Draft 1. Still revising this before /r/nosleep

I don't want to die.

The scabs under the bandages itch and the air is thick with the stink of rotting meat. I’ve given up changing the bandages. I fear what’s underneath.

I don’t want to die, but God help me, living isn’t much better. More than that, I don't want to be forgotten. I want people to know. I can’t tell anybody. I don’t dare to leave the apartment. But here, I’m free to talk, where you can’t be put off by how I look, I’ve got a chance.

I work with a department that helps the Police with counseling. Worked in a department. Not the nice kind. The kind where a woman's been beaten to within an inch of her life just for a cold dinner. The kind which helps the DA get a sworn statement from a teenage who hadn't stopped saying no over the course of two hours, even when she had to say it through a mouthful of her own broken teeth. You think you've seen evil on the news. You haven't seen it till you watch a red tear making its way down a face more bruise than skin. I've seen evil, seen it through the swathe of destruction and pain as it tornadoes through the lives of these poor women. I've been here seven years and I've never seen anything like what the Alastairs did to that woman.

The shit hit the fan two weeks ago. There was a knock at the faux border of my cubicle, a prayer to death of office privacy. Finnegan stood there, the partition wall complaining as he leaned on it. He worked sexual crimes; and had done so for more than half his career. The kind of cop that went to sleep in his uniform. Not this time though, the bags under his eyes made him look his full fifty years and then some. His tie hung half undone, a limp little noose. A splotch of dark coffee marked his shirt. Finnegan placed a thick file on my table. When he leaned in to speak, the stale smell of cigarette smoke filled the space between us.

"We had a bad one. Got her out yesterday. Worst case I've seen. I came over as soon as I could. I don't want any of the younger ones on this case."

I rolled my eyes at him, he ignored me.

"Confinement," he continued. "You remember the Fritzl case in Austria? Like that. We don't know who she is, how long she's been there. I had some poor schmuck down in the archive going back twenty years on missing persons in the city. We’ve drawn a blank on nationwide but they’ll let us know. The couple were both in on it, that’s rare. The pair of them. They were fucking perfect. Both retired, no biological children. Husband was a deacon at the local church. Wife taught Sunday School. They even fostered children for the system. And down in the basement... this.” He slid the file across the table.

I teased the file open. I’d made it through at least twenty photographs before I remembered to breathe. When I did, the air felt thick and soupy in my lungs. The first pictures showed a darkened room. No windows. No fixtures. Naked lightbulbs on the ceiling. Chains threaded through rings in the wall, ending in shackles.

When I first saw her, my fingers tightened on the photograph. She was barely there, the ridges of her skull clearly stretching out her parchment thin skin. Her arms were painfully thin,pale even against the white hospital gown. I flipped through the pile of photographs, in each, her dark eyes seemed to look through the glossy paper and right through mine. Finnegan called my name twice before I looked away.

"Papercut," he said. I looked back at a smear of crimson across the last photo, obscuring the face of the tortured young soul. I put the photograph down. "I'll clean it up later. I need to know what they did to her."

"Preliminary medical says she's severely malnourished but not in any other danger. The scars are the only signs of physical trauma. The newest is barely scabbing over. The writing’s mirrored, no idea why. One of the guys thought it might be latin. We’ve got photos up with a translator at the university. No sexual assault. We don't know who she is. She doesn't speak. Can't tell if it's induced or medical. Don't know when she was taken, don't know if they wanted a ransom. It doesn't make any sense. None of this makes any damned sense."

Finnegan waved a picture in front of me, a window opening to a happier time. I saw a couple in their fifties with two smiling boys between them. Picture perfect.

"Albert and Margot Alastair. Those are the last two kids they were fostering. One on the left’s a trooper, he figured the puzzle out behind the false wall and saw the woman. Waited till the Alastairs were out and called the cops.”

“Were there any signs of abuse on the boys?”

“Nope. Strict but nothing to complain about. Very religious though. Church twice on Sundays. Prayers in the living room every night. Right on top of where they chained the woman. Goddamn bizarre.”

He groaned a little as he eased himself off the chair in front of my desk. “We’ve got enough to nail the couple, but we need more.”

"What do you call the victim?"

He looked back over his shoulder. "We're calling her Sarah for now."

Sarah. She did look like a Sarah. I mused over the photograph. She looked happier in this last one. It took me a second to look past the slight upturn of her lips, a skull's rictus rather than a smile, to find the real mystery with the picture. The blood was gone. My thumb still smarted, the single thin slash across the ball still weeping blood. The blood was gone and Sarah was smiling.

I put my thumb in my mouth, the sharp metallic taste strangely reassuring. I shut the file, the brown cardboard hiding the face of the tortured woman. It was time to see Sarah.

Session 1

I hated the psych ward. Hospitals were alright. Counselling rooms were better. Psych wards, they were something else. So many lights, so you didn't lose something small, a pen or a paperclip. You never knew where it'd turn up next, in patient's windpipe perhaps. Or pushed into your eyeball. So many lights, so there wouldn't be shadows on the ground. In the psych ward, the shadows walked and yelped and shuffled in hospital gowns. Shadows of lives, shadows of events.

I showed my pass to the ward sister. She nodded in acknowledgement.

"One of the worst cases we've seen. Doesn't speak, doesn't eat much, doesn't drink. She creeps the hell out of all the nurses."

The sister led me to Sarah. Sarah lying face up on the bed, her hospital gown hanging off one shoulder, baring a single emaciated breast. Her head lolled, bringing a glassy-eyed stare around to meet my gaze. There's a light that goes out when the life flees an animal, when there's a switch from alive to dead. That light was missing. I shuddered, pulling my sweater sleeves down over my forearms in spite of the generous heating.

I put my bag on the floor and took out some of the tools of the trade. A voice recorder, a large notebook, a leaky pen. I hesitated at the battery of questionnaires that I would normally have used. Establish rapport. Build trust. Easier said than done, I almost lost myself in those dark, empty eyes, like holes in her head, completely the impression that I was looking at some sun-bleached skull.

I introduced myself. Blank stare. I asked if she wanted to talk. A pearl of drool made its way from the corner of her mouth, scattering the light from the lamps overhead. The scars were everywhere. A mad-crossword puzzle scratched out in letters half an inch high. The oldest fading to nothingness, the newest a fresh scab. Maybe she needed time.

“Tell me about the house.”

Sarah righted herself, spindly limbs lashing out in the air. There was something insectile in that motion, as though her time in the dark had peeled away her humanity and left something raw and primal. She got to all fours on the bed, unfurling herself in twitching dance. She didn’t take those dead eyes off me, not for an instant. Not even to blink, not even once.

The air in the room was all wrong. There was no defeat, no surrender in this room. Whatever Sarah had gone through hadn’t broken her. There was danger there. Something visceral in the air that clawed at that deep animal part of my brain, I looked at the doorway for a second, a portal back to sanity. When I looked back, the bed was empty. In the silence of the room, the click of the light switch had all the suddenness and finality of a guillotine.

My own body betrayed me. I strained to hear any sounds of movement, but heard nothing but my own laboured breathing and the drumbeat of my heart. A rectangle of brilliance blazed on the far side of the room, a million miles away. The little glass window in the door. The little light that made it into the room shattered any hope I had of spotting Sarah. I saw nothing but shadow and the dancing purple afterimage of the window.

I picked up my bag and made my way across the room, aiming for the door and the salvation beyond it. My questing fingers found the edges of the light switch on the wall when the rectangle of light was snuffed out. Clever girl. She'd been waiting for me, perhaps she wasn't any more adept in seeing in the dark than I was, instead choosing to stay at the one place in the room I would make a break for. Her breath tickled my ear, she must have been close, kissing close. I smelt the sweet ketone laden air squeezed out of a body that was digesting itself.

This was crazy. Stupid and unprofessional. She was just a victim, that was all. You can break a mind, shatter it. Who knew what evils the Alastairs had visited on the poor woman. She was only human. Emboldened, I flicked the switch. The world went white. When it swam back into focus, the first thing I saw was Sarah's face, the scantest inches from my own. Still with that glassy stare, her jaw slack, showing yellow teeth and gums streaked black with rot. I took an involuntary step back from this apparition.

I tried to smile, to reassure her. I only had half her name past my lips when she opened her mouth and shrieked. The piercing sound seemed to go in forever, a klaxon for the end of the world. One hand covering my left ear, I reached out blindly for the handle for the door. Head down, I barreled out of the room and sank to my knees.

Strong hands helped me to my feet and the honest red face of the ward sister filled my view.

"Are you alright, my dear?" she asked, pressing me slowly and firmly to a waiting chair.

I forced the words out through gritted teeth. "Damned woman screamed in my ear."

The sister's brow crumpled in puzzlement. "I heard nothing out here, and I've been here since you went in."

I didn't have time to argue with her. I winced as I pulled my hand from my right ear. It came away sticky and red.

Finnegan was at my desk when I clocked in the next morning, a plaster on his cheek. The man swore by his old straight razor, but it wasn’t like him to cut himself. His eyes widened at the sight of the a wad of gauze over my right ear.

"What the hell happened?”

“I’m off. Your victim is a goddamned banshee. She screeched in my ear loud enough to perforate my eardrum. I’m off sick for at least a week. I don’t care if the nurses heard it or not. It was her. Look, I’m in over my head here. I can’t reach Sarah. She doesn’t even move like a normal human being. We don’t even know how long they’ve had her. For all I know, she doesn’t speak English. Or she was never taught...”

He held up a hand to stop me.

“Margot Alastair is killed herself last night.”

“How’d she do it?”

“Managed to get a spare toothbrush. Broke it in half and got a bit of a point on it. Looked straight at the tip and pushed. Better than twenty-five to life. Good riddance.”

“Damn. She didn’t look like she had that in her. That’s not the point. I’m done here. I’m not a cop. I signed up to help people, not to get stalked in a hospital room by some deranged woman.”

His voice dropped a register. “I know you don’t want to do this. What if there was more than one woman? Albert isn’t talking. His wife is on a slab. The boys upstairs are scouring credit card details, workplaces anything they can get their hands on. Sarah may know something and you're the only one we have here that can do anything about it. You know that."

He was right. It was a small city. Combined the years of experience of my two junior colleagues barely added up to half of mine. My boss hadn’t done field work since her promotion two years before.

“Got two things that might help. First, the stuff that’s been carved into her skin. The older stuff is pictographic. The smarts down at the university guessed Sumerian, but it’s too faint and overlaid with fresher stuff to tell. There’s at least three languages there, but the most recent stuff is written in latin."

The gruff man heaved a sigh and ran his palm up and down his cheek, the rasping of the beginnings of a beard filling the silence.

"Dumb stuff. Behold the black lamb. The whore opens the gates of salvation. Hail the mother of nations. Sounds like it was taken straight out of a death metal song."

There was something familiar there. A flash of recognition. "Your men don't speak latin?"

Finnegan's only response was a snort.

"The biblical Sarah's name meant princess. She was also called the mother of nations."

Worry tugged at the corner of Finnegan's mouth, lines on his forehead deepened. He forced a smile that never reached his eyes. "Never figured you for the Sunday School type."

I shrugged. "My parents forced me till I was about twelve. I took Comparative Religion in college as well.”

"Albert Alastair was a tradesman. Partner in a plumbing firm. Margo was a housewife. Neither of them went to college. Neither of them speaks or understands anything other than English. They were both well respected members of their community and their church. Hardly the type to be playing etch-a-sketch with the satanic verses on a young woman's skin.”

The ham-fisted joke was his own defense, gallows humour a common shield for those that stood watch over the edges of society, where the wallpaper frayed and peeled back to reveal the rot underneath.

“You think there’s someone else.”

“It's a possibility."

"You don't find it strange that your men chose the one name that had its meaning carved onto her skin?"

"I don't have time for strangeness. Strangeness can't be proven in court. Strangeness isn't going to put Alastair behind bars."

The thought of being in that tiny room with Sarah filled me with an unnameable dread, a numb feeling at the back of my throat. Finnegan pulled out a tissue from the box on my desk. He gestured at his ear with his free hand. My fingers went to the edge of my jawline. They came back red.

Session 2

I was half a step behind Finnegan as we strode down the hospital corridors. Having his bulk at the edge of my vision helped. A man sat slouched outside of Sarah's room, poking at his phone with the studious disinterest that only uniformed men have mastered. He straightened up once Finnegan lumbered into view. The two exchanged perfunctory greetings. Ritual complete, Finnegan pushed the door in and nodded at me.

The air in the room was dry and stale, redolent with the funk of an unwashed body. Sarah rocked gently back and forth on her bed, back stiff, a ticking metronome to a beat only she could hear. The woman did not acknowledge us, her face a stoic mask.

I pulled up a chair in front of her. There are imperceptible signs, reactions, that a normal human being shows. A slight flaring of the nostrils, a flick of the eyes. Sarah was alone in her mind, I didn’t even exist.

I thought to try something new. “Agnus.” I called out to her. Lamb. There was a moment of recognition, a shallow intake of breath.

“What...?” Finnegan started. I held up my hand. There was something dark on the sleeve of her hospital frock. Dark and wet. The scars. She must have been scratching them open again. I asked Finnegan to get a nurse in to look at them. I watched as he left, my eyes locking with his as he gave one last disapproving look over his shoulder. The door swung shut with barely a hiss. When I looked back around I was face to face with Sarah.

In the few seconds I had turned away, Sarah had managed to get off the bed and to within kissing distance from me. So close. So close I could see the pocks in her pale skin. So close that her rotting breath flowed over her blackened, uneven teeth and tickled my nose. Her dead eyes seemed to suck me in, till there was nothing in the world but those two dead orbs.

The air snagged in the back of my throat. Only two things seemed to exist, the ever tightening band around my lungs, that dark look sucking me in. White motes danced at the edge of my vision and still I could not look away. I wondered which would claim me first, the pain in my chest or that thing in front of me.

I began to shake. A gentle swaying at first, and then more and more, until my teeth clacked against each other. A small voice at the back of my head told me to wake up wake up wake up. I blinked and I was staring into the gaunt face of Finnegan. Behind that, the ever present lights of a hospital ceiling. He helped me back up to a sitting position. The door to the room was swinging, loose on its hinges, the frame shattered into a starburst of splinters.

"You locked us out. You locked us out and spoke to her. Why?" His tone was uncharacteristically harsh.

I swallowed before I spoke, my tongue scraping against the dry roof of my mouth. "She didn't say a word to me."

Sarah sat on the bed, back to the wall, her knees pulled up under her chin. Was that a smile on her face?

"I need to know what she said. It could mean everything to the case."

"She didn't say a thing to me.”

“Bullshit.” His cheeks coloured and he spoke loud enough for the nurses who had gathered by the ruined door to cease their whispering.

“I don’t have anything to hide from you, detective. I’m not one of your perps.”

I got to my feet, forcing him to retreat. “I wasn’t even meant to be here today. I told you all I know. One second she was looking at me, the next, you were shaking me. That's all there is to it." I paused by the door, scattering the nurses. "Please get that bleeding of hers looked at. You may need to restrain her for her own safety. While you're at it, think about how these doors don't lock from the inside."

I left him there, kneeling on the floor, the look of realization breaking on his face like a late sunrise.

I wandered the city sidewalks for hours before I made it home, but home held no peace of mind for me. Each corner held some unknown horror, each shadow a hiding place. I turned all the lights on and collapsed on my bed. Finnegan wouldn't lie to me. The nurses had been wide-eyed at the destruction he'd wrought on the door, but there was something else in there. Pity. Confusion. Not directed at Finnegan. At me. What happened to me in that room? What had Sarah done to me?

The television was on, a senseless drone of flashing images and bleating noises. None of it mattered. I rubbed at my eyes with the back of my hand and drew back in shock at the smear of blood across my arm. I stumbled to the toilet. The cool water swirled red in the sink, smears of pink on the porcelain accusing me like the lipstick stains of mistress. The source became clear after I'd washed the blood off my arm. A series of letters, in reverse, just like Sarah. Agn Agnus. Sarah could not have done that to me at the hospital. Someone would have seen. I would have felt it.

I stared at the letters, daring them to speak to me, to tell me their secret. They were mockingly silent. I slapped a wad of gauze over the hateful letters and secured it with medical tape. I collapsed into bed, heedless of the day's grime.

Sleep, when it came, was restless. When my eyes shut, I was back in that hospital room, trapped by those huge, empty eyes. When my eyes were open, I scanned the shadows in the corners of the room, paranoid that Sarah would somehow find her way here, shat out from the shadows, covered in the same devilish script that was now on my arm.

I was already awake and staring at the dust motes dancing a slow waltz in a shaft of morning sunlight when my phone rang. Finnegan.

He greeted me and immediately apologised for his outburst the day before. Nerves, he said. I sat up in my bed, wincing as the bandaged arm brushed the sheets.

"I spoke to Alastair again yesterday. After the trouble at the hospital. Figured I'd get a little more out of him. Didn't work though. Until I told him about Sarah and you. He perked right up, I swore he was going to spill. I've taken hundreds of confessions. There's a look they get, most folks. Lying's a burden and there's something in a person when he's about to cast off that weight, they'll sit a little straighter, talk a little clearer. And then it was gone. First time I'd seen someone just shoot right back in their shell like that. He's scared, he's scared of something and it isn't jail time. He'll never see Sarah again in his lifetime and he's still scared of her."

"Is that all you called to tell me?"

"I apologised, didn't I? That isn't all he said. I was just about to leave and he called me back. Said something else. He told me the woman wasn't imprisoned. The woman was the prison. I think he's a lost cause. He keeps this up and the shrinks will write him off as a nutcase. Most convincing act I've ever seen someone pull off..."

His words receded into a high pitched drone from my phone. I let the phone slide from my hand and bounce off the sheets. The bandage on my arm was sodden with blood. I peeled the bandage off slowly, feeling the added letters on my skin before I saw them. Agnus. The lamb. There were five letters where there were only three the night before, the first three a dull and angry red and the last two seeping red, deep enough to gape when I tugged at the skin.

Sarah wasn't being kept imprisoned. She was keeping something, something that was leaking. Something inside her. The bandage was pristine, the tape in the same place that it had been the night before. The writing wasn’t back to front. It was inside out. I shivered at the image of the bandage bulging outwards as something carved me up from the inside.

What was Sarah exactly? It made no sense to me, it made no sense to Finnegan. There was something locked up in a psych ward, staring at the ceiling with eyes that might as well have been made of glass. Something that an otherwise normal couple had kept chained in their basement for months? Years? Something covered in scars in languages that neither of them understood. The Alastairs had forced each of their fostered children to pray in the living room, right above Sarah.

There was an instant of vertigo, a blurring at the edge of my vision when I allowed myself to entertain the thought that the Alastairs were right. That they weren’t evil but guarding against it. That Sarah wasn’t just a damaged young woman, but something other. Something that shrieked in my ear loud enough to shred my eardrum, in a quiet ward where no one else heard her. Something that stolen ten minutes of my life, straight out of my head. Something that held a door shut against the bulk of a six foot tall cop.

I had to see her again.

Session 3

The third time in the wards brought contradiction. My previous trips had conditioned me, like a rat in a maze, I took each turn unerringly, step by confident step towards my destination. My mind, on the other hand, was adrift. I feared the end of my journey, meeting Sarah, that woman. That thing.

Nurses come and go, the shuffle of sensible shoes across the linoleum a constant in the wards. The silence of their absence was painful. I rounded the corner to the psych ward. Empty as well. In the distance, I saw a nurse stumbling down the corridor. When she reached the swinging doors on the far end, she didn't break step or push the door open. The dull smack of her head on the door was the only sound in the ward.

Sarah was perched on the bed, her spindly fingers stroking the slack face of the ward sister. The older woman was slumped at the foot of the bed, her skirt hitched up obscenely, showing a vast expanse of cellulite puckered thigh. The ward sister gripped a scalpel, methodically slicing letters in her flesh. The fear exuded from her pores, a heady musk. Sarah noticed me and gave me a broken toothed smile.

What are you? I wanted to ask, but Sarah raised a finger to her lips. She leaned forward and whispered into the ear of the shivering woman in front of her, nearly too low for me to hear. The words were thick and guttural, a tongue as alien to human lips as the howls of an animal. The sister's back arched, her eyes rolling back in her head. I could tell you, Sarah seemed to say, but your mind was not made to comprehend me. I peeled the bandage back across my arm. Agnus Ater it said, Black Lamb.

The Alastairs kept Sarah chained up like an animal. Good people except they confined and tortured a young woman. Turned her into this. Or had they? Sarah was the prison, Albert Alastair had said. What was inside of her? I looked at the neat, red, inside out writing on my arm. What was inside of me?

We were wrong, Finnegan and I. So terribly wrong. Sarah watched, unblinking, as the drooling wretch at her feet abandoned the scalpel in favour of ripping clawed fingers. Wheezing mewls escaped from her parted lips as she attacked her ruined flesh. I picked up the scalpel and pointed it at Sarah. The tip shook. Sarah continued to bare those jagged little teeth me, tilting her chin up and stretching out the pale skin over her throat.

I thought I could do it. That I would be strong enough. The scalpel slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor. Sarah reached up to cup my chin with her fingers, her yellow nails pressing to the bone. She opened her mouth and laughed, the first and only sound I heard from her. Then she let me go. I fled from the ward, hounded by the mocking glee of that thing in the wards.

The elevator door opened on the ground floor, back to the real world. A familiar silhouette by the glass doors leading back outside. Finnegan still had the plaster on his cheek, except he’d swapped it out for a larger one. He nodded at the bandage on my arm, the gauze already blossoming pink in the centre.

“Kitchen accident.”

The lie hung in the air between us, daring him to say something. His hand went up to the plaster on his cheek. He shrugged and pushed by me. I let him go. I didn’t turn around when I spoke.

“You were the first one one into the basement. She spoke to you didn’t she?”

He was still behind me. I knew without seeing. His silence was the only answer I needed. His weight shifted and his footsteps told me he was going away. I would never see him again. I spoke again.

“We were wrong, Thomas.” I’d known him for five years and still his name struggled to find its way off my tongue. “Not all things were meant to be free. The Alastairs understood it. We didn’t. It won’t stop with us. Whatever it is you think you’re here to do, you won’t. I tried..”

The elevator door hissed shut behind me, and I was alone in the bustle of the hospital reception.

The blood weaves through the brick mortar like a child painting his way through a maze coloring page. Not a single crimson drop leaves its pre-forged paths. Spreading out through grooves, delicate branch patterns emerge along the wall, shaping itself into the Devil’s Christmas tree.

Slow drips begin to emerge from the wood floor boards above. Drops pitter-patter the basement concrete and ding against metal paint cans and drum upon empty boxes. Every sound is distinct, including the sound of the droplets slapping against the skin of the angelic boy hiding in the place that has haunted him since he moved into the home last week.

The basement door creaks open and the young boy scurries into the darkest corner of the room. Senses are elevated, the heart is racing, and fear oozes from every pore. The child knows he is the last one and the man has come to kill him too.

“Jacob? Jacob, I know you are down here. I won’t hurt you little one. I love you. If someone loves you they can’t hurt you right?”

He had heard these words before. It is what the people with the white coats used to tell him. But he did get hurt, always. He would not fall for the lies anymore. As the man approached the corner, catch pole in hand, Jacob lunges out and wraps around the man’s leg like a Humboldt squid on a tuna. His jaw unhinges and a massive beak removes the inside thigh of the attacker.

Jacob finishes his meal, says goodbye to his new family and looks for a new hiding place from the people with white coats.

StupidDialUp

Lessons From The Shadows of Hiroshima

The Guestbook of Elysium

First version of "Elysium"-The Beachhouse

Saving Your Soul Through Aspyxiation

Where a Kid can be a Kid

All Firemen Are Heroes

This is going up on /nosleep later in the day. A little bit darker than what I've posted before.

The nice doctor told me that writing my story out would help. I'm not supposed to be allowed to go on the internet, but he let me because I've been good lately. I've lost track of how long I've been here. Time has no meaning for me, I try and remember the important dates but they just get harder and harder to pin down.

I marked the passing of the hours with the pills they gave me. The green pill in the morning contained lightning and giggles. The white pill after lunch was full of pink clouds and flashing colours. The one at night tugged on my eyelids like a pair of leaden weights. But there was a short time in the afternoon when the fog thins. The memories bubbled up then, breaking the surface of my conscious mind like a bloated corpse floating to the surface of a still pool of water. When they did, I would wonder about the stranger's voice that shrieked with my mouth. I welcomed the heavy footfalls of the large man in the white clothes with his needles full of forgetfulness.

Sometimes, I hit the sweet spot, between the clouds and the screams, between the false promises of heaven and the realities of the hell I live in. That’s when the doctor asked me to write. And to look for people that would believe me. People like you. This is my story.

Toby was six months old then. He was our first and only child. Robert and I. We live in shitty, shitty world, but sometimes, when I held my boy, stroking his light blonde hair, the universe stood still for us. He had his father's hair. But my eyes. The best thing about holding him, if he was awake, was to look into those deep, green eyes.

There were other times though. Money was tight. Robert had to spend more and more time at work. I had to take care of baby Toby by myself. The moments of perfection grew fewer. It seemed that Facebook held nothing but the mocking updates of other young mothers. The flagellant sisterhood. You weren’t a good mother if you weren’t suffering enough. They bore their battle scars with such pride. Sore breasts. Sleepless nights. Back aches. Chirping at each other across cyberspace with as much meaning as a morning chorus of birds. But heaven forbid that you didn’t compete, because if you didn’t, then you were BAD MOTHER. Like weaning your child too early. Or not playing him music at night. Or not taking walks with him in a pram. BAD MOTHER. Instead of nursing a strapping young lad, you’d be taking away his potential, one laziness at a time. You’d be left with a bonsai of a human being, a little shrunken caricature of what he could be.

I’d continued to work from home, but Toby’s crying puncturing my little cocoon of concentration like an air raid siren. Sometimes I couldn’t tune it out. He would just sit in his crib, his face red with exertion, tears streaming down his face. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t work. There were times when I joined Toby and bawled my eyes out next to his crib. It didn’t help.

Robert thought technology could help. After all, he just needed to be kept busy while I worked. I needed the concentration. There were apps for babies after all. Not just any app, of course. It had to be good. Top rated. Educational. Robert did a search on iTunes. He found an app quickly enough, near the top of the list. Such a deceptively simple app. It was suppose to help jump start babies' learning to speak. Fantastic. 4.5 out of 5 stars. It had to be good. It cost a bit but we could spare a few dollars surely. After all, it was for our our son's future. All the reviews seemed to be gushing.

I set the iPad up where Toby could see it. I'd been using it to play him some lullabies while I worked. He could sit up well enough with the support of some cushions. I fired up the app. Pale pastel colours and amorphous blobs filled the screen. A tinny voice began to hum out some tuneless lullaby in an accent that I couldn't place. Maybe it wasn't made for America? Strange. In any case, Toby was entranced with the display. His green eyes grew wide and he grinned with his emerging baby teeth. And just like that there was peace in my house. I got up and headed back to my desk for work, leaving baby Toby hunched around the iPad.

I was woken up by the dull hiss of white noise. I raised my head, a smear of drool on my cheek and on my forearm. I must have been more tired than I’d care to admit. My screen was a dull black mirror and the light from the window had gone a rich orange. I must have been more tired than I thought. Except it wasn't white noise. There was a strange cadence to the noise. It wasn't just a hiss of noise, no, the closer I got, the more distinct the sounds. The tuneless lullaby was still there, but it must have stalled or crashed or something. There was just a meaningless stream of syllables coming out, all hard glottal stops and ululating whines. It could have been just my imagination, but even then, I thought I could see Toby’s contented gurgling synchronizing with those strange noises. I shook my head and shut the iPad off.

The newfound quiet was liberating. Toby got quite attached to the new app. Anything that gave me some space was welcomed. That damned bug would always cut in, I couldn’t predict when it would happen, but it never happened while I was in the room with him. But if I even stepped out for a second, I’d come back to find it spewing nonsense words again.

Except it wasn't really nonsense. It didn't sound like any language I'd heard before. The rhythms and the intonations were too coarse, too alien. Words don't just have meanings and sound. They have shape and texture. Think of the word 'plump'. Doesn't it just bounce off your tongue? What about that succulent purse of your lips in the middle of the word when you go 'um'. The words coming from the app were different. They were sharp. Cold. Barbed. I could feel them catching on my mind, digging into my flesh like I was squeezing a fistfull of fish hooks. My discomfort was the exact opposite of Toby's reaction. It was the only time of the day he'd light up. He seemed drained and hollow the rest of the time.

I pondered this when I was giving Toby his last feed for the night. Robert was already snoring next door. He hadn't said two words sideways to me from the time he finished his dinner until the time he went to sleep. I sighed as I stroked Toby’s head and held him in the crook of my other arm. There was a closeness in feeding a baby that fathers will never understand. After all, fathers didn’t carry their children around for nine months. Damn near shared a circulatory system. I was lost in the feeling of the gentle suck of Toby’s mouth. A sharp pain in my breast snapped me out of my fugue. I winced and pulled Toby away from me. I gasped at the swirl of pinkish foam on my body. Blood. I rushed to the toilet and dabbed at the damage with a wadded piece of tissue. Had he bitten me? I examined myself. I didn’t find tooth marks. I kneaded my flesh and watched as pinpricks of blood oozed out of a dozen or more tiny puncture wounds, circumnavigating my nipple. Not tooth marks at all. More like a needle? Unbidden, the nightmarish image of a leech’s mouth came to my mind, no teeth at all, but rows upon rows of quivering needles. I shook as I imagined that I hadn’t been carrying my son at all, but some kind of monstrous worm, swaddled in a blanket, sucking the life from me.

Out in the room, I picked up the sounds of that foreign, unnatural lullaby and its idiot words. I was certain that I hadn’t left the iPad on. I winced as I pulled my t-shirt back down. I headed back to the study. The iPad was off, its screen dull and lifeless. The words were coming out of my boy’s mouth. Alien, twisting syllables. I wish I could reproduce them here, but there are are no squares on our keyboards that can do any justice to what I heard. Toby kept his eyes trained on me as he spat out wave after wave of babble. I rushed over to pick him up. The gibberish turned to little hiccuping coughs as I bounced him gently in my arms. I recognized the warning signs. I hadn’t burped him. I didn’t have time to turn away before he gave me a quizzical look and vomited on me.

But it wasn’t off-white milky baby puke covering my shirt. Not the sourish smell of regurgitated milk. The metallic tang of blood rasped at my sinuses like a bandsaw. The entire front of my shirt was soaked with blood. My boy had thrown up a bellyfull of blood onto me. I did the only thing I could. I shrieked until my lungs felt fit to explode.

Robert burst into the room and grabbed me by the shoulders.

"What's wrong?" he asked, breathing hard and blinking the sleep from his eyes.

"Toby... he spoke. He said something. It wasn't natural. Then he... there was blood. So much blood." I was blabbering.

"Where's the blood?" Robert asked.

I paused, looking back down at the yellowish mess on my shirt. I could see irritation in the quiver in the corner of Robert’s eye, the slight reddening of his cheeks.

“It’s the teething,” I stammered out. “There was a little blood. It was just shock.” The blood was gone, off my t-shirt.

Robert's expression softened. "Did I miss his first word? What was it?"

"Just baby gurgles. The app that you downloaded, but it doesn't seem to be working right..."

Robert picked up the iPad and stabbed at the screen with his long fingers. The room filled with the lilting sounds of that lullaby, the strange accented woman starting up on cue. "Seems alright to me. Look, Toby really digs it." Our child had propped himself back up, swaying gently to the tune. "Why don't you go and wash up. I'll clean up the mess here."

Something was changing in my child. I could see it, even if Robert could not. Or would not? Toby's first words hadn't been Mommy or Daddy, but rather a cruel echo of that nonsensical stream. Perhaps it wasn't a stream of nonsense. What if it had meaning? Learning shaped the brain after all. If that were the case, then what strange connections were being made beneath his blonde hair?

I tried swapping him to the bottle. I hadn't meant to wean him so early. Bad mother, a small voice croaked at the back of my head, rattling off the list of articles I had read about the benefits of breastfeeding up to the first year. It didn't help, Toby wouldn't take to the rubber teat. I shuddered when I raised him back up to my breast, thinking of the concentric circle of wounds from that night, thinking that it wasn't my son that was spouting some new and alien tongue, but some giant squirming thing swathed in blankets.

Robert was no help. If anything, he grew more and more distant. Physical contact became a distant memory. He was barely at home, always said he was busy at work. When he was at home, he took pains to avoid me, stealing away after dinner to hunch over his laptop, furtively swapping windows when he heard me approaching. I even missed looking at his sleeping face at night, consigned to watching his broad back heave with deep breaths. Some nights I wanted so much just to drag him over to Toby’s room and yell at his face that we were losing our son. I wanted to, but I didn’t.

So I dragged out the space between Toby’s feeds, reluctant to be close to him. Was it still my son looking back at me from those pale green eyes? There was a wry curiosity there that I hadn't seen before. A focus that didn't have any place on a baby’s face. And when he opened his mouth! Sometimes to scream, to complain. Other times to unleash a stream of gibberish. I started to be able to make out the individual words, but still they made no sense. But each new word dredged up a cold fear in me. The only thing way to get him to stay still or to shut up was to bring out the iPad and lay it in front of him. Tears or babbling would cease as soon as the strange lullaby started up.

I struggled to make sense of the thing that was effecting this change in my son. There was no fixed point at which it segued from lilting, broken English to that foreign tongue. The more I tried to understand it, the further it seemed from comprehension. There was cadence, a rhythm underpinning the cadence, verse and stanza but I couldn't find a pattern there. What if (and I felt my stomach lurch at the thought) it wasn't a song at all, but a message, or a lesson? Something that kept evolving the more my son learnt? The more he changed?

Sometimes I listened to the blabbering infant in the room next door and wondered how much time I had left before it was too late. I could no longer bear to be in the same room as him without Robert around or if I had to feed him. The soft sounds of the iPad and Toby leaked out of the room. Point and counterpoint. Stab and riposte. Were they talking? Communicating? Robert wouldn't help. He couldn't see what was going on. There was something wrong. I had to fix it. I had to fix our son.

The iPad went silent when I stepped into the room. Toby stared up from his crib. Silent. Defiant. There was no love left in those eyes. Was there anything remotely human left there? I looked over at the hated little rectangle. First Toby. And then the iPad. The iPad started up again, on its own. Music blared out. The words were different this time. Still in English. I could understand the woman with the unidentifiable accent. Do not harm the vessel, it said, over and over again. The vessel? The iPad. No. Toby. If he was a vessel, what was he being filled up with?

They asked me later if I remembered what I did. I told them I did not. I knew what I had to do, I didn't remember how it was done. I remembered my son's fingernails. They were perfectly formed pink little crescents. I remembered those little fingernails wave ineffectually through the air. I stared at my own fingernails, chewed down till there was no edge but ragged skin. The contrast of my fingernails on the smooth cotton pillowcase. The fingernails of my baby tracing lazy arcs through the air, slowing and then they were still. There was no more babbling. No more strange words. The room was peaceful. Quiet. Fixed.

I do remember Robert tackling me to the ground. Carpet burns on my arms and knees. A nice lady in a blue uniform led me away afterwards. They asked me to tell my story, and I did, exactly the same way I told it to you.

I like it here. It's mostly quiet, just the way I like it. I get to be alone most of the time. It's hard to tell how long I've been here. I tried counting the days, but sometimes they give me two pills instead of one and it goes a little fluffy.

It's been a while since Robert came to visit. We weren't allowed to be in the same room at the time. There was a window between us, thicker than any that we had in our house. So thick that we spoke through a pair of plastic telephone handsets. We exchanged pleasantries, but my attention was drawn to the lady waiting at the back of the room behind the glass. I half recognized her from one of Robert’s office parties. Maybe Christmas. A little too touchy feely in her slutty little dress, I had to yank Robert away that night. We had an argument about it later. There she was, sulking as though she’d been forced to suck on a plateful of lemons. I recognized the blonde hair on the infant that she was carrying though. Robert’s hair. She was carrying our baby.

Baby Toby turned to look at me. He’d grown a little since I’d been in here. How long had it actually been? He gave me a grin with his little baby teeth. His eyes were wrong. He had his father’s hair, his father’s face. But he’d always had my eyes. Green eyes. They were supposed to be green, not brown. They’d done something to him. Robert and that woman. And his mouth. Still moving, but I recognized each tiny motion. He was still making those sounds. I had failed. It had to be Robert. He was the one that downloaded the app in the first place. I smashed the handset against the glass, heedless of the little shards of hard plastic that were driven into my palm. Robert’s plaintive pleas died along with the handset.

I pounded my fists against the glass window, screaming at Robert, screaming at the woman with my child. Most of all, I screamed at the wild haired ghost of a woman that pounded her fists back at me. I told them that they had stolen the eyes from my boy. I called him a cheating bastard. I called the woman with my baby a slut and a whore. The glass bounced my screams back at me. The three on the other side of the glass gaped. They were speaking silently, I could almost hear the mocking strains of the lullaby again, the stream of unnatural words. Robert held the door open. The woman hitched Toby up to her shoulder and left. The last thing I saw, before the orderlies dragged me away, was Toby. Toby peering over the woman’s shoulder, his lips mocking me with their silent chanting.

The nice doctor told me I was getting better. That's why he let me use the internet. That's how I found you guys. Maybe I'll be well enough to qualify for a day release. I'd like to see Toby again. Robert too. I need to get better so I can see them again. I failed so miserably the last time, I can't wait to make it up to the two of them. Robert first. I should have started by fixing him. He was the one that downloaded the app for us. It must have gotten to him first.

More than anything, I want to fix my baby once and for all. I can't believe I failed so miserably the first time around. I'm haunted by the last time I saw him through the glass. I won't let it win. I have to be strong for my boy. I could be a perfect mother. If only I tried harder.

Shivering from the cold, Dane slowly opens his eyes. It was dark, almost completely devoid of light but for the glow of his cell phone somewhere beside him. Shaking his head in an attempt to push away the fog of sleep, Dane stretches his arm out to retrieve his phone. How long had he slept? Did he oversleep again? Straining against what must be his blanket wrapped around him, he is unable to reach the phone on the bedside table. Maybe if he kicked off the covers and sat up first… It was at that moment, that Dane realized he was sitting up. In fact, not only was he in a sitting position, but he also could not seem to move more than his right arm.

In a panic, he struggles against whatever is restraining him until his flailing arm hits something directly in front of him. In the near dark, slowly feeling around the obstruction, Dane realizes that what he found is a steering wheel. The fog of his unconsciousness quickly clears when Dane puts the pieces together to understand that he is not in the assumed comfort of his own warm bed back at home, but in fact somehow strapped into the driver’s seat of his ’04 Kia. Memories begin to flicker into Dane’s mind like bright flashes from a camera…

Reading an invitation from his closest friends for a ski trip in the mountains of Colorado, thinking how nice it would be to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city for a weekend. Already imagining the fresh cold mountain air, the stress of everyday life dissipating like frozen breath in the air, and especially the possibility of sharing a steaming cup of coffee with Maggie’s hot new friend Alisha in front of a roaring fire…

Packing up his car for the trip, talking with Brad on the phone about the amazing ski resort and how amazingly hot Maggie’s single friend looked that morning, and weather reports promising clear skies and perfect driving conditions.

An unexpected snowstorm making the lonely drive take much longer than he expected, slowly ascending the steep winding roads up into the mountains. Very quickly becoming the only other car on the road as the snow fall becomes a flash blizzard, reducing the visibility to naught but five feet ahead of the car; the glare from the headlights blindingly reflecting in the falling snow.

Barely visible signs announcing the Eisenhower Tunnel a few miles ahead, hitting a hidden patch of ice, overcompensating the turn of the steering wheel, brakes doing nothing to stop the skidding…the feeling of weightlessness after the car careens through the flimsy guardrails and plunges over the edge…seemingly hours later, while in reality likely only seconds, the impact of the car hitting the ravine’s snow drifts and Dane’s head cracking against the window.

The car sinking into the deep powdery snow while he sinks into unconsciousness…

And now, darkness is pierced only by the faded glow of his overturned cell phone, just out of reach somewhere on the passenger side of the car. Trying his hardest to push away the grip of panic, Dane uses his only free arm to try to determine why he cannot move. While it appears his seatbelt prevented him from further injury, the steering wheel seems to be what is pinning him to his seat, pushed hard up against his chest. Unable to see further into the dark, Dane is not aware that the steering column is as twisted and broken as his legs tangled around it. Numb fingers find his left arm swallowed by the crumpled metal of what was once his driver’s side door. The muted light of the cell phone screen allows him to pick out the dark snow pressing against the spider webbed outline of the shattered windshield, as well as darkening the other windows.

Closing his eyes and able to only force shallow gasps of icy air into his lungs, Dane can only assume that his car is somewhere off the side of the mountain a mile or so before the tunnel. Before the blizzard hid anything outside of a few feet from the car from his view, he remembers seeing elevation signs reporting he was passing 11,000 feet up the mountain. There is no telling how far down his little car tumbled before coming to a rest under the snow. Determined to make a call for help, Dane strains as hard as he can muster against the constricting confines of his interior Kia prison; reaching out again to the far side of the passenger seat for his cell, his fingertips just barely brushing the edge of his possible salvation…before the strain becomes too much for his battered body to endure and he slips once again into the soft cushion of unconsciousness.

Dreams of a blissful wintery ski resort retreat snuggling intimately under a heavy warm blanket with Alisha are shattered by the sounds of sharp cracking noises that jostle Dane from his catatonic state. Unsure of how long he was dead to the world, he calculated it must have been hours as the precarious comfort of the “always on” glowing cell phone screen has been extinguished as the battery, much like his failing hope for rescue, had given out. Plunged again into the cold wintery darkness, the sharp cracking noise again makes his heart skip a beat. Could this be someone above digging through the snow and ice to rescue him from his cold snow-covered tomb? Feeling hope blossom once again in his constricted chest, Dane takes as deep a breath as the steering wheel allows and screams for help.

His screams for help dying on his lips, coughing and gasping for breath, Dane tries to listen for some answer from his presumed rescuers, hoping for some indication that someone is up there digging down to him. Only silence answers his cries for help, broken only by his sobbing, not a sliver of light or hope to be found in the bitter darkness. His mind races at imagined terrors in the pitch black interior of his crushed car, the smallest of noises making him flinch as the car continues to settle under the weight of tons of ice and snow. Did he only imagine the cracking sounds from before? How long has he been trapped here in this maddening cell devoid of light? Is his shivering more from the deepening cold or his fear of the dark? Another popping snap from somewhere on the passenger side causes Dane to whip his in that direction with bile rising in his throat. Screams escape his lips once more, only now shaped more from terror than for hope of salvation.

This time his impotent screams are answered immediately by one last cracking sound and a familiar noise that reminds Dane of early mornings back in his old apartment; waking up with the sun, stumbling into the kitchen, and shoving a fresh filter into the coffee maker. Grabbing a new unopened bag of coffee, and pulling open the vacuum sealed top. The is exactly what this new curiosity sounded like; except instead of the fresh smell of roasted Arabica coffee beans, he is greeted with a cold rush of air as the weight of tons of snow and ice from above have finally pushed through the broken windshield and are quickly filling the empty space of the car’s interior. With the frigid rush of powdery hell engulfing Dane in his twisted metal coffin, all he could think of was the smell of that first freshly brewed coffee of the day as he choked in his last frozen breath.

“Peter? Peter Emory? Can you hear me?”

Peter awoke from a strange dream, feeling sluggish and disconnected from reality. Once his eyes began to operate he tried to make sense of his surroundings but failed miserably. It was hard to focus—everything was milky and distorted, as if he was underwater, and he seemed unable to blink away the haze.

Suddenly, a grotesquely bulbous face floated into view.

“Ah,” said the face, “I see your eyes moving. You’re awake at last. Listen, Peter, I am Doctor Andrew Gould, and I have some exciting news. Well, shocking news, for you, but I think you’ll eventually reap the rewards.”

Peter tried to reply, to ask what the hell was going on, but nothing happened. His mouth was unresponsive. Nevertheless, Dr. Gould nodded as if he understood Peter’s concerns, which had the surreal effect of making the doctor’s forehead balloon like a reflection in a carnival mirror.

“I think you may remember, Peter, that you had an accident? You were riding your motorcycle very fast, much too fast for these backwoods. I’m afraid you were in quite a few pieces when I found you, just down the road from my house. And then further down the road. And a bit more, even further. Heh.”

What was he talking about? Peter hadn’t been…

Oh.

A quick succession of flashing images came to mind, like a video with missing frames. He remembered the pothole that had appeared in the road before he could react. He remembered the bike being wrenched out from under him, and the pavement flying up at his face. He remembered wondering if it would hurt.

He remembered that it had.

“Yes, well,” Dr. Gould continued, “by a happy coincidence I was close at hand. And luckily for you, I’ve been looking for a proper test subject. You were practically delivered right into my lap, in a most dramatic fashion, as if Providence was truly at work. I could hardly have asked for a more perfect opportunity to demonstrate my accomplishments. Oh, yes, fortune smiled on us both. And with your help, they will have to listen to me now. They must! There will be no denying the evidence. You, Peter, are undeniable.”

The more the doctor talked, the more Peter felt a growing sense of dread. All he wanted to know was the extent of his injuries, but at the moment he could only listen to this person who seemed far too pleased that Peter had nearly been killed.

“You see, my lad, after years of work, I think I have done it. This, er, goo that you are enveloped in? It has saved your life. Resurrected you, very nearly. You have no idea yet how lucky you are that I came along when I did, and that I’ve recently made so many advancements with my, ah, goo. I must find a better term for it. Something with ‘quantum’ or ‘nano’ in it, maybe. It’s exciting stuff, but due to its incredibly unique properties you may at first feel a bit… disorientated.”

Dr. Gould held a jar in front of Peter. He tapped it, making Peter wince inwardly.

“For instance,” Dr. Gould said, “you may experience unsettling sensations since your ears and auditory processing centers are in here. Meanwhile, your eyes are… well, your eyes are in there, as you can tell. In another jar. The rest of you is here and there, nearby. I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know I found most of you. All the essentials, anyway.”

Dr. Gould kept talking. And talking. Peter wanted to scream, but Dr. Gould would not stop, relentlessly explaining himself to his mute and impotent patient. It seemed his miraculous goo kept the various parts and pieces of Peter alive, and though separated by some distance and completely unconnected, many parts worked as if still united.

It sounded to Peter like mumbo jumbo, or the scientific equivalent to magic. Still, it was evident that his eyes were indeed here, the majority of his brain was over there, and his ears were currently on the move, in Dr. Gould’s hand. The old man carried Peter’s ears around as if dictating into a microphone, and to say it was "disorientating" for Peter to no longer be at the center of what his senses were experiencing was an understatement. A colossal understatement. Peter felt that in this case, “disorientating” required many more modifiers in front of it, long strings of additional words such as “terribly,” and “horrifically.”

Despite Dr. Gould’s assertions, Peter did not grow any more comfortable with this living nightmare in the weeks that followed. He still had no voice and had found no other means to communicate, which left him trapped and powerless. He might have been able to blink “yes” or “no,” but with his eyelids apparently located elsewhere (or perhaps missing altogether), even blinking was impossible.

The doctor did not appear to be interested in establishing back-and-forth communication anyway. Peter was subjected to one arcane experiment after another, while also being forced to endure the non-stop monologues coming from this madman who finally had a captive audience to whom he could explain his acts of genius.

When, at long last, the doctor appeared to be satisfied by the results of all his tests, Peter found himself being packed at random into dozens of shipping boxes, all bound for a prestigious university. “Proof of theory,” Dr. Gould called this step, with obvious relish. He saved the jar that contained his patient’s ears for last, and as he carefully went about boxing and sealing the rest, he explained how Peter would soon be the most famous medical wonder in history. With more help and funding, the world would watch as Peter’s full resurrection was completed.

“We will be rich,” Dr. Gould assured him, “and everyone will forever remember the names of Andrew Gould and Peter Emory. And you will be whole again, of course! Your present state has laid the groundwork and shown me the way, and very soon we will be able to regrow you exactly as you were. Or you can make new selections. Yes, consider that during your coming journey—as a reward for your patience I will tailor your body however you wish. Would you like to be taller? Would you prefer fair hair to brown? A chiseled jawline? You have but to request your idea of physical perfection, and I will make it so!”

For now, Peter could only endure; he had no other choice. Dr. Gould picked up the jar that held Peter’s eyes, gave him a wink that made Peter yearn to have the same ability once more, and sealed him into yet another box.

The trip almost turned out to be more unnerving than the days Peter had spent listening to the doctor. He heard loud noises, and some of his disjointed parts felt the rumbling vibrations of takeoffs, handoffs, and deliveries. More than once his stomach dropped as the planes he’d been loaded onto accelerated, which was a familiar sensation except that his stomach also felt like it was ten feet away. More maddening were the changes in pressure that gave him an insatiable urge to scratch his big toe, a simple task that was currently impossible and which only got worse the more he tried not to think about it.

He had no idea how long the trip lasted, but after what felt like an eternity of discomfort and darkness he heard a new voice. The voice of a young woman.

“Euurgh! What is this, ears? And a liver? Look, there’s a kidney in this one. You get disturbing mail, Professor.”

“Oh, lord,” said an older voice. “Don’t tell me, they’re from Andrew Gould, aren’t they?”

“Looks like it. Who’s he?”

“A one-man circus. Sorry, I usually warn new assistants. He’s been annoying the whole medical sciences department for years, claiming he was on the verge of the biggest breakthrough ever. Practical immortality, that sort of thing.”

Muffled laughter was followed by playful sarcasm. “Oh, come on, Professor. We must use the scientific method and examine his proof! Otherwise, how do you know he hasn’t found immortality?”

“Because a heart attack proved him wrong,” came the grunted reply. “They found his body right off campus last week. I heard he was trying to gargle some nasty smelling goop when he died.”

“Oh. Jesus, now I feel like a jerk.”

“Yes, well… he was irritating, but I don’t think it was intentional. I must admit I’ll miss his rambling letters and emails full of pseudoscience. They were great for forwarding.”

“What do you want to do with these packages?”

“Incinerator.”

“Damn, that’s a lot of trips downstairs. Why’d he have to send so many?”

“Who knows? Hard to figure a nutcase. Don’t even bother, just toss them.”

Finally, thought Peter.

Though his eyes were still in the dark, his ears soon heard the approaching roar of the incinerator. He welcomed it. The blank void of nonexistence would at last be his, so much better than the freak show he’d been turned into against his will.

The university’s incinerator must have been a heavy-duty machine. In fast, sharp flashes he felt himself go, piece by piece, into death. He envisioned the boxes turning to ash, the glass jars splitting and cracking, and the milky goo boiling away in a sizzling hiss as his remaining limbs and organs shriveled up like blackening bacon. Though the process took longer than his motorcycle crash, this time the fact that he wanted it meant it hurt far less.

Calmly, he waited for the end.

But the end refused to come. It was only much later that Peter came to believe he understood what had happened, and why the flames had not granted him the release he craved.

Somewhere, in an unknown location, he imagined there was a carefully packaged box that had gotten separated from its mates. Perhaps it was sealed with warning tape and sitting in the “Lost, Damaged, & Undeliverable” section of a giant shipping warehouse. Within that box was a jar, and within that jar was a brain, totally deprived of all sensory input. The almost magical connection between this brain and the rest of its body had extended further than even Dr. Gould had anticipated, and now the brain was all that remained of Peter Emory.

He wondered how long it would take before someone got around to investigating such a box. How long until he was finally incinerated? Or would his brain jar be donated, to end up sitting on a shelf and gathering dust? How long would it take life-sustaining goo to evaporate from an airtight seal? How insane was he going to be by the time he finally succeeded in dying?

Alone, with only his own thoughts for company, Peter had a feeling he was in for quite a wait before any of these questions were answered.

This has been posted on /r/nosleep before. It is one of my favourite stories, so I'm reposting it for the benefit of newer readers and I hope you enjoy it

Do you ever watch other people in the subway? It’s so strange to have to ignore someone who’s right up there in your face. A can of sardines springs to mind, except we’re not joined by a bond of thick oil or brine. Coated instead by a miasma of sweat, cologne and annoyance. Everybody absorbed in their own little worlds. There, whizzing through the bowels of the city at a brisk clip, you’ll find people reading books, newspapers. Maybe on a Playstation Portable. Maybe on a smartphone. Except me. I’ll always be looking through the thick glass windows at the flickering blackness just beyond. There are stranger things in the tunnels than in the cabin. I guess this is the right place to share what I saw that night.

It had been one of those weeks. Actually, it had been one of those months, where the targets piled up like so much dirty laundry. The boss was on my case. Miserable, balding fart with his mortgage and his European sports car, riding us all for another bullshit project for some client across the country. The days and nights lost their meaning. In at work early to beat the crowd. Heading home without ever seeing the light of the sun. Caffeine was my only friend. I got used to rushing for the last train home because the miserable bastard wouldn’t even sign off on the late night taxi claims (it showed up on the work life balance indicators, he’d said).

It had been another mindless day of numbers, slides and text. To be frank, I didn’t even know if the version of the meaningless report I was working on was the fifth or the fiftieth, nor could I have told you the difference between the two. The office had already emptied out an hour before, my last coworkers giving me a commiserating pat on the back as they headed off. I cursed as I stuffed my laptop and swept some papers into my bag. I was going to miss the train. The stale warmth of the building gave way to the bitter cold as I hit the streets running.

The station was empty. Not unthinkable at this time of the night, but eerie all the same. There’s something about a hollow space meant for crowds. I’m not talking about muggers or anything like that. There is an air of the forbidden about these empty spaces. That’s how that night started out. Expectant. Waiting for something to happen.

Not that I cared at the time. The escalators were out for the night. I was wheezing hard by the time I got to the bottom, that old college fitness long buried under an ocean of booze and a mountain of fast food. I thought the last train had already left, resigning myself to a long wait for an expensive taxi ride back. I was about to leave when the train pulled up with the familiar scream of metal on metal. Graffiti adorned the grey skin of the train, tribal tattoos for the modern locomotive. The doors hissed, warm air belched from the cabin. I got in.

The train, strangely, was full. Not packed, but it was crowded. I found myself a seat in between a old man in a large brown overcoat and young lady that wearing a dark formal dress, a large flower pinned to her breast, her face a mask of mascara and eyeshadow, inexpertly applied. Across from me sat a pair of army guys in fatigues, their scalps shining pink under their tight buzz cuts. And many more besides. It was a puzzling thing, to have a cabin so full late at night, and with such a motley crew of inhabitants.

With a shudder, the train pulled out from the station.

I settled back contentedly into my seat. The network connection in the tunnels was never dependable. I had to find another way to entertain myself on the ride home.

The noise from the screech of the rails and the rush of air outside seemed muted. Instead, the cabin was filled with a soft susurrus, the hushed tones of a crowd in a theatre, expectant but subdued. The cabin felt colder than it should have been. Was the heating out again? It couldn’t be. I was certain that the cabin was warmer than the platform a second ago, yet now, it felt like I was back outside in the howling cold. I tugged my jacket a little tighter. I looked at the hodge podge of strange individuals in the cabin. Everybody seemed out of place. Why would there be a gaggle of high school kids, obviously inebriated, this late at night? Or the waifish girl that was wearing what seemed to be a school uniform. I shifted uncomfortably on the sculpted plastic seat. The other odd thing was that I didn’t see a single mobile phone or any other electronic device in sight. I looked up at the row of LED lights that indicated the train’s progress along my route. 4 more stops.

I was still staring at the display when the train whizzed by the next stop. It didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow down. Just kept going right by the stop. The lights and pillars of the station streamed by in a blur. I jerked upright in my seat, my eyes widening. What kind of train had I gotten on? The rest of the crowd was unfazed by this development. If anything, the low buzz of whispers got even louder as the train progressed.

We were still hurtling through the dark tunnel, the overhead lights flickering on and off, when the little girl in the school uniform affixed me with a curious stare. She crept over to the group of high schoolers and tugged at the sleeve of one of the young men. He must have been a basketball player or something, he nearly had to bend double to bring his ear down to the little girls face. Her jaw worked up and down as she whispered something to him urgently. I heard nothing over the sound of the train. He blinked and took a step back when he looked back in my direction, as though seeing me for the first time. His handsome face twisted strangely. What was it? Anger? No, he looked like he wanted something. He looked hungry. His compatriots noticed the break in the conversation and directed their gazes to the focus of his attention. To me. The same gamut of emotions cycled through their faces. Shock. And then a sharpening, a hardening of their features. They were hungry too.

The feeling spread through the cabin, like a spark arcing from person to person. The two uniformed men, looking up and tightening their jaws. The old man next to me, perking up and scooting down another seat so that he could look at me without straining his neck. Outside, a blur of lights told me that another station had shot by. 3 more stops.

I shrank back in my seat.The tendons straining at the surface of my hands as I clutched at my bag protectively, as though that stupid gesture, grabbing on to my work, the focus of my life, would ground me and take me from this nightmare. It didn't. I felt the weight of their eyes on me, like insects crawling over my skin. Something was wrong. So clearly wrong. This strange crowd, so different, yet each of them was wearing that naked need on their faces.

"Don't mind them, they're just jealous of you." The voice of the young lady by my side. Her voice was soft, mellifluous. "Don't stare back and don't talk to them."

I turned to look at my erstwhile companion. "What are they jealous of? I just wanted to catch the last train home."

"It's the last train home for all of us, too." She smiled. She was very pale. Very beautiful. "But not all of them want to be here. And looking at you, going home tonight, makes them so very unhappy."

"Where'd they all come from? Was there a convention? A meeting?" I cast my eyes around the cabin again, but was stopped halfway by her strong fingers on my chin. Her fingers were icy cold. She turned my head around to face her.

"Everywhere. All around. Most of them didn't want to be here. Except me, maybe. I'd had enough of where I was. I miss my parents. I haven't seen them in such a long time. It took awhile, for me to gather enough courage to go look for them.” She paused, suddenly pensive at what she’d said. “You're not meant to be here, you know. This isn’t your ride." Outside the window, another station went by. My eyes flicked back to the board with all the little lights. 2 stops to home.

The whispering in the cabin had started up again. Louder than before, but still muffled by the sounds of the rails and the rushing air outside. They were talking about me. The atmosphere grew oppressive. It was strange but the attention of the crowd felt like a rock on my chest. My breathing became laboured, each inhalation a struggle. My companion sensed my discomfort.

“I wish I could stop them,” she said, sadly. “It’ll stop when we get to the end of the line, I suppose.” Her eyes lit up at the thought. She turned around and scooted up onto the seat, her knees on the hard plastic, palms on the cold glass. Even with her face pressed up against the glass, there wasn’t a trace of fog on the window left by her breath. If she was even breathing at all. “Here, why don’t you take this, I won’t need it where I’m going.” She fumbled at her dress, detached the white flower and pressed it into my hands. The sweet smell of the lily took my attention away from the pain in my chest.

“We’re here!” She was quivering with excitement as the train began to slow. I looked up at the board overhead. All the lights on the map had gone out. Where were we?

She cupped my chin in her hands. It was only then, with her arms so close to my face, that I saw the network of fine white lines that criss crossed her forearms. She caught the flick of my eyes towards her arms. She shrugged, sheepish. “Practice makes perfect,” she said. She frowned, suddenly serious again. “This stop is for the rest of us. You can’t join us. You have to stay here.” She leaned forward quickly and gave me a kiss on my cheek. Her cold lips burned like an ice cube.

The people in the cabin quickly turned their attention to the approaching platform. I felt the weight on my chest ease. The whispering grew to a crescendo as they pointed and chattered excitedly. The platform drew close. And what a sight it was. I didn’t recognize the tiles or the posters. I must have taken this train a thousand times. I could have closed my eyes and named every station in order and the time between stations if I wanted to, and yet I was lost. There was nothing on the platform that helped in any way. No signs. No directions. What the platform had was people, a milling sea of heads and faces, all expectant, all eagerly waiting.

When the door opened, it let in the roar of the crowd outside. Shouts, shrieks and yells. And tears, so many tears. The passengers burst out of the train, throwing themselves into the waiting sea of people. I saw one of the army boys embracing an older gentleman, also dressed in military fatigues. None of that new aged stuff that looked like it was plucked out of a stage of minecraft. This was old school, with big green and brown blotches. The resemblance between the two was clear. They parted, the younger man introducing his father to his compatriot. The older man hugged him as tightly as he had hugged his own son earlier.

The old man that was sitting by me had found an elegant looking lady in her thirties, her light sun dress looked out of place for the biting cold of winter. Or had I mistaken the man for someone else? I looked again and it wasn’t the old man any more, but a young couple laughing in the prime of their lives. No, it was the same coat and his features, lined with a jealous greed scant moments ago, were now lit with a fierce joy.

Just as the train doors hissed shut, I saw the girl that sat next to me on the train. She was in tears with her arms around a well dressed couple. She waved at me as the train pulled out of the station. I waved back.

My legs shook as I got off the train at my stop. The platform was reassuringly deserted. I watched as the train screeched into the distant darkness of the tunnel. I gingerly touched the numb spot on my cheek where the girl had kissed me. My fingers came away wet. I didn’t even remember the tears falling.

My nose was suddenly assaulted by a rich, thick greenhouse scent. Decaying plant matter. I fished out the lily from my coat pocket, where the strange girl had left it. The pristine white petals were dry to the point of crumbling and speckled black with rot. I let it fall from my fingers and watched it bounce on the station floor. I stared at it for a long time before I began the long trek home.

“Want some Pop Rocks?” Mindy asked Mr. Stuart, rolling her jaw absentmindedly. “I like how they fizz.”

“Pop Rocks? I haven’t had those since I was… well, for a while. Sure, why not?”

Mr. Stuart held out his hand, and Mindy shook the envelope over his palm. His eyes remained fixed on her the whole time, his thoughts tumbling and jostling together like the brightly-colored candy.

What was he doing here? She was seventeen, for god’s sake. He’d had idle daydreams about pretty students before, but he’d never actually done anything about them. No, he’d always been quick to repress those kinds of thoughts as soon as he realized he was thinking them, afraid of where they might lead. Not once had he truly considered moving beyond his short-lived fantasies.

And yet here he was, sitting in his car with Mindy. In the school parking lot. After dark.

He was teetering back and forth between disgust at himself and excitement at the proximity of her body—her soft teenage skin, her big eyes, her freshness. There was something special about Mindy. He’d experienced one of those rare instant connections when she first walked into his class at the start of the year, and now his stomach was fluttering like it hadn’t done since he was her age and found himself sitting near a girl (any girl). Just like then, he wanted everything to rush forward at the same time he wanted it to last forever.

“No one likes me,” said Mindy, staring out the window.

Teenage angst, thought Mr. Stuart. I’m on surer footing there. He chuckled, then replied in his warmest, most empathetic manner, like a teacher should. “Plenty of people like you. You have friends. You can’t go around feeling bad if not everyone likes you. Life doesn’t work that way.”

“It’s not that. They all think I’m weird, even my friends. They think I’m cold, like a vampire.”

“Really? You don’t dress like a goth.” He looked at her skirt, at her knees, then ran his eyes down her calves, which were lovely and slim despite the traces of lingering baby fat. And while her skin was light, it wasn’t overly pale. He would describe it as “creamy.”

And breathtaking.

“You’re funny, Mr. Stuart. No, I’m not a goth. I don’t know what I am. I thought I’d fit in with all the zombies here, you know? A school filled with brainless and lifeless idiots going through the motions.”

“First vampires, now zombies?” he said with a laugh. “I can tell you have an old soul, Mindy, but your skin isn’t dropping off.” He took this opportunity to give her a reassuring pat on her knee, conveniently forgetting her short skirt and bare legs.

My god, he thought, as an electric tingle ran through his fingers. So warm. When he let his hand linger there a bit too long, he worried that she would get alarmed, but she didn’t seem to notice the inappropriate touch. She turned and smiled at him.

“Well, at least you’re not a zombie, Mr. Stuart. You’re always so alive in class.”

He pretended not to be thrilled to hear such a compliment. Was it really this easy, to become someone like this? Someone who took advantage? No wonder it happened so often. The lure was almost irresistible.

“I had no idea you were into horror stories,” he said, his voice sounding strained to his own ears. “After that unit we did on Stoker and Shelley…”

“Yeah, I kind of slacked off there,” she shrugged. “You know what always gets me about vampires and zombies? And werewolves too, I guess. I think it’s stupid, how in the movies it’s always their bite that gets you. You have to get bitten.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s the general rule in films and literature.” He still felt the impulse to turn things in an educational direction, but it was an impulse that was quickly waning in the face of other, more pressing ones.

“I know, but it’s stupid. Teeth are teeth, aren’t they? Nothing magical. They’re solids. It seems like with all those monsters it should be more like, I don’t know, maybe an infection. Like, the bite’s just about breaking the skin, but the real problem is swapping fluids. So really, a vampire or a zombie could just spit in your eye, and boom. You’re toast.”

Mr. Stuart shook his head and smiled, pleased at the way her mind worked. He remembered that he had a palm full of Pop Rocks in one sweaty hand, and he tossed them back as he considered how to give her a compliment in return. Preferably in a way that wasn’t too obvious.

Rolling the fizzing candy around in his mouth, he said, “You really are a clever girl, Mindy. Most of your classmates would never think to look beyond what they’re presented with, but you do. You question things. You’re no zombie, trust me. I’ve seen plenty of those shuffling through my classes, and you’re different.”

Mindy’s cheeks pinked and she lowered her head, then turned her eyes up to him. “You are so sweet, Mr. Stuart. I like sweet. I’ve always liked you.”

The next thing he knew, Mr. Stuart almost choked on his candy as Mindy swept her lithe little body onto his. He felt her thigh move between his legs, rubbing up and down insistently. Small, pert breasts pressed into his chest, and her face was directly in front of his, breathing heavy. Her eyelids drooped as she fixed her gaze on his mouth.

A wave of apprehension came over him. This was suddenly all too real. “Mindy, I’m not sure–“

“Don’t worry,” she mumbled, chewing on her lower lip, “I won’t bite. This is what I want.”

She took his stubbled cheeks into her hands and kissed him, hard. Instinctively he moved his own hands to her back, making her arch into him as he ran his fingers over her, from the soft hairs at the nape of her neck, to her sides, and then down to her squirming hips.

Mr. Stuart’s brain short-circuited. It was almost too much. He had never been kissed this way before, not by any of the full-grown women he had known, let alone a girl. Her lips were warm and soft, and the tongue she pressed into his mouth was still coated with candy and sugar as it danced with his.

After a steamy eternity, they broke to take a breath. She gulped in air, her chest heaving against his face while she clutched his head and caressed his hair. Then her body relaxed and she let out a blissful sigh.

He looked up into her eyes, completely astounded. It had been the single most passionate moment of his life. Fireworks were going off in his head, his heart was hammering, and his mouth was still sparkling and popping.

“Mindy, that was amazing,” he started to say.

But he couldn’t get the words out. The surface of his tongue kept on fizzing, while underneath it felt sluggish and thick. An acidic taste, like bile, had begun to overpower the sweetness of the candy, a taste the sugar could no longer mask. Then his eyes widened as his tongue began to bubble. Then blister. And suddenly, to his horror, it collapsed into a frothing liquid paste that filled his mouth.

Choking and gagging, he was only dimly aware that one of Mindy’s hands had clamped his jaw shut and tilted his head back against the car seat, while her other hand stroked the length of his throat, almost as if she were trying to soothe away his pain. Reflexes kicked in, and unable to stop himself, he swallowed. The formless, boiling liquid that had once been his tongue was like molten fire as it seared its way down his esophagus.

Apparently satisfied with this result, Mindy rolled off him, returning to the passenger seat and allowing him to pitch forward as both of his cheeks dissolved and the ruined remains of his mouth spewed forth onto the dashboard. He was still clawing helplessly at his chest while everything he had swallowed invaded his lungs and began eating away at the delicate strands of tissue there, like saliva melting cotton candy.

This was agony. Pure agony. His whole body twisting and shuddering, he somehow managed to turn his face to Mindy, but with his vocal cords already gone he couldn’t even scream. He could only ask “What are you?” with his eyes.

Mindy was smoothing the wrinkles on her skirt.

“I told you,” she said, grinning at him from between her dimples, “I don’t know what I am. Some kind of vampire? A zombie? I just don’t know, I’ve never figured it out.”

She reached over to pat his quivering knee before continuing. “But I am kind of ashamed of myself. I’m really much, much too old for you, Mr. Stuart. I do know that.”

I told you I was going to show you something special, didn’t I? Some unusual things? Be brave, my friend. On Halloween night, it’s only to be expected that unusual things occur in a place such as this.

Come, walk over to the low stone wall with me. The wall is amusing, isn’t it? It attempts the opposite of what most walls are built to do, for it offers a sort of reverse protection—you could say it guards those who are without from those within. Those without are protected from thinking of those within, while those within are beyond caring.

Usually, that is. Not tonight.

Though the wall is made of stone, the stones are merely suggestions. “We would prefer you to stay out,” say the stones, “but if you don’t, we cannot be blamed. We are just stones, you know.”

Tonight, we are going to ignore their suggestions. A leg up, and over the wall we go. Watch your footing in the mist. At least the grass on this side is maintained somewhat, so we should be able to see… what else? Even more stones. But of course these stones are smoother, and more artfully shaped. They stand alone, separated by rows and columns of grass. If you remember your geometry classes, you might see this place as a graph, a grid for Xs and Ys. Let’s move along the gridded plots and not yet think of the Zs—the depths.

I apologize for waxing poetic, but graveyards have that effect on me. Notice the many trees and shrubs? They’re meant to be comforting, I presume, to make the place more park-like. “Ignore the stones!” say the trees. “Stones have dead voices. Permanent voices. Look to us trees instead, for we speak of movement and change and life.”

Personally, I think we should be suspicious of both. The trees may speak of life, but they litter their own lives upon the ground in the coolness of October. Meanwhile, the stones are not as permanent as they would have you believe. Even stones move and change. They’re just more calm about it than trees.

Here, keep to the shadows, and watch that you step in the patches not covered in crackling leaves. From this point on, we need to be quiet. What I am going to show you is just over that small hill. A thicket of bushes lies at the crown, so we will enter them and remain hidden. Be cautious and move slowly, my new friend, and if we aren’t noticed you’ll witness the unusual sight I promised.

How do I know about it? Well, it happens every Halloween night, around this time. It is a meeting, of sorts, and we shall be eavesdroppers. Now, into the bushes with you.

Oh dear, I forgot to tell you there would be thorns. Did they snag you? Yes, I can see a little blood. My apologies. You’d best move even slower. Please, grit your teeth and don’t cry out when they nip at you. I did mention there might be some danger involved, but it will be minimal so long as we remain hidden and quiet.

Crouch and shuffle, shuffle and crouch, that’s the way, over the top of the hill and down the other side a bit. Goodness, I hope that’s not one of your favorite shirts. The bushes could stand a bit of thinning out, couldn’t they? You’re very kind to be so patient. Soldier on, soldier on.

Just here, I think. Yes, this is the spot, the hunting blind for my annual Halloween vigil. And over there, in the little rest area beyond the vines—do you see him?

That is Mr. Edgar. He is here every year, regular as clockwork, with his back as stiff and straight as the stone bench he sits upon.

There’s a dark aspect to him isn’t there? To me, Mr. Edgar always brings to mind daguerreotypes. Stoic, black-and-white people etched on silvered plates. I think a tornado would have a better chance at ruffling the hair of people in one of those old portraits before it ever disturbed his. As you can tell, he is a serious person. He has a mustache, after all.

Ah, ah! We’ve arrived just in time. See the shadow creeping up on him? The shadow is Mr. Clive. He is far less reserved than Mr. Edgar—note the unkempt beard and the slouching shoulders. Every year, Mr. Clive tries to startle Mr. Edgar when they meet, and every year he fails. I’ll stop whispering in your ear so we can listen to them.

“Boo!”

“Good evening, Mr. Clive. Have you been planning that greeting all year?”

“I decided to go with a classic, Mr. Edgar.”

“I see, very clever. Well, have a seat, you’re late. It is almost time.”

“Already? But I thought ahead this year, Mr. Edgar, in preparation for an extended wait. Look, I brought a nice, comfortable camping chair. Folds up better than a dead spider. I brought one for you, if you want it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Clive, but I prefer the bench.”

“I knew you’d say that. That’s why I didn’t actually bring one for you.”

“My, are you actually showing signs of being perceptive to those around you? Perhaps you are growing up.”

“Perish the thought. You’re mature enough for both of us. Old, you might say. In the head. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you went senile tomorrow. I’d wake up before noon just to see that.”

“We are wine and beer, Mr. Clive, wine and beer. As ever, that remains an apt description of our partnership. By now, I would think that we… whatever are you looking around for?”

“Whiskey.”

“Shush. Eyes front. My watch says the time is nearly upon us.”

An odd pair, wouldn’t you say? They have almost the same conversation every Halloween. No matter how early I arrive, Mr. Edgar is already waiting when Mr. Clive appears, whereupon they exchange friendly banter about their differences then sit quietly as midnight approaches. Despite their insults, it is obvious they respect each other.

What are they waiting for? Oh, I don’t think we’ll have long to see it. In fact… can you hear it now, all around us? The scrabbling? The scratching? The digging?

The dead are coming.

Hold your breath and listen. Next, you should hear… yes, the moaning. There is always moaning. I think the moans are meant to be words, but when the words come from vocal cords as dry as dust, the results are akin to vibrations along a piano wire gone rusty and slack.

Quiet, quiet, my friend! I strongly advise you not to do anything rash. Wait and be calm, like our two perspicacious gentlemen. They are also aware of what is happening, but do they seem disturbed? No, they look rather bored. They are used to the idea that in some places, in some graveyards, and—most relevant to our interests—in this particular graveyard, the dead will briefly rise on Halloween.

Legends, you say? Folk tales? You are correct. But legends and folk tales must originate from somewhere, mustn’t they? Disbelieve all you wish, however the why and how of it matter less than what you can see with your own eyes.

And look, look! There, through the mist. The first of the dead goes lumbering past us, into the darkness. Tattered rags, withered flesh, sloughing patches of skin and hair… quite a ghastly sight, wouldn’t you say? An older resident, I think—the fresher ones tend to look even worse.

I wonder who he was. I have a few friends interred here, you know. The state they’re in, I doubt they would recognize me. Would you like to hear my theories about why this is?

I believe the dead are confused, just as you or I may be after waking from a deep nap. They amble about on All Hallow’s, as midnight rolls by, not quite sure what to do with themselves yet. It will be a while before the faintest glimmers of their long-neglected memories return to their moldy heads. This confusion is the chief reason most living people are safe tonight, for the dead will walk, and shuffle, and drag themselves in aimless, random directions, much like newborn babies who stretch and squirm to become accustomed to their bodies.

Most of the dead will end their Halloween stroll at a gravestone, or a tree, or the low stone wall we came over when we entered. They will find any object in their path to be a mystifying, insurmountable barrier. Only a precious few will make it past all obstacles, out into the world beyond the cemetery.

And then?

Well, that’s where the peril lies. The dead are far more dangerous when they finally realize what they are, what happened to them, and most of all, what they want. What they want, of course, is life. A taste. They want to ingest something with a spark inside, something warm to light the way home for own their departed souls. When they realize all this, they quicken. Oh, I’ve seen it—they’re inhumanly fast when they catch on. They become desperate to consume, frenzied to sample life again.

But fortunately for the living, by the time that happens the midnight hour is usually almost over. Unless they have escaped, unless they have devoured life, whatever Halloween spell first reanimated them begins to recall them to their graves, where they must remain for another year.

There are more of them now, aren’t there? Here they come, drawn to our little hill, where Mr. Edgar and Mr. Clive will begin their annual ritual. No, they’re still not afraid. This is a cornerstone of their partnership, as a matter of fact.

If I may explain, there is nothing mystical or occult about Mr. Edgar and Mr. Clive. Not at all. They are simply lawyers. Attorneys, to be more precise. Feel free to insert your own lawyer joke here, but the truth, I believe, is that these two gentleman really do have no souls. Perhaps they did once, but no more. They need not fear the dead.

Do you see what they’re doing as the dead cluster closer? They understand that it would be unwise to interfere too much with whatever dark magic is taking place tonight, so they’re merely doing what lawyers do—they’re handing out their cards. Stuffing them in pockets, pushing them into cold, stiff hands… that’s all. This is how they promote their business. They make a tidy sum of money this way, for they know that a number of these folks will make it past the Halloween deadline, when the witching hour ends. Some will venture beyond the cemetery boundaries, feast on the living, and awaken to find themselves alive once again. There are always a few.

Tomorrow, those few will only have two possessions: whatever scraps remain of the clothing they were buried in, and a business card detailing how much experience a certain law firm has with all kinds of relevant suits—wrongful death, manslaughter, malpractice, that sort of thing. Suits may even be brought for being declared dead prematurely. Inheritance tangles alone are a legal gold mine, no matter who wins in the end.

If none of these things apply? If either their memories or their relatives are too far gone to make use of? You’d be surprised how grateful some people are to disappear into a new, legal identity when they literally have blood on their hands. Imagine that, waking from a nightmare to find yourself a murderous cannibal. You might go to disturbing lengths to keep that hidden.

Well, however the two men make use of those who have returned—and believe me, there are more ways than I have the good taste to mention—it is in this manner that Mr. Edgar and Mr. Clive secure a great deal of lucrative business for themselves, sometimes enough to carry them through the year.

It’s really quite ingenious. Look here, I managed to acquire one of their cards. Can you see it in this light? It’s very handsome, embossed and printed on thick quality stock, though I think they’d be better served with lamination—the dead aren’t exactly neat. Yes, it is impressive… “Edgar, Clive, & Stephens, Attorneys at Law.”

Stephens? That’s me.

I’m afraid it’s true. I made a couple of helpful suggestions to their ritual since they had grown weary of chasing in all directions after their clients, and they’ve seen a notable increase in business. They’ve made me a full, soulless partner.

Haven’t you noticed how more and more of the dead have been swarming specifically in this direction? They’re surrounding our little hill, and it’s not to visit Mr. Edgar and Mr. Clive. No, the dead are here for you. They can smell you. All those nice, fresh cuts and scratches from the thorns, you see. The warm odor of life and blood. They’re parched for the stuff.

I promised to show you some unusual things on Halloween, and I feel I have delivered. I only neglected to mention that the unusual things would see you as well.

Ah, you look ready to leave. Perfectly understandable, but you may want to start slowly, because if you rush out of the bushes you’ll only make a lot of noise and scratch yourself further, which will cause the feeding frenzy to begin immediately. I told you how fast they become when they get wind of what they want. Inhumanly fast, I believe I said, although “supernaturally” might be a better term for it.

Of course, they’ll be coming for you in a moment no matter what you decide. So I guess if I were you, I’d just go ahead and run like hell.

Good luck, my friend!

Perhaps I’ll see you here again next year.

I am dying. To be more succinct, I am about to die. This confession is just my way of attempting to make peace with whatever options I have on the other side. It’s a worthless and typical attempt at salvation from someone who truly does not deserve it. Truth be told, if I weren’t about to die, I wouldn’t be writing about any of it. I love what I do too much…plus I’d be killed by my people shortly after sharing this info with you all. Ironically, as menacing as I have been for the last 40 years, at the end, I find myself more pathetic than my weakest victim.

There is a very old saying that “information is power.” It is one of the truest things you will ever hear.

I was very powerful before my illness. Just not in the way one might describe someone as “powerful.” My power didn’t come from great wealth, or brute force, or political success (even I am not that narcissistic). My power came from harnessing the mundane and the minutia of life. I became powerful through observation and routine, through patience and planning, through cunning and camouflage.

I, and people like me, visit your home almost every day and you all hardly notice. We, or as you’ll come to call us, “The Gazers,” know your most intimate details. We know everything about you. When you are home, when you are not, who you are having an affair with, when you are on your rag, how many children you have, which rooms they stay in, how often you remember to lock your backyard gates, what type of medicine you take, what you like to eat and drink, who you owe money to, what type of animals you have, etc. Some of you have bought us Christmas presents, baked us pies, and even allowed us into your homes and into your lives. You’ve done all of this without realizing that we, “The Gazers” are the reason you can’t find your mother’s pearls; had your car stolen; lost your beloved pet; found your father dead or your mother raped; or your sibling kidnapped and…well...you get what I am saying.

We, the Gazers, are at your service: garbage men, gas and electric meter men, grass cutters, etc. I was your mailman.

The Gazers communicate just like you do. We email, post on Reddit and 4chan, etc. We have just been so successful hiding in public that the transfer of information, transfer of the most fantastic “details,” has never been simpler. The most unsuspecting phrases that you find in short stories like these, or on message boards, often mean the most sinister and titillating things to a Gazer. “Going to the store,” “she wore a short red dress,” “it’s time to put the baby down for a nap,” “having roast for dinner,” “finally taking the kids out for ice cream,” all mean much different things to me and my kind than they normally would to you.

We can identify ourselves by the nicknames we have for our…specialties. If you enjoyed a little B and E or a little stalking while you stole, you were “thrifty.” Enjoyed a more professional approach by selling off the information you’ve collected to interested buyers? Then you sold “Avon.” Kidnap women, children, and/or pets? Then you were a “tooth fairy.” As for me and people like me, they called us “Picasso.”

Funny thing is none of us ever saw our marks until the day the deed was done. That is what makes the system work. If five people in the last year come up butchered in my neighborhood or on my mail route, I’m not going to be in business long like I was for the last 40 years. No, you see, our power came from the information we all collected, and the better notes I took the more information was shared back with me. The better the information, the better the “pay,” whether it be monetarily or a “fun fact” about my next victim. It was always easy to find “garage” or “estate” sales online to sell and collect information. Information was currency and I was a rich, rich man.

Anyway, I’m not writing this to brag or relive my exploits. My hope is that by sharing this information, maybe I’ll save enough lives; spare enough heartache and despair to get some sort of reprieve in the next life. A kind of ridiculous thought now that I’m thinking back to all that I’ve done.

Let me leave you all with one piece of advice. Next time you see a service worker near your home, smile at him or her. No normal person is going to be in a good enough spirit to smile after walking in the hot sun, picking up 30 lbs of your shit for 6 straight hours. If that person smirks back at you, congratulations, you’ve just grinned at a Gazer.

But if the Gazer smiles wide…well…you may have just welcomed a Tooth Fairy or, an equally horrifying proposition, a Picasso into your home.

The poor mother and her daughter are sobbing now. Slobbering may be a better word with all of the fluids flying out of their eyes, nose and mouth. I can’t help but stare at the mother. This woman’s pain is the real deal. It’s not physical pain like losing a limb unexpectedly. No, it is more profound than that; more metaphysical. I’m watching a part of her soul being detached, stolen away from her. She feels it and I can see it…her dimming. I could always see the dimming.

It is why I always start with the ones that have nice haircuts. Sure, some people get the hair cut out of vanity. But most do it because they care. It is hard not to pamper and nurture the things you love. Over the years, I’ve found these are the easiest to target. Each day I come to work and get paid for doing what I love. I look at my chart, see who is in the 2nd and 3rd night of their stay and make my order list. I enjoy this…making my kill list. It’s rare you get to fantasize, no prophesize, about witnessing a dimming before it happens.

This woman is crying about #2 on my list. Alas, she was here at the moment we opened, but I always come to work an hour early. And by the time the doors open to the public, I’ve already put down my 6th cherished family pet of the day. This poor woman’s timing is tragic…and intoxicating. Unfortunately for her, I’ve been making another list for some time. After all, children are just like pets, aren’t they?