark and George started banging on the wall but to no avail, Maria stared in shock at the screen, though it had previously been displaying the future date all it displayed now was the words “DISTORTION PROCESS STARTED”. Beneath the sound of desperate cries and the angry banging on the wall of the agents, a low whistle was emanating from the orb in the centre of the circle.

The orb started subtlety growing in size, the luminosity of the bluish white glow also grew with it. The low whistle also grew louder, as it grew louder the terrified agents could hear more details to the sound, a backdrop of what sounded like crashing rocks, the hint of the sizzling of electricity, the through line sound of a prolonged explosion.

The orb had by now grown to such a size that it had consumed the rod which seemingly supported it, the orb kept growing and growing as the agents backed terrified in the wall, the sound was now so intense that though they could see the others with their mouths agape they heard no sound. 

Eventually the orb had grown to such a size that each one of them was face to face with it, the light was so intense that they had no choice but to close their eyes and accept their fate, they was no escape. The orb grew one final time and consumed it’s unwilling inhabitants, and the agents were distorted through time…

●

“Don’t focus on that, just focus on doing your job.” Mark said to Clair. The car unintentionally ran over a rock and uncomfortably rocked, Clair was staring intently at the Instruments’ screen, occasionally instructing Maria on how to drive. The approximate distance the Instrument displayed changed at random but with a downward trend, they were getting closer to it.

“Oh crap! It’s already 6:01!” Clair exclaimed.

“We still have time to stop them.” Maria said wearily.

“How exactly did Ivan die?” Mark suddenly asked. Maria and Clair responded with silence.

“When you two retrieved the Instrument?” He asked again. More silence followed.

All three sat awkwardly until Clair suddenly said, “Oh there it is, it’s up ahead.” Indeed the Instrument was now displaying the words: “TEMPORAL DISTORTION DETECTED FROM THE FUTURE AT 6:01 15/04/24. S FROM CURRENT LOCATION. EXACTLY 128 METRES”. With the metre count quickly ticking down. Through the trees they finally saw the facility with George and Robert’s car parked outside.

“Did they get here first?” Maria asked.

●

Maria and Clair parked their car in front of Ivan’s house, though it was night all the house’s lights were on. “Did we have to do this at night?” Clair asked with a yawn.

“We don’t know when their guys are distorting into our time. We need as much information as possible as soon as possible.” Maria replied.

“But it could be in like a month.” She replied.

“Or it could be in a day!” Maria pointed out.

Clair had no response to that so she just kept quiet.  They walked over to the house, the house looked regular except for the fact that it was painted a sinister blood red, there was a large grass garden surrounding the house and a gravel path leading up to the door of the house.

“Remember what Robert said.” Maria told Clair.

●

The three TPA agents who remained at the base were concerned, Robert had gone off on his mission but was somehow injured, Mark had gone to get him but both should have been back by now. George was constantly checking the outside camera on his phone.

“Oh there they are! There they are!” George suddenly exclaimed, he had saw their car approaching in the distance. The three of them exited the base just as the car parked out front. Mark immediately jumped out of the car and walked to the boot of the car. He opened it up and pulled a short handcuffed man with dirty, messy black hair. The man’s face wore two opposing features, a bruised eye and a smug smile.

“Who is this?” Maria asked.

“His name is Josef,” Mark replied, “He claims he works for Ivan.”

“That Ivan!?” Clair said shocked, “He must know where The Distortion is then right?”

“Yeah, problem is he won’t tell us where it is.” Mark replied, “Worse, he confessed to something disturbing… according to him five people who work for their criminal organization will distort from the future to their past, and our near future.”

“When? How near of a future for us?” Maria asked concerned.

“He won’t say, only saying soon.” 

“And do you have any idea of where?”

“He claims they are going to distort into the facility where they keep The Distortion, which he again won’t tell us the location of.”

“How do we find it?”

“Luckily Josef has quite the loose mouth, he confirmed the existence of a device we only suspected they have, a sort of temporal instrument which can pinpoint the time and place of a time distortion. It is located in Ivan’s house.”

“Just his house? We suspect it’s that house at the edge of the forest. We could just go there and retrieve it right?”

“Josef claims we “cannot break into his house”, because of traps Ivan had installed there.”

“Did he say what they were?”

“Surprisingly yes! He mentioned mines placed on the gravel path leading up to his house but not on the grass.”

●

“Oh right. He told us not to use the gravel path.” Clair said.

Maria and Clair walked carefully across the grass and made their way to the front door, Clair peered into the window on the door while Maria started picking the lock.

●

“Robert could you take Josef to the basement.” Mark asked.

“I can’t with my arm.” Robert replied tending to the cut on his arm.

“George could you?” Mark asked, George nodded and walked off with Josef.

“What happened to your arm?” Maria asked Robert.

“Ask Josef.” Robert replied annoyed. Though George and Josef were already inside they still heard Josef giggle as Robert responded.

“Any other traps mentioned?” She asked.

“He also mentioned that the front door has a row of guns on the inside that automatically fire when they detect motion.” Robert responded.

●

“The left wall here is covered in bullets while the right has this long dark rectangular hole in it.” Clair observed through the window.

“Would we be okay if we crawl down that hallway?” Maria asked. She had successfully picked the lock but didn’t open the door.

“Probably.” Clair replied. Not a reassuring answer but it didn’t seem to bother Maria, she slowly and carefully opened the door. They both bent down to the floor and started crawling into the house, without warning the guns hidden away in the hole in the wall started firing overhead.

“You alright!?” Maria shouted, her voice barely avoiding being drowned out by the onslaught of explosions centimetres away. Clair only nodded. They carried on, after a couple of metres of crawling the bullets stopped and the room fell suddenly and violently silent. Though the bullets had stopped, they crawled on a couple more metres before standing up. 

They walked down the hallway, before reaching the end they suddenly heard a loud thud. At the end of the hallway was what looked to be the living room, as they entered the room the door to the living room suddenly closed behind them. The colour of the living room matched that of the outside walls, even the couches were a sinister red.

On one of the couches sat a very old man, his face was clean shaven and his hair was various uneven shades of grey yet still neatly combed. His clothes were surprisingly plane and unremarkable. The man was just then sipping out of a mug of something hot. 

“Oh hi…” The man said clearly trying to sound friendly but failed when his last word was cut off by a violent and painful sounding cough. When he finished coughing he made a deceptively sweet smile, though his smile was soft his eyes had something violent in them, something hidden that would best be not revealed.

Maria had faint recognition, “You must be…”

“Ivan.” He replied.

Maria ran over to him and forced him to stand up, she turned the him around and started handcuffing him. Instead of resisting the crime boss simply set his drink down on the table in front of him (though most of it had already spilled after she had forced him up). While Maria continued to handcuff Ivan, Clair had walked over to the corner of the room.

On her way there she stepped on something, she looked down and saw it was a phone with its screen smashed. In the corner of the room was a peculiar square object.

“Ah yes, that is the Temporal Instrument.” Ivan said delightedly. He was now fully handcuffed and being held by Maria who noticed that one of the antennae of the Instrument had a distinct bend in it.

“Did you do that?” Maria asked him. He simply giggled in response, his giggle turned to a (less aggressive this time) cough at the end.

Clair looked up at one of the walls and noticed a large wooded board attached to it. Attached to the board was about a hundred watches arranged in a rectangular pattern except for five blank spaces with no watches at the bottom of the board. Each watch had its face smashed and thus no longer worked.

“What in the world is this?” Clair asked perplexed.

“Each of those watches belonged to one of my accomplishments, the time they display was their times of death.” Ivan replied with the same unchanging smile. A moment later it all clicked for Clair, it all clicked for both of them, the reveal of this creepy collection from murdered corpses, the sheer magnitude of violence inferred from the number of watches and even the ferocity of attack implied by the way their faces were smashed.

“Accomplishments!?” Maria said with disgust while Clair took a couple steps back in horrified awe, she noticed that about half of the watches were pitch black, she looked down her own watch and it matched the ones on the board exactly. Each TPA agent was given the same black watch to match their uniform. The added implication of the loss of so many of her own profession somehow made Clair feel worse. Maria had also noticed the black watches but asked another question.

“Who did those non-TPA watches come from?”

“My own associates, the ones who worked on The Distortion.” Ivan replied causally, not acting as though the decision to end these lives was difficult, “You see, the device required many to construct it but few to know of its existence at the end, it had to be done.”

Maria and Clair’s reactions to the appalling admission were very different, Maria’s was of anger and a thirst for justice, Clair’s was of fear and grief. Clair looked to the room’s door, desperate for an escape, but it was closed. On the wall next to it was two identical levers.

“Let’s take him away, you could carry the Temporal Instrument.” Maria said.

●

“And Josef also said that one of the door’s in the house automatically closed, and that there were two levers next to it, apparently the right most lever opens the door again. That’s all the things about the house he mentioned.” Robert said.

“Did you ask what happens when you pull the left lever?” Maria asked.

“He just laughed.”

●

Instead of picking up the Instrument Clair walked over to the pair of levers, she thought for a moment before pulling the right most lever. The door remained closed as ever. Suddenly an object fell out of the roof, nearly hitting Maria on the head. The object looked mundane and unremarkable, it looked like just a chunk of dark grey metal.

Ivan sighed, he then suddenly pulled away from Maria. Before she could grab him again he ducked down took a sip from his drink.

“Hey!” Maria exclaimed, Ivan without warning fell to the floor on top of the grey object. Since he fell on his back he could look at Maria and Clair and smiled once more, but this time his smile was not friendly but instead matched the violence which had always been in his eyes. The smile broke when he started painfully coughing again, spitting up some of his drink on his face.

Suddenly the room was filled with yellow light, along with a loud bang. The two TPA agents were knocked of their feet and fell backwards. A couple seconds later they arose.

“You okay?” Maria asked concerned, Clair nodded. They looked to where the explosion had accorded. There was now a black circle of ash on the floor atop which Ivan’s lifeless smoking body lay, his face now as dull and expressionless as the object which had ended him.

“What the hell?” Clair exclaimed.

“That bomb could have taken all of us out!” Maria said.

“He knew that was going to happen,” Clair began, “Why didn’t he try to take cover or escape?”

“Why did he save us?” Maria asked. They both stared at his body for a while in silence. Eventually Maria walked over to the Instrument and inspected it.

“Temporal distortion from future detected at… 6:01!?” Maria read aloud. “That’s about…” She looked at her watch, “An hour! We have to go!”

“Does it show the location?” Clair asked. Maria picked up the Instrument and looked intently at its screen.

“Yes.” She replied, she moved it from side to side in her hands, “It’s only an approximation though. We should go back to the base, we all have to get there as soon as possible.” 

“Can’t we go directly there from here?”

“The distance estimate is varying to much even for small adjustments in my hands, we really have no idea how far away it is. It’s better to get the others.”

“They are distorting here in an hour, we have to go now!”

Maria looked suspiciously at Clair, “You just want it to be the two of us so that you have a better shot at that promotion!”

“And you want it to be all of us so that they automatically choose the leader of the group.” Clair replied coldly. Maria said nothing, she simply walked off carrying the Instrument. Maria pulled the left lever and the door opened letting them out. After crawling out of the house they both soon entered the car and drove off back to the base, when they arrived Maria went to the back to get the Instrument while Clair went to open the door.

“…I’m the medic though? Don’t you want me to at least look at it?” George asked confused.

“I just feel more comfortable when it’s me.” Robert replied indifferently, he was rapping a bandage around his injured arm.

George still looked confused, “I think you’re hiding-“

“Clair!?” Robert interjected surprised.

“You don’t have to sound so surprised.” Clair replied. Maria walked in with the Instrument and set it down in the middle of the room.

“Get over here Mark!” Maria shouted, Mark walked into the room and quickly shot a look at  Robert before his attention was stolen by the device in the room’s centre.

“Alright everyone,” Maria began.

●

Maria thought for a moment. “Come here Clair! We’re going to get the Temporal Instrument!” She shouted.

Clair emerged looking confused, “Do we have to go now?” She asked.

“Yes!” Maria replied, “We have to get the device before Ivan’s men distort to our time!”

Maria and Clair climbed into the car Robert and Mark had just arrived in and drove off. Mark looked at Robert and smirked.

●

Robert’s arm was bleeding, he looked like he was in great pain but instead of tending to it he was steadily holding a gun with his uninjured hand, he was pointing the gun at Josef who was sitting on the floor. Josef wore a fresh bruised eye and a wide smile, which was barely visible in the early morning light.

The two were on a patch of gravel outside the forest, surrounding them were two cars, one had a faded TPA logo on it and the other’s driver’s window was smashed in. There was a shed nearby providing minimal light to the two injured men.

Robert saw a pair of headlights approaching in the distance, when the car gained detail, he noticed it’s TPA logo and was relieved. When the car arrived Mark walked out.

“What happened?” He asked.

“This guy, says he works for Ivan, cut my arm. I can’t drive back.”

Mark looked at Josef. “So he knows all about The Distortion then?” he asked.

“He claims that five of ‘Ivan’s guys’ are going to distort from the future to the present, he doesn’t say when or where though.” Robert replied. “Can we get going?” He asked.

“No… wait…” Mark said thinking, “What if, while we’re here, we get some more info from this guy?” He asked, “Come on dude, speak” he commanded Josef.

Before Robert could protest Josef started talking, he started explaining how they would never find where the five people were distorting to since they could only find that location with the Instrument, and how they would never find that since it was at Ivan’s house which had was protected by various traps.

“…and there is a pair of levers, the right one reopens the door, the other one…” He giggled, “…doesn’t! I’ve said too much.”

Mark looked both pleased and disappointed, pleased at all Josef had given away but disappointed that he’d stopped. Robert however looked like he was in pain. “Can we please get going!?” He asked with a wince.

“Alright.” Mark replied. “We’ll put him in the boot of the car.” Robert said, “Or well you’ll put him there.”

Mark went and handcuffed Josef to minimal resistance and put Josef in the TPA car’s boot. Mark and Robert climbed into car and they drove off back to the base. As they drove Mark thought.

“Maybe we could… no that wouldn’t work.” He said.

“Maybe we could what?” Robert asked.

“No I just thought perhaps we could’ve lied about some of the traps at Ivan’s house, like to ‘get rid of some of the competition’ for the promotion, but that wouldn’t’ve worked since we need to know the location of The Distortion if we have any chance of getting that promotion.” Mark replied.

Robert thought for a moment, “We could do that.” He said. They saw the base in the distance.

“Really?” Mark asked.

“Yeah, We’ll just change one thing. We’ll tell them the safe lever is the one on the left, not the one on the right.”

“Good thinking.” Mark said while he parked the car in front of the base.

●

Robert was driving at top speed, perhaps that was not the best thing to do this late at night but he had reason for his urgency. In the distance he saw two people walk out of the shed, they each climbed into a different car and one of the car’s drove off while the other took a little longer to start driving.

Robert sped into front of the slower car blocking it’s escape. The car’s driver jumped out of the car while Robert stopped, the driver looked contemplatively between the forest and Robert. Robert fired a warning shot from his gun before he could make up his mind.

“Don’t you think about running!” Robert said commandingly, the man raised his hands into the air in compliance. Robert saw a rope the ground and picked it up, he then walked over to the man.

“Turn around.” Robert said. The man complied. Robert started tying his hands behind his back with the rope to minimal resistance.

“Do you work for Ivan?” Robert asked.

“Yes I do… My name’s Josef by the way… yours?” He seemed to notice his captor didn’t seem to care much and just looked off to where the other car drove off.

“Yes that was him.” Josef said with a grin.

Robert looked regretful and a bit angry, “Where is the Distortion!?”

“Like I’d tell you, you guys really don’t have long to find that anyway.”

“What do you mean!?”

“Five of Ivan’s guys are coming from the future, from what I hear they’re going reek quite some havoc.”

“What!? Where? When!?”

“About in a couple…” He trailed off. Robert looked annoyed and looked over at Josef’s car, he suddenly grabbed Josef’s ropes, he pulled Josef over to a nearby tree and tied the rope to it. He walked back to Josef’s car and looked inside. Josef’s smug and unconcerned facial expression transformed into realisation, and he quickly began reaching for his pocket with his hands. Robert had picked a rock off the ground and started bashing the car window with it. 

With Josef still desperately trying to reach inside of his pocket Robert had broken open the car window and reached inside to grab the phone which lay between the front seats.

Josef had finally found the thing in his pocket, his knife, he carefully picked it out and started quietly (but still quickly) cutting at the rope, meanwhile Robert observed that the phone was still open on the Maps apps, and it had a location set for a random point in the woods, he smiled, this was it. He saw that there was a marker in the car and quickly grabbed it as well, with nowhere better to write he began to write The Distortion’s coordinates on his right arm.

Josef had abandoned all pretence of quietness he had before and began feverishly cutting at the rope. Finally when Robert was done he dropped the marker and walked back to his car with determination on his face, he was going to find The Distortion first, he would stop this future threat, without any help from his colleagues, he would finally get that promotion. Suddenly came up behind Robert and Josef sliced Robert in his right hand, Robert yelled in pain and whipped around the punch Josef square in the face, who fell to the ground on his back.

“You’re damn lucky I didn’t have my gun in my hand, you have any idea how screwed your little operation is? I know where The Distortion is now! It’s over!” Robert said angrily, though after he said that he let out a soft groan of pain. 

Josef was cuffing his eye which was hit, but with great effort he put on the same smug smile, “I know you just wanted to go there alone,” he began, “you all just want the glory for yourselves, but now with that arm you’ll need the other’s help. Hell, you can’t even drive us out of here with both arms, you’re going to have to go there with your colleagues, and you’ll probably not be any help with that arm, so I guess you won’t even have a chance at the promotion…” By the end of the sentence Josef’s smile had turned genuine. Robert however had gone from his previous anger to realisation to even angrier, he was holding his gun (with his good arm) steadily at Josef’s head.

Wincing with pain he took his phone out of his pocket with his right arm and after pushing buttons he said “Another is on his way, don’t say another word!” And for the next few minutes they just stood and sat there, waiting.

●

Ivan was enjoying his drink in the dim light of the shed, he wanted to check the time so he leaned over to the temporal instrument which sat in the corner on the floor with three perfectly intact antennas, he almost spat up a bit of his drink as he coughed. Suddenly Josef burst through the shed’s door.

“Ah! Josef! I was wondering when you would come, have a seat.”

“Sorry I’m late sir, I have received disturbing news, there are-“

“Might I say I appreciate your persistence and loyalty to our operation.”

“Umm, thank you sir, well-“

“I always thought that when I’m no longer around you should take over from me.”

“Thanks, well… wait really?”

“Yes of course, not that I have many options though, I ‘took care’ most of the scientists who worked on The Distortion.”

“I’m very grateful sir, but I have important news…” he trailed off as if waiting for Ivan’s interjection.

“Me too.” Ivan replied after a while, “Go first of course” he said with a smile which was interrupted by another cough.

“I have received intel that five TPA agents have been stationed in the forest to investigate our operation, worse, they are up for promotion, so they will be willing to do anything to ‘get glory’. What is your news?”

“Mine might be even more severe, the Temporal Instrument’s reading indicate that at exactly 6:01 today, a Distortion will occur, in the middle of the facility no less.”

“What? You didn’t have anything planned right? Nothing from the past or future?”

“Nothing planned at all, stranger is the details, five objects appear from another time at 6:01, their total weight is 426kg.”

“That’s more mass than we ever tested it with, largest thing we sent was that camera which recorded the room two minutes in the past.”

“Exactly! I can’t think where or when this could be coming from… hold on, what is 426 divided by five?”

“About… eighty-four I think, eighty-four eighty-five.”

“That’s about the weight of a person.”

Josef gasped, “Wait, what about-“

“The TPA agents!”

“They find the facility!? Oh no…” 

Josef was pacing back and forth, while Ivan was thinking. “I always did want to test it on a person… testing it on multiple would be even better, especially multiple of those damn TPA agents.”

“So if they come out the other end… damaged then great, we know it’s not ready for people and our other problem is solved… but what about if we survive.”

“We… we make them kill themselves.”

“What? How!?”

“We could… convince them of some sort of threat, like that… that like five of our guys are coming from the future to… do something horrible. They are trigger happy enough in pursuit of the promotion to probably kill their future selves appearing out of nowhere before they realise who they are killing!”

“But do we have to lead them to facility?”

“Of course, we must make sure all five make it there at the same time, we can’t have one of them going off on their own. So we should give them some location information but not all of it, I could probably bend one of the instrument’s antennae to do that.”

“Would… would this work? Would they really fall for this?”

“Josef, it will work because we make it work, after the invention of that wonderful device the past and future have begun to become intertwined. So if we don’t commit to this plan then no, those five people at 6:01 won’t be those who we wish. But if we do the deception work now then it will have always been them, understand?”

Josef thought for a moment, “Yes sir.”

“Good, now I’ll remotely set the time to distort to on my phone to 6:01, and also make sure it just activates when enough weight is on the platform. I’ll even set the display date to something else so that they suspect nothing.”

“Will they just get on the platform you think?”

“Yes, probably out of curiosity. I’m going back to my house with the instrument, they are probably on their way here now, you stay here and get caught.” 

“I have to get caught!?”

“We need to convince them that this threat is real, so real they’ll kill themselves without knowing. Lead them to my house, I’ll lead them to the facility. Can you do this… for me?”

“Umm… yes of course.”

“Great now help me with this.” Ivan said gesturing at the Instrument

Josef carried the Instrument to Ivan’ car and loaded it into the boot, he turned around to see a car approaching.

“Good luck.” Ivan said before climbing into his car and driving off. Josef climbed into his car but did nothing, nothing but wait.

●

Josef lay in the boot of his captor’s car, they were talking about something but he couldn’t hear what they were saying, the plan was going almost perfectly with the exception of Robert knowing where the facility was, but he improvised about what to do there. The point was that they seemed to fully believe his story, which meant Ivan’s plan was working, and if it working that meant that these people driving the car were unknowingly setting up the conditions for their deaths, and they had no idea.

The car stopped, suddenly the boot door opened and Josef was saw the figure of one of those he had doomed to death, and for once he hid his smile, for it would give away the fact that unknowingly to them, he was victorious.

2097

Vitaliy found himself in his dingy office room at home. The lamp on his desk gave off a dim light, and the shadow his upright body cast upon the wall was large and dramatic. The TV played a black and white re-release of the Wizard of Oz. Old movies had always helped him focus. He closed his eyes before grabbing the handle of the door. He had done this a million times before, and yet every new time it felt like he might mess up and nothing would happen. He straightened his posture, took a deep breath and walked through the door.

This better work.

Though his magic possessed great destructive power, the many complex arcane and mystic rituals of his long-winded family tree were mostly a mystery to him. And so even a supposedly simple transportation spell as this one, had always put him under pressure. Opening his eyes as he exhaled, he appeared in the library of Alexandria. Although not quite.

A perfect snapshot. Plucked out of time, formed from shreds of the libraries’ uneven history, and handed to his predecessors countless generations ago. All the great wizards in his ancestry utilized this mythical locale as their study, their escape and sanctuary. In turn they changed it, reformed it again and again, reshaping it each time and repurposing it to their individual needs, with countless of scrolls and books added, this fountain of knowledge on both the physical and immaterial was Vitality’s greatest weapon in his campaign against the demonic forces. And his only real teacher in When he had first gained access to it.

Vitaliy had spent what would be weeks in normal time measurements, getting lost in the infinite knowledge buried inside. But time flows differently here. That too, is a mystery neither him nor anyone before him was able to solve. It seemed like hours spent in this space were mere minutes in our world, sometimes more, sometimes less. He didn't even know if he really was aging in the time he had spent here. It was in the nature of the spell itself not to question these matters. Accessing this place and maintaining it, required purpose, focus, and a present mind. Although ancient, it was volatile. Although simple, it was hard to break. Doing such would cost precious time in reassembly, and tampering with unpredictable arcane energies had never been much fun to him.

As he stepped through the gilded entrance halls, he took in the archways, the busts of ancient philosophers and the resplendent paintings who shine with the same bright colour as the day the brush wet the canvas. Some he recognized; others were startlingly new to him each time.

That one must be new.

Each visit was new and yet familiar. He felt a sense of undefinable nostalgia, as if remembering events that had never occurred. It was like trying to visually hone in on a photograph that stayed blurred.

As he crossed the round dome that acts as the centrepiece of the construct, he stretched out his arm horizontally behind him, reaching out to one of the scrolls near the entrance. It shot outward from its stack, the scroll on top swiftly replacing it, and landed smoothly in his grip. He opened the scroll and checked the text on it. The letters radiated a warm, golden glow onto his pale skin as his gaze flew over one sentence, then the next. When the last sentence had reached his mind, he simply threw the scroll upwards.

Read that one before, I think.

Over the top of his head, it had rolled itself up and fired itself back into the stack it came from. He tapped his shoes on the sun depicted on the mosaic floor which he was now at the centre of. Gazing up, rubbing his chin, he inspected the fresco mural spanning the dome.

Its most recent addition depicted an old man with grey, flowing hair and beard, wielding yellow runic sigils in both his hands, sealing a demon into a cave. Vitaliy had attributed this addition to his great-grandfather, who had never been a particularly humble man.

Or wizard, for that matter.

The runes on the hands of the mural-wizard pointed Vitaliy to the archway entrance of a wing he visited the rarest of times. It contained books on the arcane school of magics. As he stepped towards it, he tried to repress his worries. The arcane was, in essence, just another form of energy to control, like lightning, the wind, fire, or even the soil beneath our feet. Yet, it was an untested, erratic, unexplained form of energy that true, founded information was scarce on. From what his uncle had told him, Vitaliy’s great-grandfather had been the most skilled member of his family in recent memory. Yet he was a peculiar fellow, and many other mages had questioned the validity of his words, and even more so his writing.

This wing was decidedly less well-illuminated than the others, dark, musty-smelling wood had replaced much of the stone carved structures of the entrance. While the rest of the library was filled with a replicated echo of the sun shining through its halls, the spell seemed to have failed here. Instead, what dim light there was, stemmed from a couple of candles, residing inside metal cups, roughly nailed to the bookshelves. Some of the nails protruded oddly, splintering the wood. When exactly that happened, he could not tell.

It was in the nature of all wizards to be forgetful.

But, for one of his particular powerset more than for others. Magic stored within writing had a special failsafe integrated to it. The usage of spells learned through text, could only be retained for a limited time. Its memory can last for days, hours, or even just mere minutes in the real world. This limitation was not created by Vitaliy’s family. Rather, after a particularly powerful sorceress had run rampant with power, the greatest of her opposition had to band together to put an end to her rampage and all those who may seek a similar scope in destruction. It was possible for Vitaliy to train, hone and even master spell craft within these grounds, to reach new heights of his abilities, only for his spell slinging to fizzle out immediately after leaving the library. He was never frustrated by it, until now. Now he needed all the power he could muster from these texts.

He was not powerless against the wizard’s amnesia, of course. Some of the books and scrolls, those marked with a sapphire stone, could be lent out, transferring them from this reality into his. It was, in fact, common for Witches and Wizards to carry their books into battle. Not only for a quick glance at a complex ritual to ensure its correct execution, but also to refresh one’s mind on a particularly powerful spell that could only be remembered briefly.

Lastly, it was also a focus. Magic needed to be channelled through a physical material, as such, the use of an artifact such as an enchanted tome could stabilize the magic, and reduce the strain on the body.

One such tome, a large and cumbersome collection of ripped pages, scribbled notes and drawings, all wrapped up in greyish leather and inscribed with the name: “the collective mastery of elements'' was the one he carried. Writing a book was a way to bind spells to the self, making them one’s own.

Besides of course inventing a spell alone, noting them down was the best way to naturally gain access to a vast arsenal of abilities.

Vitaliy knew this well. His father had begun writing the book, and he had continued it, becoming the most powerful elemental mage in history. At least that he knew about. Most people only had access to a narrow category of spells, some were gifted the control over water, metal, or even sound. But Vitaliy, thanks to his lineage, had been blessed with the control of a multitude of elemental energies. This, together with his research and writings in demonology, he had hoped would assure he left a positive mark on the world when death came for him.

As Vitaliy passed the unfamiliar shelves of the library, he pondered on this. On if it would all be enough. It weighed on his mind constantly, but he tried his best not to take it out on the people around him, especially his son. Crossing another corner, he found a dusty wooden desk paired with a shaky looking chair in front of him. A table lamp was nested on top. It was not connected to any electric source but sure enough, once he had pressed the button on its cord, it turned on. He began picking out a couple books and scrolls from the nearby shelves and stacking them shakily atop the table. He could of course have read them all much quicker through magic, but he preferred studying the first texts of his excursions into the unknown with care.

Besides, knowing his great-grandfather, there could have been all sorts of hidden messages and clues embedded within these texts, or outside of them, for that matter. As he picked out his fifth book, staring vacantly into the aisle in front of him, Vitaliy could have sworn he saw a shadow shift, hushing over the floor in the dark. A sinking feeling took hold of him, like something beyond his senses was wrong. It wasn’t like being watched as much as stared at, taken in. He shook off the feeling, accessing this pocket dimension was impossible for anyone outside his own family.

Focus.

The aching and screeching of the old wood in this section of the library did its best to unsettle him, and made it easy for him to attribute any perceived sightings to the overly active mind of a studious spellcaster. Settling into the wooden seat, it quickly lamented his weight, giving ample reason not to trust the seat to last another ten minutes beneath him. He ignored it best he could. One of the books grabbed from the pile, he sloppily threw it open with a sigh and began intently studying it. “Although the arcane is the most unexplored of magics, it too is another font of energy for the caster. It too is a malleable force for him to shape into tools of destruction.”

That much Vitaliy already knew. He flipped the book to check its cover. “Of Arcane Misadventures and Profane Dentures” by Artyom Agelastos, his great-grandfather.

A ridiculous title, befitting of the man.

“Oh good.” He spat out, a hint of a smile on his lips.

“What drives, and eases the casting of the arcane most of all however, is knowledge. Knowledge itself, the very presence of it in the wizard’s mind strengthens their bond with the arcane, and empowers their spells.”

It makes no sense.

He took a deep breath, glanced to the side once again, and picked up a few books from the precariously balanced pile. They were only tangentially related to the subject of wizardry, he realised, and some were so obscure they wouldn’t even be considered a legitimate academical resource by most scholars. His scatter-brained great-grandfather had been honing his magics in truly unordinary ways all this time. Maybe Vitaly could learn a thing or two from him.

He folded together his hands, closed his eyes, and took a breath in.

I see you, ancestors.

As he opened his eyes, they started glowing in a bright, golden light. The quantity of air leaving his lungs as he breathed out was much greater than what he had breathed in. The intensity of said breath picked up to be a gust of wind, causing his torn clothes to flap around wildly. Within an instant, his fingers elongated and thinned, his skin wrinkled with age, and his hair whitened. He grew a beard and mustache reaching his chest in length. He had assumed sage form. A blessing from the God Baldr, access to this form was his family's most treasured ability. In this form, he had access to fragments of all the combat and magic-wielding experience of his entire lineage, as well as highly empowered spells. Although his body seemed frailer, the runes binding it together had made Vitaliy extraordinarily resilient, even more so to attacks by other magics.

Taking this form meant being protected, both physically and mentally. A warm embrace from across time. He stretched out his arms in front of him, folded out both of his hands and turned his palms upward. His eyebrows pointed down as his forehead wrinkled. The pages of the book in front of him began to quickly flick under his intense gaze, picking up speed until the book slammed shut. Within seconds, the entirety of the book's contents, the sum of its knowledge, had been absorbed into the corners of his mind. Like a piece of bread in a vat of acid, the information was dissolved, digested. Vitaliy felt closer to his great grandfather already. His curiosity peaked, and his appetite stimulated; he reached out for another book to thud onto the table. And another. And another. With each new book, be it about magic or not, the speed of his reading ability heightened. Be it fact or fiction, a thought experiment or a cautionary tale, the speed with which they flew off the shelves and into his rushing field of vision improved ever more.

Multiple books were now floating in front of him, whirring as semi-transparent strings formed between them and Vitaliy’s head, tearing once they closed up. The knowledge was magically seeping into his brain, which became heavier and heavier. It was clouded with a whirring mass of nonsense, containing mere glimmers of appliable knowledge. It was exhausting, even in this form.

The library was filled with the sound of magic devouring the books, tomes and scrolls, accompanied by a spectacle of light as golden letters and shining phrases projected into the air. They were joined by two projections of Vitaliy’s image, both echoing his spells in order to accrue more knowledge even faster. This only further fractured his mind, his attention slipped multiple times and he had to redirect it towards the spell, the books.

One of the tomes however, wrapped in greyish metallic fabric, was seemingly immune to the magic.

But his mind was now ravenous, both filled to the brim and starving at the same time, he couldn’t stop here.

In order to decipher the tome Vitaliy had started to tear at any scriptures that may resolve the puzzle. More knowledge consumed; he was able to crack the magical encoding that protected it. As soon as he had started the process of reading and deciphering the metallic tome’s text however, he found himself unable to stop. His eyes were glued to every word, as his mind was overwhelmed by the electric streams of impossible amounts of information. His vision blurred. “Cursed are those who seek her.” Was what he could still make out and bring to the forefront of his consciousness. In his periphery, it appeared like reality itself was bending at his fingertips, who were rigid just like the rest of his body. The table was shaking. A black orb had formed in between his hands, and just above the flapping pages of the book. Fear took hold of him; inside his head he was screaming. The orb started spinning, pulsing. As it rotated, the orb absorbed the strings of light and fragmented words emanated by Vitaliy’s magic, the candles in the corridors had all extinguished. Books were ripped from shelves and absorbed, entire shelves were torn apart, the splintering wood hitting him in the back of the head before disappearing into the orb. Vitaliy’s eyes glazed over, he felt a black hole coming into existence between his very hands. Its emptiness brought relief to his overflowing mind. Yet Its pull made every fibre of his being shudder. He strained against both the magic and his frozen body with all that he could, regaining a little control of the muscles in his hands at last.

Stop. Stop!

Yelling out in desperation, he managed to shut the spell down by an inch of his hair, slamming his head into the fractured table. Both plummeted to the floor.

A wash of coldness woke him. The chill of the air caused him to puff out little clouds of steam as he got up.

How is it cold here? That shouldn’t be possible.

His spell had left the library section in shambles. Torn pages littered the floor, he stepped over wooden planks as he examined the waned magic from the texts. He was unable to cause them to emit that warm glow again. He had never seen the library damaged before. Just then, a shape hushed by his periphery. Something scurried the floor at the foot of the shelves.

With a flick of his wrist, he summoned a shimmering ring of runes, hovering around his closed fist. Its pale light illuminating just beyond the tip of his nose. He was not afraid of the dark, he knew better than to call out to creatures haunting the night. And yet, he was unnerved at what could possibly possess the strength to invade the library. Paranoia had gotten the best of him as he scanned the shelves and corridors, seeing assailants that were not ever there. Turning a corner however, he spotted it once more. He could barely make out something humanoid hastily taking books out of a shelf to Vitaliy`s right. Shooting forth the ring of light, he illuminated the path of havoc left behind by whatever was dishevelling his library. What was first a shape revealed itself to be a shrouded woman. Turning her face before the ring of light had reached her, she reached out to the ring of light before shattering the magic in her fist. Reforming another ring, Vitaliy gave chase to the woman dashing through the hallways. The library proved treacherous however, he didn’t recognize it in this chaotic state, he lost sight of her. Just then he realized he had arrived at one of the archways leading to the entrance hall - the exit for the spell and the library.

The mosaic sun on the floor was damaged and its colour faded. His eyes followed the cracks towards a pillar leading up to the fresco. Taken aback at first, he studied the changed images now revealed beneath the originals. His parentage, his family`s legendary feats, were replaced by ominous images recounting the life of a woman. The fresco pieces of her face were missing, as if they fell out.

Who is that?

The last image in the sequence depicted the woman being banished into a cave by a bearded man. Her face was missing too, except for a green gem that must have been used to form her left eye. The chill in the air had now picked up to be a ghostly breeze, beckoning Vitaliy to turn around and look for the entrance, no, the exit door. Never in his life would he have believed the library could be invaded let alone ravaged like this. The entire entrance was missing, as if torn out by a massive beast. In its stead, the floor simply stopped after the sun mosaic, and had broken into a swirling void of wooden splinters and stone shards. He could make out parts of the golden pillars, now a sickly rusted green. The swirls of debris included pieces of the entrance door as well. Twisting, winding and floating through nothingness. There, in the middle of it all, hung a black cocoon, three times the size of a human.

Huh.

Vitaliy let out a sigh of exasperation, yet at the same time he felt reassured. “More demonic meddling. I should have known.” As the words left his lips, they echoed within the library halls behind him, but instead of fading out, they came back louder and louder. Folding in his thumb, middle and ring finger on both hands, he formed a small, red and orange glowing globe in the space between his little and index finger. As soon as they came into existence, the orbs were set ablaze. In one swift and smooth motion, Vitaliy slammed his hands together, violently crashing the two flames into each other. The orbs started to react, repelling and attracting each other, fusing and separating until he snatched them into his fist. His feverishly glowing hand, now emanating intense heat and blazing light, was aimed at the cocoon. As soon as he relaxed his clenched fingers, opening his fist, a brutal roar exploded out, silencing the echoes of his own voice still ghosting through the halls to his back. Then, it too disappeared, as the broken room was illuminated by a colossal wave of fire escaping his hand and rushing towards the cocoon. Its size exponentially increased with each passing second it travelled towards the object. The force of the wave and its overwhelming heat had caused Vitaliy to stumble slightly. Once a simple fireball spell, he had perfected it into a weapon that can disintegrate just about anything caught in its wake. Yet, as the fire reached its target, it simply slid off the leathery skin. Repelled, its force evaporated into the nothingness behind the black, oily mass.

The shape stirred. With a cracking sound, like the shattering of bones, its outer layer rippled, forming cuts along its oval surface. Its texture remained unchanged, stretching, ripping and repairing effortlessly. The ripples revealed themselves to be folds, moving outwards and unfurling into two black wings. Spanning at least ten meters in length, the wing sections were separated by white, exposed bone, connected to the skin by small nerves, sticking together unnaturally. In Between the wings, a mass of squelching, gurgling flesh was being carved into a feminine shape.

“What the fuck kind of demon are you?” Murmured Vitaliy, as he gathered his strength once again, focusing his thoughts and breathing for his next spell.

Let’s see you handle this.

Hovering Above the ground, he formed the shape of a triangle with his thumbs, index and middle fingers, pointing the centre of the triangle at the shifting creature. His eyes glazed over and a thunderous rumble shook the remaining walls of the library. Just then, a focussed blast of bright, purple-coloured lighting zipped from the centre of the triangle towards the shape.

Its lips parted.

“Demon? I am a god.”

As soon as sound escaped the creatures’ mouth, Vitaliy’s spell dissipated millimetres before reaching its target. The words uttered stabbed his ears like daggers, his body convulsing from the sudden, sharp pain. The runes tattooed on his body instantly vanished and, as he dropped onto the floor, so too did his empowered sage form.

What?!

It was possible, in theory, to break the spell holding together his sage form. Yet, after all the years and all the battles lost, it had never happened. Usually, he had fought in it until a retreat or he had fainted. His incredulity was washed away by a wave of utter despair. Back in his regular body, Vitaliy clenched his ears shut. He screamed out against the sound hurting him, but he couldn’t hear his own voice.

Then silence. The creature’s lips had closed. Loosening the grip on his own head, Vitaliy raised his gaze to see the womanly figure floating towards the floor not yet part of the swirling nothingness. As she neared it, the flesh of her wings quickly rotted and decayed, the bones becoming brittle. As she hovered above the ground for just a moment, a patch of moss sprouted on the ground below her feet. Her wings broke off, as if rejected by her body. Their fast decomposing remains were now drifting into the nothingness behind her back. She landed. The moss providing a soft, quiet embrace. Vitaliy could hear it now, she was breathing. With every breath in, the patch of moss beneath her expanded outwards, with every breath out its outer parts died, shrinking the circle and beginning the cycle anew. Vitaliy knew this feeling. Fear.

“If you are a god, then who are you?”

His question was not answered right away. The figure instead took a couple of steps towards him, accompanied by the moss. He could see her better now. It was a woman, her pale skin seemingly reflecting non-existent light, same as her emerald green left eye. He could only see her left side at first, and as she got closer, he understood why. The right side of her face resembled a gnawed-up skull. He saw a fly circling her empty eye-socket before flying into it. Her face was split in half between its hauntingly beautiful and vaguely familiar left side, and the right side rotting away. Her long, wavy red hair flowed in the air as she slowly walked forward, cloaking, veiling the left side of her body. His eyes followed her neckline down to her chest, she was covered in runes carved into her skin. On the left side, these markings were still fresh and bloody, while on the right what little flesh and skin remained only showed a couple of black engravings. He followed the runes to her breast, the right had none, as her ribcage was fully exposed, centipedes skittering around and gnawing at her lung. Her left nipple was slashed through, leaving a scar in the shape of the cut. Her bowels were spilling out of her right half, hanging down almost to her feet, she seemed to ignore them dangling as she moved towards him. The lower parts of her right foot were mere bones. She stopped about two meters in front of him, looking down at Vitaliy as he was still kneeling.

“I am the hare, and the wolf that bites it.”

Death?

The words were bouncing around Vitaliy’s head. She had directly projected them into him, without uttering a single sentence. Less painful than what she had done before, yet just as invasive.

“How are you here? No one- no being outside my family has ever reached this library.”

He was still incredulous as he spoke.

Am I just imagining this?

“I am nowhere at all. Not yet anyway. Even now, this form is a mere echo of one I may take in the future.”

“But why are you here? What do you want with me?”

“I am here because this is where the thirst for power leads all men. It leads to me.”

“Power is not what I’m looking for. I was looking for knowledge. I always am. I always was.”

“It is childish of you to make that distinction. Is it not the knowledge to enact violence of unprecedented magnitude you have sought here time and again?”

“I’ve only ever done what was necessary to protect my world from demons, and tomorrow-”

“Tomorrow you will face your best friend, possessed by the devil himself. I know him well.”

“So, you must understand why I’ve gone to these lengths to find a way to kill him.”

“Yes, I do understand. I also understand your kind. Tell me: What would you do with the power required to complete this task? Would you use it just this once? Or would it become a habit to you? Would your hands become shaky; your mind quick to anger?”

She picked up a wildflower that had grown in front of her legs and took it into her hand, closing her fist around it. As she opened her first, a small pigeon flew out of it.

Vitaliy scoffed, his tiredness began to set in and his frustration grew, overtaking his fear.

“I am done being toyed with by the likes of you.”

The pigeon flew around both of them in circles until it abruptly crashed into the floor, falling to dust immediately.

“Power makes you paranoid. I know that pension to fear intimately, my own family feared power so much they imprisoned me. Your kinds’ amplification of fear into hatred only multiplies these tendencies. Yet, our interests are aligned. I will not gift you power, but you will receive what you sought.”

“How exactly are you going to do that?”

“Give me your hand.”

He outstretched his arm towards her and she snatched it into her right hand. The cold of her touch stirred his entire body. Skin on her arm hadn’t peeled off, like on other parts of her body, but its colour was a sickly grey and translucent, showing the many tiny purple and black veins that ran along it. He could feel the iciness travel from her fingers into his organs. It felt as if a block of ice was forming in the pit of his stomach. He tried to shake off her hand, but he couldn't move an inch. His legs could not even squirm as she gazed directly into his eyes. As they were grazing his hand, her spindly fingers revealed black nails, sharp and shaped like claws. One of which, her thumb’s, was elongating before his eyes. Vitaliy’s mind was anticipating the pain to come. His left arm was held perfectly still as the rest of him shook and strained. Using her nail, the woman made a horizontal incision directly into his pulse. He felt the warmth of his blood rushing out of the cut, dripping onto his hand and from his fingers onto the floor below. It was nauseating to see it starting to pool. The metallic smell invaded his nostrils, as he heard a wet sound coming from his arm. She had only inserted her nail into the slit she created at first, but soon her entire thumb slid beneath his stretching skin with ease. The pain almost overwhelmed him, and he let out an exasperated scream only to feel oddly reassured as he peered onto her calm face. Her arm was now pulsating, throbbing with black veins seemingly almost bursting with an unknown liquid. She was pumping it into him. He panicked as he watched his own veins fill with black sludge. The chill had now reached his very bones.

She let go and he stumbled backwards, shakily bending his knees as he sputtered the sinking black, unreflective liquid out of his mouth. Coughing and wheezing he tried to keep her in his sight but collapsed.

The thump from hitting his head on his desk woke him. He was back in his office. In front of him laid a small notebook with a black cover, its pages tattered and discoloured. It was spread open in the middle of its pages.

In squiggled, hastily put together words it read “life binder spell”.

I woke that night to the sounds of doors banging and then distant shouts. I sat up in bed and let my head stop spinning before I stood up. Thankfully my pants were still on, but the Nurse had put me in a dressing shirt, so I looked around for my shirt and jacket but both were missing. I tucked in my dressing gown and hoisted my galluses onto my shoulders.

I walked along the hallway to the front office. But finding it empty I continued out the door and onto the wooden porch of the hospital. I stopped and listened for a few moments until I heard voices coming from the Marshal's Office. Apprehension weighed on me as I returned to my office only a few short paces away.

As I stepped in I saw people running around grabbing equipment and shouting orders. The chaos was too much to understand but the eye of the storm was centered on McGarry's cell. I waded through the officers until I got to the cell and saw the three dead agents scattered around the hallway in front of the open cell door.

I stepped up and grabbed one of the rookie agents that ran the night shift.

"What is going on?" I said with a growl. The young agents eyes grew wide as he looked up and up until he met my eyes.

"McGarry escaped when the nurse came in to check on him. He shot three officers and ran." He said in a high pitched staccato.

" What nurse?" I demanded

"The brown headed nurse of Dr. Arlos." He said

Ophelia, my heart dropped into my boots.

"Where is she? I demanded, still not releasing the collar of the junior agent.

"He took her too. He used her as a shield until he made it to a horse that was out front, then threw her over the saddle and he lit out south." The agent said, tugging at his arm.

I couldn't move enough to release the agent. I just stood pole-axed, Jemy had taken My Ophelia. My focus snapped back like a bowstring, anger making it sharp.

"Who took off after him?" I asked

"Nobody yet, most of us just got here, and we're waiting on Marshall Clevins, he shot our Sargent and two of the senior officers." Disgusted, I released him as I began surveying the offices.

I walked to the Marshall's door and kicked it in. I knew he had my Schofield's in his desk, and I wasn't chasing that sewer rat without something that would make a hole big enough to toss a grapefruit through. I found my gun belt in his top drawer so I strapped it on and checked the chambers. I re-holstered the hoglegs and walked out to the wall of long irons. I snatched a short twelve gauge and a long Henry, grabbed a box of shells for both and headed for the back door.

The Marshal's office shared an alleyway with the livery stable and I stomped across the brick alley, kicked open the back door and went to his stall. I didn’t actually own a horse but when I needed one I would visit the Livery. I favored one horse in particular, she was a line back dun that always seemed to know what I needed from her. She stood at her stall door with her head low enough for me to pet. She was a large mare standing sixteen hands at the withers, to most men large enough to be a plow horse, but for my excessive size she seemed to compliment me perfectly.

Setting my arsenal down in front of her stall I moved to the tackroom. Grabbing my typical saddle, blanket and bridle, I added two rifle scabbards and a set of saddle bags to my load.I stalked back to her stall and set my bundle down. I had to stop and compose myself so my anger wouldn’t spook the mare. Pulling the bridle out of the mess I pushed his anger down as much as possible and slipped the leather straps over her ears and the bit in her mouth. I led her out of the stall and looped the rains over a rail, then saddled her as quickly as I dared. I added the shotgun to one scabbard and the henry to the other then stuck the boxes of shells in the saddle bags.

As I went to lead her out Marshall Clevins stepped through the back door.

“John,” He said as if approaching a spooked animal “What you got planned there?”

“He took her and I aim to get her back.” I said with a flat calm that belied my rage.

“John, the Doc ain’t even released you for duty yet, and we are still getting a Posse together.” Marshall said with calm authority.

I pulled the badge from the right-hand pocket of my jacket and tossed it toward him. “I ain’t on duty. Y'all feel free to catch up but I ain’t waiting on you.” I said then pulled the dun around and led her to the front Livery doors. “Tell the livery I’ll pay him tomorrow, or feel free to pay him from my wages.” I said as I opened the doors and led her out.

“John!” The Marshall demanded “I ain’t asking again. Wait on the Posse then we’ll ride out together and bring back McGarry and Ms. Ophelia.”

“Sorry sir.” I said as I stepped into the saddle and sunk spur into the side of the poor mare.

I took off in the general direction that I knew McGarry had ran. Knowing him he would head for a known hole, just like any other rat. When McGarry had been terrorizing the swamps and saloons around New Orleans, he had made a hole out of an old swamp shack. It was a few miles out of town to get to it but that was where I assumed he would head.

I urged the big mare down the cobblestone and then the sandy road out of New Orleans until the houses fell away. The live Oaks and Cypress trees crowded the lane as the land around it began to sink into swamp. I kept the mare at a punishing pace until I found the fork that would wind through the swamp toward Jemy’s old shack. Hoofprints were visible in the full moonlight and they confirmed my suspicion, so I made the turn and kept pushing.

Gators and snakes shied away from the banks as I pounded along the narrow trail through the black swamp. Everytime my heart would clench in fear I would urge the poor dun faster. Finally vague pinpricks of light showed through the trees so I pulled the mare up and stepped down from her lathered back. She stomped and twitched as her sides moved like billows trying to catch her breath. I pulled the shotgun and then the rifle out of the scabbards and laid them on the ground, then retrieved the boxes of ammo from her saddle bags. Finally, I turned the poor mare back toward the Livery, took off her bridle and gave her rump a firm smack. She lit out, out of fear and probably out of relief, making her way back to the Livery.

I pulled my knife off my side and cut the long bridle reins off, then tossed the bridle on the trail. I fetched the shotgun, made sure it was loaded, and used the reins to make a shoulder sling then looped it over my back. Then I pulled a handful of shells from each box and tucked them in my pockets. Finally, I picked up the rifle, made sure it was loaded, then began walking.

As I hurried toward the light I noticed the sun turning the night sky to a steely gray with hints of blue to the east. The pre-dawn would make it easier to draw a bead on McGarry. As the lantern became clearer I slowed and began creeping from tree to tree until I was able to get a clear view of the shack. It wasn't much more than four walls and a roof. It did have a door but the windows were just burlap sacks nailed over the holes. The roof hung far enough over the front and back to be called a porch and I was frustrated by the sight of two of Jemy's old gang sitting on chunks of stove wood.

I didn’t go into this thinking I was going to leave without blood on my hands. I had every intention of killing Jemy McGarry. I had wondered if he would try to find his old gang but I hadn’t expected them to already be here. It didn’t matter though I wasn’t stopping until I could carry Miss Ophelia out of this swamp. I began taking stock of the situation and calculating the best course of attack.

A male scream rang out from inside of the shack, then a shot followed by a much more feminine scream. My blood ran cold and my hand clenched the Henry as a red haze came over my vision. I don’t remember drawing a bead on the man sitting right of the door but I do remember looking at the barrel of the rifle. His mouth had turned up in a grin as he looked toward the door of the shack. My finger squeezed the trigger and then his head split in two. I quickly turned to the other gang member who had turned to look me dead in the eye as I placed a bullet directly between his.

Both mens pitiful excuse for brains now painted the shacks front porch as other members started shouting and then appearing around both sides of the shack. Shots splintered the tree as I pulled back for cover, the Henry narrowed my vision too much to deal with two sets of enemies and I was still too far away to employ the shotgun. I leaned the Henry against the trunk of the giant old cypress that I had been hiding behind and pulled my Scholfields. With one in each hand I stepped out from the tree and began alternating shots between each side of the shack as I stalked forward. I didn’t just unload after the first shots sent them for cover, I walked forward waiting for the slimy snakes to poke their heads out then I would calmly split their part for them.

After the first few brought lead samples back they began to get a little smarter and a couple climbed under the shack to come at from the crawl space. A poor shot grazed my arm but I didn’t care, he did though and it was the last shot he had a chance at. I saw the other one move before he got a gun up and put him down. By now I had drifted to the left side of the shack and tucked my six-shooters away to pull up the double barrel. I stepped around the corner and unloaded both barrels on the three men standing there discussing their options. All three met their maker at that moment. I quickly reloaded and continued around the back. The backyard was empty save for a broken hitching post, I saw churned earth where their herd of ponies had taken flight when the shooting started. I turned the next corner to clear the rest of the yard and was annoyed to find it empty as well. I turned my attention to the door and rushed toward it.

It’s been more than a year since I stepped through that door but it still haunts me every night. In the corner sat my lovely brown eyed, curly headed Ophelia. She sat on the floor with her back against the corner. Her blue dress was torn from her breast, her arms crossed over them with her hands pressed to a spot just above and to the left of the valley between. Blood seeped and dripped from between her fingers as she stared at me. Her pale face turned up to me and her eyes grew wide as she stared up at me. Then her gaze shifted slightly as I felt the air shift behind me.

I ducked and turned as I felt something miss my already battered head by mear inches. I followed the turn with an upper cut of the shotgun's shoulder stock. The blow lifted Jemy off the ground and onto his back. The rage in me broke loose like a rogue lion from the circus and I dove on Jemy. I didn’t need the shotgun for this and tossed it aside as my fists came down on his face. I rained blow after blow until his skull gave way under my knuckles. I stopped and actually looked at him for a second. I had beaten his head into a lump of broken bone and ground meat.

“John.” I heard a quiet voice say behind me. I turned quickly as I wiped my bloody hands on my jeans.

“Let me get you out of here.” I said as I stepped over to her.

“John, I don’t have long left.” She said then had to pause and catch her breath, “John, will you kiss me?”

The request had me flustered, but I had wanted to kiss Ophelia since I saw her from the floor in Doc Arlo’s office. I didn’t want to admit that her time was drawing near but at that moment I couldn’t have refused her any request. So I leaned in and brought my lips to hers. They were cool and soft as she returned my kiss and poured every ounce of strength she had into it.

I haven’t been kissed many times in my life but that one kiss from Ophelia is enough to last me until I get to step in front of my almighty judge. I pray that I can atone for the sins and failures that I have committed on this Earth enough so that when I step up to my Lord he opens those pearly gates and allows my sweet brown eyed Ophelia to meet me on his doorstep. Until that day I think I will feel the tingle of her precious lips on mine everytime I close my eyes.

I pulled back from Ophelia as I felt the life leave her. Her kiss went soft and her hands fell to her lap. I dropped to my rear on the floor and let the tears fall for a few moments. I looked up at her again and realized she was indecent and I wasn’t about to leave her like that. I gathered the ripped sides of her dress and pulled them over her chest until I nearly joined them. Then I stood up and gathered her up and into my arms. I began walking toward town.

I’m not sure how long I had walked but I looked up and saw a pack of men on horses surrounding me. I scanned the faces for a few minutes before my brain activated and I was able to recognize the men from the Marshalls office. Marshall Clevins stepped down from his horse and moved up to us.

“I’m sorry we didn’t make it in time.” He said quietly

“I didn’t make it in time either sir, but she fought him, she fought him all the way to the end.” I said pride mixing with the misery.

“That’s good John. Why don’t you let us take her, it’s still a long ways to town.” He asked.

“No sir, I’ll carry her.” I said firmly.

“Alright John.” He said and waved one of his men over. They stepped forward leading my dun mare. “Let me take her while you get in the saddle.”

I hesitated then relented as I couldn’t see any other way, but I hoisted her back into my arms as soon as I settled in the leather. My mare followed the Marshalls as a portion of us returned to town.

At the Doc’s office I slid off the mare without having to let my Ophelia go and then carried her back up the hall to my bed. There I laid her down and made sure she was decent before turning away. Marshall Clevins and Doc Arlo were standing at the doorway waiting when I turned to face them.

“Doc I don’t know if she has family, but would you let them know I’m sorry that I couldn’t get there in time.” I said then began walking. Both men said something to my back but I was done listening. I just kept walking.

It has been about a year since I met and lost my Ophelia, but I think about her everyday. I walked until I found a little mining town out in Oklahoma. I decided to stay here and work. It's hard work, but it tires me out and I’m able to actually sleep some nights.

I’m taking a few moments to tell my story and confess my sins so it is known what happened and who I was when I pass on. Whoever finds my testimony, please send it on to Supervisory Deputy Marshall Cecil ‘Bulldog’ Clevins, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Marshall Clevins;

I’m Sorry.

John Boudreaux

Dear Reader;

In 1961 Jimmy Dean wrote and sang Big Bad John. He talks of a man with a mysterious past that sacrifices himself to save his fellow miners. I’ve heard this song my entire life and I’ve always been curious about the events that drove him to the mine. The song talks about a fight over a cajun queen, but I felt like there was more than that so a story began to form in my head. I found out recently that there are sequels to the song that expound on the events of his early life, but as for my story those didn’t happen.

I hope you enjoyed the tragic tail of Big John. I would have liked to give him a happy story but that's not what the Good Lord had in store for our hero.

Thank you for reading my “fan-fiction”. I recommend giving Jimmy Dean's Big Bad John a listen, just to finish his story.

H.K. Daniels

I was an average day for Hamwise. He lived in the city of Rome, in 2 AD, where the sun was shining bright, the air was fresh, and the pungent odor of the public washroom filled the air. Hamwise walked down the road from the food stand he ran, beyond the lavish palaces the nobles live in, past the Thermopolium he ate at 9 days a week, and finally to his little house, just a mud hut with little more than a yard, a bed and a table. But Hamwise didn’t mind. Hamwise would want no more, for he was happy. He had friends and family and all the joys of life.

He soon prepared a treat on the fire, a dessert of dates stuffed with ground up cashews and peppercorn, boiled in honey. He always made sure to grind up the pepper as fine as possible, lest he bite into a large piece and suffer an uncomfortable taste. A sweet yet savory flavor, it was always his favorite treat to make.

He gobbled many down, then settled down to sleep on the uncomfortable, thin bed that lay above a large rock that gave him back problems. He gazed at the stars surrounded by trees in the sky, and drifted off to sleep, entranced by the beauty of the night sky. The architecture was cool too.

In the night, Hamwise awoke. Putting on his robes and shoes, he snuck off into the night, preparing to assassinate the emperor, John Roman. He recruited his closest friend, Etheldred, to carry out his plans.

“That bumbling fool, tis’ a shame nobody maimed him already, eh? He can’t run an empire for his life, he won’t know what hit him,” Hamwise snickered to himself.

“We’re totally gonna do this, if we don’t we’re finished. We’ll be executed and humiliated,” Etheldred whispered.

They snuck into the lavish marble palace, armed with small lil’ knives, and successfully killed the emperor. By dawn they returned, not before lavishing in the luxuries of the emperor's palace. They returned, and settled down to get some shut eye. When Hamwise woke up, he noticed something. His dates were gone. Not a single was to be found, not even the bowl he stored them in.

He fell to his knees. His eyesight blurred, tears streamed from his eyes. He screamed in agony, his throat drying up and hurting like when you wake up in the morning. He could never imagine such horrors, such pain to inflict on something. He slept for a month after that, never failing to leak tears and sniffle the whole way through. Etheldred checked up on him.

“You good buddy? You’ve been asleep for a month, I think you caught something.”

“You FOOL, I caught nothing. Wouldst thou truly wish to know what happened?” Hamwise spoke, jolting awake.

“Ermmmm…”

“ANSWER ME, heathen.”

“ Sure.”

“The night before my slumber, on the day of his death, my dates were stolen. Picked off, like how one might pick off an auroch. I seek revenge, Etheldred. I seek death.” Hamwise muttered, filled with hatred.

“Okay.”

“Doth ye realize the importance of this!? I will kill whoever did this to me. They shall regret this for as long as I live! I will retrieve my dates. No matter the cost.”

Hamwise stood up, wobbling and knobby, and ran out the door. A name came to him. Porkunwise.

“I will kill you, Porkunwise. Ye wronged me. Two wrongs do make a right after all, ye fiend,” spoke Hamwise.

Asking around the city, Hamwise collected all information he could about this mysterious person. In a short, meaningless while he collected this information.

Brown, Curly Hair Yellow Toga Filthy Rich Really stupid Unaware of Hamwises wrath Stole a bunch of dates Lives in the royal palace

This was all Hamwise needed to know. He raced towards the royal palace, his head fuming, bones breaking, lungs leaking, fingernails falling, eyelids falling, chest breathing, feet scraping, heart beating, mouth foaming, stomach digesting, kidneys filtering, brain braining, muscles tearing, . He saw the palace approaching fast. Suddenly, Etheldred jumped out in front of him, stopping Hamwise and sending them into a tumble. Hamwise gathered his strength to get up after a long time of laying down, only to be shocked. Etheldred was dead.

Etheldreds body was nowhere to be seen, vaporized from the hit, Hamwise assumed. Hamwise weeped. He weeped for years, until the streets were flooded with the salty, murky water that came from his eyes. Hamwise sobbed for 15 years straight, never once stopping.

After 15 years, Hamwise came to his senses. He swallowed all his tears, eyes leaking all the while, then headed to the palace. His fury rivaling that of Mars himself, his head shone as red as a tomato hanging from a summer vine. He headed straight to the room that housed Porkunwise, in the palace, and upon seeing the nobleman now grown old, he felt an emotion he'd never felt before. Sorrow. He felt immense, awful sorrow. But he didn’t stop, he went to Porkunwise and used his inhumanly gigantic fist to crush him. In the room was also the treasure, the most valuable thing the world had ever known. In the room were Hamwises dates. Hamwise teared up in joy, snatching the bowl and gobbling up the remaining 7 dates. He had done it. Hamwise was happy.

Hamwise headed home. He walked the stone streets, now corroded and blanked with matts of seaweed. From the apartments, from the colosseum, from the mud huts of the lower class peoples, people emerged. Glaring eyes shot at Hamwise, furious with pain and suffering.

“Fifteen years of pain, for merely 7 dates? Curse you, stranger. May your name be forgotten” someone yelled from the street.

Hamwise felt guilt, he felt anger, he felt sorrow. But most of all, he felt nothing. His mind was an empty universe, once bumbling with light, now devoid of life and planets and stars. When he arrived home, he found a curious sight. A bowl of dates, stuffed with ground up cashews and pepper, boiled in honey. His eyes lit up. There were fourteen dates, exactly the amount he made 15 years earlier. His mind, then an empty universe, flared with bright, shining stars, galaxies appeared from nothing, planets swarmed with life. He picked them up, and ate seven. 7 dates remained in the bowl. A sense of euphoria washed over him; this is what started his journey. His quest. Soon, from his lowly, lumpy bed, he glimpsed a bright, shining light that engulfed him, then woke up. Arising from his bed, his head spinned and turned, a terrible headache pounded on his skull. His eyes, now crusty with hours of sleep, squinted in the morning sun. He saw his old friend. Etheldred. Nothing happened. It was all a dream.

“What happened?,” asked Etheldred, who was gnawing on a piece of bone.

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

“Hm.”

“How strange it is to be anything at all,” Hamwise whispered.

I hated this idea from the jump. Now look at me, in a damp cave crawling in spaces that are too dark to see my hand in front of my face. I'm so upset with Micha I could spit.

He only wanted to go on this journey because he's been depressed about his girlfriend dying. Listen, I’m not insensitive. They were only dating for a week! He met her on Monday, they were “married” by Tuesday, and she died that very next Tuesday. Give me a break. I get sad and grieving but this? We’re in the middle of the desert in a cave. We’re from Ohio dude!

“Micha! How much further?” I call from behind him. I have been holding onto a rope attached to the back of his backpack for what seems like miles now. He ignores me, which he has been doing since we started this journey. I've thought about turning around about fifteen times now, but Micha is my best friend and I feel like I can't let him do this alone. He definitely would have let me do this alone though. I give him a pass because through the silence, every so often I can hear a sniffle and a sharp exhale. At this point I’m surprised that he has anymore tears to cry.

After a few more feet of crawling, Micha drops suddenly. The force of him falling pulls me down with him. I can feel my limbs flailing and my heart drop to my stomach. I let out what I imagine is a blood curdling scream. We fell for what seemed like an eternity before hitting something hard but malleable with a painful thud.

I lay there for a minute writing in pain, as all the breath has been knocked out of my lungs. I can see Micha laying on the floor motionless. I roll over on my belly and try to crawl over to him, but before I can reach him he shoots up into a sitting position. Micha clamors over himself and runs to something in the center of the room. For the first time I noticed what exactly we landed on. The floor we landed on was not a floor at all. We had fallen into what seemed like a deeper chamber of the cave, and the ground was completely covered in gold coins. There was no telling how far down the gold actually went.

“Leo get up! I found it! The lamp!” Micha is kneeling in the center of the room with his back turned to me. I can see that he's holding something in his hand, but you're kidding right. A lamp? We came all this way for a lamp!? He told me he knew someone that could help us but I didn't think he was talking about a Genie! By this time the air has somewhat returned to my lungs and I sauntered over to his side with my arm wrapped around my ribcage.

“Micha, you're kidding right. Genies aren't real.” I looked down at the gold lamp he held in his hands. Micha looked up at me and without another word, he rubbed the lamp three times.We sat there, waiting. Nothing. He looked down at the lamp before releasing all the air in his body and dissolving into a puddle of tears. I went to pat his back but before I could, a small stream of smoke started pouring from the spout of the lamp. Micha noticed it too, as he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. He brought it closer to his face for further inspection and the lamp exploded in a huge ball of smoke.

“Jesus Christ!” I hear Micha scream as the lamp rattles to the floor. The whole room is covered in dense smoke, and neither one of us can see anything in the cave anymore. After about a minute of us fanning away the fog it starts to thin and we can see a woman sitting in the corner of the room. She is gorgeous. Her hair is a deep black that compliments her olive skin. Her wavy hair is pulled back in a sheer veil that goes down to her hip. Micha looks at me as if to confirm we’re seeing the same woman and I shift my pants a little.

“Hello boys.” The woman says as she gives a sly smile. Both of us are staring at her slacked jawed before I punch Micah in his arm. He closes his mouth and clears his throat.

“Are you the genie?” He asks in a voice that's a little too loud for the situation. She looks at him puzzled and giggles to herself.

“Honey what else would I be? Go on with the wishes then, I don't have all day. It was a long journey from uh-” She trails off and looks at us expectantly and I call out,

“Ohio.”

“Ah yes. Ohio. Well, I'm sure you have your wishes thought out then.” She gives an impatient customer service smile and looks at the both of us. I point at Micha who looks like he's giving himself a pep talk. Oh, my god. He is an idiot.

“Right then. For my first wish, I wish we were back in Ohio.” he says confidently. That wasn't as bad of a wish as I thought it was going to be and I actually feel a sense of relief wash over me. Without another word, Genie snaps her fingers and we’re in a field somewhere in Ohio. Me and Micha look around and then at each other. Yeah we’re in Ohio but, where exactly were we in Ohio? Before I could ask my question Micha started with his next wish and a sense of dread washes over my body all over again.

“I wish for everything that's dead to come back to life, except plants and insects!” After finishing his sentence he stands there smugly and I sigh.

“Micha, you're a moron.” I say while pinching the bridge of my nose. He looks at me and starts on some unimportant monologue about how it wasn't just about his girlfriend but everyone who ever lost someone. Unfortunately, I tuned him out because out of the corner of my eye I saw something big rustling in the field.

I slowly headed towards the rustling before I stopped and turned back to look at Genie. She has a smug look on her face and she gives me a wink before snapping her fingers and disappearing. I look at the creature that is now standing fully erect and is towering over me and Micha. Its giant claws hung at its side and it resembled something like a prehistoric sloth. I freeze, not knowing if I should run or stay still and hope it spares me.

“Micha.” I whisper to him without taking my eyes off of the creature.

“Yeah dude?”

“Screw you, and that Genie.”

From the perspective of the fruit fly, the giant-kind had always been a bloodthirsty type.

It was the dread of any sane fly to encounter one of them, and yet, so often were their mazes tempting; Treasure troves of food, scents impossible to find anywhere else, warmth that did not match that of the outside world - it was undoubtedly an effective temptation. Many a fly had found themselves at least once thinking to themselves: 'All I need is just a taste.'

The allure of food and drink had seen thousands, millions, possibly billions of flies eradicated from the earth, perhaps even rent from the annals of history. When there was still food to be found, few would be remembered. It was a frustrating cycle - the hoarding nature of these massive beings could only bring us to adapt, searching through their deathtraps to find our own sustenance. Yet, even their mere scraps, the unwanted of the unwanted, would evoke a terrible rage from these beings if approached. Their gluttony was - is - unbounded.

My last venture into the motley maze of a giant had left me bereft of both food and joy - the hubris with which my family had entered soon to become despair. Hunger had driven us into desperation. The giants would drive us to destruction.

There were at least fifteen of us at the beginning. Confident in our ability to evade the monstrous beings, we sped through the massive corridors and chambers of the giant's maze undetected, quickly determining the location of one of their hoards. Searching through it, we would become overjoyed - our findings there could last us weeks, months even. Of course, there would always be another problem.

Transportation of such large items would be impossible. Even if all of us were to work together, the food within the treasure trove would still dwarf us by hundreds of times. Furthermore, the maze was not titled such for no reason - while it might be easy to enter, exit was no simple task. What appeared to be a doorway to the outside would often be blocked by some form of barrier, unmoving and impassable. Tens of these could be inside any maze, attracting would-be escapees only to have them destroyed by a waiting giant. Some flies had even taken to calling these barriers 'Gambits'. It was almost impossible to tell when one would let you through and when one would not. If entering the maze was a gamble, then exiting would be a jackpot. Finding a giant's hoard was merely a bonus.

Such were the problems that must be dealt with to successfully steal from the giant-kind. Losses in the mazes were common, if not guaranteed. So when the giant appeared to us as we rejoiced upon the trove of its making, a massive green weapon swiping down upon those who had strayed just slightly too far, there was no chaos. Even the slowest of us would simply fly away, using the air currents created by the behemoth's movements to flit around its attacks. Every moment near the giant was one that we were threading the needle between life and death, each flap of our wings deciding how much longer we would live.

A single wrong turn and -

Wham.

Two had died, just like that.

From there, it devolved into a horrifying game of hide and seek; Occasionally, the giant would lose track of us, its devilish gaze scanning the chamber until it could find another of us and continue its chase. Leaving the way we came was no simple task - the maze had changed forms after the giant's entrance. Leaving a new way was improbable as well - three of the group had already attempted to exit through a gambit. Two had seen fit to distract the terrible entity for the escape. All of them had ended up as paste on the end of its weapon.

After that, I lost track of the deaths. Every few seconds, I would hear the weapon come down upon something - or someone - else. I dared not look. So many times would that sound assault my ears, so many times would the whoosh of air fling me aside as I made for a new hiding place; It felt as if days had passed as I attempted to escape the maze. And eventually, I stopped seeing other flies.

The giant would occasionally notice me, its eyes following me as I scrambled away in terror, and yet, it would not attack. Its gaze mocked me - 'I do not finish you, because you are not worth my action'. And then it would return its attention elsewhere.

During these times is when I would begin searching for the others - I refused to believe that I was the only survivor. Yet, in all its cruelty, the giant had left its actions on plain display for me. The broken bodies of my clan remained upon its weapon and the walls of the maze, some so utterly destroyed that all that was left were the stains of what had once been another fly.

The food had long since become unimportant to me. Survival trumped even the greatest of meals. And yet, as the time without companionship grew longer and the bodies I found grew more unrecognizable, I could not help but think of surviving such an ordeal as a curse.

It was when I came to such a conclusion that the path to escape would open for me. The human, for reasons I have yet to find out, had pushed through the gambit. The sight of such a thing was not enough to convince me, however - I would not be fooled by the trickery of a behemoth. Yet still, as I wandered ever so slightly closer, the smell of the outer world would find me. And the smell of freedom was intoxicating beyond belief.

And so, for the first time, I flew towards the giant, my desire to live temporarily overriding the guilt I felt at being the only survivor of this expedition. And as the giant's eyes locked on to me, I prepared for this to be my final flight - my final gambit. I braced myself as it moved, the wind brought about by its activity slightly altering my course, and then;

Nothing.

The impact, and subsequent darkness, never came. Instead, I was met with great brightness; Sunlight. I had found freedom from that terrible place. The giant had missed me - or perhaps, it never intended to hit me. Perhaps I am the method by which it spreads its fear. I do not know.

I am the final survivor of the seventeen billionth maze massacre of this year. And thus, I ask my fly-kin a simple question: When will the tyranny of the giants be enough?

There once were crocodile-like creatures eating people trying to cross the Bosphorus Strait during prehistoric times. The creatures would nest on the west side of the strait. Men who managed to cross successfully allowed them to continue nesting there so that they could reap the spoils without competition. If a man Noble enough made it across he was prevented from killing the creatures by the men already there.

These creatures had a body like a lizard, similar to a crocodile body only with longer and more dextrous limbs. They were smaller than a crocodile but bigger than a man. Their skin gleamed like a dolphin's and they had texture like a reptile. They were very fast and had an intelligence to them which made the slaughter all the more infuriating. They were a Teal/Turquoise color with black orbish eyes. Despite their reptile like appearance they were probably mammals.

The water levels were much lower at that time and I remember walking down across sand and washout where the water had previously been. There were two distinct waters flowing parallel to each other and they were each a different shade of blue. One was bright like shallow tropical waters and the other was more of a dark blue. I'm not sure exactly how far it was across but I remember you could make out the white of somebody's face who had successfully swam across.

In one instance a man was backstroking vigorously across when he was attacked. They would always attack facing away from us, like they felt vulnerable somehow attacking from the west. It was difficult to get a good look at them and I had to take risks to do so. These things surfaced out of the current so fast. He continued to backstroke while yelling and striking violently until luckily the creature aborted it's assault.

The conclusion of this was that only the most athletic men were making it across at Great risk and they weren't helping anyone else cross. This meant a party had to go all the way around the Black Sea because for whatever reason crossing Open Sea wasn't safe either. We were facing some kind of pressure from the east which had driven us to the strait to begin with so we couldn't go back. One group would stay while those best suited for excursion launched a long campaign to loop around the Black Sea to kill the man-eaters so the others could cross.

It took many years, generations. It was smooth hiking until we ran into some dilemmas at the north end of the Sea. First there was the cold climate that made things slow going. Then we started to notice a presence as we traveled along the sea. Turns out there's some kind of giant water snake with very keen sensory abilities that is able to travel a certain distance inland so we could no longer rely on the bounty of the sea for our travels and had to move along further inland as we crossed the northern region of the Black Sea. Oh and guess what another curveball because we traveled further inland to avoid the snake we encountered a Bigfoot creature and that's his territory.

So now we're left crossing the north side of the Black Sea through this narrow corridor between bigfoot's territory and the water snake's territory. It makes travel difficult as our resources are scarce and it's a cold climate. Our numbers dwindle. The men who had successfully crossed the strait guard this corridor as well knowing it is the only way for safe passage making our journey even more difficult. I have to kill a man. He shadows us for some time testing my patience and boundaries until finally he makes his attack and I kill him. I use a hatchet and strike his head. We seem in agreement that he had to try to stop me and I have my mission to complete so there are no hard feelings.

We continue our adventure and begin to turn South down the west side of the Black Sea. The giant water snake seems to allow us to make intrusions into its territory if we are truly thirsty and famished to the point of death, but then it wants us to leave promptly. Eventually we get back into warmer territory and the going gets easier. We can travel along the sea without fear again. We arrive and kill the creatures that killed so many of our people. It has taken much longer than anticipated and there are very few left in my party. The important thing is we got it done and the others could cross, they too having faced their trials being trapped in that small area during this time period.

I recollected all of this from a series of dreams I had when I was little. It sure sent me for a loop.

An interesting vantage point. The people remaining at the strait had mostly lost hope that we would be back. One day they woke up to find the creatures trying to nest on their side of the strait. Momentarily puzzled, they soon realized it was because we had accomplished our mission! The man-eaters were quickly dispatched.

I smell like cigarettes, perfume, and weed.

Cold rain seeps into the cracks of my chapped lips as I stare up at the stars. My mind is quiet—a symphony of silence, no discernible thoughts or words, just an overwhelming presence of emotion. Happiness.

She dances in the rain, without a care in the world. Her feet splash in puddles formed in the uneven concrete. The streetlights silhouette the rain, making each droplet a golden circle that shimmers like a thousand fireflies. Her laughter and stomping feet fill my ears like a gorgeous melody.

She moves with the fury of the sun.

She is invincible.

She is explosive.

She is beautiful.

“C’mon, dance with me!” she calls, her voice bubbling with laughter as she twirls. A smile—wide and radiant—lights up her face. Her brown eyes reflect the golden streetlight as she reaches for me, hand outstretched.

I hesitate, glancing down at my scuffed sneakers. My hands feel awkward as I pull them from my pockets, but the warmth of her grip cuts through my doubt and tugs me forward.

Our eyes meet. Rain drips from the rosy tip of her nose, streaking down her cheeks and smudging her mascara into messy trails. Somehow, it makes her look even more striking.

We start moving, a clumsy waltz that grows into something effortless. Our bodies sway in rhythm without thought, just following each other’s gaze.

“How are you so warm?” I say through an awkward giggle.

Keep eye contact.

“Oh, are you cold, little man?” she teases, smirking up at me.

“Little man!?” I puff up my chest, striking a ridiculous pose. “Don’t act like you can’t see how big and strong I am.”

I hope she thinks I’m funny.

She stomps in a puddle, splashing the bottom of both our pants. I quickly retaliate, water splashing in every direction. In a cyclone filled with laughter and stomping feet, we end up in each other’s arms.

She fits so perfectly.

My hands slide around her waist, pulling her closer until there is no space between us. Her palms press gently against my chest, and when she looks up at me, I feel my heart quicken, each beat a drum roll in my ribs.

She’s so pretty.

My gaze flickers—eyes, lips, eyes again—hesitant, hopeful.

Does she want me to kiss her?

Her lips are a color that should only exist in flowers.

I have to kiss her.

The rain seems to fall even harder, bursting off the ground in a thousand golden sparks.

Take the leap.

I pull her waist in tighter. Her eyes don’t move from mine.

“Hey, uh… can I kiss you?” I ask softly, our faces just inches apart.

She breaks into a shy smile, glancing down as a quiet giggle escapes her lips. When she looks back up, her eyes answer before her words can.

Sparks.

The rain, the doubt, the fluttering nerves—all of it melts away.

Soft lips, heavy breaths, bumping teeth, a smile against a smile. I hold her tightly; her damp hair brushes against my chin as she presses her head to my chest.

She can have whatever, forever.

I smile at the night sky with her in my arms—beating heart, trembling hands, and my broken lips, healed by her second hand ChapStick.

***

I smell like cigarettes, cologne, and weed.

Cold rain seeps into my shoes, soaking my socks as I splash through the uneven concrete. The world around me dissolves into music, the rain transforming into a symphony of strings and horns, moving me with an overwhelming swell of emotion. Happiness.

He stands there, gazing up at the sky like he belongs to it, like this moment was made for him. The rain falls around him in golden sparkles, catching on his dark lashes before dripping to his chapped lips. His presence conducts the symphony in my mind.

He stands with the softness of the moon.

He is forever.

He is gravity.

He is beautiful.

“C’mon, dance with me!” I call, my voice light with laughter as I extend a hand toward him. He glances down at his scuffed shoes; his green eyes catch the light like sunlit emeralds. Slowly, he pulls his rosy hands from his pockets, and I reach forward, impatient, to tug him closer.

Our eyes meet. His lashes flutter under the weight of rain, his cheeks flushed, a delicate pink that only makes his quiet charm more endearing. I can’t help but smile.

We begin to move, a clumsy waltz to the music only we can hear. Our bodies sway together, unbound by form or structure, drawn by nothing but the pull of each other’s gaze.

“How are you so warm?” he asks, his giggle soft and nervous, like he can’t believe he’s here with me.

“Oh, are you cold, little man?” I tease, smirking up at him.

I hope he thinks I’m funny.

“Little man?!” He puffs out his chest, ridiculous and over-the-top. “Don’t act like you can’t see how big and strong I am.”

He’s so silly.

I laugh and stomp in a puddle, aiming to soak the bottom of his pants but inevitably drenching myself as well. He retaliates with no hesitation, sending water splashing in every direction. In a flurry of rain and laughter, I fall into his arms.

I fit so perfectly.

His hands find my waist, pulling me closer, erasing any space between us. My palms rest against his chest, where I can feel his heartbeat pounding as fast as mine. When I tilt my head to meet his gaze, there’s something electric in his eyes, something that makes the rest of the world blur into the background.

He really is strong.

I stare at his lips, watching them twitch as he looks into my eyes.

Is he going to kiss me?

His lips are chapped and broken; he licks them softly.

He’s going to kiss me.

The rain falls harder, exploding around us in bursts of sparking light.

C’mon, take the leap.

He pulls me in tighter. I can’t look away from his eyes.

“Hey, uh… can I kiss you?” he asks, his voice barely above the rain, soft and tentative.

He’s so cute.

I smile up at him, my cheeks aching from the warmth I can’t suppress. Before I can respond, the answer is already in my eyes.

Sparks.

The symphony crescendos, and suddenly, everything else melts away.

Cracked lips, heavy breaths, bumping teeth, a smile against a smile. He holds me tightly as I nuzzle my head into his chest. His heart is beating steady and strong.

He can have whatever, forever.

I smile into the warmth of his body, surrounded in a cocoon of feelings and future. His arms flex as he hugs me tighter, I can feel his hands shaking. A faint tingle lingers on my lips, the last trace of my ChapStick now his.

If the only sun goes out, what do you do? When the light at the end of your tunnel goes out, what do you do to make a new light?

Without that sun in my life, I feel like I've fallen into a pit of deep darkness without any way out in sight. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel anymore, just infinite darkness. And that darkness is cold and isolating and endless. It makes you trapped and lonely.

Down the dim-lighted street, I walk as lost in my own head as one can possibly be. My hands are in my hoodie pockets, eyes straight ahead with my hood covering my face. Walking is one way that is calming to me now, getting away from all the stress of life. Getting away from the reality it brings. 

I’m just really walking without purpose, like most things anymore. A sigh, I take. It mixed with a lack of motivation to do anything anymore. I haven't really talked to friends or found any enjoyment in playing games or watching my favorite Tv show, or I should say our favorite show.

I mean, how could I when all that’s on my mind is her? When I can’t stop thinking about continuing on when I’ve lost the only purpose my life stood for. When all I can think about is her smile, her laugh, her eyes, her happiness and brightness, her - her everything that I’ll never get to see anymore. 

Like, why? Why can’t I! How is this fair, why does she get to die and not me! She doesn't deserve it! She… she didn't deserve it. Why can’t she still be here, I still need her! She can’t be gone yet, I still need her. It’s not fair, why couldn’t it be anyone else? Why couldn’t it have been me?

I should go home, I have work to do. Then I’ll probably go to bed early for the Twentieth night in a row. So Home, I walk still as lost in my own head as before. I can remember her smile vividly, her everything vividly but that's just in my mind. I don’t want to live with the memories, I want the real thing. I just want to hug her, kiss her again. 

I’d give up everything if it meant I could spend another minute with her again. I’d kill to just tell her that I love her once again. I’d Sacrifice myself so she can live her life fully.

At home, I arrive. Tomorrow, I’ll work, eat, sleep and repeat till the end of this life really. So exciting, I can’t wait for tomorrow, another day without her. That one would be day 31. I would visit her but that involves me having to face a reality I’m much more comfortable just co-existing with instead. But work calls just so I can be in this loop of depression forever. Just an infinite tunnel with no light at the end of it.

- "You never realize exactly what you have until it's gone" Modern saying of “"You never miss the water till the well runs dry" by Rowland Howard

#Welcome to Serial Sunday!

To those brand new to the feature and those returning from last week, welcome! Do you have a self-established universe you’ve been writing or planning to write in? Do you have an idea for a world that’s been itching to get out? This is the perfect place to explore that. Each week, I post a theme to inspire you, along with a related image and song. You have 500 - 1000 words to write your installment. You can jump in at any time; writing for previous weeks’ is not necessary in order to join. After you’ve posted, come back and provide feedback for at least 1 other writer on the thread. Please be sure to read the entire post for a full list of rules.

#This Week’s Theme is Bravery!

Image | Song

Bonus Word List (each included word is worth 5 pts) - You must list which words you included at the end of your story (or write ‘none’).

• banish
• bluster
• bedlam
• bookish

There are many different shades to bravery; Heroism, justice or even something small like not giving in to pressure. My personal favourite is standing up to authority to sow uncontrollable harmless trouble for the sake of making things interesting.

Do you have a character who has a tough world-changing decision to make and is scared? Perhaps someone who really toes the line between bravery and stupidity; some say those are two sides of the same coin. Or maybe, it's something more intimate, a child peeking under his bed in search of an imagined monster. However you decide, may you all brave this SerSun sea with courage and creativity. (Blurb written by u/FyeNite).

These are just a few things to get you started. Remember, the theme should be present within the story in some way, but its interpretation is completely up to you. For the bonus words (not required), you may change the tense, but the base word should remain the same. Please remember that STORIES MUST FOLLOW ALL SUBREDDIT CONTENT RULES. Interested in writing the theme blurb for the coming week? DM me on Reddit or Discord!

Don’t forget to sign up for Saturday Campfire here! We start at 1pm EST and provide live feedback!

###Theme Schedule: This is the theme schedule for the next month! These are provided so that you can plan ahead, but you may not begin writing for a given theme until that week’s post goes live.

• December 1 - Bravery (this week)
• December 8 - Conspiracy
• December 15 - Death
• December 22 - Echo
• December 29 - Fate

Check out previous themes here.

#Rankings

Last Week: Attachment

• First - by u/ZachTheLitchKing
• Second - by u/MeganBessel
• Third - by u/Nate-Clone
• Fourth - by u/Writteninsanity
• Fifth - by u/NotComposite

#Rules & How to Participate Please read and follow all the rules listed below. This feature has requirements for participation!

• Submit a story inspired by the weekly theme, written by you and set in your self-established universe that is 500 - 1000 words. No fanfics and no content created or altered by AI. (Use wordcounter.net to check your wordcount.) Stories should be posted as a top-level comment below. Please include a link to your chapter index or your last chapter at the end.

• Your chapter must be submitted by Saturday at 9:00am EST. Late entries will be disqualified. All submissions should be given (at least) a basic editing pass before being posted!

• Begin your post with the name of your serial between triangle brackets (e.g. <My Awesome Serial>). When our bot is back up and running, this will allow it to recognize your serial and add each chapter to the SerSun catalog. Do not include anything in the brackets you don’t want in your title. (Please note: You must use this same title every week.)

• Do not pre-write your serial. You’re welcome to do outlining and planning for your serial, but chapters should not be pre-written. All submissions should be written for this post, specifically.

• Only one active serial per author at a time. This does not apply to serials written outside of Serial Sunday.

• All Serial Sunday authors must leave feedback on at least one story on the thread each week. The feedback should be actionable and also include something the author has done well. When you include something the author should improve on, provide an example! You have until Saturday at 11:59pm EST to post your feedback. (Submitting late is not an exception to this rule.)

• Missing your feedback requirement two or more consecutive weeks will disqualify you from rankings and Campfire readings the following week. If it becomes a habit, you may be asked to move your serial to the sub instead.

• Serials must abide by subreddit content rules. You can view a full list of rules here. If you’re ever unsure if your story would cross the line, please modmail and ask!

#Weekly Campfires & Voting:

• On Saturdays at 1pm EST, I host a Serial Sunday Campfire in our Discord’s Voice Lounge (every other week is now hosted by u/InFyeNite). Join us to read your story aloud, hear others, and exchange feedback. We have a great time! You can even come to just listen, if that’s more your speed. Grab the “Serial Sunday” role on the Discord to get notified before it starts. After you’ve submitted your chapter, you can sign up here - this guarantees your reading slot! You can still join if you haven’t signed up, but your reading slot isn’t guaranteed.

• Nominations for your favorite stories can be submitted with this form. The form is open on Saturdays from 12:30pm to 11:59pm EST. You do not have to participate to make nominations!

• Authors who complete their Serial Sunday serials with at least 12 installments, can host a SerialWorm in our Discord’s Voice Lounge, where you read aloud your finished and edited serials. Celebrate your accomplishment! Authors are eligible for this only if they have followed the weekly feedback requirement (and all other post rules). Visit us on the Discord for more information.

#Ranking System

Rankings are determined by the following point structure.

TASK | POINTS | ADDITIONAL NOTES |:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:|:--:| | Use of weekly theme | 75 pts | Theme should be present, but the interpretation is up to you! | Including the bonus words | 5 pts each (20 pts total) | This is a bonus challenge, and not required! | Actionable Feedback | 5 - 15 pts each (60 pt. max)* | This includes thread and campfire critiques. (15 pt crits are those that go above & beyond.) | Nominations your story receives | 10 - 60 pts | 1st place - 60, 2nd place - 50, 3rd place - 40, 4th place - 30, 5th place - 20 / Regular Nominations - 10 | Voting for others | 15 pts | You can now vote for up to 10 stories each week!

*You are still required to leave at least 1 actionable feedback comment on the thread every week that you submit. This should include at least one specific thing the author has done well and one that could be improved. Please remember that interacting with a story is not the same as providing feedback. Low-effort crits will not receive credit.

###Subreddit News

• Join our Discord to chat with other authors and readers! We hold several weekly Campfires, monthly World-Building interviews and several other fun events!
• Try your hand at micro-fic on Micro Monday!
• Did you know you can post serials to r/Shortstories, outside of Serial Sunday? Check out this post to learn more!
• Interested in being a part of our team? Apply to be a mod!

The smell of the tobacco caught my nose as I pulled a pinch from its pouch and sprinkled it onto the paper. Closing the pouch with my teeth I tucked it back into my breast pocket. Wetting the paper I rolled the cigarette and lit it. I had always assumed some woman would have nagged this habit out of me by now. I guess you can’t expect to have a nagging wife if you’re never around long enough to spend time with any women. Oh well, just the same, I wouldn’t want to be leaving one at home alone for weeks at a time anyway.

Small waves rocked the old paddle wheeler as she began to turn from the channel and pointed her bow for the port. The New Orleans humidity was unbearable in August, but this is home and when you’ve been away for a spell even the annoying things seemed comforting. I pulled the last few drags from my cigarette and tossed the stub into the muddy water as I turned to retrieve my cargo. I had a cabin in the lower section of the boat, and while it does help with security I sure do hate these dark narrow hallways.

You see, I'm a little larger than most people, in fact at six foot six I stand head and shoulders above most. On top of that I’m not the bean pole type of large, but rather I’m built like a bull with wide shoulders and a big frame. Funny thing is Momma said I was her smallest baby, but once I started eating there was no stopping me.

Being wider and taller than the corridor didn't make for a comfortable fit but I finally crouched and shimmied my way to the white wooden door of my cabin, without too much swearing. Swinging the door and just stepping in was always a bad idea in my line of work, but I guess I’ve been spending a little too much time star gazing and that’s just what I did. The stars that I saw now were enough to make me wanna take a nice long nap right here on the floor that I was suddenly laying on. I guess I should probably explain why my cargo wanted to bash my skull in with a brass bed knob.

You see, I’m a prisoner escort for the Louisiana Marshals office. My job is to travel around and haul back the prisoners that Sheriff’s and bounty hunters catch. This prisoner was a real piece of work; Jemy McGarry, and yeah that's really how you spell it. You see his family was all from out on the Bayou and his momma didn't have much in the way of an education, so she spelled it like it sounded to her.

Jemy had seven separate warrants issued for his arrest in the Louisiana Territory alone. He had attempted to hit all of the major crimes and got most of them, arson, rape, kidnapping, theft, and murder, just to name the high points. A bounty hunter had cornered him in a cave up in northern Missouri and brought him to St. Louis. Now after spending several days with him barely making a sound and smelling up the cabin, I had gotten lazy and thought he had just resigned to his fate. For some reason I don't seem to be at the top of my game lately and Jemy was sure taking advantage of it.

My mind snapped back to the present when I felt him digging for my new Smith & Wesson Schofield that I had partially landed on. I swung out and rolled at the same time successfully backhanding him across the face and knocking him into the hallway. I forced myself up and onto my feet even though the room wanted to spin as Jemy staggered back to his feet. He looked up at me, deciding whether to fight or flight I reckon, then took off like a sparrow. When I brought him on board I had kept him in leg irons and just chained his right wrist to the brass bed post, the one that left a crease in my hairline. Those same leg irons were now hobbling him like a horse and he ended up shuffling more than running down the hallway.

I staggered after him and we both made it up the stairs and onto the deck before I could gain on him. The deck had filled with people who were crowded around waiting to disembark. Upon seeing Jemy’s weird gated run and my blood covered face they flew apart like the Red Sea parting for Moses. Sick of the chase I grabbed a medium sized carpet bag from a well-dressed lady and chunked it at his knees. It had the effect I was hoping for and dropped him like a sack of potatoes. I hurried over and pinned him down with a knee on his backside. As he turned to fight back I did my absolute best to break his jaw with my right fist, unfortunately I only knocked him out.

I stood back up and grabbed the leg irons in one hand and the carpetbag in the other. I dragged Jimmy behind me as I returned the bag to the now-pale lady and headed back down the stairs. I took a little too much pleasure in hearing Jemy’s head bounce off each one of the nine steps. Dragging him back into the cabin, I opened my leather bag and brought out the rest of my irons. I trussed Jemy up like a Christmas goose, threw him over one shoulder, grabbed my bag and trudged back up to the deck.

Anyway, I guess me and Jemy made an interesting spectacle as I trudged down the docks and toward the Marshal’s office. I caught a glimpse of myself in a few shop windows and it’s a wonder people just stared. That brass bed knob had split my head enough to start it bleeding and by this point it had nearly covered my face and I had to keep wiping it out of my eyes. Jemy was a smallish sort of man and his weight didn’t really slow me down much, so instead of walking my anger at my own stupidity caused me to stomp along the cobbled streets like a locomotive.

I was walking up the steps of the Marshalls office as a young officer ran up and opened the door for me. Not slowing I stalked right through the doors, across the offices, and down the hallway to the cells. I ever-so-gentle dropped him on the floor and ducked back out of the cell. My boss, Supervisory Deputy Marshal Cecil Clevins, eyed me warily as I stepped back into the hallway.

“John, you alright?” he asked cautiously.

“Yeah, McGarry tried to make a run for it at the last minute, but he didn’t make it too far.” I said.

“Is he still alive?” Clevins asked, eyeing the wad of rags and chains that Jemy had become.

Jemy answered that one for me with a low groan as he rolled over and passed back out. Laughing, the Marshal turned back to me “You better take yourself down to Dr. Arlo’s office and get that head seen to.”

“I’m alright, I just need a few hours’ sleep and I’ll be ready to head out again.” I said as I leaned back against the wall for support.

“Now listen here boy,” He said, getting that bulldog look that netted him his nickname “I’m not sending you back out on another job until I get a clean bill of health from Dr. Arlo. Now get yourself down there before you pass out here, ain’t none of us man enough to move you if you go down.”

“Yes, sir” I said, having run out of energy to fight.

I trudged out of our office and walked the four doors down to the Doc’s office. I’d grown weary in those few steps and my feet felt like they were pushing through the muddy bottom of the bayou. I made it up the steps and through the glass paneled door with the Doc’s name stenciled in gold leaf. I even made it to the counter where the little old gray headed receptionist sat, but for the life of me I couldn’t make it all the way through “Dr. Arlo please” before the blasted floor came up and met me again.

Somebody kept yelling. Didn’t they know I had hardly slept in a week! As my eyes opened I was prepared to tear a new hole in whoever had woken me, but my first look at her had the words drying up in my throat. Well, that along with the spinning room and the hangover that I couldn’t remember enjoying. As I looked into the deep brown eyes of my new angel, I think I might have confessed my love right then and there. But apparently it came out a little muddled because she started asking questions again.

“Can you tell me your name, sir?” The angel faced brunette asked.

“Jo..., John, John Boudreaux, Detention Enforcement Officer, U.S. Marshal’s office.” I said, not sure why she needed to know all that but the hangover was running things right now.

“Alright, Mr. Boudreaux, can you tell me what happened?” she asked.

“I think I passed out.” I answered helpfully.

“Yes sir, you did, but can you tell me how you got this knot on your head?” she pushed.

“McGarry hit me with a bed knob so I knocked him down with a carpetbag, I don't think his jaw is broken though.” I stated, like that was supposed to answer everything. Then I settled into the floor a little better and tried to go back to sleep.

“Oh no you don’t.” she said as she patted me, not very gently I might add, on the cheek.

When I saw her again my mind went off on its own, there was something about that crazy mass of hair that surrounded her head like a halo., “You’re very pretty.”

“Thank you, Mr. Boudrueax, do you think you can sit up?” she asked unfazed by my undying devotion.

“Margaret..” she said.

“No ma'am my names John, ma’am, John Boudreaux, Detention Enf…..”

“Yes I know,” She interrupted with a note of exasperation then turning to look above me“

Margaret, would you please run down to the Marshal’s office and see if they will send down a few officers to help Mr. Boudreaux into a bed?” she asked.

“Looks like they better send the whole squad if you ask me.” She quipped.

The angel kept asking me little questions that wouldn’t stay in my head long enough to mull over until Marshal Bulldog Clevins came in followed by 6 of the largest officers in our division. I had sat there long enough for some of the fog to clear when Clevins stepped back up in front of me.

“Boy, I told you I didn’t know if we had enough guys to get you up. Now you had to go and make us find out.” He said with a scowl.

“Sorry sir; I’m hungry, would you bring me some gumbo?”

I guess I passed out again because the next thing I knew I was lying in a small white bed, propped up by a bunch of pillows. The large bedroom had another bed in it that wasn’t occupied. The room was decorated with light blue wallpaper and dark trim surrounded the two windows that allowed light to shine on the foot of the two beds.

I didn't have much time to look around and gather my thoughts before the nurse came in. She was a small woman, not delicate like a daffodil but sturdier, more like a sunflower, that only stood about five foot tall but radiated the sun. She had curly brown hair that looked like it took all her willpower to keep it in the bun on her head. Her face was very pretty with pale skin, deep gorgeous eyes the color of rich pure earth ready for planting, and full lips that had me quickly try to think about other things.

“Mr. Boudreaux, I see you’re awake again. How’s the head feeling?” She asked in her no-nonsense angelic voice.

“Like Jemy McGarry hit me with a brass bed knob, how long was I out?” I asked slowly.

Smiling she replied “about twelve hours, and it seems to have helped, your story is starting to make a little more sense.”

She moved forward and peeled off the bandages that encircled my head. She then spent several uncomfortable moments examining the horsehair stitches that now rested in my part. I tried to look away as much as possible but her flowered scent permeated my brain and caused my chest to tighten. She retrieved some salve and coated the sutures, her touch causing my face to go hot, then rebandaged my entire head. Stepping away she said, “Dr. Arlo is gone to lunch but will come back soon and see how you’re doing”

At the mention of lunch my stomach gave an undignified gurgle and then an outright growl as it protested its emptiness. Smiling at me she asked “Do you feel up to eating something?”

“Yes Ma’am, I’ve been craving gumbo since I left St. Louis.” I said hopefully.

Chuckling, she said, “Let’s hold off on the gumbo for a little while and see how you do with some bread and broth.”

Dejectedly I agreed and in moments I had a hot mug of broth and some crusty brown bread sitting on a tray in my lap. The broth and bread were both very good and somehow took the energy out of me. I settled back and dozed for several minutes before the Doc walked in. “Good afternoon John.” the frail old sawbones said as he hobbled into the room with the help of his ever-present ebony cane.

“Afternoon, Doc.” I replied, setting up and not enjoying the pain that went with the movement.

“Looks like some sorry snake attempted to bash in your skull, son. Sure is a good thing that the Lord made yours as hard as pig iron.” he said and then began chuckling at his own joke.

Doctor Arlo had been a fixture within the New Orleans community since before it had been purchased by the Colonies. His once thick french accent had dulled until you only noticed around the edges. The Doctor had been the one to deliver me and was there anytime I had fallen ill. He had gotten on in years and now needed a cane to get around, but his office was always open and ready to help. It had been a few years since I had needed to visit the Doc so this was the first time I had gotten to meet his nurse. I wasn’t sure how to get her back in here, but I sure would like a lot more nursing by her.

“Yeah, one of my prisoners attempted to make a run for it.” I said forgoing the details.

“Yeah, I just left his cell. You nearly took his jaw clean off. It was dislocated so I had to wire it shut until it heals up a bit. That boy looks like he was run over by a horse,” he said, shaking his head.

I figured it best to keep the details to myself for now so I just added “Dang, I was trying to break his jaw clean off, oh well. When am I gettin’ outta here doc?”

“Tell you what, you go ahead and enjoy Nurse Ophelia's company for the night and I'll cut you loose in the morning.” He said with a knowing look.

Ophelia, my angel’s name was Ophelia. Any other time I'd be arguing with the Doc but if it meant spending a few hours with my beautiful Ophelia how could I pass that up. It dawned on me then that I was thinking of her as MY Ophelia. I didn't even know if she was a free woman or not and my mind was already attempting to cut her from the herd. Well I do believe it was time to become a very needy patient.

“Hey Doc, do you think you could ask her for some more food? I’d surely be mighty obliged if she could find me some gumbo, I’ve been craving my momma’s for nigh on a month.” I said, hoping to pull at his withered old heart-strings.

“I sure do miss your momma and her gumbo. I’ll talk to Miss Ophelia and see what we can do.” He said then turned and started hobbling for the door.

“Thanks Doc!” I said as he got to the door.

He just lifted a hand in a wave as he rounded the corner.

Nurse Ophelia of the rich eyes and brunette curls, came to see me a little while later carrying a covered dish and scowling at me.

“Marshal Clevins & Dr. Arlo both have been hounding me to get you some gumbo. So, here you go, I hope it heals you fast so you can be out of my hair.” She said with a slight smile, erasing that scowl.

“Miss Ophelia, If I had my way I’d never be out of your hair.” I said feeling bold, probably from the pain medicine the Doc had me on.

“Mr. Boudreaux! You watch that mouth of yours or Doc Arlo will be needing to add a few more sutures to that head.” She said in a stern tone. “Now eat this gumbo so your jaw don’t keep flappin’”

I sat up in the bed with a fair amount of groaning, most of it legitimate. Then she moved in close again followed by the most heavenly scent of gumbo and flowery perfume. A man could lose himself in those smells alone. I smiled as I looked from her glorious face to the lid of the pot, and then with slow reverence lifted the lid.

The steam of the rich brown roux hit me slap in the face and I tell you I could have cried. It was like my sweet little momma had come down from heaven just to nurse me back to health. I couldn’t speak for a number of minutes as I stared through swimming vision at the sausage and crawfish floating around the white island of rice sprinkled with the heavenly manna of cayenne pepper. Lord, I thought, Thank you for letting my momma step away for a few moments to check on her baby.

I picked up the spoon and ladled up a small portion of the glorious brown broth and brought it to my lips for a first sip. My momma really had come down. This was the closest I had had to mama's gumbo in five years. I looked up at Nurse Ophelia with shock.

“Where did you get this?” I asked quietly

“For some reason today is not Gumbo day in New Orleans, so I fixed some this morning and just brought the pot in. Don’t you like it?” She said getting a little defensive.

“Ma’am, The best gumbo I ever had in my life was what my Momma made me since the day I was hatched. This is every bit as good and possibly better than hers but I wouldn’t talk bad about my Momma..” I said as I stared into her deep loamy eyes. “Miss Ophelia, when Doc lets me out of this blasted bed would you allow me to court you sometime?”

Her mouth dropped in shock at my statement. Her face reddened as she stared back at me.

“I, uh, I would be honored.” She said at a near loss for words. She looked around for a second to ensure everything was in order and then exited the room as quickly as possible.

The smile that swept across my face could have been seen for miles. Miss Ophelia of the excellent gumbo and brunette tangles was willing to let me court her. Pure joy settled in my soul and I plumb forgot about my gumbo for a full minute. But the smell coaxed my attention back and I dug into Heaven. Now if I could only sneak a quid of tobacco it might be a perfect evening. The growing smile on my face moved my stitches about and I sobered up quickly and finished off my gumbo. Maybe it was time I put serious thought into quitting the tobacco, especially if I could keep Miss Ophelia around for a while.

I stand

I stand at the edge of my kingdom, the iron gates only a few feet behind me. I built the ramparts and the portcullis, I laid the stone walls and dug the well, I set the cornerstone and the capstone of each piece of my castle. I did all of that for my family, they are the ones that I serve, they are my kingdom. I stand.

I stand at the iron gates knowing this is my last stance. I stand on the road to my kingdom as a wall, I stand to fight. I am trained to fight, I know how to fight. I know how to draw blood with my sword and break bones with my shield. I know how to repel attacks and break defenses. But blood will not be spilt, bones will not be broken and the attack will not be repelled. I stand.

I stand with my feet on my soil, crops growing all around. My armor weighs heavy, my helm stifling. I stand with my chainmail under my breastplate. I stand with my greaves and bracers buckled and secure. I stand with my hand on my sword and my shield on my arm. I stand fully armored knowing my sword and shield, my greaves and bracers, my helm and breastplate will not be enough. I stand.

I stand for my family. They are under attack, not me. I stand ill equipped and ill prepared but I stand out of my love for them. I stand staring at an army that I have no understanding of. I stand staring at an army I am unable to defend. I stand.

I stand knowing I have searched and begged for a weapon. I stand knowing I have researched and pleaded for a strategy. I stand knowing that I do not know how to fight this enemy. I stand.

I stand knowing that the war wages all around my kingdom. I stand knowing the war was being waged before I knew we were under attack. I stand watching the war come in waves around me. I stand knowing many fight this war and many have lost. I stand.

I stand and draw my sword knowing it is useless. I stand and take in a breath that I believe to be my last. I stand facing a war that I am going to lose, when I feel a hand. The hand rests on my shoulder, I look at it and see the scars of battle and know. I know that today I no longer stand alone. I know that my pleading did not go unheard. I know that I no longer need a weapon for He stands with me.

We stand. We stand in the breach, I under his hand and him at my side. We take a breath and the enemy halts. We step forward and the enemy quakes. We declare His power and the enemy flees. I no longer stand alone.

He stands. He stands at the breach as I rest. He stands, defending his kingdom so my family is at peace. I no longer have to fear. He stands.

H.K. Daniels

The sound came first—a chaotic, ear-splitting cacophony that seemed to claw at the senses, louder and louder as it approached. It was the shriek of shattered glass grinding against iron, the hollow thunk of wood battering stone, the shuddering rattle of a thousand loose, metallic trinkets caught in a relentless, monstrous shuffle. Over it all, a groaning, leather-on-stone rasp rose and fell like a tide, punctuated by the faint clinking of coins scattering onto the dirt and the wet, sickly slosh of liquids spilling from unseen containers. The noise was maddening, as if the detritus of countless lifetimes was being dragged relentlessly through the bowels of the earth itself.

And then the thing came into view.

The sack was enormous, monstrous in its proportions—its bulk stretched wider than the span of most houses, and every inch of its tattered leather and fabric exterior told a story of violence and decay. Swords, arrows, and jagged shards of bone pierced through its skin, creating a forest of deadly protrusions. Spilled liquids—some glimmering like molten gold, others dark and viscous—had soaked the sack, painting it in a grotesque tapestry of reds, greens, and blacks, the hues shifting with the light as it dragged forward. Among the torn patches of its surface, severed heads of beasts—some rotting, their flesh sloughing off in greasy tendrils, others fresh with gleaming, bloodied fur—hung like trophies of some eldritch hunt. Flies swarmed in dense, buzzing clouds, their droning hum adding to the unbearable din, and the stench that accompanied the monstrosity was suffocating—rank decay, fetid liquids, and something acrid, like burnt hair and bile.

From gaping holes in the sack’s surface spilled a trail of its ghastly contents. Trinkets of strange, forgotten craftsmanship, leather-bound books with pages fluttering like dying moths, vials of unknown potions that gleamed with inner light, and coins that glittered in the sun like the cursed treasures of a thousand kings—all scattered behind it, forming a bizarre breadcrumb trail in its wake.

A horse trudged at the front of this grotesque procession—an ordinary creature performing an impossible task. Its sweat-soaked coat clung to its wiry frame, muscles straining visibly with each step as it dragged the monumental sack behind. Each hooffall was a muffled defiance of logic, the animal moving with a jerky, mechanical gait that seemed unnatural, wrong. This mundane beast, bearing a burden that should have broken it, moved forward in silence, an eerie spectacle of defied reality.

Its eyes burned with something far removed from fear or pain, something darker, as though it knew its plight was guided by a force greater than life or death. Upon its back sat the stranger, a man whose pale hair caught the light like freshly fallen snow, the only clean thing in the abomination's wake. His face was weathered but sharp, and his piercing gaze seemed to dissect the soul of anyone it fell upon. He shifted in the saddle, brushing strands of white hair from his face, and as he drew closer, his lips curled into a wry, knowing smile.

"I heard you're looking for a witcher."

Link to serial master post for other chapters

Madeline managed to last a week before she started pushing. One week of Liam barely speaking two words together to her or Billie. One week of red, tear-stained eyes he tried to hide. One week of hardly touched meals.

One week since he’d learnt his mother was dead.

She’d told herself again and again that he needed time and space to grieve in his own way. He knew that she was there for him — that she’d always be there for him — when he was ready. By repeating that mantra over and over, she managed to restrict herself to a few kind words here and there, a couple of nudges to try eating just a little more, and the occasional hand laid gently on his shoulder.

Each and every time, he rebuffed her. He avoided making eye contact, barely acknowledging when she spoke to him, and flinching away from her touch.

It broke her heart to see him like this. To see him in pain and to be powerless to help. One week was all she could take. What she was doing now clearly wasn’t working. Liam needed her help — needed her — whether he was ready to admit it or not.

When their next free day came, Liam retreated back to his side of the room after yet another barely touched breakfast. But this time, Madeline went to follow.

Billie caught her arm, raising their eyebrows in a question.

She met their gaze as steadily as she could in spite of the tears stinging behind her eyes.

With a sad smile, they nodded, releasing their grip on her. As she continued over to the other side of the privacy partition, she felt their presence close behind.

Liam was curled up on his bed facing the wall with his knees hugged into his chest. He didn’t turn or look up as the pair of them approached.

“Liam,” she said, softly, “we need to talk.”

He didn’t move, remaining completely still apart from the slight shuddering in his shoulders that betrayed a barely concealed sob.

“I’m worried about you, Liam,” she tried again. Seeing him lying there, seeing him so clearly in pain… It tugged at her chest, pulling her towards him, to comfort him. But Billie caught her arm again, holding her back.

They were right, of course. She was already invading his space when he clearly didn’t want them there. The least she could do was stay where she was, on the threshold between the two halves of the room.

“Please, Liam.” The lump building in her throat swallowed the words, her voice coming out barely more than a whisper. She paused, taking a deep, shuddering breath until she felt in control again. “I just want to help. We just want to help. Please let us help you in any way that we can.”

The small form lying on the bed shifted slightly, and Madeline thought she heard a muffled reply, though she couldn’t make out what he said.

“Yes?” She took a step towards him. “What was that?”

Finally, he turned, watery eyes glaring daggers at her in an expression she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen that sweet, young face wear. “I said, you can leave me alone!”

She flinched back slightly at the venom in his voice, bumping into Billie hovering behind her.

“Come on, Mads,” they whispered. “He’s not ready yet. Just give him time.”

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t bear to see him like this and do nothing. He’d told her to leave him once before, and she had. And she’d regretted it ever since.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said firmly. “I can’t make you talk to me, and I wouldn’t want to, but if and when you’re ready, I’ll be here.” To reinforce her point, she carefully lowered herself to the ground, sitting cross-legged on the threadbare carpet. She could feel Billie’s presence, still standing just behind her, but she didn’t take her eyes off of Liam.

He scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Typical.”

“And what do you mean by that?” she asked as calmly as she could manage.

“Nothing!” He turned his back on her with a huff, facing into the wall. But he only managed to restrain himself for a beat before he turned back around, swinging his legs off of the bed to stand. “It’s just that it’s typical of you to ignore what I want. I’m just a kid, right? I don’t know what’s good for me? So instead you just steam-roll through my life and squash any parts of me that are inconvenient for you!”

His words winded her. The anger burning in them, accusations fighting there way through the tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I never meant… I’m sorry.”

“You never meant to what? To take me away from my home? From where I felt safe? From where my dad could find me? You never meant to force your personality on me? To bore me to death with these stupid stories?” He grabbed the book from his bedside table, hurling it across the room at Madeline. It missed its mark, but she still felt the hit. “You didn’t mean to make me feel safe only to tear it all away? To leave me? You didn’t mean to get me captured by the monsters that destroyed my life?”

She knew that the words were designed to hurt, but that didn’t remove the sting of them. Each accusation hit her with the weight of her own buried guilt.

“You didn’t mean to come here and tear my life apart all over again? To take me away from my friends?” Liam stepped forward, fists trembling at his sides, voice quivering. “To give me hope only to… only to…” He sagged to his knees, sobs crashing over him like waves.

Without thinking, Madeline rushed forward, kneeling next to him to wrap her arms around him.

“You made me think… You came back!” The words croaked out through the sobs as he rocked back and forth. “If you came back I thought… maybe they could too. I could imagine… I could hope… But now.”

“But now you know for certain that she isn’t coming back,” she whispered, stroking his head gently with one hand. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take that hope away from you.”

They sat on the floor, curled around each other in silence for a long while after that. The sobs washing over Liam subsided slowly, as Madeline held him, until the shaking in his body faded to a tremble.

Eventually, he pulled back slightly and she did the same. She stared down at him — at a face that had never looked so young and lost, or so old, and weary all at the same time — and carefully brushed a strand of hair from his face, plastered there by the tears.

He stared back, through red, watery eyes. “How do you do it?” he asked, quietly. “How do you keep going when there’s nothing to hope for? When there’s nothing to look forward to? When everything feels so dark and…” He looked up at her imploringly. A look that wrapped around her heart and pulled.

Madeline fought past the lump in her throat. “I look for the light. I find things to keep me going, like you, like Billie.” She glanced over at the person she loved, still lingering in the partition doorway, smiling sadly down at the pair of them.

A sniff drew her attention back to Liam. “But what’s there to look forward to when we’re stuck here? I mean, we’re just going to work here until we die, like… like my mum.”

She sighed, as resolve settled over her. Perhaps it wasn’t right to give him hope of something that might never happen. But hoping for things that might never happen was one of the only ways she’d coped this past year. She couldn’t take that same chance from him.

Soft footsteps on the carpet warned her of Billie’s approach before their hand settled on her shoulder. She looked up into their warm, brown eyes, and they smiled down at her. “It’s time, Mads.”

“It’s time.” She nodded, before turning back to the boy in her arms. “Liam, it’s time we told you the whole reason we came here. We came here to find you, and find out about the other’s who’d been taken. But we also came with the hope that, maybe, one day, just maybe, we’d be able to break back out.”

“That’s what keeps me going.” Billie knelt down next to them. “Along with you and Madeline and the time we spend together. It’s what kept me going when the guards took me away.”

“We’re not saying it will definitely happen.” Madeline said, wiping a tear from Liam’s face.

Billie managed a small, tight smile. “But it’s something to hope for.”

Author's Note: Next chapter due on 8th December.

The Destruction of Nourishment 

Crackling and sparking, the fire across the mossy road drenched me with feelings of jealousy as the group huddled around it, laughing and joking, another reminder of my loneliness. This was the final nail in the coffin; the little heat I had came from my tan wollen jacket that failed to zip up any more, tied together with a single frayed shoelace around my waist. It was not enough to support me through the cold winter months ahead. I was desperate. Hungry and tired, I began searching for food and sustenances in an upturned bin; anything at this point would have been of use to me, the smell of food wafting over from the fire, almost taunting me. 

The voices by the fire became clearer: I began to hear snippets of their conversation, murmurs. Desperate for human contact, I trudged forward and stopped about 10 feet from their campsite and began to pick through what I had found in the dumpster. 

“We can’t survive,” the scrawny, tall boy said.

“Yeah,” a shorter, more shy looking boy chimed in. “We are lucky we have lasted as long as we have”.

“Trust me,” the older one soothed. He seemed to be much older than the other two boys, possibly their father, though I could not make it out very well. “We will get through this, we always have and always will”. 

Glancing back over my shoulder, I made direct eye contact with the youngest boy, who looked about eight or nine years of age. Almost immediately, he buried his head in his thick woollen blanket; peeking back up, he looked at me but this time he didn’t shy away immediately.  I cracked a wayward grin at him, resulting in him going back to hiding in the dark, stained woollen blanket that lay draped across his lap. Turning back to my haul of rubbish, I heard the three of them suddenly stop talking. Feeling a boney finger tap me on the shoulder, I spun around, expecting to be attacked. 

It was the older man. He was standing above me, and for the first time I was able to make out a slender figure, with incredibly sunken eyes and wisps of grey hair atop his head. 

“Are you hungry?” he said through a broken voice and with a southern accent.

I looked at him with amazement: I thought he must be joking because people coveted food and did not offer it. Was it some sort of cruel prank?

“Well?” he questioned, “It's getting colder by the second”. 

What's the worst that could happen, I thought to myself.

“Yes, please…”. I wheezed through my cracked and dry lips.

Spinning around and with me close by his side, he limped slowly back to the safety of the fire. The second I arrived at the fire I was doused in a fiery air; it was the best feeling I had ever experienced. Crumpling onto the blue tarp between the two boys, I was able to make them out properly. The younger of the two, whom I was playing with earlier, was younger than I thought. He must have been no older than five or six, and he had his eyes latched onto me. His hair was shoulder-length and dirty blonde, with electric blue eyes and a contagious smile. Whereas the older one was not anything like him: he had jet black hair and eyes so dark I did not know where his pupils were.  He had a dark and mysterious aurora that surrounded him like a bad smell. 

“My name is Darren,” said the older man with a smile, “And that there is Jack.” He gestured to the younger boy, “There is his brother William,” he said with a mouth full of some sort of meat stew.

“It’s Will,” the older boy spat through gritted teeth. 

“Okay, okay, no need for that,” Darren said, attempting to calm Will down.

“Anyways you were hungry, weren't you?” 

I nodded eagerly, as this was the first hot meal I’d had for as long as I could remember, before The Collapse anyway. I was handed a blue plastic bowl with remnants of the last meal caked across the edge, but I did not care; this steaming pile of what looked like beef stew was the best thing I had ever eaten. The smell was so inviting; it smelt like what was before everything happened. It smelt of order and peace. 

Devouring the last of the meal and scraping the last remains of the sauce, I had a full stomach for once, and I noticed that the flame of the fire was dying down. I was offered more. Gladly accepting, I reached across the dying fire, the flames licking up toward my outstretched arm, and something fell out of the jacket's inside pocket, a blackened book with a hard leather cover. It had the Majesty’s State badge scrawled across the cover in blood-red ink. Suddenly, a wave of nausea passed across me and looking up I saw Darren’s initial kindness replaced by horror. Will and Jack looked confused. Darren’s eyes filled with anger and malevolence. The fire sparked and fizzled, igniting once again.

“Okay, okay, I'm not with them,” I stuttered.

Darren unsheathed a partially rusted blade and pointed it in my direction. By now the fire was blazing.

“Why have THAT, then?” He jabbed at me and the book.

“I can explain,” I grovelled.

This brought Jack to tears, which just fuelled Darren’s unbridled rage. Now the fire was ravenous, eating all the smouldering embers and dead wood scattered around the edge.

“STOP IT!” He spat at Jack, bringing his tears back stronger. The flames had fully seized the entire fire pit and were at its disposal. 

“GO, go back to where you came from!” Darren roared. 

The fire was now spreading around us, licking at the blankets. Jack and Will were terrified as they backed away from the two flames. I was paralysed with fear. I was now at the mercy of Darren and the rampant inferno that had comprehensive control over the campsite. 

What was worse, was that I watched in horror, as the last book, the only book left in existence, each word, each exquisite, handwritten sentence, disappeared within the flames of ignorance.   

I opened my eyes slowly. I could feel the crust surrounding the outer edges of my eyelids. If I opened my eyes too fast, the crust would surely fall in. I closed my eyes and wiped the crust from my eyelids, but kept them closed.

Outside, I could hear my rooster calling from the front yard. How does he keep getting out of that fence? I know getting out of bed is the only way the rooster is going to stop, but my body resists. I was up late last night wondering about him again. Wondering. That seems to be the only thing I do when he's gone. Does he wonder about me? Sometimes I think that I just enjoy spending time with him in my memories, for sometimes he almost seems closer there.

I muster up the energy to launch myself onto my feet and start my morning. I don't need coffee this morning as it’ll only give me more energy to overthink. I stand on the porch and take a deep breath. The air is cool and crisp, and the sun has not yet peeked over the horizon. The edges of the farm are still completely dark from, only slightly illuminated by moonlight. I lock my fingers together and stretch before stepping off the porch and sauntering over to the rabbit pen.

Most of the rabbits are still sleeping but I check to make sure everyone is alive. Next, is the barn to check on the horses. I open the door and I hear one of the horses give a short whine. It’s his horse, Viridi. Looking at her has become bittersweet.

In a way, Viridi and I have a weird sense of solidarity. Frequently abandoned by the one we love the most, never really sure of when he's coming back. Each time he's gone is never longer or shorter than the last. He comes and goes as he pleases. Nomadic in every sense of the word. I had half a mind to go with him, and I know he has half a mind to stay home but, in ourselves lies the truth. There will always be a part of us that wants something different.

I walk over to her and gently rub her nose. I know she doesn't like me as much as him, but she's always nicer to me when he's not around. He never believed that. She looks at me with blank eyes. Memories of me and him building this barn for her, start to flood my mind and I feel a sense of hopelessness wash over me. Not right now.

I take my hand off of her nose and rush out of the barn. There's just so much I have to do. I storm back into the house and rip through my drawers. They have to be in here somewhere. I know he left them here, I'm positive. There, I pull a pair of headphones out of my bottom drawer. I turn them around and look at the jagged engraving of ‘R+D’ in a heart. Running my finger over the raised edges, I take a deep breath. I toss them over my ears and throw on a playlist of ambient music to keep my brain occupied. I can't spend all day thinking about him.

With the addition of the music, the farm chores go by rather uneventfully. I check the fence around the chicken coop to try to see where the rooster is getting out of, but I find nothing. Either way I know I'm going to have to fix it when I find it so I grab my wallet and my keys and make my way towards town in his pickup truck.

On the way to the tractor supply store, I called him. He built the fence after all. If anyone knew how to fix the fence it would be him for sure. It rings, and rings, and rings some more before I finally give up. That's weird, he's usually awake by now.

“He’s probably just busy.” I say to myself out loud. I try to say it confidently but it comes out more like I'm trying to convince myself it's true.

The drive back from the store is filled with swirling thoughts of what he could be doing, and where he could be. It wasn't unusual for him to not answer a phone call but that didn't stop me from worrying about it every single time that it happened. When I pull up to my house I’m expecting to see my rooster on the porch but instead there's a man. The sound of the pickup truck catches his attention and he turns around, but I know who it is before then. He raises his arms in the air at the sight of the truck and gives a warm smile.

“I thought we agreed you were supposed to have tea and a shower ready for me when I got home.” he yells from the porch. I know he's trying to make a joke but for some reason it rubs me the wrong way.

“Yeah well it’d be easier to do that if i ever knew when you were coming home.” I push past him into the house and leave the door open behind me, and I hear it shut from the back door. Footsteps gradually make their way to me.

“So cranky darling. Is that any way to greet me?” he stares expectantly. I stare back blankly before taking a deep breath and walking over to him. Something in the back of my mind is telling me not to but I fall into him anyways. I wrap my arms around him tightly and stop breathing. I can feel his heartbeat on my cheek as we stand there in silence.

“I hate that you leave me.” This is our usual routine. He puts a finger under my chin and lifts my head so that our eyes meet.

“I’m never gone for long my love, and I know you're strong. After all, I just want to see the world.”

“You can see the world but I want you to spend more time with me! I want to start a family.” I feel my eyes start to burn and my face gets hot so I release him. I hate letting him see me cry.

“I worry, Darry. I worry that one day you won't come back. Whether that's because you found a new girl to be with, or you get hurt, or you just never find your way back home. We built all this together and sometimes it feels like I'm living in a shell of you. I miss you. I miss us. I miss having my husband around. Is that too much to ask?” I stare at him expectantly and he looks down at the floor.

“Rose I-”

“No Darry, I know what you're going to say. I don't want to hear how you're only going to be gone for a couple more years and-”

“Rose please!” His voice is stern but troubled. A pit starts to form in my stomach and I can feel myself getting nauseous

“Can we please just talk about this later?” I bit my lip and looked at the floor.

“Of course we can sweetheart. What tea would you like?” He sits down at the table and looks up at me silently. I wipe my hands on my pants and start to rustle through the cabinets for the kettle. We drank the tea in silence.

The next morning I woke up to the sun peeking through the blinds. I roll over and feel for Darry but I'm met with the soft coolness of the sheets. My heart sinks and my breath catches. I jump out of bed and run to the window before I can process what's happening. There he is. In the backyard , fixing the fence surrounding the chicken coop. I swear I looked in the area he was patching and didn't see a hole.

He should be coming in soon so I walk to the kitchen to make him tea. I sit at the kitchen table and butter a piece of toast I made for myself while I wait for the kettle to scream. He walks through the door just as it decides to blow.

“Just in time.” I mutter sheepishly.

“You made me tea? Ah, I appreciate it, but I don't know if I'll have time to drink it.” he replies. I stop and stare at him. His back is facing towards me but I know he can feel my eyes burning into his back.

“Don't do that now,” he mutters under his breath. I get up to storm back into the room but he catches my wrist in the doorway. I snatched it back.

“Do not!” I yell before taking a pause. By now tears have already started streaming down my face. I know what's coming next.

“Just go Darry. Leave, like you always do. Tell me you have to do a job or you want to go visit a friend and leave.” I throw my hands up in the air and turn to head up the stairs.

“Rosie, I’m not trying to hurt you my love. I promise. I'm just trying to figure some things out so I can be home more. You don't think I want to be here with you? I love you. Of course I want to be here with you. I care about you.”

“Care? Darry, you don't know anything about me! We don't talk and that's all your doing.”

“I know you very well Rose.”

“What's my favorite color?”

“Blue.” I stare at him for a moment before I turn and walk away. He doesn't say anything to try to stop me. After a while of burrowing my face into a tear drenched pillow I hear footsteps creak into our room. He sits on the edge of the bed and puts his hand on my side.

“Listen. I love you. You're right alright. You got me, I don't know any of the minor details about you. I don't remember your favorite color, or how much time has passed since the last time we talked but I always know what to say to you. I walk into a room and I always make you laugh. I know me leaving hurts you, and I know that it's wrong. Hell, I think you're pretty strong for putting up with it this long,”

“Get to your point.” I hissed at him.

“It would be selfish of me to expect you to continue doing this for me, and I also understand you don't want to leave and come with me every single time I go somewhere for months on end. Rosie, you feel like home. What I’m trying to say is that you're my home. Through all the whipping and moving around I've been doing over the past years, I spend a lot of time thinking about the last time I was secure. That was with you Rose, in this home, in your arms.” I look at him and I feel my shoulders relax a bit.

“What does all that mean, Darry.”

“ I want you around. I need you around.” Darry grabs my hands and holds them close to his chest.

For the longest time I refused to go with him and travel because I wanted some sense of security. That's why anyone does anything right? To feel secure or at least lull themselves into a false sense of the word. That's why he helped me build this farm to begin with. Everything we did back then was for security. Getting married, building this farm, moving to this lonely city. I thought this was what I needed until he started traveling. His trips became more sporadic and longer and I was starting to get more and more impatient. I figured it was just the typical feelings of missing your spouse but as time went on I could feel it growing into something more. Something bigger than that. I wanted it to be resentment but in my heart I knew I couldn't hate Darry if I tried. He was my everything. So why was I having these feelings?

“So what? I sell the farm and we just travel forever? What about all the things we built to feel secure together? You wanted this too Darry! I never even wanted to be in this city. I don't know anyone in this city. I only moved here because you said this was what you wanted.” Darry looked down at my hands and set them down on the bed.

“This was what I needed, but things change my love and people grow. Their needs change and they may need to do things a little differently.” I can see Darry shift in his seat a little before clearing his throat. He has something to tell me but I can't fathom what. He already told me he was going on another trip, so what else could there be?

“Now Rosie, I don't want you to go on and do all that hootin’ and hollerin’ like you do when you get mad but I have something to tell you.” I stare at Darry, emotionless. Sitting there patiently, I can already start to feel my body start to vibrate from the inside out.

“While I was out on one of the trips, I slept with this girl I met at the bar. I didn't think anything of it because we went our separate ways the next morning and I thought that would be the end of it.” Darry trails off and tears start to form in his eyes.

“You're about to piss me off Darry. You didn't.” I look up at the ceiling and ball my fists up. I can feel the buzzing in my body getting more and more intense and my teeth start to chatter. My body is completely stiff save for the periodic convulsion from the tremors in my body.

“She told me she could get pregnant Darry, and by god, I trusted the lady knew her own body!” He says it matter-of-factly. Of course he trusted her, a stranger, over logic. How disgustingly lustful. I stood up and took a long drawn out breath. I turned around to face him.

“Darry, I want you out of this house right now. I want you to pack up that bag with every trace of you in this home and take it elsewhere, you hear me? Darry I mean everything, down to the buttons that fell off your shirts.” I walk out of the room but he starts talking before I make it all the way out.

“Baby c’mon! I don't want to be with her, it didn't matter. I’m not going to be a father to the kid anyways.” I stopped dead in my tracks.

“Why would you abandon your mistake to make me feel any better? You think I could have a baby with you in good conscience knowing that you have another one out there who you don't take care of? That doesn't attract me. It was supposed to be our child. I was supposed to have your child Darry, For Christ's sake, we're married!” What started out as a calm response shortly elapsed into a wailing sob.

Darry stood there with tears streaming down his face but somehow still emotionless. He didn't know what to say. He didn't have to tell me that. After years of being with him, I already knew. For the first time, Darry didn't have to say anything. I didn't want him to.

INVERTED:

I think I almost died last night, or at least my brain thought it was going to. Not in the sense of being stabbed, or shot, or falling ill to some disease. I find it hard to put into words, and I’ll try, but if it doesn’t make sense realize you’re reading my story and not the other way around.

I was asleep in my bed, my girlfriend sleeping next to me, when it happened. There was nothing unusual about the night, though I do feel it worth noting I have been getting over a bad case of pneumonia. It had sent me to the ER, though not on some panicked ambulance ride, it was a choice as the antibiotics hadn’t been working and my family had gotten a bit concerned about my health. I saw the Doctor, and all is well, but it has been a surreal experience. I’m saying this in full disclosure that my mental state was tuned a little closer to death than it normally is. I’m sure it has to do with it.

I was in that place, between waking and sleeping, though much closer to dreaming. It happened so quickly, but it scared me. I saw a boat on a lake. It was a small white boat with two oars fastened to the sides. There were large flakes of paint missing to show the old, brown wood underneath. It sat on a wide and clear lake, with grey storm clouds above.

Though I know it makes no sense, the water was so still and unmoving, the boat’s reflection so perfect in its suspension of space, I couldn’t really tell If I was above the water or not. It felt more right to me that the water was only division, a vale of sorts between two worlds. That the water had as much substance as the air, and by putting your hand through and extracting a handful would be as useful as trying to do the same with the sky.

I watched, as the two boats…folded in on each other.

It was as if I was looking down at the length of a giant mirror as it angled and twisted the two boats into each other. I expected them to push through each other, replacing the other in some odd cosmic transfer. What I was seeing wasn’t making any sense of course, but at least that had some logic to it. But as they pushed into each other, they vanished instead, leaving behind a perceptible divot in the water where the boats should have been.

I stared as the water held the memory of those boats for just a little too long, as if the universe was distracted. The vacuum where the boats used to be, the space the water held. It left a hole of sorts. And I knew at that moment if I stayed there any longer it would take me with it when it closed. No destination, just a pop out of existence. As all the something rushed into fill the nothing I was occupying.

I woke up wet.

PS: This is the first short story I have written, I am excited to begin this hobby with all of you, and would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading!

So let's say there is a character called anger, a big warrior dude in armor and a sword and a shield, and he is in a cave holding a torch and you think he is extremely brave because he looks extremely serious and buff, and then there is epic music and there is a scary atmosphere, and you see him going forward chopping Vines with his sword, getting rid of spider webs with his gauntlet, and then he gets to a door, and he tries to open it and it's locked, and then he backs up and runs towards it and the door explodes open. And then you see a huge cavern.

And the warrior is looking around and starts to search it. And then in the background you see glowing eyes for a brief moment from one of the crevices and it scurries away...

As the warrior searches the huge cavern, one of the stones underneath him shifts suddenly and his torch goes flying, and it falls into a pool of water and now it is dark and shadowy in the cave.

It is dead silent as the warrior looks around seeing if he can detect any noise or movement now that his torch is out. And the camera shows something scurrying behind him, and he looks over his shoulder and he sees nothing.

And so he cautiously continues towards the door on the other side of the cavern.

And then all of a sudden he steps on the wrong rock and the floor collapses and he is holding on to the ledge for dear life. He is so big and huge and muscular and his armor is heavy and the stone is slippery with dust that it very hard for him to hold on.

And so he falls and the camera watches him fall into the blackness, but you don't hear him scream you see him look stoically accepting his fate if he dies.

As he is falling, Anger takes his sword and thrusts it with all of his might into the rock and soil wall that he is descending into, and it slows his descent just enough, with the sword slicing through the rock and the soil, to deaden his fall enough that he survives barely.

Anger assesses the damage, he is barely conscious because his weight was so heavy he hit the ground so hard, and he is feeling that his limbs are damaged somehow and he is looking at where he is and he sees shadows around him and he is thinking about how long it will take for him to be able to get back up and start seeing if he can figure out where he is, and then you see the same glowing eyes and the scurrying Shadow that was from the cave above.

And then Anger wakes up from after falling unconscious again because he heard a noise and a shifting sound come from nearby him, and then he is laying on his back and he can hardly move his arms or legs, he can only really move one arm, and he sees the shadow coming closer to him with the glowing eyes, and he is holding his arm up and he is so weak that he won't be able to defend himself, and as the monster gets closer you see the teeth dripping with saliva and the tongue hanging out, and right before it takes a bite out of anger, a rock flies through the air and hits the monster in the head and it knocks it out.

And Anger opens one of his eyes and sees that the monster is knocked out. Anger is confused. And then he hears a voice from the shadows going, you got to watch out for those things they'll make you their lunch but I'm going to make it my lunch now.

And then Anger sees a figure wearing a leather glove grab the tail of the monster and drag it into the darkness and anger hears crunching noises, and now Anger doesn't even know how to react.

Anger shifts backwards propping his back against the wall while his legs stick out still too weak to walk. He says into the darkness who are you, how did you get here? Silence. And then the voice says the food was good but now a nap sounds even better. And then anger rolls his eyes.

And as Anger sits propped up against the wall, and as he hears this the mysterious figure snoring loudly, anger questions his life choices and is thinking to himself how did I manage to get myself into this situation, but as he hears the snores of the figure in the darkness he realizes that he might as well get sleep because who knows what's going to happen next. And then anger closes his eyes.

Anger's eyes are closed and his head is tilted to one side as he sleeps and there is something dripping on his cheek, and then he waves his hand and he looks up exhausted out of the side of his eye.

And he sees a tongue dripping saliva right on his face and he is startled awake by this massive figure standing right over him giving him a dumb grin and beady eyes.

But the figure is so huge and round and it looks like the pokémon Snorlax, and Anger goes what the hell are you?

And then the mysterious figure in the shadows says that's my friend, he's saying hi I think he likes you. Anger shifts uncomfortably trying to get out from under the saliva dripping on him and is squinting at the figure and says tell your friend to give me a little space please.

And then the Snorlax gives Anger some side-eye and crosses its arms and stomps backwards with some sass making the ground shake while he does it.

Then the mysterious figure says hey he can hear you buddy treat him with some respect we go way back okay? And anger rolls his eyes as he wipes the saliva off his face.

And after some awkward silence with Snorlax squinting and crossing its arms and tapping its foot at Anger and with Anger looking off into the distance pretending he doesn't see Snorlax staring at him annoyed, Anger says well how are you guys going to get out of here?

And then the mysterious voice lets out a huge laugh for like an extremely long time that makes Anger raise his eyebrow and cross his arms, and then the mysterious figure says we would have gotten out of here a long time ago if we could have, but now it seems that you're stuck in here with us, what do you feel about that?

And Anger goes well I guess I'll die then, and then Snorlax lets out a snort and covers up its mouth because it is giggling a little. And then anger smirks a tiny bit and then notices that he is smirking and coughs and then goes back to being super serious.

Those were the first headlines.

“A comet from the neighbouring galaxy is headed towards the solar system, expected to be rerouted by Jupiter”

It wasn’t supposed to be anything exciting.

“Experts are unsure of what exactly the foreign asteroid is“

For weeks, nobody knew what it was. The JWST couldn’t capture it. The Hubble telescope couldn’t properly display it. All we knew was that it was some interstellar object.

People started spreading rumours. Until the scientists finally spoke again.

“Semi-catastrophic events expected from asteroid fly-by”

It would soon pass between Earth and Mars. It would rip mountaintops off. Earthquakes would rock the planet. There would be global, biblical flooding. Florida became Atlantis. The Arctic disappeared. Antarctica became an archeologist’s dream and a virologist’s nightmare.

“Easter weekend overshadowed- literally- by gargantuan asteroid”

Then, I saw it with my own eyes.

I hadn’t seen any good photos of it prior. I don’t think anyone had. All photos uploaded onto the internet were blurry or hard to interpret for the average person. We wouldn’t know what it looked like until it came by. There was that week where everybody thought it was an alien spaceship, which deserves its own story, but scientists confirmed it was mostly composed of natural material. Iron and carbon.

It passed by the planet for a whole day.

Everyone watched it with their own pair of special glasses made in the “comet craze” leading up to the fly-by.

The lack of sunlight did a hell of a lot of harm, though.

Not just to the expected plants and animals,

but to people, too.

Some boarded up their windows in fear of the end of the world. Some took it as an opportunity to steal, destroy, and harm.

Most people saw it before it blocked out the Sun, like I did.

I don’t think any of us could really look away.

It took up a third of the sky.

One massive, red chunk of planet.

Scientists estimated it was 20-25% of its original planet.

As it flew away, you could see craters lining its backside, with smaller asteroids following it.

Some of those asteroids crashed in the ocean.

Some of them destroyed towns.

Before it passed by, you could see the face of the planet.

Its’ surface.

Its’ dried rivers and its’ barren lands.

If you were nerdy enough or lucky enough to use a telescope before it blocked out the Sun, you saw… them.

Or… you saw it in the papers afterwards, like most people did.

They say you could see them with your own eyes in Ecuador.

The buildings.

The destroyed skyscrapers and neighbourhoods, cities and towns, arranged in the most intricate designs. Like the stars of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Large patterns sprawling the red planet’s face, their purpose ultimately unknown.

Alien architecture from beyond the Milky Way,

inexplicably at our doorstep,

out of our reach,

and never to be seen again,

just like the ice cream truck as you go to grab your money.

Their buildings looked like ours.

Chapter 1: Cats, Deadlines, and a Cup of Magic

Patches Guerrero had long accepted her place in the world. She wasn’t the prettiest, the most charming, or the kind of woman people noticed twice. At 40, living in a quiet single-attached home in a town just outside the metro with her three cats—Chandler, Joey, and Abby—she found peace in routines. Morning coffee with a splash of condensed milk, evening comic book reading,, and occasional binge-watching marathons of obscure shows she’d already seen three times over.

Her mother, a lively senior citizen who spent her days coordinating church events and neighborhood Zumba classes, lived with her. On either side of their home were her elder sister and younger brother—both single and absorbed in their own quiet lives. Their close-knit little trio of houses formed a cocoon, one that made Patches feel safe, even as she longed for something... more.

Patches was an introvert at heart, forced to wear an extroverted mask for work. She had spent 18 grueling years in the advertising industry, navigating deadlines, difficult clients, and the constant pressure to prove herself. Now, three months into her new role as Business Unit Director at a mid-sized agency, she was still struggling to find her footing.

Her boss, Ricky Asuncion, was perfectionist personified. Anal and uptight. He had an uncanny ability to make Patches feel like she was “lacking,” even after years of accolades and experience. Ricky’s sharp words often echoed in her mind late at night, amplifying the hum of her Persistent Depressive Disorder and anxiety. Still, she soldiered on, leaning on her two dependable Senior Account Managers—Tin and Mika, both Gen Z dynamites who somehow made the chaos of advertising bearable.

One Thursday morning, Patches sat in her cramped home office, hunched over her laptop as Chandler pawed insistently at her mug. She was pulling together a last-minute deck for a high-stakes client presentation when the room seemed to shimmer.

The report she had been agonizing over? Done. And not just done—perfect. The data aligned flawlessly, the visuals popped, and the messaging was sharper than anything she could have come up with on her own.

Patches blinked at the screen. Had she blacked out? She scanned the document, her heart pounding. It was undeniably her work, yet she had no memory of completing it.

The clock ticked on. There was no time to question the strange turn of events; the presentation loomed.

Chapter 2: Threads Unraveling

At first, Patches chalked it up to stress. Maybe her mind had worked overtime while she zoned out. But when it happened again—this time with an impossible timeline for a campaign that miraculously fell into place—Patches couldn’t ignore it anymore.

She tested it, tentatively at first. A wish here, a fleeting thought there. Each time, the universe seemed to nudge reality in her favor. A parking spot at the crowded grocery. A sudden stroke of genius during a brainstorming session. A canceled meeting just when she was on the verge of tears.

“Am I losing it?” she whispered to Chandler one night as he curled up on her lap. Joey and Abby lounged nearby, unimpressed by her existential crisis.

Chapter 3: Javier

Amid the swirling chaos of her newfound “power,” Javier, a long-time online friend, re-entered her life. They had met in person only once, years ago, but their friendship had been sustained through shared interests in video games, geeky pop culture, and late-night chats.

Javier was an introvert too, though his charm and good looks had earned him a reputation as a bit of a player. Patches knew about the string of women he kept at arm’s length—never committing, always distant. Still, there was something about him that made her feel seen in a way few others did.

Their conversations grew deeper, stretching into hours. But while Patches began to hope for something more, Javier seemed oblivious to her feelings.

Chapter 4: Discoveries and Doubts

The more Patches leaned into her strange ability, the more the lines between what she wanted and what she needed blurred. Her powers weren’t infallible—they worked best when her intentions were pure. She couldn’t just will a million dollars into her bank account or turn herself into someone she wasn’t.

But she could make small shifts in the world around her. Enough to nudge her life forward.

Chapter 5: The Fallout

One day, Patches pushed too far. In a desperate moment of self-doubt, she wished for Ricky to see her worth. The next day, he announced her promotion—but it was a hollow victory. The team resented her newfound success, and even Tin and Mika seemed wary of her.

Her powers had given her what she thought she wanted, but at what cost?

Chapter 6: The Turning Point

Javier visited Patches at her home for the first time, surprising her with a rare gesture of closeness. They spent the day playing video games, walking around the neighborhood, and reminiscing about old cartoons. By evening, they spent more time talking at the overlooking deck. As the city lights twinkled below them, Patches felt a rare moment of contentment.

“Do you ever feel like you’re living someone else’s life?” she asked.

“All the time,” Javier replied. “But I think we get to decide how much of it we make our own.”

Chapter 7: More Than Enough

Patches let go of trying to control her world. She began using her powers not for perfection but for possibility. At work, she guided her team with trust instead of fear. At home, she embraced her quirks and found joy in the smallest moments.

And Javier? One quiet evening, as they talked about their favorite Pokémon, he confessed, “I think I’ve been looking for something real, and maybe... it’s been you all along.”

Patches laughed, surprised by how natural it felt. She didn’t need magic to make someone care for her. She was enough, just as she was.

The End

My name is Lenny, my mother and father passed away this year, and I was placed with a small caravan of migrants headed towards Clearport Haven. My aunt Cara lives there, where she owns an Inn, and she's my last remaining family. To get to Clearport Haven we had to travel through Bloodwood Forest, which is known for being home to quite a few hostile goblin tribes. We were told that only about half the caravans that travel through these woods make it to their destination, but without enough money to charter a ship it's the only way there. When we left hopes were high that we'd be part of the fifty percent that make it safely, we were unfortunately wrong.

We stopped a mere three days from our destination as the sun began to set over a colorful late autumn forest. The leaves had mostly fallen from the trees and the air was getting crisp and chilly. We arranged the covered wagons in a circle in a clearing just off of the main dirt road and began collecting firewood. The night passed rather uneventfully with a hopeful mood in the camp being so close to our destination. I remember waking up early because I felt a cold and wet sensation hit my face, a snowflake. Early in the morning just as the sun was rising the sky began to flurry with snow. However, as the snow came, so did the arrows.

I always loved the snow, it was a nice brief moment before the chaos. I turned to look at one of the guards that came with the caravan who was keeping watch. He turned to me with a smile, which was quickly wiped from his face as an arrow shot from the woods stuck through his neck. Our eyes met with surprise as he fell to the floor holding his neck trying to keep the blood in. I watched as life left his eyes and then saw where he was pointing, a nearby tree where the roots grew in such a way a small person could hide there.

As I scrambled to rise to my feet I could see we were beset from all sides by angry screaming goblins. The little grey creatures had pointed ears, sharp teeth, and even sharper spears made of rock and bone. I sprinted towards the tree with tears in my eyes and fear in my soul. All around me the people I knew were getting run through with spears, bitten, scratched, or filled with arrows. Some of the migrants put up a fight and were even able to dispatch some of the goblins, but would soon either be overwhelmed by the little monsters or outright dismembered by the hobgoblin in charge.

One foot after the other I kept running as fast as my legs could push me. I was maybe 10 feet away from the tree when I turned my head to see the black eyes of a goblin locked onto me. He charged me with a spear in hand, screaming that guttural language they've been shouting. I blinked and suddenly the goblin had been downed by a well placed arrow to its head. I didn't know it at the time but I would soon find out where that arrow that saved my life had come from.

Lungs burning and legs exhausted I made it to the tree crashing into the hiding place as the sounds of violence erupted around me. I couldn't tell who was winning the battle, but then I heard a sound that still sends chills down my spine. Loud, heavy footsteps slowly and methodically approached until out of the smoke the hobgoblin appeared. He had pointed ears, just like the goblins, except he stood over six feet tall and had skin that was a dark red. He had on leather armor that was accented with bone and he wielded a metal sword.

The hobgoblin was terrifying standing in the smoke with his eyes focused on me and a twisted smile on his face. He raised his sword up ready to bring it down. I closed my eyes tight and waited for the inevitable. Eventually I felt a splash of blood hit my face, but I didn't feel any pain. I opened my eyes, this wasn't my blood, it was his. He looked at me in shock and then down at the sword that had been run through his chest. His eyes rolled back as he was unceremoniously tossed to the floor. Behind him stood a figure, the same one that I would learn shot the arrow that saved my life. There in front of me stood a different hobgoblin. He knelt down to my level and I expected to hear that goblin language, but instead heard in a broken common speech “Hello, I am Alzan. Friend.”

After a year abroad, Aanya returned home to care for her ailing mother. She had hoped the visit would bring moments of healing and connection, but those hopes were dashed the moment her mother’s eyes fell on her bare neck.

“Where’s your gold chain?” her mother demanded, her tone sharp with suspicion.

Aanya’s heart sank. She hesitated before replying, “I left it at a friend’s place by mistake. I’ll get it back soon.”

Her mother wasn’t convinced. “Don’t lie to me. You’re not someone who would just forget something so valuable. Who did you give it to? Tell the truth!”

The accusation pierced Aanya’s heart. The truth was far more complicated than her mother could imagine. She had given her chain to Arjun, her boyfriend, to help him during a financial crisis. Trusting him, she had lent it with the promise that he would return it within a week. But when the week passed, Arjun hadn’t kept his word.

At home, her mother’s constant mockery and accusations turned her stay into a nightmare. “Irresponsible! Do you even care about this family? You’ve brought nothing but shame!” her mother would sneer. Each word felt like a knife, cutting deeper into Aanya’s resolve.

When she reached out to Arjun again, his response left her devastated. “Aanya, I’ve stood by you for ten years. I’ve helped you in ways you can’t even count. And now, the one time I need your help, you’re taking your mother’s side? You’re making me feel like a beggar over this.”

His words hurt, but Aanya couldn’t bring herself to argue. She felt trapped, enduring both her mother’s hostility and Arjun’s indifference.

By the time she was ready to leave for abroad, Aanya was emotionally and physically drained. Her frail body and hollow eyes were a testament to the toll the month had taken on her. Arjun met her at the airport, and the sight of her weakened state melted his defenses.

“What has she done to you?” he asked softly, guilt etched on his face.

Without a word, Aanya removed the rest of her gold jewelry—bracelets, earrings, and a ring—and handed them to him. “Take these too,” she said quietly. “Return them with the chain when you can. I don’t want to hear about it again.”

Arjun stared at her, the weight of her pain hitting him like a tidal wave. Determined to make amends, he sent the chain and all the jewelry back through a common friend, along with a simple explanation: “Aanya had left her chain at a friend’s place, and that friend passed it to me to return. I’m sending it all back to you now.”

When Aanya’s mother received the package, she was stunned. The explanation seemed plausible, yet guilt gnawed at her. Had she been too harsh? The sight of Aanya’s jewelry only deepened her regret, reminding her of how much she had pushed her daughter away.

Though Aanya’s mother softened in her behavior afterward, Aanya’s heart carried the scars of the experience. She learned to draw boundaries, understanding that sometimes the only way to heal is to protect oneself—even from those closest to you.

He stumbled forward, weaving through the shadows like a snake. Each flash of the moonlight shot pain through his skin and bones, muscles extending and shifting on top of broken bones. He panted, each breath straining his lungs and causing his chest to burn. He heaved his legs forward, one after the other, the large gash in his left leg made it painful to stand. His vision was blurred by the tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.

He dragged himself along, his only saving grace being the nightvision his monstrous form had forced upon him. Wiping the tears away, he peered through the deep forest of pine trees. He focused in on a warm light radiating in the distance, the yellow glow cutting through the night like a blade.

Clutching the bloody flannel draped across his shoulders, he limped forward. In and out, with each step he took, he breathed in and out, focusing on the goal in front of him. He nearly fell forward as a stray beam of light stabbed his shoulder as he limped from one shadow to another. He let out a strained yelp as he fell back onto the bark; the muscles of his shoulder blade rapidly expanded and dormant hair follicles reactivated, growing long, thick silver hairs the color of the moonlight itself.

He bared his teeth, horribly long and snarling as he whimpered in pain. He wiped away a stray string of drool that had escaped his slightly elongated jaw. He dry-heaved, the taste of blood and bile forcing its way into his mouth. He sighed and continued on, he had to keep moving no matter how much he wanted to lay down and sob into the soft grass.

As he emerged into a grassy clearing, he finally saw the origin point of the light. A small wooden cabin made of the same pine trees that surrounded him. Stumps of long dead trees surrounded the home, a bundle of logs sitting next to an outhouse. He shifted the flannel up to cover his scalp, blood coating his black and silver hairs. After a second, he took a breath in and sprinted towards the front door. Each second away from the darkness caused his body to contort and shift; he nearly fell to the ground as he burst through the door.

He threw the flannel to the ground and shut the door behind him, finally allowing himself to breathe a sigh of relief. He peered over his shoulder to see that the source of the glow was a brick fireplace on the right wall, a small dying flame flickering in the embers. On the left wall was a staircase and a window casting light on a table set with two chairs, soup bowls with silverware still set out.

His pupils expanded at the sight as he hurried forward. As he reached for the bowl, the light burned his skin. In only a second, his fingers and nails had extended and darkened in color. He hissed and stumbled backwards, collapsing as his ill-fitting legs finally gave out under his weight.

He crawled over to the window, grabbing the blinds and shoving them closed. He hoisted himself up and grabbed the bowl, liquid sloshing around as he limped over to the fireplace. He plopped down in front of the fire, attempting and failing at crossing his wolf-like legs. His mismatching limbs ached as he sipped at the broth. The taste of pork nearly made him vomit, but he forced down the liquid anyway. As he ate, he listened to the dying crackles of the flames. He finished his small meal, licking the bowl clean and setting it in front of him.

He sighed and peered over at the staircase, perhaps there would be some supplies that he could use to patch himself up. With each creaking step, he paused and braced for impact, but nothing ever came. Eventually he reached the top, a long hallway with two doors on each side greeting him.

He gripped the golden doorknob and peered inside the first room, where he was met with a woman, around his age, peacefully sleeping in her bed. Her bed was on the parallel wall from where he stood, and her sleeping figure was facing directly towards him. With the rise and fall of her shoulders, her golden curls shifted back and forth. Her pale skin reflected the moonlight and almost shimmered in a strange way.

He could feel himself salivating, the beast side of him forcing thoughts into his mind of how satisfying it would be to tear into her flesh. How she was easy prey, and how amazing her meat and blood would taste between his teeth. His breath halted at the thought. Tears reappeared in his eyes as he ran away from her door. He scratched at the skin of his shoulder, the same one that had been exposed to the moonlight. He scratched until he drew his own blood with his claws. Soon the tears of panic were replaced with those of pain as he stumbled over to the other room.

Empty, the smell of sawdust wafting through the air. Inside was a desk, large bed with flannel sheets, and a shag carpet. He made his way across the room and searched the drawers, eventually finding gauze and whiskey. He hissed as he soaked his open wounds in the alcohol, tightly wrapping the linen as his blood soaked through. He looked in another drawer and found yellowed pieces of paper, ink, and quills.

He turned his head away as he passed the woman’s door, descending the stairs with the supplies he stole from the upstairs bedroom. As he sat back down in front of the now dead flame, he thought long and hard about what he should write on the parchment. Eventually, he wrote down his words, placed the paper down on the table, and fled the scene. On the paper read four simple words:

“I am sorry -Orion”

TW: violence and death

The dock was filled with shipwrights and deckhands diligently working on the new pride of the navy. It was a massive project, more of a floating fortress than a ship. It was to have two gun decks with 12 ballistas on each deck and one quarter deck to house the supplies and crew. The figurehead of the ship was the head of a dragon, which was currently being set up in a way so it could spit fire from its open mouth and shoot chain bolts from its eyes.

However, a ship is nothing without a crew and a ship like this needed a strong crew just to sail it, not to mention to fight with it. That’s where captain Vogan and his men came in. They were all goliaths, descendants of giants, and they were not from Taladara or any of the Eastern Islands but from the kingdom of Altwost. Even though they were not local, they have made Taladara their home and have earned the governor’s trust through years of service.

Vogan was standing on a balcony, observing his ship’s construction while puffing a pipe. He was a prime example of what a goliath should look like, over 2 meters tall, broad shouldered, gray skinned and covered head to toe in tribal markings, not that you could see much of them with all the clothes that he was wearing. His fashion sense made sure everyone understood he was a captain. He wore the traditional sailor’s white shirt, loose pants and green sash around the waist but he also wore a nice blue captain's coat and a tricorn hat.

As he was deep in thought, when he heard footsteps approaching him accompanied by a cane, he might have turned around but he knew who it was. It was a frail man that even though recently made it past 40 looked like he could fall over and die any minute and the thick opulent coat he was wearing did not help. This was also the most important person on the whole island, which also put a heavy weight on his shoulders, the governor Eidir.

“So, what do you think?” the governor spoke first, genuinely curious about the captain’s opinion.

“It will be a fine ship. Maybe not the fastest but it will pack a punch.” Vogan said frankly.

“Well, we can’t have everything.” Eidir said jokingly.

Vogan only nodded.

“Have you decided on a name? Let me guess, The Sea Drake!?” At this moment the governor looked like an excited little child.

Vogan turned to the governor as if he was gravely insulted. “Sir, the blood of giants runs through our veins, not dragons.”

The governor was unfazed and kept up his cheery attitude. “Then why the dragon’s head?”

“Have you ever seen a giant spit fire?” After a moment of silence, Vogan cracked a smile and they started laughing together.

“Alright, alright, then what are you gonna call it?”

A bottle of rum got smashed against the wall as an elf barely managed to duck out of its way. “The Titan has sunk four of my ships and that’s all you got to say for yourself!? I’m sorry!?” Another bottle got flung at the poor elf, this time however he wasn’t fast enough and it clipped his shoulder.

The man throwing these bottles was not happy about his subordinate’s failure and he had a good reason. He used to be the most powerful pirate in the Eastern Islands, all were terrified of his fleet and trembled with the mere mention of his name, Mad Dog Cromwell. This all changed with Taladara’s Titan and now only two of his ships remain.

“I’m sorry, I thought…” the elf tried to explain himself before he was grabbed by the throat by Cromwell.

“What did I just say about your sorries!?” Cromwell howled at the elf, drool smacking him in the face.

“Phese, i’m so…” the elf grasped for air but Cromwell squeezed even harder.

“YOU LET MY SHIPS SINK!” veins bulged out on Cromwell’s face and hands, it was a wonder they didn’t pop.

“air… phe…” the elf tried to speak but it came out as barely a whisper.

“Speak up!”

The elf opened his mouth but nothing came out, his body then went limp in Cromwell’s hands. Cromwell finally released his grip and the elf crumbled onto the ground.

“Hey! Wake up! I’m not done with you!” Cromwell kicked the elf in the stomach to wake him up, then again and again and again … constantly shouting for him to get up. By the time he was done the elf was just a bruised mess. “Fuck. Now my foot hurts you bastard.” He then kicked him once more in the face for good measure.

“Are you done yet? As entertaining as that was to watch, I don't have all day.” A man who had been sitting in the corner of the room the entire time and sipping a glass of bourbon finally spoke up, clearly irritated by being ignored for so long. He was wearing a commodore’s uniform of Taladara’s navy.

Cromwell looked over at the commodore, having forgotten that he was there. “Ah, you.” He went over to his desk and grabbed a half empty bottle of rum. “Tell me. Why shouldn’t I kill you?” He said to the commodore with disdain before taking a swig from the bottle.

The commodore finished his glass of bourbon and remained unintimidated. “Because I can help you get rid of our mutual thorn in our sides.

The Titan had been ordered to patrol the sea between Taladara and Yarra, it was quite a large area with a lot of small unnamed islands where pirates and slavers could hide, that’s why it was accompanied by two of the commodor’s personal ships. They had been on patrol for a few days now, they met merchant ships, navy ships of their allies but no pirates. This made the crew relaxed, believing that they already got rid of all the pirates. The sole exception was Captain Vogan, who was always on high alert.

That day it was a misty morning. Fog was so thick you could cut through it like butter. Visibility was truly abysmal, thankfully they were all familiar with these waters and their crow’s nest was higher than most, so they could see above the fog. Meaning no pirate could catch them by surprise, not easily anyway.

“Two ships on the starboard side, behind that island!” cried the lookout in the crow’s nest.

“Colors?” asked Vogan.

“None but I think one of them is the Black Cur.” answered the lookout.

“Cromwell.” Vogan said to himself, he then turned to his crew. “The Mad Dog has decided to show his face! Let’s see if he has teeth or if he’s just bark!” The whole crew cheered and got themselves ready for a fight.

Pleased with his crew’s determination, Vogan turned to his first mate. “Inform the other ships that we have sighted two of Cromwell’s ships and that they should follow our lead.” The first mate nodded and started issuing orders.

The Titan headed straight for the Black Cur, readying the dragon head’s ballistas and alchemist fire. Then, suddenly the Titan shook and its speed was reduced to a crawl. “What is going on!?” Vogan shouted at his crew. One of the sailors from the lover decks ran up onto the quarterdeck. He took a moment to catch his breath before reporting. “Sir, we’ve been hit by chainbolts in the stern. We should be able to unhook them in a minute or two.”

“The stern? But there are no pirates behind us!” Just as Vogan finished his thought, the ship started to turn left. He quickly grabbed a hold of the helm, in an attempt to return the Titan to its course. At first it didn’t even budge, Vogan then braced his legs against the helm and exerted as much force as he possibly could and the Titan started to very slowly turn back. But then the ship shook once again and the helm broke, unable to withstand the strength of the two opposite forces.

“God dammit. What is it now?” Vogan exclaimed, frustrated. He then heard a voice from up in the crow’s nest. “The pirates hit the bow with chain bolts while they were out of range of the dragon head.” The lookout reported.

“Of course they did. What about our other ships?” Vogan was getting tired of this mess.

“They were the first to chain us. I don’t think they are on our side anymore.”

This isn’t good. Vogan thought. But we can still get out of this, it’s gonna be tough though. At this point the Titan wasn’t moving forward at all and was only spinning on the spot. Despite this unfavorable situation they still held a certain advantage. The Titan’s hull was stronger than theirs, their ballistas might be able to puncture a hole and get stuck but they won’t be able to rip the ship apart. And the moment one of the chains gets unhooked, the Titan will be able to pick them off one by one.

Just as Vogan was regaining his composure the fog started to lift. At first everyone thought that was a good thing, that was before they realized why it was lifting. It wasn’t disappearing but going up into the sky, condensating and turning black, right above the Titan. This also made the entire battlefield visible. The commodore’s ships have truly allied themselves with Cromwell, the four ships have each chained the Titan and forced it to stay in place. As Vogan was observing the situation he noticed a robed figure standing on the upper deck of one of the commodore’s ships. Its face was hidden behind a hood and it was clutching a staff with both its hands, it almost looked as if it was chanting something… Vogan quickly looked at the other three ships, confirming his suspicion, there was a robed figure on every one of them. Mages.

“Get us unhooked, now!” Vogan commanded his first mate as he took a harpoon which he immediately threw at one of the mages, before it hit him however a sailor jumped in front of the mage, getting impaled in his stead. “Everyone! Focus on the mages! Don’t let them finish that spell!”

That’s when the battle truly started. The allied ships used all their manpower to protect their mages, using only one ballista each to make sure that the Titan stayed on the same spot. Those who could formed a shield wall the rest either served as meat shields or fired back at the goliaths with bows and crossbows. The Titan didn’t fire its ballistas either, not because they didn’t want to but because they couldn’t, the chains kept the allied ships at such an angle that they couldn’t be hit. So everyone on the lower decks focused their efforts on getting those chains unhooked but everytime one would get loose a new one would take its place. On the upper deck the goliaths did what they could to stop the mages. They threw and shot everything they had on hand. Several of them tried to swing onto the enemy ships but most were filled with arrows in the air but a lucky few managed to get across the water and they started wreaking havoc.

One of these swingers even managed to reach Cromwell himself. He was barely standing, the bolts and arrows that pierced his body also happened to be the main thing keeping him upright. The goliath ran at Cromwell, his boarding axe held high, blood and fury in his heart. Cromwell dodged out of the way and cut his belly open in the process. When the goliath gripped his own guts so they wouldn’t fall out onto the floor, Cromwell kicked him over the edge of the ship, sending him into the depths of the sea.

As the battle raged on, both sides took heavy losses. The allied ships could no longer keep up with the goliaths and one of the Titan’s sides was freed from the chains. The whole ship jolted and the dragon’s head got a clear shot at one of the pirate’s ships, within moments it was engulfed in flames. However, with his final breath the mage on that ship finished his chant.

What was formerly a fog was now an angry storm, lightning was falling like rain and more powerful than anyone has ever seen before. Each bolt was like a fiery spear that pierced the Titan straight through. Even though their deaths were assured, the goliaths did not try to run, instead they continued to fight more ferociously than before. The storm destroyed the Titan in less than a minute but in that minute the goliaths have killed over two dozen men.

The roar of the storm was deafening yet everyone could hear the shouts of captain Vogan who stood on the Titan’s dragon head as his ship was being dragged into the sea. “Cromwell! I curse you and all of your ilk! My soul shall never rest until I have my vengeance!” He and the storm both went silent in unison and the Titan was finally devoured by the ocean.

It’s been a year since the Titan was destroyed and the curse hasn't shown its ugly head, in fact life has been good. Cromwell was able to rebuild his fleet, maybe even improve it a little, with the help of the commodore. Ever since that day, they have been working closely together. Cromwell made sure that the commodore had a great reputation in Taladara’s court and the commodore made sure Cromwell’s pocket’s were lined with gold.

Today, Cromwell was on what he liked to call a stroll with his Black Cur and two of his best ships. He was heading to one of the less protected towns in the Eastern Islands to raid it or burn it to the ground, he hadn’t decided yet. It was a nice sunny day when a thick fog started rolling in. Cromwell didn’t like fogs, they always made him feel weird. This fog made him especially uneasy, since he couldn’t see the two ships that were following him anymore.

Then they heard deep thunderous singing of a chorus from all around them, it was as if the fog itself was singing.

“Verdammt und Verloren, Gejagt und Gehasst Wir haben unsere Chance auf Erlösung verpasst Dem Schiff und der Crew bleibt das Jenseits verwehrt Jetzt fahren wir rastlos und ewig aufs Meer…”

“(Damned and forlorn, hunted and hated We've missed our chance for relief The ship and the crew the next world refuse Now we sail eternally restless on the sea..)”

Everyone was nervous and looking around for the source of the singing but no one could see anything and the fact that nobody understood what the voices were singing about didn’t help either. “Shut up! Shut up and show yourselves!” Cromwell shouted into the fog and the fog answered. Cromwell and his crew saw as one of the two ships that were following them was embraced by flames. Cromwell stumbled back. “No, it can’t be…”

The singing of the chorus continued and it was joined by the rattling of massive chains.

“...Hol uns der Teufel Verdammt und verloren, gejagt und gehasst Wir haben unsere Chance auf Erlösung verpasst Hol uns der Teufel..”

“(…We'll get the devil Damned and forlorn, hunted and hated We've missed our chance for relief We'll fetch the devil…)”

Just as they were beginning to calm down, they heard the sounds of several ballistas being fired at once, wood breaking and something heavy crashing into the water. The fog then subsided, hanging above the surface of the water like a white blanket, revealing the mutilated corpse of the second ship along with its killer. It was an enormous ship with two gun decks and a dragon’s head as its figurehead. The ship was burned, bruised and battered, dragging behind it three large chains, nevertheless, it stood tall and headed straight for the Black Cur. And the singing DID, NOT, STOP!

“…Dem Schiff und der Crew bleibt das Jenseits verwehrt Jetzt fahren wir rastlos und ewig aufs Meer Verflucht hier im Nass zu verfaulen Bis das man uns Gnade gewährt Hol uns der Teufel…”

“(…The ship and the crew the next world refuse Now we sail eternally restless on the sea Damned here in the wet to decay Until we are granted mercy We'll get the Devil…)”

“What are you doing!? Turn the ship! Fire everything we have at them!” Cromwell commanded his men with furious cries, who in turn scrambled back to their senses, firing ballistas at the mighty ship. The ship took the brunt of the attack without fuss but it did not return fire, it just kept charging. The Black Cur wasn’t fast enough and it was rammed in the side.

Giant figures poured out of the ship onto the deck of the Black Cur and they started slaughtering everyone. Whenever one of those giants was harmed, it kept fighting, not even registering the injury. The crew of the Black Cur didn’t fight back for long, resulting to running away but the giants wouldn’t allow it, grabbing anyone who tried and killing them before they could reach the water.

Cromwell was in constant movement, dancing in between the giants, slicing at anything he could get his hands on, like a little hurricane of blades. As he was about to slice one of the giants across the arm, he felt his hand get stuck losing balance and momentum in the process. He regained his footing and looked at what caused this inconvenience. What he saw was not a giant but a severely injured goliath, riddled with broken bolts and arrows and a stomach sliced open with his guts hanging out. This goliath let his hand be pierced by Cromwell’s sabre and was now holding Cromwell up by his wrist. “Have we met before?” Cromwell wondered out loud. Right before crying out in pain as his right wrist was crushed.

“Well done. You can drop him now.” A deep raspy voice called out to the goliath, who didn’t hesitate and dropped Cromwell with a thud. Cromwell didn’t wait, starting to throw curses around. “You bastard! Do you know how expensive this will be to heal!?”

“Oh shut up, will you?” The same voice as before retorted. The owner of the voice came over to Cromwell and squatted down before him. He was well dressed for a goliath, wearing a blue captain’s coat that was burned at the left shoulder. The goliath himself was also marked by flame, from the collar bone up to the left ear. His neck was very badly damaged, so much so that you could clearly see all the neck muscles moving.

Everything was quiet, the battle was already over. None of the Black Cur’s crew remained, well, except for one. “Vogan? You look like shit!” Cromwell laughed.

“Well, that’s what happens when you get hit by lightning. Thanks for that by the way.” Vogan responded, as if talking to an old friend.

“Guess you weren’t kidding when I killed you.”

“No, I was not.” Vogan then dropped the friendly facade. “Where’s the commodore?”

Still not taking the situation seriously, Cromwell shrugged. “How should I know?”

Vogan sighed, his neck muscles rippling. “Do you know what it's like to come back to life?”

“Can’t say that I do.” Cromwell said with a wide shit eating grin.

“It makes you just so goddamn tired.” Vogan then got up, looking down at what used to be his greatest enemy. “So I’m not gonna be dealing with your bullshit today.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!?”

Vogan didn’t say anything, grabbed Cromwell’s hair and started dragging him across the floor back to his ship.

“Fuck! That hurts! Hey, where are you taking me!? Hey!” Cromwell kicked and screamed but no one even looked at him.

Cromwell was thrown onto the revenant Titan, still cursing and screaming. The goliaths returned to their ship in silence, leaving only carnage behind. When everyone was back on deck, the fog rose again only to disappear entirely soon after. Now all that remained on the open sea were the burned ruins of one ship, scattered wreckage of a second and the Black Cur without a crew.

It all starts when a girl falls asleep. Like every night on those red satin sheets, wrapped in thin cotton blankets with a stuffed pig cuddled close to her chest. Like every night, her eyes close and everything goes dark as sleep comes, but the only difference is that the girl doesn’t dream this night.

Eyes closed tight, she struggles to breathe as she just floats in a liquid nothingness. You would assume she is underwater by how the liquid feels on her bare skin, and she assumes the same. Holding her breath, the girl opens her eyes to look around. Floating in nothingness. She’s neither cold nor warm; she can’t feel temperature as if it doesn’t exist.

A girl's lungs grow tight with the air they hold and begin to hurt. Her chest was aching for a release of the carbon dioxide.

Prepared for death, the girl exhales and takes in a hesitant breath. Curiosity fills her mind as the liquid is not what a girl breathes in, but oxygen. The girl continues the shallow, barely there breaths as if knowing that if she took advantage of the miracle and took a deep, fulfilling breath, her lung would fill with the mysterious liquid that surrounded her and not the air she needed.

With the ache in her lungs and chest gone, the girl opens her eyes wide. With her initial panic having subsided, she can take a closer look around her and try to see if she can recognize where she is. Looking down and around on all sides, there is nothing. The girl is the only entity in the space. But she can finally see a speck of color that surrounds her. Black and darkness is the only thing that is below her, but it slowly fades into darker shades of blue going up.

The girl assumed that she was sinking in the ocean, but looking around, there were no sea creatures to be seen. No seaweed, coral, or any sign of life but herself.

Glazing up, the girl's eyes widened further in hope. Light. Bright white light shines above her, signaling the path for her to follow.

She stretches an arm above her, reaching for the light and the surface, and kicks her feet in an attempt to swim. Moving slowly, she inches further to the light. Almost there. A few more feet. Keep your arm out so you can reach it sooner. A couple more inches. Keeping your eyes on the light, you stop kicking and float closer, a smile spreading your lips just as you are about to touch the light and see life. Your hand touches the surface, placed against a flat white nothingness. Eyes closed, your body relaxes as you are enclosed in warmth. A feeling of home in your chest.

It all ends when a girl wakes. Spread across those red satin sheets and entangled in those cotton blankets. An emptiness in her mind. A longing in her chest that can’t be filled. A girl curls into herself and closes her eyes, wishing to return to the darkness and warmth.

The streets were wet. They were always wet. And filthy. Always filthy. I remember there used to be the street sweepers, big loud lumbering things that didn’t make things clean… but at least made them seem less filthy. I guess they don’t run them anymore.

I turned down one of the side streets. It was more of an alley, really. If you wanted to split hairs. A few rusted fire escapes hung over my head, threatening collapse at any moment, and somehow seeming at the same time, as solid as the buildings they clung to. I emerged from the alley onto the street at the far end and checked my watch. It was a quarter past ten, and the darkened streets were guarded by sparse streetlamps, which though evenly spaced, shed inadequate light due to the burned out bulbs at random intervals.

I pulled my collar up, tighter around my neck, and pulled the flat cap a little further down my forehead. The air had a chill to it- not enough to warrant a heavy coat, or gloves, or even a scarf - but cold enough that you’d wish you had them. I checked my watch again. 10:18. I had two minutes to go.

I checked left and right, up and down the street. Not another soul in sight. That was good. I contemplated a cigarette, but ruled it out. Two minutes wasn’t enough time to enjoy a smoke. I had to enjoy the few butts I got to have. It wasn’t worth the headache for my wife to smell them on me. I’d wait till the job was done, I decided. Then I could have one while I enjoyed some whiskey at Sillivan’s.

10:20

I reached into my pocket and felt the smooth handles. I looked up, scanning for him. He should be out by now, I thought. The building in front of me was a rundown brownstone, mouldering away as it served a number of illicit operations. Whores and drugs were the main ones. I spat on the ground. That’s where he should be. Every Wednesday, he should be here, visiting the blonde girl. He’d been like clockwork for months. Don’t tell me he decided to switch his routine now, I thought with a grimace. 10:23. I was on borrowed time by now. The job should have been done already. I checked both ways again. Still nothing. I decided to give it two more minutes. If he wasn’t out by then, I’d abort.

One minute went by. Then two. I checked my Timex one more time to be sure. 10:25. Shit. I pulled my hand back out of my pocket and turned, beginning to retrace my steps. That was the moment I heard the creak of the front door and the barely audible murmurs of conversation within. I ducked awkwardly back into the shadows and watched. Sure enough, there he was, the prick. Shiny suit and fedora, just as usual. I looked around one more time for his car. His driver was usually here by now. Why wasn’t he here? I listened closely, straining to hear a car engine coming closer, closer by the second. Nothing. I decided, to hell with it. I’m getting the job done.

I emerged from my hiding spot and walked forward, cap jammed down and collar hiked up, right past him and around the corner. It was the route he always took. If he didn’t pay me any mind as I passed, he certainly wouldn’t think I was waiting for him around the corner… In the shadow of the brownstone I waited, hearing his expensive leather shoes click-clack along the uneven sidewalk, turning the corner. I made my move.

The thin metal wire secured to two wooden handles cut deeply into his neck as I pulled. He had no time to cry out or make any sort of sound, save for the gurgling of blood from his neck and mouth. I waited until he’d gone limp, then I eased his body to the ground. Checked his pulse for good measure. He was gone for sure. I turned his pockets inside out, and took his wallet. It’s not that I needed the money, but If it looks like a robbery, it’s always easier to get away with.

I walked on ahead, pulling off my bloodied trench coat. Turning down the next alleyway, I pulled out a trash bag from my pants pocket and shoved the coat in, careful to ball it inward on itself so the blood wouldn’t spread all over. I double checked my shoes to make sure they were clean. A few trickles of blood ran down the toes. I spied a puddle and stepped into it, shaking my feet around to get the blood off. Not how I preferred to clean up, but it would suffice. After all, the streets were always filthy.

He had saw her. Everyday she walked past his quiet storefront, always in a rush. She has stopped a few times on her commute from her apartment and the subway, grabbing some part or screw.

He often sat and watched as people rushed to and from work. He could probably open his little hardware store later but he enjoyed his morning coffee by the front window. The people hurrying along, either on foot or in car, weaving around and avoiding potential chaos with every step.

He had noticed her more than a year back. She had caught his eye one morning as she ran to make the 8am train, hair streaming out behind her as she does the throng. He was amazed at her chaos, from her riot of curls to the 2 handbags filled to the brim. She continues to cause havoc each morning in some form or fashion, apparently being perpetually late.

The 2 times she had entered his shop he had tried to talk, wanting to flirt and impress her. He mangled his words until finally mumbling her total and a quiet Thank You. He hated how she had looked at him like one of the alley rats.

Nearly everyday he had watched her, feeling like a stalker, but still needing to see her. He knew he should start drinking his coffee somewhere else but his chest ached each time he saw her.

The morning dawned like any other and he dropped himself down in the old squeaky wooden chair by the window and picked up his coffee. He had convinced himself that 7am was early enough that he was just people-watching, not watching just for her.

The hot coffee bit his lip as he rushed that first sip. Sitting it down on his desk he scanned up and down the street. Movement across the early street caught his eye. A man in a black leather jacket stepped out of the alley shadows followed by a man in a grey windbreaker. The stepped into the sunlight and leaned against the red brick.

People stopping and watching was nothing new and he didn't think anything about it. He continued drinking his now cooled coffee, his eyes kept drifting back to the men who seemed to be focused on a spot just down the block from him.

He knew the moment she came out. He didn't know which apartment was hers but he swears he could feel her presence as she left her home. He noticed something else too, the two men straightened up. Their eyes became focused on the same spot and began tracking toward him. His heart clutched as she passed him and he saw leather jacket and grey windbreaker start off a roos the street toward her.

He knew I. His soul she was in danger and he had to help her. He sprang from his chair and grabbed a tactical from the display as he rushed for the front door. He tucked the sheath in his front pocket as he grabbed the doorknob and ran down the front steps.

The two men had gotten blocked crossing the street and he was in the lead. He found her rushing obliviously to her train. He took off at a run, panic in his bones.

He caught up to her in a few yards and grabbed her arm. Startled, she jerked away, turning toward him wide-eyed. She looked at his eyes and then down at his belt, focusing on the knife handle. She immediately swung her bags striking him upside the head and making stars explode in his eyes.

He dropped to the concrete as she took off like a sprinter. He began to push his spinning head off the ground when the two men showed up in his vision.

“She’s ours punk,” leather jacket said in his face. He felt a pierce in his side as the man moved in close as if he was checking on him. The jumped back up quickly and took off after her.

He felt the blood begin to itch as it ran down his ribs to his sternum. He knew if they got to her they were going to hurt her. He didn't know why they needed her, but he knew he needed her worse. He needed her hair flying past his window every morning. He needed her in this world, his world, even if it was always from a distance.

He pushed himself off the ground, the pain in his side making his vision blur. He cleared his eyes as he got to his feet. Taking as big of a breath as possible he took off after the three of them.

He stumbled down the subway steps but kept his legs under him. He saw the two men approaching the opposite steps with her walking tigfly between them. He ran as much as possible, heart hammering and gasping for air through the pain.

They made it to the top of the stairs as he stepped on the bottom. They couldn't run as it would attract attention, but he could. He ran and stumbled up the stairs keeping her in his sight as much as possible.

He slowed a step as he realized they were taking her into an alley. Waiting until they had fully made the corner her took off with renewed speed. He made the turn and found both men pressing her against the wall with a knife to her nose. He pulled his knife and hit them both in a flying tackle.

he did his best to stab and slice as long as he had the advantage. He came at the with all the rage and aggression he could muster. Grey Windbreaker swung a right hook and knocked him off the two of them.

The two men got up and looked at each other, blood streaming out of various cuts and stabs. They turned and looked at him as he rolled to his feet like a predator ready to pounce. Deciding against fighting this lunatic the two men took off farther down the dark alley.

The adrenaline faded quickly and he dropped the knife as he slumped to the dirty concrete, rolling onto his back. Staring up at the thin blue stretch of sky he saw as she leaned over him. He marveled at her deep brown eyes, halod with her riot of brunette curls. As she pulled a cell phone up to her ear, his world faded to black.

He had the thought that thisust be what a fish felt, as his conscious was yanked into the bright sterile room. He blinked at the harsh lights for a moment as his head spun and he debated on rolling over and going back to sleep.

The same brown eyes came back into his vision. The memory of the alley came to him, causing pain to raise his heart rate as a beeping grew incessantly louder.

“Are you ok?” He asked.

“Yes, thanks to you, I'm Jessica by the way.” She said with a smile.

The beginning!