"A garbage truck!"

These were the first words spoken by nine-year-old Jimmy, right after he woke up that dreadful morning. As he climbed out of bed, he burst into a fit of silly laughter. He had been dreaming right up until the moment he woke, and although much of what he dreamed quickly became distorted or outright forgotten, a single question posed in that dream still lingered clearly in his mind.

"What smells awful, has one horn, and flies?"

As he slipped yesterday's t-shirt over his head and threw on his britches, Jimmy continued to chuckle and repeat the set-up outloud to himself. In part because he was so proud of the joke he had dreamed, but he was also determined to deliver it just right the instant he saw his dad.

"Morning Mom," Jimmy said as he zoomed past the framed picture of his mother that hung on the living room wall. He never knew his mom. She died when he was only two. From then on, it had always been just he and his dad. As often as they could, they did everything together. On the rare occasions that his dad had to be away, he was looked after by the kind old widow next door, Mrs. Vogel. She was nice enough and all, but Jimmy thought she must've been about a hundred and twenty years old, and for this reason, she wasn't exactly a fun person to stay with.

Jimmy wasn't entirely surprised to find the kitchen empty, although a box of cereal, clean bowl, and spoon were left for him at the table. But there was no time for breakfast now; he had to find his dad. It wasn't hard to guess where he was either, and if Jimmy didn't already know, the rythmic clap of a hammer that came from the backyard was surely a dead giveaway. The young boy slipped his shoes on, hurriedly tied their laces, and darted through the kitchen door.

It was a bright and beautiful morning. The sun beamed proudly against a field of neverending blue; a gentle breeze caressed the flowers and whispered secret songs to the little butterflies that flitted here and there. Jimmy's dad was making the most of the gorgeous day. All week, he had been working on a treehouse for his son, and by his reckoning, it would be finished that afternoon. He stopped hammering for a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead when he saw his son come running up to him with the goofiest grin on his face. The young boy shouted to get his father's attention, "Dad! Dad!"

Before Jimmy could blurt out his dreamed-up joke, the gentle breeze transformed itself into a gust of wind. And that wind carried on its back a nauseating odor, something like what spoiled chicken boiled in vomit must smell like. The caustic stench burned Jimmy's lungs and made his stomach flop like a fish. Taken aback by the sudden rancidity, Jimmy stopped dead in his tracks. As he fought to keep his previous night's supper down, both he and his father became engulfed in some great shadow, as if cast by a huge passing cloud.

Next door, Mrs. Vogel was pouring herself a cup of hot tea when she heard Jimmy's scream. She looked out of her kitchen window but could not see beyond the privacy fence. Jimmy's shrill wail did not let up; in fact, it intensified.

Not yet one hundred and twenty years old, Mrs. Vogel rushed out the door, through her yard, around her neighbor's house, and into their backyard. At first, she saw only Jimmy standing there, screaming and bawling. His face, chest, and arms were all covered in blood. The thick, crimson mess ran down his cheeks and dripped from his chin. When Mrs. Vogel saw the power tools and lumber all laying around, she assumed some accident must have occurred while the boy's father was inside. But when she finally reached Jimmy, she too screamed at what she saw there.

At Jimmy's feet, lying prone in a pool of still warm blood was what was left of his father's body. His head, left shoulder, and left arm were completely torn away. Jimmy blubbered, screamed, trembled, and was very near to the point of hyperventilating when Mrs. Vogel scooped him up in both of her arms, held him close, and turned away from the gruesome sight.

A thousand questions flooded her mind at once, yet somehow she managed to articulate a few of the most important ones. "Jimmy, are you alright? Oh, you poor dear! Are you alright? Are you hurt? What happened? What did this?"

Jimmy looked up at her with red puffy eyes, a blood-splattered face, and a runny nose. Only a few minutes prior, his mind was filled with thoughts of funny dreams, silly jokes, and other nonsense. Now, those thoughts could not have been further removed from his mind. He was still sobbing so hard that he could hardly speak. "I . . . don't . . . know," he managed to say at last. It was true. He didn't have any idea.

Even though he saw the vile creature swoop down from above and kill his father with a single terrible bite, then vanish back into the sky, he hadn't an inkling of what the thing was. He had never seen, nor had he even heard of anything like what he saw that morning. But maybe, just maybe, in her many years of life, Mrs. Vogel would know what the creature was that, in the blinking of an eye, made him an orphan. With a quivering voice, he asked her, "What smells awful, has one horn, and flies?"

In the fog of Gallow's Hill, you can hear footsteps followed by the light from a swaying lantern. No one knows when it started appearing, but the locals of Brindlewood, where Gallow's Hill passed through, knew it could take away as much as it could give.

It started in 1985 when Nathan Scott stepped foot into the fog.

Once inside, he never returned, and no one had seen him since.

Yet, out of the fog walked Clara Austen. a little girl who had gone missing three years prior. Her family was ecstatic that she had returned, but when they asked her where she had been, Clara told them that a creature with a lantern had led her through the fog, walking endlessly to nowhere.

So people would enter and appear out of thin air, exiting the fog, but what about the creature with a lantern?

When asked to describe the creature, she furrowed her brows and shook her head, not remembering any details. Morgan Keller, a journalist accompanied by her cameraman Dani Jones, came to Brindlewood to record a story about the fog of Gallow's Hill.

Morgan got an interview with Clara, who asked her about the fog.

"So, Clara, can you tell us what the fog was like?"

The young girl put her book down and stared at Morgan and Dani.

"What was it like?"

Morgan nodded, her pen and paper ready. Dani is behind her recording.

"Well.." Clara paused, choosing her words carefully. "It was chilly and eerie."

"Was there anyone else there with you?"

Clara nodded. "Many."

So, many people were there with her, yet people would appear from nowhere and exit out of the fog as well.

"Why did this creature take people away?"

The young girl shrugged, opening up her book again.

"Can you describe the creature to us?"

Clara stiffened. "I'm not supposed to."

Morgan nodded and looked at Dani over her shoulder, who stopped recording. They would have to wait until nighttime, when the fog rolled in, to find out for themselves.

"Thank you, Clara."

The journalist and cameraman gave each other a look of knowing before leaving the Austen household.

"What's the plan?" Dani asked.

"We wait till nighttime and record the fog," Morgan replied.

If they were to record the fog, who would be entering it?

The cameraman felt he would be the one doing it since his co-worker wasn't really one for doing the grit work of any type of case they were sent to investigate before the detectives got involved.

Dani set up a camera that night and carried a small handheld one.

"Is everything ready?" Morgan asked, checking her makeup in a compact.

"Yeah, I've set up the camera, and it's set to turn on automatically. I've got this one right here to take with me along with my messenger bag." the cameraman motioned to his hand and side.

The reporter snorted, putting her compact away. "Do you really think that is necessary? It's not like you're going to be trapped. It's just fog."

"If it's just fog, why don't you walk into it?" Dani muttered.

"Did you say something?" Morgan asked, twirling a brown curl around her finger.

The cameraman sighed as he found a place to sit. When night arrived, the fog slowly rolled in. It was pale and denser than mist clinging to the ground and trees like ghostly tendrils. The atmosphere turned hauntingly, still muffling every sound, making it feel otherwordly.

The reporter straightened her clothes as the timer went off for the recording to start, and she began her introduction. "I'm Morgan Keller, and I'm here with Dani Jones." she smiled into the camera lens and motioned to the area around her.

"We're here at Brindlewood on the infamous Gallow's Hill to see if the rumors are true. I'll give you commentary from the outside as Dani walks through the fog to see if he can spot the creature with the lantern."

"Dani, are you ready?"

The cameraman nodded and exhaled before turning his handheld camera on and walking forward. He wondered who would exit after he was inside.

Dani moved his camera around, looking for a light, if any, to appear. "Hey Morgan, I don't think that—" he paused, standing still as a swaying lantern in the distance began coming his way.

That must be the creature with the lantern. Dani kept moving forward until he came face to face with what Clara Austen couldn't muster the words to describe. They were tall, dressed in tattered and ripped robes with the hood covering their face. When he tried shining the light of the handheld camera towards its face, there was nothing but pitch darkness.

"What the hell?" the cameraman muttered, stepping back.

Morgan impatiently tapped her foot and looked at her watch outside the fog. What was taking so long?

"If you're trying to prank me, Dani, this isn't funny," the reporter said.

She squinted, seeing a figure walking towards her out of the fog.

"Dani?" Morgan said softly, but as the figure got closer, she could tell it wasn't him.

It turned out to be a man dressed in neon-colored clothing who stepped out, his eyes looking frantically around. As if something would reach out and grab him.

"Nathan Scott?" Morgan asked, slowly stepping forward.

He nodded, looking over his shoulder as the fog began to turn into a thin mist. Dani's handheld camera, which he had taken onto the fog with him, lay behind Nathan as the fog thinned.

The reporter knelt down, picked up the camera, and turned it on to examine the saved footage. It began with Dani walking into the fog, panning the camera around, showing nothing until a swaying light came into view.

He cursed, and as the creature approached, he tried to capture its face, but it was pitch black. The creature raised the lantern and motioned for Dani to move behind them. He stepped back when Nathan Scott walked out and passed him as if he wasn't there.

The cameraman turned around, recording Nathan Scott exiting the fog.

A skeletal hand placed itself on his shoulder, and he dropped the handheld camera. The footage went static and then to black.

Trembling, Morgan stood, turning it off. She looked at the man dressed in neon and asked, "What happened while you were in the fog?".

Nathan opened his mouth to find the words before replying, "It was like I was walking endlessly. There were others, too. Some looked like they had been in the fog for years."

He paused before speaking again, wringing his hands together. "The others looked like walking skeletons."

Morgan knew it would be best to get him to the local clinic. As the doctor talked to the reporter, he was astonished by Nathan's health. Being gone for three years, he wasn't dehydrated or malnourished, as if something was keeping him alive while in the fog.

Morgan turned in her report along with the footage left behind by Dani.

Her boss was initially skeptical about the evidence she and Dani had gathered, especially since the cameraman himself was not present.

However, after watching the footage, he had no choice but to believe her.

Somewhere out there, Dani was walking behind the creature, the lantern swaying back and forth, its light shining and leading the way. He was waiting for his chance to exit the fog.

I woke up with my head hurting like hell , Must be due to the damage I took while fighting Dave

I felt cool breeze on my head , I looked up and saw that my car that used to have a roof no longer has one.

"Woke up?" A voice said

I got up and saw that the man who was driving spoke to me.

"I think you guys already know enough about me , So I do not need to introduce myself." He said.

Of course, The only man who managed to wield the power of an unnatural without handing over control. There's no way we wouldn't know about him.

"Try anything funny and it's not going to end up well for you" he said , in a more serious tone.

"Where are we going?" I asked

"To a safe place." He replied

"What do you plan to do with me?" I asked

"Nothing much , Just ask you about stuff. Actually let's start right now , Tell me about UNF" He said.

I shut up , There's no way I'm leaking anything to him. He's an enemy who's working against us afterall.

After a few seconds of silence he spoke again

"Tough nut to crack huh, How about you tell me why you joined UNF?"

I didn't utter a word yet again.

"Why would an academically smart student with a bright future ahead associate with lunatics who worship those weird murdering creatures?" He asked

"Unnaturals are the future. 'Academically smart' and 'bright future' mean nothing in the world they'll create." I replied.

"I highly doubt that" He replied.

"Your investigator skills are useless in these matters. The only reason you're alive is because one of those 'weird murdering creatures' is your hand , Quite an hypocrite aren't you?" I replied.

I suddenly flung into the seat in front of me after the car suddenly stopped.

"Hey! Don't stop the car so suddenly!" I yelled at him.

His gaze was fixed on the road , as if he was looking at something. So I looked towards the road.

There was a man standing there , He didn't seem particularly threatening or anything. But something about his presence was offputting.

"I SURVIVED THE BLACK LETTER" He yelled.

After hearing that , Tracey left the driving seat and went towards the man. They both started talking to each other , Their conversation was inaudible to me.

Suddenly a phone rang , not mine. Seemed like Tracey left his phone , The call was someone called Daniela. I picked up.

"Hello?" I said

"Who's this?" A female voice replied.

"I'm Britney" I replied.

"Where's Tracey?" The voice asked.

"He's talking to some guy who apparently survived the black letter." I replied.

"No no no. YOU MUST WARN HIM , THATS NOT-"

Suddenly the car went backwards and I accidentally hung up the call.

When I looked forward , Tracey had gotten smashed into the windshield of the car. The man standing in front with his leg up in the air , Smiling towards us.

I thought it was harmless at first. Just a little phase. Everyone gets into weird stuff online—especially my husband, Andrew. He had always been a deep-dive kind of guy, the type to research conspiracy theories with the same passion he had for surfing or fishing. So when he stumbled upon something about “reptilians” lurking among us, I just rolled my eyes and laughed it off.

But it got bad. Fast.

He started staying up all night, going through endless forums, watching videos with grainy footage and people spouting nonsense. Then he started looking at me differently. His smile grew strained, his glances paranoid. He’d ask weird questions, like what my favorite color was as a child, what animals I liked, if I’d ever had strange dreams about the desert. He kept telling me he was “seeing signs” everywhere.

One night, he whispered in bed, “You know, Roxie, I always thought your eyes looked a little… cold.” I tried to brush it off, but the way he looked at me—like he was seeing something alien—it left a chill.

Then, a couple of weeks later, I woke up to find him and the kids gone.

I searched everywhere. Called everyone I knew. Then I found his laptop, still open on the kitchen table. I guessed his password, typing in "desert dreams," remembering his odd question. The screen unlocked instantly. The things he’d written… twisted thoughts about “purging” our family, about “protecting” the world from us. He ranted about “lizard DNA,” that I’d “infected” our daughter Emma and our son Henry with it. I couldn’t breathe. My hands shook so badly I almost dropped the laptop. He’d really, truly believed that I—and our innocent, beautiful babies—were monsters.

I called the police, barely able to form words.

They found him a couple of days later, just across the border, holed up in some abandoned ranch in Mexico. He was raving when they got to him, talking about “doing the world a favor” and stopping us “before it was too late.” But by the time they got there… God, he’d already done it.

My sweet, two-year-old Emma. She had this laugh, this beautiful, pure laugh that could make anyone smile. And Henry, my ten-month-old boy, with his big eyes and chubby hands, always grabbing at me, wanting to be held. Andrew… he used a speargun. A fucking speargun! He’d said he had to rid the world of the “Serpent Queen’s spawn.”

I had to see his confession on video. The way he said it, like it was something noble, righteous. He looked right at the camera, unblinking, hollow, and cold. I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again, knowing that I’d loved a man who’d done this.

Now, it’s just silence. A silence that fills every corner of my home, where toys still lie scattered, where tiny clothes still hang in their closet, waiting for children who will never come back. The world went on after that day, but I feel like I’m just… frozen.

Beginning • Previous

On one of his scavenging journeys, Louis Kelping and his small crew of eight arrived with a bulging sack of relics from the lost world. He always presented his findings first to Captain Francis and his officers who would sift through the haul, deciding what would be valuable for the ship and how the rest might be distributed. Wires, copper, and gears were prized most. Any mechanics were stripped down, reassembled, each piece finding new life on the vessel.

After the items had been sorted and distributed across the ship, Louis gathered what remained and carried them to his suite. He laid them out on the table, and Joe, Anne, and Sam leaned in, faces lit with excitement, fingers ready to explore.

Shiny stones, small plastic figures, and fragments of aluminum scattered the tabletop, but one piece captured their attention above all—a sand timer. Joe and Sam, unable to resist, both reached for it at the same moment, each racing to be the first to hold it.

Joe, being the eldest and the fastest, grabbed it first, lifting it with a triumphant grin and wagging it teasingly before little Sam. Sam’s jaw tightened, his eyes squeezed shut, holding back tears that threatened to spill. I nuzzled against his leg to comfort him. Their parents chided Joe, telling him to share the sand timer with his brother. After a moment’s pause, he suggested a race—up on the deck, from one end of the ship to the other—before the sand ran out.

I ran with them. We raced in wide loops from one end of the ship to the other. The timer was slipping away, and I ran harder, faster. I ran as if everything depended on that last grain of sand.

XXXXX

I could still see the sand timer, each grain slipping away like a final breath before my eyes. The door between the material and ethereal worlds was closing, the portal sealing, while the lifeline tethered to my body grew ever thinner, weakening, drifting beyond my grasp.

We sprinted from Big Yard, relieved to see no sign of the Warden patrolling the area, then crossed the swaying rope bridge.

“Hurry up!” I stopped, glancing back to find Lee lagging several yards behind. Rusty and Marlow—the middle Wise Keeper—clung firmly to his back, while Flynn sat ahead, one hand gripping the strap of an oversized dark green sack that matched him in size, the other hand buried in Lee’s fur for balance.

"I’m running as fast as I can!” Lee gasped, his tongue lolling, flinging flecks of saliva at the rats. “But it's almost impossible to keep up with you!”

Sea Green stretched ahead, its rolling hills lush with green grass and vibrant trees basking in sunlight. Splashes of wildflowers painted the landscape in colors almost unreal. The stretch of green land looked almost too perfect. I imagined this was the world as it had been, before the Great Wrath. How the world once looked. But the closer you got, the more you noticed that it was only a replica of the lost paradise. A mere imitation made out of plastic, plexiglass, latex, and nylon.

Little Eden wasn’t home to all cats. Some, unwilling to trade garden patrols for a roof and scraps, wandered to Sea Green, where existence was easier… or as easy as life allowed in Floating City. The cats of Sea Green roamed freely, sprawling and tumbling across the artificial grass. Meanwhile, dogs raced and barked with delight, sniffing trails and marking bushes or flower beds as they pleased. Here and there, human settlements dotted the landscape: dome-shaped houses of stacked rubber tires and recycled glass, glinting like jewels under the sun.

A piercing screech pulled us toward one of the domes. We slipped through the gap in the dark green tarp that served as a door. Inside, we found the wraith-Page, back arched and hissing, eyes locked on Alan with a look of pure malice.

It launched itself off the long table, and Alan screamed as it clawed its way up her wounded leg. She clutched its neck, desperate to tear it off, but it clung to her, one paw reaching for her pocket. Stumbling back, she tripped and crashed into the wall. The black stones tumbled from her pocket onto the floor. In an instant, the imposter Page leapt from her leg toward the stones, but before it could reach them, Gunther seized it by the scruff of its neck.

“What’s gotten into you, Page?” he demanded, his eyes wide with alarm, as the creature hissed and yowled, swiping at him with dagger-like claws.

He rushed to the small cage on the table, wrenched the door open, and forced the creature inside. Then he slammed the door shut and locked it. Enraged, the imposter thrashed about, flinging itself against the cage walls, hissing and shrieking.

After a moment, the creature quieted, though its sides still heaved with residual fury. Alan threw a blanket over the cage, and, with a final, defeated huff, the creature fell silent. She picked up the two black stones from where they had fallen and placed them on the far end of the long table, away from the cage.

We crept silently to a space behind a shelf stacked with jars, vials, and pots filled with powders and liquids in every color. The rats slid off Lee’s back: Flynn dropped down to the floor with a soft thud, his fall cushioned by the sack he carried. Rusty followed close behind, and finally, Wise Keeper Marlow joined them.

“What's the plan? What are we going to do?” Lee whispered, struggling to contain his excited voice.

“We need the wraith to swallow this,” Marlow replied, reaching into Flynn's sack and pulling out a thick, dark-brown hairball.

“What exactly is that?”

“This,” Marlow said, brandishing the dense hairball, “is the Soul Cleanser. It’s made from cat hairs fermented in seawater for a year, with sacred liquids from the Wise Keepers—”

I pulled a face. “Oh, wonderful, that sounds appetizing!”

“—and then dried in the sun and blessed by the leader of the Wise Keepers.”

“Who would that be?” Lee asked, curious.

“Why, me, of course!” Marlow answered, looking slightly affronted.

“How are you going to get the wraith to swallow that nasty, stinking hairball?”

“Soul Cleanser!” corrected the Wise Keeper.

“It won’t be easy,” Flynn said, pulling a few thick cords from the sack, each one as long as three cat tails, and knotting them into lassos. “Rusty and I will need to catch the wraith and hold him down, while His Wiseness gets him to swallow the Soul Cleanser. Once he does, the wraith will be forced out of Page's body—that’s why it’s called a ‘Soul Cleanser’—and then you can re-enter your own body.”

“And I’ll chop the wraith’s head off with this!” Rusty announced, brandishing a long sword fashioned from a razor blade. “It’s been blessed by all seven Wise Keepers with their sacred liquids.”

“Do I even want to know what those liquids are?” I asked, uneasy.

Flynn grinned slyly. “That’s a secret. And believe me… you're better off in the dark about it.”

“Quiet, everyone!” Marlow whispered, raising a hand and a finger to his lips to signal us to fall silent.

Just then, Dr. Starkey, the Sea Green veterinarian, walked in from another room, carrying Ziggy in her arms, his shoulder and legs swathed in bandages. Her wild curly gray hair bounced as she carried him over to a corner and gently lowered him into a basket, where he slumped, too drowsy to move, against the soft cushions.

“He had a nasty wound on his shoulder,” she said, stroking his head lightly. “He’ll be alright, though. I gave him something to help him relax. The burns on his legs should heal within a few weeks. Of course, with proper care–”

She paused suddenly, blinking in surprise. After a quick adjustment of her crooked glasses, she looked up at Alan's serious face. “What’s the matter?”

“There's something wrong with Page,” said Alan, her eyebrows furrowed with worry.

Dr. Starkey's eyes fell on the blanket-covered cage. She cautiously approached it and lifted the edge of the blanket, glancing inside. But she flinched back when the creature hissed and lashed out, a sharp claw scraping against the metal bars. Wordlessly, she lowered the blanket back over the cage, a troubled look crossing her face.

“He’s never acted this way before,” said Gunther.

I floated up onto the table, watching the vet closely, sensing she was about to deliver unwelcome news.

“He could be in shock, a panic reaction to today's events,” she began, then hesitated. “But…”

Alan swallowed hard. “But what?”

The vet’s gaze darkened as she glanced between them. “There's a chance he could be… infected.”

“Infected with what?” Alan and Gunther echoed in unison.

“I’ve been finding animals, mainly rats, infected with a strange parasite lately,” Dr. Starkey explained. “Just a few weeks ago, I came across a dead rat on the street with tendrils pushing out from its mouth. I brought it back to the lab, dissected it, and inside was this gelatinous creature… something that looked like a jellyfish.”

“So, you found a dead rat with a jellyfish in it,” said Gunther, bluntly.

“But it wasn’t a jellyfish. I don't know what it was. Anyway, whatever it was, it had infiltrated the rat’s organs and nerves completely.”

“What makes you think Page is infected with this jellyfish parasite?”

No! It's not the blob. It's a wraith! I wanted to tell them.

“Because the other day, I saw another cat showing the same behavior as Page. I was doing a routine checkup on the cats in Little Eden when one of them caught my attention. He’d become unusually aggressive, slashing at the other cats without cause or provocation. And it wasn’t just his behavior. He’d grown much bigger, too, as if something was transforming him.”

“What now?” Gunther snapped, scowling. “Are we just going to stand here and watch that thing eat Page from the inside? Are we going to let him die?”

“I was sure that the apothecary had something that could've helped him,” said Dr. Starkey, “but that shop is, obviously, gone now. So, there's no magic pill that can cure him. We no longer have many of the medicines that we once had in the old world.”

Alan frowned. Her face tightened as she looked at the vet. “Then how will you remove the parasite? Can it be done without killing him?”

I glanced anxiously at the vet as her tone grew grave. “The only other option would be to surgically remove the parasite.”

As soon as those words were said, the world seemed to fall around me. She was going to cut me open!

I looked frantically at Alan and Gunther. Tell her no! Don't let her cut me up! It'll kill me, and something else will come out beyond your control. Please hear me!

Although his rugged appearance, a buff frame and thick beard, made most people find him intimidating, Gunther was, at heart, a gentle soul. And now, his tough exterior cracked; his expression crumbled, and his eyes filled with tears.

Alan nodded. “Alright,” she said firmly, though there was just a hint of apprehensiveness. “Whatever it takes to save him.”

It was too much for Gunther. He left the dome for a lone walk with his own thoughts. Meanwhile, as Dr. Starkey and Alan grappled with the imposter Page, struggling to pull him from the cage, I flew down and floated back to Lee and the rats who'd been intensely watching the entire scene.

“You have to do something now!” I shouted.

Lee didn't hesitate. With an excited bark, he swiped his paw across the shelf, knocking bottles and jars to the floor with a loud crash. Glass shattered as he and the rats toppled the entire shelf, sending it crashing down.

Dr. Starkey whipped around, eyes wide, mouth agape in shock and confusion.

“Oh, no! No!” she screamed.

She looked frantically left and right, trying to track Lee as he raced around the room, running in circles and knocking over shelves, vases, and chairs.

“There he is!” Alan exclaimed, spotting the white-and-brown blur zipping from one corner to the next. She quickly shoved the imposter Page back into the cage, then joined the vet in catching the dog.

But the cage door wasn’t locked. It creaked open, and the creature stepped out. My breath caught painfully in my throat, leaving me paralyzed, gripped by terror.

I couldn't recognize myself anymore. The wraith possessing my body had twisted me beyond recognition. My reddish-brown fur, once as welcoming as a hearth’s glow, was now dull, slick with grime. My almond-shaped eyes, which once gleamed with flecks of gold, had become deep black voids. Soulless, endless darkness.

The creature leapt from the table, landing heavily on the floor. Flynn spun the lasso with a fierce focus, his eyes locked on the imposter Page. With a swift throw, he looped the lasso over its neck, then dashed to its side, using the cord to hoist himself onto its back. It reared and bucked again, arching its back, but soon its energy waned, and it collapsed onto its side in exhaustion.

Marlow rushed forward and tossed the Soul Cleanser into its open mouth. Rusty then looped a second lasso around its jaws, pulling tight to keep its mouth closed, forcing the creature to swallow the hairball while Flynn eased his lasso’s grip.

Then, something started churning violently within the creature. I could see a frantic movement shifting under its skin. The imposter Page rose shakily, its limbs spasming. Flynn leapt off its back and scrambled out of its path. Its head jerked back, mouth yawning wide in a violent gag, as something clawed its way up its throat. With a sickening, wet splat, the oily wraith finally burst from its mouth, slithering onto the floor like an eel. My body collapsed onto the floor, now an empty vessel.

“Page, go! Now!” Flynn’s shouts cut through the madness—shelves toppling, glass shattering, the wraith’s shrill screeches, Lee’s frantic barking, and Alan and Dr. Starkey’s desperate screams.

The sand timer reappeared before me. Its grains were pouring through the narrow neck, slipping away like the moments of my life. I broke into a sprint, the sound of the shouts and laughter of Joe and Sam ringing in my ears, their footsteps gaining ground, just as I remembered them running across the ship’s deck.

XXXXX

“Ha! I won!” Joe exclaimed triumphantly, crossing the finish line they'd marked with forest green chalk, while Anne stood nearby as the judge—though I could tell her mind was elsewhere, her gaze lost in the distant stretch of blue water.

“No, it was Page who won,” Sam panted, pausing to catch his breath against the rail.

Joe stuck out his tongue. “Page’s a cat. That doesn’t count.”

Sam turned to Anne. “You’re the judge! Tell us who won.”

Anne shot them both an exasperated glance. “I say no one won! Now, will you both shut up about this stupid race?”

“You weren’t even watching! You don’t know who won,” Sam snapped.

Joe marched over to the sand timer. He picked it up, and grinning, waved it in the air. “I guess we’ll have to race again!”

I spun around, tail high, and meowed in pure delight. Before the sand timer even settled on the floor, flipped by Joe’s hand, I was already pacing around the deck, my paws, light and quick like lightning.

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Suddenly, I was airborne, soaring through the air before plunging back into my own body. Light seared my eyes as I struggled to open them, and a sharp breath filled my lungs as I gasped for air. I was alive again, as though I'd been reborn.

Evelyn watched as the sun slowly went down from the window, waiting for the cover of night to arrive so they could sneak back into Gigist's lair, she hoped the cover of night would give them an advantage. "Hopefully, all the training we did pays off in this fight," Blyke said coming up behind her, I think it will even though we had to learn everything in a short time, it should help us in the long run," Evelyn said convinced. "Alright everyone gather around, you all remember the plan and destroy that substance no matter what" The Man said sternly but softly, What happens if Gigist himself shows up to counter us? Cleo asked, If he shows his face I will deal with him, The Man said Angrily. Do you all have your Mechs and weapons? The Man asked, as the four friends held up both, he nodded his head in approval, Alright then let's get moving, I still want you guys to have a bit of light so to not active your Mechs until we get to the other side, they opened the door and headed to the boat to cross the river. Everyone got off easily, The boat ride was normal now's going to be the hard part, I pray we succeed by the grace of the Gods, Thought Evelyn, So how do we move forward now? Noah asked, Evelyn closed her eyes and held out her hand but sensed nothing, The coast is clear I don't feel any movement or my sixth sense isn't going off unlike last time, Evelyn said.

"They might not know we are on this side, which means we could still have the element of surprise," Cleo said Hopefully, As they moved forward with the Man guiding this time and the fading light in the sky made the path visible to them helped a lot. Evelyn felt the barrier once more once they got close, Alright you all suit up I don't want to take any chances, The Man said seriously, Just like last time they all put the adapters to their chest and pressed it and were covered by Mech armor and took out their weapons as well. The Man opened another gateway and pulled out a six-foot sword with light swirling energy around it, Evelyn recognized it as the same one as in the vision, he looked at her and nodded and she knew what to do as she reached out to touch it she was SUDDENLY PULLED in to it. The others grasped loudly while The Man said "Stealth is no longer an option, I have to break it with force" as he held the sword up and slashed through the barrier, with it broken they all rushed in to find multiple eyes of locus creatures staring at them, Alright being a distraction won't work anymore just find Evelyn and get to that substance when I break through them, as the others nodded. As the locus-like creatures charged at them, The three took out their weapons but it wasn't needed for The Man stepped forward and slashed the air with the sword when it hit them they turned to dust quickly, and the friends looked on in amazement but when Cleo looked up she shouted, Look! as the rest followed her gaze the creatures JUMPED down from the trees but the Man was too quick and slashed the air once more catching them again.

However, more eyes appeared and the boys took out their guns while Cleo took out her staff getting ready to join in on the fight "I'll deal with them, you have to stick with the plan" The Man said, How will we get past them? Noah asked, The Man's right hand glowed brightly once more, and he then waved it over them. After that motion, Cleo looked at the creatures and saw their attention was fully on the Man now like they were invisible to them, as if confirming she said, I made you three invisible to their eyes but hurry it only lasts for a minute, since i'm using it on so many people. The friends wasted no time running while he slashed the air once more and turned the ones in front of them to dust, running forward they saw and heard more locus creatures dashing and screeching towards the Man, they also felt a large gust of wind pass them while still running, that was strange, Cleo thought not thinking much of it, Noah stopped running and pointed to the center of the clearing, This is the cocoon we told you about, but it's smaller than last time, Noah said worried, noticing less creatures than before. So you're telling me that more of those things have BROKEN out of that, Blyke said shocked, Cleo spoke up "Sadly, we have to leave this alone for now, until we destroy the substance and find Evelyn," not knowing how much time was left, they rushed passed it knowing what they seek was just ahead when they ran and broke through the substance with the symbols around laid there before them. With their mission before their eyes, Noah took out a holy relic gifted by the Man, a crystal capable of destroying dark energy itself, he was about to drop it when they heard a Man's voice "I WOULDN'T DO THAT, AT LEAST IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR FRIEND AGAIN" limping with a cane with symbols from the other side of the tree-line.

Wait if he can see us that means the invisible spell must've faded, Cleo thought, You're with The Void aren't you, Do you know where she is? Blyke asked with anger, Yes I side with The Void, For your second question she's being taken to Lord Gigist as we speak, the Man answered truthfully. Cleo's attention was drawn behind the Man seeing a LARGE shadow, What is that, she said pointing to it, as Noah and Blyke followed their eyes widened, Ah I see you met my friend, you can come out now we'll just kill them anyway, after he said that the figure stepped into view, It had orange eyes, four arms and eight feet tall, Noah I assume that's one of the evolved ones you saw? Cleo asked, Yeah, he responded softly. "YOU WILL HAVE TO GET PASS US TO SEE YOUR FRIEND AGAIN IF SHE'S STILL BREATHING," It said with a slight mockery, Cleo noticed it was still standing a few feet behind him as if it was following his orders, in striking turn of events Blyke pressed down on his chest adapter twice his armor made him eight feet tall, he jumped over the substance and rushed at the creature. He jumped and kneed it in the chest, it stumbled while taking a few steps back, it grinned showing sharp pointed teeth, it threw a quick punch to his visor which he blocked with his arm sliding back a few feet. Blyke partly looked back to see the substance and walked around it, they were facing horizontally this time the creature rushed forward and jumped using its bottom two arms to attack, he managed to block the left yet the right punch hit sliding Blyke to the left near the trees.

I'll have to deal with this Man somehow, to help Noah complete our mission and save our world, Cleo thought, Hey what can you do I don't think you can fight because of your injury, taking your down will be easy, she said mockingly to him. He began chuckling, Judging too early is a bad sign I suggest you work on that if you survive this, He said to Cleo, as the symbols on his cane started to glow with dark shadow energy covering his whole body in seconds, when it finished he came out with strange body armor, almost like it was part metal and part organic at the same time. It looked like some hybrid or fusion of two suits in one, with spiky shoulder pads on both sides, the metal side had a visor while the organic side vaguely resembled a monster with no mouth and one eye for the Man to see, Both Noah and Cleo felt the danger even with their armor protecting them, Now let's see who armor is better crafted the Light side or Dark, he said joyful. He jumped over the substance as well and landed fifteen feet away from them, Now surrender or die your choice, The strange Man said with his voice now distorted and sounding inhuman, Cleo charged at him with her staff spinning it with both hands in the air, before jumping up and bringing it down, he caught it but as a counter she swung her foot forward into his chest, kicking him back some feet, Oh you've had some training at least this won't be boring, he said surprised. Dark energy was visibly coming off the armor now, as he took slow steps towards her, a dark energy beam shot out of his hand towards her she sidestepped it with a second to spare, he jumped up to punch her but she moved out of the way, the impact of the hit shook the ground, NOAH drop the crystal in the substance, we have to stop this" Cleo told Noah, don't worry we'll find you Evelyn I promise, Cleo thought.

Evelyn took in her surroundings and found herself around seven feet off the ground tied to strange vines in the trees within another clearing, at the center of the clearing she saw a familiar throne like the one in her vision, Gigist, she thought. But where am I the last thing I remember is getting DRAGGED from the other side of the barrier, she thought, she heard footsteps when they came into view Evelyn stopped and just stared, for Gigist and the pterodactyl creature stood a few feet from her, "what do you want with me" Evelyn said angrily. "You don't have to pretend with Lord Gigist, he knows you're scared I can smell it on you," the deep voice of the pterodactyl creature said. However, a quick look back silenced the abomination Gigist motioned it to leave them it bowed then walked away, I ASSUME MY WEAK BIG BROTHER TOLD YOU WHAT I AND THE OTHERS DID, it said Yeah, she answered, See how easy that was, it said, Evelyn felt something was off with this former Angel turned monster she didn't know if it was his calmness or the sinister aura coming off. Everything you say is betrayed by your aura, I can feel it's destructive might JUST underneath the surface, Evelyn said honestly, I knew there was something SPECIAL about you, a power that can turn the tides of the war in favor of the darkness, but it's not an external power rather an internal, Gigist said intriguingly. Evelyn knew she had to stall this creature's curiousness if only for a few moments to buy her some time, Can I ask you two questions? she asked, Gigist seemed to think for a moment before answering, Sure, he said nonchalantly, "Is the Void King, Karoh still aware within his statue like prison?" she asked, he eyes widen in surprise for a moment, I would like to think so he's powerful but I'm not sure, he answered truthfully.

Now for my second, "Who are the seven Void Royals, the children of King Karoh?" she asked, the Void Royals, consider this a small warning prey you NEVER meet one they are more ruthless than even the Ancients, Gigist responded. If he's warning me about encountering a Royal just how much of a lesser evil is he to them and the Ancients, Evelyn thought, she remembered her daggers that she had on her, before I forget I took your daggers as well couldn't risk you breaking out of the vines, He told Evelyn. You won't get away with this I want you to know that, she said trying to hide the fear in her voice, I've gotten away with many acts since before you were given life, this is no big issue even with my big brother holding off my creations, Gigist said chuckling. "Why are you so calm anyway?" Evelyn asked, There is no reason for me to stress or be in my feelings in this situation, for that will just lead me to defeat, Evelyn took in what he said and it made sense but to her, it came off as overconfident that they will lose and she will proof otherwise. I can tell you underestimated us and I think you will regret taking your brother as the only serious threat here, Evelyn said loudly, he began to chuckle once more, forgive me but I don't see humans on the light side as a huge threat at all it's laughable that any of you are trying to stop us, You say that but remember it was a human who SEALED the Void King away, Evelyn boasted. At that moment he stopped and looked like he thought about it, I guess that is true he was caught off guard and got sealed, Gigist said with a hint of anger, Evelyn hoped he was losing focus so the others could find her location, but a miracle happened like the Gods helping out, they both looked up to see a BEAM of light shooting up and hitting the barrier and a few seconds later broke open, at least our allies on the light side will be aware of what's happening here now, Evelyn thought.

A Few Minutes Earlier...

Hurry guys you may be our only hope to protect all of creation, for now at least, The Man thought, he sensed something coming fast, so he held his sword out and created a barrier in front of him a second later the figure crashed into it. The energy rebounded and the figure screamed as blue flame enveloped its arm, taking a few steps back it shook off the flames, and the locus creatures charged once more The Man slashed the air catching them. He noticed the figure that tried to attack him was a colorless humanoid butterfly with gray skin and wings made of dark energy, what kind of abomination has my brother created He thought, the creature looked at the Man and pointed more locus came into view and charged towards him while the butterfly jumps in the air and spread it's four wings out. The Man saw its wings glow slightly brighter he lifted his hand and the locus was lifted and crushed, with no more in sight his eyes locked on to the new threat, he dropped to one knee suddenly feeling the strength leaving, why is my power fading is it the wings, he thought. I must overcome it and push through for the fate of creation is on the line, The Man thought, "STAY DOWN OR THINGS WILL ONLY GET WORST FROM HERE" it softly said, he was shocked it could speak at all "Sorry that's not an option, I have to stop you for the innocents of this world" The Man responded.

He wondered how to get out of the wings glow until he looked and saw that the creature was flying around eight feet in the air but some of the trees were higher than it was, my power is fading but if I threw my sword at one of the curved branches it could work, he thought. Slowly standing up once more he threw his sword to one of the branches, it hit the branch and fell but the evolved creature dodged it the Man felt his strength return fast, the sword returned like a boomerang and he caught it, this evolved is still new so it might not have a full grasp on its power but I can use that weakness, The Man thought. He looked and held out his hand to the creature and brought it down, a second later a big gust of wind brought the creature crashing back down to the ground its body making a loud boom, he suddenly had a moment of clarity, the barrier if I destroy it our allies will know what's happening and offer aid, but I'll have to make to it fast, The Man readied himself for that moment. The dust started to clear as it slowly got back up and stared at the Man, it vanished then appeared six feet above and brought its fist down, the Man sidestepped it and countered by slashing at the shoulder, he slashed the mark but instead of blood a dark energy came out of the wound, it screeched loudly jumping back several feet then looked at the wound The Man noticed it slowly closing, so it has a healing factor as well, I'll have to do it now, he thought. He charged at it slashing the air with his sword again, it dodged by flying in the air once more than flew quickly towards the Man, he held out his hand and stopped the creature, he waved his hand and it flew back crashing into trees, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and moved his sword upward the light energy beamed forward and CRASHED into the barrier- breaking it, as he saw the opening getting bigger he knew it was only a matter of time.

The creature slowly stood and looked at the collapsing barrier, How does it feel knowing you're on borrowed time now and the forces of light are likely on their way as we speak, The Man said smugly, "I WONDER IF THAT LITTLE GIRL WILL BE SAFE FROM LORD GIGIST NOW" it spoke softly.The Man looked confused, What do you mean, He said masking the worry in his voice, Now that you revealed our location to the enemy who knows what my Lord will do to her, it said chuckling and moving a few steps forward, I have to find her before it's too late, he thought. The creature jumped towards him and raised it's fist upward preparing to flattened him, he brought his sword up than a barrier of light shielded him from the attack just in time, not a second later the attack landed hitting the barrier, it's arm lit up in large blue flame once again it jumped back but this The Man was gonna try something else. He powered up his sword with more light energy, The Man ran forward, jumped up, and spun then a slash of pure light from his sword rushed towards the creature, it was still waving it's arm trying to shake the flames off, the energy hit the creature in it's chest, it screamed as a large amount of dark energy came flowing out of the chest and fell on one knee breathing heavy. The Man noticed the wound wasn't healing like last time, why don't you just tell me where Evelyn and my brother are and make it easier on yourself, He said seriously, Even if I do by the time you arrive it will be too late, but the despair on your face will be worth seeing, it responded laughing, The Man pointed his sword and charged ready to finish off the monster but THREE locus came from behind it making him use telekinesis to stop them, but noticed the creature get up and fly back the way it came.

It looks like our help from above just alerted everyone on the side of light, if you want to run knows your chance, Cleo said with confidence, The Man chuckled, I never run from a fight child no matter who my opponent is, he said with the same distorted tone. I promise we WILL find her just drop the crystal into the substance and so we can STOP this for good, Cleo shouted again to Noah, he threw the crystal within the substance and saw it start to bubble and exploded letting out a HUGE shock wave that set all within range flying off their feet. As the three friends got back on their feet and regrouped with each other, We've destroyed the barrier protecting this space and the thing making this new legion of monsters you two are finished, Noah said joyfully, they both now stood, and looked at the friends huddled together, We may have lost our shield and The Void energy too make more creatures but we STILL have your friend, The Man said smugly. I WONDER WHAT MY LORD WILL DO TO HER, The creature chimed in next to him, The young adults just looked at them and knew they had to be stopped, looks like were winning for now but how do we stop the both of them, Cleo thought, she looked up at the trees and had an idea on how to stop the Man at least, she turned around to her friends and whispered "the Trees" to Noah and pointed up for Blyke they nodded their heads in agreement. As she charged towards the Man once more he shot another dark energy beam towards her which she sidestepped quickly, she brought out her staff and tried to strike at him but he caught it with one hand, she pushed a button and the staff retracted and in his confusion she punches his chest and the kinetic force sent him back around eight feet from her, right where I wanted, Cleo thought, Blyke charged at the creature before it could help, Noah held out his arm shot out kinetic energy shots from small barrels on it and blasted a huge trunk that fell on TOP of the Man.

Well, that's one problem down, Cleo thought, as she looked at her friend and the creature fighting and wondered if she should go giant and help that way, Cleo I think there's a way if we can't stop it we can hurt it, Noah told her. I'm not really following, she said truthfully, its eyes take away the sight and we have the upper hand but I'll need a clear shot for it to work, Noah said confidently, Blyke jumped and tried to punch it but it blocked using it's upper right arm then tried to grab him with its left arm but he jumped off, flip, and landed perfectly. You three NORMAL Humans cannot win against The Void, it said smugly, maybe not but with you I think we have a good chance, Cleo said loudly enough for it to hear, the creature turned its attention towards her, NOW! She shouted to Noah, once more kinetic energy shot out and ended up HITTING the thing in its right eye. It screamed in pain covering it but instead of blood coming out like they expected a large amount of dark energy escaped the wound, it took a few steps back and had trouble balancing because of the pain, Blyke ran forward and the creature still dazed didn't notice he jumped and knead its chest and the creature flew back crashing into a nearby tree. They heard footsteps and turned around only to the familiar face of The Man of Light to come into view looking surprised, I'm glad you all are still alive and here, he said thankfully, What happened I thought you were supposed to come much sooner? Noah questioned, I was until the butterfly-evolved creature tried to end me but I gravely injured it and I see you held your own against another one, he said proudly, Wait so none of us seen the pterodactyl-evolved creature yet. Noah asked, It must be the last of my brother's defense so let's go, The Man said.

What about those two is it safe to just leave them there? Blyke asked, I don't think they'll be getting up anytime soon so for now it's safe, The Man said, Ah you've also destroyed the substance good now we've got the upper hand in this, he added. Evelyn sensed Gigist's rage slowly rising above the surface but he kept it under control, Should I go and see the progress Lord, and report back to you? The pterodactyl monster asked, There would be no point more enemies are most likely on their way as we speak which means I'm on borrowed time as is, Gigist said sourly. All their heads turned to the butterfly creature rushing through the trees with dark energy flowing from a large wound in the chest and embers of blue flames on its arm, What happened to you to become like this, Brother? The pterodactyl creature asked walking up to it, I came into conflict with the being of light and figured I had the upper hand, may you heal me my Lord I promise not to fail again, it responded. Just this one time if you fail again do not expect mercy, Gigist said seriously, It slowly got up and bowed while he walked towards it and held out his hand for a purple-like flame to come out it when it came in contact with the wound it closed within seconds, Evelyn looked on in shock at what she just saw, Just how much power does this Former Angel truly have, she thought with fear slowly overtaking her. The Ancients will not be pleased by this but if I end my brother they will overlook what has happened here, Gigist said, Evelyn didn't know what it was but she felt FEAR within this former Angel when mentioning these Ancients but this was an opportunity she couldn't pass on for the fate of all may be at stake, Are you afraid of the Ancients because you speak as if you're below them? she asked loudly, all the creatures heads turned to face her, Foolish girl the Seven of them have respect for the Fallen Five which is why we have positions of power but we still answer to them but I've seen them at their worst and trust me you don't want to be on the end of that, Gigist said to Evelyn.

As the group continued forward the air pressure seemed to become colder to the point where they could feel it through the armor, we're close now whenever the air starts to become unnaturally cold like this The Voidspawn are most likely close, The Man said. Cleo noticed a clearing up ahead and pointed The Man nodded his head, Alright everyone be ready for anything, he whispered to the three, they came upon the clearing and saw a throne like the one Evelyn explained to them, Noah looked up and saw Evelyn hanging in the air wrapped around vines, Look guys it's Evelyn, Noah said silently. Where's your brother and the pterodactyl creature? Can you feel them? Noah asked the Man, No I can't but we should get her down before they come back, he told them, Blyke wasted no time running to her and cutting the vines off her while grabbing her gently so she didn't fall when he looked down at her she appeared to be sleep nothing more, oh thank goodness, he thought. He sat her body down in front of the others, Where are her daggers? Cleo asked, Blyke looked around and spotted them on the throne, I see them on the throne I'll get them and be back in a flash, he said calmly, before he even moved a wave of energy BLASTED him back into nearby trees breaking them as the others looked around and where once was nothing now saw three figures appear at the center of the clearing. I'm shocked you did not sense my presence big brother after everything we been through, Gigist said laughing, he used Evelyn as bait but why didn't he attack us when he had the chance, The Man thought, with no words Cleo and Noah pressed twice on their chest adapters and grew to eight feet, Blyke got up and rejoined everyone, you alright? Noah asked, Just a little damage is all, he responded, Be careful everyone Gigist has the power of illusions he can change one's perception in an instant, The Man warned, and with everyone nodding they charged forward.

The Man made the first move, slashing the air at Gigist which made contact and sent him sliding back some feet, Cleo and Noah teamed up on the pterodactyl creature with her jumping up and throwing a punch at its face which it stopped by using its arm as a shield it countered by using it's palm to push her off and sent her flying. This gave Noah enough time to charge up his armor's kinetic energy and shoot it to the creature hitting it in the face, it let out a roar of pain not being able to see he took this moment to rush and kick the thing in the chest than before the body hit the ground he sent another blast although smaller and less power it hit the mark and the thing went flying into the trees. He looked over to see Blyke getting dropped from a high height onto the ground, If I can just use the energy blast again I can bring it down but it needs time to recharge, Noah thought, Where's our problem? Cleo asked, Over there out cold I hope, he answered, Now he need to bring down the butterfly any ideas? Noah asked, she thought for a moment and nodded her head. Foolish boy it was a MISTAKE to go against me, it said looking down on Blyke, the wings on the backs spread out and started glowing, Blyke felt his energy slipping away even through his armor, why do I feel weak is it because of it's wings, he thought, a quick glance to the side he saw his friends preparing to try something at that moment he knew the thing's attention had to be focus on him, Is that the best you can do, he yelled mockingly. The creature started shaking at that and the wings started to glow even brighter Blyke fell to the ground unable to get up, Alright I hope this works, Cleo said, she threw the staff towards the creature hitting its side the thing screamed and looked down at the staff but the runes on the weapon began to glow and blue flame quickly spread across its body making it loss focus and crash into the ground she went up to it laying motionless and pulled the staff out.

Cleo and Noah went to help their friend lifting him to his feet, It drained my energy but I already feel it returning thanks to you guys, Blyke said thankfully, The group went to check on Evelyn seeing as she was slowing getting up from the ground, You're okay do you remember what Gigist did to you Evelyn, Blyke said worried. She shook her head, No I wish I could though, Evelyn said sourly, Don't worry about that now the important thing is your safe now, Cleo said warmly, Evelyn smiled at this getting up and looking around her eyes fell upon her daggers on the throne, We been trying to figure out how to get them for you as well, Noah said, She suddenly sensed something CHARGING from behind, Watch Out, she warned as the rest turned their hands to see a familiar creature. Blyke took out his gun and started shooting at the thing before it got closer to them some of the bullets hit the mark for their visor lit up everything more clearly, it jumped up, over and spun around then hit the ground facing them looking more crazed than it did, I WILL TEAR OUT YOUR FLESH FOR WHAT YOU DID TO ME AND MY BROTHERS, it yelled laughing in hysteria, Wait where's the other Man that was with you? Cleo asked, It tilted its head at this, I don't know honestly, it said. Evelyn didn't know if it was the mangled, disheveled fur or the MISSING right eye that made her freak out, without warning the creature rushed forward and punched Noah sending him crashing into nearby trees, it then turned to Blyke grabbing him with its two upper arms and throwing him into the air while Cleo tried to swing her staff but it caught her and with one punch sent her crashing into a tree. Blyke crashed into the ground leaving Evelyn the only one untouched, THE ONLY ONE LEFT YOU AREN'T EVEN WORTH MY TIME, it said in that high-pitched tone, Evelyn internally kicked herself for being weak at a moment of importance like this she suddenly got an idea but she needed to test it, Do you enjoy crushing beings that are weaker than you? She asked it loudly, it just looked at her with a blank stare, hopefully, it was the right move, Evelyn thought.

Evelyn felt this creature's wickedness and started to regret even asking but before it even answered it was PULLED away fast by a whip of light energy around its neck and thrown forward towards Gigist's direction by The Man. However, he saw his servant coming and outstretched his hand for the purple flame to shoot out and catch the monster but instead of lowering it, he threw his creation to the side and once more the flames moved past the Man like a living snake, he grabbed the butterfly servant this time and threw it near the four arms one like nothing, Go check on your other brother I need to see if he's still alive, he ordered, as the one-eyed monster slowly got up, bowed and went to check. Evelyn noticed everyone started to get up and rejoin her one by one, Should we help him? Noah asked everyone, they didn't answer unsure of what to do now, but they all felt the pressure around them as The Man revealed a glowing yellow circle over his head with wings appearing on his back supporting the same color, the four friends knew about this but to see it still amazed them. They noticed Gigist started to hover, his white cloth blowing with the wind, his horn started to glow, and Dark purple wings became VISIBLE to Evelyn and the rest, the purple flame returned even stronger than before but the new unexpected part was tears, glowing purple tears flowed down Gigist's face, Could he actually be feeling some form of regret or sadness, Evelyn thought. With no words further exchanged between the two powerful beings they clashed, Gigist making the first move by pounding his fist on the ground making the flame surround his brother, The Man flew high in the air and cast a beam of light down towards him, by using his wings he shielded his body from the attack, he threw his burning unnatural fire at him, The Man dodging each of them getting hit by a fake-out at the last second. He started to fall back down to earth but steadied himself and landed on his feet plunging the ground with his sword, erasing the flames and staring down Gigist, his horn grew brighter as he put his hands together, his flames now resembled arm gauntlets they both charged at the same time with Former Angel bringing his hand down and The Man countered with his sword creating a huge shockwave throughout the area that everyone else felt.

Gigist tried to bring his free hand down on him, The Man sent a beam of light to his eyes and blinded him, he roared and grabbed his eyes in pain taking a few steps back, I could injure him and make him retreat or capture him but first, The Man thought. Gigist took flight this time and started shooting flames at him but the Man was faster at dodging, as a counter he slashed the air in his direction which hit him but just winded him, The Man created a barrier around himself as he flew at a great speed, Gigist saw this and let his flames loose upon his brother The Man could feel it even though still protected but he knew now was the time. He opened a small hole and took his whip once more to use as a distraction, he extended the whip towards The Former Angel's eyes which distracted him long enough to STAB him in the chest, as he tried to remove the sword his cloth and chest was engulfed by blue flame causing him to fall back down to earth, I actually beat him this is a good day for the side of light, The Man thought. As he landed on the ground he looked at the remaining three creatures and charged his sword getting ready to finish them off but was HIT by his brother's flame he felt the fire begin to burn his wings, I have to stop this at once, he thought, his hands started to glow the same yellow and when he put them to his chest the flames were put out when he turned Gigist was standing without the sword and flames where the wound should have been. He still moving I thought that was enough to finish him off, Cleo said nervously, Did you think that would be enough to kill me, just think about it, would The Gods perish from something like that? Gigist asked mockingly, The friends already knew the answer but did not want to say it aloud, he laughed at their silence, I wish I had more time but I can hear and smell your allies starting to close in on the other side, so our time together is up, Gigist said sourly.

The friends saw Gigist's horn charge up once more, before runes began appearing on the ground beneath him, making a circle-like pattern. His hand held up high, a few seconds later, an evil looking tree sprouted from the earth, with dark red fruit hanging from it's limbs, engulfed within dark energy. Once the tree fully grew, at it's base a triangle-like doorway appeared, soon after the doorway became visible, when it opened, it brought two new disturbing creatures with it. The first to step through was a black Lycan wearing a large trench coat, muscular, pink claws, deep pink eyes, black silt-like pupils, a long pink stripe down it's forehead to it's snout, nine-feet tail a few feet shorter than Gigist himself, it greeted him by nodding it's head while The Former Angel returned the gesture, I would like to introduce you to my friend its or rather his name is, Dark Trojan Elder! A pleasure to meet you Enemies, Elder said to the four friends, Its voice was like Evelyn imagined it but distorted. The second creature was humanoid or at least top half, for the lower half was that of a serpent, it had black hair, orange eyes, sharp teeth, and a tail, What is your command Lord Gigist, The half woman, half snake said in a loud whisper voice, Grab the three new ones they are injured but they'll get the job done, he said calmly, as she moved with great speed to surround them and usher them through the Veil, What will you do about your brother, Elder said with an excited tone, Leave him and his new friends with this crushing defeat besides they know following us is a death sentence, Gigist said with satisfaction. The Man knew he was right if he followed them into The Void now it would be suicide he hated it but he had to let them go, Now let us go, Elder, he said to him, as they turned and walked into the Veil the tree disappearing completely, sinking back into the earth itself, The Man joined them with his halo and wings gone looking normal again, I'm glad you all survived and came out unharmed, The Man said thankfully.

We survived but I don't feel like we've won for some reason I don't know it's a strange feeling, Noah said sourly, You all were lucky that this army and the evolved creatures with still new born and getting a custom to what they could do, The Man said honestly, Wait! We forget about the Man that was on their side he must have gotten out of the branch by now, Cleo said nervously. The Man quickly his held out hand most likely trying to feel his presence, Unfortunately, Cleo is right I can no longer feel any life form he most likely escaped during the battle with Gigist, he said, They started hearing a helicopter a few miles in the distance, I assume that's our allies right there? Blyke asked, The Man nodded in turn. So now we either reveal ourselves to them or we stay with you? Cleo asked, That sounds about right unless you want them or me to erase your memory and return to your normal life, All four friends looked at each other and shook their heads, I'm ready to protect our world from these monsters that want to destroy it, Noah said, with everyone agreeing with him. Wait! What about my daggers, Evelyn said worried, The Man picked them up off the throne and gently floated and handed them to her than by a slash of his sword he destroyed where his brother once sat, The Man opened another gateway where all four stepped inside and he closed it behind them, Are you sure you all are ready for this you'll encounter beings, and worlds brand new to your eyes, The Man curiously. Well, my parents always said I needed to get out more but I had no idea how far I would go, Noah said jokingly, Everyone smiled at this, Hey, do you think it's over, or was that just the beginning? Cleo asked the Man, No, The Ancients will stop at nothing to achieve their goals no matter the price and I sense the Royals are starting to become desperate for their father's return and who knows what disaster they'll bring with them for an entire realm is at their disposal but I think all of them are in for a surprise, he said confidently, Now who's ready to come along, as they followed him into another world.

A frightened sigh escaped his lips as he climbed the basement stair for what would be his final time. A dry rattle had taken hold in his chest, and soon that dryness would take on a wet quality that meant a threshold had been crossed. Once, not long ago actually, he would have already called for the nearest doctor to come and inspect him, give him aid and succor. Only now, that didn't seem so important. Nothing seemed important.

After all, his wife was dead.

Even while sweating through his shirt, that thought made a mad shiver race up his spine, going from top to bottom and back again, like an elevator filled with shards of frozen glass. After catching his wind again, he put one foot in front of the other. Arthritis, along with decades of wear and tear that each human body should be so lucky to accumulate, screamed at his joints. The chest rattle took on a feeling of dampness, no longer sounding like a rattlesnake in the desert, but a bundle of wet leaves scraped across pavement. He didn't have much longer, and that meant that he had to get himself up this god-damned staircase and get to work. It was a fool's errand to come to the basement, but he had something he had to do.

After all, his wife was dead.

She passed last evening, and it was a mercy that she did so in the comfort of her own home, with him by her side. Her mind had been eaten away by the wasting disease she was afflicted with, and not only did she not remember him these days, but that she remembered herself in the slightest was laughable.

He continued to shift his weight forward, finally reaching the top of the stairs, carrying the boards he was looking for for far too long. Nothing had prepared him for the full weight of what had happened, and that had scrambled his mind quite a lot. When he pictured them passing, he thought they would be sleeping, cheek to cheek, and would simply slip away from the mortal realm. Give that coil a hell of a shuffle, but do it together, and in peace. Then a few days ago she started going so fast. One week, she was sitting in her chair amidst the brilliant shades of sunlight that she often took to in her parlor. The next, she was different, and couldn't be let out of the room, with no exception. He wondered now, scooting his way towards their downstairs bedroom (their bodies were much to old for stairs at this point, as his was displaying), what had really happened on her evening walk that day. For the life of him, he didn't know, and she never said. It would add a hell of a lot of peace of mind for what he was about to do.

After all, his wife WAS dead.

He opened the door and laid his eyes on her again, just to make sure his feeble old brain wasn't still playing a trick on him.

She lay there, eyes wide and glassy, staring at him. When he entered, she was blank and expressionless, but after he turned and started to hammer the boards into place on the door, he couldn't help but stealing a glance again. Now, she bore the lunatic grin of a person who, after starving all day, saw a waiter bringing their food, only to watch that server trip and scatter it on the floor. It was hungry, somehow, and the smile wasn't the only thing. It was her eyes, pupils spreading like too much ink in too little water, almost seeming to overshadow the iris entirely. They were eyes that coveted, that lusted, that desired not only to overeat, but absolutely gorge.

She was dead, but clearly no more.

He finished hammering the last nail, barely able to hold the hammer as he did so. The wet rattle was now sopping and soaked, and his heart beat in his chest like a cryptic jazz rhythm that couldn't keep time. With the last of his strength, he walked to her side table and grabbed the oil lamp, still burning brightly in the early evening. He sat at the end of the bed where her jaws, now gnashing and chomping for meat, wouldn't find him. He had been her husband, her best friend, the soul responsible for doing not only what made her happy, but sometimes what was best for her. He meant to put an underline under the last task.

“I love you” he said with lungs that couldn't sustain the strain anymore.

His heart, now losing all memory that it should beat entirely, reached out for her and found only blackness there now.

He threw the oil lamp to the floor with his remaining willpower, and put both of them out of their misery.

In Obedient Grove, silence isn’t just the lack of sound—it’s a way of life, a kind of ritual, almost. It lingers in the air, in the way our neighbors nod rather than greet, in the steady tolling of the clock tower. Evelyn and I, we’ve grown accustomed to it. After all, in a place like this, silence can be comforting. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve always thought.

These days, our quiet is occasionally softened by the sound of Timmy’s laughter, and, if I close my eyes, I can almost pretend everything is as it was. He doesn’t understand, not fully. To him, this is just a visit to Grandma and Grandpa’s, a long one, perhaps, but temporary. He talks about his mother and father as if they’re right down the road, as if any day now they’ll walk through the door. Evelyn and I haven’t found the strength to correct him, to tell him that he’s here with us for good. Instead, we let him keep his illusions, because a part of me wishes I could still believe it myself.

In the morning, I watched Evelyn braid his hair into cornrows, her hands moving carefully. I think about it now, of Evelyn smiling as she sends him off to school with a sandwich and a small treat, watching him skip down the driveway. I know she worries, lingering at the door until he’s out of sight, fearing that, like his parents, he might simply disappear if we don’t watch him close enough. Each night, I read him the same stories we used to read to our daughter, and he falls asleep with his little hand tucked into mine. He’s the last bit of her we have, and I don’t think either of us would survive losing him, too.

The whole town seems to sense it, our need for this fragile new normal. The neighbors nod from their porches but rarely speak, lawns are pristine, and at night, the streetlamps all flicker on in perfect unison, a soft, reliable glow against the dark. Obedient Grove cocoons us, as if trying to keep us safe in its quiet embrace.

There’s a peculiar stillness to this place, something deeper than grief, something unspoken. It presses in, as though the town is watching us, biding its time.

That first night was the first time in a long while that I felt uneasy in my own home. It’s difficult to explain; it sounds almost foolish as I write it down, but the silence here, the stillness—it was different. There was a weight to it, a quiet that pressed down like a presence, as if something else had settled into the house with us.

It started small, just faint noises—a creak on the stairs, the thud of something dropping in the attic, footsteps. Old houses have a way of making their own sounds, so Evelyn and I brushed it off as our imaginations running wild. Still, when I checked on Timmy, I found myself hesitating by his door, lingering just long enough to hear the soft, steady sound of his breathing. He was fast asleep, oblivious to the unease seeping through the walls.

But the noises didn’t stop. At one point, I could’ve sworn I heard someone—or something—whispering from the corner of the room, but when I looked, it was only shadows flickering, shifting along the wallpaper. Just a trick of the light, I told myself. But I knew that wasn’t quite true. Evelyn felt it too. I saw it in the way her hands trembled slightly as she closed the curtains, how her eyes darted to the shadows that gathered just beyond the lamplight.

We tried to sleep, to put it out of our minds, but the house refused to let us rest. There were noises—an almost rhythmic tapping along the walls, faint but insistent, and a skittering sound, as though something was crawling through the walls themselves. I remember holding my breath, straining to make sense of the sounds, my heart thudding in my chest. I don’t remember feeling this way since the accident—this feeling of something terrible hovering just out of sight, waiting.

Then came the shadows. They seemed to pool in the corners, darkening the spaces between furniture, thickening under the bed. At first, I thought it was just the play of headlights from the street, but the shapes lingered, stretching along the walls and ceiling in ways I can’t explain. And just before dawn, I thought I saw a figure standing in the doorway of Timmy’s room.

When I gathered the courage to look again, there was nothing there.

It was only then, as I lay back down beside Evelyn, that I realized I’d been gripping her hand all along, and that I’d been praying, over and over, that it was only the house settling, that the quiet would return to its familiar, peaceful hum.

But this morning, when Timmy asked why someone was whispering his name during the night, I could feel the truth beginning to creep in: we aren’t alone. Something has shifted, and whatever it is, it’s come to Obedient Grove to make itself known.

The silence in Obedient Grove has always been a comfort to me, a stillness that held the world steady and predictable. But lately, I wonder if it’s something else entirely, something alive, that stirs within the quiet. A force that thrives in the spaces where words go unspoken and thoughts remain nascent. As strange as it sounds, it’s as though the very hush of this town draws out what’s hidden, giving shape to things that should never take form.

It began with Timmy’s sketches. He’s always been fond of drawing—a happy distraction, I’d thought, a way to keep his mind on brighter things. But his drawings have changed. Where once there were smiling stick figures and animals, there are now twisted shapes, creatures that don’t belong in any storybook. Long limbs, eyes that bulge in impossible places, mouths that curl into jagged grins. Evelyn and I exchanged uneasy glances when we saw them, dismissing it as a phase, perhaps, or an outlet for the confusion he must be feeling. But it didn’t stop there.

The first real sign came a few nights ago. Timmy was fast asleep when I heard the patter of footsteps in the hall. Thinking he’d woken up, I went to check, but found only his toys scattered across the floor. They hadn’t been there when we tucked him in. As I reached down to pick them up, one of them—a wooden horse on wheels—let out a faint creak, as if it had moved by itself. I told myself it was my imagination, but the dread lingered, a chill that seemed to seep into the walls

Evelyn and I were sitting in the living room, exhausted and the house was finally still, or so we thought. A faint shuffle behind us broke the silence, something soft and scratchy—just the sound you’d make if you dragged a piece of chalk across the wall in slow, jagged strokes.

I turned, and in that sliver of dim light from the hallway, I saw it. The thing was barely there, a shape that wavered and shifted, like a child’s frantic drawing, come to life and slipping between worlds. It looked like something Timmy had scrawled in crayon on paper, then smudged over in wild streaks—a chimera, but incomplete, sketched in blurry lines that couldn’t hold still. A strange smear of limbs and eyes that almost formed a face but melted away when I tried to focus. It didn’t walk, didn’t crawl, just seemed to blur in and out, as if it were trying to find itself and failing.

It was there, and then it wasn’t. When I blinked, the shape shifted, slipped backward, and vanished. But there was a sickly residue left in my mind, like staring too long at something bright and having the shape burned into your vision.

Neither of us said a word. Evelyn’s hand was cold in mine, her grip unsteady, and I knew she’d seen it too. We couldn’t find words to fill the silence, so we sat there, each of us holding our breath, watching the shadows for any sign that it might reappear. I felt my heart pounding in my ears, the quiet pressing in again, as if the house had sealed itself over that strange, fragile thing.

Hours later, we climbed into bed, but sleep refused to come. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering if it would slip back into our room while we slept, if it had always been lurking just beyond our sight, waiting.

Morning arrived, but it felt like the earth had tilted slightly, leaving everything off-kilter. The sunlight poured through the windows, but it didn’t warm the room; it only made the shadows sharper, more oppressive, as if they were stretching longer just to remind us of their presence. I watched Timmy sitting at the breakfast table, still as stone, staring blankly at his untouched plate. His hands were curled into fists at his sides, and his eyes—his eyes were distant, hollow, as if he wasn’t really here with us at all.

Evelyn and I didn’t speak. We couldn’t. The silence between us had grown thick, a presence in itself. The kind of silence that makes your skin crawl, the kind that makes you feel like you’re suffocating on your own breath. The house was so still I could hear my pulse in my ears.

I watched Timmy, my heart hammering in my chest, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him what was wrong. His stare was empty, unfocused, as if he were seeing something we couldn’t. The air in the room was so dense, so heavy with something unseen, that I couldn’t move. I couldn’t look away.

Evelyn’s hands were trembling in her lap, wringing together like she was trying to hold onto something, trying to stop herself from breaking apart. I could see the same panic rising in her eyes—the kind of panic that comes from knowing something terrible is happening, but not knowing what or when it will strike. Her gaze kept flicking to the shadows in the corners of the room, as if expecting them to move, to shift into something more solid, something...alive.

I couldn’t look away from Timmy, and he couldn’t look away from whatever it was that he saw. The silence stretched on, longer than it ever should have, choking us, suffocating us. No words were spoken, not a sound—just the sound of our breaths, too loud in the oppressive quiet. I wanted to scream, to break the silence, but I couldn’t. It felt like the very air would tear if I did.

Timmy didn’t blink. He didn’t move. His hands were still clenched, and he just kept staring at that breakfast plate like it was the most important thing in the world. I wanted to shake him, to make him snap out of whatever this was, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. I was terrified that the moment I did, whatever we were avoiding—whatever we were waiting for—would rush back in, filling the room like smoke, like shadows, like something we couldn’t control.

The quiet wasn’t just the absence of noise. It was something more—something alive, suffocating, pressing against us from every side. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but I knew it was here, in the house, in the air. The same thing that had haunted us the night before, that had flickered in and out of existence like a smear of ink—now it was everywhere. I felt it creeping up behind me, in the corners of my eyes, where the shadows wouldn’t stop stretching.

Timmy finally blinked. But he didn’t move.

We didn’t move.

The house didn’t move.

And the silence...the silence just kept pressing in, tighter and tighter.

I had to get out of there, and left Timmy and Evelyn to go to the library. I've always got my answers from books. I have an uncanny knack for research and locating information. I had to do something, to find a way through the silence. It was strange that I felt like I was somewhere I didn't want to be, as though the threshold to knowledge were a cold and evil stone slab I had to step over.

I don't know how long I spent in the library—time blurred into something unrecognizable, a tangled mess of hours or perhaps days. The cold stone of the building seemed to press in on me, heavy and oppressive, as if the very walls were conspiring to keep me trapped. I had no idea what I was searching for, but I knew I had to find something—anything—that could explain what had been happening to Timmy. There had to be an answer hidden in the town's forgotten past, some piece of history that could tell me how to protect him.

And then I found it. A single, obscure folktale, buried in a crumbling old book, tucked between forgotten volumes. It wasn’t much—just a few tattered pages, barely legible—but it was enough. The story, something from the earliest days of Obedient Grove, told of a creature, a thing born from a child’s imagination. It had no true form, just a blur of shifting shapes, twisting shadows—like something sketched quickly with crayon, but alive. And it had been summoned by the innocent mind of a child.

The creature, too pure at first, had grown twisted, fed by fear, until it had become a terror that gripped the town for years. The child’s grandparents, it seemed, had been the ones to defeat it. They had used something—an artifact, a weapon of light, something the town’s history had nearly erased. These artifacts, the Fulgence Illumum, were the key. The light they wielded was the only force that could push the creature back, banishing it into the darkness, but at a cost.

The cost was unthinkable.

Using the Fulgence Illumum, the tale warned, would destroy the child’s imagination—erase it. The very thing that had brought the creature into existence would be destroyed, and with it, the child’s innocence, the very soul of childhood. I read those words, feeling them sink into me like vomit, heavy and suffocating.

But what could I do? The creature was here, in our home, in Timmy’s mind. I saw it every time he stared into space, every time he shuddered and looked over his shoulder. I couldn’t let it consume him. But the price...

I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t stop myself.

That’s when I overheard something. One of the librarians, a woman with an unsettlingly quiet voice, had mentioned the library’s restricted cellar. It was off-limits to the public, but there were rumors about what might be kept down there. Strange things. I hadn’t thought much of it until then. But now, in that moment of desperation, I knew where I had to go.

The library had emptied by the time I slipped down the hall, moving quietly through the back corridors, my breath catching in my throat. The air grew damp and cold as I descended the narrow stairs to the cellar, the stone walls pressing in on me as if they wanted to swallow my soul. It was darker than I’d expected, the kind of darkness that makes you feel like the shadows hide something, watching. Shelves lined with dust-covered crates filled the space, each one feeling more ancient than the last.

And then, I found it. A chest, sitting alone in the corner, its wood old and warped with age, covered in strange markings, too faded to decipher. Something in me knew. I felt it in my gut. This was it. This was what I had been searching for.

Inside the chest, the Fulgence Illumum lay waiting. Three objects, gleaming faintly even in the darkness: a lantern, its glass glowing from within as if it contained its own heartbeat; a pair of gloves, thin and delicate, woven from a silver thread that caught the faintest light; and a crystal orb, so clear it seemed to absorb the very air around it, casting a thousand tiny, fractured reflections on the walls.

I didn’t need to ask what they were. I knew, somehow. These were the very objects that had been used to banish the creature long ago. The light they held was the only thing that could stop it now. But there was no forgetting the cost. The child’s imagination would burn away. Timmy’s innocence would be gone forever.

I hesitated, standing there in the dark, the artifacts heavy in my hands. The price... the cost was unbearable, but what choice did I have? Timmy couldn’t go on like this, trapped in his own fear. I couldn’t stand to watch him slip further away, lost in that terrible thing that lurked in his mind.

I took the artifacts. My heart raced, my hands trembling as I slipped them into my coat, burying them close to my chest. I didn’t look back as I ascended the stairs, barely breathing as I passed the empty halls, out into the crisp night air.

The weight of what we faced pressed down on us, heavier than anything I’d ever carried. Evelyn and I hadn’t spoken much since I returned from the library, the silence between us thick with the weight of what we were about to do. I could feel it in her eyes—what I felt, too. The fear wasn’t the same as before; it wasn’t just the creature anymore. It had become about Timmy, and the uncertainty of what we had to sacrifice. What would it cost us to protect him?

When Claire and her husband... when they were taken from us, everything changed. The world became a quiet, desolate place. It’s hard to describe, that kind of loss. It’s not like any grief I’ve known, where you can say goodbye, where there’s a sense of closure. No, this was different. It was the suddenness of it that cuts the deepest. One day they were here, full of life, and the next, it felt like they’d never existed. That kind of absence, that void, it doesn’t fill up easily.

And now, in the quiet of this house that used to echo with Claire’s voice, there’s only stillness. The walls are heavy with it, and every corner feels empty. That’s when Timmy came. He wasn’t a replacement for Claire, and I knew he never could be. But he’s a piece of her, a part of this family, and we hoped—maybe foolishly—that his presence could fill just a little bit of the space she left behind. But I don’t think Timmy understands. He still thinks this is just a visit. That one day, everything will go back to the way it was. He doesn’t know that his parents aren’t coming back.

And that breaks my heart. He’s so young, and he’s so lost in all of this. He deserves to know the world isn’t a dark and broken place, that there’s safety and love. But sometimes, I see it in his eyes—the same confusion, the same fear I feel. I wonder if he senses it too. The emptiness, the loss, the way everything’s changed so suddenly, and so completely.

Every time I look at him, I think of Claire. I think of how she would’ve known what to say, how she would’ve made everything feel okay. But she’s not here. And now there’s something else—a creature, a thing born from Timmy’s imagination, his fears, and this quiet town that seems to hold everything in place, like it’s waiting for something to break. It’s feeding on him, growing stronger every day. It’s like watching him slip away, little by little, into something else. Something darker.

I wish I knew what Claire would have done. What she would have said. Maybe she would’ve known how to stop this—how to keep Timmy from fading into something I couldn’t reach. But she’s gone, and I’m left with this fear, this horror, and I don’t know how to fix it.

The Fulgence Illumum—these artifacts I found, these light-based objects that can burn away the creature—might be the only hope we have. But there’s a price to using them, a terrible price. If we destroy the creature, we destroy Timmy’s imagination, his innocence. I know it will break him. And I don’t know if I can do that.

But I can’t let him become what this creature wants. Not after all that’s already taken from us. I can’t lose him too.

So we move forward. The ache of Claire’s absence is still fresh, still raw in ways I didn’t expect. Timmy’s only just moved in, but already, it feels like he’s been here forever. And yet, every day, I feel like we’re walking on the edge of something we can’t quite see, waiting for it to take us. We can’t protect Timmy from everything—he’s already lost so much—but I have to try. I can’t let this thing steal him, too. I can’t let him become like this house: empty, quiet, forgotten.

For Claire’s sake, for Timmy’s, we have to face what comes next. Whatever it costs us, we can’t let him slip away into the dark. Not like she did. Not again.

It all happened so fast, too fast—one second, we were standing there, the light flickering in our hands, trying to hold it together, and the next, the creature was everywhere. God, I can’t even make sense of it, everything a blur—its body stretching, twisting, growing. It didn’t make sense. The walls groaned like they were alive, creaking, cracking, and suddenly the air felt wrong, as if the house itself was being torn apart from the inside.

The windows—they exploded outward, and I couldn’t hear myself scream over the shriek that tore through the walls. It wasn’t just screams—it was everything—growls, screeches, tearing metal, cracking bones, all crashing together, a roar that rattled my bones, shook the very ground beneath us.

We had to run. We didn’t even think. We just—ran.

Evelyn grabbed my arm, pulling me toward the door. Timmy was right behind us, his hand clutching mine, and we were stumbling, tripping over our feet, every step leading us farther from that thing inside. The floor beneath us groaned, buckling, the house itself seemed to be caving in, bending and shifting in ways I couldn’t understand. There was no time to think, just run—run, get out—and we did, through the door, into the air that felt cold, wrong, like it had been poisoned by whatever the hell was inside.

And then—then—it came. The house… broke. The limbs of it reached, stretching out from the windows, from the cracks in the walls, like they were made of nothing but air and shadow, barely there, flickering like some half-formed nightmare. It was too much, too fast, too much to even take in—everything splintered and cracked and flew outward, shards of wood, glass, the very walls breaking apart, exploding into the air, the wind screaming with the sound of it.

We were running. We didn’t even look back.

The air was full of glass, of splinters, like they were cutting through the world, raining down around us. We didn’t stop. I couldn’t—we couldn’t—look back.

But then, for a second, I did.

The house… it wasn’t a house anymore. It was just pieces, fragments, everything falling apart, bending, warping like it wasn’t meant to be real. The thing—whatever it was—was still there, still growing, limbs flailing, stretching outward, impossibly large, and the noise… God, the noise, it was like everything was screaming at once.

And then it exploded.

No, it wasn’t like fire—it was like the world itself cracked open, every bit of it pulled apart and shredded in an instant. The walls, the windows, the floor—everything—ripped away, flying outward, and I thought I was going to be torn apart with it. I was holding on to Timmy, holding on to Evelyn, and we ran, ran, just trying to get away from the destruction, the chaos, the terror. But there was no escaping it. It was all around us, too close, too fast.

And then—it stopped.

The house was gone. The wreckage of it was all that was left. We stood there, breathing heavily, too terrified to speak. My legs were shaking, my chest was tight, and I couldn’t even—couldn’t even think—I just stared at the pile of rubble. The thing—the creature—was gone. But we weren’t safe. Not yet.

Timmy was beside us, so we grabbed him into our embrace, alive, but changed, somehow, like he’d seen something no child should ever see. Evelyn clung to me, and I to her, and we all stood there, frozen, holding each other as the dust settled, as the echoes of the nightmare slowly faded away.

But that silence—it was heavier than anything else. And the fear, it was still there. In the back of my mind, gnawing at the edges of my thoughts, I could feel it.

The nightmare wasn’t over. It couldn’t be.

...

Now, I’m sitting here, writing this in the big city. There’s noise here, all the time. Sirens, honking cars, the constant murmur of the crowd. But it doesn’t bother us anymore. The noise is normal. We’ve learned to drown it out, to let it become part of the rhythm of our life. It’s like we’ve lived here forever, and somehow… that night, that house—it already feels like a dream.

Timmy is different now. He’s still Timmy, but there’s something softer about him. Something older, too. The other day, he showed me a drawing he’d made—a picture of his mom and dad going to heaven. There were clouds, stars, and a golden light surrounding them. I don’t know how long he’s been thinking about them that way, but he told me they were happy now. He said they were watching over us. He said it with this quiet certainty, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And for the first time in a long time, I think he might be right. I don’t know how or when it happened, but he’s starting to heal. The scars from that night are still there, buried somewhere deep, but Timmy’s imagination is still alive, and it’s no longer a weapon. It’s his way of coming back to us, of understanding, of letting go.

It’s strange, though. Even now, I can’t help but remember the fear, the terror of what we had to do to protect him. The Fulgence Illumum, those damned artifacts—we took something from him that night. We didn’t just fight a creature. We fought against what makes him who he is. I can never forget the look on his face when he realized what had happened. But somehow, we’re all still here, still together, and in some ways, that’s all that matters.

We’re safe now. We’re whole. But I know that no matter how far we move from Obedient Grove, no matter how much the city’s noise drowns out everything else, I’ll never forget that silence—the quiet that swallowed us whole, that thing we fought, and the way our world shattered in an instant.

And I know, deep down, that we’ll never fully escape it. Not really. Not ever. But I’ll hold onto Timmy and Evelyn, and I’ll protect them for as long as I can. That’s all I can do. And maybe… just maybe… we’ll be alright.

I took the night security job at Lakeside Carnival on a whim. It was an off-season position, meant to last only through the winter while the park went through renovations and an equipment upgrade. Nothing fancy, but the pay wasn’t bad for what seemed like a simple gig. Besides, I’ve always preferred night work, the quiet hours and the solitude. I’m not a people person, and the idea of roaming an empty theme park under the stars was oddly appealing.

The park had been around for decades. Tucked away on the edge of town near a small lake, it was the kind of place that was bursting with life in the summer and felt like a ghost town in the winter. Rides that would have been filled with screams and laughter stood silent, their bright colors dulled in the moonlight. The whole place had an eerie beauty to it at night, the way the roller coaster’s tracks twisted up into the sky like skeletal hands reaching out for something. It felt still, like it was holding its breath.

On my first night, I met Mr. Davidson, the park’s manager. He was an older man, probably in his mid-sixties, with graying hair and a face that looked worn from years of long shifts and the pressures of running the place. As he walked me around the empty park, showing me my route and the key locations, he spoke in a low, gruff voice that barely broke the silence.

“Listen,” he said, stopping near the carousel. “There are some things you need to keep in mind during your shifts here. This place isn’t like the others. It’s got… a history. Some of it good, some of it not so much. Just follow the rules, and you’ll be fine.”

I chuckled, brushing it off. “Rules? Like don’t ride the Ferris wheel alone or make sure the clowns don’t escape?”

He didn’t laugh. Instead, he handed me a small, worn piece of paper, folded and creased like it had been opened and closed a hundred times. Across the top, in faded ink, were the words: Night Security Rules. Below, in the same old-fashioned script, a list of instructions.

Night Security Rules:

1. Never look directly at the carousel between 1-3 a.m.
2. If you hear carnival music, follow it to the entrance and wait until it stops.
3. Do not enter the funhouse alone.
4. If someone dressed as a clown waves at you, turn around and walk away.

The list seemed absurd, and I chuckled again, expecting him to say it was a joke. But when I looked up, Davidson’s face was grim. He met my gaze, and for a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of something...worry? Fear?

“Do not,” he said, his voice low, “under any circumstances, break these rules.”

I shrugged, feeling a strange discomfort settle in my stomach, but I nodded. “Sure thing. If it keeps the ghosts at bay, I’ll do it.”

Davidson left me with a firm handshake and one final reminder to check the list whenever I felt uneasy. I watched him leave, his figure disappearing into the darkness beyond the park gates, and then I turned to look at the paper in my hand.

The first rule felt innocuous enough: Never look directly at the carousel between 1-3 a.m. I glanced over at the carousel, a colorful fixture even in the dim light. The horses were lined up in silent parade, frozen in mid-gallop, their manes captured in a permanent wave. Their glassy eyes seemed to follow me as I walked by, an effect that was eerie at night. But Davidson’s warning lingered, and I tucked the list into my pocket, telling myself it was just some quirky attempt to add mystery to the place.

The park was still and quiet, an unnatural silence that settled deep into the empty spaces between the rides and food stalls. The Ferris wheel loomed in the distance, towering above the park like a watchful eye. I felt a faint chill, and I told myself it was just the cool night air seeping through my jacket. I turned on my flashlight, the beam cutting through the darkness as I began my rounds.

The hours passed slowly. I wandered through the empty paths, the only sounds the crunch of gravel underfoot and the occasional creak of an old ride swaying in the wind. Around midnight, I found myself back near the carousel, and I paused, glancing at the clock on my phone. 12:15. The rules said not to look at it after 1 a.m., and I had no problem obeying that.

I decided to keep moving, staying close to the edge of the park, where the woods crept up close to the fences. My mind started to wander, drawn to the oddities of the place: the aging rides, the faded posters, the way the park felt almost frozen in time. It was as if it had been waiting, holding onto its past, like a memory that refused to fade.

At one point, I passed by the funhouse. In the day, it was bright and cheerful, with a cartoonish face painted above the entrance. But now, in the dim light, it looked different, almost sinister. The colors were faded, and the once-smiling face seemed to have twisted into a leer. I felt an irrational urge to go inside, to walk through the twisting halls and see what lay at the end. But Rule #3 lingered in my mind...Do not enter the funhouse alone.

I laughed to myself, dismissing the impulse. I was alone in a deserted theme park at night, after all. Who wouldn’t feel a little jumpy?

As I continued my patrol, I caught sight of the clown statues scattered throughout the park. They were relics from the park’s early days, dressed in garish, old-fashioned costumes and frozen in a perpetual wave or a cheerful grin. Something about them was unsettling, the way their painted smiles seemed a little too wide, a little too fixed.

And that last rule… If someone dressed as a clown waves at you, turn around and walk away. It was ridiculous. Who would be dressed as a clown here, at this hour? I shook my head, dismissing the strange list once again. It was nothing more than a set of superstitions, an old security guard’s joke left behind to spook the newbies. I told myself that over and over as I made my way back to the entrance.

As I stood there, taking in the quiet, a faint sound drifted through the air...the distant, tinkling notes of carnival music. I froze, every hair on my body standing on end. It was faint, almost like a memory, a melody that seemed to come from somewhere deep within the park.

I reached for the list in my pocket, unfolding it with trembling fingers. Rule #2: If you hear carnival music, follow it to the entrance and wait until it stops.

The music was growing louder, filling the air with a tune that was both cheerful and haunting. I forced myself to move, to follow the path back to the entrance, my footsteps quick and uneven. The music continued, echoing through the empty park, a haunting melody that seemed to wrap around me, drawing me in.

When I reached the entrance, I stopped, glancing around as the music continued to play, faint but persistent. I waited, my pulse quickening, until, finally, the music faded, trailing off into silence.

I let out a shaky breath, glancing down at the list in my hand. The rules had seemed like nonsense at first, a silly joke meant to unsettle me. But now, standing alone in the dark, I wasn’t so sure. Something about the park felt different, as if it had come alive, aware of my presence.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the park was watching me. By dawn, I’d almost convinced myself that the whole thing had been in my head, just nerves playing tricks on me. But that morning, lying in bed, the faint strains of carnival music still echoed in my mind. It was the kind of tune you couldn’t forget even if you wanted to...the notes lingered, twisting around in my head as I drifted off to sleep.

The following night, I returned to the park, a slight feeling of unease gnawing at me. I told myself it was nothing, that the music had probably come from a forgotten speaker or an automated system that turned on by accident. That’s all it could have been.

I repeated this in my mind as I went through my rounds, my flashlight beam cutting through the dark. The night was colder, a biting chill in the air that seemed to seep into my bones. I kept the list of rules in my pocket, my fingers brushing against the worn paper every so often, as though it could somehow protect me. I’d thought about ignoring the rules, maybe even testing them, but the memory of that music, the way it had wound its way through the empty park, held me back.

As I passed the carousel, I glanced at the clock on my phone...12:55. Five minutes to go before the first rule would apply. A trickle of dread ran down my spine as I realized I didn’t want to be anywhere near the carousel between 1 and 3 a.m. I turned away, deciding to circle around the park, to give the carousel a wide berth. But as I walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

At exactly 1:00, I heard a faint sound, just a soft whir, like gears beginning to turn. My heart skipped a beat, and I glanced back, half-expecting to see the carousel starting up on its own. But the horses stood still, frozen in mid-gallop, their glassy eyes staring blankly out into the night. I tried to look away, to continue on my path, but my gaze was drawn to them, an irresistible urge to look directly at the carousel, to confront whatever was happening.

I took a step closer, the rules slipping from my mind as the whirring sound grew louder. The air felt heavier, pressing down on me, filling my ears with a low hum that made it hard to think. My vision blurred, and the world seemed to tilt slightly as I stepped closer to the carousel, drawn to it despite myself.

Just as I reached the edge of the platform, my phone buzzed in my pocket, breaking the spell. I jolted, pulling myself back, and quickly turned away, my heart racing. I walked briskly toward the other side of the park, forcing myself to ignore the carousel, even as the whirring sound faded into silence. I didn’t dare look back.

My phone buzzed again, a message lighting up the screen. It was from Davidson, the park manager. “Follow the rules.” That was all it said, just those three words.

I felt a chill run through me. I hadn’t told Davidson about my shift, or that I’d even considered testing the rules. How could he have known? I shoved my phone back into my pocket, my hand trembling slightly, and continued my rounds, keeping my gaze firmly fixed ahead.

The air felt wrong as I moved through the park, the silence more oppressive than ever. It was as though the rides themselves were watching, waiting for something to happen. The Ferris wheel loomed in the distance, a dark silhouette against the night sky, its empty seats swaying gently in the wind. I could almost hear it creak, a soft groan that sounded unnervingly like a sigh.

Just after 2 a.m., I passed by the funhouse. The entrance was still, the cartoonish face painted above the doorway twisted into a smile that now looked sinister in the dark. The door creaked slightly in the breeze, swinging open just a crack, as if inviting me inside. I felt a strange urge to enter, to walk through the dimly lit halls and see what lay at the end. But the rule echoed in my mind...Do not enter the funhouse alone.

I shuddered, turning away, forcing myself to walk back toward the main path. My footsteps echoed in the silence, each step feeling heavier, as though the ground itself was dragging me down. I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting to see someone standing at the entrance, watching me leave. But there was nothing...just the gaping entrance of the funhouse, its twisted grin mocking me.

The silence pressed in around me as I continued my rounds, my flashlight cutting through the darkness. I thought about Davidson’s message, the way he’d known exactly what I’d been doing, as though he were watching from somewhere beyond the park’s gates. I glanced at my phone again, almost expecting another message, but the screen was dark.

As the clock neared 3 a.m., I returned to the entrance, eager to finish my shift. I took a deep breath, trying to shake off the lingering unease. Just as I was about to settle back into my chair, a faint sound drifted through the air...the distant strains of carnival music.

My blood ran cold, and I reached for the list in my pocket, unfolding it with trembling fingers. Rule #2: If you hear carnival music, follow it to the entrance and wait until it stops.

I forced myself to stay calm, to follow the instructions, even as the music grew louder, filling the air with a haunting tune. The melody was slow, almost mournful, each note hanging in the air before fading into silence. I stood there, listening, my pulse racing as the music echoed through the empty park, a sound that didn’t belong.

I glanced around, expecting to see lights flickering on, the rides springing to life in some nightmarish display. But the park remained dark, the rides still, and the only movement was the gentle sway of the Ferris wheel in the distance. The music continued, winding its way through the air, a melody that felt strangely familiar, as though I’d heard it before, long ago.

My phone buzzed again, and I glanced down, half-expecting another message from Davidson. But the screen was blank, and when I looked up, the music had stopped.

The silence that followed was absolute, a heavy stillness that pressed down on me, filling my ears with a ringing that wouldn’t fade. I stood there, rooted to the spot, my heart pounding as the reality of the rules settled over me. They weren’t just guidelines...they were warnings, boundaries meant to keep me safe from whatever lurked in the shadows of Lakeside Carnival.

I glanced around, my gaze sweeping over the darkened rides, the empty stalls, the rows of clown statues frozen in perpetual cheer. For the first time, I felt as though the park itself were alive, aware of my presence, watching me from every corner, every shadow.

Just then, I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned, my heart racing, but saw nothing. The shadows seemed to shift, pooling in strange shapes that vanished as soon as I tried to focus on them. I took a deep breath, telling myself it was just the darkness playing tricks on me, but the sense of unease grew stronger, a knot of dread settling in my stomach.

The sound of gravel crunching broke the silence, and I froze. Someone...or something...was moving toward me, footsteps echoing in the stillness. I gripped my flashlight, the beam wavering slightly as I pointed it toward the source of the sound. But the footsteps stopped, and the darkness swallowed whatever had been there.

A chill ran down my spine, and I glanced back at the entrance, suddenly desperate to leave, to escape the strange pull of the park. But my shift wasn’t over, and I knew I couldn’t leave until dawn. I took a deep breath, steadying myself, and continued my rounds, forcing myself to ignore the shadows that seemed to close in around me.

The rules felt heavier now, their words echoing in my mind, a reminder that there were forces at work in the park that I couldn’t understand. I could feel their presence, lurking in the darkness, waiting for me to make a mistake. And as I walked, I knew one thing for certain...I wasn’t alone.

The weight of the silence bore down on me as I made my way through the park. The rides loomed like towering skeletons, their frames twisted and shadowed, each one standing as a silent witness to the strange occurrences of the night. Despite my efforts to stay calm, an unsettling realization settled over me...this place was watching, waiting, and somehow it was aware of my every move.

As I continued my patrol, a strange compulsion grew within me, a pull I couldn’t resist. It was almost as if the park itself were guiding me, leading me down winding paths, past the silent games booths and empty snack stands. The familiar layout felt distorted, the paths stretching longer, twisting in ways I couldn’t quite remember. I wanted to turn back, to escape the maze of shadows, but something drove me forward, an unspoken demand whispering at the edges of my mind.

The pull grew stronger as I approached the carousel, and before I knew it, I was standing just a few feet away, drawn by a force I couldn’t understand. The horses stood in perfect stillness, their glassy eyes fixed on me, their once-playful expressions frozen in something that now felt like malice. I swallowed hard, remembering the first rule: Never look directly at the carousel between 1 and 3 a.m.

But it was already too late.

A flicker of light caught my eye, and I turned to see the carousel coming to life. The faint whir of gears filled the air, followed by the slow creak of metal as the platform began to rotate, each horse bobbing up and down in a slow, ghostly parade. The music started softly, just a whisper of a tune, but it grew louder, filling the air with a melody that was both haunting and strangely familiar.

I tried to look away, but my gaze was locked on the carousel, trapped in the rhythmic rise and fall of the horses. My pulse quickened, and I felt a strange, creeping fear settle over me, an understanding that I was witnessing something forbidden, something I shouldn’t have seen. I wanted to turn and run, to escape the pull of the music and the carousel, but my feet felt rooted to the ground.

Suddenly, I saw something move between the horses...a figure, shadowed and indistinct, darting in and out of sight as the platform spun. I blinked, telling myself it was just a trick of the light, but the figure remained, moving with the same slow, steady rhythm as the horses. My breath caught in my throat as I realized it was watching me, its gaze piercing through the darkness.

The figure stepped closer, slipping between the horses with an ease that defied logic. I caught glimpses of a face...a pale, painted smile, eyes dark and hollow, a hint of red around the lips. The makeup was smudged, the features distorted, twisted into a grin that was too wide, too empty.

A clown.

My heart raced as I remembered the last rule: If someone dressed as a clown waves at you, turn around and walk away. But I couldn’t move. The clown stepped forward, one hand raised in a slow, deliberate wave, its smile widening, stretching impossibly across its face.

I took a step back, my pulse pounding, but the clown kept coming, weaving between the horses as it closed the distance. The carousel picked up speed, the horses bobbing faster, their eyes gleaming in the dim light. The music grew louder, the notes blurring into a discordant melody that filled my head, drowning out my thoughts.

“Stop,” I whispered, my voice barely audible, swallowed by the relentless tune. “Please… just stop.”

The clown paused, its gaze locked on mine, and for a brief moment, I thought it would listen, that it would stop. But then it moved again, its movements jerky, unnatural, like a puppet pulled by invisible strings. It was close now, just a few feet away, its hand still raised in that mocking wave, its painted smile stretched into a leer.

I stumbled backward, the weight of the fear pressing down on me, making it hard to breathe. The clown’s eyes were dark, empty, but I could feel its gaze, cold and unrelenting, piercing through me. I tried to look away, to break the spell, but my gaze was locked on its face, trapped in the horrible, distorted grin.

“Why are you here?” I managed to whisper, my voice shaking. “What do you want?”

The clown tilted its head, as if considering my question, its smile widening. It raised a hand, pointing at me, its finger held steady, accusing. And then it spoke, its voice soft, a whisper that seemed to echo in the empty park.

“You broke the rules.”

The words sent a chill down my spine, and I took another step back, my heart pounding. The clown’s gaze held mine, unblinking, its finger still pointing, accusing. The carousel spun faster, the music building to a feverish pitch, filling the air with a maddening, endless tune. The horses’ eyes seemed to gleam, their mouths twisted into snarls, their glassy gazes fixed on me.

I turned and ran, the sound of the music chasing me, echoing through the empty park. My footsteps pounded against the ground, the cold night air stinging my lungs as I raced toward the entrance. But no matter how fast I ran, the music followed, a relentless tune that filled my ears, drowning out everything else.

I glanced back, just for a moment, and saw the clown standing at the edge of the carousel, watching me with that same mocking smile. Its hand was still raised, waving slowly, its painted eyes glinting in the dark. I tore my gaze away, focusing on the path ahead, desperate to escape the park’s grip.

The exit was just ahead, the gates looming like a dark silhouette against the night sky. I pushed myself harder, every muscle straining as I closed the distance. But just as I reached the entrance, the music stopped. The sudden silence was deafening, a heavy, oppressive quiet that pressed down on me, filling the space where the music had been.

I stopped, gasping for breath, my eyes scanning the darkness. The park was still, the rides frozen in mid-motion, their frames shrouded in shadow. I took a step forward, and then another, my gaze fixed on the gate. But as I reached the exit, a flicker of movement caught my eye.

I turned, my heart skipping a beat, and saw a figure standing just a few feet away, half-hidden in the shadows. It was a clown, its face painted in the same twisted smile, its eyes dark and empty. It raised a hand, waving slowly, its grin widening as it stepped closer.

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head, backing away. “No… this isn’t real.”

The clown took another step, its gaze locked on mine, its smile frozen, unchanging. I stumbled backward, my pulse racing, the weight of the silence pressing down on me, making it hard to breathe. The park was watching, waiting, its presence filling the air with a palpable sense of anticipation.

I turned and ran, my footsteps echoing through the silence, the image of the clown’s grin burned into my mind. The park seemed to twist around me, the paths stretching longer, winding in strange, impossible directions. I ran past the carousel, the Ferris wheel, the funhouse, each one looming like a silent sentinel, watching me with cold, unblinking eyes.

As I stumbled past the funhouse, I felt the urge to look inside, to confront whatever was waiting there. But the memory of the rules held me back, a faint reminder that there were boundaries, lines I couldn’t cross.

The laughter started softly, just a faint echo in the distance, but it grew louder, filling the air with a hollow, mocking sound. I turned, my gaze darting through the darkness, but there was no one there...just the empty park, silent and waiting.

The laughter grew, blending with the distant strains of carnival music, a sound that twisted and distorted, filling my mind with a creeping dread. I ran faster, my legs burning, my breath coming in ragged gasps as I pushed myself toward the exit.

Just as I reached the gates, a hand grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back. I turned, heart racing, and found myself face-to-face with the clown, its painted smile stretching impossibly wide, its eyes gleaming with a cold, unfeeling light.

“You broke the rules,” it whispered, its voice soft, a hiss that cut through the silence.

I screamed, jerking away, and stumbled through the gates, the cold night air washing over me like a wave. I ran, not stopping until I was far from the park, the sound of the music and laughter fading into the distance. I didn’t look back, didn’t dare to, the memory of the clown’s smile burned into my mind.

The park gates swung shut behind me with a creak that seemed to echo through the empty streets. I kept running until the lights of the park had faded into the distance, my breath coming in shallow gasps, my mind reeling with images of the night. But even as I slowed to a walk, the feeling that something was following me, just out of sight, remained. I glanced back over my shoulder, expecting to see the painted face of the clown in the shadows, but the streets were empty.

By the time I reached my apartment, the night was beginning to fade, a pale gray light touching the horizon. I stumbled inside, my hands shaking as I locked the door behind me, as if that simple barrier could protect me from whatever had lingered in the park. I wanted to believe it was over, that I’d left the horrors behind, but an uneasy feeling settled in my chest, a heaviness that I couldn’t shake.

I tried to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw the clown’s face, its wide grin and hollow eyes watching me with a gaze that felt disturbingly real. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, my mind replaying the events of the night over and over. The rules, the music, the carousel, each one a reminder that there was something in the park that defied understanding. The park had felt alive, aware, as though it were playing with me, testing the limits of my fear.

The next morning, I called the park’s main office, hoping to reach Davidson, to tell him I couldn’t return, that I was done. But when the receptionist picked up, her voice calm and detached, she told me there was no one named Davidson working there. I insisted, explaining that he was the manager, that he’d hired me just a few days ago, but she only repeated herself, her tone growing colder, more distant.

I hung up, feeling a hollow ache in my chest. Davidson, the rules, the entire night...all of it felt like a dream, a memory slipping through my fingers. I searched my pockets for the list, the rules I’d carried with me through the night, but my pockets were empty. The paper was gone, as though it had never existed.

The days passed slowly, each one bleeding into the next. I stopped sleeping, the memories of the night filling my thoughts with a persistent, creeping unease. Every sound felt amplified, every shadow held a threat. At night, I would catch faint strains of carnival music drifting through the air, a haunting melody that seemed to come from nowhere. I would sit up, listening, my heart racing, waiting for the music to fade, but the tune lingered, filling the silence with a hollow, mocking sound.

And then, one night, I heard it...the soft, rhythmic tapping, the same sound that had followed me through the park. I froze, my heart pounding, as the tapping grew louder, closer, until it was just outside my window. I held my breath, the weight of the silence pressing down on me, the memories of the clown’s painted smile filling my mind.

Slowly, I turned, my gaze drifting to the window, where the glass reflected a distorted version of my room. For a moment, I saw nothing, just my own face staring back at me, wide-eyed and pale. But then, in the reflection, a figure appeared, standing just behind me, half-hidden in shadow. The face was painted in a wide grin, eyes dark and hollow, one hand raised in a slow, deliberate wave.

I turned, my pulse racing, but the room was empty.

The image faded, leaving only the faint strains of carnival music, a melody that lingered long after the room had fallen silent.

PANTY WRAITH by Al Bruno III

The woman lay on a hospital bed that was too large for her room, groaning and shifting in pain as her final moments approached. She glared desperately at the young man emptying her bedpan. Her grip was strong, and he nearly dropped it.

"Please..." she had said, her voice shrill yet weak, "Please be sure they bury me in my blue church dress... and my own clean underwear. Sometimes they forget the underwear. Don't let them leave me nude under my clothes. Please."

The young man turned away, trying to hide his smirk and eye roll. 

+++

Stark white, fringed with lace, and roughly the size of his head. Granny panties for a woman who had never been a granny. How had these panties gotten into the box reserved for photo albums, doilies, and Precious Moments figurines?

"They should have been in the laundry bag with..." Brett thought aloud, "...the blue dress."

Had there been a hole in the bag, or had he been careless? Or was it another similar-looking pair? He shrugged. It was too late to worry about it now. Great Aunt Jill was freshly buried under six feet of fresh dirt in Silent Memorial Cemetery.

Barely suppressing a mean-spirited chuckle, he tossed them into the kitchen trash as he went out onto the porch to grab a breath of fresh air.

No, he thought, Not THE porch. MY porch. I earned it.

And the old hag hadn't just left him the house; he'd gotten every penny of her money, which was a lot. Great Aunt Jill had been

rich, not super rich, but rich enough to never need anything- rich enough to have family members coming to her with their hands out morning, noon, and night. However, since she was stingy, Great Aunt Jill stayed rich and got richer.

"...Nude under my clothes." Brett took in the crisp fall air; that was just one of the many stupid and neurotic statements he'd heard from the woman over the last eight years. There was a big box out at the curb; it was brimming with her paintings and statuettes depicting the suffering of Christ. He thought of how they depicted Jesus in his oversized loincloth. Was it any wonder the woman thought that visible panty lines were a sign of virtue and modesty?

After a few more minutes, he headed inside; there was a lot more to pack up if he was going to transform what had once been his prison into a bachelor pad. He thought to himself that his life shouldn't have been this way, that at twenty-four, he should have been on his own and living a life of acceptable debauchery. All the people he had gone to high school with were out in the world; even if they were losers that were never going to leave town at least they were starting their lives.

And why? Brett thought. Because their parents had given them breathing space to make mistakes and be kids. But not me. Oh no, all I got was Great Aunt Jill.

He had been just sixteen years old when his parents gave up on him. Yes, he had gotten into trouble, but it was the standard teenager stuff- shoplifting, school fights, and marijuana possession. Unfortunately, it had been just enough shoplifting, school fights, and marijuana possession to leave him at serious risk of going to juvenile detention. Good luck and good lawyers had helped Brett avoid that fate, but when it had all blown over, his parents told him he would be sent to live in the bucolic wasteland of Elmira, NY. It was there, they were sure, that Great Aunt Jill would 'straighten him out.'

In retrospect, he wished he had taken his chances in juvie.

Brett remembered his parents dropping him off here to leave him in the care of a relative he had previously only seen at holidays and funerals. A relative he only remembered because of her bell- like shape and dry kisses. As soon as Brett finished waving goodbye to Mom and Dad, his new guardian laid down the house rules - no loud radios, no TV except for educational and religious programming, and no video games. It was lights out at 10 PM. There was no lock on the bathroom door, so if he dared to pleasure himself in a righteous household, she would catch him, and he would find himself doing Hail Marys while kneeling on pencils.

That was when Brett made the mistake of asking her what a Hail Mary was.

A dozen Hail Marys later, she took him to his new room up in the attic. It was just a bed, a lamp, and a chest of drawers. The wind whispered through the cracks in the windowsill, making him shiver as he imagined the cold drafts that would come with it.

It took Brett a little while longer to clear out her wardrobe. For a woman who had only seemed to wear six to seven outfits her whole life, Great Aunt Jill sure had a lot of clothes stuffed into bureaus, dressers, and closets. Once that was done, he started to break down the hospital bed she had used for the last few months of her life. He pushed the bed out onto the front porch; the Hospice service had promised to pick it up by sundown. That done, all Brett had left was clearing out the junk drawers. He tossed anything that might remind him of her.

He found a black and white photograph in the far drawer of the kitchen counter; it was mixed in amongst the pens, pencils, rubber bands, and broken rosaries. It was of his Great Uncle John, who died just a few years after his marriage to Great Aunt Jill. Everyone said it was a tragic boating accident, but sometimes Brett had to wonder if her nagging and lunacy had driven the man to suicide. Brett swept all of it into the trash.

By nightfall, he was surveying an empty house. On Monday, he would visit the lawyer regarding the disbursement of the

inheritance. Then he could put anything he wanted in the place- a giant television, a pool table, a fantastic sound system, anything at all. Brett decided to celebrate with a sandwich and one of the beers he had cooling in the fridge. It was probably the only beer that had ever rested in that refrigerator.

He made himself a sandwich to go along with it and ate blissfully, thinking that, at long last, the future was his.

+++

From the ages of sixteen to twenty-four, Brett had learned a great many things beyond the basic necessities of survival, like keeping the house neat, his manners perfect, and how to sneak down into the basement laundry room at one AM so he could masturbate. Brett also learned that his parents weren't coming back for him and that he'd been written off.

No, not written off... sold off. Brett thought.

He was sure that was why his parents had stranded him in Elmira, trying to win Great Aunt Jill's heart and a place in her will by giving her the one thing she never had.

A son of her own to care for, dote on, and emasculate.

It didn't matter how many times he begged to come home. It didn't matter that at every family gathering, he felt himself drifting further and further from the emotional orbit of his parents and siblings until they started to treat him with the same kind of cool affection they'd reserve for a third cousin.

He treasured the memory of his relatives at the reading of the will, their hopeful faces turning to shock when they realized they were getting the financial equivalent of a Walmart gift card.

Four months later, those same relatives were coming to see Brett, not that often, but often enough. They came with their hands out, and he slapped them away.

Not even when his parents came to him with a business plan for a cheese shop or when his uncle needed money to keep his house. Not even when his sister begged him to help her afford to care for her severely disabled child,

That was another thing he'd learned from her, "Never a borrower or a lender be."

There was a knock at the door. Brett paused to look at himself in the full-length mirror of his bedroom: dark sweater, skinny jeans, and a killer goatee. He was ready. Brett answered the door and found Melanie waiting for him. She was an assistant librarian at the college, which sounded dull, but he didn't care if she gelded horses for a living. What mattered was that she was sexy, easy to talk to, and she'd swiped in the right direction on the hookup app he'd been scrolling through non-stop for the past month.

Brett led her to the dining room; a spaghetti dinner was simmering on the stove. Since Great Aunt Jill had expected him to prepare dinner regularly, he'd had to quickly learn how to cook, and she was not one to give a culinary lesson more than once. He'd always resented being her personal chef, but now, basking in the compliments from Melanie, he was almost grateful.

There was wine; there was small talk, and there was a moment when she wiped a bit of tomato sauce from his chin with her fingers and then licked them clean. And with that small talk, his planned desert of homemade tiramisu went by the wayside. They kissed and wasted no time finding their way to Brett's bedroom. They kicked off their shoes and panted nonsense words to each other. Brett was so aroused he felt dizzy. It was finally going to happen. He was finally going to become a man. He was finally going to put into practice all the things he'd dreamed about for over twelve years.

Brett slowly peeled away Melanie's clothes, savoring every moment. Her blouse and bra fell to the floor as he nuzzled her neck and explored her smooth skin. Their bodies pressed together, the heat between them growing stronger by the second. Melanie removed his sweater and cooed at his freshly shaved

chest. Then her hands moved down, unbuckling his belt. She began to stroke him, and he felt his knees quiver.

Eagerly, he reached down and undid the zipper of Melanie's skirt. By the time he had it off her, she had begun to talk dirty. Really dirty. Her skirt pooled at her feet, revealing the stark white lace- trimmed panties she wore.

Brett felt his entire body go cold. He looked back up the length of her, hoping it was a trick of the light or one too many glasses of wine, but no. They were there, the waste band riding high up near her navel and the leg holes riding low. They might as well have been a pair of bleached bicycle shorts. He got them off her as fast as he could and threw them across the room.

But it was too late. The damage was done. Brett's arousal had quite literally dwindled away to nothing, and despite Melanie's considerable skills, there was no going back. She made excuses and quickly got dressed; she didn't stay to talk and give him time to recover. Soon enough, Brett was all alone, despising himself and gorging on tiramisu.

+++

Melanie never talked to him again, and it almost seemed like she'd put the word out. The app went silent. There were no pings of interest or responses to his direct messages. It was the end of his online journey, so Brett tried his luck with the bar scene, but he spent more time eating poorly made chicken wings and sipping watery drinks than he did making conversation. He worked hard to keep himself from glaring at the happy couples around him or the smooth talkers making the rounds.

He tried college bars; he tried sports bars and pubs. He even tried a gay bar, but that was by accident. Finally, he found his way to a dive called the Bunkhouse. It was tucked away on a side street, the building's neon sign hung crookedly, and its paint was

peeling. The pool tables were poorly maintained, and every employee from the bartenders to the house band was sullen and disinterested; it was there he got his second chance; her name was Olive, and she was middle-aged with a leathery tan and a tiger-striped skirt. She had frizzy hair and crooked teeth, but when he bought her a drink, she bluntly asked him if he wanted to get his dick wet.

He was too desperate to turn down the offer. Olive brought him to her car and ushered him into the back seat. She didn't care that they were right there on the street. She was rough when she pulled down his pants. He told her he didn't have a condom; she told him she'd had a hysterectomy. Then she stopped talking for a while and went to work. She was even rougher with her mouth, but it was enough. Brett wanted to complete this rite of passage. He wanted to graduate from being a boy to being a man. After a few minutes, Olive shifted around, accidentally elbowing him in the gut as she maneuvered her knees to either side of his head. Her nylons rasped against his ears. She told him that it was time to return the favor. Brett reached up, caressing her backside. He thought to himself that maybe this wasn't so bad after all.

A car drove past, headlights briefly illuminating the backseat to reveal her white, oversized panties. Instantly, Brett began to hyperventilate and thrash about. Olive took this as encouragement and began to grind harder against him, which only made him thrash harder, which only made her grind harder. This continued seemingly forever, only ending when Brett fainted.

One hour later, he was driving home, the stink of Olive's perfume on his clothes a constant reminder he had woken up to find an EMT kneeling over him, a crowd of onlookers surrounding him, and his pants around his ankles. Apparently, Olive had shoved him out of her car and fled the scene.

What the Hell is happening to me? He wondered. What more could possibly go wrong?

+++ 

Despite owning a perfectly good washing machine and dryer, Brett had begun taking his clothes to the Pristine Fold and Dry laundromat every week. Not because he didn't have time but because he was trying to get to know the assistant manager better. Her name was Emily, and over the last few weeks, he'd managed to learn about her pet bird, her useless college degree, and her passion for painting.

Every week, he learned something new. And today, he'd learned Emily was a lesbian.

With a disappointed and angry grumble, he carried his two bags of freshly washed clothes inside the house. It had been four weeks since the disaster with Olive. During that time, Brett had attempted to make connections naturally by striking up conversations with women he encountered at work, the coffee shop, or Walmart. Unfortunately, most of them brushed him off, but there were a few instances where he managed to go on first dates. However, those never led to second dates. Brett tore open the plastic bags and started sorting through his clothing.

He remembered the heated conversation with the last girl that had turned him down. He'd demanded to know where he went wrong, and she responded with a hint of pity, saying that he was a perfectly nice guy but was trying too hard.

That turn of phrase only frustrated him further. Trying too hard?

He only had what he had in this world because he had tried hard, tried hard to get a good education, tried hard to excel at work, and, of course, tried hard to keep Great Aunt Jill out of a nursing home where her estate would have been nickel and dimed away to nothing. He deserved that honors diploma; he deserved his promotion to manager in less than a year; he deserved Great Aunt Jill's fortune.

Didn't it stand to reason that he deserved some wild nights in the

sack? Hadn't he earned it?

She probably isn't really a lesbian. Brett thought to himself as he crammed the neatly folded shirts into the upper drawers of his bureau.

I bet she was just trying to scare me off. Brett tossed his socks into the drawer opposite and closed it again with a slam.

She's probably laughing about me to all her friends. He should have hung his pants up, but instead, he just threw them over a chair.

That’s the last time I ever take my clothes there. he vowed as he turned his attention to his underwear. He'd read numerous men's magazines on the subject of what women liked more, boxers or briefs. He'd gone with boxers in varying styles of plaid and stripes.

That was why one pale garment stood out from the rest. A pair of large, white panties. Brett reeled, stumbling backward until he struck the bureau, knocking the katana he had displayed there to the floor.

It was a coincidence. It had to be; nothing else made sense, but it took Brett a long time before he could approach the undergarment. But when he could, he tore it to pieces with his bare hands.

+++ 

There was a strip club almost an hour from Elmira called the Blue Bayou. Whispers and rumors circulated about rampant prostitution among the performers, and that was enough to make Brett think it might be worth the drive. It had been more than a year since Great Aunt Jill's death, and the pangs of loneliness and frustration were driving him to the brink.

And what's wrong with paying to get some? He told himself as he turned off the interstate and found his way to the bad section of Binghamton. Plenty of guys at work like to say that all men pay for it one way or another- single guys with dinner and drinks, husbands with jewelry and appliances.

What was wrong with getting some action with a little bit of cold, hard cash? Wasn’t that just cutting out the middleman?

As Brett's car neared the Blue Bayou, he conjured up images of what its interior might look like. He had never been to a gentlemen's club before, but from what he had seen in movies and TV shows, he pictured a dimly lit room filled with plush leather chairs and red velvet curtains. The air would be thick with the scent of perfume and whiskey, and rock music blaring over the sound system would play in the background.

He could see himself sitting at the bar, sipping on a whiskey while watching beautiful women dance on stage. He imagined their bodies glistening under the stage lights as they moved seductively to the music. He saw himself casually flashing some bills, catching a dancer's eye at the bar; she was a sultry brunette with deep brown eyes and a tiny dress. He would buy her a drink, and she would casually tell him all the things he could experience in a private room.

And oh yes. He would experience it all, and then when he was finished, he would have a drink and then repeat the process. He would do it again and again until he ran out of cash or stamina. Brett was so lost in this fantasy that he didn't realize there was a police raid going on until he had pulled into the parking lot.

Flashing blue and red lights dazzled him. By the time he recovered his wits and tried to leave, there was already a uniformed police officer blocking the path of his car. The officer was tall and imposing, and despite it being almost eleven o'clock at night, he was wearing sunglasses. The officer rapped on the driver's side window with a meaty fist. Brett rolled down his window. The officer didn't ask for a license and registration - he

demanded it.

The license was in his wallet, and the registration was in his glove compartment, but the glove compartment was brimming with fast food detritus and CDs. Brett pawed through them, tossing Night Ranger and Limp Bizkit's greatest hits onto the seat beside him. Then he grabbed hold of something soft to the touch.

And shapeless.

And stark white.

And trimmed with lace.

And roughly the size of his head. Brett screamed.

+++ 

A month later, Brett was jittery and teary-eyed. Whenever he went in his house, whatever he did, he found them. Searching for a bottle opener, Brett discovered one tucked away in the junk drawer. Investigating the clogged vacuum cleaner, he found one entangled in the drive belt. When he sat down to breakfast, a pair tumbled out of his box of cereal. Brett decided it must be all in his mind, so he made an appointment to visit a psychiatrist, only to flee the waiting room when a pair of panties, along with some subscription cards, fell out of the magazine he was flipping through.

Those damned panties hounded him at every turn.

No. He thought, It's her. She's haunting me. 

And Brett knew why. 

"Don't let them leave me nude under my clothes...” 

By now, the only women he saw were the ones on his computer.

Brett would stay up late at night, navigating from one website to the next until he found some explicit content that could temporarily distract him from his troubles. With just a VPN and solid antivirus protection, he could escape into his wildest fantasies: an endless supply of women in different apparel and settings

The final straw came after he finished satisfying himself with a video of a particularly nimble young woman. Overwhelmed with his normal surge of self-disgust, he scrambled to find something to clean himself up with, but the object his hand landed on wasn’t his box of tissues.

It was stark white, fringed with lace, and roughly the size of his head.

Brett went mad. He smashed his computer, ripped the television off its wall mounting, and threw it out the front window. Brett broke chairs and flipped tables. He pulled curtains from their fixtures and sent bookshelves toppling. Finally, he punched a hole in the wall.

And dozens of pairs of panties came spilling out. And everything went black.

Hours later, he found himself sobbing in the corner of the basement.

So. she wants her damn granny panties, does she?

He would see to it she got them. Brett had everything he needed in the basement: a flashlight, a collapsible camping shovel, kerosene, and a crowbar. He packed everything but the kerosene into a duffel bag. The kerosene was for the couch and coffee table.

His car peeled out of his driveway with a loud screech. The last thing he saw of Great Aunt Jill's house was the first thick plumes of smoke rising from the broken windows.

It was a dark and stormy night, which made breaking into the cemetery easy. He carefully parked his car out of sight and hoisted his equipment over the fence's low spot before awkwardly scrambling up after it, grunting with effort as he struggled to find footing on the slick surface. The smell of damp earth filled his nostrils as he made his way through the rows of headstones, his heart beating faster with every step.

At around one AM, Brett discovered the tombstone shared by Great Aunt Jill and Great Uncle John. His heart raced, cold rain drenched him to the skin. He felt exhausted, alone, and cursed, but the storm had at least softened the ground for digging.

However, unearthing the grave proved to be a lengthy, backbreaking process. Each time Brett thought he was making progress, one side of the grave would collapse, forcing him to start again. Brett remained determined. He had come too far to turn back now.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the end of the shovel hit something hard. Moments later, the coffin was uncovered. Brett took a moment to catch his breath. Would it be enough to leave the forgotten undergarments here and fill in the grave again? Would that break the curse?

How far would he have to take this? Would he have to actually put them on her?

The thought made Brett shudder with revulsion, but there was no turning back now. Brett grabbed the crowbar and, working with a low growl, exerted all his remaining strength until he felt the wood start to give way with a loud cracking sound. The stench was worse than he could ever imagine, both rancid and sweet; bile filled his mouth, and his eyes watered.

Great Aunt Jill's one-year-old corpse looked far older. Her bloated body was covered in rotting skin, and her once elegant funeral dress had been stained with sporadic patches. The features of her face were twisted into a grimace.

I have to do this. Brett thought, I have to do this.
He reached down with trembling hands and pulled up the hem of

her skirt. Then he dug his hand into his jacket pocket.

The panties weren't there.

He tried the other pocket. Still nothing.

"No." Brett said as he checked each pocket a second and third time, "Oh no no no no.”

They were gone.

Where did they go?

Clawing his way out of the grave, Brett looked around frantically for that damned scrap of cloth. He tried to remember when he last had them, but his thoughts were hazy and jumbled.

Were they back at the car? Or perhaps amidst the burning remains of the house?

Brett retraced his steps through the rain-soaked cemetery. The storm intensified, lightning illuminating the gravestones. He stumbled through the muddy terrain, sopping and desperate.

Then Brett realized, and he started tearing at himself, the crack of thunder swallowing his choking cries.

+++

The lead caretaker walked through Silent Memorial Cemetery in the hazy dawn light. It was a quiet job he had taken on after selling his groundskeeping business years ago. He enjoyed being in nature with only birds and rabbits as his companions. Passing rows of headstones, old and new, he felt a sense of peace.

Then he saw something that sent him running back to the office;

he dialed 911 and started babbling the minute the operator answered. "I need the police down at Silent Memorial. Someone dug up one of the graves, and there's this young man lying dead just a few feet away. .. Yes, he's dead. I know a dead man when I see one! And... and you wouldn't believe what he's wearing...”

Rainbow Creek isn’t the most interesting town, and it likely wouldn’t exist at all if not for the two colleges it was built around, or the federal prison a few miles outside of town. It’s a small city nestled in the Montana mountains, and while the locals are happy to live the small city life, college students, like me, crave things that remind us of the cities we came from.

That’s what brought me into Gannon’s antique shop. Back home my mother would take me antiquing with her. She had a taste for the old and unusual, and as I was nearing the end of my first semester of my freshman year, I found myself feeling homesick. So, one day, as the cold late autumn air nipped at my skin on my evening walk, I finally decided it was time to drop into the old antique store.

There was an old bell that rang as I opened the door, and the old man behind the cash register barely acknowledged my presence, looking up from a stack of old documents he was reading that I guessed must have something to do with the jeweled sword laid out on the countertop.

I started browsing the wares and was quick to notice that this was unlike any antique shop I’d ever been in before. The antique stores I was used to shopping at with my mom had old things, some up to maybe two-hundred years old, but this place was in an entirely different class.

Old was not a strong enough word for many of the items old man Gannon had for sale. Many of them would be better classified as antiquities. The newest item I found was labelled as being from the year 1852, but most were older than the fifteenth century, and some were even marked as being over two-thousand years old.

It was one of these older items that caught my attention. It was a bronze figurine, roughly six inches tall of a winged, goat-headed, hermaphroditic creature with serpents crawling across its belly. The craftsmanship was exquisite, showing every detail in clear relief with such a lifelike appearance that I could almost see it move. The eyes were made of some kind of deep red jewel that seemed to glint with a light all their own. The body was completely corrosion-free and shone like it had just been polished.

It was ugly and beautiful. It was alluring and horrifying.

I had to have it.

I checked the label next to it. It read simply Idol of Baphomet Circa 500 CE $3,600.

I was no expert on ancient artifacts, but I did know that high quality art from before the renaissance was ridiculously expensive, and this figurine, this idol, was far more finely crafted than anything I had seen in museums. If it was real, it was a true masterwork of antiquity, and that made it vastly underpriced.

Still, $3,600 is a lot of money. It was, in fact, exactly as much money as I had in my bank account after paying bills for the month. I’d been saving for a rainy day, setting aside something from every paycheck I’d received since I got my first part time job at the age of sixteen, and it represented my life savings, but this idol was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I took it to the checkout counter and got old man Gannon’s attention. “I want to buy this,” I declared.

He looked at me, and he looked at the small idol I had set on the counter, then back at me again. “I don’t think you want that particular item,” he replied. “It’s special. You don’t pick it, it picks you.”

I scoffed. “Don’t insult me old man!” I replied testily. “I may just be a student, but I have enough money for this!” I handed him the label with the price listed, and he examined it intensely.

“That’s not the price I put on it,” he said slowly.

“It’s the price,” I replied hastily, sensing that the old man was going to claim the idol was supposed to cost more before jacking the price up. In fact, I was certain of it. An item of that age and quality was definitely worth more. He probably left a zero out of the price by accident.

It’s the price,” I repeated, and I have exactly enough money to pay for it.” I produced my debit card from my wallet and held it out to him.

He stared at me thoughtfully for a moment before taking my card and running it. The charge came up as good.

“It seems the idol has chosen you after all,” he said, and I could swear I detected a hint of sadness, maybe pity in his voice. “Be careful with it.”

“Wait here,” he commanded, then went into the back room before reappearing a minute later with a binder. “This is the provenance of your antique,” he said in a businesslike tone. “Be sure to read it as soon as you get home. It tells you the story of this particular item as far back as is known. There are gaps in the history, but that’s expected for an item of this age.”

I took the binder from him and flipped it open. It was filled with documents in protectors, half of them old and in other languages, and the other half new translations to English placed in a separate protector behind each original document.

“Don’t forget to read them,” old man Gannon said warningly as he packaged my new idol for transport home. “Always know the details of anything you buy, new or old.”

“Sure thing,” I said dismissively as I took the package from him and scooped up the provenance binder. “I’ll read it at my first opportunity.”

If only I had actually done as I said, maybe I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now.

I hurried home with my prize and placed it in the center on my desk’s bookshelf.

I stepped back to admire it, snapped a picture with my phone, texted it to my mom, and called her to tell her about my amazing find. We spoke for a little more than an hour, a lot of our conversation being speculation about the true value of such an artifact, wrapping up with a promise that we would take it to an appraiser when I came home for the summer.

It was early evening by that time, and all of my friends were done with classes for the day, so I put the binder of provenance on the bookshelf, left to go party with the girls, and promptly forgot about it.

I got home late and exhausted, so tired that I fell into bed fully clothed, and I swear I was asleep before I even hit the mattress. I had vividly troubled dreams. Visions of damned souls screaming in eternal torment in Hell. Images of violence and bloodshed among the living. Lies, pain, and betrayal were all around. Behind it all, ever in the background, was a winged, goat-headed figure with glowing red eyes and an evil smile splayed across its caprine lips.

The next day was tough, not just because I stayed out too late and my first class was early, but also because my dreams seemed to have sapped the rest from my sleep, leaving me slow and foggy all day long. I barely made it through my classes, went to my dorm, and promptly went to bed despite it being early afternoon.

My dreams remained troubled, filling my head with the same visions as the night before, only closer, more present this time. I could swear I actually smelled the stench of sulfur and burnt flesh. I could feel the pain and anguish of betrayed lovers. I could taste the iron blood in my mouth as people were gruesomely murdered.

Mixed in with the overwhelming cacophony of torment, I began to feel my own response. Horror and revulsion gripped my heart, and I felt like I was suffocating, barely able to breathe as I choked on the smoke of billions of damned souls. I felt physical pain, and my mind screamed to wake up, but I could not. I was trapped in the hell world of my dreams, and there was no escape. I was bound to sleep, forced to suffer along with the many, many tortured souls that filled my every sensation.

It felt like a lifetime that night, and when I woke up to my alarm blaring next to my head, it was with a great gasp for air, trembling, and a racing heart that took many minutes to slow down as I went from gasping to hyperventilating as the panic overwhelmed me. It was only when I was able to convince myself that it had all been a dream, a horrible, horrible dream, and the waking world was safe that I finally was able to slow down my breathing, and eventually get myself under control.

I looked over to my desk and set my eyes upon the idol of Baphomet sitting in a place of honor where it was easily visible. Seeing it, I was reminded of how the demonic figure in my dreams had taken on the form of my new relic, and I wondered for a moment if the two were somehow connected. I walked over and picked it up, examining it closely from all angles. It was so lifelike, and the gem eyes were so lustrous that they seemed to glow much like the eyes of the dream demon.

“How peculiar,” I muttered quietly. “Why are you showing up in my nightmares? You’re beautiful.”

I stared into the luminous gemstone eyes of the idol as I spoke, and it felt as though they were staring back at me until I finally set it down in its place of honor and left to attend my first class of the day.

My friend, Geraldine, could see that I was out of sorts during our first class and caught up to me when it was over. “What’s going on?” she inquired. “You look like something’s eating you.”

“You have no idea,” I replied exasperatedly.

“Then give me the idea,” she quipped.

Her manner may have been on the sassy side, but I knew she was sincere. “I’ve been having nightmares the last couple of nights,” I told her. “Real bad ones, and they feel more like I’m actually there than like I’m dreaming.” I trailed off at the end, then continued. “But that’s ridiculous, right? They’re just dreams. I don’t really feel, smell, and taste anything in them any more than I see and hear in a normal dream. At least . . . I don’t think so.”

Geraldine looked thoughtful, her thin, arched eyebrows pinched in concern. “I don’t think so,” she replied. “But then I’ve never heard of people dreaming in all five senses before. Maybe we should head over to the library and check out a book on dreams.”

I shook my head. “No, you can go if you want to, but I have enough dream stuff on my mind without researching brain patters or mythology.”

Geraldine cocked her head to the side. “Fine,” she said. “Then how about we blow off some steam by skipping class and day drinking in your dorm room? I’ll even bring a dimebag to share. Your roommate dropped out. Nobody’s going to bother us while we have our own little party.”

“I have to admit that sounds like fun,” I replied with a smile. “And I could definitely use something to clear these thoughts out of my head.”

“Great!” she chirped happily. “You head home, and I’ll meet you there in an hour with everything!”

Geraldine was true to her word, and she showed an hour later, almost to the minute, with a backpack full of beer, a flask of whiskey, and a baggie of weed and rolling papers.  We launched right into our private party, leading off with a couple of boilermakers before lighting a couple of joints. Underage drinking and drug use be damned, I felt happy and free for the first time since the nightmares began.

We chatted like we always do, about anything and everything, everything that is, except my nightmares, and the distraction proved good for me. Having those dark thoughts pushed aside for a little bit of chemically enhanced normalcy was exactly the medicine I needed.

After our fifth game of Uno, Geraldine happened to look at my desk and notice the idol for the first time. “What’s that?” she inquired, curiosity taking over.

I walked over, picked it up, brought it to the table, and set it down in between us. “This is an antique idol of Baphomet from the sixth century,” I informed her. “I picked it up at Gannon’s a couple of days ago, and I’m pretty sure I got it for way less than what it’s worth.”

Geraldine was fixated on the small idol. “May I pick it up and take a closer look?” she asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Go right ahead,” I replied with a wave of my hand. “Just don’t drop it. I’m taking my mom out to get it appraised with me this summer. If it’s worth bank I’m selling it, and I want to get top dollar.”

She picked it up carefully and turned it over this way and that as she examined it closely. “I didn’t think people knew how to make such detailed sculptures back then,” she replied. “The details are finer than even the greatest Greek and Roman master sculptors, and art was in decline in the sixth century.”

“You would know that Ms. Art Major,” I laughed.

She looked concerned. “I’m serious,” she replied gravely. “The work is too detailed to be a bronze sculpture from that time period. How do you know it’s not a fake?”

My jaw dropped in surprise. “I . . . I never thought about that,” I stammered. “I bought it at Gannon’s, so I just assumed the old man wouldn’t rip me off.”

“Did he give you any documentation we can use to validate it?” she asked.

It took me a moment to remember, but when I did I got up and went to my bookshelf. I pulled out the binder old man Gannon had given me and brought it to Geraldine. “He gave me this,” I stated. “He called it provenance.”

Geraldine set the idol down and took the binder from me. She opened it and flipped through the pages, quickly glancing at each document, taking only long enough to note that the originals showed the proper signs of age before moving on to the next page. She nodded her head approvingly. “This is good,” she said brightly. “Have you read any of it yet?”

I shook my head. “No. He said I should as soon as possible, but I’ve been too busy and tired to bother.”

“Mind if I borrow this then?” she asked. “I’d love to learn the history of this little demon of yours.”

Something about the word demon shook me slightly as the word rattled around in my brain. I dismissed it as nothing more than the jitters from two nights of vivid nightmares. “Go right ahead,” I accented. “You’re better qualified to validate this art stuff than I am.”

“Great!” she replied happily as she closed the binder. “Now how about you put your demon back where it belongs and have a rematch?”

And that’s what we did until the hour was late and we were both thoroughly faded. We said goodnight, and Geraldine took the binder with her.

My dreams that night were less intense. The hellish torments and violence were replaced with a singular vision of Baphomet seated atop a throne of bone with rivers of blood flowing out from the base. He spoke to me in a deep voice, speaking a dark language that I could not understand. With each word, I could feel a sensation in my brain like thin threads wrapping around the inside of my skull.

The great demon said something I didn’t understand, but the tone made it clear that it was a command. I obediently approached the throne and held out my hand. He took it in one great hand, and his grip was like a vise though I did not resist. He closed his other hand, leaving only his index finger outstretched, then he lowered it to my open palm and drew his long, sharp talon along it, leaving a deep, bloody gash behind.

I felt the sting as his claw pierced my skin, and the slicing burn as he cut my palm open, but I did not scream. He let go of my hand and stretched his arms and wings out wide as he stared so deep into my eyes that I could swear he saw my very soul. Under some compulsion, I raised my cut and bleeding hand, and pressed it against his bare chest, directly between the breasts, right over his heart.

Something surged through my body, and it was both exquisitely delightful and exquisitely agonizing at the same time. It branched like lightning through every organ and limb and sat in my brain like fire.

Then I woke up, my alarm blaring, telling me it was time to get up and get ready for class. I turned it off, sat up, and that’s when I noticed the severe, throbbing pain in my right hand. I looked at it and screamed in horror.

My hand was cut across the palm, blood oozing slowly through a fresh, partially cauterized wound, just like it was in my dream.

The amount of panic I experienced at this is beyond my ability to describe. I screamed, and I kept screaming until people began pounding on my door. If I hadn’t stopped and answered it, they would have battered it down to rescue me from whatever had me screaming so loud and long.

Several people offered to escort me to the doctor when I showed them my garish wound, but I refused. They would have asked questions, and my answers would have made me look crazy. Who would believe that I merely went to bed, dreamed about a demon cutting my palm, and woke up to a slashed hand in real life? They would think I was either crazy or having a mental breakdown.

I lied and told them it was an accident, that I was only screaming in pain, and that I would go to the doctor. None of it was true.

I called Geraldine, and she didn’t answer her phone. I called again, and again, and again to no avail. I went to her dorm, and her roommate didn’t know where she was. She didn’t come to class.

I was fully freaking out by the time I returned to my dorm and was fully relieved to see Geraldine waiting at my door with the binder of provenance, and a dusty old book that looked like no had read it in years.

She didn’t wait for me to acknowledge her. “We need to talk in private, now!” she insisted, dispensing with all of our usual pleasantries.

“Okay,” I said dumbly, taken aback by her alien demeanor. I unlocked my dorm, and we both entered.

No sooner was the door closed than Geraldine began to speak rapidly. “We have a problem,” she blurted. “A big, big, giant, humongous, gigantic problem!” She hurried to the table without waiting for a response and put the binder and the book down on it. “Sit,” she insisted.

“Wait,” I replied. “Whatever it is, I think we need a drink.”

She nodded in agreement, and I retrieved a couple of beers from the fridge, cracked them open, set them down on the table, and took my seat. Geraldine responded by picking up her beer and chugging it faster than I had ever seen her do before. She looked like she thought it might be the last beer she ever drank, and didn’t want to waste a moment downing it.

She slammed the empty can down on the table, belched, and tapped the binder with her free hand as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I read this,” she began hastily. Catching herself, she slowed down. “I couldn’t sleep because I was having the same crazy nightmares you told me you’ve been having, and I woke up having a panic attack after just an hour of sleep. So, I decided to read the documents your little statue came with.”

“Idol,” I corrected. “It’s an Idol.”

“I know that” she growled testily. “Stop being pedantic and listen to me. If these documents are telling the truth, we have a big problem, and we have to find a way to fix it!”

I took a big drink of my beer. “I think you’re right,” I sighed. “I had a different dream last night, but when I woke up I had this.” I showed her my right hand, and her eyes grew wide at the sight of the gash across my palm.

“Oh . . . no . . .” she said slowly. “No. no. nonononono!” She grew more frantic with every no. “It’s really happening! God help us, it’s really happening!”

“What’s happening?” I asked seriously.

She looked into my eyes with a fixed, panicked stare. “Baphomet, the real Baphomet, is coming for us.”

I shook my head in disbelief and took another swig of beer to calm my nerves. What she said was unbelievable, but she obviously believed it, and it was enough to make me question my own firm belief that nothing supernatural is real. “That’s impossible,” I replied without conviction. “And even if he were coming for me, why would he come for you?”

Geraldine opened the binder to spot she had bookmarked and tapped the page repeatedly with her finger. “It says here that the idol finds those whom Baphomet has chosen to be his servants. It says that he comes to them in their dreams, and after tormenting them with visions of their future, he binds them to him in an eternal blood oath.”

“No . . . way,” I said hesitantly, my lack of conviction apparent in every syllable and pause. “If that were true, there would be records, a lot of them!”

Geraldine turned her hands to point down at the binder. “There are,” she insisted. “Right here! Over a hundred of them. They are personal accounts and eyewitness accounts of the people who once owned your idol, and what it did to them and those around them. It’s dangerous!”

Old man Gannon’s words echoed in my memory. “Be sure to read it as soon as you get home,” I murmured.

“What?” Geraldine asked, not quite hearing me.

“Old man Gannon told me to make sure to read the binder as soon as I got home,” I replied. “I didn’t, and you’re starting to make me think I should have.”

She turned the pages back to the first one, then flipped to the English translation. “Read this!” she commanded, sliding the binder over to me.

“Beware the Idol of Baphomet,” I read aloud. “This graven image is no mere trinket. It is empowered by the demon lord himself, and failure to perform the proper rituals will result in your doom.”

I looked up at my friend. “This is serious?” I asked, already knowing the answer, but wishing for a different one.

She nodded gravely. “It goes on to give a detailed ritual that must be performed before you go to sleep any day that you touch the idol once it comes into your possession. Failure to do it opens you up to Baphomet and allows his influence to spread to others through you if you let them touch it too. They can cleanse themselves with the same ritual, but it has to be done before they go to sleep, or else he can claim them too.”

“Then let’s do the ritual!” I blurted. “Let’s do it now and get it over with, and never touch that accursed thing again!”

Geraldine shook her head with tears welling up in her eyes. “It doesn’t work that way,” she said sadly. “Once he’s in you, he’s there to stay. This binder is filled with people’s failed attempts to regain their freedom once they let Baphomet in, and nothing worked. No exorcism. No ritual. No holy trinket. Nothing released them from the demon’s grasp.”

I felt a crushing weight inside my chest as her words sunk in. I sat back in my chair, fully deflated. “So, there’s no hope,” I said resignedly. “We’re both doomed.”

“Maybe not,” she replied with faint hope. One of the documents mentions a book called, well, in English it’s called the Tome of Dreams. I went to the library as soon as it opened hoping to find a translated copy, and I did!” she held up the dusty old book triumphantly.

I spent my entire day reading it, and it mentions a way to fight back, but it has to be done inside the dream itself. But there’s a catch!”

“And?” I inquired impatiently, not liking the theatrics.

“It says that if you fail, your fate is sealed, and the totem that brought the demon upon you will seek out a new servant.”

“Well, that’s not high stakes at all!” I said sarcastically. “And what happens if we do nothing? If I just keep the idol and go about my life as best I can with completely messed up dreams?”

She gave me a serious, fixed gaze that demanded and held my attention. “The same thing, only slower as he gradually hollows you out and enslaves you to his will.”

I felt utterly defeated. “Then I guess we have no choice. What do we do?”

“Not we,” she corrected. “I. I am the most recent person touched by Baphomet’s influence. I have to do it first, and if I succeed, I can guide you through it, both here, and in the hell world.”

“You mean the dream world?’ I asked.

“No,” she said flatly. “These dreams aren’t dreams. They’re us, literally us, our souls, being taken to Baphomet’s realm in Hell. It’s a hell world.”

It took a moment for the gravity of her revelation to properly sink in. “Well. That . . . sucks.” I groaned.

Geraldine produced a thermos from wherever she had it hidden on her body. How had I not noticed it before? “Tonight, before going to bed, I’m going to drink this. It’s a tea made from a blend marijuana, peyote, and ayahuasca. It’s a shamanic thing with no connection to the Judeo-Christian tradition that Baphomet belongs to. It taps into the older, pagan era when he was worshipped as a dark god. I’m going to drink this. Perform the ritual in the hell world itself, and free myself of this curse before helping you do the same thing.”

I was out of my depth. What she told me made no sense, but I could not deny the physical proof cut into my own hand. I wanted to deny it. I wanted to scream that it was all nonsense. I wanted to laugh and call it absurd. I wanted anything other than to admit the truth and face reality.

The reality is that I messed up big time. As big as anyone can mess up and not only was I paying for it, but so was my friend and classmate. And it was all my fault.

It was my fault for buying the idol in the first place. It was my fault for ignoring old man Gannon when he told me the idol was not for me. It was my fault for ignoring him again and not bothering to read the binder he gave me and warned me to read. It was my fault for letting Geraldine touch the idol after these previous faults. It was all mine, and I hated it, but I was impotent to do anything about it.

Geraldine drank her potion and went to bed in my dorm that night. I don’t know what she did, but my own dreams were peaceful at first. They were nothing more than the ordinary, meaningless drivel of a mind sorting out what it had been taking in.

Then, at the end, everything shifted suddenly, and I found myself in Baphomet’s throne room once again. I saw him lift Geraldine up with one clawed hand until she was left dangling over the edge of the throne. She gasped as she clawed futilely at his iron grasp. He spoke in that same strange language, his deep voice resonating throughout the room and my own body and mind.

I could not understand the words themselves, but, somehow, I knew their meaning. “Failure. Now take your place forever!” Then there was great snap, and I saw Geraldine’s head suddenly coked too far to one side, her mouth hanging slack, staring straight ahead with lifeless eyes.

Baphomet turned his fell gaze upon me, and spoke again, and I knew, somehow, I knew, he was promising terrible, terrible things, and I would live long enough to regret my mistake before he took me to spend eternity at his side in Hell.

That was six days ago. At least, that’s what the calendar on my computer is telling me right now. My body is cut up and bruised, and I hurt to my very soul.

When I came to this morning, Geraldine was missing. There is only a bloodstain where she had lain to go to sleep that night. The idol is missing too. Where it went, I cannot know. Honestly, I hope Geraldine somehow survived, that my dream was a lie, and she took the accursed thing to destroy, or, failing that, hide it where no one will ever be cursed by its presence again.

But I don’t think that’s what happened. My head is filled with fuzzy visions of terrible deeds, seen through my own eyes, but as though I am merely an observer in my own body, like someone else was in control the whole time.

I went online and searched up the strange visions in my head, and they are all real. The murder of a family of five two days ago, slaughtered with such brutality that the cops are unsure if it was man or beast that did them in. the torture of a classmate out in the woods, left for dead once she was too weak from blood loss to scream anymore. A cinderblock dropped from an overpass, smashing the windshield of a passing car below, causing it to careen out of control and cause a forty-car pileup with over a dozen fatalities.

These visions, and more, so many more, were all true. The last six days have been marred by murder and mayhem, and I know that I am at the center of it all. These bloodstains on my clothes are not only my own. They are the blood of my victims, too many victims, and the memory of the atrocities I committed are coming back like a crashing wave.

The dreamlike fog I first saw them in, the faint wisp of a memory that first set to my task of researching them has been blown away. I know what I did. I know my crimes. I know that I was not in control of my own body as I committed them.

And I know that I liked them. God help me, I liked them.

I know I should turn myself in. I know I need to go to the police, confess, and have them throw in solitary confinement before I fall asleep again. But I can’t. I won’t.

My will is no longer my own. My will, my body, and my soul belong to Baphomet. I am his to do with as he pleases. Six days a week I am bound to labor for him. One day only, the Lord’s Day, I am free to do as I will.

Even if I wanted to, I don’t know if I could turn myself in. I don’t know if Baphomet would exert his will or influence to stop me. I am bound to him now, by blood I am bound, and nothing can change that now.

What I can do is tell my story. I can warn you that if you find the idol of Baphomet, do not take possession of it. Don’t even touch it. The binder with the protection ritual is gone now. Destroying it was the first thing I did when my master took over my body. Without it, you are as helpless to resist him as I was.

I know what I should do. I know I should go to the police. I know I should end myself if I don’t imprison myself. It’s the right thing to do, but the truth is, all I want to do is go to sleep and let my master take control for the next six days.

I just hope he doesn’t follow through on his threat and take me home. I know his intentions for my family, and I have seen his handiwork firsthand.

The first time I heard it, I was just practicing. Just doing my usual thing—hand up, hand down, keeping my movements soft, careful, letting the sound drift out like silk. The theremin’s tone is so fragile, like a breath that could stop at any moment if you’re not gentle with it. That's what I loved about it, I think. It was just me and the air, and the tiny vibrations between us. No one to see, no one to judge.

I was alone in my practice spot, this clearing out in the trees. It was quiet, with sunlight slipping through the branches, turning the dust into tiny golden stars. The first notes floated up, high and thin, and I started to feel that warmth inside, the one that made me feel like maybe I was safe, even here in these woods, even with all the other campers wandering around.

But then—no, this sounds ridiculous I'd say—then I thought I heard something. Just… a whisper, faint and shivering, almost like it was hiding behind the music.

I lowered my hand, the note slipping away, and listened. Nothing but the wind stirring through the pines, and yet I felt something…not so much watching as listening. I took a deep breath, told myself to shake it off. Still, I kept glancing over my shoulder the whole way back to camp.

That night, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, my nerves buzzing. I couldn’t stop thinking about the whisper, replaying it in my mind even though it was just a sound, barely even there. I’d convinced myself it was all in my head until Sam leaned over her bunk and asked, “You heard it, didn’t you?”

I turned, and she was looking at me with this weird little smile, like she knew exactly what I’d been thinking about. “Heard what?” I mumbled.

“The Weaver.” Her voice was just a whisper. “Everyone knows about it. The Weaver’s… a thing that lives in the forest, a kind of creature, or maybe a spirit, no one knows for sure. It’s supposed to prey on people like us—on musicians. Especially musicians with… well, you know. Secrets.”

She didn’t know about my secrets, of course, but I felt a chill slip over me anyway. “What… what does it do?”

She leaned in closer, her eyes wide. “It can take on any shape, any form, anything you’re afraid of. And if it finds you, if it latches onto you… it starts to play you. Your fears, your thoughts, your music. It turns it all into its song, and you can’t do anything but listen as it twists you into… whatever it wants.” She sat back, smirking, like it was just another campfire story.

But I didn’t sleep that night. The idea of something that could twist my music, make it into something I’d never choose, something that wasn’t me—I hated it. And worse, I couldn’t help feeling like Sam had been right, like the Weaver had already noticed me. Like it had already begun.

The next day, everything felt… wrong. The sunlight was too bright, the forest too still. My theremin, normally my only source of comfort, felt heavy in my hands, and my music… my music didn’t sound like mine anymore. Each note came out different than I wanted, the sounds drifting into strange, unsettling tones, like they were being stretched and pulled by something invisible. And the whispers—they were back, too, sliding between the notes, too faint for anyone else to hear.

I told myself it was just nerves, just my stupid imagination. But then I heard it: my name.

Amelia.

My blood ran cold. The voice was soft, distant, like it had been carried on the wind, but I knew it was real. I knew it was calling me.

That night, I lay in bed, too scared to close my eyes. But the whispers came anyway, slipping into my thoughts like they’d waited for me. And then, faintly, I heard my theremin. A single note, low and eerie, drifting through the cabin like a dark lullaby. My heart pounded, and I squeezed my eyes shut, but the music grew louder, twisting itself into something awful, something wrong.

It was my music, but it wasn’t. The notes coiled and warped, bending into a melody I’d never played. A horrible, hollow feeling washed over me, as though the Weaver was reaching inside, taking my hands, making me play its song. I tried to move, to scream, but my body wouldn’t obey.

It was as if I’d become an instrument myself.

The Weaver’s instrument.

And as the music wrapped around me, filling me with dread, I felt myself slipping, like I was being pulled into the sound, becoming part of it, disappearing into its song.

I thought maybe it was just me. The whispers, the eerie twists in my music, that creeping feeling of something watching. But by the third day, it was clear I wasn’t the only one. Strange things were happening all around camp, things no one could explain.

First, there was Ethan, the cellist, normally so calm and unflappable. He’d been fine that morning, practicing in the open field by the lake. But when he came back to the cabin after lunch, he looked pale, his hands shaking as he set down his cello. He tried to play through it, but his fingers stumbled, scratching out sour notes, as if something in his music had gone wrong. Later, I heard him mumbling to himself in the cabin, words I couldn’t make out, like he was arguing with someone who wasn’t there.

Then, one of the flute players, Sarah, had a breakdown during a rehearsal. She’d played fine—beautifully, even—but suddenly she just stopped, her eyes wide and unfocused, clutching her flute like it was the only thing keeping her safe. She claimed she’d seen someone in the woods watching her, someone that looked exactly like her, only with hollow, empty eyes. By the time the counselors reached her, she was sobbing, completely inconsolable.

The Weaver had started weaving its web.

I tried not to think about Sam’s story, the one about the Weaver preying on musicians with 'secrets'. But the more I saw, the harder it became to ignore. It was like the whole camp had fallen under a spell. Each day, someone else would drift off, or stumble back from their practice spot looking dazed, hollow, like they’d left something behind in the woods that they couldn’t get back.

And at night, the whispers grew louder.

Every time I closed my eyes, I heard it—the faint, taunting hum of my theremin. Notes I didn’t remember playing echoed in my mind, low and twisted, wrapping around my thoughts like spider silk. My dreams were filled with shadows, each one tugging at my hands, pulling at my voice, trapping me in endless, dark corridors filled with music I didn’t recognize as my own.

By the fifth day, I couldn’t even bring myself to practice. I stayed in my cabin, but even there, I could feel the Weaver’s presence. It had found its way into our minds, spinning webs made of our fears and memories, as though each of us were an instrument for it to pluck and pull.

There was that night, Sam woke up screaming, gasping for breath like she’d been drowning. “It… it was here,” she whispered, her face ashen. “I saw it. It took my face, Amelia. It looked just like me.”

None of us could sleep after that.

Later that night, I found Sam sitting by herself near the fire pit, her face pale and drawn. She hadn’t spoken much about the whispers, but I could see the strain in her eyes, the way she avoided making eye contact with anyone.

I sat next to her, uncertain of what to say, but something in me pushed past the fear. “Sam?” I asked softly. “You don’t have to hide it, you know. I’m… I’m scared too.”

Her eyes flickered up at me, and I saw something raw there—a vulnerability, like she had been carrying it all alone. “I didn’t want to tell anyone,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I thought if I did, it would just make it worse. But… I hear the music, Amelia. I hear it, and I feel like I’m losing myself. Like I’m becoming a part of it.”

I felt my heart ache for her. I understood that fear more than she knew. That fear of being consumed by something you couldn’t control, something that played with your mind until you couldn’t tell what was real anymore. I put a hand on her shoulder, my own voice trembling. “You’re not alone, Sam. We can face it together. All of us.”

Over the next few days, I saw the same fear in the faces of other campers, the quiet ones who kept to themselves. Slowly, they began to open up. And each time they did, I realized how much I had in common with them—the same vulnerability, the same fear, the same dread of being controlled, manipulated by something we couldn’t understand.

Together, we started talking more, sharing our experiences. Some of the others had heard the music, too. Some had felt the shadows closing in. One girl, Eliza, spoke about the feeling of being watched while playing her flute, and how every note felt like it was being pulled out of her, twisted in the air before it could reach its proper pitch. Another camper, Marcus, said he’d seen the shadows follow him, the way they slipped behind trees, always lurking just out of sight.

I listened, I absorbed, and for the first time since arriving, I felt a flicker of strength deep inside me. These were my people. We weren’t alone in this. There was something in the way they shared their fears that made them all seem less like victims, and more like fighters. And I knew that I had to do everything in my power to help them fight back against The Weaver.

When I finally spoke, my voice was steadier than I’d expected. “The Weaver, it’s controlling us, manipulating us. But it only has power because we’re afraid. We have to face it, together. We can’t let it win.”

The group rallied around me, and I saw a spark of hope in their eyes. My sensitivity, the very thing I had always viewed as a weakness, had become a bridge—connecting me to them, and them to each other. It wasn’t just fear we were sharing. It was strength. It was understanding. We were all in this fight together.

Then that moment sorta leaked away, and the reality of our daily nightmare rolled in. Where I'd felt strong and supported I suddenly felt alone and weak. Maybe this was just because I felt like I was reliving the helpless silence that I had suffered through when I was younger, my secret, or maybe it was the Weaver exploiting those feelings of helplessness. It felt like some kind of trap either way.

We were trapped, like flies caught in a web, held by invisible threads that tugged at us in the dead of night. The Weaver didn’t just watch us—it played us, each of us caught in its dark, twisted melody. And the more it pulled, the emptier we felt, as though something inside us was slipping away, being stolen note by note.

At one point I actually tried to tell myself I was imagining it, that it was just a story, but deep down, I knew the truth. The Weaver was no myth. It was real. And it was here, lurking in the shadows, taking pieces of each of us until there would be nothing left but silence.

I was shaking when I walked into the big counselor’s office. Everything in me wanted to turn back, to go back to the cabin and pretend that none of this was happening. But the silence—the way nobody would talk to the adults about the strange things happening around camp—reminded me too much of before. Of the times things had happened, and everyone had just… kept quiet about it.

The counselor looked up, a little surprised to see me. “Amelia? What’s going on?” Her voice was calm, but I saw her eyes narrow a bit as I started to explain.

“It’s just that…” I hesitated, forcing myself to keep talking. “I keep hearing weird music. Not mine. It… it comes from somewhere else. And there are shadows that move when no one’s there. I feel like… like something’s watching us.”

She studied me, and for a brief second, I thought she might believe me. But her expression shifted, her brows knitting together like I was saying something embarrassing. “That’s… quite an imagination you have, Amelia. Why don’t we call your aunt? Maybe she’d like to come pick you up.”

“No! I’m not making this up!” My voice came out louder than I’d meant, and the surprise in her eyes twisted into something closer to pity. The look that told me she thought I was just a troubled kid, a problem to be solved by sending me home.

My stomach turned in knots. She didn’t believe me. Nobody ever did.

The big counselor went to the front of camp's office, to use the phone there, with her back to me. She was already dialing my aunt’s number, speaking in that soft, careful tone people use when they think you’re just overreacting. I could practically feel the walls closing in around me, the way they had before, the same way they did whenever people refused to see what was right in front of them.

"It's going to be okay, Amelia. This happens to a lot of new campers. It's her option to come get you if you're having a problem."

Desperation clawed up my spine, and as her voice droned on into the phone, my eyes wandered to the bookshelf. That’s when I saw it—a small, leather-bound journal with “Camp Black Hollow – 1963” written on the cover. Something about it made my heart skip. Sam had mentioned a journal she’d seen once in the counselor’s office, one that held old, forgotten stories about the camp. Stories she’d overheard the counselor say shouldn’t be read by 'impressionable kids'.

Before I could second-guess myself, I slid over to the shelf, slipped the journal out, and tucked it under my sweater. I took a deep breath, steeling myself, and in one quick movement, I climbed out the open window and darted away from the office, my heart racing as I ran back to my cabin.

Inside, the world felt quiet again, but I couldn’t shake the pounding in my chest. I held the journal close, feeling its rough edges press into my hands. I could just leave. I could run from this, let my aunt come and pick me up, leave the other campers to… whatever this was.

But I knew what happened when I ignored the things that frightened me. I knew how silence and ignorance could allow an atrocity continue. I couldn’t leave Sam and the others alone with whatever was out there. Not if I could do something—anything—to stop it.

Hands trembling, I opened the journal. The pages were filled with spidery, slanted handwriting. My breath caught as I read the first few entries, which described strange dreams and music that echoed in the dark, voices that whispered in the trees. The final pages were even more frantic, describing a creature called the Weaver, a thing that preyed on musicians, wrapping its threads around their minds until they became something twisted, something broken.

August 10th. There’s a talisman in the woods, hidden at the edge of the lake. They say it can repel the Weaver and seal its portal. I don’t know if I can find it, but I have to try. I can’t let it take any more of us.

I felt a chill run down my spine as I closed the journal, gripping it tightly. I didn’t know if I could find this talisman, or if it was even real. But I knew one thing: I couldn’t just run away. I had to try.

Tomorrow, at dawn, I’d go to the lake.

I woke with a start, shivering in the cold. The cabin was still dark, and the air felt heavy, like the night was clinging to the walls, refusing to let go. I couldn't remember when I had fallen asleep, only that I hadn't slept well, not really. My head was a mess—thoughts and whispers all tangled together, so much uncertainty. The terror of what I had seen... what I had almost become... it still clung to me like a fog. I was shivering, but I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or something deeper, something wrong inside me.

The faint light of dawn had barely broken through the windows, casting pale, fragmented patterns across the floor. I felt disconnected from myself, as if I were watching my own hands move as I dressed, each motion slow and deliberate, as if I could stop time if I willed it. The chill outside seemed to creep into my bones as I stepped out of the cabin, the cold air biting at my skin. The ground was damp from the night, but I barely felt the earth beneath me as I walked, my mind too focused on what I needed to do.

I had to find the talisman.

But as I stepped into the clearing, something felt off. Like I wasn’t entirely there. My body moved as if it had a mind of its own, and I was only an observer. Was I really awake? Was this real, or was I watching myself as I had watched myself fall into this nightmare?

I couldn’t tell anymore.

The camp around me was still mostly silent. The cabins were dark, the campers still asleep, unaware of what had happened the night before—or maybe they did, but they couldn’t bring themselves to speak of it. The darkness that hung over the camp, like a cloud, seemed to block out the early morning light, the patches of midnight lingering like black cobwebs in the corners of my mind. The air was thick with something I couldn’t explain, and it made my stomach churn.

I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going.

I pushed through the forest, each step slower than the last, until I reached the edge of the lake. The journal had said something about the talisman being near here, but how could I find it? What was I even looking for? A stone? A charm? The description was maddeningly vague. The earth felt cold beneath my feet, and the trees loomed over me like silent witnesses to the horrors I couldn’t escape.

The silence was suffocating. The only sound was the rustling of leaves in the breeze, and my breath—ragged, shallow—as I tried to make sense of everything. But there was no sense. I was grasping at shadows.

And then, I felt it.

The air grew thick, pressing against my skin, my chest tightening. A whisper, faint but unmistakable, like a breath in the dark.

“Amelia…”

I froze. The whisper was inside my head, too close to my ear, like it was coming from behind me. My heart began to pound as I turned, my eyes straining to find the source. But the forest was still, eerily so. No movement. No shape. No sound—except for the one that crept into my thoughts, slithering, growing louder.

“Amelia…” The voice was colder now, more insistent, as though it had been waiting for me. Waiting for me to hear it.

I could feel it. The Weaver.

It was watching me. Waiting. The very air seemed to twist around me, bending to its will. The shadows stretched out, shifting, pooling into shapes I couldn’t quite understand. I wanted to scream, but the words caught in my throat. My body was frozen, each movement sluggish, like the very forest was holding me in place.

And then, I heard my aunt’s voice—louder this time, sharp and real.

“Amelia!”

I snapped my head to the side, blinking, confused. She was there, standing just outside the clearing, her figure framed by the dim, early light. She was real. She was here.

“Amelia, come here! NOW!”

Her voice was cutting through the fog of terror, pulling me back. Without thinking, I turned and ran toward her, the fear still hot on my heels, but her voice was my anchor, pulling me away from the nightmare. The ground seemed to push against me as I ran, as if the earth itself was reluctant to let me go. The dark trees whispered, reaching for me, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t look back.

I stumbled into my aunt’s arms, and she wrapped them around me so tightly, I could hardly breathe, but it didn’t matter. I needed her. I needed her warmth. Her presence was the only thing that felt real anymore.

“Shh, it’s okay. You’re safe now,” she murmured, her voice steady, grounded. She didn’t ask me anything. She didn’t need to.

I couldn’t look at the camp again, couldn’t bear to think about it. The Weaver was still there. Still waiting for me to return, to fall into its grip again.

I let my aunt guide me away from the woods, away from the camp. The first light of dawn was creeping through the trees, but it didn’t feel like morning. It felt like the world was holding its breath, suspended between night and day, waiting for something terrible to happen. But I wasn’t going to let it.

I left everyone behind. I knew I had. Sam, Eliza, Marcus—they were still there, still in the grip of whatever had taken them. Whatever had almost taken me.

But I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t save them.

As the car pulled away, I looked out the window, my chest tight, knowing that something terrible was still out there, in the shadows, and I was leaving it behind.

But as my aunt squeezed my hand, I couldn’t shake the thought that I would be okay. For now.

In those blurs between rooms, those hallways; I dreamt. Not grey, but white welcomed me. Although harsh light filled the place like a ward or doctor's office, it spared comfort the uncertain dusk would ellude. 

"Time turns around." It sat in front of me, a hut of frazzled hair reaching to the floor obscured the face. "No different than the last." It stood and the hair still slouched on the floor. "Maybe the hair?." It approached me, arm poking out of the dense thicket that surrounded it, a shaman reaching out of its straw hut. It caressed her head, fused to the side of my neck. "Him and her… what else are you?" 

I grasped its rotted wrist. "Creature. We have not met." With a firm vice, I cast the arm, yet the mound of hair did not seem to react. "I would hope that it would remain that way." I spoke with some indignance towards it, a claim that it knew me. A claim that was dubious and reeked of gravity, I entrenched my disgust for this thing in preparation as I threw its hand away.

"Memories do have that uneasy quality!" The mound flatly remarked. It began to notch its skin. "But, that’s all we have." It dug into its sickly arm pocked with stains and marks of harm, pulling black from it, tainting the white. The ugly spot centered itself in the space, and I had narrowed my focus onto it. “You’re not fond of me, you’ll never be.”

I was unable to take my eye off the stain. "In my unfortunate time knowing you, you seem to ruin all things." The spot grew under my eye, it would spread through this place, another sickness like the infestation of that house. I resented the mound for it. "I do remember you.” Ire redirected back to the mound “I’m acquainted with ruin."

"And you know this place all too well!" Its tone heightened, a cheerful optimism, and I believe it mocked me. "So gentle are the colors, the sounds, the scents." It kneeled tilting its hut towards the stain. How fondly it spoke of the foul creation, I pictured a content face behind the hut of hair.  "A lovely place with things and senses. " 

"No." I laid a line, rebuking it.

"No sense leaving a canvas blank." The drop of black grew to a puddle.

"Not your canvas!"  I reacted frantically, attempting to wipe it clean and with clumsy, frantic strokes of my hand, I left a sordid smear. No more pristine, inarguably worse, burning swirled in my head and chest and I dug my hands in the black, ripping chunks of primordial goo out of a seemingly infinitely deep pool, mixing my tears into it as they haplessly dropped. 

"Whose is it?” It asked in between my tired wipes.

"Not your canvas...” I directed my attention with a snarl, baring teeth to crack and bite.

"Was it yours?" It pointed. "It wasn’t yours." We took a moment to stare deep into the pool. "Prick yourself, and you’ll spill me." It twirled its rotted fingers around the pool, with strands of its hut slowly leaching the black upward, as if siphoning the hideous color.  

I passed a hateful stare. ”Part your hut and I’ll see nothing like me." 

It played in the pool, silent for some moments. "Just as ugly. Just as vile. Just as loud. Just as fearful. Our defects are congenital." It spoke decisively. obstinately. I would pull that straw from its addled dome, the thoughts piled in me, more violence would be the answer.

“This was your stain to spill, you speak so callous, then you blame me.” We were surrounded by a lake of black. Yellow and green buds sprouting out of the opaque stain that looked to be ugly designs of bramble and vine shooting upwards. “I was supposed to be here.” Once a lake, now a sea, still somehow miniscule but exponentially expanding. 

It gave scale to the white as a slowly consumed universe. "It hates us."

"Then leave it alone." Still pained, watching this sickness overtake the world. "And I had no choice, you had it in your mind already to ruin this place."

"It takes up too much space in our minds, with no reason to. We speak so fondbly of this place. Yet none of us can be here."

"I am."

"And unwelcome. Do you feel like you're home?"

"I just wanted to rest." The bramble shoots turned to walls as it condensed and soared upward. Climbing hedges surrounded me with putrid colors, sickly hues of green and yellow. It stung the eyes and devoured the horizon. I softly knelt in the seamless muck, unable to see anything in reflection. "Please."

"I know you're sick." We both gazed upward at a white box gradually souring to that anxious color. Gloaming. And in that souring I watched the horizon, the lukewarm glow of a tired star hung formed in the same place, though not shrouded by the mists that covered the house. "I am too." The trills of cicadas saturated the air, burying our voices. My thoughts were dragged to the corners of my mind, barely rumbling over the harsh, meaningless calls, dissolving into all the raucous clamor of the blind idiots. 

 I then watched their abdomens vibrate out of the black sea.  They lifted their calls up the thorny hedges that stood like bright monoliths and the hedges shimmered with the waxy chitin of chimera. A vile symbiont, flashing and screeching and imposing as dusklight cast sickly rays through the gaps where they shook and screamed. I waited for the end of things with the mound. The mound did not hear me when I mouthed my anxiety. It did not listen. It did not care, and it asked for my help, callous as it was to me… I struck it. 

And struck it.

And pinned it.

And clawed it

And plucked it.

 It pulled away at the scalp so effortlessly tearing out chunks of bleeding and vile hair that felt like shredded wheat. In the picking of the mound, I found a worm. The head tapered but did not distinguish or articulate a neck. Bulbous eyes shot in different directions, ticking wildly as I saw shock in them, matching the expression on its lipless mouth. The ugly thing riddled with knobs and tumors, gnarled bones, teeth, eyes and stray strands of ugly hair marred the already weak and soft body. They bled with such  tasteful purpose, this body was meant to be ruined, what a pathetic thing. Blood poured out of the flutes of its toothless gape, flicking a white tongue as it gagged on its fluids. The arms, gaunt and sickly, were too weak to retaliate, they flailed and grasped and swatted at me, offering light tickles rather than struggle. I sat on its flabby chest and had my way with the worm. It reminded me of the sack I encountered, with the flesh giving no resistance as I slammed my fists into its soft head. 

 I grew deaf, with only the vibrations of furious pummels landing on its noseless center connecting me to the world. The head gave, caving inward. A crater of viscera and black impressed between the lower mouth and forehead, it still hissed after all of this abuse, but not to air out whispers of death. It was still quite alive. 

"Spill more of me." It gurgled through the crater and into my mind The worm sunk into the inky floor, so shallow it barely drowned my sole. "You’ll come back..."

I watched it submerge itself. Somehow I knew it still smiled through the crater of broken flesh while slowly being lowered a sort of wry committal. The murky shallows thickened to a silky mud, molding around my sole and swallowing the Worm.  

It held the ugliest, loudest, filthiest creatures. They soiled the hedges to an even fouler color, draping banners of rot that rolled down the sickly towers as they sang their wretched song. This chorus following the burial of the worm. How primordial they were – encompassing all that was there during the first painful throes of life. Destructively aimless, spreading their filth and screaming out of fearful ignorance, bewildered by the heat and light. Screaming of their nativity and neglect, screaming out of muck's cold womb, screaming as their existence called for it.

The star hummed, sitting at the meridian, but shedding twilight's hue. Still a constant stream of unbearable heat, akin to the first steps into that inner darkness where I seared myself, escaping the fate of a vessel for these screeching idiots. It tensed my back, making it tingle with the dull tenderness of a sunburn, though the heat still lingered on the body as if I neared too close to an open flame. The muck dried away to rusted sand, soft and finely grained. It clung to the residual grime and mud I stood in when I saw the world first form. It slowly heated to the temperature of dying coals, it cooked my feet as I wandered hopelessly. The screaming hedges impossibly loomed over ,enclosing me into a maze.

 The scene repeated over and over and over and over and over. I counted my paces from the start of every corridor to the turning of the corner. I kept track of any disturbances in the sand, I watched the star to wane across the sky. Each turn presented the same results, maddingly so. The four hundred and fifty four paces, the uniform rusted sand, the stillborn star, the chimera spewing excrement and singing over their soiled towers. It played over and over and over. What would I imagine beyond this? I grew to a panic, not at the horrors in sight, but the state of it all. Endless and helpless. I was here at the creation, but had no say in it. An addled mind manifested it long ago, too ill to form a beautiful thing, instead it thought of the throngs of chattering idiots and empty monuments, all hideous as the mottled brain of the miserable being that dreamt it. And it would not be happy alone, it shunted me inside of it, as a companion or a sort of cosmic cruelty. That Worm forced me to witness the beginning, the beginning of endlessness. 

The cicada calls flattened into a singular drone, and melded into the background. Becoming a modest din, white but still unpleasant. I began to mumble and whimper  the truth, as it all dissolved into fractals I helplessly passed through. Colors stretched and slowly rotated with dull glows of brown, yellow, green, purple and red, collapsing me with them. My body flattened out to a sheet that spanned the cosmic plane, with a constant feeling of a limb being yanked me, but further and further and further. 

The drones were replaced by stilted sounds of past lives and memories echoing faintly, stuttering at times, and eventually turned to hiccups and of vaguely familiar noises, as if awakened by a repressed consciousness within me. Or perhaps they were hallucinations of a dream, bearing a tenuous likeness of reality, but convincing enough to pierce the veil of waking. These sounds played indefinitely, the fractals and colors spiraled outwards to every plane, and I flattened to an indivisible sheet of paralyzed flesh that reached every recess of the world. Colors and thoughts overtook me through the terrifying jaunt and culminated with every atom vibrating in synchronicity, each radiating a dull pain. I felt it all, and I could never be numb to it. I gazed upward, bewildered at the colors, bound to the foundation as a hapless stratum of thin flesh, lids clamped open, forced to feel every moment in between. I was the plane. There was nothing quite like the horror of infinity.

I found myself between the boundless. I found myself. I found myself. I. Found. Myself. It should have been impossible. But yet I found truth. In essence – it was crude luck. But that was the nature of it all. Even in the boundless it was bound to happen.

And with that I would begin to form again, I lifted myself off that infinite plane, no longer a second dimension thing. I became a man. I forced the colors to separate back into the unshapely figures and sour din of that forsaken garden.

I held it all within me. A mistake in no uncertain terms. It should be an unsightly spectacle, one that turns the eye as well as the stomach. They all scream and stand for the same reason. I cling to the rotted substrate just as the beasts do, yet I jeer at them, turning my nose up while bearing the same scent. My silence denoted deference, and so it was, I drowned in the babel hoping something would notice me, but passivity begat suffering. For the moment is always mine, and mine alone.

HEAR ME.

HEAR ME AS I JOIN THE CHOIR.

HEAR ME AS I LEAD IT. ASCEND PAST IT AS THE ONE TRUE VOICE. THE FIRST ABANDONED.

I SCREAMED IT BEFORE THE BEASTS AND BRAMBLE, THE STAR AND SKY. AND YOU WILL HEAR ME BEFORE ALL ELSE. I WAS BORN SICK, BORN OF FILTH, BORN OF FLESH, AND CAST FROM GRACE. I WILL NEVER KNOW YOU, BUT YOU WILL KNOW ME.

I LET LOOSE AN ENDLESS WAIL AND I WAS LOUDER THAN IT ALL.

FINALLY! AT LAST! I WAS LOUDER THAN IT ALL.

I let my righteous fury boil over and lift me off the hot sands. My first tread forward cratered and imprinted the presence of a behemoth, one could have fit the countless shameful tracks of a desperate animal that came before it inside. It could have wrapped around itself, coiling infinitely around itself till it spanned past every horizon, and it would still not outstrip the single step. It was one with purpose.

I realized in all of that I could not hear anything, the stillness of the house and the white void returned, well welcomed. The hedges still festered with the creatures, did they know me? I removed one from the bramble, pinching it between my fingers. It squirmed, blurring itself with fierce vibration, beating a fleeing pulse of desperation through my hand, to know it's life was meaningless awaiting an abrupt and wanton crushing from an uncaring giant. It was still screaming. I was still screaming.

The world was very much filled with sound. And it never occurred to me that I could deafen it all. I reached towards my mouth and felt a gaping pit, pulling down on my lip, cracked and roughened, I could feel the fissures and lesions on it ringing. Ringing. Ringing. The strangest sensation, a silence that I made by being the loudest, that is to say I live in it. Yes, I already live in noise, as I live in my thoughts. All I had are my thoughts, all I have are my thoughts. As I walked through that house, as I spoke to that loathsome worm, as I splayed out infinitely, a cosmic sheet. I only had myself. That is how it will always be. I should be the locus, why would I let this illusion supersede me? I was fully capable of dispelling it.I was sleeping and lacked will. In all. I am. Nothing else is. I am.

I burrowed deep, gulping the blistering hot sands, my skin burned and cracked and peeled as parted the world, never ceding heat. Inside was not a burning core at the center, but the stillborn star lingering above me as a dreaming idiot, haplessly drooling out a parching poison that made the land sterile. What a disenchanting thing. What a simple thing. What an ugly thing. I turned a spurnful glare, gazing into it, it singed my retinas, better than to let it continue to belittle me, loitering, mocking my existence with its indifference. It should know my disdain for it is more than mutual, rather all encompassing, active, reasoned, and grounded in its very nature. The same repulsion that pushes forces from their respective poles, that gravity,  that primal fear of unknowing, that instinct of an infant wailing at birth, the baleful screams of vermin, blind, deaf, numb to feeling, but still harbored and frightened in the bramble, still screaming in pain. It was hatred written in me, before me, by me.

 How I loathed its gloaming and yet it still reached me.

Despite everything it still reached me.

I examined myself in the deep hold and grasped at my neck, a ruined hunk of meat, hair and bone perched at the margins of my shoulder. I held my vanishing keepsake of her, kneeling under the blazing gloam. Still screaming, now crying, spilling sand from my great maw. She was wholly unrecognizable, only known from her last resting place.

It hurt me. I ripped and flayed skin from my torso, exposing pulsing muscles, tendon and bone, spilling my own blood on the sands as each drop hissed like water splashed upon a hot iron. I knelt crafting flesh from myself to save her likeness. I wrapped the hair and skull with myself, the product was a mangled totem of meat, but still my only keepsake. 

I grieved while the star mocked me, it drooled misery exposing everything to its deadlight. All would eventually look up to it and gaze deeply into the sterile core and blind themselves. An unsightly thing, signifying a dying mind crafting this nightmare in a listless and bewildered state, the unerring gaze and racing thoughts of God. 

To hold you again, even as our skin seared and fused in an unholy branding, I felt the most gentle embrace. Security, comfort… hearth if not but for a moment. All felt equal. We shared fear, anxieties and doubts in a psychic bond. It had only made sense now, burrowing through the harshest sands, shredding and searing my body. You had fell from me, I failed to catch your grace, I lost your embrace.

How unfortunate you are, and how helpless I am. Had it meant that gravity brought us to concert and became a lumbering amalgam, twisting and wailing throughout the hallways... Your screams will be mine.

"In. Unison." It echoed through the living towers, the world shimmered with the subtle glint of lucidity as it spoke. 

I raised the broken hunk of flesh and hair reflecting the sickly glow of the deadlight. It dangled over my mouth, it stretched wider than I felt my face, taking up a dimension different from my own. 

I let go, and it plummeted down my gullet. I expected the sharp taste of iron but neglected the fact I could not feel my tongue, I imagined it sundered, atomized, spaghettified, then annihilated. As it crossed the outer bounds of the pit it was erased, and I felt nothing.

I felt nothing and screamed, having nothing but a name and the blood stained on my chest, mixed with my own, spilt on the sand. I would let it dry on my skin, a sanguine tattoo eventually dissolving to rust, blending into the wretched grounds I cut myself on. It eroded me, with my bones bare and grinding dust. But I felt nothing. I swallowed blood swept dunes, towers of thorn, and the quivering idiots.

I was before it all, yet that star still mocked me. It knew I could never reach it, I grasped upwards to it, straightening my spine, extending it further and further till a tension snagged at my body, it had only made sense to pull further away. Hard cracks knocked the hollow thorns and bramble and rolled across the sands and textured the baleful vibrations of the idiots muted song. Each knock marked a new vertebra birthed from me, elevating me. I grew to a steady rhythm, reaching higher, higher to climb to that stillborn and smother it. It would be that for each of these infinite passes, I grew. A terrifying agony as I was ripped further and further from my form with each addition. It no longer was a man. I grew forever. 

 My blood as a foundation. My bones as a frame. I ripped myself to pieces and formed the first brick, screaming as I molded sand and spilt blood. A pitiful uneven block unfit for children’s games, still mine of blood and bone, as crude as my butchering, still mine of blood and bone and forever eternal. I grew back from the sands and watched it all tower and crumble with the idiots colluding, now unable to beckon as I secured dominion. They huddled together grinding their abdomens into each other, taking place in a communion of violence. A disgusting intimacy brought forth by the blind and death grasping and straining outward, but never inward. A desperation to reach out to one of their few senses I had not taken from them. They could only feel their anguish. 

They shook and shook with such terror, such frightful energy, and turned on themselves. Panicking and melting into each other, becoming lesser than their selves. Truly they were together. Weaker, dumber, slower than ever before. Irony would be absent from them, overtaken by what brighter minds would understand to be their lower processes. They knew nothing of nothing, the odious sorts, and they would be best fit for filling gaps as mortar. They cling to each other with the mewling shakes of a captive.

I dug my hands deep into the bramble and gathered the pieces. The fouled shells crumbled and scent drifted upwards the ripeness of a rotted potato. I mashed them together in a viscous slurry, setting my first brick. My spine knocked with each moment of eternity and I grew to the hedges. 

A dismal scape with a motley of decaying colors sickly yellow, rotting brown, fetid greens, and murky black. The heads scintillated with idiots reflecting deadlight as though gilded from sublime material, thought to be shades from the divine place of one were not privy to the wretches’ antecedents. Each hedge had its contrast, with a shining hedge girdled to a plummet down in the burning sands, revealing a hellish maze of chance. The shimmers hoarded light, like selfish monuments, condemning those gaps to shadow, even in the dense sun and heat, how those of ill importance rise undeservedly, yet they still shriek their prayers, how I wish to raze it all and form the chirpers to a prison of sand and blood. Unable to sour the air further.

The frame was bramble muddied with old blood from a ceaseless toil. 

The foundation sand from the same anguish.

The floors laid as prisons for the idiots. Bound by my leaking humors.

The walls voids, soaking noxious deadlight.

And I built till I could eat the star.

And I built.

And I built.

And I built.

The Grimstone family is cursed.

A long time ago, when the Milners and Grimstones established the town of Roothhollow, a rivalry began between the two families. The two family heads ended their bickering by having a gun dual. In just twenty paces, it would be over. They both counted, matching their steps.

Five paces.

Ten paces.

Fifteen pa-

A loud bang resounded through the empty forest space they had chosen to have their duel: no witnesses, just Abel Grimstone and a now-dead Lou Milner. Abel's hand shook as he put his gun away into the pocket of his jacket; walking over to see if Lou was still alive, he saw the wide-eyed expression on his face.

Abel had shot Lou dead without finishing all twenty paces.

As blood began to pool under the body, Abel grabbed Lou by his ankles and started dragging him into the woods to bury him in an unmarked grave. He left Lou there and made his way home. When he returned to Roothhollow alone, causing an uproar in the Milner household, who had to admit defeat with Lou missing, the rightful Mayor of the town would be Abel.

That night, as the Grimstone family went to bed, Abel tossed and turned.

He felt like someone was watching him from the room's far corner. The shape and size of this tall figure were undeniably the ghost of Lou Milner.

Lou looked at him, blood dripping from the wound on his head. He was talking, but Abel couldn't hear what he was saying. The Grimstone family head knew what he was saying without words.

"You killed me..."

A chill went down his spine, and he turned over, facing his sleeping wife.

Abel closed his eyes, trying to make himself go back to sleep. If he ignored it, Lou's ghost would go away, wouldn't it?

Drew looked at his grandfather from across the dinner table, who flipped through the pages of his newspaper as he told this story.

"You're joking. The Grimstone family can't be cursed."

His grandfather lowered his paper. "Boy, do I look like I'm joking?" he said, the skin under his eyes prominently dark from lack of sleep.

Drew shook his head. " No, sir."

Charlie leaned back in his chair, addressing his grandson sternly.

"It won't be long until you see him too. What our ancestor Abel did to Lou Milner was cruel, all because he wanted to be the leader of Roothhollow. It's why Abel's son moved the Grimstones out of that place, trying to escape it when he grew up. He should have known, though, that the curse would keep following."

"Has anyone tried breaking the curse?"

Charlie folded his newspaper and put it aside, fiddling with his wedding ring. "Only once. My father traveled in search of the town of Roothhollow."

He tapped his fingers on the table. "There wasn't a town anymore, just empty, abandoned buildings and something else."

Curious, Drew fixed his posture and looked at his grandfather curiously.

"What else was there?"

His grandfather exhaled, saying, "A memorial statue of Lou Milner."

"So then someone found Lou."

Charlie nodded.

"His brother Shaw Milner knew something was up when Abel returned to Roothhollow alone. So, the year Abel passed away, he went looking for where the duel took place."

Drew paled. "So it means that Shaw found the body of his brother Lou and brought it back to Roothhollow, getting the statue built and burying the remains under it." he thought to himself.

It would explain why the curse was able to follow after Abel's son even though he had moved the Grimstones to another town. Drew knew that soon after his grandfather and father were gone, he would be haunted by the ghost of Lou Milner.

"Is there really no way to put an end to this?"

His grandfather looked towards the window, lost in thought.

"There might be, but I think it would be a shot in the dark."

Whatever the suggestion was, Drew was willing to give it a try.

"Go to Roothhollow and burn the bones of Lou Milner."

If the solution was so simple, why hadn't his great-grandfather dug up the bones and burned them then?

"Is there a reason why great-grandfather didn't burn the remains when he was there? He questioned his grandfather, who turned back to look at Drew.

"He was already seeing Lou's ghost, and since you haven't seen him yet, you might have a good chance at breaking this curse for good."

Drew nodded and got the location for Roothhollow, making plans to travel.

When he arrived at the ruins of Roothhollow, the entire place made his blood run cold. It was as if he could sense the lingering resentment that still hung onto this place. In the center was a tall, broken, and weathered statue, which he assumed was in memory of Lou Milner.

Taking out a camping shovel from his travel pack, he began digging.

Drew's shovel finally hit something hard. He knelt down, unearthing the rest with his hands. He found a tightly bound bundle wrapped in an old sheet. Pulling it up from the hole, Drew untied it and looked at the contents inside.

Inside was fabric stained with patches of grime, frayed and weathered.

Amidst the dirt-clung fabric were green and grey brittle bones that were once ivory. Drew picked it up, put it in a large pot, and placed it inside. Pouring flammable liquid onto the bundle, he lit a few matches and tossed them inside.

Once it was done burning, he destroyed what he couldn't burn with.

He hoped this would end the curse for his and the family's sake. As Drew left, he couldn't sense the lingering feeling he had once felt. Breathing out a sigh of relief, he got into his car and headed home.

When Drew arrived home, he was greeted by his grandfather and father.

"Welcome back."

He exited his car and approached the two. "Hopefully, it went well. Have you seen Lou?" The two shook their heads. That's good; that means that burning the remains worked.

Was the curse that haunted the Grimstones finally over?

Drew was able to do something that his own great-grandfather was not able to do. As he was settling down for bed, there was a knock at his apartment door. A nagging feeling told him not to answer it, but his curiosity made him check it out.

Looking through the peephole, Drew saw nothing out of the ordinary, nor did he see anyone. He slowly opened the door and saw a card on his welcome mat. Leaning down, Drew picked it up.

The eight of swords.

Drew swallowed the lump and looked around for who was responsible. Right behind him, he could feel something hovering over him, but he didn't dare turn around.

"You can't escape, Grimstone."

A clawed hand placed itself on his shoulder, gripping it inhumanly tight.

"Not until every last one of you is dead."

Drew was yanked inside, and the door slammed shut, muffling his terrifying screams behind it. Close by, a young woman peered around the corner with a satisfied smile. They may have ended Lou Milner's ghost, but the Milner family would continue wiping out the Grimstones in his place.

Even if they had to make deals with demons to aid them.

The Grimstone family will always be cursed.

My parents never explained why we had to play the Game of Silence. All I knew was that, every night at exactly 10 PM, we would sit in the living room, completely still, our lips sealed tight. Dad would set the kitchen timer, and that’s when the game would officially begin. We weren't allowed to make a single sound until the timer rang again. The rules were strict, and breaking them? Well, I’d rather not think about what happened when we did.

I made a mistake once when I was younger. It was just a cough. One small, innocent cough. But the moment the sound escaped my lips, I felt it. A sudden, icy brush against my skin, like something sharp and cold dragging across my shoulder. My skin split open, thin and precise, like a paper cut made by something unseen.

Even as a child, I knew. I knew that if I screamed, if I made even the slightest noise, I wouldn’t survive the night. My parents didn’t need to yell or scold me. The terror in their eyes, the pale horror etched into their faces, told me everything. That night, after the timer finally rang, my dad took me aside. “You can’t ever break the rules again,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “They don’t like it.”

After that night, I learned to hold my breath, no matter what.

The rules were simple: no talking, no moving, no noise. I never understood why. There was never any explanation, just the same old ritual.

Now, years later, I still don’t know who they are, but I do know one thing: when you break the rules, they can touch you.

Tonight, the house feels wrong. Something in the air is different. Mom has been nervous all day, pacing the kitchen, wringing her hands. Dad hasn’t said a word, but the tightness in his jaw tells me he’s just as worried. My little sister, Emma, clings to her stuffed rabbit, her eyes darting around the room like she can see something the rest of us can’t.

The timer ticks down. The silence is suffocating. My heart beats in my chest, loud enough that I wonder if it counts as noise. I keep my eyes focused on the floor, trying to block out the rising tension. But then there’s a noise: a soft thump from upstairs. It’s faint, but unmistakable. Something fell. My pulse quickens. Dad’s grip tightens on the armrest. We all know what happens now.

Nothing happens at first. We sit frozen, waiting. Then, the footsteps start, slow and deliberate. They come from upstairs, moving toward us. Mom’s breath hitches. Emma squeezes the rabbit tighter. We’re all on edge, waiting for what’s coming next. The sound grows louder, closer. My chest tightens, fear curling around my spine like an icy hand.

The door to the living room creaks open. But there’s no one there. Just an open doorway, leading into the dark hallway.

The coldness in the room intensifies. The air feels thick, like something is trying to push its way inside.

We sit there, staring at the open doorway, waiting for something to move in the dark. The footsteps have stopped, but the tension hasn’t. The room is freezing now, and I can see my breath in front of me. Emma is shaking, her fingers digging into the worn fabric of her rabbit.

I glance at Dad, his eyes fixed on the doorway, his jaw clenched so tight that I’m afraid he might snap. Mom hasn’t moved an inch. I want to ask her what’s happening, why things feel different tonight, but I know better. The rules don’t allow for questions.

Then, a sound breaks the silence. It’s faint, like a whisper carried on the wind. I can’t make out the words, but I know it isn’t good. The voices, whatever they are, are back. I know from experience that you don’t want to hear what they have to say.

Mom tenses, her eyes wide. She’s heard it too. Dad slowly shakes his head, as if telling us to ignore it, to stay quiet. We’ve been through this before. We know the drill.

But something feels wrong tonight. The air is heavier than usual, the shadows in the hallway darker. It’s like the house itself is changing, warping. I feel a knot of fear twist in my stomach.

The timer on the kitchen counter ticks loudly, counting down the seconds until we’re free. But it feels like an eternity away. I can barely stand the tension anymore, and I’m not sure how much longer Emma can hold out.

Suddenly, there’s another noise. This time, it’s a low scraping sound, like something being dragged across the floor. It’s coming from upstairs again. My heart skips a beat. I don’t dare look at Emma. I know she’s barely holding it together.

The scraping sound stops, replaced by a soft knock on the wall. Three taps, slow and rhythmic. Then another three taps, a little louder this time. It’s coming closer, moving down the stairs.

Mom’s breathing grows rapid, her eyes darting toward Dad. But Dad doesn’t move. His hands grip the armrest of his chair so tightly that his knuckles turn white. He’s afraid too, but he’s trying to hide it. It isn’t working.

Then, without warning, Emma stands up. My heart leaps into my throat. She drops the rabbit on the floor, her small body trembling as she takes a step toward the hallway. “Emma!” I want to shout, but I can’t. I bite my lip so hard I taste blood.

She’s sleepwalking. She does this sometimes, but not like this, not during the game.

Mom moves to stop her, but Dad holds up his hand, stopping her in her tracks. His eyes are wide, and there’s something in his expression that sends a chill down my spine. He’s not stopping Emma. He’s letting her go.

I don’t understand. Why isn’t he stopping her?

Emma takes another step toward the dark hallway, her eyes half-closed. She’s not awake. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. The shadows in the hallway seem to shift, reaching out for her. My heart is pounding in my ears, and I want to scream, but I can’t.

Just as Emma reaches the threshold of the door, something happens. The scraping sound returns, but this time it’s fast and frantic. It rushes toward us, and Emma freezes, her tiny frame standing at the edge of the darkness.

The whispers grow louder, more insistent. They seem to wrap around her, calling her name.

Mom can’t take it anymore. She jumps up, rushing toward Emma, but Dad grabs her arm, pulling her back with a strength I didn’t know he had. “No,” he whispers, his voice strained. “Let her go.”

Let her go? The words don’t make sense. What is he doing? Why is he letting her walk into the dark?

Emma takes one more step, and suddenly, the door to the hallway slams shut. The whole house shakes, and the lights flicker. The cold air vanishes in an instant, replaced by a suffocating stillness.

The timer rings, breaking the silence. The game is over.

But Emma, Emma’s gone.

The timer rang, signaling the end of the game, but my sister had vanished, taken into the darkness beyond the door. My mind raced, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

I turned to my parents, expecting them to react, to rush toward the door, to find Emma. But they sat there, frozen, their faces pale, eyes wide with that same deep-rooted terror I’d seen before. It was as if they were waiting for something.

"Where is she?" I whispered, my voice trembling. "Why aren’t you doing anything?"

Mom finally moved, slowly shaking her head. “We can’t,” she said softly, her voice barely audible. “The game is over.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Emma was gone, and they were just sitting there. I stood up, my body shaking with fear and anger. “We have to find her!” I shouted, louder than I should have, but I didn’t care anymore. “My little sister is out there!”

Dad’s voice was firm when he spoke, though his eyes betrayed his fear. “It’s too late,” he said. “The game has its rules.”

“Rules?” I repeated, incredulous. “What about Emma? We can’t just leave her!”

“We can’t go after her,” Mom said, her eyes filling with tears. “Not now.”

The fear in their eyes, the trembling in their voices … it wasn’t just fear of losing Emma. It was something else, something much worse. They knew something I didn’t, something they weren’t telling me.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I ran toward the door, throwing it open and stepping into the hallway. The air was colder, denser, as if the house itself had changed. The shadows seemed darker, thicker. I called out for Emma, but there was no answer.

As I crept through the hallway, my footsteps echoed unnervingly. The house felt larger, more expansive than before, the walls stretching out into places that hadn’t existed before. It was like the game had taken over completely, twisting the space around me.

Then I heard it, a faint sound, almost like a sob. It was coming from upstairs.

Without thinking, I rushed toward the stairs, my heart racing. I had to find her. I had to bring her back. Each step creaked under my weight, the air growing colder with every breath I took. I reached the top of the stairs and paused, listening. The sound was closer now. It was Emma. I was sure of it.

I followed the sound down the hallway toward her bedroom door. It was cracked open, just a sliver of light spilling out. I pushed it open slowly, stepping inside.

And then I saw her.

Emma stood in the center of the room, her back to me. Her rabbit lay discarded on the floor, and she was whispering something, too low for me to make out. Relief flooded through me. She was here. She was safe.

“Emma?” I called softly, stepping closer.

She didn’t respond. She just kept whispering, her voice steady and calm. I moved closer, but something felt wrong. The air in the room was thick with tension, and the shadows along the walls seemed to pulse as if alive.

“Emma?” I said again, louder this time.

She stopped whispering. Slowly, she turned to face me.

What I saw made my blood run cold.

It was Emma, but something was different. Her eyes were vacant, distant, like she was somewhere far away. Her skin was pale, almost translucent in the dim light. Then I saw it, a faint line across her neck, as if something had gently traced the same cold cut I had felt years ago.

“Emma?” I took a step back, my heart pounding in my chest.

She smiled, a small, eerie smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “You should’ve stayed quiet,” she said softly.

Before I could react, the door behind me slammed shut, trapping us in the room. The temperature dropped instantly, and the whispers I had heard earlier began again, surrounding me. They were louder now, coming from everywhere at once.

I turned to the door, trying to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. I was stuck, and the shadows on the walls began to move, creeping toward me. Emma stood still, watching me with that unnerving smile on her face.

“They’re here,” she whispered. “They want to play.”

The shadows inched closer, their forms shifting, becoming more solid. They moved toward me slowly, deliberately, as if savoring the moment.

I pressed myself against the door, panic surging through me. “Emma, please,” I begged. “We have to get out of here.”

But Emma just shook her head, that same empty smile on her face. “It’s too late,” she said. “The game is never really over.”

The shadows were almost upon me, their cold presence wrapping around me like a vice. My skin prickled, the same sensation I had felt years ago, the invisible fingers tracing across my neck. I was trapped, and I knew that if I made a sound, it would all be over.

Then, I heard a loud crash from downstairs. My parents had finally moved.

“Emma!” Mom screamed from the bottom of the stairs. Her voice broke through the eerie silence in the room. I took the opportunity to shove past Emma, running toward the door. I slammed my shoulder against it, and it finally gave way.

I rushed down the stairs, my legs trembling as I reached the bottom. My parents were standing there, wide-eyed and terrified. Behind them, the shadows continued to grow, spilling down the stairs like a dark fog, creeping toward us.

“We have to leave!” I shouted, grabbing my mom’s hand. But she didn’t move.

“We can’t leave the house,” Dad said, his voice hollow. “If we leave, they’ll follow us.”

“We don’t have a choice!” I shot back, glancing up at the stairs. The shadows were almost upon us, and I could hear Emma’s footsteps echoing from the hallway above.

Dad shook his head slowly. “This is our fault. We broke the rules.”

“What?” I stared at him, confused. “What are you talking about?”

Mom’s face was pale, her eyes filled with tears. “It’s true,” she whispered. “We broke the rules years ago. Before you were born. We didn’t know what we were doing, and ever since, the game has been watching us.”

The room felt like it was closing in around me. “So, what? We’re supposed to stay here and let them take us?”

Dad didn’t answer. He just stared at the shadows creeping down the stairs. “Go,” he said quietly. “You and Emma. Get out of here. Don’t come back.”

Tears welled up in my eyes, but I nodded. There was no time to argue. I ran back upstairs, finding Emma standing at the top, her face pale, her eyes blank.

“Come on!” I shouted, grabbing her hand. For a moment, she didn’t move, but then something in her eyes shifted. She blinked, as if waking from a dream, and nodded.

We ran down the stairs together, the shadows chasing us as we sprinted toward the front door. I could hear Mom crying behind us, and I forced myself not to look back.

The moment we stepped outside, the cold air hit us like a wave. The house groaned behind us, the door slamming shut. I grabbed Emma, pulling her away from the house as fast as I could.

We ran down the street, not stopping until we reached the edge of the yard. I turned back, my heart pounding in my chest.

The house was dark and silent, its windows empty and lifeless. But I knew better. I knew that inside, the game was still playing.

My parents had stayed behind, victims of a game they had accidentally started long ago. And now, the game would never end for them.

I looked down at Emma, who was trembling beside me. “We made it,” I whispered, trying to reassure her. But I knew the truth. We hadn’t really escaped. The game would follow us, always waiting for the next time we made a mistake.

As we walked away from the house, I could still hear it in the back of my mind, the soft ticking of the timer, counting down once again.

It's a strange afternoon ritual, sure. And a work in progress. But fifty-six days into “dealing” with my daily visitor, I was at least getting more efficient. The human mind can really adapt to anything, I thought while resting my bolt-action hunting rifle against the coat rack. I took a seat in the folding chair positioned to face the inside of my front door, glancing at my watch. I used to be a lot less desensitized to this process. 

5:30PM. I tried and failed to suppress a yawn. Anytime now, though. I let my right index finger slide gently up and down the trigger - a manifestation of rising impatience. This ritual had become so redundant that it was almost boring. I put my feet up on a half-packed moving box and attempted to relax while I waited. 

My favorite time-saving measure, without question, has been the bullseye. I hid it from Holly behind a magnetic to-do list that hangs on the door. Probably an unnecessary precaution - it's just a red dot about the size of my rifle’s barrel. Could be a smudge for all she knows. At the same time, I don't want her cleaning it to have it only reappear. She would want to know why it’s important enough for me to replace it. That's a question I don’t want her to have the answer to, I mused, pulling the barrel of the rifle up to meet the red dot. That target has saved me a lot of migraines, though. In the past, I’ve missed that first shot. Then there is either a fight or they run - exhausting no matter how you slice it. Now, when they twist the lock and open the door, the red dot guides me to that perfect space right between their eyes. 

Sparks of pain started to crackle where the butt of the rifle met my chest. I sighed loudly for no one’s benefit and swung the firearm a little to the left so I could see the watch on my right, feeling impatience transition to concern. 

5:41PM. A little late, but not unheard of. I shifted my shoulders to release tension built up from holding the rifle up and ready to fire. The deviation from the norm had spilled some adrenaline into my veins. I felt my eyes dilate and my focus sharpen - my body modulating to once again adapt to potential new circumstances. When I heard a loud mechanical click with a subsequent scream from the opposite side of the house, my predatory instincts withered back to baseline in the blink of an eye. 

They had been doing this more and more recently, I lamented, now trudging down the hallway, using the continued sounds that tend to accompany intense and surprising pain to guide me. A higher percentage still came through the front door, though, based on my counts. The bear trap was a nice backup, though. 

I take a left turn at the end of the hall and lumber down the two rickety wooden steps that connect my home to my garage floor. I look up, and there he is for the fifty-seventh time. The steel maw caught his left leg and clearly interrupted some previous forward motion as he hit the concrete face-first and hard, evidenced by the newly broken nose. 

At first, he’s confused and pleading for his life. He’s telling me what he can give me if I show him mercy. And if I can’t show him mercy, he asks me to spare Holly. His monologue is interrupted when he sees me standing over him. Sees who I am, I mean. Like always, the revelation leads him to shortcircuit from frenetic negotiation to raw existential panic mixed, for some reason, with blind rage. The type of frenzied anger that your brainstem fires off because none of the higher functioning parts of your nervous system have enough of a hold on what is transpiring to activate a less primordial emotion. 

Same old dog and pony show. Wordlessly, I empty a round into his forehead. Then, I send my boot slamming into the foot that’s still caught in the bear trap, causing it to snap and separate at the ankle from the rest of the body, releasing small fireworks of black dust into the air. 

No blood, thankfully. Clean-up would be a nightmare. Other than the cadavers themselves, I have little to clean up. Only tiny bone shards and obsidian sand, both of which are easily vacuumed. 

I will say, having them come through the garage is convenient from a storage perspective. Less distance to move the bodies. I drag the corpse to a metal storage closet that used to hold things like my snowblower. My key clicks satisfyingly into the heavy-duty lock, and I pull the door open. Inside are intruders fifty-five and fifty-six. 

At this point, fifty-six is only a skeleton, leaning lonesomely against the back of the storage closet, making it appear like some kind of underutilized “Anatomy 101”-style learning mannequin. Fifty-five has been completely reduced to a pile of thin rubble coating the floor. 

I cram fifty-seven in hastily, trying my best to lift from my core and not aggravate the herniated discs in my lower back any more than required. The cycle of decay for whatever these things are is, on the whole, pretty tolerable. No organic tissue? No smell of rot or swarm of death flies. The clothes and jewelry disintegrate into the unknown material too. My wife’s cheap vacuum is getting a lot of mileage, consolidating the black detritus for further disposal, but that's about it. 

All of them manageable, except the one. But I do my best to ignore that exception. The implications make me doubt myself, and I despise that sensation. 

Holly never gets home before 7PM on weekdays - plenty of time to clean up the mess. We live alone at the end of an earthy country road in the Midwest. Our nearest neighbors are half a mile away. Even if they hear it,  no one around here is ever alarmed by a single rifle shot. Weekends are trickier. In the beginning, I’d send her on errands or walks between 5PM and 7PM, but that was eventually raising suspicion. Now I catch the automatons down the road with a bowie knife through the neck. The rifle is better for my joints during the week. 

Automatons may not be the right word, though. They can react to information with forethought and intelligence. They just always arrive at the same time for the same reason. That part, at the very least, is automated. 

They’re predictable for the same reason the “red dot” hack works. It helps that they are all an identical height. Same reason they’re concerned about Holly’s safety, too. 

They think they’re me returning from work. 

I was walking home from a nearby water treatment plant, my previous employment, the first day I encountered one of the copies. I think I was about half a mile from home when I stepped on what felt like a shard of glass beneath my feet. I’m not sure exactly what it was; my head was up watching light filter through tree branches when it happened. I felt that tiny snap and then began to see double.

Instantaneously it was like I was stepping off a wooden rollercoaster - all nausea, disorientation, and vertigo. Next was the splitting. I was in my body, but I felt myself growing out of it, too. The stretching sensation was agony - pure and simple. Imagine the tearing pain of ripping off a hangnail. Now imagine it but it's covering your entire body and doesn’t seem like it's ever going to stop, no matter how hard you pull and wrench at the rogue skin. 

When the pain finally did subside, I had only a moment to catch my breath before the copy was on top of me. Paradoxically shouting at me to explain myself with its hands tight around my neck. I didn’t have an explanation, but I gladly reciprocated the violence. Knocking my forehead into his, I dazed him, allowing me to spin my hips and reverse our positions. 

All I knew was he needed to die, so I buried my thumbs into his eyes and pushed until he stopped moving. Through tears, I pulled his body by the leg off the dirt road and into the woods, hands wet and shaking from the shock and the savagery. 

I took the next day off of work. I didn’t explain anything to Holly - I mean, what is there to tell that won’t land me in an asylum or jail? Initially, I thought I had some kind of episode or fugue state that resulted in me killing another man in cold blood because I had mistaken him for some sort of doppelganger. 

I’d reaffirmed my sanity that afternoon when the sound of a male whistling woke me from a nap on the couch. I crept into the kitchen, and there I was - tie loosened and hands sudsy, just getting to work on some dirty dishes from the previous night. Thankfully, Holly wouldn’t be home for another twenty minutes when I drove a kitchen knife through his back. Quit my job the following day and blamed my worsening back pain. The best kind of lies, the most effective ones anyway, are designed from truths. 

I’ve never gone out of my way to prove this, but my guess is the copies materialize where that split happened at the same time it happened every day, and they just pick up where I left off - walking home after a day of work. The rest is history. Well, excluding the aforementioned exception. 

When I noticed that my wedding ring had a plastic texture, immobile and fused to my skin, I didn’t want to believe it. But it kept gnawing at me. One day, I ventured into the woods. When I found that the original’s corpse was seething with maggots, fungus, and sulfur, I realized what I was. 

I love Holly just like he did, and I’m all she’s got now. She doesn’t need to go through this pain if I can prevent it. We’re in the process of moving to Vermont for retirement, where she’ll be safe from this knowledge and from the infinite them. 

I'm not sure what will happen when the copies arrive at an empty house, but they aren’t my problem. 

All that matters to me is maintaining the illusion. Holly can never know.

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

It happened abruptly on a plane. 

I was woken up by some turbulence, and instead of going back to sleep, I stood up and demanded the nearest stewardess to bring me some sugar water. 

My voice was coarse, and I could feel every muscle tense across my body—as if I was preparing to do a backflip.

After crushing a Mountain Dew, I practically barked like a dog: “More! MORE SUGAR!”

It was terrifying.

Something awful had seized all executive functions of my brain—that’s the best way I could put it. It's like my consciousness got kicked out of the driver's seat, and was forced to watch everything from a cage.

I could still see, and hear, and feel every sensation in my body … I just had no input. No control over what I did.

“Mam, please calm down. We’ll get you some soda.”

“Sugar me, NOW!”

Horror quickly blended with embarrassment. I guzzled a dozen soft drinks in less than three minutes, which resulted in vomit all over my pants. People gasped, got up and moved away. I became ‘that woman’ on the plane.

“Do we have to restrain you mam?”

“Not if sugar I more have.”

***

Instead of heading home towards my husband and two daughters in Toronto, I went straight to the travel counter to book a new flight.

“Lost. Angels.”

“Excuse me ma'am?”

“Plane me.”

“You'd like to book a flight to Los Angeles, is that right?”

Despite speaking in broken monosyllables, everyone was very willing to help.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m very thankful that I live in a very progressive, nice part of the world that somehow tolerates strange speech and vomit-stained pants, but for once I just wanted an asshole to call me out for a ‘random screening’.

I wanted someone to detain the insanity controlling my body. Instead, I helplessly watched my visa get charged a fortune.

First Class. Extra legroom. Next available flight.

***

Upon arriving in California, a group of women dressed in very fancy blazers held out a sign for me. The sign said Simone. Which was my name.

The palest one wearing cat-eye sunglasses approached with a glossy-toothed smile. “Hello gorgeous. How was the flight?”

“Divine.” The Thing Controlling Me said.

“Good. Let’s freshen you up.”

***

In public, the women laughed and talked about fictional renovations. Everyone would take turns talking about ‘sprucing up their patio’ or how they were ‘building a yoga den’.

In private however, the women spoke in wet gagging noises—as if they were trying to make speech sounds not designed for human mouths.

The whole car ride from the airport, I was engulfed in drowning duck sounds. As a means of distraction (and potential escape), I tried to focus on what was being ‘squawked’, but that got me nowhere. The language was indecipherable. The one who wore a sunhat which obscured her eyes was honking at me especially. “Hreeeonk” she said,  pointing at me, over and over again. “Hreeeonk! Hreeeonk!”

The only consistency I could make out in their language is that whenever they spoke to the sunglasses leader, they would make the same double gagging sound. “Guack-Guack.”

And so, imprisoned in the backseat of my brain, I mentally started to make notes. 

• The leader I will call ‘GG’.
• My name is … ‘Hreeeonk’ ?

***

As we swerved through a busier commercial district, GG slowed her driving, in fact, everyone in the minivan became quiet and started scanning the surroundings.

The car pulled over a curb, near a preacher who was proselytizing by a rack of pamphlets. He might have been a Mormon or a Jehovah's witness.

GG stepped out first, followed by what I would call her right hand loyalist— a woman who perpetually wore a violet scarf. 

From the crack of my window, I watched GG and Violet introduce themselves as fellow evangelicals. They said we were all going to a public prayer, and that we could use more preachers outside to attract attendees.

“That's very kind of you to invite me,” The man said. “ But I'm used to just sticking to my corner here.”

They insisted, and said it was all for the greater good, but the man still politely declined. 

“You should know something,” GG said, and took off her sunglasses. Something in her eyes had the man absolutely captivated. 

“We are angels. Sent by God.”

There was a pause. The preacher continued to stare without blinking. “You're … what?”

“And we're having a congregation.”

The car's windows rolled down, revealing our six woman crew. At this point I should mention that before I became bodysnatched (and even before I became a mom), I was a fashion model for many years.

In fact, all of these possessed women looked like idyllic models, with their long shiny hair and unblemished faces. We were basically a postcard for Sephora.

“You … “ The preacher gawked at all of us. “ You're angels?”

He didn't object when Violet grabbed his rack of brochures, and placed it in the trunk. And he also didn't object when GG led him into the passenger seat in front of me.

The car doors closed and we were off again in seconds. 

“So does this mean the end times are near?” He was visibly stunned. Laughing.

Violet, who sat beside me, secured a gold ring along her finger. A dart-like needle protruded from it.

“Something like that.”

She slinked an elbow over his shoulder and stabbed the ring into his neck.

“Ow! Hey! What’re you? What is that?”

Violet pulled away. “What? This? It’s Bulgari. Off Sak’s on Ventura.”

“Why does it burn?” The man clasped his wound, patting it as if it were on fire.  “Ahh! AAAAAAHHHH!”

After a few squirms and moans, he fell completely limp. All the women honked an aggressive nasal sound. A celebration. The Thing Controlling Me joined in, honking at full volume.

***

The abandoned hotel they inhabited was somewhere between Los Angeles and Bakersfield. It was hard to be precise because my eyes weren't always looking out the window.

“Let me give you the grand tour,” Violet said, or at least that's what I assume the seal-like barking coming from her mouth meant.

The foyer was filled with flats upon flats of energy drinks. Monster, Red Bull, Rockstar, and dozens of other brands that all looked the same.

Our bedrooms looked all like normal hotel bedrooms. Except there were massive locks on the outside handles.

Violet also gave me a peek at the rooftop balcony patio—where I wish I could have averted my gaze, or closed my eyes, instead of staring right at the pile.

There were about two dozen bodies. Each one lifeless, each one dressed in very nice clothes, their ‘’Sunday best”. The preacher was dumped to the back half of the pile. The side with all the priests.

It reeked bad as some of the corpses were clearly decomposing, but The Thing Controlling Me wasn’t bothered by the smell.

Violet laughed her goose-honk laugh and took me downstairs.

***

It was in the dining room where everyone stood in a circle, awaiting my arrival. 

Formerly, this must have been a space where they held buffets and parties, but now it was just a completely bare room with energy drinks and glass pipes on the floor. 

GG came up and handed me a four-pack of Guinness tall cans. The Thing Controlling Me proceeded to guzzle each one.

For the first time, my conscious state became fuzzy—the jet lag and sleep deprivation was finally catching up. I slowly brought myself to the floor.

The rest of them smiled and honked as my hands curled beneath my head. I fell asleep.

***

A kick to the stomach woke me up. I rolled away and grimaced, staring at the black Prada heels worn by GG.

It was a full minute of reflexive dodging before I realized that it was now me who was crawling and sniveling.  The real me. I was moving my own limbs and shielding my face. I was shriveling up in a corner and screaming like a maniac.

“Please! Let me go! Please!!”

Somehow, when Thing Controlling Me fell asleep, I was able to take command again.

The honking entities surrounded my corner and nudged another frightened young woman towards me. I had never noticed her before because she had worn that massive sun hat that whole day.

It was Shula.

I was so caught off guard, I barely realized that I had control over my speech too.

 “... Shula?”

She used to work at the same modeling agency as me, and we often booked the same gigs because our skin tones were complementary. We even did a big eyeliner commercial for MAC once.

“You have to do everything … exactly as I say …”  Shula’s MAC eyeshadow now streamed down her cheeks.

She looked as sorrowful as I felt. 

“If you don’t listen  … they’ll only hurt us more.”

I stood up in my corner, eyeing the four other possessed humans. Their pupils were all dilated, probing me with intensity. 

“What? What do you mean?” I asked.

Shula’s head hung low. “This is your initiation. They want us to fight.”

“Fight?”

She stood up with reluctance and rolled back the sleeves of her oversized sweater. “We are going to have to make it look like I beat you up.”

“What? No. No no Shula. I’m not fighting you.”

“It’s not up to us. You have to do it.”

I wasn’t about to fight in some perverted boxing match. So I decided to run. I tried to bolt to my left, past Violet who was watching Shula. 

But the entity’s reflexes were too quick.

Violet seized my wrist and hurled me against the back of the room.

I slammed into a vinyl counter, breaking a nail, but miraculously, not my skull. By the time I stood up, the circle of women had surrounded me again.

“There’s no escape, Simone.” Shula curled both her fists, her sadness looked terrible and deep. “You need to fight. To show you're strong. Let's get it over with so they don't toss you.”

“Toss me?”

Shula nodded—fighting back tears.  “They've tossed bad picks before. Weaklings. So you have to put up a fight to show you're worthy. I don't want them to toss you.”

I looked at the counter behind me. It was adjoining a kitchen. 

I didn't know how long my free will would last, and I also didn’t know if I would ever have it again. I could have made many other decisions, but the mantra in my head was: escape now or die trying. Although their reflexes were quick, I thought maybe if I vaulted fast enough, I could grab a kitchen knife in time to properly retaliate.

So that's what I tried to do.

I flipped myself over into the kitchen. And this time, no one grabbed my wrist.

Scrambling off the linoleum floor, I shot past the fridge and industrial sink. I shot past the walk-in freezer and fryers.

But footsteps weren't far behind. By the time I reached another exit, someone grabbed my hair.

“You have to fight!” Shula screamed and dragged me to the ground. In seconds, I was pinned with a ladle against my throat.

She held a knee onto my stomach.

“That’s it. Just thrash around a little. It doesn't have to last long!”

I flipped her over and grappled her ladle, putting it on her own throat instead. Shula may have been taller, but she did not have tennis lessons with her kids.

“No! Simone! They can’t see you beat me!”

I pressed on the ladle like I was testing one of my rackets. I was single-minded in escaping, and if it meant I had to choke out my friend. Then that's what I had to do.

“You've got to stop! Plea… pl…

Her strength was fading, but I held on. It was only once her cheeks had turned blue, that I finally let go. 

GG bent over next to me with a smile. “Well done. What a fine vessel Ergic has chosen.”

My friend lay passed out on the floor. I stood with four smiling women who all smirked and patted my back.

***

Flats of drinks were opened in the foyer. They handed me Rockstars like candy, honking and ululating in some kind of trance.

All the while, GG held on to my shoulder, not seeming to care that I was still Simone.  Her squeal-whispers felt like slugs entering my ear.

Snishak G’shak Ree

A new supplicant for thee

Snishak G’shak Gaul

Soon ours, one and all

During the chanting ceremony, Violet’s purple scarf was taken off her neck and then wrapped around my own.

The entities circled around me. They bowed and breathed at me, anointing me with their exhalations.

***

GG took me to my room, and squawked to the entity inside me. I could feel it trying to wake up, playing a cerebral tug-of-war with my body.

Then GG looked me in the eyes without her sunglasses. She didn't have pupils like a normal human. She had the grid-like ommatidia of an insect.

“You are now Ergic’s tool, human. This is a high honor. Ergic is Vice-Praetor of the Old Ones.”

The Thing Controlling Me, or Ergic, had briefly seized control of my head and nodded.

GG put sunglasses over her eyes to speak to me, the real me, directly. “Cooperate with Ergic, and you will triumph. Resist, and we’ll toss you like the others. Understood?”

I didn't know what to say.

GG squeezed and held onto my cheek like I was some toy. Then she left without a word, and turned all six deadbolt locks.

***

I wasn't certain, but I had a feeling that if I fell asleep, I would lose all control again. That Ergic would reassert himself. That’s why I was left here with more beer cans around me. They wanted me to doze off.

I had to stay awake.

There was a discarded laptop in the room. It was probably planted to test my allegiance or entrap me. But I didn't care. I used it to email my husband and people I trusted.

I told them I was taken hostage somewhere in California, and that needed their help. I told them my kidnappers were part of some bizarre cult.

But I didn't tell them about my possession, the preacher, or any of the crazy bodysnatching stuff. I didn't want them to think I was insane ... They would never believe me.

But hopefully you do. 

That's why I also posted this here.

If you live between Bakersfield and LA, and have ever driven past a pink, run down motel, please call the police. 

Send someone.

Save me.

Before The Thing Controlling Me takes over again.

Picture this scene: the room is ultra-dark, you’re pressed against the sofa cushions by a strong man with his wet tongue stroking your neck, the sofa and cushions are not that soft, and your head is turned, stretched even, facing just the right angle to stare out the window and into the neighbor’s lit-up attic, where a shimmering light glows up the face of a doll and it is so far away you can’t make out any of its expression. It becomes a game for you to make out what its face is telling, but no matter how many times you get pinned against that sofa, you never figure out what it tries to tell you.

It has been 11 years. I am now 21 years old, an outsider trans girl turned barista for a company that sells primarily to white cis mall babes, and I have been planning on re-taking my rightful first steps into adulthood with my best and only childhood friend, Kyle. (Yeah, he lives every bit up to his name—a hype-beast who peaked during his High School football years and DJs for a trashy nightclub, who acts unrestingly like he has been force-fed Monster Energy drinks since he was an infant when really, it’s probably ADHD.) His dad, Bob, loyally has promised to pick us up from the nightclub at midnight when Kyle’s playtime is over—for our safety. Bob’s a “Bob” the same way Kyle’s a “Kyle”, a man who could be anyone so his friends, colleagues, and family had to nickname him “Bob the Builder”, which clarifies him… He works construction, and I guess people have always thought of him as stereotypically kind and normal. My parents have heritage in the Middle East; they fight loudly, and regularly and are not well-liked around our block (luckily my younger and older siblings have turned out better people so far), so we automatically stick out, and since tonight is my first time going out, I’ve had to keep it a secret from them.

I hang out with Kyle after my shift has ended, going to random local thrift stores, and we’re about to exit the most moldy-smelling one when a fat doll pops up out of nowhere. It looks like it has been sitting there collecting dust for the past 11 years. I know it is the right one, the one from the attic. Even though I was never able to read its expression, its hair, clothes and shape are too recognizable for it to be any other. Finally seeing its expression up close feels like a sudden anticlimax. It has gone from a hazy mystery to an average-looking vintage doll staring right back at me.

Without letting Kyle know why, I buy it. Perhaps I don’t know the reason myself, why I feel like I should own it (where would I even put it? I still live at my parent’s). We don’t have time to go back to my place, so we head straight to the nightclub where Kyle will be practicing since he’s still new, and we have a couple of mutual friends there who co-own it.

“What the fuck is that?” is the question of the night, referring to the 3-pound heavy baby I’m carrying around awkwardly. “Sorry, that’s our new friend, I forgot to introduce you,” I say. “Who the fuck brings a doll to a nightclub anyways?” Kyle is not happy about it, being my opposite in many ways, as straight and masculine as a hammer or spanner.

When they start with the drinks, I am sober in the most “epiphany” kind of way—that is, I simultaneously care less and less about how I stick out and feel like I don’t belong here, and really am glad that I don’t get hammered by alcohol the way that they do. My fat doll becomes attractive to their drunk minds, a genuinely amusing play tool that gets passed around in a circle used mockingly as a Lolita and less offensively as a hostage to their strong and sour alcoholic breaths. I give in to their caricatured selves, the tension around my neck loosens up, and I too engage in their mockery and silly dancing.

At some point, I forget keeping track of time and checking my phone for new messages and notifications. People stream in like silverfish on a bathroom floor until the club is filled with people in slick and shiny clothes. The pumping loud music is making me feel dizzy even though I’ve had nothing but free tap water all night. Kyle introduces me to a girl friend of his I’ve never met, she’s cool, goth and her eyes pierce deep into my soul as she pulls me onto the dance floor, leaving my doll in Kyle’s lap as he tells me that he has to go take a piss and I answer: “well, bring the doll and just don’t take a piss on it then, Kyle,” and he smirks.

The night is gone like that. Any frustration, any concern evaporates into the thin oozing smoke penetrated by colorful laser beams, a hard pounding in my chest, a gleeful smile in front of me and my matching rhythmic dance moves to those of a new friend.

And then the screams. The kind that doesn’t belong here: guttural, panicked, “someone just fucking died” kind of screams.

Reality hits me like a bowl of ice water, groups of people push to the exit, I have no idea wherefrom the panic arose but I know I have to follow people outside. I’m pushing past them aggressively; Kyle’s friend is gone. I throw my elbows to rush faster and make space, I check my phone, it is midnight, it is midnight, where did I leave Kyle?

Where did Kyle go? People exit in different directions, but I know where to go because Kyle’s dad should have been here now, so I go to where we had arranged for him to pick us up. To the side of the club, a small parking area lit by flickering streetlights, people are running away from there, leaving a body behind on the asphalt with a man kneeling screaming his name: “Kyle, no, no, no, my son,” no, no, no. I run to them unaware of any danger or sensation other than that my heart is in my throat, electricity shoots bolts through my body. He’s dead. He has no face. It’s replaced by mossy red matter. They’re soaked in a pool of blood; his dad doesn’t even notice me.

“I am so, so sorry,” I say as if it’s my fault that Kyle is the one who is dead. Bob still doesn’t hear me, other people come and try to pull him away from the body, and sirens ring discordantly. I go to the shadowed wall of the nightclub, throw up water and turn around to see once again, just far enough out there in the distance, my doll lays with its face turned towards me, hollow in its expression. Almost menacingly.

I wish I could say my story ends there. Alongside Kyle’s. But it doesn’t.

Three hooded men wearing masks were spotted running away from the crime scene after having beaten and kicked my best, and only, friend to death outside his workplace. No one got caught. No one got punished.

It has been six years.

I used to scuff at movies featuring creepy killer dolls because it always felt like mine saved me, but now I believe it. This doll of mine was there with him, stained with a single drop of blood on its cheek, a testimony to what it witnessed. It was my fault, it said, and then I slowly walked past the small crowd taking care of the body and the body’s father and I picked it up from the ground and thought, this is my fault, I am going to take that home with me, all the blame. I see it now: This is my fault.

On the sixth anniversary of his death, I make a quick call to my parents and siblings to let them know that I care for them and appreciate them, for having respectfully supported me and letting me live with them up until I got my own apartment (which is a month ago). I quit my low-pay job, and I turn on the gas oven and open it, ready to put my head inside of it.

I have thought about it a lot so that I don’t mess it up. There is something so poetic about dying like Sylvia Plath, a woman whose soul was haunted despite the love she also received during her life. I am reminded then in that moment, of the backstreet cat that has peered through the window since the first night I moved in, which I reluctantly opened the window for and let into my apartment for a cup of almond milk. If I am to end what I have here to get a sense of peace, to bury the endless black noise that has occupied my brain since Kyle’s death, I am not taking an innocent cat with me.

So, I go into the living room, blow out a candle and close the window to the streets where a strong wind is whooshing. As I do it, I hear the sound of the door to the kitchen slamming behind me, the air cracks and I hear a low rumbling as something erupts behind me, tree and glass splints and a wave of heat hits my back. I am knocked over; my head hits the ground with a loud thump.

I wake up in the hospital to my dad sitting next to me. He is eating shawarma (probably from his place downtown), which makes the whole room smell strongly of homely spices. I feel nauseous but mostly because I realize my demise; that my demise was not the one I had hoped for. How does one go about explaining what I had tried to do, excuse it? There is no way to do that. Instead, I stare at the doll placed on the cupboard in front of me, parts of its face are burned but the body is very much intact and the same. “Oh,” my dad says as he notices the subject of my attention, “they did not manage to save much from the fire but that. It’s so ugly, they should’ve left it.” It is an ugly doll, for sure. That thing is haunted. Maybe it never saved me, maybe it has been there at every bad moment of my life because it was the reason for them, it is the cause of bad things happening around it.

I want to get rid of it, and I know I can’t. If it could die, I know it would’ve died in that fire.

You would think things could only go downhill from here: at the hospital after a failed suicide attempt with basically no income, no place to live, having to move back to my parents, having to experience my family silently judging me at the peak of the aftershock? Yeah, I don’t think so. I am spending the next few months facing my new realities, such as that due to the fire, most of my back is scarred including the backside of my head, where my long beautiful hair will never be able to grow back. Some of my chin is scarred, my neck is scarred, and a lot of my arms and legs. I look like someone’s nightmare, and I don’t know how any wig or makeup could ever save this.

I get rejected at every job interview, getting embarrassed and spooked looks from the interviewers and the people in the streets. Even after having spent hours in front of the mirror trying to piece my skin and body back together into something recognizably human. The doll turned out better than you, I think.

I guess that is when I decide to make a change, and instead of reversing my life into societal norms, I am going to completely destroy any sign of them. I am tired of this body and this mind, there are only a few things I have been definitively good at anyway, and if I stay, I want to fulfil the revenge I sought out in the first place.

My only, and depressing, regret, is that I got the wrong person killed. Technically, the beating was only supposed to land Bob, Kyle’s dad, in the hospital. I was too much of a coward to ask the small group of white druggies from the edge of our suburb to finish the deed after I paid cash—naturally, I had saved up and withdrawn money from the bank ever since I started working my first job at 16. I just guess they took it too far and got scared when they realized they jumped the wrong family member; Bob and Kyle do look somewhat alike, as fathers and sons typically do. I haven’t heard or seen them since, and I don’t care to because I don’t blame them. It is me who was responsible for looking out for Kyle, me, who hired them knowing their history and not at all caring if it would’ve turned out the same for Bob, splashed out on the street for all to see.

Maybe I sound insane but that is what he made me feel: Wrong and worthy of destruction for the reason of existing. For years, I would escape my parents’ fights by going to Kyle’s and finding comfort in how much more average-looking, “ideal” his home life appeared. We played games on his PlayStation, Kyle even got me to play ball games with him, and we chatted about life and everything cool and not-cool, deep and not-that-deep.

Kyle’s parents were happily divorced, and since his mom was a career-lady, Kyle naturally favored staying with his dad. I never saw Bob around much because he, too, would work pretty late, but when I came over at night because of my parents, things started to change. He would never leave me and Kyle alone, out of sight, except to bring us ice cream from the fridge and soda. He seemed like a perfect dad, probably too perfect, and then one day, it was like he flipped the switch. His face grew more serious as he asked first Kyle, and then me, to undress.

Kyle’s face blushed with redness, I couldn’t stand looking at him, he tried to ask his father if they could do it later, alone, privately. I both understood what was about to go down and had no clue what it meant. He didn’t seem to force Kyle to do anything, Kyle appeared as if he went along with it, while I stood there frozen. “You too,” Bob would say, sneeringly. Petrified I removed my clothes like he told me to, and I felt myself distancing from my body which was wrapped in cold air and goosebumps.

Sometimes he did both Kyle and I, sometimes he did only me and made Kyle watch. I still couldn’t stand looking at Kyle, so there I stretched my neck, looking out of the window into the neighbor house’s attic across the street, at the doll that I now own.

I don’t know why I ever went back; if it was for Kyle’s friendship; if it was the desperate belief that everything else about his home life was perfect and better than mine; if it was because I felt that, even though what Bob did to my body hurt and left me feeling dirty and shameful, I still somehow felt that it was so much better than the lack of control in my own house. Somehow the act of going back felt like I did have a sense of control, and that it was rewarded in the end with Kyle’s lifelong friendship.

Now Kyle is dead because of me. I had arranged that night out where we would need to get picked up, made sure that it was Bob who would come to get us, and showed the gang members who to go for, while I would be dancing the night away with Kyle. Obviously, I knew it would hurt him emotionally, but I trusted my gut that it was for the better because Kyle still lived at home and I still saw the way he acted around his dad, timid and uncomfortable when he got up close to him. I knew that it was right.

But I messed up everything, and I have to do it over. I have found another strategy. Bob wasn’t only interested in kids; he was also interested in hookers. Here I find myself unable to get past a job interview for a normal job, and I must go rogue. I tell my family that I am safe but I am going to be away for a while, and they try to hold me back but they can’t refuse because I am my own adult.

It is depressingly easy to get into prostitution today: One contact becomes your ad and suddenly, you’re sold like a cheap car on Craigslist. So much for self-empowerment and feminism. I don’t have any clothes I consider slutty but I find out that it doesn’t matter, they’ll treat you the same—and all the sexual trauma awakens, rushes down my spine and keeps my body stiffened like I am in electrotherapy, breathing through my teeth. The greedy sensations, the foul smells, the taste stuck in the back of my throat that I will be washing away with soap in the bathroom later. And the best part, I can’t stop. This is what I was made for, and it all crescendos the day Bob becomes my client, and takes me home.

“It’s been a while,” he says. I tell him to shut up, my voice is grown-up. “What?” he says anyway, and I tell him that I don’t want him to make me remember. “Alright,” he answers. Over the next many years, I willingly see Bob. Bob becomes my client, and I become his. Sometimes he makes me dress up as Kyle in his old clothes, all of which I know by heart, and sometimes he tears up and asks me to just sit with him and hold his hand. I don’t know which makes me feel more ill.

When I fuck with Bob, I make sure to make him feel loved and seen and heard. I do everything that he wants me to. It is like I am his doll. This is a punishment for both of us, I think, fittingly. My life has turned into our life. We are one side of the same coin, the victim and the perpetrator. He buys me things and asks me out, too. We lay in bed after fucking, and I let him cook breakfast for me in the morning.

By the time Bob is in his late 60s, we are in a loving relationship, and I no longer have ties with my family. And by loving, I mean: “I hate every single inch of your skin, but I will tolerate you until it’s time.” Because one day, he will die by my hands, too.

He frequently talks about marrying me. A discreet marriage, of course—not because I am the childhood friend of his dead son and much younger, but because I am a trans girl. His colleagues, of course, can’t know. I don’t reject him but I appear reluctant, I don’t want him to know that I want the marriage to happen, too.

So, by the time we are officially, and discreetly, married, I am ready to finalize our time together.

Serving by serving, I put a little bit of rat poison in his drinks. He falls ill, pale as a white sheet and wet with heavy beads of sweat. His lips are bluish, he throws up a lot. I keep it going, serve him just enough to keep him ill for extended periods and drag it out, but make sure there are periods when his health is better and he can return to work to avoid suspicion.

It is a slow process but this is what I have waited for. I realize that I do not find joy in seeing him die slowly but there is something else that makes it worth it. Like the tense pause between the end of a performance and a standing ovation. He coughs, gets slimy, he is the most disgusting he has ever been, and I have seen the worst of him. He wants sex, and I pretend to pity him when I say no, I simply cannot.

I know the torture has to end when he is bedridden for several weeks, the workplace keeps calling and he is coughing up blood. I have to give him a proper doze and end the misery, despite how every nerve in my body tells me to extend and keep pushing, keep seeing how far I can make him go. I know that it has to end.

The fat doll, which I have placed on a bookcase next to his bed, stares at us as I sit next to him and give him his final doze of arsenic. “I am scared,” he says, “don’t you think you should call the doctor?” I open his hand and run my finger in circles on his rough palm. “No. I don’t think I will.”

With caution, I proceed to remind him that a real man owns his illness and doesn’t succumb to it. A man’s illness is his, and only his problem, and if he makes it anybody else’s, well, then he is no better than said illness. Bob’s teary eyes look at me for help. “I want you to know before you pass, that it was me. All those years ago. With Kyle. I arranged for someone to get hurt that night.”

He blinks, and his gaze flickers around as if he is tracking a fly darting the room. “What do you mean “with Kyle”?” His old voice is so much more fragile like a whimper than I expected. He almost sounds innocent.

“I mean that I killed your son,” I say, and he reluctantly laughs in an uncomfortable smile. “It was supposed to be you for raping me and for raping Kyle. For everything you did to us, you disgusting pig.”

I can feel my voice and hand tremble as I recollect my memory. All of what has been boiled up, unsaid. No words have enough color or edge to give life to that. Yet I want him to believe what I say, and it appears he is fumbling, beginning to see a picture he never even considered.

“Remember how eager I was for you to come and pick us up at the nightclub? How I had it planned for months—and those three men who got away? I paid them for years worth of work salary, oh yeah, I messed up with that. It wasn’t supposed to be Kyle.” I suddenly find myself choking up before realizing my cheeks are already wet with tears. “He was my friend. I didn’t even want anybody dead. I just wanted you to hurt,” I cried, gasping, “I needed you to feel so, so hurt. Please, why did you do it?” I ask.

Through my blurred vision, I see his face distorted, too, in a sad frown with ugly tears and snot running down his face. It feels like I am looking at the real Bob, caught in shame and self-pity, and I can’t tell if he is crying for me, for himself or for both of us.

I stop myself from squeezing his hand and let go. He eyes the empty cup of arsenic at his bedside. “How long?” he asks.

No, I think. This is not about you, Bob. But he thinks so.

In the exhausted breath of a loser, I sigh and stand up. I no longer look at him. I’m staring at my doll.

Bob is not healthy enough to get up himself and call for help, call for anything. He may live for another hour, maybe for another day. Nobody stops by for him anymore.

As I leave Bob to die alone in excruciating pain, I am comfortable knowing that I will be somewhere else and that when his neck tightens, and he angles his head to scan the room for help, he will find himself in just the right position to lock eyes with the “faceless” doll I leave behind.

The package was heavier than I expected. It sat on the worktable in front of me, wrapped in a layer of brittle, brown parchment that smelled faintly of mildew and old varnish, with a wax seal—red, chipped, official-looking—stamped on the front. For the attention of Magdalene Driscoll, written in the small, careful script of someone who doesn’t want their name connected to this delivery. I traced the address with my thumb, feeling a prickle of excitement.

The museum was quiet, colder than usual, with that familiar smell of dust, varnish, and the ever-present tang of metal from the displays around me. All around, cases of glass and steel stood like silent, forgotten sentinels in the dim light, each one filled with relics of another age—half-melted candle molds, tarnished sextants, peculiar tools that looked like they’d been assembled from spare parts in someone’s attic. I heard the creak of the floorboards settle and imagined the exhibits behind me listening as I worked.

A message from Tamsin had arrived earlier that day, her voice crackling over the line as if her words were being dragged through static. Tamsin held a Ph.D. in Industrial Archaeology, specializing in 19th-century mechanical innovations and esoteric technology. Her research focused on unconventional inventors who operated on the fringes of Victorian science, particularly those whose inventions blurred the lines between science, art, and the occult. She liked to call it "studying dead men’s toys," which never failed to annoy purists.

"Hey, Maggie! Just wanted to give you a heads-up," Tamsin had said, sounding more animated than usual. "Remember that inventor we talked about—Winslow? Well, guess what? A journal of his just surfaced, full of sketches and notes on his inventions. I thought of you right away! It's on its way over now—you’re going to love it."

I’d laughed it off then, but now, sitting alone with the package, I felt a sliver of apprehension. The stillness pressed in as I peeled back the parchment, revealing an old leather-bound journal underneath, its edges worn and cracked. I ran my hand over the cover, which felt almost soft, as though it had been handled by a hundred hands before mine.

The first page crackled as I opened it, and a musty, almost sweet scent puffed up—a mix of faded ink, dried paper, and something else, something metallic, like old blood. My fingers tingled as I turned the page, and there, in thick, dark strokes of ink, was the name: Ivor Winslow, 1829.

A thrill ran through me. I’d heard of Winslow, that much was true. Tamsin and I had laughed over rumors of his work—devices that supposedly let you “see beyond the veil,” things people claimed let you peer into other realms, glimpse spirits. It was all nonsense, but this… this journal made it feel solid, real. Winslow’s words sat heavy on the page, a warning as much as an invitation.

Journal Entry, 7th February, 1829

At last, I have refined the diagrams for what I now denominate The Warden’s Glass, a contrivance designed to unveil the hidden substrata beneath the human countenance; to pierce the common veil and afford a glimpse into the architecture which, I am convinced, courses beneath the surface of mortal flesh. This apparatus, if assembled to the precise specifications I have delineated, may permit the wearer to behold not merely the tissue of our corporeal form but that elusive quintessence which lingers therein, half-visible yet wholly inscrutable.

The device itself demands the placement of two primary lenses—one convex, one concave—set within a brass frame that holds them at a separation exact to a quarter of an inch; such a distance has proven critical, for without it, the apparatus serves merely to magnify the mere superficies, yielding naught but an ordinary amplification. My initial trials, I regret to note, yielded only this, much to my chagrin; I shall not soon forget the unfortunate episode involving the dissection of a housecat, whose secrets were, alas, not laid bare by the preliminary lenses.

Further, I have introduced a third lens, set obliquely, and treated with a thin coating of silver nitrate—a substance which, I surmise, shall act as a filter for those more spectral elements which lie dormant to the unassisted eye. This treatment, I hypothesize, shall lend to the viewer a rarefied perception, one that transcends the bounds of mere organic scrutiny and hints at the immaterial. I have yet to comprehend fully the nature of this spectral substratum, though in prior observations, I have beheld faint vapours—fleeting emanations—particularly around those in the final throes of life, and, in one instance, upon a cadaver but hours deceased.

Yet, even as I commit these particulars to paper, there emerges within me a sensation not solely of elation but of something altogether more severe, as if some primeval warning lingers at the fringes of consciousness. The phrase, To see what lives beneath, haunts my thoughts incessantly, suggesting more than mere flesh or sinew; it alludes to an uncharted realm that may lie upon the precipice of the observable, awaiting its own dreadful unveiling.

There remains upon this very page a faint smear, left from an earlier accident in the course of the experiment; it is a smudge of blood, thin and dried, mingled with the residue of silver nitrate—a token, as it were, of the very boundary I seek to cross. Blood, yes; yet blood is but the beginning, the primal fluid from which my investigations must spring, leading me down that path where substance yields, finally, to essence.

To-morrow, I shall resume these trials, urged forth by a conviction both unrelenting and yet laced with apprehension, as though bound by some spectral thread; it tugs, invisible yet undeniable, drawing me onward into shadows where no man has ventured and whence no man may return unscathed.

I turned the page, feeling the brittle edge scratch lightly against my thumb; a faint itch surfaced at the bridge of my nose, and I scratched it absently, my eyes falling once more upon Winslow’s neat, precise script. The ink looked darker here, almost oily, sinking into the parchment with an unsettling intensity. The next entry lay before me, waiting. I took a steadying breath.

Journal Entry, 15th February, 1829

The apparatus, now augmented with certain modifications, has yielded the most extraordinary results; indeed, what I have observed may strain credulity, yet it must be recorded with the utmost fidelity, for the sake of both science and posterity. Upon this day, I dared to engage The Warden’s Glass upon a human subject—none other than myself—and thus set forth to test whether my theories held substance or were mere phantasmagoria borne of fevered ambition.

At first, there was naught but an unsettling disquiet, as if I had peered through a dense mist; shapes appeared, nebulous and indistinct, floating at the periphery of vision. I adjusted the lenses with trembling fingers, aligning them precisely; a curious vertigo ensued, a spinning sensation, brief yet palpable, as though I had plummeted from some great height within my very soul.

Then, as the vertigo subsided, I beheld—oh, how shall I describe it?—an apparition, not wholly human, but a shade of myself, clinging to the contours of my face, my hands, my form; it seemed a dark mirror of flesh, pale as death, as though some ghastly double had emerged from within, lurking beneath the skin. There were my eyes, yet hollowed and glistening with a malign intelligence not my own; there were my hands, twisted and elongated, as if stretched by unseen forces to an unnatural shape. This other self regarded me with an expression so dark, so hideously knowing, that a thrill of terror ran through my frame.

Yet, the spectacle did not end here; the vision grew stranger, still more grotesque, and I perceived upon my limbs faint trails—pale, winding veins—pulsing not with the warmth of blood but with a thin, sickly light; it traced across my skin as though some inner fire burned weakly within, struggling for release. These veins converged upon my heart, which throbbed visibly beneath the Glass, as if yearning to break free of its bony cage. Indeed, I swear I saw it, my heart itself, beating with a sickly rhythm and tinged with a hue I dare not name; it seemed a creature alive unto itself, malicious, hungry, and ever-watchful.

Such was the horror of this vision that I was compelled to tear the Glass from my face, lest I descend fully into madness. My breath came in short, gasping bursts, my hands numb with fright; it was as though I had glimpsed some heretofore hidden world, one that exists beneath our every waking moment, unknown to us, and yet profoundly, horribly real.

I write these words with trembling hand, for I know not what next I shall uncover should I continue these trials; yet I am driven by a force I scarcely comprehend, an unquenchable thirst to understand the dark inner workings of our being. There is something—some force or essence—that dwells within each of us, some shadow-self that lurks beyond perception, ever present, and I am determined to unearth it, though it cost me my reason, or my very soul.

Tomorrow, I shall endeavor to increase the refractive power of the lenses, to deepen the magnification, and perhaps unveil that which lies even further beneath; for there are layers upon layers yet unexplored, and I feel compelled to venture into these unfathomed depths, however treacherous they may prove.

May these notes serve as testament to my efforts, and as a warning to any who may follow; for there is, I suspect, a price to such knowledge, one that has already begun its dark toll upon me.

I checked my watch—10:42 p.m. Just about time to pack up, call it a night and head home. That was the logical thing to do, of course, but the thought came and went like smoke, barely registering. I was stuck here, rooted to the spot with the journal practically pulling me in. The brittle pages caught the dim light in a way that dared me to leave it unfinished, to abandon Winslow and whatever strange things he’d uncovered. Instead, I turned another page, my pulse picking up.

My eyes landed on his sketches, meticulous and exact. He’d drawn out the Warden’s Glass—lenses sketched in sharp detail, measurements scrawled along the sides like the work of a man in a hurry. Below were lists of chemical compounds he’d tried, with a line or two about their “effects on perception,” in a mix of English and Latin that seemed to straddle the line between science and something close to mysticism. 

Tinctura Salis Nitri

• Description: A tincture derived from purified sal nitrum (saltpeter), thrice distilled in a copper alembic; proportioned as 3 drams saltpeter to 1 drachm copper. Purported to “steady the pulse and prepare the nerves for heightened vision.”
• Dosage: 12 drops, administered upon the tongue ere the handling of the Warden’s Glass.
• Observation: “Observed upon trial—a mild clarity of thought, yet tingling persists at the extremities. Requires further refinement.”
• Latin Notation: Per visum maiorem, sed cum tremore (For greater sight, but with trembling).

Vapor Mercurii Sublimati in Vinum Plumbum

• Description: A mist derived from calomel (mercury chloride) vapor, suspended in lead-infused wine at a ratio of 2:1 (wine to calomel); believed to “illuminate hidden recesses within the flesh.”
• Application: Inhaled sparingly ere observation. Caution advised, as mercury’s influence upon the constitution is known to be deleterious.
• Observation: “First trials reveal a subtle brightening in perception, though a dull ache ensues. Mild unease follows.”
• Latin Notation: In corpore visio, tenebrae patent (In the body, vision opens to shadows).

Pulvis Lapidis Philosophi, admixtus cum Oleo Absinthii

• Description: A powdered facsimile of the lapis philosophorum (Philosopher’s Stone), created through pulverizing native sulfur with oil of absinthe in a ratio of 3 to 1. Purported to sharpen the mental faculties to an extraordinary degree.
• Dosage: A small pinch upon the tongue, not to be administered more than twice per fortnight.
• Observation: “Immediate effect—awareness heightens, with a ‘second sight,’ though evanescent; faint illusions present to the mind.”
• Latin Notation: Per lumen infernum lumen celatur (Through infernal light, hidden light is revealed).

Elixirum Fulmini, Miscere cum Spiritu Terebinthi

• Description: A volatile admixture of spirits of turpentine with tincture of fulminated silver, at a ratio of 3 scruples turpentine to 1 scruple silver. Said to “cleanse the ocular sphere, removing impurities in sight.”
• Application: Applied delicately about the eyes using a cloth; vapor inhaled at a distance.
• Observation: “Excessive luminance detected in immediate vision, though violent throbbing persisted until following day.”
• Latin Notation: Oculi aperti, cor videt (Eyes open, heart sees).

Pulvis Stramonii cum Lacte de Belladonna

• Description: A powder derived from dried thorn apple (Stramonium), mixed with an extract of belladonna at a ratio of 2 grains to 1 grain respectively. Purported to allow perception of “phantasmal entities.”
• Dosage: A pinch stirred into water or wine, taken with sustenance to avert any ill humors.
• Observation: “Pupils dilate; slight euphoria, accompanied by mild hallucinations of forms obscured by shadow.”
• Latin Notation: In somnis, veritas occulta (In dreams, hidden truth).

Essentia Aetheris Aquae Regiae

• Description: An essence distilled from aqua regia with an admixture of ether, in a proportion of 5 parts aqua regia to 1 part ether. Said to unveil that which “lies beneath the flesh.”
• Dosage: To be inhaled directly from the bottle, not to exceed three breaths.
• Observation: “Dangerous in excess; a potent elixir causing immediate vertigo and narrowness of vision. Fleeting effect, to be used sparingly.”
• Latin Notation: Corpus mutatur, anima apparet (The body changes, the soul appears).

Winslow’s notes showed a fervor that bordered on obsession; he outlined doses, mixtures, ratios, specifics so precise they were almost unnerving. The parchment held dark stains—residue from his experiments, or maybe just the ink reacting to the years.

Then I hit the next entry, and immediately, the tone shifted. The ink was darker, almost pressed into the paper with a weight that practically dripped frustration—or fear. I took a breath, feeling a chill creep up my arms, and read on.

Journal Entry, 22nd February, 1829

It is with great dismay, mingled with some measure of indignation, that I pen today’s account, for my recent revelations concerning the Warden’s Glass have met with scorn and derision among those I once counted as both colleagues and friends. The very mention of my observations—the vision of that dark being, that infernal double I beheld through the lens—was met with laughter, outright mirth, as if I were a common charlatan recounting tales of phantoms and spirits to gullible children. Even Dr. Abner Hollis, whom I had regarded as a mind of singular curiosity, dismissed my findings as fanciful delusion, urging me to “rest” and “let the fever pass.”

There is but one, Mr. Roderick Elwood, whose ear was inclined toward my words with more than passing interest; indeed, he listened as I recounted my ordeal with a silent intensity, his gaze fixed, thoughtful, as though he too had once glimpsed into some dark crevice of the soul. Mr. Elwood, a fellow student of optics and physiology, is a man of sober mind and unyielding curiosity; he has spent many years in the examination of light and refraction, often proposing theories both strange and inspired, yet rooted always in science and logic. At my behest, he agreed to come to my laboratory, to view himself through the Warden’s Glass and see if my account held merit.

Upon his arrival, I noted a strange solemnity upon his countenance, as though he approached some sacred rite. I placed the Glass in his hands, noting with satisfaction his careful grip upon the device, his movements precise and respectful, for he understood the nature of invention, of risk. When he at last held the lenses before his eyes, I waited, scarcely daring to breathe, as he peered into his own reflection, his gaze unwavering.

Yet, as the moments passed, his expression remained impassive, unmoved; indeed, his features betrayed no trace of horror nor recognition of that shadow-self I had glimpsed so vividly. At length, he removed the Glass and regarded me with a bemused smile, expressing no horror, no dread, but instead a mild disappointment; he claimed to have seen nothing untoward, nothing to suggest the “revelations” I had described with such fervor. He suggested, perhaps too kindly, that my vision had been the product of fatigue or nervous excitation, and recommended I abandon the apparatus for a time, lest it lead me further astray.

This revelation—this failure—has left me at once baffled and resentful, for it suggests that the Glass reveals not to all but only to certain eyes, or perhaps certain souls.

I am loath to abandon my inquiries, for in them I sense some deeper truth—a truth both terrible and irrevocable. Tomorrow, I shall proceed with another trial, perhaps upon a third party or upon some creature devoid of reason, that I may discern whether this apparition is unique to me alone. Let this entry serve as both testament and warning, for should my findings reveal some singular corruption within my person, I know not what end awaits me, save one of horror.

I really should’ve been heading home by now; this journal wasn’t paying my overtime. Winslow’s journal had me in a strange grip, as if the lines of ink themselves were threads, winding tighter and tighter around me. I pulled the lamp closer, allowing the warm pool of light to spill across the worn pages, and I turned to the next entry with a growing sense of anticipation.

Journal Entry, 24th February, 1829

To any who might follow my steps through these pages, let this entry serve as a testament to the precarious and beguiling path upon which I now tread. Today, I conducted my latest trial with the Warden’s Glass, and I am yet shaken by the result, unable to decide if the vision I beheld is truth or some horrid delusion crafted by a fevered mind.

Having resolved to test the apparatus upon another, I enlisted the company of Mr. Leopold Grant—a figure of some notoriety within the town and not unfamiliar to those versed in local gossip. Accused, albeit never convicted, of unspeakable acts against a woman and child, Grant remains a shadowed presence in our community, a man cloaked in accusations, though no judge’s gavel has ever fallen against him. Despite his standing, I confess a fascination with his intellect, for he speaks with an eloquence that belies the baser rumors surrounding him; his discourse is, in fact, often compelling, with insights that I might describe as mordant, even penetrating, if not for the faint whiff of arrogance which always accompanies his speech.

Mr. Grant is a man of many convictions, particularly in matters of social order and the so-called "rights" of mankind. He regards the world, as he put it in our discussions today, as “a vast tapestry wherein each thread is not woven by man, but dictated by nature’s own hand.” A peculiar view, yet I found myself reluctantly compelled by his arguments, for he spoke with such fervor on the inherent hierarchy of all living beings, on the natural superiority of the “enlightened few,” that for a moment, I found myself nodding in unthinking assent. It is a view, I must admit, that grows more common in our age—this conviction that certain men are fated for greatness, while others are destined to serve. Such beliefs disturb me; yet, in Mr. Grant’s company, I confess I felt strangely willing to listen.

It was with no small sense of foreboding, therefore, that I handed him the Warden’s Glass, knowing his nature but curious to observe if he, too, might glimpse his inner form as I had. I prepared a dose of Tinctura Salis Nitri, administering twelve drops upon his tongue precisely as prescribed. He accepted the tincture without protest, though I noted his lip curled slightly at the bitterness; still, his gaze remained fixed upon the Glass with a peculiar intensity, as though he anticipated some spectacle or revelation unique to himself.

At last, he held the lenses to his eyes, his features poised in cold anticipation. I watched him carefully, scarcely daring to breathe as he peered into his reflection, his gaze unwavering, his form statuesque, and his lips set into a thin line of contemplation. The silence stretched between us, thick as a shroud, and I waited for some flicker of recognition to pass over his face.

But it was I—not he—who beheld the horror.

Through the Glass, I caught sight of his reflection, twisted and blackened, a shadow-self that I dare scarcely describe; for in his visage I beheld not mere flesh, but a mask of malice, as if his inner being had warped his features into a grotesque semblance of humanity. His eyes, dark as pitch, seemed to absorb the light, drawing it inward to feed some monstrous emptiness within; his mouth curled into a smile, but it was a grimace of hollow triumph, a sneer stretched tight as if over bone. The flesh about his throat bore dark lines, winding like chains, as though some inner violence had left its imprint upon his very spirit.

I struggled to remain calm, to keep my face impassive, though every nerve in my body urged me to recoil. Mr. Grant lowered the Glass, glancing toward me with a faint expression of curiosity. “Is all well, Mr. Winslow?” he inquired, his voice low and untroubled. For a moment, I stood rooted to the spot, fighting the urge to confess the vision that had chilled me to my marrow.

But no words came. Instead, I forced a smile—weak, strained—and assured him all was well, that the Glass was simply an instrument, nothing more. He seemed satisfied with my answer, his mouth twitching into that familiar, unsettling smirk as he handed the Glass back to me, remarking idly that he “had hoped to see something truly remarkable.”

And thus, I let him go, saying nothing, betraying nothing, though my mind shrieked with horror at what I had beheld. I should have told him, should have confessed my vision, for he deserves, at the very least, to know the depths of his own corruption; yet, perhaps cowardice or some lingering fascination stayed my tongue. Even now, I cannot shake the image from my mind, nor can I fathom why the Glass should reveal such horrors to my eyes alone.

I stifled a yawn, rubbing my eyes and reminding myself that any sensible person would’ve left hours ago. But here I was, still anchored to Winslow’s strange, unsettling world. I’d gotten used to this, I suppose—staying long after everyone else had clocked out, losing myself in archives and journals, just as I’d done back in grad school. My old study partners used to make fun of me for it, always the last one hunched over some musty old book while they grabbed drinks. But they’d gotten lazy after a few years; most of them were happily cataloging exhibits or doing desk work now, their curiosity worn down to a dull nub. Maybe I wasn’t exactly Miss Popular, but if that’s what they thought it took to be “likable,” I didn’t care.

I flipped to the next page, feeling the spine shift strangely beneath my fingers—a bit heavier than the rest, a peculiar thickness at the back that I hadn’t noticed until now. I pressed a little, thinking I’d feel something odd beneath the leather cover, but nothing seemed amiss. Just the pages and that sense of old weight, dense and ominous in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me, tired as I was, but it felt like the journal itself was pressing back, heavier somehow the deeper I got into Winslow’s entries.

Leaning into the lamp’s glow, I turned the page. The flicker of the light seemed to make the ink shift on the page, as though his words were still wet, fresh and almost alive. I took a breath, pushed my glasses up my nose, and read on, drawn in by that same strange, nagging pull.

Journal Entry, 10th March, 1829

A fortnight has passed since the night of Mr. Leopold Grant’s visit, and I find myself gripped by an unease that no science nor rational philosophy can dispel. The Glass, in its cold and indifferent clarity, has revealed a dreadful truth—one I had, until now, successfully cloaked in the comfort of denial. Leopold’s visage, that foul, contorted shade I glimpsed, was no fleeting mirage; it was, I am convinced, a manifestation of his true essence, made visible to me alone.

Yet, how did I fail to heed the warnings? The rumors of his alleged misdeeds have lingered about him for years, staining his reputation like a faint shadow one might dismiss in passing, but which clings persistently to the air. There were whispers of a woman, a child—of lives cut short by a silent hand and buried by the cruelty of indifference. He eluded judgment, defended by technicalities and the absence of witnesses, and emerged unscathed in the eyes of the law. And here I was, deceived by his charming eloquence, his wit, even his mind, so coldly rational yet disturbingly vibrant. It sickens me to think that I too might have been charmed into silence, lulled into complacency by my own foolishness.

No longer, however, will I rest on such foolish conceits. I have devised a plan to expose the truth, to force this revelation upon the eyes of others who, like myself, have failed to see the wolf among us. I shall host an evening gathering at my own residence, an affair of unusual festivity; and I shall invite a select company—those men and women I deem most respected within our society. This will be a congregation of the learned, the curious, and those of firmest moral standing, for I must secure witnesses of unquestionable judgment; only then can the weight of Leopold’s corruption be laid bare for all to behold.

I shall prepare carefully, extending invitations to each guest with utmost discretion, lest the nature of my purpose be misconstrued. I have chosen them with utmost care; there is Dr. Abner Hollis, once a friend, whose skeptical eyes may lend credence to the spectacle I shall unveil, though he regards me now, I believe, with disdain. There is Mrs. Lavinia Crawley, a woman of high social standing, outwardly prim yet keen for the private scandal; perhaps she will delight in the unmasking of our mutual friend. Mr. Edward Salloway shall be among them, a man of inflexible conviction and a strict adherent to logic, whose presence shall serve as a bulwark against any claims of exaggeration or hysteria. And there is Miss Eleanor Finch, an artist of prodigious skill, whose temperament is both studious and unafraid, a woman with a keen eye for shadow.

The invitations have been sent, and I have taken pains to craft them in a manner both cordial and mysterious, hinting at a grand spectacle which might arouse their curiosity. Though I am seldom one to host gatherings, I trust that the unusual nature of this event, combined with their intrigue in my scientific pursuits, shall draw them here.

17th March, 1829

The night of the gathering has come and gone, and I am yet in a state of agitation, a turmoil so profound I scarcely know how to order my thoughts upon this page.

They arrived in finery, exchanging pleasantries in the candlelit corridors of my home; I greeted each with cordiality, concealing the quiet dread that gnawed at the edge of my mind. Leopold was among the last to arrive, sauntering in with that insufferable air of familiarity, as though he and I were kin of the closest order. He clasped my hand, a broad, arrogant smile spread across his face, and I felt a shudder seize me, an impulse to pull away, to banish him from my sight; yet I smiled, swallowing the disgust that welled within me.

Wine flowed freely, and soon laughter and the low hum of conversation filled the rooms; yet beneath it all, a tension simmered, invisible to all but myself. I waited until the hour was late and their spirits sufficiently loosened before making my suggestion—that we adjourn to the lower chambers where my laboratory lay, for I had “a marvel” to show them.

They laughed, teased me as expected, yet curiosity won out, and they followed, descending into the dimly lit room where my apparatus awaited. The laboratory was arranged with deliberate care: the Warden’s Glass rested upon a velvet-draped pedestal, surrounded by vials and tinctures whose oils glimmered faintly in the gaslight, casting shadows that flickered against the walls. I had prepared the room as one might a stage, each object meticulously placed, each light angled to create an atmosphere both scientific and foreboding.

One by one, I offered them the Salis Nitri, observing with satisfaction as each obligingly took a measured dose; I administered the preparations carefully, precisely as before, knowing that any deviation might compromise the outcome. As each guest took their turn peering into the Glass, I noted with relief that their reflections remained untainted, their forms unchanged; they laughed, finding nothing to remark upon save for a faint dizziness from the tincture’s effects.

Finally, it was Leopold’s turn. Yet no sooner had I extended the vial than he declined, laughing as he waved it away. “I have tasted your draught once, Winslow,” he jested, “and I see little need to subject myself again.” His voice, dripping with casual insolence, made my blood pound hotly, yet I forced myself to maintain composure, coaxing him with gentle persistence. He continued to resist, and the others began to laugh at my insistence, though I sensed a flicker of hesitation in his eyes—a trace of something that only deepened my resolve.

Before I could press further, a clumsy guest—young Mr. Pettinger, the son of a local magistrate and entirely inebriated—stumbled forward, declaring his eagerness to try the experiment once more. His heavy hand caught the edge of the pedestal; the Glass, my creation, my only means of revealing the truth, toppled to the floor with a sickening crash. In an instant, it shattered, shards of glass scattering across the stone, reflecting a dozen fractured images of my horrified face.

Rage surged within me, a torrent so fierce I feared it might consume me utterly. I scarcely remember how I ushered them out, my voice tight, my gestures sharp and unkind. Leopold gave me one last smirk as he left, a look that seared itself into my mind, mocking me, taunting me with the knowledge he had escaped yet again. As the door closed behind the last of them, I stood alone in the darkened room, staring at the remnants of my work, a hollow emptiness settling within me.

Yet beneath the emptiness, a darker impulse stirs, a heat that I cannot ignore. I find my mind drifting to thoughts of vengeance, to the image of my hands wrapped around a throat, squeezing, feeling the life drain slowly away. I see it as clearly as I see the room before me: Leopold’s face, contorted in shock, in pain, in horror as I exact upon him the justice he has evaded for too long.

I closed the journal with a slow, steadying breath, feeling that prickling chill on the back of my neck, the kind that keeps its hold long after the lights go on. Winslow’s words were a trap I was willingly stepping into, deeper and deeper with every page. My shift had ended ages ago—but the idea of going home felt so…trivial. The museum was empty, quiet, and as always during these hours - rare as they are besides occasions such as this one - I liked it that way. The silence wrapped around me like a wool coat, somehow making Winslow’s twisted little world feel all the more real.

I got up, stretched, and wandered down the dim corridors, looking at the exhibits I’d walked past hundreds of times without a second thought. There were glass cases of polished brass instruments, faded maps, and fragments of machines that once hummed and clanked in some distant past, their usefulness as dead as their makers. Some pieces reminded me of that strange mix of people you meet in school—the ones who can’t leave the past alone, whose lives revolve around dusty artifacts, more comfortable with objects than with people. I’d been one of those, too. Still was, I guess.

I thought about the things Winslow had written, the strange way he seemed so formal, so poised, even while talking about horrific things. And yet, the cold detachment didn’t make it any less unsettling; if anything, it made him sound even more unhinged. Like he saw the world through a lens the rest of us weren’t privy to, and that lens wasn’t showing him anything pleasant.

Funny, though. The more I read, the more I could almost understand him. Winslow was someone you’d see wandering the library stacks at university, the one who barely looked at you, who muttered to himself like no one else was there. I’d known people like that. Hell, I’d been people like that. Lost in their work, their little pockets of esoteric knowledge, and wrapped so tightly in themselves they couldn’t connect with anyone else. Not that I’d had a huge circle of friends to begin with. They’d called me abrasive, prickly, or “too blunt.” Like that was somehow my problem.

But I’d never cared for the small talk, the endless cups of coffee over gossip about professors or breakups. Too many of them were just waiting for life to get started, like there was some grand event right around the corner. I’d found comfort in the straightforward nature of things like this museum. Artifacts don’t disappoint; they just…are. Just like Winslow’s journal, fixed and constant in its quiet horror.

I wandered past an old brass astrolabe, its darkened surface polished smooth by god knows how many hands, and caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the glass—a little older, maybe, and definitely tired, but the same me that stared back at people a little too directly. 

My mind wandered back to Winslow’s “Nitre Tincture” and the mad certainty in his words as he described his plan. The image of his guests in the cold light of his laboratory, not knowing they were about to witness something…something awful. I could almost picture him, adjusting the Glass with one hand, trying to hide his disgust for Leopold with the other. The man had ambition, I’d give him that. And even though he was bordering on deranged, there was something satisfying in seeing him out to prove everyone wrong. That sense of triumph over the ones who doubt you, who turn up their noses at what you know.

After a while, I made my way back to the journal, a little clearer, ready to get lost in it again.

Journal Entry, 29th March, 1829

The deed is done; there is no turning back now, and I write this account with hands steadied by grim purpose. Leopold Grant is dead—by my own hand, and by methods as precise and deliberate as any experiment. I have, at last, silenced the monster within him, though I am aware that in doing so, I may have awakened the same within myself.

I encountered him alone, in the shrouded hours between night and dawn, when the streets are silent and only shadows bear witness. I had observed his habits with meticulous care; he often took solitary walks at that hour, basking, no doubt, in the certainty of his impunity. I had prepared my tools—the tinctures and powders that would ensure a swift yet undeniable end, items familiar to my hand but now turned to a darker purpose.

Approaching him, I offered my cordial greeting, concealing within it the cold malice that had festered in my heart. He returned my address with that same smugness, that insufferable smile; and yet, even as he spoke, his words rang hollow to my ears. I felt as though the world had narrowed to the beat of his pulse, to the delicate arch of his throat, to the faint gleam of his breath hanging in the air. There, under that shadowed lamplight, I pressed the vial to his lips, insisting it was a draft to ease “the malaise of the spirit.” Ever arrogant, he accepted it without question, swallowing my poison as if it were merely another trifling amusement.

The effects were swift, as I knew they would be; his eyes widened, his hand clutched his chest, and he fell to his knees, gasping for air that would no longer serve him. I watched, transfixed, as he convulsed, the once-powerful limbs now twitching feebly, his voice reduced to a mere whimper. The darkness consumed him, and I observed each stage of his passing with a dispassion that frightened me more deeply than the act itself; it was as if I had stepped beyond mere morality, into a realm where justice was the only law.

I write these words not from guilt, for I feel none, but from a strange, lingering satisfaction. I have succeeded where the law and society failed. Let this entry stand as testament; he has paid for his sins in kind, and I, though damned, feel a purity in my actions, as though I have struck a balance between the shadows of this world and the light.

I dropped the journal, my hands suddenly cold, trembling as if I’d touched something forbidden, unholy. Winslow’s words echoed in my mind—a confession. Cold-blooded, calculated murder. This journal wasn’t just a record of experiments; it was his dark, twisted diary, and I’d just read his final, damning entry.

As the book hit the table, something slipped out from between the pages, landing with a soft thud. A flat object, wrapped in parchment. So that’s what had been causing that strange weight shift. I hesitated, heart pounding, before reaching for it. I slid it out from the parchment, cautiously peeling back the layers as it began to glint under the light—a piece of glass, clear but with an almost unnatural shimmer.

Then it struck me. This wasn’t just any piece of glass. It was the Glass, a shard of Winslow’s infamous Warden’s Glass. Somehow, he’d saved a fragment, hidden it here. But why? He’d never intended for the journal to be found, or did he? Was this some deranged message left for anyone who might stumble upon it? A tool for... what exactly?

As I held it up, the glint caught my eye, refracting the light, casting odd reflections across the walls. I squinted, adjusting it, when something shifted in the glass. I blinked, my mind insisting I was seeing things, but there it was—a faint, twisted image staring back at me. My own face, but… wrong. My features were there, yes, but warped, malevolent, a grotesque reflection filled with a cold, wicked intelligence that wasn’t mine.

I gasped, dropping the glass instinctively; it sliced across my finger as it fell, and a sharp sting brought me back to reality. I watched in silence as a single drop of blood slid down my fingertip, hitting the table with a soft splatter. My breath hitched, relieved it hadn’t splashed onto the journal, as though preserving Winslow’s final words mattered more than the thin line of red beginning to stain my skin.

For a long moment, I just stood there, staring down at the shard on the floor. That face I’d seen—had it been my imagination? Or had Winslow left this glass behind intentionally, some silent invitation to see what he’d seen?

Every single day, the same dreams. I am forced to relive the same memories whenever I close my eyes. Over forty years have passed since then, but my subconsciousness is still trapped in one of those nights. As sad as it sounds, life moved on and so did I. As much as I could call it moving on, after all, my life’s mission was to do away with the source of my problems. To do away with the Man Made from Mist.

Or so I thought. I’ve clamored for a chance to take my vengeance on him for so long. The things I’ve done to get where I needed to would’ve driven a lesser man insane; I knew this and pushed through. Yet when the opportunity presented itself, I couldn’t do it. An additional set of terrors wormed its way into my mind.

A trio of demons aptly called remorse, guilt, and regret.

I’ve tried my best to wrestle control away from these infernal forces, but in the end, as always, I’ve proven to be too weak. Unable to accomplish the single-minded goal I’ve devoted my life to, I let him go. In that fateful moment, it felt like I had done the right thing by letting him go. I felt a weight lifted off my chest. Now, with the clarity of hindsight, I’m no longer sure about that.

That said, I am getting ahead of myself. I suppose I should start from the beginning.

My name is Yaroslav Teuter and I hail from a small Siberian village, far from any center of civilization. Its name is irrelevant. Knowing what I know now, my relatives were partially right and outsiders have no place in it. The important thing about my home village is that it’s a settlement frozen in the early modern era. Growing up, we had no electricity and no other modern luxuries. It was, and still is, as far as I know, a small rural community of old believers. When I say old believers, I mean that my people never adopted Christianity. We, they, believe in the old gods; Perun and Veles, Svarog and Dazhbog, along with Mokosh and many other minor deities and nature spirits.

What outsiders consider folklore or fiction, my people, to this very day, hold to be the truth and nothing but the truth. My village had no doctors, and there was a common belief there were no ill people, either. The elders always told us how no one had ever died from disease before the Soviets made incursions into our lands.

Whenever someone died, and it was said to be the result of old age, “The horned shepherd had taken em’ to his grazing fields”, they used to say. They said the same thing about my grandparents, who passed away unexpectedly one after the other in a span of about a year. Grandma succumbed to the grief of losing the love of her life.

Whenever people died in accidents or were relatively young, the locals blamed unnatural forces. Yet, no matter the evidence, diseases didn’t exist until around my childhood. At least not according to the people.

At some point, however, everything changed in the blink of an eye. Boris “Beard” Bogdanov, named so after his long and bushy graying beard, fell ill. He was constantly burning with fever, and over time, his frame shrunk.

The disease he contracted reduced him from a hulk of a man to a shell no larger than my dying grandfather in his last days. He was wasting away before our very eyes. The village folk attempted to chalk it up to malevolent spirits, poisoning his body and soul. Soon after him, his entire family got sick too. Before long, half of the village was on the brink of death.

My father got ill too. I can vividly recall the moment death came knocking at our door. He was bound to suffer a slow and agonizing journey to the other side. It was a chilly spring night when I woke up, feeling the breeze enter and penetrate our home. That night, the darkness seemed to be bleaker than ever before. It was so dark that I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. A chill ran down my spine. For the first time in years, I was afraid of the dark again. The void stared at me and I couldn’t help but dread its awful gaze. At eleven years old, I nearly pissed myself again just by looking around my bedroom and being unable to see anything.

I was blind with fear. At that moment, I was blind; the nothingness swallowed my eyes all around me, and I wish it had stayed that way. I wish I never looked toward my parent’s bed. The second I laid my eyes on my sleeping parents; reality took any semblance of innocence away from me. The unbearable weight of realization collapsed onto my infantile little body, dropping me to my knees with a startle.

The animal instinct inside ordered my mouth to open, but no sound came. With my eyes transfixed on the sinister scene. I remained eerily quiet, gasping for air and holding back frightful tears. Every tall tale, every legend, every child’s story I had grown out of by that point came back to haunt my psyche on that one fateful night.

All of this turned out to be true.

As I sat there, on my knees, holding onto dear life, a silhouette made of barely visible mist crouched over my sleeping father. Its head pressed against Father’s neck. Teeth sunk firmly into his arteries. The silhouette was eating away at my father. I could see this much, even though it was practically impossible to see anything else. As if the silhouette had some sort of malignant luminance about it. The demon wanted to be seen. I must’ve made enough noise to divert its attention from its meal because it turned to me and straightened itself out into this tall, serpentine, and barely visible shadow caricature of a human. Its limbs were so long, long enough to drag across the floor.

Its features were barely distinguishable from the mist surrounding it. The thing was nearly invisible, only enough to inflict the terror it wanted to afflict its victims with. The piercing stare of its blood-red eyes kept me paralyzed in place as a wide smile formed across its face. Crimson-stained, razor-sharp teeth piqued from behind its ashen gray lips, and a long tongue hung loosely between its jaws. The image of that thing has burnt itself into my mind from the moment we met.

The devil placed a bony, clawed finger on its lips, signaling for me to keep my silence. Stricken with mortifying fear, I could not object, nor resist. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I did all I could. I nodded. The thing vanished into the darkness, crawling away into the night.

Exhausted and aching across my entire body, I barely pulled myself upright once it left. Still deep within the embrace of petrifying fear. It took all I had left to crawl back to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. The image of the bloodied silhouette made from a mist and my father’s vitality clawed my eyes open every time I dared close them.

The next morning, Father was already sick, burning with fever. I knew what had caused it, but I wouldn’t dare speak up. I knew that, if I had sounded the alarm on the Man Made from Mist, the locals would’ve accused me of being the monster myself. The idea around my village was, if you were old enough to work the household farm, you were an adult man. If you were an adult, you were old enough to protect your family. Me being unable to fight off the evil creature harming my parent meant I was cooperating with it, or was the source of said evil.

Shame and regret at my inability to stand up, for my father ate away at every waking moment while the ever-returning presence of the Man Made from Mist robbed me of sleep every night. He came night after night to feast on my father’s waning life. He tried to shake me into full awareness every single time he returned. Tormenting me with my weakness. Every day I told myself this one would be different, but every time it ended the same–I was on my knees, unable to do anything but gawk in horror at the pest taking away my father and chipping away at my sanity.

Within a couple of months, my father was gone. When we buried him, I experienced a semblance of solace. Hopefully, the Man Made from Mist would never come back again. Wishing him to be satisfied with what he had taken away from me. I was too quick to jump to my conclusion.

This world is cruel by nature, and as per the laws of the wild; a predator has no mercy on its prey while it starves. My tormentor would return to take away from me so long as it felt the need to satiate its hunger.

Before long, I woke up once more in the middle of the night. It was cold for the summer… Too cold…

Dreadful thoughts flooded my mind. Fearing for the worst, I jerked my head to look at my mother. Thankfully, she was alone, sound asleep, but I couldn’t ease my mind away from the possibility that he had returned. I hadn’t slept that night; in fact, I haven’t slept right since. Never.

The next morning, I woke up to an ailing mother. She was burning with fever, and I was right to fear for the worst. He was there the previous night, and he was going to take my mother away from me. I stayed up every night since to watch over my mother, mustering every ounce of courage I could to confront the nocturnal beast haunting my life.

It never returned. Instead, it left me to watch as my mother withered away to disease like a mad dog. The fever got progressively worse, and she was losing all color. In a matter of days, it took away her ability to move, speak, and eventually reason. I had to watch as my mothered withered away, barking and clawing at the air. She recoiled every time I offered her water and attempted to bite into me whenever I’d get too close.

The furious stage lasted about a week before she slipped into a deep slumber and, after three days of sleep, she perished. A skeletal, pale, gaunt husk remained of what was once my mother.

While I watched an evil, malevolent force tear my family to shreds, my entire world seemed to be engulfed by its flames. By the time Mother succumbed to her condition, more than half of the villagers were dead. The Soviets incurred into our lands. They wore alien suits as they took away whatever healthy children they could find. Myself included.

I fought and struggled to stay in the village, but they overpowered me. Proper adults had to restrain me so they could take me away from this hell and into the heart of civilization. After the authorities had placed me in an orphanage, the outside world forcefully enlightened me. It took years, but eventually; I figured out how to blend with the city folk. They could never fix the so-called trauma of what I had to endure. There was nothing they could do to mold the broken into a healthy adult. The damage had been too great for my wounds to heal.

I adjusted to my new life and was driven by a lifelong goal to avenge whatever had taken my life away from me. I ended up dedicating my life to figuring out how to eradicate the disease that had taken everything from me after overhearing how an ancient strain of Siberian Anthrax reanimated and wiped out about half of my home village. They excused the bite marks on people’s necks as infected sores.

It took me a long time, but I’ve gotten myself where I needed to be. The Soviets were right to call it a disease, but it wasn’t anthrax that had decimated my home village and taken my parents’ lives. It was something far worse, an untreatable condition that turns humans into hematophagic corpses somewhere between the living and the dead.

Fortunately, the only means of treatment seem to be the termination of the remaining processes vital to sustaining life in the afflicted.  

It’s an understanding I came to have after long years of research under, oftentimes illegal, circumstances. The initial idea came about after a particularly nasty dream about my mother’s last days.

In my dream, she rose from her bed and fell on all fours. Frothing from the mouth, she coughed and barked simultaneously. Moving awkwardly on all four she crawled across the floor toward me. With her hands clawing at my bedsheets, she pulled herself upwards and screeched in my face. Letting out a terrible sound between a shrill cry and cough. Eyes wide with delirious agitation, her face lunged at me, attempting to bite whatever she could. I cowered away under my sheets, trying to weather the rabid storm. Eventually, she clasped her jaws around my arm and the pain of my dream jolted me awake.

Covered in cold sweat, and nearly hyperventilating; that’s where I had my eureka moment.

I was a medical student at the time; this seemed like something that fit neatly into my field of expertise, virology. Straining my mind for more than a couple of moments conjured an image of a rabies-like condition that afflicted those who the Man Made from Mist attacked. Those who didn’t survive, anyway. Nine of out ten of the afflicted perished. The remaining one seemed to slip into a deathlike coma before awakening changed.

This condition changes the person into something that can hardly be considered living, technically. In a way, those who survive the initial infection are practically, as I’ve said before, the walking dead. Now, I don’t want this to sound occult or supernatural. No, all of this is biologically viable, albeit incredibly unusual for the Tetrapoda superclass. If anything, the condition turns the afflicted into a human-shaped leech of sorts. While I might’ve presented the afflicted to survive the initial stage of the infected as an infallible superhuman predator, they are, in fact, maladapted to cohabitate with their prey in this day and age. That is us.

Ignoring the obvious need to consume blood and to a lesser extent certain amounts of living flesh, this virus inadvertently mimics certain symptoms of a tuberculosis infection, at least outwardly. That is exactly how I’ve been able to find test subjects for my study. Hearing about death row inmates who matched the profile of advanced tuberculosis patients but had somehow committed heinous crimes including cannibalism.

Through some connections I’ve made with the local authorities, I got my hands on the corpse of one such death row inmate. He was eerily similar to the Man Made from Mist, only his facial features seemed different. The uncanny resemblance to my tormentor weighed heavily on my mind. Perhaps too heavily. I noticed a minor muscle spasm as I chalked up a figment of my anxious imagination.

This was my first mistake. The second being when I turned my back to the cadaver to pick up a tool to begin my autopsy. This one nearly cost me my life. Before I could even notice, the dead man sprang back to life. His long lanky, pale arms wrapped around tightly around my neck. His skin was cold to the touch, but his was strength incredible. No man with such a frame should have been able to yield such strength, no man appearing this sick should’ve been able to possess. Thankfully, I must’ve stood in an awkward position from him to apply his blood choke properly. Otherwise, I would’ve been dead, or perhaps undead by now.

As I scrambled with my hands to pick up something from the table to defend myself with, I could hear his hoarse voice in my ear. “I am sorry… I am starving…”

The sudden realization I was dealing with a thing human enough to apologize to me took me by complete surprise. With a renewed flow of adrenaline through my system. My once worst enemy, Fear, became my best friend. The reduced supply of oxygen to my brain eased my paralyzing dread just enough for me to pick a scalpel from the table and forcefully jam it into the predator’s head.

His grip loosened instantly and, with a sickening thump, he fell on the floor behind me, knocking over the table. The increased blood flow brought with it a maddening existential dread. My head spun and my heart raced through the roof. Terrible, illogical, intangible thoughts swarmed my mind. There was fear interlaced with anger, a burning wrath.

The animalistic side of me took over, and I began kicking and dead man’s body again and again. I wouldn’t stop until I couldn’t recognize his face as human. Blood, torn-out hair, and teeth flew across the floor before I finally came to.

Collapsing to the floor right beside the corpse, I sat there for a long while, shaking with fear. Clueless about the source of my fear. After all, it was truly dead this time. I was sure of it. My shoes cracked its skull open and destroyed the brain. There was no way it could survive without a functioning brain. This was a reasoning thing. It needed its brain. Yet there I was, afraid, not shaken, afraid.

This was another event that etched itself into my memories, giving birth to yet another reoccurring nightmare. Time and time again, I would see myself mutilating the corpse, each time to a worsening degree. No matter how often I tried to convince myself, I did what I did in self-defense. My heart wouldn’t care. I was a monster to my psyche.

I deeply regret to admit this, but this was only the first one I had killed, and it too, perhaps escaped this world in the quickest way possible.

Regardless, I ended up performing that autopsy on the body of the man whose second life I truly ended. As per my findings, and I must admit, my understanding of anatomical matters is by all means limited, I could see why the execution failed. The heart was black and shriveled up an atrophied muscle. Shooting one of those things in the chest isn’t likely to truly kill them. Not only had the heart become a vestigial organ, but the lungs of the specimen I had autopsied revealed regenerative scar tissue. These things could survive what would be otherwise lethal to average humans. The digestive system, just like the pulmonary one, differed vastly from what I had expected from the human anatomy. It seemed better suited to hold mostly liquid for quick digestion.

Circulation while reduced still existed, given the fact the creature possessed almost superhuman strength. To my understanding, the circulation is driven by musculoskeletal mechanisms explaining the pallor. The insufficient nutritional value of their diet can easily explain their gauntness.  

Unfortunately, this study didn’t yield many more useful results for my research. However, I ended up extracting an interesting enzyme from the mouth of the corpse. With great difficulty, given the circumstances. These things develop Draculin, a special anticoagulant found in vampire bats. As much as I’d hate to call these unfortunate creatures vampires, this is exactly what they are.

Perhaps some legends were true, yet at that moment, none of it mattered. I wanted to find out more. I needed to find out more.

To make a painfully long story short, I’ll conclude my search by saying that for the longest time, I had searched for clues using dubious methods. This, of course, didn’t yield the desired results. My only solace during that period was the understanding that these creatures are solitary and, thus, could not warn others about my activities and intentions.  

With the turn of the new millennium, fortune shone my way, finally. Shortly before the infamous Armin Meiwes affair. I had experienced something not too dissimilar. I found a post on a message board outlining a request for a willing blood donor for cash. This wasn’t what one could expect from a blood donation however, the poster specified he was interested in drinking the donor’s blood and, if possible, straight from the source.

This couldn’t be anymore similar to the type of person I have been looking for. Disinterested in the money, I offered myself up. That said, I wasn’t interested in anyone drinking my blood either, so to facilitate a fair deal, I had to get a few bags of stored blood. With my line of work, that wasn’t too hard.

A week after contacting the poster of the message, we arranged a meeting. He wanted to see me at his house. Thinking he might intend to get more aggressive than I needed him to be, I made sure I had my pistol when I met him.

Overall, he seemed like an alright person for an anthropophagic haemophile. Other than the insistence on keeping the lighting lower than I’d usually like during our meeting, everything was better than I could ever expect. At first, he seemed taken aback by my offer of stored blood for information, but after the first sip of plasmoid liquid, he relented.

To my surprise, he and I were a lot alike, as far as personality traits go. As he explained to me, there wasn’t much that still interested him in life anymore. He could no longer form any emotional attachments, nor feel the most potent emotions. The one glaring exception was the high he got when feeding. I too cannot feel much beyond bitter disappointment and the ever-present anxious dread that seems to shadow every moment of my being.

I have burned every personal bridge I ever had in favor of this ridiculous quest for revenge I wasn’t sure I could ever complete.

This pleasant and brief encounter confirmed my suspicions; the infected are solitary creatures and prefer to stay away from all other intelligent lifeforms when not feeding. I’ve also learned that to stay functional on the abysmal diet of blood and the occasional lump of flesh, the infected enter a state of hibernation that can last for years at a time.

He confirmed my suspicion that the infected dislike bright lights and preferred to hunt and overall go about their rather monotone lives at night.

The most important piece of information I had received from this fine man was the fact that the infected rarely venture far from where they first succumbed to the plague, so long, of course, as they could find enough prey. Otherwise, like all other animals, they migrate and stick to their new location.

Interestingly enough, I could almost see the sorrow in his crimson eyes, a deep regret, and a desire to escape an unseen pain that kept gnawing at him. I asked him about it; wondering if he was happy with where his life had taken him. He answered negatively. I wish he had asked me the same question, so I could just tell someone how miserable I had made my life. He never did, but I’m sure he saw his reflection in me. He was certainly bright enough to tell as much.

In a rare moment of empathy, I offered to end his life. He smiled a genuine smile and confessed that he tried, many times over, without ever succeeding. He explained that his displeasure wasn’t the result of depression, but rather that he was tired of his endless boredom. Back then, I couldn’t even tell the difference.

Smiling back at him, I told him the secret to his survival was his brain staying intact. He quipped about it, making all the sense in the world, and told me he had no firearms.

I pulled out my pistol, aiming at his head, and joked about how he wouldn’t need one.

He laughed, and when he did, I pulled the trigger.

The laughter stopped, and the room fell dead silent, too silent, and with it, he fell as well, dead for good this time.

Even though this act of killing was justified, it still frequented my dreams, yet another nightmare to a gallery of never-ending visual sorrows. This one, however, was more melancholic than terrifying, but just as nerve-wracking. He lost all reason to live. To exist just to feed? This was below things, no, people like us. The longer I did this, all of this, the more I realized I was dealing with my fellow humans. Unfortunately, the humans I’ve been dealing with have drifted away from the light of humanity. The cruelty of nature had them reduced to wild animals controlled by a base instinct without having the proper way of employing their higher reasoning for something greater. These were victims of a terrible curse, as was I.

My obsession with vengeance only grew worse. I had to bring the nightmare I had reduced my entire life to an end. Armed with new knowledge of how to find my tormentor, finally, I finally headed back to my home village. A few weeks later, I arrived near the place of my birth. Near where I had spent the first eleven years of my life. It was night, the perfect time to strike. That was easier said than done. Just overlooking the village from a distance proved difficult. With each passing second, a new, suppressed memory resurfaced. A new night terror to experience while awake. The same diabolical presence marred all of them.

Countless images flashed before my eyes, all of them painful. Some were more horrifying than others. My father’s slow demise, my mother’s agonizing death. All of it, tainted by the sickening shadow standing at the corner of the bedroom. Tall, pale, barely visible, as if he was part of the nocturnal fog itself. Only red eyes shining. Glowing in the darkness, along with the red hue dripping from his sickening smile.

Bitter, angry, hurting, and afraid, I lost myself in my thoughts. My body knew where to find him. However, we were bound by a red thread of fate. Somehow, from that first day, when he made me his plaything, he ended up tying our destinies together. I could probably smell the stench of iron surrounding him. I was fuming, ready to incinerate his body into ash and scatter it into the nearest river.  

Worst of all was the knowledge I shouldn’t look for anyone in the village, lest I infect them with some disease they’d never encountered before. It could potentially kill them all. I wouldn’t be any better than him if I had let such a thing happen… My inability to reunite with any surviving neighbors and relatives hurt so much that I can’t even put it into words.

All of that seemed to fade away once I found his motionless cadaver resting soundly in a den by the cemetery. How cliché, the undead dwelling in burial grounds. In that moment, bereft of his serpentine charm, everything seemed so different from what I remembered. He wasn’t that tall; he wasn’t much bigger than I was when he took everything from me. I almost felt dizzy, realizing he wasn’t even an adult, probably. My memories have tricked me. Everything seemed so bizarre and unreal at that moment. I was once again a lost child. Once again confronted by a monster that existed only in my imagination. I trained my pistol on his deathlike form.

Yet in that moment, when our roles were reversed. When he suddenly became a helpless child, I was a Man Made from Mist. When I had all the power in the world, and he lay at my feet, unable to do anything to protect himself from my cruelty, I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t shoot him. I couldn’t do it because I knew it wouldn’t help me; it wouldn’t bring my family back. Killing him wouldn’t fix me or restore the humanity I gave up on. It wouldn’t even me feel any better. There was no point at all. I wouldn’t feel any better if I put that bullet in him. Watching that pathetic carcass, I realized how little all of that mattered. My nightmares wouldn’t end, and the anxiety and hatred would not go away. There was nothing that could ever heal my wounds. I will suffer from them so long as I am human. As much as I hate to admit it, I pitied him in that moment.

As I’ve said, letting him go was a mistake. Maybe if I went through with my plan, I wouldn’t end up where I am now. Instead of taking his life, I took some of his flesh. I cut off a little piece of his calf, he didn't even budge when my knife sliced through his pale leg like butter. This was the pyrrhic victory I had to have over him. A foolish and animalistic display of dominance over the person whose shadow dominated my entire life. That wasn't the only reason I did what I did, I took a part of him just in case I could no longer bear the weight of my three demons. Knowing people like him do not feel the most intense emotions, I was hoping for a quick and permanent solution, should the need arise.

Things did eventually spiral out of control. My sanity was waning and with it, the will to keep on living, but instead of shooting myself, I ate the piece of him that I kept stored in my fridge. I did so with the expectation of the disease killing my overstressed immune system and eventually me.

Sadly, there are very few permanent solutions in this world and fewer quick ones that yield the desired outcomes. I did not die, technically. Instead, the Man Made from Mist was reborn. At first, everything seemed so much better. Sharper, clearer, and by far more exciting. But for how long will such a state remain exciting when it’s the default state of being? After a while, everything started losing its color to the point of everlasting bleakness.

Even my memories aren’t as vivid as they used to be, and the nightmares no longer have any impact. They are merely pictures moving in a sea of thought. With that said, life isn’t much better now than it was before. I don’t hurt; I don’t feel almost at all. The only time I ever feel anything is whenever I sink my teeth into the neck of some unsuspecting drunk. My days are mostly monochrome grey with the occasional streak of red, but that’s not nearly enough.

Unfortunately, I lost my pistol at some point, so I don’t have a way out of this tunnel of mist. It’s not all bad. I just wish my nightmares would sting a little again. Otherwise, what is the point of dwelling on every mistake you’ve ever committed? What is the point of a tragedy if it cannot bring you the catharsis of sorrow? What is the point in reliving every blood-soaked nightmare that has ever plagued your mind if they never bring any feelings of pain or joy…? Is there even a point behind a recollection that carries no weight? There is none.

Everything I’ve ever wanted is within reach, yet whenever I extend my hand to grasp at something, anything, it all seems to drift away from me…

And now, only now, once the boredom that shadows my every move has finally exhausted me. Now that I am completely absorbed by this unrelenting impenetrable and bottomless sensation of emptiness… This longing for something, anything… I can say I truly understand what horror is. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the Man Made from Mist isn’t me, nor any other person or even a creature. No, The Man Made from Mist is the embodiment of pure horror. A fear…

One so bizarre and malignant it exists only to torment those afflicted with sentience.

Every year, the town would have a massive gathering. Bead necklace vendors, food trucks, and most importantly of all, baked goods. Nana was a cornerstone of the community, culminating in her involvment in the harvest festival. She would sell her famous cookies to the adults, who fawned over how they were unlike any other cookies they’d ever had. But children got unlimited free cookies. Truly, she would make a staggering amount, with tray after tray loaded into the back of a pick-up truck. It became a competition between us on who could eat the most cookies, as Nana never once told a child they’d had enough, She did watch though, as if keeping track.

“Hello, dear,” called out Nana as I passed her house the next day, coming home from school. “Would you like a cookie?”

Normally, stranger danger would be in effect, but this was Nana we are talking about. She’s been a constant in the lives of children in town for as long as anyone can remember.

“S…sure,” I answered reluctantly. “If you don’t mind.”

I was swept into the house, where a tray of cookies was set in front of me.

“Eat as much as you like, as long as you can keep a secret.”

“A secret?” I hesitated “What kind of secret?”

Nana’s eyes shifted conspiratorially. “You can come here everyday and have as many cookies as you want, as long as you never tell a soul.”

Now, being the supple 8 year old that I was, I saw no issue in an arrangement in which an unlimited supply of cookies was involved. “I can do that.” I said

So the arrangement commenced, everyday after school, I would stop by Nana’s and gorge on cookies until I felt sick, then make my way home. The weight gain was subtle at first, but throughout the year, I went through no less than 4 sizes in clothes. My parents, baffled, chalked it up to hormones or some such causing the growth, as my steady diet of cookies remained between Nana and I.

After several months, the holidays were upon us again. I began noticing strange utensils and implements being taken out of storage. A huge cast iron pot, old jars labeled in a language I didn’t know, ornate cutlery and spoons, and a weird bucket with a stick coming out of the top. When I asked about them, Nana just said that they were for the harvest festival cookies.

The next few visits grew increasingly uncomfortable. Nana’s insistence on my cookie consumption, at first charming, now gave the sense of an inarguable command. Growing up to respect my elders, I had no choice but to comply, despite my disgust at the very thought of cookies. Nana would occasionally poke at my side, commenting on how I was coming along well.

After Thanksgiving, on a chill winter day, something felt off walking up to Nana’s door. I can’t explain it, but to say that there was a rotten feel to the air. The feeling of unease was compounded when Nana opened the front door. She seemed… hungry. 

Nana smacked her lips and muttered, “I made this cookie special just for you.”

The cookie in question seemed innocuous enough, however I was hesitant. I took it, and as Nana went to grab something, tossed the cookie into a potted plant nearby. When Nana refocused on me, her smile didn’t make it to her eyes. I took in the scene around me and knew that something was terribly wrong. The large pot on the old fashioned oversized wood stove, the doors wide open and flames licking out at a hectic pace. In the fire, I could see something glinting. It looked like… a pair of wire frame glasses. I froze staring at the blackened metal. I could picture the face that those glasses belonged to. Chubby cheeked from being force fed cookies for an entire year.

Panic set in as puzzle pieces started fitting into place ...no one knew where I was, and last year’s promise to stay silent now felt like a trap. My heart began thudding in my chest, like an engine revving up. Nana’s smile dropped off like a mask, revealing a horrid scowl, and pounced at me, her small wiry frame possessing a disproportionate strength. Flooded with an urge to escape, I pushed back with every ounce of weight I’d gained that year. Nana stumbled back off balance, tripped over the wood pile by the stove, and fell head first into the open oven. An unearthly scream pierced the air, as she flailed impotently, catching fire like dry paper. As the fire began traveling down her body, I awoke from my trance and ran. I ran through the front door, I ran the 3 blocks to my home, and I ran through my front door straight to my mother.

It took a while for my incoherent screaming to settle into comprehensible words, as I attempted to recount the situation to my mother. Police were called, and before I knew it, detectives, like from the tv shows, were in my living room asking me questions.

The full details came out a few months later. Police arrived at the scene to find a pile of ash in front of the stove. Twisted frames of wire glasses, brittle child-sized bones turned to ash, a dagger crusted with dark, ancient stains, and the recipe for Nana’s famous cookies.

 A pretty run-of-the-mill recipe, save for one key ingredient, written in careful, looping script:

Tallow of child.

Working as a night guard at a small Croatian museum seemed like a low-key way to make some extra money. A friend, David, had mentioned the opening—a quiet place, tucked away in the city’s old quarter, where work was almost nonexistent.

“Come on, man,” David had said, way too enthusiastically. “They pay well. Last week, I made an extra thousand just for staying an hour late.”

“Sounds sketchy,” the boy laughed. “If this paycheck feels like cartel blood money, I’m out.”

“Just show up, will ya? I’ll meet you there. Eight o’clock, and don’t be late, bozo.”

When he arrived, the museum looked eerie under the streetlights, shadows stretching over its weathered, white walls. He hesitated for a moment before stepping inside, drawn to the strange, musty scent that seemed to linger in the air. Paintings lined every wall, all old and unfamiliar. He sighed, already questioning his decision.

At the reception, David was slouched in a chair, half-asleep.

“David?” he whispered, nudging his friend’s arm.

David jolted awake, mumbling, “Huh? Wha—?”

“You seriously fell asleep on the job?” the boy asked, trying to mask his nerves.

David just laughed, rubbing his eyes. “This place drains you. Believe me.”

“Right… And I thought you were here for the easy money. How long have you been at it?”

David shrugged, yawning. “About a month. The boss, Mr. Boris, is… interesting. Friendly enough, but private. I haven’t quite figured him out.”

“Great.” The boy glanced around, the dim lighting doing nothing to ease his discomfort. A faint line of black-and-yellow caution tape blocked off a section of the gallery down the hall.

David noticed him eyeing it and stepped closer. “Whoa, we don’t touch that area, okay? Just ignore it.”

The boy held up his hands in surrender. “Fine. But seriously, doesn’t this all feel… off?”

David smirked. “What’s ‘off’?”

“The place. It’s closed off, yet no one’s here, and the boss is this mystery guy you barely know. It’s just weird.”

David sighed. “You’re overthinking it, man.” His friend grinned, the familiar David shining through. “Now come on, let me show you the ropes, Mr. Security.”

The boy forced a laugh, his tension easing as they ran through the security protocols. After a while, David’s energy flagged, and he started heading for the coffee machine. “One last thing—I need caffeine. You good if I leave you for a minute?”

“Fine, but I’ll haunt you if you don’t come back,” the boy teased, trying to lighten the mood.

“Right,” David chuckled, waving him off as he disappeared down the hallway. The boy exhaled, the silence in the gallery quickly settling back over him, thick and heavy.

Glancing around at the paintings, he squinted in the dim light. A mix of unease and curiosity bubbled up as he scrolled through his phone to pass the time. It was nearly 9 p.m., and the strange stillness made each minute feel longer.

Suddenly, a faint snicker echoed from somewhere nearby. He froze, his heart pounding, and glanced around. There was no one in sight.

“David, this isn’t funny,” he called out, but silence was the only answer.

As he scanned the room, his gaze drifted back to the sectioned-off gallery area, where the black-and-yellow tape was strung up. Behind it, partially hidden beneath a draped cloth, was a painting—a familiar one.

His pulse quickened as he took a few cautious steps closer, and as he neared, distinct features of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa came into view. What was it doing here?

The cloth had partially fallen away, revealing a black, inky substance dripping from the frame. Against every instinct, he reached out and touched the edge of the cloth. It was cold, almost clammy, like something dredged from a swamp.

He took a step back, his gut twisting with a sense of wrongness. When he looked back at the painting, the woman’s expression seemed… different. The famous smile was wider, unnaturally so, and her eyes seemed to follow him with an unsettling awareness.

Blinking, he rubbed his eyes, half-hoping it was just a trick of the light. But as he focused again, the smile stretched even more, grotesque, twisting into an exaggerated grin that seemed more mocking than serene.

Staggering backward, his foot caught on the cloth, nearly making him trip. A soft, slithering sound echoed from behind him. His heart pounded in his chest, and he spun around, half-expecting David to be there, laughing at an elaborate prank.

But the hall was empty.

Swallowing hard, he turned back to the painting, his breath caught in his throat as he realized… the woman was gone.

The frame was empty, the inky residue smearing the edges, dripping onto the floor where her face had been just moments before.

Allison started forward to the mound. Bucky had the bag of cards they had stolen from Baseline, and was out of sight. If he had been taken, their plan was over. She did have one card she had saved out. Maybe that would be enough to turn things around and get Hart on his feet.

If she could get Hart back on his feet, he would immediately be fighting the Queenand her forces. She didn’t have a solution to that problem. Her idea was to give him an array of numbers so he could use his own ability to do all the work while she followed behind the moving line that would happen.

She hoped he could save the Glass with what she and Bucky had secured by thievery.

She advanced with an eye on the horizon around her. If they could wake up Hart, things would rapidly change. Hopefully he could push the Flag out of the Glass with his new army.

If he couldn’t, everyone who had ran to Baseline would stay there and wait for the Queen to start trying to take that over next.

She would be dead. The Queen wouldn’t let her live after all the trouble she had caused.

Thunder cracked across the sky. Allison paused to look up. She frowned at the forces of the Flag falling on her. She pulled her sword and closed on the mound. She had to be ready to help Bucky wake their leader up and get him in the fight.

If she died doing that, it would be worth it.

A loud boom announced the arrival of the Queen. She smiled at the swordswoman as she straightened her dress with its wide skirt. Her red hair was lighter than Allison’s own, but glimmered metallically under the Glass’s glowing sky.

“I see that I will have to handle things myself,” said the Queen. Her voice sounded like squealing tires. “I hoped those warriors would deal with you before it came to this.”

“I see you are going to give me a chance to kill you before I kill all of your army,” said Allison. She flicked her wrist and her gold sword came to life in her hand.

The Queen laughed. She made a swing of her arm, and an axe as tall as she was dropped into her hand. She spun it with her fingers, listening to it cut the air.

“I have killed so many peasants,” said the Queen. “One more won’t make a difference.”

“That’s what all braggers say before they lose,” said Allison. “It will be a pleasure to put you down in front of your army.”

“Let’s see what you have then,” said the Queen. She marched forward at her enemy. Her axe swept in front of her in a blindingly fast arc. A smile spread across her round face.

Allison didn’t try to block the massive weapon. It would rip her arms off on contact. She stepped out of reach and looked for an opening.

She needed to get inside of the guard of the weapon as it cut the air like lightning, or she needed to change the battleground to something that suited her.

She doubted she could get close enough to do anything to stop the axe from swinging. The Queen was much too fast, and much too strong.

How did she change the battlefield into something that would help her?

She had the game card in her pocket. She needed to give it to Hart so he could use it. How did she do that?

She needed to cover her motion while making it look like she had been hit. She gauged the swing of the axe as she kept stepping out of the way. She firmed up her conviction with the hurried plan that had come to her.

She hoped the Queen, and her observing soldiers, didn’t catch on to what she was doing until it was too late.

Allison made to block the axe with her sword so she could force an opening. The Queen smiled. Nothing could stand up to the velocity she was going to exert. The axe blade missed as the swordswoman slid under the blow. She sliced at her enemy’s legs but the golden blade missed as the dress puffed out from the commander of the Flag leaping backward.

Allison pushed herself to her feet to stab at the Queen. The axe caught her sword on the flat side of its head. The blade reversed direction, but missed with a whine.

“You just don’t have the ability to stop me,” said the Queen, spinning her axe around in her hand. “Soon I will stamp out the last of the resistance here and make this world my own. Then I will take over the Baseline. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“I don’t have to stop you,” said Allison. She fought to calm down her breathing. That little exchange had pushed her more than she had been in years. “I just have to help Hart wake up, and give him something he can use to start his army.”

“And how are you going to do that?,” asked the Queen. She smiled.

“I already did,” said Allison. “I’m just waiting now.”

The mound began to shake. Lines of light rushed out to connect the edges of the Glass with its heart buried in the ground. Something reptilian surged from the top of the hill, growing wings and burning eyes. It roared at the invaders.

Allison smiled as fire poured down on the army around her. She turned and cut a horseman down. She had to get out of the way, and let the dragon do its business.

The Queen seemed paralyzed as fire rained down on her minions. She spotted her enemy running away. That could not be allowed to happen. She wanted payment for this turnaround.

The small fighters tried to tie the dragon down, chopping at it with their weapons. They could force this thing back into the ground for their ruler. Nothing could stop them.

The dragon begged to differ with roaring, fire, and crushing blows.

Allison turned to avoid the axe of the Queen as she roared down from a giant leap. She slipped on the grass and fell. The ruler of the Flag landed and raised her axe for the killing blow.

The air changed as more beasts took shape, and took flight. Energy other than fire swept out. Hordes of combatants emerged from the ground with sword, and gun, and claws. A unit of Tucker’s Kobolds formed up and began killing everything around them with firearms and spears.

The axe started to fall. At least this one meddler would be out of the way. Then she could resummon her army to do away with the other loci. Something that looked like a yellow squirrel lit up her bones with lightning before she could bring the blade down. She fell to the grass, trying to get up. The axe stood beside her.

“I’m afraid, madam, you have been evicted,” said an ogre in a tuxedo, walking at the head of other ogres in similar uniforms. “Good day.”

They hoisted the Queen up and threw her into the air. She popped as she fell back to her native grounds. Her army sounded the horns to retreat from the battle. Flying ships, and flying monsters harassed them as they fled from the Glass.

The ogre picked up the axe of the Queen. He slung it over his shoulder. His other hand helped Allison up from the ground. The yellow squirrel climbed her to sit on her shoulder.

“The King will see you now,” said the butler.

Engel Kelin is the oldest child in his family and has lived in Braunschweig, Germany, for centuries. When he turns twenty this year, the so-called family torch will be passed on to him.

Honestly, Engel doesn't know how he feels about it.

His grandfather would pat his shoulder, saying, "You'll do just fine, like your father and I before you." He smiled, his curly mustache making his smile look even wider.

Engel would nod and look at his tired father. He was basically in a family of insomniacs.

Tonight, he would accept the exchange of tradition. It would be a long trek to the moss and vine-covered statue hidden in the woods surrounding their family home.

As a child, Engel once questioned his father about it, who told him, "One day you'll know, but for now, just enjoy being a kid." he'd ruffle his hair and go inside to patch up yet another wound he'd gotten.

Now, amidst the trees, walking along a well-worn dirt path, three cloaked figures walked in a line right behind one another. Engel felt nervous, rubbing his palms on the sides of the dark cloak that shielded him. The waxing moon shone above them, giving them little light to walk with besides their lanterns.

"How much further?" he asked his grandfather, who was leading the way.

"Not too much further. This is your first time coming here, isn't it?" his father replied.

Engel nodded.

He remembered his father's stories about what the place looked like, but it was the first time he had seen it in person. Engel's grandfather and father took turns keeping the area clean and free of trespassers.

He could see the statue clearly in the open clearing as they approached.

A haunting stone statue was before them. With a muscular frame shrouded in a flowing, tattered cloak, the rider was on top of a rearing stallion. One hand firmly gripped the reins while the other held his severed head under his arm.

The disembodied head and the eyes of the horse glow a pale blue.

It sent chills down Engel's spine.

Not that it was scary but more intimidating. The weight of this tradition now feels unbearably heavy. Exhaling slowly, Engel stepped forward into position, his father on the opposite side.

They were standing on an ancient stone circle with a rune in the middle.

"Are you ready?" his father asked, looking at his son. Engel nodded and pulled down his hood. A grey smoke slowly escaped from his father and approached him.

It stayed there momentarily, floating as if observing him before entering his body. Engel coughed and hunched over with his hands on his knees.

His eyes began glowing a pale blue, and he felt a burning inside his chest.

"Tonight will be the first time that you will transform. Your job will be to ensure people stay away from here." his grandfather explained, looking towards a part of the woods where a pack of black hounds with tongues made of fire were growling and pacing.

It was the hounds of hell.

They only showed up when someone was going to try to enter the woods.

Of course, this place is cursed, and the Kelin family protects it by becoming a headless horseman. If people somehow run into the hounds of the woods, they would be torn apart, leaving the Kelins to dispose of the parts that are left behind.

The authorities themselves wouldn't step foot inside the woods—if they're local, that is. Those born and raised here know about the legend and how the Kelins try to get those who enter to safety.

Sometimes they don't listen, and sometimes they do.

"You can't save them all, Engel." his father would tell him, his face solemn.

Engel felt hot at first, as if he were standing outside in the middle of summer, but then a blast of cold air suddenly hit him, knocking the air out. He stumbled, falling back into the statue, and the sound of hooves on dirt made its way towards him.

A skeletal horse walked towards him, bowing its head to him. He opened his eyes, which he didn't remember closing, and saw the spectral animal before him, his eye level much lower now, noticing he was holding his severed head. He lifted himself onto the saddle using the reins and stirrup as if on instinct.

Where his head had once been was a swirling blue flame.

Engel was ready. Since off in the distance, he could hear a group of young people entering the woods—the rumored Sleepy Hollow. Many young locals and travelers always want to prove their bravery or investigate the rumors about the Headless Horseman.

"Go on and chase them out of here. The hounds of hell are getting restless and ready to hunt." His father's voice was urgent.

Engel nodded and gently tapped his stead with the side of his foot, turning around with a tug of the reins and galloping off towards the sound of voices—deep growls waiting for their chance to feast if he failed.

The group's voice was closer now, and he unholstered a silver-bladed ax.

A chorus of screams echoed through Sleepy Hollow. Urgent footsteps ran as fast as their owner could carry them. They dropped things along the way, exited the woods, and continued.

Engel watched from the edge, making sure they were far away.

Except one person from the group had gotten separated from their group.

The hounds of hell howled, chasing after their prey. Soon, a shrill scream passed through the trees of the woods, followed by a wet squelching and sickening splitting sound. He felt his stomach churn, feeling sick.

As Engel approached the mess the hounds had made, he got off the horse, and the hounds of hell dispersed from their meal. This was the part that he was warned about. Engel couldn't save everyone who wanted to enter the woods of Sleepy Hollow.

First, he had to clean this mess up.

This person would have to be reported missing, and their friends would have to be made to leave this town and never return unless they, too, wanted to be consumed by the hounds of hell—if they didn't heed the warnings of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

Malcolm Wiltermood had no memory of how he arrived in the desolate town, nor did he question it. Rather, it was as one finds themselves in the middle of a dream, never once stopping to ask, "How did I get to this place?" The last thing he did remember was walking up the road and past the city limit sign. According to it, the town was called Rose Gate.

Although the name had an air of familiarity to it, Malcolm was certain he had never before been to the town. Every house and every structure was made of stone. Strange too was that even though the sun was heavy in the west and softly caressed the horizon, no lights illuminated the barren streets. Malcolm didn't see vehicles or machinery of any kind. It was as if he had stepped out of time and into some faraway land.

Then there was the overwhelming feeling of being utterly alone. He had felt alone before, sure, but this was somehow different. It was like cold, damp air that clung to his body and saturated him to the very marrow of his bones. No birds sang, nor did a single insect chirp. The only sound Malcolm could hear was that of his own footsteps crunching through the streets of loose gravel. It was a foreboding and alien place, and Malcolm wanted desperately to be home where he belonged.

As the pinks and lavenders of the setting sun darkened into grays and purples, Malcolm found his footsteps quickened. When the town became enveloped by the deep shadows of a moonless night and fog slithered in like some great serpentine apparition, the agonizing loneliness that burdened his entire being metamorphized into a grotesque, primal fear. The hair of his neck and forearms stood at strict attention, his mouth was filled with glue, and his eyes darted in all directions wildly. When it grew darker still, the maddening silence was shattered by thousands of whispering voices that surrounded him; Malcolm broke into a full run.

The fog looked as though it was illuminated from within by some ethereal light. When the roaring whispers calmed back into freakish silence, Malcolm watched dumbfounded as dark shadows began to take shape within the fog. He stopped dead in his frantic run and looked in every direction. He could see that these silhouettes of men, women, and children were now everywhere. They stood unmoving in front of the stone houses. He was surrounded. But by whom?

Malcolm had no reason to believe that the figures hiding just behind the thin wall of mist were in any way hostile. But it all felt so unnatural, so oppressive. His mind raced with a hundred questions all at once, and his eyes continued to dart from this place to that, all the while he was oblivious to the fact that he was walking backwards, out of the street, and into one of the strange yards that were occupied by the unknown figures, which inexplicably filled him with dread.

He reeled and shrieked when he felt fingertips touch his shoulder. Tears welled heavy in his eyes but refused to drop down his cheeks without the assistance of a blink, but in that moment, blinking was something that Malcolm could not bring himself to do. He was confident that some fetid horror with green dripping flesh, bulging eyes, and a mouth full of rotten teeth would be there to meet him. Expecting the worst, he almost could not believe his eyes when he saw that it was only a woman, quite ordinary in appearance.

Malcolm couldn't see her very well in the dark and the fog, but he could tell that she wore a long dress and clutched in one hand a small bouquet of flowers. He fought with the paste in his mouth and his parched, swollen tongue to find his voice. "P-please! I'm lost! I need to get home," Malcolm said. "I don't know where I'm at. I just want to go home. I live in a town called West Knob. Do you know it? Where's the nearest neighboring town from here? Please! I just want to go home!"

Although he was frantic, the woman seemed unfazed by Malcolm's disposition. She held her flowers to her nose and inhaled deeply of them, then she said in a sleepy, trance-like voice, "My daughter came for a visit this morning. She's so thoughtful. She even brought me these flowers. She really is so thoughtful." Again, she brought the flowers to her face and breathed in their aroma. After this, she simply turned, opened the door to her home, and walked inside. As she closed the door, she looked at Malcolm and said in her monotone fashion, "Welcome to Rose Gate."

The sound of the door as it closed reminded Malcolm of the loud clanging noise made by a cell door in any movie he had ever watched that featured a jail or prison door being slammed shut. Forsaken and forlorn, Malcolm fell to his knees and beat the ground with his fists. "I just want to go home," Malcolm whimpered.

There on the cold ground, smothered by cruel darkness and the writhing fog, Malcolm hung his head and wept. A voice whispered out from behind him. A voice like that of millions of voices speaking unison, yet never quite in sync with one another. But it was not the cthonic likeness of this voice alone, but what it said that turned Malcolm's insides into slimey ice. "Malcolm Wiltermood," it said. "Come with me, Malcolm. I'll show you home." Malcolm sprung to his feet and whirled around.

"Who's there?" Malcolm's voice cracked. He saw only darkness before him. A moment passed, and Malcolm received no rejoinder. "Who...?" Malcolm started to repeat himself but was then interrupted.

"Let me show you home, Malcolm. Come with me." The voice of myriads, the voice of one said. And Malcolm saw a hand extend before him but still could not see to whom or what it belonged. It was white as ash and invited Malcolm to take it into his own. "Let me show you, Malcolm, all of your questions will be answered."

Malcolm trembled in full paroxysm and looked at the hand that held itself out to him. He hesitated at first, but then surrendered himself, finally taking it into his own. With all of the abruptness of lightning, the overpowering fear that gained dominion over Malcolm Wiltermood was vanquished. He was completely at ease as the figure walked him through the streets of Rose Gate.

The two spoke not a word as they wandered the darkness, past homes of granite and more palatial structures made of marble. But as they walked, Malcolm began to remember where he was before coming to the strange community. He was driving. That's right, he was driving home from work. The same route every day. Over the hill, down the highway, past the...

The figure that led Malcolm stopped in front of one of the strange stone houses, which, under the veil of night, looked no different from any of the others. "Here you are, Malcolm. Home at last." Home? Malcolm's memories continued to flood back. It was raining before. No. Not just raining. It was storming. Lightning flashed, and rain poured down in buckets. The phone rang. Malcolm's wife.

As Malcolm's memories continued to return, he looked up at the strange figure that led him through the streets of Rose Gate, and he asked in a calm voice, "Who are you?" But the strange guide did not answer, nor did it have to; Malcolm knew too well now. It pulled its hand away, and Malcolm sensed more than saw that it was gone. He looked at the building the figure called his home. Above the door, carved in the stone, Malcolm read his name there. He opened the door and started inside.

Malcolm vividly recalled the shouting match he had with his wife over the phone. Late. Always late coming home from work. "You're being ridiculous!" He remembered yelling into his phone. "I don't care more about work than you! No, I don't! Oh! Please don't give me that! Well, I'm almost home now, so what the hell are you going on about?"

Almost home. He was just passing the cemetery, and it would have been only five minutes more. He recalled the helpless feeling that gripped him as he lost control of the hydroplaning car. He remembered seeing the semi and knowing what was inevitable. He remembered the last thing he saw before the eighteen-wheeler slammed into him at full speed. The stone wall and its accompanying sign: Rose Gate Cemetery.  

I never thought I’d be the one to cover the night shift, but I guess that’s how life throws things at you sometimes. I’ve always been the day shift clerk at this quiet supermarket, a regular, dependable guy doing regular, dependable work. My routine was simple: clock in at 9 AM, deal with a steady stream of customers, and head home by 6 PM. Easy. Predictable.

But last night, that all changed.

It was around 8 PM when I got the call from my manager, Linda. Now, Linda's been nothing but kind to me since I started here. She’s a sweet woman, always understanding when someone needed time off or when the schedule had to shift around a bit. So, when she called and I heard the urgency in her voice, I didn’t hesitate to listen.

“Tom?” Her voice crackled through the phone, tense and fast. “I need you to do me a big favor tonight.”

I could tell something was off right away. I leaned against the kitchen counter at home, glancing at my leftover dinner. “Sure, Linda. What’s going on?”

“It’s…well, it's about Jackson.” Her pause felt heavy, like she was picking her words carefully. “The night shift guy. He’s not answering his phone, and nobody saw him leave this morning.”

I frowned. Jackson? He’d been working the night shift for a few months now, quiet guy, kept to himself, but never struck me as unreliable. “Maybe he’s just sleeping in, forgot to charge his phone?”

“I wish it were that simple,” Linda sighed. “I checked the cameras, Tom. He didn’t leave the store.”

“What do you mean he didn’t leave?”

“I mean,” she continued, her voice dropping to almost a whisper, “he was here at 6 AM when the morning shift arrived, but then…nothing. He’s was gone. It’s like he vanished.”

My heart skipped a beat. This was getting weird. “So…you need me to cover for him tonight?”

“Just this once,” she assured me. “I know it’s short notice, but you’re the only one who’s free. Please, Tom. I’ll owe you big time.”

Something in her voice made me uneasy, but I agreed. Linda had been good to me, and I couldn’t leave her in the lurch. After all, what was the worst that could happen on a quiet night shift?

“I’ll do it,” I said finally. “But only this once.”

Linda let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Tom. I owe you.”

By 10:30 PM, I was on my way to the supermarket, mentally preparing myself for what I assumed would be a long, boring night. The store sat on the outskirts of town, nestled in a quiet suburban neighborhood. It was one of those places that never saw much action, especially at night. I figured I’d probably be alone for most of my shift.

As I approached the back entrance, I noticed something strange. The employee door, which was usually locked at this time of night, was blown open. A gust of wind pushed it back and forth on its hinges, creating an eerie creaking noise. And then I saw him, Jackson.

He was standing just inside the doorway, shivering like a leaf in the wind. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and filled with something I couldn’t quite place, terror, maybe? He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, his face pale and gaunt.

“Jackson?” I called out, more confused than concerned at that moment. “What the hell are you doing out here? The manager’s been looking for you.”

Jackson didn’t respond right away. He stumbled toward me, his steps unsteady. When he got close enough, I could see the sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool night air.

“Tom,” he rasped, barely able to form the words. “Don’t…don’t cover the night shift.”

I blinked, taken aback by the urgency in his voice. “What? What are you talking about?”

“You don’t understand,” he muttered, running a hand through his disheveled hair. “This place…it’s not what it seems. You don’t want to be here at night. Trust me.”

I couldn’t help but feel a little irritated. Jackson had always been a bit odd, but this was too much. “Come on, man, you’re freaking out. Maybe you just need a few days off.”

He grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly strong for someone who looked so weak. “No. I’m serious. Don’t stay."

I looked at him, puzzled.

Then he continued "But If you do stay…check the last drawer of the counter. There’s something there that will help you. And for God’s sake, leave at 6 AM. Not a minute earlier, not a minute later.”

“Jackson, listen to me”

“I’m not going back in there,” he interrupted, shaking his head violently. “Not ever.”

Then, before I could say another word, Jackson bolted, sprinting into the darkness as if his life depended on it.

I stood there for a few moments, watching Jackson disappear into the night. His behavior was bizarre, but I chalked it up to exhaustion. Working nights had probably gotten to him, people don’t always think straight when they’re sleep-deprived.

Still, something about his warning gnawed at the back of my mind.

When I finally entered the store, I found the day shift clerk, Sarah, getting ready to leave. She greeted me with a tired smile, but I could see the relief on her face, she was more than ready to clock out.

“Hey, Tom,” she yawned. “Thanks for covering tonight.”

“No problem,” I replied, glancing around. “By the way, did you see Jackson earlier? He was acting kind of strange.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Jackson? No, I didn’t see him"

I frowned. “What do you mean? He was just outside a minute ago, freaking out about something.”

She shook her head, clearly confused. “I didn’t see anyone. And I’ve been here the whole time.”

A chill ran down my spine, but I forced myself to shrug it off. “Weird. Maybe he was hiding out somewhere.”

“Maybe,” Sarah said, unconvinced. “Well, good luck tonight. It’s usually dead quiet, but…” She hesitated, biting her lip as if she wanted to say more.

“But what?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly, grabbing her coat. “Just…don’t let it get to you. See you tomorrow.”

And with that, she left, leaving me alone in the quiet, fluorescent-lit store.

The first few minutes were uneventful. A couple of customers wandered in, buying late-night snacks or picking up a few items they had forgotten. I scanned their goods, made small talk, and settled into what I thought would be an easy shift.

Around 11:30 PM, the store fell completely silent. There were no more customers, no more cars passing by outside. Just me and the hum of the refrigerators.

I began to relax, thinking maybe this night shift thing wouldn’t be so bad after all.

But then, as I sat behind the counter, I noticed something odd. At the far end of the store, in the dimly lit aisles, there was a figure, a customer, maybe? But they weren’t moving. Just standing there between two aisles, like they were waiting for something.

“Hello?” I called out, peering into the darkened aisles. No response.

The figure stood perfectly still at the far end of the store, where the lighting was poor, casting long, eerie shadows between the shelves. I squinted, trying to make out any details, but it was hard to tell if it was a person or just my mind playing tricks on me. The store was silent, except for the faint hum of the refrigerators and the low buzzing of the fluorescent lights above.

“Hello?” I called out again, louder this time.

No response. The figure didn’t move. It was unsettling, but I convinced myself it was probably just a customer lingering in the shadows, perhaps deciding on a late-night snack. I turned my attention to the security monitor, thinking I could get a better look at whoever it was.

Oddly enough, the camera that had a direct view of that aisle showed nothing. Just empty aisles, shelves lined with products, but no person in sight. I frowned, glancing back up toward the aisle itself, and my heart skipped a beat. The figure had moved. It was closer now, just beyond the poorly lit section, but still standing unnaturally still.

My eyes flicked back to the monitor. Still, nothing. The figure wasn’t there. It didn’t make sense.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to shake off the unease settling deep in my gut. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or maybe they were standing just in a blind spot of the camera. That had to be it.

But when I looked back toward the aisle again, the figure had moved again, this time, much closer. Now, it stood under better lighting, but somehow, the shadows still clung to them. I couldn’t make out a face, just the vague silhouette of a person. They stood there, unnervingly still, as if waiting for something.

My body moved before I could stop myself. I got up from behind the counter and made my way toward the aisle. As soon as I rounded the corner and entered the aisle… nothing. No one was there.

I stood still for a moment, the hair on the back of my neck prickling. The store was empty. There was no one there but me.

I checked every aisle, walking through each one slowly, trying to find any trace of someone having been there. But no one was inside. Eventually, I returned to the counter, telling myself that whoever it was must have left the store quietly.

I checked the cameras again. All clear. No sign of any movement.

And then I remembered what Jackson had told me.

The drawer.

I hesitated, looking at the monitor again. Midnight had just passed, and the store felt even quieter now, the silence pressing in on me. Reluctantly, I opened the last drawer behind the counter, expecting maybe some keys or supplies. Instead, my fingers brushed against a folded piece of paper.

I unfolded it and read the first few lines:

These are the rules that you need to follow to make it through the nightshift. I found out about them the hard way, so I’ve noted all of them here to keep the new nightshift clerks safe. If you encounter a strange event, please note it down.

I rolled my eyes, thinking it was some elaborate prank by Jackson or one of my other coworkers. Still, a part of me couldn’t shake off how serious Jackson had been when he warned me earlier. His voice echoed in my head, along with his exhausted, terrified expression.

I continued reading the list.

Rule 1: Occasionally, you’ll see a shadowy figure at the far end of the store, just standing between two aisles. It will not move unless you ignore it. Always nod or wave to acknowledge its presence, and it will leave you alone.

I felt a sudden rush of panic, and before I could stop myself, I shouted into the empty store, “Yeah, real funny, guys! Really mature!”

My voice echoed in the aisles, but the store remained still, as if waiting.

I continued reading.

Rule 2: From 2:00 AM onwards, Aisle 7 becomes different. Products are rearranged, the air is colder, and you will start to see "strange things" that aren't there.

“Sure,” I muttered, rolling my eyes again. This had to be some weird initiation prank for covering the night shift. Still, a strange uneasiness settled into my bones as I read on.

Rule 3: Between 1:00 AM and 4:00 AM, only five customers can enter the store. After the fifth one, any further ‘customers’ are not human, no matter how they appear. Count them carefully, and if a sixth enters, lock yourself in the back office and do not leave until you’re sure they’ve gone.

My eyes widened as I read that one. I forced myself to keep reading.

Rule 4: No matter what happens, Aisle 3 must be cleaned at exactly 2:45 AM every night. A spill will appear on the floor out of nowhere, and you must clean it up as soon as you see it. Ignoring it will cause the spill to spread, and soon, you’ll notice wet footprints appearing around the store.

I chuckled nervously. This was getting ridiculous.

Rule 5: If the back door is left unlocked, someone, or something, will enter after midnight. You won’t notice them, but you will feel an unsettling chill, as if someone is standing behind you.

A chill ran down my spine just as I read that line. I instinctively glanced behind me at the back door, which I’d left unlocked, thinking no one would bother coming through there. We never locked it during the day, so why bother at night?

The next rule sent another wave of dread through me.

Rule 6: Occasionally, you might catch a glimpse of yourself walking the aisles, stocking shelves, or mopping the floors. Whatever you do, do not approach them, and do not let them see you.

A sense of unease started growing in the pit of my stomach. I tried laughing it off, but the truth was, this list was starting to get to me. I continued reading, my fingers trembling.

Rule 7: If you hear sobbing or cries for help from the manager’s office, do not go inside. The door may be ajar. The crying will get louder the closer you get, and if you open the door, it will stop. Something else will be waiting in the silence.

I threw the list back in the drawer to forget all about it, when something in the corner of my eye made me freeze. A shadow flickered across the security monitor, near the back door.

I had to make sure no one had come in.

I hurried toward the back door, expecting to find one of my coworkers sneaking around, trying to scare me. But when I reached the door, no one was there. The air felt unnaturally cold, and a draft blew in through the still-open back door. I slammed it shut, feeling a shiver crawl up my neck. I locked it.

Just as I turned around, there was a faint knock on the door. A cold sweat broke out on my skin, and I slowly turned back toward the door.

I opened it, expecting a collegue of mine to jump out and scare me.

But there was no one there. The back alley was empty. I stepped outside, glancing around.

Nothing. Not a soul.

I shut the door and locked it.

As I got back to the counter, my heart skipped a beat. I felt a cold, icy presence behind me, so real, I could almost feel the breath on the back of my neck.

I spun around. Nothing but the wall.

The chill lingered, creeping up my spine as I stood there, breathing heavily. Rule 5 echoed in my mind. I could feel something watching me.

I had to get a grip on myself, shake off the lingering dread that clung to my skin. Standing still behind the counter wasn’t helping. The rules were unsettling, sure, but that’s all they were, words on paper. I needed to move around, clear my head, and remind myself that this was just a quiet, empty store.

I decided to do a quick walk through the aisles, maybe even restock a few items to keep myself busy. The familiar routine would ground me, keep me from spiraling further into paranoia.

As I walked along the aisles, everything seemed normal at first, the familiar rows of snacks, canned goods, and drinks stacked neatly in their places. But as I made my way toward the freezers at the back of the store, something caught my eye.

There was an ice cream carton lying on the floor, right in front of the freezer doors. It was still sealed, perfectly intact, but just sitting there like someone had dropped it.

I frowned. No one had been in this section recently. The few customers I’d had earlier didn’t even go near the freezers. I bent down to pick it up, telling myself it was nothing.

I stood up with the carton in hand, and as I reached out to open the freezer door, something cold and solid wrapped around my wrist.

The sensation was all too real, yet there was nothing visible holding me.

I yanked my hand back, pulling it toward my chest as I stumbled backward. My eyes darted around the freezer aisle. There was no one here.

But I had felt it. Something had grabbed me.

Panic surged through me, cold and sharp. I stared at my hand, my skin tingling where the grip had been. Thin red marks, tracing the outline of where those fingers had been. They were narrow, and there were only three distinct markings, like the hand that had grabbed me had only 3 fingers.

“What the hell…?” I whispered to myself, but my voice sounded small, almost drowned out by the eerie situation.

I rushed back, my hand still tingling from the icy touch. The thin, red lines on my wrist were still there, burning slightly, as if whatever had touched me had left a mark deeper than just on the surface.

When I reached the counter, I leaned against it, breathing heavily, my heart still racing in my chest. I couldn’t shake the feeling of the cold, thin fingers gripping my wrist.

I was still staring at my hand when something shifted in the corner of my vision.

My head snapped up, eyes darting toward the back of the store, and that’s when I saw it again. The figure, just like before, standing between the aisles in the poorly lit section. Its form was obscured by shadows, but I knew it was the same figure from earlier. That unsettling presence I had seen but convinced myself wasn’t real.

It was standing there, staring at me, unmoving.

This time, I felt the panic creeping up faster. Rule number one.

“Always nod or wave to acknowledge its presence, and it will leave you alone.”

Was this really happening?

I swallowed hard, the dryness in my throat making it difficult to breathe.

I lifted my arm slowly and gave a small, hesitant wave toward the shadowy figure at the end of the aisle.

The figure didn’t move, didn’t step forward or shift in any way. But then, its face, or what passed for a face, lit up with an unnerving, wide grin. The smile was impossibly wide, stretching from ear to ear, teeth gleaming unnaturally in the dim light. It wasn’t a smile of joy or warmth, it was too sharp, too predatory. It radiated a faint, unnatural glow, like the smile itself was made of something otherworldly.

And then, the figure vanished.

I stood there, frozen in place, my mind struggling to comprehend what had just happened.

This wasn’t my imagination. Something was happening, something far worse than I had been prepared for.

“Oh my God…” I whispered, my heart pounding harder than ever.

I didn’t know what to do. My legs felt weak, my mind racing.

With trembling hands, I opened the drawer again, the faint creak of the wood making my heart jump. I fumbled inside, feeling the familiar rough texture of the folded paper. The list of rules. I had to double-check it, make sure I hadn’t missed anything crucial. My mind was spinning after what had just happened, but I needed something concrete to hold onto, even if it was just a set of bizarre, unsettling rules.

As I unfolded the paper, the front door chimed. I flinched, my nerves still on edge, but it was only a customer, a middle-aged man. He looked normal enough.

I let out a shaky breath, trying to calm myself. It’s fine, just another customer, I thought, trying to force my heart rate back to normal. He nodded to me briefly and walked further into the store. I watched him for a second, then turned my attention back to the list, clinging to it like a lifeline.

“Okay,” I muttered under my breath, scanning the rules. “Between 1 AM and 4 AM… count the customers. No more than five.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall, just past 1 AM. So far, only this middle-aged guy had come in. Customer number one. I had to keep track. No room for mistakes.

“And… at 2:45 AM… clean aisle three.” I sighed. It seemed simple enough, in theory. But after what had already happened tonight, nothing felt simple anymore. Still, the market wasn’t large. I could handle counting a few customers and cleaning one aisle. I repeated the steps to myself, like a mantra, trying to find comfort in the routine.

Another customer walked in as the middle-aged man finished checking out, wishing me a good night as he took his bag and left. I watched him walk through the automatic doors and disappear into the night.

That’s two, I thought. I mentally added the new arrival to the count.

Then, the woman who entered next didn’t glance at me. She didn’t say a word. She walked straight ahead, her eyes locked in a distant, unblinking stare. Her movements were stiff, almost mechanical, like she was being controlled. Her skin, pale and almost unnaturally smooth, shimmered under the store’s fluorescent lights as if it wasn’t skin at all but something else, something artificial.

I watched her as she disappeared into one of the aisles, breaking the line of sight. My breath caught in my throat. It took everything in me not to follow her, to see if she was real or something else entirely. But I shook my head, forcing myself to stay behind the counter.

“It’s nothing,” I whispered to myself, trying to sound convincing. “Just a weird customer.”

I glanced at the clock again. It was just past 2 AM. Aisle seven was the next danger zone, according to the rules. I’d have to avoid it for the rest of the night, and that felt like the simplest thing in the world compared to what I’d already encountered. I checked the security monitor, peeking at the dim view of aisle seven. Everything seemed… normal.

At around 2:30 AM, the door chimed again. I turned to see another customer enter, a man, this one seemingly normal. He wandered through the aisles, picking up a few items. I breathed a small sigh of relief, grateful that he seemed ordinary.

But something nagged at me. The third customer, the woman with the robotic movements, I hadn’t seen her leave. My eyes flicked back to the monitor, and I switched through the different camera angles. Nothing. No sign of her anywhere in the store.

Maybe she left and I didn’t notice? I thought, trying to convince myself. But the pit of unease in my stomach only grew deeper.

Four customers now. I mentally ticked them off, hoping and praying that no more would come before 4 AM. The idea of encountering a “sixth customer” was something I couldn’t even bear to think about.

I watched the newest customer as he checked out with his goods, offering a polite “Good night” as he walked out.

Four, I reminded myself.

The minutes ticked by slowly, dragging like hours, and then my attention snapped to the clock. It was almost 2:45 AM.

Time to clean aisle three, I thought, dread settling in my gut like a stone. I grabbed the mop and bucket from the back room and slowly made my way to the aisle. My footsteps echoed in the quiet store, the squeak of the wheels on the mop bucket sounding unnervingly loud.

But just as I reached the aisle, I heard something. A whisper, faint and distant. I froze, gripping the handle of the mop. The sound seemed to drift through the air, faint but unmistakable.

It was calling my name.

I turned slowly, the whisper growing clearer, more insistent. My heart pounded in my chest, each beat hammering in my ears. The sound was coming from the other side of the store, near aisle seven.

My legs felt like lead as I moved toward the sound, each step reluctant, but something compelled me forward. The whisper grew louder the closer I got. My name… over and over again, like a distant plea.

I reached the edge of aisle seven, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. I knew I shouldn’t look. I knew. But something took over, some dark curiosity that made me peek around the corner.

And what I saw made my blood turn to ice.

The aisle wasn’t normal anymore. Mannequins stood scattered throughout, posed as if shopping, their stiff limbs dressed in tattered clothing. Their plastic faces were blank, yet they radiated a silent menace that I couldn’t explain. It was as if they’d been caught mid-action, and the second I looked, they frozen in place.

I pulled back, my heart hammering in my chest. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. I took a breath and peeked again, against every instinct telling me not to.

This time, all the mannequins were looking directly at me.

I staggered back, my hands shaking, my pulse roaring in my ears. My body screamed at me to run, but my feet stayed planted to the spot, frozen in terror. I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. And then, at the far end of the aisle, I spotted her.

Customer number three. The woman with the robotic movements. She stood at the end of the aisle, staring directly at me, her face blank . My heart dropped into my stomach. She was there.

Suddenly, she moved. No, she burst toward me, her body jerking unnaturally, her limbs flailing in that same mechanical rhythm. I let out a strangled cry and bolted, sprinting as fast as I could away from aisle seven. I could hear the heavy thud of her footsteps growing louder, faster.

As the sound of footsteps reached the edge of the aisle, they stopped. I whipped around and there was nothing. No sign of her. No sound.

I ran back to the counter, gasping for air. My hands flew to the security monitor, my fingers trembling as I flipped through the cameras. Aisle seven appeared normal on the feed, no mannequins, no woman. Just an empty, quiet aisle.

And then, from somewhere deep in the store, I heard my name again. This time, I wasn’t playing this game anymore.

I glanced at the clock. It was past 2:45 AM. Aisle three. I need to clean aisle three.

I grabbed the mop and bucket, my legs feeling weak beneath me. I bolted toward aisle three, dread pooling in my stomach. As I approached, my heart sank further.

There was a pool of something on the floor. A thick, dark liquid spread across the tiles, glistening under the store’s fluorescent lights. Worse, I could see wet footprints leading away from the puddle, small and childlike, heading toward the far end of the aisle.

I didn’t have time to think. I just moved. I rushed toward the spill, plunging the mop into the murky liquid and furiously scrubbing the floor. My hands shook as I worked, my breath coming in ragged gasps. What is this? I thought, panic clawing at my mind. What is leaving these footprints?

I mopped and scrubbed, my heart pounding in my ears. The footprints led toward the end of the aisle, but as I got closer, they stopped just around the corner. Vanished, as if whoever, or whatever, had left them had simply disappeared.

I stared down at the now-clean floor, my hands trembling around the handle of the mop. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. I didn’t know what was real. I left the mop and bucket behind and stumbled back to the counter, feeling completely drained, physically and mentally.

Exhausted. Terrified.

My chest heaved as I leaned against the counter, gasping for breath. I kept glancing over my shoulder, half-expecting to see something emerge from the darkness.

I thought about Jackson again, how exhausted and terrified he had been when he warned me. He must have gone through all of this, experienced every one of these horrifying things to make that list of rules.

A part of me wondered how he had survived it.

Another part of me wasn’t sure he had.

It was nearing 4 AM, and I was almost done with Rule 3, counting customers. Or at least, I thought I was. Somewhere along the way, amidst the strange events, I had lost track. My mind had been all over the place, jumping from one unsettling moment to another. The panic of the night had scrambled my focus. I tried to piece it back together, but the harder I thought, the more I realized I wasn’t sure how many customers had actually come in.

Then, the entrance door chimed, its sharp sound jolting me out of my thoughts. My head snapped toward the door, and in walked a lone customer. He were bundled up in a thick winter coat, the hood pulled low over their face, which was strange. Something about him immediately set me on edge. The way he moved, slow, aimless, like he had no real purpose in the store. He didn’t look around, didn’t acknowledge me. He just wandered, drifting between the aisles, never picking anything up.

I watched him carefully, my nerves taut, trying to figure out if this was the fifth customer or something else. The rule replayed in my mind, “After the fifth customer, any others are not human. If a sixth enters, lock yourself in the back office.”

My heart pounded in my chest. Was this the fifth customer? The night had become a blur of fear and confusion, and now I couldn’t remember what was real anymore.

As I stared at the man, something odd caught my eye, his reflection in the store’s large front windows. It wasn’t right. The image flickered, glitching in and out, like a broken video feed. The movements looked distorted, out of sync with their actual body. My stomach twisted with dread.

Suddenly, the man stopped dead in their tracks, standing perfectly still. Slowly, he turned to face me, and I could feel the weight of their gaze through the shadows of the hood. Two pale, ghostly eyes stared out from the darkness, locking onto me. He didn’t blink, didn’t move, just stared. And it felt like they were looking straight into my soul, seeing something in me that no one should ever see.

Panic hit me like a freight train. I bolted from the counter, my legs moving on pure instinct. I didn’t care what he was, I just knew I needed to get away. My heart thundered in my chest as I ran toward the back office, my footsteps echoing through the empty store.

I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting to see the customer far behind me, But he was much closer than he should have been, gliding across the floor without moving his legs, almost like a statue being dragged, his eyes still fixed on me, unblinking.

I pushed myself harder, sprinting through the aisles until I reached the back office. I slammed the door shut and leaned against it, my breath coming in shallow gasps. Silence enveloped me like a suffocating blanket, just the pounding of my own heartbeat in my ears.

Then, a low-pitched hum began to vibrate through the walls. It was soft at first, barely audible, but it grew louder, resonating from behind the door like some kind of electrical charge building in the air. I gulped, pressing my ear to the door, trying to make sense of it. My body was frozen with fear, my breath shallow and quiet, not daring to make a sound.

The hum persisted for what felt like an eternity, filling the air with an ominous tension. And then, it faded away. The silence returned, thick and oppressive, like the store itself was holding its breath.

I stayed there for what felt like hours, too terrified to move, my back pressed against the door, waiting for something to happen. But the only thing that greeted me was the eerie, suffocating stillness of the night.

Eventually, the fear began to dull, and curiosity took over. I hadn’t heard anything for a while. Slowly, cautiously, I reached for the door handle, my hand trembling as I turned it. I cracked the door open, peeking out into the store.

Everything seemed normal.

The aisles were empty, the lights buzzing faintly overhead. There was no sign of the customer, no sign of anything out of the ordinary. But I knew better than to trust appearances now. Nothing felt right.

I made my way back to the counter, the tension of the night still buzzing beneath my skin, but there was a slight sense of relief beginning to creep in. I glanced at the monitor once more, scanning the empty aisles. The store was deserted, just as it should be.

One more hour. One last stretch, and I’d be free of this nightmare for good.

I kept watching the clock, the minutes ticking away slowly. It was almost over, just a little longer, and I’d be walking out of here, never to return to the night shift again. With each passing second, the weight on my shoulders lifted slightly. It was almost 6 AM.

No customers had come in during the last few hours, or so I thought. The store had been quiet, unnaturally so, but I was grateful for it. The fewer customers, the fewer things that could go wrong.

Then, just as I was beginning to feel a flicker of hope, a soft knock echoed from the back door. I froze, my mind racing. I glanced at the clock. It was 5:50 AM, ten minutes until I could leave. I hesitated. The knock came again, firmer this time.

Reluctantly, I walked toward the back door, each step slow and cautious. I unlocked it and opened it carefully. Standing there, smiling, was one of my colleagues from the day shift.

“Hey,” he said casually, “how was the night? You look like you’ve seen… something.”

I stared at him, feeling a pit of dread growing in my stomach. “Yeah,” I muttered, my voice hollow. “You could say that.”

He proceeded towards the counter.

As he stood there, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. The sense of impending doom weighed on me, and my heart began to race again. I glanced around the dimly lit store, my nerves on edge.

Suddenly, the lights flickered, and then, without warning, everything went dark.

The store was plunged into pitch blackness, and my breath caught in my throat. It was still dark outside, far too early for daylight, and now the store felt completely cut off from the world. My pulse quickened as I realized the power had gone out. I grabbed a flashlight from the back office, flicking it on in the suffocating darkness.

I bolted toward the counter to check on my colleague, but when I got there, he was gone. I scanned the aisles with the flashlight, but there was no sign of him. My heart pounded in my chest as I ran to the door, my flashlight cutting through the dark like a blade. But when I reached the front door, it wouldn’t budge.

I turned, shining the flashlight through the glass. What I saw made my blood run cold. The world outside wasn’t just dark, it was void. An abyss. The light from my flashlight didn’t penetrate it at all. It was as if the darkness was swallowing the light whole, consuming everything beyond the threshold of the store. I couldn’t see anything, no buildings, no streetlights, nothing.

The clock on the wall caught my eye, and my stomach dropped. It was 6:02 AM.

Jackson told me to leave at 6 AM sharp. Not earlier. Not later.

I felt panic rising in my throat as the realization hit me. I had made a terrible mistake.

I began running around the store, desperate, trying to figure out what to do. I had no plan, no idea what was happening, but I needed to escape. The store felt different now, like the walls were closing in. The aisles seemed to stretch and warp, twisting in ways that defied logic. Voices echoed through the space, whispers, groans, distant sobs. I could hear the mannequin woman from earlier, her stiff, robotic movements shuffling through the aisles. Somewhere behind me, the man in the winter coat moved soundlessly, his hollow eyes still searching.

I didn’t know what was real anymore, or how long I’d been running. The store was changing, shifting, the aisles no longer obeying the rules of space and time. My breath came in short, panicked gasps as the voices grew louder, the walls seeming to pulse around me. I turned a corner, only to find myself back where I started. No matter which direction I ran, it all looped endlessly.

Time was slipping away too. My mind struggled to hold onto moments, to figure out if seconds or hours were passing.

I screamed, though I didn’t know if any sound came out. Everything blurred together as my movements became frantic. My body felt weightless, as if I was floating through the chaos, trapped in an endless loop of repeating aisles and shifting shadows.

Suddenly, I found myself back at the rear of the store, standing just by the back door. My hand trembled as I reached for the handle. I shoved it open, bursting out into the cool night air.

The world outside was still dark, but now it was the familiar darkness of early night, not the void I had seen earlier. I glanced at my watch, my heart pounding in my ears.

It was 11 PM.

With shaking hands, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pen and the list of rules. My hand trembled as I scribbled down the last entry:

RULE 8: Whatever you do, leave the supermarket at 6 AM sharp, not a minute earlier, not a minute later. If you don’t, the store will feel different, like it’s been sealed away from the world. The aisles will shift and stretch, and strange entities will roam through the store. You’ll be trapped with them until night falls again.

I stared at the note, my heart sinking as I realized just how real these rules were. I glanced down at my hand, the same hand that had felt the icy grip earlier, and the three-fingered markings were still faintly visible on my skin. This was real. Every part of it.

As I stood there, one of my colleagues approached the back of the store, waving at me casually.

“Hey, everyone’s been looking for you,” he said, as if nothing was wrong. “You alright?”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t know how to explain what had happened.

“I’m taking the night shift tonight,” he added. “Is there anything I should know?”

I swallowed hard, pulling out the list of rules, and handed it to him.

“This is not a joke,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “Read them. Follow them. Exactly.”

He looked at me, confused, but I didn’t wait for a response. I just turned and walked away, my footsteps heavy with the weight of what I had experienced. I knew I couldn’t explain it to him, couldn’t convince him of what was coming.

I left the supermarket behind, knowing I would never return, not during the day, and certainly not during the night.

Never again.

Alex ducked into an alley, pressing up against a wall and sliding to the ground, the jacket’s leather making an uncomfortable scraping sound that almost felt like a protest. He puts both hands on his head and ran his fingers through his short black hair. The jacket seemed to tighten, in what could be a comforting or threatening gesture. Or. Or Alex is just batshit crazy, bought an ugly jacket from a pawn shop, then went on to stick 2 butter knives into a man’s eyes after making love to him, while also being straight his whole life. Maybe that’s what happened. Sure, probably.

Alex had just walked out of a room from a dead body. Grappling with that horror was like wrestling a bear. A bear with teeth gnashing and claws swinging, ready to disembowel him at the slightest graze. He stared at the opposite brick wall with a wide eyed empty gaze, losing his fight with the fear bear quickly.

“The road to coming out of the closet is fraught with steps back into the closet, sweetheart.” Thought Alex.

Alex’s hands dropped from his head. Alright, one coherent hallucination is one thing, but to have a second one in a row… unless that’s how hallucinations worked. Alex had to admit, he wasn’t an expert.

“Furthermore, I’m custom made Italian leather, being worn by some straighty-80 shopping at thrift shops for a new ‘him’. The voice? Let's call it the voice. The voice in Alex’s head said. “Why did Courtney leave me? Probably because I could barely pick up a man in this dumpster queen body.”

Alright, the voice in his head didn’t need to be so insulting, after all, friendly fire much?

“Let’s get one thing straight,” the voice thought into Alex’s head. “I’m not you, and you’re not me.”

Alex decided to try another tactic. “Then what are you?” He thought.

“I’d like to solve the puzzle, Pat” The voice thought, in a very game show host-ish manner.

The jacket constricted to the point that Alex couldn’t breathe. He gasped air, which only served to expel the air that was already in his lungs. His feet kicked and scrabbled on the concrete, not gaining purchase or really accomplishing anything at all.

Just as felt he would pass out, the constriction suddenly let up and Alex could breathe again. He fell over gasping and sputtering, purely focused on getting oxygen back into his body.

“I used to only do that on the third date.” thought the voice.

Already having thrown everything up in the room, Alex simply dry heaved on the street, writhing in pain. More than just the pain from his head and chest, but fear pulsed through his entire being. What was happening, and why was it happening to him?

“Simply put, you sought me out, and you found me.” Said… Leo. His name was Leo. “Darling, you’re already in pieces, waiting to be put back together.”

Leo?

“That’s right, sweetheart,” chided the voice, almost playfully.”Leo”

“What… what do you want from me?” Alex’s voice shook, already dreading the answer.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Leo drawled. “All I want for you is to loosen up a little. To see what you’re really capable of.” The jacket’s grip tightened briefly, not painful, but firm. “You’ve been holding back your whole life. Let me show you how freeing it can be.” ‘ “But, what do you get out of it?”Alex shuddered, fearing he already knew the answer.

“I want to live a little.” Leo sang out. “Feel the wind on my face, and a cock…tail on my lips.”

Leo went quiet momentarily, then burst out.

“Don’t you know, I’m still standing, tighter than before”

Alex stood up, without consenting to do so.

“Wrapped around your body, rooted to the core.”

Alex’s shoulders started shimming to an unheard beat, kicking his feet and spinning in place.

“I’m still standing, and I’ll take my due,” Alex did a spin in place.

“Because you’re mine completely, nothing you can do.” Alex collapsed back to the ground moving his hands over his body regaining full control. “I’m still standing.”

“That’s about all I have for now, but baby give me some time to come up with some more lyrics.”

With that, Leo went silent, leaving Alex to contemplate how fucked he was.

The first thought that entered Alex’s mind was to head to a church. He’d seen enough movies to know that all you need to do was throw some holy water or something at a malignant spirit, and it happily fucks off to wherever evil spirits go. There was a catholic church just three blocks down the road. He got up and started walking. He tried not to think about doing it, which felt impossible. After 15 minutes of walking, the church stood before Alex. It felt like salvation was within reach.

That’s when he just kept walking.

“Alex, baby,” cooed Leo. “Did you really think that this friend of Dorothy would let you groove up in a church?”

“Worth a shot, I guess.” Said Alex.

“Fair enough, sugar.”

Exhausted from the fear, panic, and the dancing, Alex decided to call it and just head back home. All things considered, he’d rather have a breakdown of his entire being to not happen on a city sidewalk.

Reaching his apartment, Alex decided to switch up tactics again.

“What can I do to end this?”

“Aww, baby,” Leo crooned. “Just be yourself. Your true self.” The jacket squeezed down on Alex’s shoulder, like a reassuring pat on the back, or a warning.

“My true self?” Alex asked, actually confused. “What part of my true self stuck butter knives in that guy’s eyes?”

“Sweet thing, I’m in your head, opening doors, closets, pantries, even a couple peeks at your google search history.”

Alex’s face flushed red instantly. “We’ve all searched for some weird stuff” Alex blustered. “Leave my pubescent internet history out of this!”

“Relax, sweetheart,” Leo purred. “Relax and let me show you who you really are.”

Alex knew he should resist, but he was exhausted. Just for now, he told himself, ignoring the sinking feeling that “just for now” could last a lifetime.

As Telandros wafted back and forth in the microgravity of the shuttle, the rear tentacle of his six-limbed, biomechanical body clutched around one of the perching rods that were ubiquitous in Star Siren crafts, he couldn’t help but feel a little less like a Posthuman demigod and a little more like some sessile filter feeder at the mercy of the ocean’s currents.

Though he was physically capable of moving about in anything from microgravity to high gravity with equal ease, and neither would have any physiological impact on his health, he was steadfastly of the opinion that Martian gravity was the ‘correct’ gravity. That was the rate that most interplanetary vessels accelerated and decelerated at, and his mother ship the Forenaustica had two separate Martian gravity centrifuges, alongside one Earth and two Lunar centrifuges.

And of course, despite the aeons he had spent travelling around the galaxy, Mars would always be his homeworld.

When he was in microgravity, he usually preferred to move about by using the articulated, fractally branching filaments that covered his body to stick to surfaces through Casimir forces, creeping along them like a starfish creeping along the ocean floor. But his hostesses here adored microgravity, and moving about in an intentionally macrogravital manner would have been seen as distasteful to them.

The Star Sirens found a great many things distasteful, and Telandros knew he had to tread lightly if he wished to retain their services. Or, more accurately, he would have to avoid treading altogether.

“Ah, hello?” a soft voice squeaked out from beneath him. It sounded like a Star Siren’s voice, but instead of singing sirensong it was speaking Solglossia, the de facto lingua franca of the Sol system’s transhuman races. “Are you Tellie?”

Telandros pointed the six-eyed, circular sensory array that counted as his face down towards the shuttle’s entrance hatch, and spotted the bald and elongated head of a light-blue Star Siren timidly peeking up at him.

Once upon a time, the Star Sirens had been the most radical species of transhumans ever created, but this gentle sylph now seemed so fragilely human compared to Telandros. Fortunately for her, Telandros was not merely a demigod, but a gentleman as well.

“I am the galactinaut Telandros Phi-Delta-Five of the TXS Forenaustica, Regosophic Era Martian Posthuman of the Ultimanthropus aeonian-excelsior clade, and repatriated citizen of the Transcendental Tharsis Technate; but you may call me Tellie if you wish,” he said with a gentle bow of his head tentacle, politely folding his four arm tentacles behind his back to appear as non-threatening as possible. “And what is your name, young Star Siren?”

“Wylaxia; Wylaxia Kaliphimoasm Odaidiance vi Poseidese,” she said as she jetted upwards, folding her arms behind her back as well as she attempted to project some confidence and authority.

At a glance, there wasn’t much to distinguish her from the Star Sirens of ancient times. Their enhanced DNA repair made mutations extremely rare, and their universal use of artificial reproduction left even less of a chance for such mutations to get passed on. They were also unusually conservative in their use of elective genetic modifications, more often than not simply cloning from a pool of tried and true genotypes. As a result, their rate of evolution was extremely slow, and genetically they had been classified as the same species for the past three million years.   

They had advanced technologically, of course. The crystalline exocortexes on their heads, the photonic diodes that studded their bodies, and the nanotech fibers woven into their tissues were all superior to those of their ancestors. The hulls of their vessels were now constructed from stable forms of exotic matter rather than diamondoid, though their frugality and cultural fondness for the substance meant that it was still in use wherever it was practical. Matter/energy conversion had replaced nuclear fusion, but solar power beamed straight from the Mercurial Dyson Swarm was still the cheapest energy around. Most impressively, the Star Sirens now maintained a monopoly on the interstellar wormhole network, a monopoly which even the Posthumans of the Tharsis Technate dared not infringe upon out of fear of destabilizing the astropolitical power balance.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Poseidese. I wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to you and your fleet for allowing me to charter your services,” Telandros said.

“Oh, we’re happy to help. I am, at least. Not to, ah, exoticize you or anything, but you’re the first Tharsisian Posthuman I’ve ever met,” Wylaxia admitted. “You came straight here from Saturn, right? Went right past Uranus? Was it the smell?”

Sadly, her joke fell flat, as Telandros just stared at her blankly for a moment.

“Ouranos is currently well outside of Saturn’s optimal transit window; a detour to visit it would have been highly inefficient,” he replied.

“I didn’t say Ouranos. I said Uranus. I, I was trying to make a joke,” she explained apologetically.

“…That pun requires rather obscure knowledge of ancient etymology to make any sense,” Telandros said.

“So you do get it?” she asked with an excited smile.  

“…I understand why the name Uranus is humourous, yes,” he agreed. “But I truly am extremely appreciative of your services. When I learned that an abandoned asteroid habitat had drifted in from the Oort Cloud and fallen into high orbit around Neptune, I knew I had to visit it before I returned to the Inner System. But no one down on Triton would rent me a vessel. They were downright superstitious about it, acting as if I was disturbing a mummies’ tomb.”

“Neptune and the Kuiper Belt are the last bastions of Solar Civilization out here, and the Oorties make us all a little nervous,” Wylaxia admitted. “Over the aeons, there have been plenty of attempts by all sorts of mavericks to settle the asteroids in the Oort cloud. Most fail, and the settlers either return home or die out, but some must have managed to take root. They’ve been out there in total or near total isolation for thousands, maybe even millions of years. We don’t know what they’ve turned into, but a lot of the ships and probes that try to travel through the Oort Cloud are never heard from again. The only reason none of us blasted that habitat into dust before it fell into orbit is because we were terrified of what would happen if we drew first blood. We’ve watched it vigilantly for millennia now, but we’ve never dared to disturb it. If there’s anything inside, it’s either dead or… dormant.”

“But yet your fleet is willing to let me investigate it?” Telandros asked.

“We are. We’ve suggested the idea of Posthumans investigating the Oort craft before, but you’re the first of your people to ever seem to think it was worth their time,” Wylaxia replied. “We’re not about to let this opportunity slip through our fingers.”

“Then I am pleased my shore leave could be of service to you as well,” Telandros said. “Is it your intention to accompany me on this excursion then?”

“It is. You’re not compatible with our Overmind, and we want to see this with our own eyes,” Wylaxia replied. “I’ve volunteered to accompany you, and I trust it goes without saying that my Fleet will hold you solely responsible if anything were to happen to me.”

“I will do everything in my power to ensure you’re returned home safely, young Star Siren,” Telandros vowed. “I’m ready to depart if you are.”

With an enthusiastic nod, Wylaxia fired the light jets on her photonic diodes to propel herself over to Telandros. Clutching onto the perch beside him with her prehensile feet and tail, she began tapping buttons on her AR display which only she could see. The phased optic arrays which coated most of the inside of the craft refused to display any pertinent information, and considering that it was still under the control of its mothership’s superintelligent Overmind, Telandros couldn’t help but take this as an intentional slight against him.

Wylaxia piloted their shuttle into the ship’s photonic cyclotron, where a specialized tractor beam rapidly accelerated it around and around while cancelling out all the g-forces. Once they had reached their desired velocity, they were shot out into space and towards the mysterious Oort craft in high orbit of Neptune.

They had only been travelling a moment when Telandros noted Wylaxia wincing slightly, as if a part of herself had been left behind, and assumed they had passed out of range of real-time communications with her Overmind.

“May I please have a volumetric display of all relevant astronautical and operational data?” Telandros requested in sirensong.

As he suspected, now that the ship was no longer sentient, it granted him this simple request without objection.

“Please don’t do that,” Wylaxia objected softly, averting her gaze as if he had just paid her some grave insult.

“Miss Poseidese, if I am to conduct a proper investigation of this vessel I will require – ” he began.

“No, I mean don’t sing sirensong!” she shouted sharply, the catlike pupils of her large eyes constricting in fury. “That’s our language!”

Sirensong was a highly complex, precise, and information-dense musical language that required not only the Sirens’ specific cognitive enhancements but also their specialized vocal tracts to speak fluently. Among transhuman races, at least. Posthumans like Telandros could replicate it effortlessly, a feat which the Star Sirens genuinely regarded as… disrespectful.      

“Of course, my apologies. I meant no disrespect,” Telandros said in Solglossia with a contrite bow of his head. 

In truth, he didn’t fully understand why sirensong was so sacred to the Star Sirens, as linguistically they were almost the exact opposite of his own people. Though each Posthuman’s mind was fully sovereign, they communicated primarily through the use of technological telepathy. Their advanced minds thought mainly in the form of hyperdimensional semantic graphs that couldn’t be properly represented with the spoken or written word, and they resorted only to these highly simplified forms of communication when absolutely necessary.

The Star Sirens, on the other hand, despite forming large and overlapping Overminds, sang aloud almost constantly. While this was partially because their still fairly human brains imposed certain limits on direct mind-to-mind communication that were best solved with phonetic language, there was no doubt that music was simply a beloved tenet of their culture.   

Wylaxia didn’t acknowledge his apology. She merely averted her gaze from him while icily shifting her shoulders.

“Would you like me to share some of my language with you?” Telandros offered.

“You know I can’t comprehend your language,” she said dismissively.

“Not fluently, perhaps, but you do possess some capacity for higher-dimensional visualization,” he said. “I could tell you my name, if you like.”

Wylaxia perked her head slightly at this, obviously intrigued by the prospect.

“Your name? You mean, your True Name?” she asked.

“No, my real name. I’m not a Fairy or a Demon. It won’t give you any power over me or anything like that,” Telandros clarified. “I just thought it might be of some cultural interest to you.”

She considered the offer for a moment, and then nodded in the affirmative.

Almost instantly, she received a notification that her exocortexes were now holding a file from a foreign system. Though she was urged to delete it, she opened it with a mere back-and-forth flickering of her eyes.   

“By Cosmothea, this is your name?” she asked, unable to hold back a laugh. “This sprawling fractal of multidimensional polytopes is your name?”

“It is a unique signifier by which I may be identified along with any generally pertinent personal information, so yes; that is my name,” Telandros nodded.

“It’s… oddly beautiful, in its way,” Wylaxia admitted with a weak smile.

“Of course it is. It’s math,” Telandros agreed.

“Well, you can’t make music without math,” Wylaxia added. “Thank you. I’m sorry I snapped at you. You didn’t mean any offense. You were just asking for a display, which you should have had to begin with.”

“I was perhaps a bit thoughtless. I know from experience what a proud people you are,” Telandros said. “Recent and ancient experience, as a matter of fact. When the Forenaustica returned to Sol, I admit I was surprised that the Star Sirens were both still so prevalent and yet so unchanged. Surprised, but not displeased. Humanity is better for being able to count such an enchanting race of space mermaids among its myriad of species.”

“There’s no need to flatter me, Tellie. I’ve already forgiven you,” Wylaxia said. “But, tell me; can you really remember things from three million years ago?”

“My exocortex is capable of yottascale computing. At my present rate of data-compression, I could hypothetically hold trillions of years worth of low-resolution personal memories if I was willing to dedicate the space to it,” he replied. “But is that so strange to you? I know that individually Star Sirens only live centuries to millennia like most transhumans, but your Overminds have roots preceding even the creation of my people. Surely you still have ancient memories available to you. Isn’t that where your Uranus joke came from?”

“Well of course we do, but those are transient. I don’t have millions of years of memories crammed into my own head,” Wylaxia replied. “When our minds grow beyond what one body can hold, those bodies are crystalized and we become one with our Overminds, our psychomes echoing through the minds of our sisters for all eternity. You Posthumans have a much more solitary and physical form of immortality, one that frankly seems kind of… unbearable.”

“Well, keep in mind that your psychology is still fairly close to a baseline human’s, just modified to be better suited for space-faring and Marxism,” Telandros replied. “Our psychology was redesigned from scratch, and is well adapted to indefinite lifespans. We are not prone to Elvish melancholy or vampiric angst as many older transhumans tend to be. We live for the eternal, and we live for the now, and the two are not in conflict. At any rate, I consider three million years in this body preferable to spending them as a ghost in one of your Overminds.”

“We aren’t in the Overmind. We are the Overmind. We are Her, and She is us,” Wylaxia said. “I’ll be a goddess, not a ghost; one with all my sisters, ancestors, and descendants until the end of our race. I wouldn’t want to live forever any other way.”  

“While I don’t share that sentiment, I will grant you this; there are certainly worse ways to live forever.”

***

Though the Oort Cloud habitat had been constructed from a hollowed-out asteroid, that wasn’t immediately obvious upon seeing it. Its surface has been smoothed and possibly transmuted into a dull, glassy substance, with uneven spires and valleys that served no clear purpose. Elaborate, intersecting lines had been scorched into the surface at strange angles, overlapping with concentric geometric shapes.

“Has anyone ever made any progress in deciphering the meaning of the outer markings?” Telandros asked as their decelerating shuttle slowly drifted towards the only known docking port on the habitat.

“None, no,” Wylaxia shook her head. “Most people think it’s supposed to be a map, maybe a warning to where in the Oort Cloud it came from, or a threat we’re supposed to destroy, but no one can read it. The outside is dense enough that we’ve never been able to get a clear reading of what’s inside. No one has been willing to force entry before to see what’s inside, so we’re going in blind. The exterior is completely barren of technology; no thrusters, no sensors, not even any damn lights. The fact that the only possible docking port is at the end of an axis would suggest that it was originally a rotating habitat for macrogravitals, but it wasn’t rotating when it got here. I’m not willing to risk any damage to the structure, so I’m going to use macroscopic quantum tunnelling to get through the airlock. Are you alright with that?”

“That’s Clarketech which requires superhuman intelligence merely to operate safely,” Telandros reminded her.

“I have a biological intellect of roughly 400 on the Vangog scale, and my exocortexes can perform zettascale quantum computations; I can get us through a door,” Wylaxia insisted. “When we’re connected to our Overmind, we literally perform surgery with this stuff.”  

“And yet you thought a dead language’s pun based on the word anus was amusing,” Telandros countered as tactfully as he could.  

“…Would you like to drive?” Wylaxia sighed with a roll of her eyes.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Telandros replied politely.

“Is Li-Fi enough bandwidth for you?” she asked as she tapped at her AR display.

“That should be sufficient. We’re just going through a door,” Telandros replied.

Wylaxia shot him an incredulous look, but handed over control of the shuttle to him regardless.

“Not a scratch, you hear me?” she warned.

“I thought you Sirens had engineered possessiveness out of your psyches,” Telandros commented.

“That only applies to personal possessions. We are very respectful of our communal property,” she told him. “This happens to be one of our higher-end shuttles; a Sapphreides Prismera. It's a Solaris Symposium Certified, Magna-Class, Type II Ex-Evo research vessel. The Artemis Astranautics Authority gave it a triple platinum moon rating across all its categories, making it one of my people's most coveted exports. It's jammed with as much advanced technology as we could fit, its hull has a higher purity of femtomatter than our own habitats, its thrusters a higher specific impulse, and its reactor is only a hair's breadth beneath one hundred percent efficiency. My sisters let me use it to keep me safe, and aside from antimatter and the most intense possible forces, a botched quantum tunnel is one of the few things that can damage it, so make sure the hull integrity is flawless!”

“Understood. It’s a Cadillac,” Telandros said, despite doubting that the history and sociology of ancient automobiles was something she kept archived in her personal exocortexes.

He noticed them flickering a little brighter for a fraction of a second, before Wylaxia turned her head and gave him a wry smile.

“She’s a Porsche.”   

The shuttle’s lights began rapidly dimming and glowing at a rate too fast for a human to notice, but Telandros decoded the optical signal effortlessly. Responding in kind with his own facial diodes, he carefully minded the wavefunction of the entire shuttle. The instant they hit the airlock, wavefunctions started collapsing so that the atoms of the shuttle jumped over the atoms of the door without ever being in the intervening space, all while maintaining the structural cohesion of the craft and its occupants.   

They passed through completely unscathed, but Wylaxia still gave a slight shudder when they were on the other side.

“Sorry. Ghosting always makes me feel like someone’s floating past my tomb,” she confessed.

“Maybe not yours, but someone’s,” Telandros said as he peered out through the window at the sight before him.

It was completely dark inside the asteroid, the only light coming from the shuttle itself. They were in a tunnel, the interior of which was entirely coated in rock-hard ice.

“That’s the atmosphere. It’s condensed to the surface and frozen solid,” Wylaxia reported. “It’s oxygen and hydrogen mainly, both freeform and bonded together as water. Nothing too interesting yet.”

Telandros wasn’t sure he agreed. As they slowly travelled down the tunnel, they spotted several smaller passageways shooting off at random angles. Telandros refrained from voicing his somewhat odd thought that they looked like they had been gnawed.

They soon passed through the tunnel and emerged into the asteroid’s central chamber. It was approximately half a kilometer wide and a mile long, and just like the tunnel the surface was completely covered in frozen atmosphere.

“Yeah, look at all this wasted space in the middle. This was definitely a macrogravital habitat,” Wylaxia scoffed. “There must be an entire society buried under all this ice. Take us in closer. Our tractor beam has macroscopic quantum tunnelling that we can use to excavate.”

Telandros complied, but his attention was on the many boreholes that dotted the interior of the chamber. These were even more perplexing, since they weren’t coming off the axis of rotation and thus would have essentially been dangerous open pits in a macrogravity environment.  

“Here! Stop here!” Wylaxia ordered excitedly as she pointed at the display. “You see it? That’s an ice mummy! It’s got to be! Beam it up through the ice so that we can get a good look at it.”

Bringing the shuttle to a standstill, Telandros examined the information on the display and what he was getting through his Li-Fi connection. He agreed that it was likely a preserved living being, but it was hard to definitively say anything else about it.

“I’m locked on. Pulling it up now,” he said. “This craft’s scanning arrays are not ideal for archaeology. Would you like me to transfer the body into the cargo hold or –”

Before he could even ask, Wylaxia had grabbed a scientific cyberdeck and had jetted out the hatch, a weak plasmonic forcefield now the only thing keeping the shuttle’s atmosphere in place.

The Star Siren used her diodes to enclose herself in an aura of photonic matter, both to retain a personal air supply and provide some additional protection against any possible environmental hazards. Radiant and serene, she ethereally drifted through the vacuum to the end of her tractor beam, watching in astonishment as the long-dead mummy rose from the ice.

“Look at this,” she said, holding the cyberdeck up close to get a good reading while her aura transmitted her voice over Li-Fi. “She’s a biological human descendant, but I’m pretty sure she’s outside the genus Homo. She might be classified into the Metanthropus family, but her species isn’t on record. They were in isolation long enough to diverge from whatever their ancestors were. And… hold on, yeah! She’s got some Olympeon DNA in her genome. That means she and I are cousins, however distantly.”

Telandros made no effort to be as graceful as the Star Siren, and instead simply pushed himself down towards the ice and clung onto it with his rear limbs. He slowly scanned his head around in all directions looking for threats before settling on the ice mummy, but remained vigilant to his peripheral sensors should anything try to sneak up on them.

“Incomprehensible mummified in ice unlike sand of pharaohs incomprehensible likely self-inflicted in either despair or desperation incomprehensible strange circumstances bred by prolonged isolation incomprehensible suggesting early stages of metamorphosis, possible apotheosis incomprehensible gnawing gnawing gnawing at the ice as if scratching the inside of a coffin,” he said, transmitting his thoughts over their Li-Fi connection.

“Ah, Tellie, a bit too much of your hyperdimensional language crept into that message. I didn’t catch a good portion of it,” she informed him. “Instead of direct telepathy, maybe speak through your vocalizer and transmit that? I think you’re right though about her death being self-inflicted. Her death looks like it was sudden but there are no obvious physical injuries to account for it. Maybe the habitat was slowly degrading and they had no way to get help or evacuate. It must have been terrifying for her. I wonder why they didn’t put themselves in actual cryogenic suspension though. We can’t revive her like this; there’s too much cellular damage. Is this whole place just a mass suicide?”

“Incomprehensible nanosome-based auto-reconstruction directed cellular transmutation incomprehensible run amok irreversible terminal incomprehensible the living bore witness to what the dead had become,” Telandros replied.  

“Tellie, seriously; speak through your vocalizer and transmit that,” Wylaxia reiterated. “It looks like she has something artificial in her cells, sure, but that’s pretty common. I’m not familiar with this particular design, but I doubt they were working optimally at the time of her death. They may even have been a contributing factor. Are you suggesting this might have been a nanotech plague of some kind? Maybe that’s why they didn’t preserve themselves properly; they were afraid the nanites would be preserved as well and infect their rescuers. That would have been surprisingly noble for some Oort Cloud hillbillies.”

She winced as her exocortex was hit with another hyperdimensional semantic graph from Telandros, this one almost completely incomprehensible outside of some sense of urgency and existential revulsion.

“Final warning; if you don’t stop that I’m going to cut you off entire–”

“Up there!” he shouted in Solglossia, this time the message coming in over her binaural implants.   

She spun around and saw that he was pointing to a tunnel roughly one-quarter of the asteroid’s circumference away from them and a couple hundred meters further down its length.

Perched at the tunnel’s exit, in the vacuum, in the near absolute zero temperature, and in the dark, was a creature.  

Zooming in with her bionic lenses, Wylaxia was immediately reminded of abyssal and troglodytic lifeforms. The creature’s flesh was translucent and ghostly blue, and its eel-like body was elongated and skeletal. It had a single pair of limbs, long and bony arms with arachnodactic fingers that gripped into the ice with saber-like talons. It had a mouth like a leech with spiralling rows of sharp hook teeth going all the way down its throat.

But most haunting of all were its eyes; three large, glazed orbs spaced equidistantly around the circumference of its body, seemingly blind and yet locked onto the first intruders that had dared to enter its home in a very long time.

“Is it… is it human?” Wylaxia whispered.

“As much as we are,” Telandros replied. “I don’t think it turned into that thing willingly. Something went terribly wrong here. They were in dire straights, running out of resources, and tried to transform themselves into something that could survive on virtually nothing. Something that could survive in the most abject poverty imaginable. No light, no sound, no heat, no electricity. Just ages and ages of fumbling around in the dark and licking the walls.”

“But… how? How could it survive trapped in here for so long? How is it even alive?” Wylaxia asked aghast.

“It?” Telandros asked, concern edging into his voice. “Miss Poseidese, you may want to turn off your optical zoom. Do your best not to panic.”

Wylaxia immediately did as he said, and saw a multitude of the strange beings poking their heads out of various nearby tunnels.

“Oh no. Oh please, Cosmothea, no,” she muttered, rapidly spinning around to try to count their numbers. “They want us, don’t they? And the shuttle?”

“However long they’ve survived in here, they’ll survive longer with an influx of raw materials,” Telandros agreed.

“This is my fault. I shouldn’t have left the shuttle. I should’ve been more careful,” Wylaxia whimpered.

“We can still make it back inside,” Telandros assured her. “Just move slowly and don’t – look out!”

Wylaxia turned to see that one of the creatures had launched itself towards her, and was silently coasting on its momentum with its gaunt arms outstretched and many-toothed mouth spread wide in all directions. Before she could even react, Telandros went flying past her, having kicked himself off the ice on an intercepting trajectory. Though he was smaller and presumably less massive than the Oort creature (though the wretch was so wizened it was hard to say for certain), Telandros had used his superhuman strength to impart him with enough kinetic energy to knock the Oortling backwards when they collided.

Yet for all his superhuman abilities, Telandros was not as elegant at moving about in a microgravity vacuum as the Star Siren was. He was slow and awkward in bringing himself out of his tumble, and several Oort creatures were upon him before he could right himself.

Their strange talons and teeth hooked onto his body as they tried to devour him. While they found no purchase and penetrated nothing, they somehow became ensnared in his coat of branching filaments. As he altered their properties to try to squirm free, one of the Oortlings tried to shove him down its throat. It was around the size of a basking shark or so, whereas Telandros was about the size of an ostrich, so as long as he held out his tentacles rigidly, he was too big to eat whole.

But the Star Siren, at not even a third of his mass, would be a perfect bite-sized morsel.

Pulling one of his tentacles free by brute force, ripping out multiple teeth as he did so, he whipped it across his attackers at supersonic speed. The billions of indestructible microscopic cilia gouged into their flesh and caused massive cellular damage, sending drops of translucent blue blood splattering through the void.  

With expressions of silent anguish, the Oort creatures withdrew, turning their attention towards the shuttle. The act of whipping his tentacle around so quickly had sent him into another spin, one that he struggled to get out of. He tried repositioning his limbs to shift his momentum, but before he could come to a stop, he found himself caught in the shuttle’s brilliant pink tractor beam.

He was instantly pulled towards the craft, zooming past the Oortlings and up through the weak forcefield of the hatch.

“Wylaxia! Wylaxia, are you hurt?” he shouted as soon there was air to carry his voice.

“I’m fine. I was able to get inside before they could grab me, but now they’re swarming us!” Wylaxia announced as the hatch sealed shut. “They’re all over the shuttle! We need to get out of here, but I don’t think I can control the quantum tunnelling precisely enough to get out without taking them with us. Tell me you can!”

Telandros nodded and latched his tail tentacle around the cockpit’s perching rod.

“Hold tight,” he said.

Spinning the shuttle around back towards the airlock, he steered it as quickly as he dared inside the asteroid. The Oortlings did not relent when the shuttle started moving, or when it passed back into the tunnel. The solid wall came at them faster and faster, but they heedlessly gnawed and clawed away at the hull like it was a salt lick.

“Are you going to slow down?” Wylaxia asked.

“No, a higher impact speed will knock them loose and make it easier to tunnel through the wall,” he replied.

She was skeptical that even he could make the necessary adjustments that quickly, but she didn’t object. There wasn’t time.

In a fraction of a second, it was over. The shuttle hit the wall and passed through it like it wasn’t even there, while the Oortlings smashed up against it at over a hundred kilometers an hour. Wylaxia had no way of knowing if they had survived the impact, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

She let out a huge sigh of relief as soon as she could see the stars again, immediately pulling up her AR display to make sure the shuttle was intact and that none of the Oortlings has escaped.

“Tellie! You, you…” she gasped, smiling at him in amazement and gratitude.

“I know,” he nodded, glancing over his volumetric display. “I dinged your Porsche.”