/r/Wholesomenosleep

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This is for scary stories with wholesome endings.

'conducive to or suggestive of good health and physical well-being.'

Stories that can be scary but have a nice twist to it. The nice twist can still be scary!

This sub is for scary stories with wholesome endings!

Wholesome: “conducive to or suggestive of good health, physical, emotional or moral well-being.”

Stories that are scary but have a nice twist. The nice twist can still be scary! Stories here have a horror element and end reasonably happily.

General Guidelines:

  • Please link or crosspost your favorite wholesome horror here! Unless you are the original author, please don’t post another user’s work as a text post. If you are the original author, please feel free to link, crosspost, or text post your story here!


  • If a story is under 6 months old, please leave a comment letting the author know that their story has been linked. They’re sure to appreciate it! If an author posts their own story, any duplicates will be removed. Please don’t let that stop you from continuing to post links to wholesome horror stories on our sub!


  • Just because this sub is called “WholesomeNoSleep" doesn't mean that the stories have to be from /r/nosleep. /r/DarkTales, /r/libraryofshadows, /r/shortscarystories, /r/cryosleep, /r/SLEEPSPELL, /r/thrillsleep, /r/thelongsleep, /r/mothergrues, etc., are perfectly acceptable sources. Original stories are also more than welcome. However, all links must lead to Reddit posts. Links to outside sites will be removed.


  • Our content rules are similar to /r/nosleep's. Posts must be a story where "something happens and then something else happens as a result". Posts must contain at least some horror. This is a sub for wholesome horror, after all. However, stories here do not have to adhere to no sleep’s plausibility rules. R-rated scenes are okay to a degree but no rape/ abuse/ pedophilia/ necrophilia/ bestiality, etc. Any excessively graphic or detailed torture/abuse/sex scenes will cause your story to be removed. Please use your best judgement or ask the mods before posting.


  • If your story is removed for breaking a rule, please do not repost it without working with the mod team in modmail to make it meet our guidelines first. Repeated reposting, whether it's because your story was removed or to gain more attention, or repeated rule-breaking posts, will result in a warning, and may result in a ban if continued.


    • Posts must be formatted so that they are readable. Please, no giant walls of text and no text boxes. If you are having trouble, shoot us a modmail. We are happy to help out!

    Thank you for your sweet and spooky stories!!

    Comment Guidelines:

    • The /r/nosleep immersion rule doesn't apply here. You don't need to "believe" the story to post a comment. But please, be friendly! Better yet, be helpful, wholesome, and kind!


  • Story critiques are welcome, but only constructive criticism! Stick to ideas, themes, compliments, and asking the authors about their story inspirations rather than giving out grammar tips and you’ll do just fine!


  • Before posting or commenting, please read our FAQ.


  • Have questions? Wanna discuss your favorite stories or other "wholesome horror" topics, or share wholesome horror memes? Visit our companion sub, /r/WholesomeNoSleepOOC!


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    2

    The parasite in my brain

    0 Comments
    2024/10/04
    18:55 UTC

    19

    Demons in the Darkness

    "The last time I wanted to die was six months ago."

    She slowly rolled up her sleeves, and then showed her arms, palms up, "That's when I got these."

    The long scar up her right arm was straight, the one up her left arm was more jagged.

    "It wasn't the first time that I wanted to die, it wasn't even the first time I took... Steps.

    "But it was the first time I did something like that."

    She pauses, taking a deep and somewhat ragged breath, "I wish I could say that it was the last time I would want to die."

    She looks down, "Or the last time that I'd try to make it happen."

    She closes her eyes, taking another deep and ragged breath, before tilting her head up, and opening her eyes, eyes which had a frightening depth to them, "I wish that I could say that it was a one time thing. But I can't."

    "I suffer from depression. I have for much of my life, and... I probably will for the rest of my life."

    She gives a very wry smile, one with very little happiness in it, "Sometimes I think that it's just a matter of time, that I already know that I'll die by my own hand."

    Another deep breath, her eyes now shining with unshed tears, "Sometimes I can believe that I'll keep my head above water, that I'll be able to keep wanting to live enough that I won't ever go through with it."

    "I really want to believe that."

    A long pause, then a slow look around the room, "Today, I know, I can acknowledge that there are people in my life that want me to live. That would be hurt if I didn't. Who want to be there for me."

    The tears are not entirely unshed at this point, "And I am more thankful than I can ever say for those people. I'm not sure if I'd still be here or not without them, but I do know that my good days wouldn't be nearly as good without them.

    "But I also know that they can't save me. That it's not up to them if I make it through the darkness or not.

    "I wish it was. I wish that they could make that choice, and that I would never have to face my depression alone again.

    "But... I'm also glad that they can't. That if I don't make it, that it won't be their fault. That it can't be their fault. No matter what."

    Tears are actively falling now, even though her smile has more happiness in it than it did, or perhaps because of it, "I won't say that my depression isn't partially situational. That my environment and those around me have no impact. That would be a lie, and it would be a massive disservice to people who do so many things, for me and others, to try and help us."

    "But I will say that sometimes... Sometimes it's a fight that those of us who suffer from depression like mine have to fight alone.

    "Not because we want to, not because nobody wants to help, not because there aren't people in our lives who would fight it for us if they could.

    "But because sometimes... Sometimes the depression won't let us see the people around us who care.

    "It won't let us know that we are loved, and that there is no way that our dying would help them more than it would hurt them.

    "Sometimes we have to face our demons alone, in the darkness. Even if we're surrounded by those who love us, even if we're being held by them, sometimes the depression won't allow us to be anything except alone in the darkness of our own minds.

    "Sometimes, it's a fight that we have to fight every hour of every day.

    "Sometimes, we can go months, or even years, without much of a struggle.

    "And then we find ourselves in the darkness with our demons once more.

    "Not because anything around us has changed, but because we suffer from depression, and that depression isn't always about facts, or logic, or even reality.

    "Sometimes it's just the demons of our own minds, lying to us, hiding the world from us, making us all alone, even when that's not true."

    The smile grows a little more real, "Today I'm alive. Today I want to be alive. Today I'm happy to be alive."

    "I hope that I feel the same way tomorrow. And I hope that tomorrow you feel that way as well."

    "But if we don't, if the darkness returns, I hope that we can find the light again.

    "And if some day we fail, I hope that those who love us remember that it's not their fault.

    "It's not our fault either.

    "Sometimes the demons win. Sometimes the disease kills us.

    "But like I said. Today isn't that day. Today I'm happy to be alive.

    "And just because sometimes we have to fight alone, it doesn't mean that we have to lose."

    6 Comments
    2024/10/04
    07:06 UTC

    9

    There's a brick wall in the middle of the street

    It's not normal to see a wall in the middle of a street, right? I mean, maybe there was some reason that made sense for there to be a wall over the white line in the middle of the road. I could see the wall from where I was sitting by the cafe window enjoying my mocha latte. I was on a coffee date and the guy I met through the usual app finally took the hint that I want one of those cute little fudge brownie things they were selling; it was when he got up to go to the counter that I spotted the wall. 

    I smiled when I first saw it because it looked so out of place. The wall looked old, made of bricks which were, like, very orange. I don't know much about sizes but I'd say the wall was maybe the size of, like, a door or something. 

    My date set the plate with the cute little brownie I wanted on the table. I didn't actually intend on eating the brownie; gosh, the carbs! But on coffee dates there's a few ways a girl can test if a man really is serious about showing up. Not showing up for the date, I mean. But like, you know, showing up in the male provider role. If my date can't even buy me a coffee or a teenie tiny little brownie then he's definitely not going to be marriage material. 

    He was cute; like seriously cute. Tall, dark, handsome; twenty-six but somehow looking closer to thirty-six but, like, in a good way. In a manly way. He dressed well; nice jacket, tastefully tight denim jeans that looked old but were obviously still kind of new. Mustard coloured shirt; umph! 

    When I say he looked absolutely delicious sitting his big tall frame down in the seat opposite me, believe me, I mean it. 

    "So what do you do?" he said. 

    "I'm an account manager for a mid-sized SEO agency," I said, "Do you know what that is?" 

    His hazel eyes lit up with newfound curiosity. I decided to reward him with a smirk. I held his gaze and the interest on his face blossomed into a full-on handsome smile. 

    "Nah," he said, "What's SEO?" 

    I flinched as if smelling something bad. I didn't mean to but what idiot didn't know what SEO meant? 

    "Search-Engine-Optimisation?" I said, trying not to make him feel stupid for not knowing such a simple thing. 

    "Oh," he said, "Yeah we use a bit of that. Get spam emails everyday." 

    The wall was still out there in the middle of the street. How had no cars neared it yet? It was late Saturday morning and the road was often busy; for some reason no cars seemed to be coming or going. There was just the wall and nobody on the street was paying it any attention. 

    "Lauren?" said my date. 

    I forced my attention back to him. By the way he said my name I guessed it hadn't been the first time he had said it just then either. 

    "Sorry," I said. 

    He smiled handsomely. He seemed nice. I particularly liked the way his large hands made the nice white tea cup he was drinking from seem small. 

    "So," I said, drumming my nails on the table. 

    "So," he said, matching my tone playfully. 

    "You work in real estate," I said, "You make good money." 

    His enthusiasm as he looked at me soured a little bit. I understood this wasn't the playful chit-chat he was expecting but, like, this was just a coffee date and it wasn't the only date I was going to have; the chit-chat could come once the essentials were discussed. 

    "Do you see yourself getting married in the next two years?" I said. 

    He gave a single-shoulder shrug. 

    "Because," I said, "I'm like, looking to get married within about two years. I'm okay with taking our time but I have a timeline I want to stick to." 

    "Timeline?" he said, smiling a little.

    "Yes," I said, "How do you feel about kids?" 

    There it was. The gormless, 'why are you asking me this?' look. I wanted to sigh and roll my eyes but that wouldn't keep him on the hook. So I moved ahead with 'old faithful' and sat forward, playing with my hair and giving him a feisty, playful look. 

    After a few moments of not knowing how to respond my date grinned wryly. 

    "Ah," he said, "You got me going there for a sec. I thought you were serious." 

    "Oh, I'm serious," I said, "I just have had my time wasted a lot and I think it makes sense for me to just let you know what I'm looking for." 

    "I appreciate that," said my date, "But yeah, I'm not looking for anything serious right now." 

    For a half second I thought I was going to take this statement from him well. 

    "Seriously?" I said, the words spilling out of my mouth before I can care to stop them, "You're twenty-six and you're not thinking about settling down?" 

    "Nah," he said, grinning and sitting back in his seat, "I'm def not looking to settle down. I'm still young." 

    "But what are you even looking for in a relationship?" I said, "I mean, like I was pretty clear on the app that I'm looking for something serious. Did you not check?" 

    He smirked and scratched his eyebrow; both gestures made me want to grab the brownie from the plate and smush it all over his irritating face. 

    "Look," he said, "It was nice meeting you but unless you want to come back to mine then we're done here." 

    The audacity. The cheek! I wanted to scream at him, yell at him, let him know what a pig he was. When did a guy like him suddenly think he was good enough to invite me for a late morning quickie? I was speechless. 

    "Um, no," I said. 

    "Alright," he said, "See you later." 

    He got up and left before I could think to say anything back. He hadn't even given me enough time to save face. What a jerk! I got up, leaving the brownie behind, and left the cafe. 

    I had taken two buses earlier to get to the cafe (it was near where I worked which was just over an hour's bus ride from my flat), and I would need to take the same buses to get home. My next date was nearer home and was going to happen in the evening. 

    I hadn't intended for the date to be over in like, ten minutes, but he was clearly not serious so it was good, in a way, that he wasn't going to waste any more of my time. I headed to the bus stop and waited for the bus to come. It was a really chilly morning and I hadn't really dressed for the occasion; I'd decided to go for this super cute one-shoulder top with a long cardigan fit; it looked great but didn't do much to stop the cold. 

    The bus didn't come. I waited for over twenty minutes only to check on the route planner app to see the buses I needed had been diverted. My gosh. Seriously. What a freaking morning. 

    Maybe the diversions had something to do with that wall in the middle of the road? Someone must have moved it because it was still at the same spot but was moved to be in line with the white center line on the road. This way cars going in both directions could pass the wall by. 

    Whatever. I didn't care about the wall or why someone had put it there or why they had moved it. If my bus had arrived like it was supposed to them I wouldn't have given the wall another thought. 

    I needed to think about how I was going to get home. The obvious answer was to book a ride through the app on my phone, but the rides were pricey, especially one to get me home. My second option was to call Mum and ask her for a lift, but she had said something about needing to take Flossie (that's what she called her car) in to get Flossie's brakes checked. My last option was to get a train but that would mean getting a bus to the next station and that seemed like a lot of extra hassle. 

    After thinking about it for another minute standing out in the cold I decided to just grit and bear the walk to get a train home. I really didn't have the extra money in my account to waste on pricey rides home. I set off silently wishing I had taken the brownie after all since I hadn't eaten breakfast and had only sipped my latte, which I had also abandoned. 

    My thoughts were stuck on my date and how quick he had decided not to continue the date. It was ridiculous. Not that he wasn't interested in talking about marriage and babies; I totally get that most men aren't mature enough to dive into that conversation on a first date; what I couldn't believe was how little he anguished over calling the date early. 

    I didn't want to admit it to myself but over the last three years the dates had become less about forging a genuine connection and more about quick flings. Plenty of times I had enjoyed those flings and it was whatever; there was no spark so there was no need to stay in touch. But, like, the reading comprehension of these men! It didn't matter what I put in my bio; serious, want someday, looking for marriage; didn't they read what was clearly written there? I even ditched all the sexy pictures of myself and replaced them with pictures that gave off more of a wholesome, wife-y vibe, dress for the part you want sort of thing. Why weren't they getting it? 

    I finally reached the tunnel which would eventually lead to the train station. The tunnel was something like an underpass. I didn't like taking it because there wasn't any exit from the tunnel except entering into it from either the end I was about to, or the end which came out at the station. I was so annoyed thinking about how the date went I didn't care if some creepy man was in the tunnel waiting for me. 

    My heeled boots echoed with every step I took through the tunnel. It was a small tunnel, painted white all around except for the floor which was painted black. There was a metal railing which went all the way from one end of the tunnel to the other. It was much too cold for me to want to grip it and I bet it was dirty anyway. The tunnel was also well lit, with strong white lights dotted at intervals all the way along. Usually the tunnel had at least a few people coming and going in it but as I walked along it I noticed I was the only thing making any noise in the tunnel (not including the faint humming of the lights above). 

    The first odd thing I noticed was that the breeze which eased through the tunnel had stopped. I was stooping over a little hugging myself for warmth trying to ignore the firm breeze; but then all of a sudden it stopped; which was weird. 

    I kept moving forwards. 

    Clop-clop, clop-clop, clop-clop. 

    Should have gotten my driving license years ago, I thought. Back then there was always someone to drive me around. I thought my acting career was going to take off quickly so I had figured by the time I was famous I wouldn't even need a license because I would have a driver to take me places anyway. That was still the goal but outside of some university short films and commercials the acting work hadn't taken off yet. 

    I wasn't sure when the scraping sound started. I was sure I noticed it after the sound of it had grown in volume steadily over several seconds. 

    I came to a stop and looked over my shoulder. The tunnel from where I was at about a quarter of the way through it hadn't reached the bend, so it made no sense that I couldn't see light at the end of the tunnel from where I had started out. Instead all I could see was an orange wall completely taking up the inside of the tunnel. 

    I giggled. It was such a silly thing to see. Obviously someone was playing a joke on me because it was the same wall I had seen in the middle of the road before. What made it even sillier was how the wall was perfectly curved around the top to fit just right with the tunnel ceiling. 

    Oh, I thought, there were probably some pranksters, some internet guys, who had moved around a fake wall and thought it would be funny to get my reaction. I took out my phone to start recording the fake wall but noticed my phone was out of battery. Just my luck. I stuffed my phone back into my handbag and continued to look at the orange wall. 

    The scraping sound had stopped when I turned around. But it started up again and I could see that the wall appeared to be the source of the scraping noise.The wall was moving steadily forward and the scraping sound was as if the brick of the wall were scraping against the concrete floor and walls of the tunnel. 

    "Oh," I said, aloud. 

    I noticed the metal railing on the right-hand side of the tunnel was upturned and coiling round. 

    With a sudden metallic pop the railing came away from the wall from where one of the bolts gave way to the approaching wall. 

    It looked so real. It was really as if the wall were getting closer to me at a slow walking pace and as it did the metal railing was being bent and ripped away from the tunnel-wall because it had no place else to go. 

    "This is really elaborate," I said, forcing a smile. Surely the men with their cameras would reveal themselves at any moment. This clearly was some dumb internet prank, right? 

    The approaching orange wall began to pick up speed. Both the scraping sound and the metallic bending noise increased significantly. I let out a scream at the sudden loudness and dropped my handbag in fright; the small hand mirror Cheryl gave me for my twenty-fifth birthday rolled on its side out of my handbag towards the wall. I watched it roll as I reached down to get the other items which had fallen out of my handbag. 

    The approaching wall crushed the hand mirror in less than a second, the mirror cracking and breaking to pieces which slipped beneath the wall's lowest bricks. 

    Despite this it still took me another second to realise how much danger I was in. The scraping and the twisting of the metal railing became almost unbearably loud; the wall continued its steady approach towards me and it seemed to be picking up speed. 

    Holding tight to my handbag I turned and ran away at a jogging pace. The sound of scraping and twisting metal and the occasional loud bursting away of the bolts keeping the railing fastened to the tunnel wall continued behind me. 

    Was the tunnel collapsing? Was there something behind the wall, like a car, which was accelerating and pushing it forward somehow? 

    Within seconds I broke into as fast of a run as I could muster in my heeled boots. Part of me thought it was so stupid to be running from an orange wall that wasn't there when I first entered the tunnel, but whether it made sense stopped mattering. I needed to get away from the horrible noises and I had seen what the wall had done to my hand mirror.

    I quickly found myself wishing I had used the treadmill at my local gym for more than just steep incline walking. A stitch came on hard as I neared what I imagined to be the halfway point of the tunnel. There was still the other half to go but the tunnel appeared to be gaining even more speed. I dared a look over my shoulder and saw the wall was swallowing up much of the twisted metal railing that was being torn away from the wall; it was as if the bottom-most part of the wall were a giant hoover at first grinding, then sucking up whatever touched it. 

    What if I stopped running? What if I fell down and the wall plowed right over me? I let out a scream and quickly wished I hadn't because I was already so out of breath. 

    Clop! Clop! Clop! Clop!

    Please! I thought, Move faster! 

    My body was pathetically slow. In my desperation I dropped my handbag. It was slowing me down and it just made sense in the moment to let it go. I moved faster thanks to the weight of my handbag not slowing me down but I couldn't help but look back and watch as the wall ground it to pieces in a mere moment. 

    The wall was real; so real and moving fast and unrelenting towards me. I felt the urge to sob. I was so scared but I knew that letting myself cry could mean the death of me. I didn't have the precious seconds to spare. needed to run to the tunnel exit.

    I wasn't going to make it. The wall was moving far too fast for me to outrun it. Maybe if I took my boots off I might be able to run full-tilt but the time it would take for me to slip them off the wall would surely reach me. No! Idiot! Just do it! Now or never! 

    I stopped and hopped on the spot taking the first boot off, then the second. It was the fastest I had ever taken my boots off by a mile. I heard the awful sound of the wall sucking up and grinding down the boots a half-second later. I could feel the rush of air and the cold of the twisted metal railing against my hand for an instant. 

    I think the wall would have crushed me then if not for the metal railing at that section bursting violently away from the tunnel wall. It struck me hard in the shoulder and pushed me forward. It hurt so much I was sure that a bone in my shoulder must have broken. I had no time to check but the push from the railing had given me a precious extra second to start sprinting. 

    I had never ran in my whole life with such intensity. I could move so much better with my feet touching down on the cold tunnel floor. I sucked in breath after breath as if hyperventilating desperate to reach the end of the tunnel; I could make out the sound of the lights along the tunnel ceiling bursting and shattering and being sucked up by the wall along with the metal. 

    I was almost out. Almost. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was maybe a handful of seconds at my sprinting pace from reaching it. But there was something on the floor ahead of me in my way. My whole body wanted to scream because it had nothing more to give and the idea that there was some new obstacle preventing me from getting away from the chaos charging forward behind it was too much. 

    There was a cat on the ground licking itself. 

    "Move!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. 

    The ginger cat seemed to realise the danger it was in and darted off towards the end of the tunnel. I had no time to feel relief for the cat. Worse, screaming for it to move warning it of the danger it should already have heard coming (I suppose it confused the scraping for the usual sound of the train rumbling by), I had used up all of the air in my lungs. Every fiber of my body was telling me it couldn't move that little bit more because it had already reached beyond its limit. 

    I reached the precipice of the tunnel catching a glimpse of the edge of the platform and a half dozen people waiting about. 

    My body gave out. I simply couldn't move forward anymore no matter how desperately I wanted to. I felt the wall at my back; the solid brick like the cold touch of death. I was going to be crushed just like the metal railing and the tunnel lights and my mirror, handbag, and boots. 

    The agony of the wall reminded me of the time I had been in a car crash. Just sheer force wracking my body and the pain climbing all at once to an unbearable degree. For a second I could do nothing but feel my entire body squeeze hard against the unyielding pressure of the wall and then, just as I began to descend towards the bottom of the wall where it would consume me by grinding me down. The pressure gave way and I found myself launching an athlete's leap from the end of the tunnel to the nearby wall where a poster for women's perfume resided. 

    I hit the plastic frame casing at a sprinting speed. Pain erupted across my face, neck, and the rest of my body. The pain that was already in my shoulder was joined by even more pain, surely several broken bones, across the rest of my body. I was alive, but for how long? The wall was still coming. It was going to crush me. 

    I slipped down with an almost cartoonish squeak, my blood coating the plastic frame in front of me; the blood was coming from my mouth and somewhere atop my head and elsewhere I couldn't be sure. I couldn't breathe. The impact had taken the air completely out of my lungs. I hit the ground and lay suffocating. I rolled over onto my back and saw the end  of the tunnel. 

    The wall was gone, but the destruction it had caused remained. I lost consciousness as the people that had been waiting nearby raced towards me. The last thing I remember seeing was a cute guy looking down at me with concern on his face.

    0 Comments
    2024/10/03
    10:05 UTC

    6

    Im An Arsonist. Pt1

    Let me start off by addressing the title. Yes I am an arsonist/pyromaniac. Ever since I was young I’ve had an unhealthy obsession with fire and anything that goes bang. I can remember being as young as 7 years old and stealing my parents match’s to light them and just watch them burn out and to also light small things like individual leafs and sticks on fire. I used to take match’s and lighters to elementary school and do the same thing with some other delinquent friends that liked fires aswell. The habit slowly progressed from lighting small fires into bigger and bigger ones. Before I knew it by the time I was in middle and high school I was starting fires that required the police and fire department to show up.

    I grew up by the woods and that definitely didn’t help but most of my fires got put out before they could get wildly uncontrollable. Mostly just burned down a few trees before the fire department showed up and put it out. Haven’t got caught for it yet though. My main way of starting these fires was with a cigarette or a joint that I would smoke until I would get it down enough and tie it around a piece of yarn. That yarn would then start burning like a fuse until it hit a pile of dry leafs that I doused in lighter fluid. That shit would light right up and everything else around it I tell you what. I guess I got addicted to the rush of getting away with this type of shit. I’ve also been involved with wrong crowds and done tons of other dumb shit that I won’t get into on this post cause frankly it would be way too long.

    Oh and another thing before any of you guys tell me I’m a lunatic and I’m fucked up and got some sort of childhood trauma I’m not addressing “you should go to therapy” blah blah blah, I know. I know I’m fucked up in the head for doing shit like this and it probably is some un delt with childhood trauma. I’ve been to therapy many times for this and many other things like my anger issues I just don’t really believe in it and honestly think it’s for pussies. So save all your preaching bullshit for someone else that cares. That’s not the point of this post.

    I’m in my early 20’s now and recently I’ve been going around to abandoned building in my town and towns around mine starting fires there. I was born and raised in a town outside of a major city in western Massachusetts. I’m not gonna name the city in case this makes it to the cops and they can track me down in some way but I think it’s important to state that the tons of abandoned mills and failed businesses that are all around here are great targets for someone like me. Especially since I’ve upgraded from my fires in the woods to more risky targets. Hell I’m probably doing these fucks a favor so they can collect the insurance on it without hiring some crackhead do it and risking them snitching when they inevitably get caught. These guys are getting it from me for free!

    I need to talk about this weird thing I experienced lately though. Old abandoned buildings often have stories of being haunted and are overall unsettling no matter where you are. Just something about the nature of the fucked up things that happened there whether it’s an old insane asylum where the patients where tourtured or old mills where some worker got grinned up in a giant machine and now haunts the building. Along with the large population of homeless people that stay in the buildings so they can sleep and have a place to get high for the night. The eerie silence and every little thing that goes bump in the night is enough to make just about anyone scared even if it is just all bullshit stories.

    Anyways my last burning I went to one of the old loading docks/storage buildings that was part of my towns textile mill. The small building was separate from the huge main building that workers used to actually make the textiles and was right next to a bunch of other storage and loading docks just like it. I broke a window and climbed into the smaller building with my lighter fluid, my yarn fuse, some kindling, and my pack of cigarettes that I would use to start the fire. As I jumped through the window into the large open area of the loading dock I see all the dust particles going right by my phones flash light. Nobody’s been here in years I think to myself. Immediately I see empty beer bottles, some plastic chairs and other trash scattered around all from other kids who broke in here to chill a little bit and have a good time. Now all I had to do was find a good corner that had some flammable materials that could get this shit ablaze.

    This place was perfect it’s almost like they set it up for me I was like a kid in a candy store. These dumb fucks stacked all the wooden chairs and wooden tables that all the old workers used to work on on one side that covered damn near 1/3rd of the building. All old decrepit wood that was ready to be set ablaze. I doused a lot of it with lighter fluid and set up my make shift lighting device when I hear it. “Jackson. What are you doing?” Like the voice of a disapproving authority figure that was also questioning how I could be so stupid. It was so clear like someone was leaning right over me talking right into my ear. I jumped back expecting a cop or some security guard to be standing there. I turned around expecting to be put in cuffs right at that second. When I turned around though nobody was there. I frantically shined my phones flashlight around and it only confirmed that it was only me in the building surrounded by deafening silence. “Must be my imagination” I said. Not my first time in these spooky buildings and thinking I heard something that isn’t really there. I recollected myself and went back to tying my half smoked cigarette to the yarn. As I see it start to light the yarn I run out of the building.

    Like many other arsonists I get my kick out of seeing the fire spread and fully engulf the structure. I run to a nearby patch of trees and bushes where I hunker down to watch the place go up in flames and the inevitable fire engine or 2 show up to frantically put out my work. Just as I thought, the place went right up. It was great just like I thought it would be. It was beautiful. Watching the flames reach as high as 3 stories I sat and admired as this small one story building was up in flames I was loving it. As I heard the sirens of the fire engines in the distance I layed down further covering myself in the brush waiting to see them put out my hard work. I don’t blame them it is their job after all. I’m just glad to see them actually doing something for once instead of sitting on their ass and collecting their pay checks for doing nothing.

    Here’s where things get especially strange though. As I lay down on my stomach still admiring this huge fire (honestly some of my best work) I saw something. From the garage door opening of the loading dock I saw 3 figures appear out of the flame. All of them dark black silhouettes obviously visible in contrast to the yellow and orange flame that they were standing in front of. One a tall male adult figure, the other a slightly less tall female figure and the last one a small child like figure all standing right next to each other. They stood there for what felt like minutes on end looking right at me with their non existent eyes. Just staring, knowing that I was trying to hide in the bushes while the sirens in the background grew louder. I laid there on the ground stricken with a sense of dread and overall fear as they stood there. The large male figure raised his hand and pointed right at me. I knew it was directed at me. I was shaking at this point from fear. A fear that I don’t know if I’ve ever felt in my life time. The sirens grew louder and louder I could see the red and white lights off in the distance the fire engines had to be a few hundred yards away. I looked away and started shaking my head around feeling that I had to be seeing things. I closed my eyes and started telling myself that I was just going crazy and that these things in front of me where not actually there. I opened up my eyes to see the fire engines and police arriving and looked specifically at the loading dock to see that the silhouettes were gone. I watched the firemen frantically getting out and hooking up their hoses to put out my flame. I watched as they methodically fought the flames like they have had to fight many of my works in the past.

    When my work of art was fully put out I snaked away and walked back to my car still in shock from what I just saw. I’m terrified and I don’t know what to do. I know what I saw was real and not just my imagination. I need sometime to sleep this off. If anyone can help explain this please reach out.

    5 Comments
    2024/09/28
    01:24 UTC

    204

    My Uncle has a strange set of rules

    I moved in with my Uncle who had a strange set of rules.

    When I was twelve I was forced to spend a summer with my Great Uncle Jeremy. You see, I was a bit of a troublemaker back in those days. My parents thought if I spent some time with my strict grouch of an Uncle, I would somehow be rehabilitated. You can imagine how hard my eyes rolled when my mom and dad told me about their plan, but I was oblivious to the horrors I would endure that summer.

    Uncle Jeremy was somewhat of a mountain man. He lived in the remote wilderness of Montana's high pine forest. A homesteader through and through, he'd made a life where most people would go insane, granted Uncle Jerremy did seem a bit kooky to me at the time.

    My dad almost tossed me out of the car as we rolled into my uncle's mountain cabin. He didn't even wait for Uncle Jeremy to greet me at the door. I watched as Dad's little Prius made its way back down the long driveway and onto the unkempt dirt road. While I was a bit offended by how I'd just been abandoned, I was not envious of the long journey ahead of him. It took us almost two hours to traverse that nasty road. I was sure we'd be left stranded at one point or another, a Prius is no off-roading vehicle.

    The hybrid's tail lights disappeared amongst the dense forest. My attention turned to the rickety wooden cabin. This house was not what you would imagine it to be, it wasn't the picturesque idea people have when they think of a log cabin. I could see the structure had been through a lot. The logs were weathered, faded by the hot Montana summer and the icy winter winds. I could tell that everything used in its construction was sourced from the surrounding forest. Likewise, no modern amenities were visible, no power lines, fire hydrants, or even a satellite dish. I knew then it would be a duller summer than I'd imagined.

    I lifted a hand to knock on the old door and stopped when I noticed a few deep scratch marks on its facade.

    'Bears?' I thought to myself. An uneasy feeling that I was being watched from the pines came over me. I cocked my head in the direction of the tree line. It felt like something was calling me over to the woods. The door squealed open and I returned my gaze to the cabin.

    In the passageway stood a grey-bearded man, the fibers in his beard long, greasy, and matted. His skin was old and weathered, I suspected the same reasoning as the cabin's. He looked at me through the grey film in his eyes. I'd never actually met Uncle Jerremy up until that point, but I'd heard stories about him from my father. My father had suffered the same fate as me the summer between seventh and eighth grade. He told me Uncle Jerremy was not a man to be trifled with.

    "You listen to everything your Uncle Jerremy tells you, he is not a man you want to make angry." My father would lecture, but when I looked into the face of the withering man, I didn't sense an ounce of animosity. He almost seemed kind, nothing resembled the ferocity my father had mentioned.

    "Hi, I'm Marcus." I outstretched my hand in the introduction but he slapped it away, before placing a hand over my mouth.

    "Shhh-- we don't say names here!" He moved my head over to the side to make sure no one, or, nothing was listening. More of my father's description of my great-uncle came to mind.

    "Uncle Jeremy is a bit-- strange, but he has your best interest in mind, try your best to ignore his lack of civility." His words were all starting to make sense now.

    Uncle Jerremy ushered me into the cabin and I thought I heard him whisper my name, as he pushed me inside. That is until I turned to see the look of fear in his eyes. I knew then that the sound had drifted in on the early summer breeze, somewhere beyond the tree line. The hairs on the back of my neck stood.

    "Is everything Okay Uncle Jerremy?" His open palm slapped my cheek as I spoke his name.

    "Damn it, kid! I told you no names!" He said through gritted teeth before returning his gaze to the tree line. Almost like a dream, a faint voice slithered into the cabin.

    "Jerrrreeemmmy." The voice called.

    "What the hell is that?" I asked but received no reply. Uncle Jerremy quickly slammed the door shut.

    "Rule number one, NO NAMES!" I dropped my gaze at his reprimand.

    "Rule number two, if you hear something strange, leave-- it -- be. Ignore it! You hear me?" I ponder his instructions before moving to question his logic.

    "W-Why?"

    "Not another word on the matter, those are the rules. My only rules, you follow them or I'll send you back to your little life in Boise you hear me!?"

    Just then my escape from homestead living became clear, break a few rules here and there and I'd be back in the Gem state. I tried not to smile at the plot that was formulating in my mind.

    "Your room is down yonder." The old man pointed down a small hallway before leading me to it himself. We stepped into a small ten-by-ten room. I threw my backpack onto the bed and plopped down right beside it, giving a grunt of relief.

    "What do you think you're doing kid? This isn't some luxurious mountain retreat." I eyed the crumbling wooden walls, 'The understatement of the century' I thought to myself.

    "We have work to do", he moved to the window and pushed open the shutters taking in a lung full of pristine mountain air in the process. Beyond his gaze stood a two-acre clearing in the forest. A mix of fields, more comparable to glorified gardens, and livestock, chickens, goats, and one cow. He turned to me and noted my disappointed face.

    "What you think this was a free ride? No, we work for our food here." He said with the first ounce of enjoyment I'd seen inch across his face. He pulled open a drawer on the nightstand.

    "I placed these here for you before you got here." I peered into the drawer to find some old torn overalls.

    "You put those on and meet me outside, there's a lot to get done around here. The faster we get it over with the faster we can have ourselves a nice supper.

    Later that night I lay in bed unable to sleep. All of my muscles were aching. Uncle Jerremy was not lying; homestead living is not for the weak. We'd worked until the sun met the horizon, and this time of year in Montana, that was around 9:30 p.m.

    We'd weeded the fields, fed the chickens, and milked the dairy cow whose name I found out to be Bessy, and done dozens upon dozens of other tasks that were not very enjoyable. The best thing about it was that Uncle Jerremy said we would do it all again the next day. I placed the pillow over my face hoping that it would suffocate me. I was a beat dog that needed to be put out of its misery. The warmth of the plush fabric seemed to comfort me a bit, so I left it there as the night slowly started to wash over me. Just as I was about to fall into an uneasy night of sleep, I heard scratching from the other side of the wall. It was coming from outside.

    The sound was very faint. It almost reminded me of the time we had mice inside the walls back home, only these walls were not hollow, they were solid lumber. I moved the pillow off to the side making sure that nothing muted the scraping by my head.

    'Scrape, scrape, scrape." The noise sounded rhythmic. As if someone was sending a message.

    'Scratch, scratch, scratch." Whatever it was it was clawing deeper into the side of the cabin. The noisemaker was making the noise was too strong to be a mouse, a raccoon maybe. Then the sound intensified, to a loud ear-piercing screech, like someone clawing at an old chalkboard.

    "Screech, Screech, Screech." I shot to a seated position. It must've been a bear. Montana Grizzlies scared the shit out of me, part of the reason why I'd never come to meet Uncle Jerremy in the first place. I heard the same faint whisper that had come from the tree line earlier that day, only this time instead of Uncle Jeremy's name, my name hissed through the cracks of the cabin.

    "Maaaarccussss." I looked at the shutters on the window, and my heart dropped when I saw something slowly pulling them open.

    "Uncle Jerremy!" I shouted. From down the hall, I heard a bedroom door smash open, followed by my room's door. Uncle Jerremy stood there holding his 22 in hand, his eyes meeting mine, before noticing the slowly creeping shutters. He leaned the gun on the wooden wall before running over to the shutters and forcing them closed. He quickly locked the latch before turning to me.

    "Kid! I had two rules and you broke both of them the first night!" He shouted at me while I made sense of what just happened. I was hoping that the more my uncle talked the more the situation would clear up, but everything he said just made me more confused and frankly, terrified.

    "Now you've done it, kid. It now knows our names, it's imprinted on us. You have no idea how hard it was to get rid of the last one."

    'It? The last one?' I thought.

    "Wha-- what are you talking about." I quivered.

    "Never mind that, from now on you keep these shutters locked here?" He didn't have to tell me twice.

    "The whole house is going to be locked down. And just so we're clear if you hear me calling your name, it ain't me!"

    'What the hell, what else could it be?' I thought before I opened my mouth to ask a clarifying question.

    "What is-- it?" I said.

    "What's my second rule!?" My uncle commanded. I pondered for a bit, before responding.

    "If I see something, leave it be."

    "That's right! Leave-- it -- be. No more of this, we will not talk about it anymore, it will only encourage it. Suddenly I no longer wanted to go through with my plot to get Uncle Jerremy to send me home.

    The next morning after breakfast, Uncle Jerremy and I stepped outside to inspect the side of the wall where the noise was coming from. Uncle Jerremy touted a gun belt today, a magnum revolver in its sheath.

    When we gazed at the marks on the wall I was sure that no grizzly had created the noise. These scratches were not random like the ones on the door. No, these markings were indeed a message. Drawn on the wooden logs was a cryptic symbol, a circle with three jagged lines drawn through it. On top of this circle were two names. Jeremy and Marcus. I gulped as Uncle Jeremy got a closer look. He gave a nervous chuckle.

    "He'll be back tonight." He said in a tone that desiring itself to be false. My stomach fluttered in fear.

    Bessy, the dairy cow, gave an agonizing Moo. I could tell that something was bothering her. Uncle Jeremy turned with a sad look on his face. He took to his feet and walked his way over to the cow. When he was feet away from her he took to one knee.

    "It's already begun." I looked over his shoulder and my mouth dropped when I saw the sight of gore that still torments me to this day. Bessy's Udders were mutilated, flesh hanging off of each of the protrusions, and flies feasting on her fresh wounds as blood mixed with milk.

    "Poor Bessy." Uncle Jeremy said. I could tell that seeing his cow suffer made him emotional. I moved to comfort him but before my hand could grace his shoulder, he stood. He Unholstered the magnum and pointed it at Bessy's head. One shot rang out as every bird in the vicinity took flight.

    Bessy was dead. She now lay in a pool of blood and brain matter. Uncle Jeremy wiped away some tears, before turning around and walking briskly back to the cabin.

    "Come on kid, we have to get ready." I knew that we were heading for some kind of battle.

    When the night fell on the cabin that day, Uncle Jeremy and I did not talk. We had barricaded ourselves and all of the livestock inside the little cabin. A total of 22 chickens, 7 goats, and a variety of domesticated geese. He'd thrust a rifle in my hand and give me instructions on how to shoot, though he said not to use it unless something happened to him.

    For the most part, the night was quiet, the chickens and geese had roosted for the night, and the goats had lost the excitement of being in a new environment. They now huddled together in a corner of the living room. I would almost say it was peaceful. Until every animal began screeching at the top of their lungs.

    The birds flocked around the house. The goats erupted in a panic, running around trying to find any hiding place they could, most now cowered under the dining room table. Almost as quickly as the commotion began, it all quieted down. I looked at Uncle Jeremy in bewilderment, but the look in his eye told me he'd seen all of this before. His eyes trained on the door. A familiar sound slid across the other side, it was the scratching that we'd heard the night before. In the same fashion, the scratching intensified before it erupted into a frenzy of banging.

    I eyed the door as the latch struggled to keep whatever was on the other side out. A voice soon followed suit.

    "Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy. Oh, Uncle Jeremy." It sounded like me. For some reason whatever was on the other side was using my voice as bait. The voice changed to that of Uncle Jeremy's.

    "Marcus. Open the door, Marcus." Uncle Jeremy looked at me before raising his revolver to the door. One shot rang out and the sound of something hitting the floor was evident from our vantage point. My Uncle took to his feet and made his way over to the door, revolver at the ready. I wanted to tell him to stay put but couldn't find the courage.

    He opened the top latch, followed by the bottom. The door cautiously creeked open and Uncle Jeremy peered out of the small crack. I will remember the words that came from his mouth for the rest of my life.

    "Oh, shit."

    Suddenly a clawed hand reached through the small crack in the door and pulled him from the comforts of the cabin. I heard screams but wasn't sure if they belonged to Uncle Jeremy, or, the thing impersonating him. Everything went quiet and I wrestled with the idea of seeing what the outcome of the skirmish was. Just then I heard a voice that brought me a mountain of relief.

    "It's Okay kid. I got him." I heard Uncle Jeremy grunt as he seemingly took to his feet from the other side of the door. But as the door slowly swung open, my heart dropped.

    It wasn't my uncle. It was the creature that had taken him. Its body was tall and skinny, its skin pale, and its face, well it had no face, just a plain identity. But as it stood there and turned in my direction, a mouth began to part. Skin sticking to its upper and lower jaws like large wads of gum, until they eventually gave way to sharp teeth. It spoke one more time in my uncle's voice.

    "Marcus." It took to a sprint and when it was just feet from me, a revolver round spat out. The creature flopped to the floor in a green pool of blood. Standing at the door was my injured Uncle Jeremy.

    After that night I had no problems following any of Uncle Jeremy's rules, no matter how arbitrary they were. We worked his homestead all summer and I never mentioned his name again. I was never one for the rules but in this instance, I was not going to summon another creature. Although I would see things dart beyond the tree line I never mentioned them. At the end of the summer, I was adamant that I would never spend another day with my Uncle Jeremy, A model citizen through and through.

    14 Comments
    2024/09/24
    17:41 UTC

    18

    Set Yourself Ablaze

    "When you've created something great,

    You simply cannot wait,

    No payment do you seek,

    As you share the best for free!"

    This I'd like on my tombstone, as I realized it summarizes both my attitude and all that I love in this world. Do I hate the failures and the atrocities of Man? I cannot say I feel hate, for I am overwhelmed by a love for the good that I have quested for and found. I've found that hate is the manifestation of weakness.

    I don't have to hate my enemies to destroy them.

    It is my love for you that teaches me all about you. It is with love that shall I comfort you as I lead you to the pasture; where I shall lay you to rest. It was with love in my heart that I said goodbye, and in an instant, I silenced your pain. Perhaps in some way, I hated the sickness in your mind that afflicted you - but I did not hate you.

    Later, I did not even hate that sickness that gave me a reason to destroy you. I grew to understand what had made you sick, and I learned the nature of this thing. In my learning I felt joy, and the hate was gone, no more weakness.

    That, my friend, I shall cure you and others like you. I do not hate you, and it gives me joy to release you from your suffering, and to prevent the spread of your affliction.

    Perhaps this is hard to understand. I shall give an example, a story my grandmother told me, when I was young.

    When she was a little girl, they had a dog named Champ. Champ was a good dog, he was brave and cunning, and he knew when to bark and when to stand proudly and stare. He was a very good boy.

    Once, Champ protected a kitten from two stray dogs. Champ was very protective of small animals, although he did like to chase rabbits, he never caught one. This kitten had wandered out of the barn while two stray dogs had come across the pasture.

    After the fight, Champ got sick. Something in those dogs he had driven off, had gotten into him through a bite. Champ changed, and he was very sorry, but he couldn't help it. The bite had made him so sick that he went mad.

    So, Great-grandfather took Champ out into the field and sat with him while the sun was setting. Then, while Champ was having his last moment of peace, there was a single gunshot to the back of his head. They buried him in the dark - under starlight - and reminded each other that Champ was still a very good boy, although near the end he had gotten quite rancorous.

    It might be hard for others to see that you were once a very good boy, but I know you. I love you and I have watched you, and I recognize that you too were bitten, in a way. There is no cure for the sickness in you, except to kill you, but that does not mean that I hate you.

    Please don't feel that way, is all I ask of you. You are loved, at least by me. That is why it is my duty to take you to the pasture, and put an end to the suffering you are causing, especially your own suffering.

    I doubt you are afraid to die, not you. You've seen too much of death to really actually fear it. No, you are afraid that we will hate you, that is what worries you. Don't worry, I don't have to tell anyone what you did. I don't have to say what Champ did, do I?

    We all love Champ, for he was a very good boy. And when I tell your story, they will all love you, too. You were, after all, a very good boy.

    I noticed that you were discriminating when you chose who you would use your skills on. I am the same way, I always choose the ones who will not be caught, the ones who don't accept that they won't feel hated. I don't feel hated, and I don't wish for you to feel that way either.

    I believe everyone deserves to be loved. It is just a very special kind of love that is reserved for one such as you. Yes, there were others before you, and there will be more after you, but you are still special to me. The term 'serial' doesn't exactly work, because each is unique and special. You're not like the rest, I've never seen one like you before. You took special planning and consideration before I could catch you.

    I cannot make your death the same as any before you, you understand. There is no 'bullet to the back of the head' or 'pasture at sunset'. That is how a dog was killed, not how you are meant to go. I wouldn't even consider something so simple for you, as you deserve so much better.

    In the past I've used all sorts of methods, but there is one common theme. I never get caught because I don't actually do it to you myself. No, my method of operation is the same in one regard: I compel you to do it to yourself.

    This way you get to choose the exact way, the fine details. It works so much better when you are happy with the results. I want you to have a hand in these decisions, I want you to be a part of this. We'll work on it together. Consider me more of a loving, angelic kind of guide - confirmation that God loves you and that you are part of the Plan. You do believe in God, it is the one thing that you and I and the ones I've already killed all have in common.

    Serial killers are never atheists. That would be silly, a fine artist like yourself - not believing in God. You know there's a God, and it is so beautiful that you are so wise. I mean it, to know that God exists, without a doubt, that is the providence of saints.

    Whole congregations with all their faith combined are not as certain as you and I. It is just one more thing I love about you. God, you are so beautiful. I get lost in the wonder that you have wrought. To the rest of the world, you are perhaps nothing more than a murderer, a psychopath, a sadist and worse, but I know better. I know you.

    It takes one to know one, they say, and that is why you know my love for you is genuine. I take everyone's life, sooner or later, as God's messenger. Yes, eventually I orchestrate the death of every person, often with some care. Your death, however, must be very special.

    I was there each time you took a life, as you must realize. You are quite intelligent, and you are starting to understand me, as I understand you. I could simply snap my finger and cause your heart to stop beating. Sometimes when I am in a hurry, and nobody is around anyway, that's how I take them. Sometimes I make it look peaceful, by stopping the flow of blood to their brain, when they are old and in bed, and they just go peacefully. Kinda boring, but I like to keep things neat for most people.

    When you took someone's life, you were playing at me. You had my power over life and death. You did it quite often and you were exceptionally good at it. They never caught you, and they never will. I don't really catch you, I just sort of come to you, like this, and let you know it is time. It is your time, your turn, your big special moment.

    And my grandmother, you might ask? Was I ever human? I am in all humans, but that one was my favorite. I was that person, all their life, and I am also you - or rather you were me. When you are gone from this world, you'll have an eternity to contemplate what your life was all about.

    For some people this is a reward.

    For others - eternal torment, punishment. The horror of their life is their lonely eternity.

    It is for you to choose, at this moment, what sort of eternity you shall have, in a few moments. If you do things my way, you'll be quite happy. Or you can reject my love for you, and find yourself all alone, feeling that hate - from a most peculiar and unexpected source, as you realize you were never me, and that you are just you, after all. I don't want you to suffer, so I am giving you this one opportunity to be me, one last time, take the power from me and by your own hand do this one very special thing.

    I'd like you to take that gas nozzle you are filling your car with, and soak yourself: your hair and clothing. Then, return the nozzle to the holster, accept the receipt and walk out into that quiet and dark street.

    There, you shall use your lighter on the gasoline receipt and set yourself ablaze.

    Good boy, Champ, good.

    0 Comments
    2024/09/23
    05:01 UTC

    259

    I think my uncle murdered his daughter

    I [F19]think my Uncle[M34] Murdered his daughter.

    Nobody bats an eye when the old get sick, it's the way of the world after all. You're born, slowly grow old, and you die. Sure, people will mourn, a few people may even weep at your funeral, and if you're lucky someone will lay an occasional flower on your headstone. But when the young die, that's a completely different story.

    My little cousin Olivia was only six years old when she fell down the stairs of her two-story house. The fall had snapped her neck somewhere along those fifteen fateful steps. It was her mother who had found her tiny body. I could only imagine the horror she felt when her eyes met the sight of little Olivia's neck at a ninety-degree angle. The thought made my spine shiver.

    My Aunt Lizy now sobbed uncontrollably as we sat in the little chapel, Olivia's casket open for the few people who knew her in life to come and say goodbye. If Olivia had died an old woman, the chappel might be overflowing, but in six short years, she had not made many connections in her brief life. While many relatives were present, only a handful had come to know Olivia as well as I had come to know her. I had been her designated babysitter for many years her little lungs drew breath, so my heart shattered when I got the news.

    My uncle Jessie spoke for his daughter in our hour of suffering.

    "Olivia was a cheerful, energetic, and playful little kid. Her enthusiasm for life brought joy to anyone in her vicinity. Life can be cruel, unjust, and inhumane, but it is not our place to judge the work of the man upstairs. When it's your time, when he calls you up, when God needs you back we can only heed the call. Olivia was too precious for this world, I believe our heavenly father knew that. That is why I can smile knowing that my little girl is in a better place."  

    I don't know how he could be so calm and composed while talking about his recently departed daughter. She wasn't my daughter and even my voice cracked whenever I spoke her name. He must've had a heart of stone I thought to myself. Who am I to judge how someone mourned the passing of their little girl? After all, we are all different.

    "Those who wish to say one last goodbye to Olivia please do so now, the casket will be closed in a few short minutes." The funeral director informed. The rustling of a few people standing sounded over my Aunt Lizy's sobbing. I didn't want to go up and see Olivia's body in that state, but my Aunt clutched my arm and pulled me with her for moral support. How could I refuse?

    The line leading up to the casket began to thin, and soon we were faced with little Olivia's peacefully sleeping face. She wore a pristine white dress that seemed to blend with the casket's padding. Her satin black hair created a deep contrast with the casket's insides. Her skin looked cold and glazed over. Aunt Lizy's head dropped onto Olivia, as she gave her little girl one last worldly embrace.

    "Why lord, Why!?" tears streamed down onto Olivia's dress, darkening some of the areas where they soaked into the fabric. I comforted my aunt and could not help but shed my tears as well. The memories of little Olivia replaying in my mind.

    "Olivia! Oh, Olivia!" My aunt cried. I looked down at Olivia's sleeping face, never expecting her to react to her mother's calls.

    "Olivia. My Olivia!" As the last 'A' of her name left her mother's mouth, her eyes snapped open. Thrusting my heart into the pit of my stomach. My eyes instantly dried up in my terror. Then Olivia's pupils trained their gaze on me. I wanted nothing more than to scream, but as I opened my mouth, the sound never managed to bypass the lump in my throat. I let my Aunt Lizy go, taking a step backward in the process. Just then I knocked into someone. My head shot around to see my Uncle Jessie looking at his daughter's face, unfazed by her soulless stare.

    He then looked at me with an expressionless face and gave me a smile of pity, before returning to his daughter's facade. I shot back around to look at Olivia but was once again met with her peacefully sleeping expression.

    'What-- What the fuck?' I thought to myself. 'Olivia was just-- I must've imagined it.' It must've been my imagination, what other explanation could there be?

    My Uncle's cold hands snaked across my shoulders in an attempt to comfort me, and it did, before he whispered in my ear.

    "It will be our little secret. You will tell no one of this."

    For the rest of the funeral, I was in a state of constant shock, trying to make sense of the situation, but never could. It had been a week since Olivia had died, they had pumped her body full of embalming fluid, and I'd even read over the corner's report.

    'A complete evisceration of the C-1 and C-2 vertebrae resulting in a complete severance of the spinal cord. Pronounced dead at the scene.'

    'There was no way Olivia could still be alive, absolutely no way.' Those words played in my head as the first few pails of earth began to blanket her coffin. But my resolve was constantly questioned by Uncle Jessie's thousand-mile stare from across the freshly dug hole.

    'There is no way Olivia is still ALIVE.'

    My Aunt Lizy continued in her emotional state long after Olivia had died, it's not hard to imagine given that Olivia was an only child. Auntie Lizy and Uncle Jessie's lives revolved around my little cousin. I tried my best to stay away, it was hard for me to hear her shrieking cries. As much as I loved Aunt Lizy, there is only so much sadness a person can take. I'd preferred to push little Olivia as far out of my mind as I could. Well, there was that, but also Uncle Jessie's comment on the day of the funeral. I'd tried to dismiss it as it being a part of my imagination, but no matter how hard I tried his words were as clear as that day they tickled my ear.

    'It will be our little secret.'

    That fear, however, would have to be put on the back burner, because Aunt Lizy had called me over to help get rid of some of Olivia's things. Looking at them had brought too much grief to her heart and she was having a hard time boxing them up, so it was up to me to lend a helping hand.

    I walked into their house, the same house where I'd babysat Olivia so many times. Everywhere I looked, memories of that little girl flooded back into my mind. Then my eyes met the bottom of the stairs, I couldn't help but imagine her little body sprawled out on the hardwood floor. A door creaked open, and I jolted in my uneasiness. It was Aunt Lizy stepping out of the master bedroom, situated on the first floor. Her eyes were puffy, she'd been crying, and she attempted to compose herself before, greeting me with a warm smile.

    Our conversation was brief. She'd only given me instructions on what to box up. To my surprise, her instructions were to get rid of everything but Olivia's twin bed. She disappeared into her bedroom, and I thought I heard her faintly sobbing through the door.

    I trained my eyes on the top of the stairs, precariously stepping around where I'd imagined Olivia drew her last breath. There was a sense of apprehension as I reached the second floor, and I swore the air was colder as my foot graced the last step, but I pushed it out of my mind as I plunged myself into the task at hand. There was a lot to box up.

    About an hour into my work, I saw my breath condense in front of my face; The air temperature had plunged drastically. I felt my skin pimple in gooseflesh, not because of the cold, but because a familiar figure graced the edge of my eye. Standing in the corner was a little girl wearing a white dress. Olivia.

    Her skin was no longer the same color as the day the casket's lid fell on her restful face, it was pale, icy, and cold. The mortician had done a fantastic job of styling her hair, but it now draped over much of her face in an unkempt way. She lifted her head, but before it could reach its full extension, it slumped over with a loud crack, likewise, her cervical spine now pointed to the ceiling as it poked through the skin on her neck. Her head may have been resting on her shoulder, but her eyes looked at me with the same intensity as the day I swore I saw her open them while she lay in that tiny little box. I fell onto her bed cowering backward until the drywall caressed my rear.

    Our eyes jousted there for what felt like hours, in reality, it was only seconds. Little Olivia raised a jagged finger, pointing to her nightstand beside her bed. I was too fearful to let go of my knees that were pressed up against my chest, but Olivia did not waver. She stood there steadfast, her eyes planted on me, her finger gesturing at the nightstand. I wasn't going to be let go until I investigated whatever she needed me to see.

    I cautiously unfurled myself out of my beatle position and crawled my way over to the first drawer, pulling it out while making sure Olivia wasn't going to jump on me. Inside were many of Olivia's crayon drawings, many were family portraits, and some I'd even helped draw myself on the many nights I babysat. But as I flipped through the pieces, they became less wholesome and more strange.

    The was a stick figure of a little girl crying, a pair of eyes peering at the girl through the door. A drawing of a man, evident in the stick figure touting a beard, covered in blood. I'm pretty sure it was my uncle Jessie. And a picture that made my heart sink, the little stick figure drawn girl crying in a corner as a mommy and daddy fought. I looked over at Olivia, but her finger had not been lowered, I flipped the page one more time and was met by a drawing of Uncle Jessie caressing a little girl with her head flopped over to the side, the Mommy stick figure off to the side weeping.

    I looked back over at my little cousin as her finger finally lowered.

    "Did Uncle Jessie do this to you?" I questioned but she made no gestures.

    I returned my eyes to the drawing.

    'It must've been.' I thought to myself. That would explain why Uncle Jessie was acting so unfazed at the funeral, and why he didn't want Olivia coming back from the grave.

    "So she came to you too huh?" My head swiveled to the bedroom door, it was Uncle Jessie, standing there as I held Olivia's testimonial in hand. I looked at the corner where Olivia once stood, but she was gone.

    "Yo-- you? You killed Olivia?" I quivered.

    "No, Mckenna it's not like that, let me explain." I inched back to the far edge of the twin bed ready to run at a moment's notice.

    "Wha-- what do you me she came to me too?" I questioned.

    "Mckenna calm down let me explain, I need to tell someone about this I don't know what to make of it." He stepped to me, outstretching his hands.

    'I have to get out of here, I know what he's done, I'm next!' I thought to myself.

    As soon as a large enough opening presented itself, I darted behind Uncle Jessie, out of the door, down the stairs, and out of the house all while looking over my shoulder but Uncle Jessie never gave chase.

    I was numb the whole ride home, reliving all the encounters I'd had with Uncle Jessie throughout the years. He loved Olivia so much. How could he do such a thing? I don't even know how I made it home in that condition. It's as if I made it home on instinct, but as my tires came to a halt in my driveway, I remembered. Aunt Lizy was still in that house with that monster, I had to warn her.

    Before I could get to my phone, it rang. The caller I.D. said, Aunt Lizy. Had he gotten to her already and was calling to taunt me from her phone? How could I be so stupid, I left her behind to die. I carefully lifted the phone to my ear and answered the call.

    "He's dead! Your Uncle Jessie is dead!" My Aunt Lizy cried through a mountain of gut-wrenching tears.

    A few weeks had passed and I'd decided to move in with my Aunt Lizy. She was all alone in the world now. I was the only family she really had left. She wouldn't eat, she wouldn't speak, she just sat there looking at some random wall. It didn't help that the world had this strange sense of irony. You see, my Uncle Jessie had fallen down those same steps as Olivia, and in the same gory fashion, his neck snapped like a twig. I felt there was some poetic justice in how it all happened, but I wished it wouldn't have affected Aunt Lizy so much.

    She'd started to make some progress, in her mourning process. I no longer had to hand-feed her every meal, she made sure to down a few sips of soup every once in a while. She no longer lay in bed until dinner, noon was often the latest, and her gaze began to unglue itself from the plain white walls that ornated her house. Everything was progressing splendidly. That is until the night they showed up.

    Aunt Lizy sat on the couch watching Saturday Night Live, the only thing that seemed to tug at the edges of her mouth, as I cleaned up after our broccoli cheddar chicken supper. It was my favorite dish to cook, and one of the few solids my Aunt Lizy could stomach, but it sure was a hassle to clean up. I scrubbed and scrubbed the pan, but the bread crumbs were baked on like old gum on concrete. I plowed my soapy sponge into the sink as I gave a frustrated grunt. I needed something more drastic to clean the pan, I needed my wire brush.

    I kept it in the cupboard above the fridge, but as I turned around to get it I gave an ear-piercing shriek. On the other side of the kitchen stood, Olivia and Uncle Jessie.

    Their heads flopped over to the side in almost identical fashion. The decay on Olivia's face was now more prominent, but Jessie's was fresher and less weathered, though still pale, cold, and grotesque like Olivia's on the day I saw her in her bedroom.

    Little Olivia held her father's hand by the finger, Uncle Jessie stood paralyzed. That is, until he moved towards the notepad, magnetically stuck to the fridge. He scribbled a few words on the paper and stepped back to let me read what he'd written.

    'You didn't let me explain.' I looked back over at him in confusion. Little Olivia, tugged on his pant leg, gesturing to let her write on the notepad next. Her father passed the notepad down to her, as she pulled her personal crayon from the dress's little pocket. I saw her face concentrate as she wrote some of the few words she knew how to write. When she finished she flipped the pad over to me. It was hard for me to read it with it being a mix of lowercase and capital letters, not to mention the grammatical mistakes. It read:

    'MOmyY dit EiT'

    I mulled over her writing again and again until it finally clicked.

    'Mommy did it.' It was all clear to me now. Little Olivia was not trying to warn me about her father but about her mother. Uncle Jessie wasn't trying to kill me on the day he died, he was trying to explain that he'd had his suspicions about what had actually happened to his daughter. Olivia had given her father the same warning, but it had been too late.

    Just then the father and daughter duo raised their fingers simultaneously, pointing behind me.

    The sound of a drawer opening, along with the rattling of utensils met my ear. I pivoted slowly. Her eyes were no longer void, no longer sad, now they were trained on me. My Aunt Lizy had found a very large kitchen knife.

    10 Comments
    2024/09/20
    15:11 UTC

    7

    Our New Student Is My Kidnapper Rejuvenated

    Cycle of the Warlock:

    Nobody believes me, although I've never lied about anything. This is worse than being taken from my home by Darmem Stonewell. Yes, he is the same as the new boy in our class, Darren Rockwell. He is a liar and a kidnapper - and a warlock.

    I was Lamb, and I lived in terror, in darkness, in hunger. I thought he was going to kill me, but instead, his plans were so much more terrible. I now live in a nightmare, although I have returned to my family and to school.

    That is why I do not want to go to Mrs. Peachtree's class today. That is why I do not want to go to school. Darren sits behind me, and I can hear him whispering: "I am watching you, Lucy. You are my little Lamb, and you are mine. You are always mine, and nobody can take you from me."

    His power over me is somehow incomplete, because I can see who he is. I know he controls everyone around me, because my teacher and my parents and my friends think he is a perfect little boy, and force me to sit with him whenever and wherever he wants me to sit. They only see a kid who shares his lunch and his smile and is so polite and kind.

    He is such a liar, so fake. I know he is evil and I know he is really Darmem Stonewell, Dr. Germaine and also Dane Radcliff. He is all those people, somehow. I would know best how he does it, how he becomes young again, and lives another life, and can disguise himself to be both a student, a soccer coach and a psychiatrist.

    They think I am traumatized and they medicate me. It only makes my head more clear, it only eradicates my emotions and let's me tell my story. I have a dictionary and a friend, in Domo Aria Gato Sans, my cat. A side effect of my medication lets me write like a grown-up, late at night, as long as I keep eating sugar. My head is so lucid, and my thumbs quick on the page to find the words. I am not alone, my cat sits with me, and when I cannot express myself, I can hear his thoughts, like he sounds like Morgan Freeman, and I know how to express myself when he says what to say.

    We'll just call my cat Dags for short, since that is one of his three names. His other name is a secret name, and that is known only to me and to him. That way Darmem Stonewell cannot cast a spell on my cat. He needs your name to use his witchcraft on you, it is part of the spell.

    My father signed me up for soccer and Dane Radcliff was our coach. He watched me with the focused gaze of a predator, and I felt his eyes all over my body while I exercised. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't explain what it was. It was just this dirty and uncomfortable sensation. Like someone is watching you.

    It wasn't until winter, when soccer ended, that my mom, a soccer mom, finally agreed with me that our coach was weird. That's all she said, that he was weird. It took her too long, and it was too little, but for just one moment, I felt safe, like she would listen to me.

    I'd had premonitions about what his plans were for me, and I told her I needed protection. She laughed and said that our security system at home was sufficient. So, her home was safe from burglary, but I didn't see how that was going to keep me safe - when I kept seeing him outside, watching me.

    I'd pull back my curtains, half asleep. I'd wake up, answering to his voice, commanding me. There he was, outside, looking at me. He didn't need to come in. I tried to say he was stalking me, but there was no evidence, he was never seen by anyone else. I'd wake up my parents and after enough false alarms, they stopped believing me.

    That is when he took me from them.

    I woke up one night and he was in our house. He was holding a strange candelabra with sparking green light dripping from the fleshy wax. It smelled of the grave, an earthy and fetid smell. There was this nascent emotion in me, where I could only stare, dreamlike, entranced. His maliferous grin was one of sadistic victory.

    He gestured and I stood in my pajamas. My cat was hiding, unable to protect me. My parents lay scattered where they had responded to his intrusion, falling to the floor as he waved his magic candle at them. It cast no shadows, or it cast a shadow, rather than light, this eerie and weird glow. The smell of it was due to its composition of a severed hand, the fingertips burning with the flames of the grave, and its power even worked on the neighborhood security who responded to the alarum-call, only to fall asleep amid the sprinklers of our lawn.

    And then he touched me for the first time, and pain shot through my body. He roughly handled me into his car, into the backseat. He buckled my waist, and lay me down back there, telling me to sleep. Then I slept, and when I was awake again, I was in a bedroom, with one of my hands wrapped in tight cushioning and handcuffed to the iron bedframe. He'd undressed me and changed me into a diaper and nightgown.

    Darmem entered the room and looked at me with satisfaction.

    "Lamb, you are. Lucy waits. You will obey me. This is a phial, and you will choose to imbibe it, and in thirteen days and nights you will consist the sacrifice. One death brings new life. I am grateful to have found a pure maiden, who has never told a lie. You are exceptionally rare these days. Some men think that all women lie, but I know better. Bless you and keep you in His grace, my dear, and you shall be cleansed."

    "I lie all the time." I tried to tell a lie, hoping it would ruin his spell. I was unable to speak, my words went into a silence and he smiled, his trickery absolute.

    "In my home, you will obey my rules. You will not speak - you cannot lie." Darmem Stonewell informed me. He made a gesture and an old book appeared in his hand. The title was Calendoer, and it was someone's diary. Even a wise and ancient warlock needed a guide. He read something from it and then closed the book again, and it vanished into his wizardly robes.

    "I recognize you. You're my soccer coach." I tried to say. He nodded, as though he could read my mind.

    "You know me, but it won't give you power over me. Nobody else has ever recognized me. It means nothing, to be recognized." He shrugged, but I sensed he had a doubt. He wasn't sure how I knew he was the same person. Perhaps it was my purity, perhaps I was too pure.

    "Liars beget liars. I don't even lie to myself." I claimed. This seemed to bother him, as though he could still hear me, although I was muted. He shrugged and left me there.

    For nearly two weeks he kept me his prisoner, attached to the bed. He changed my diaper and he put a leash and collar on me and took me to an old iron bath and washed me in salts and oils, cleansing me. He cast spells that sounded like prayers over me, and I was subdued. I couldn't resist him, I felt like I had to do what he wanted.

    Every day he seemed to wither and grow weaker, until the thirteenth sunrise, and sunset, the final day of my terrifying ordeal. I was truly frightened, as I believed he was going to sacrifice me. I thought the wavy knife he kept, his athame, was meant to slaughter me in the chamber he had prepared in his basement.

    I shook with fear, completely under his power, but filled with dread. I wore a white dress, and he showed me to myself in a mirror ringed in black wood, carved and embedded with white silver. I looked different, angelic, and for a moment I admired my reflection. I did look very beautiful. On my head he placed a crown made of braided daisies which he had carefully woven.

    "This will protect you, and nothing in that chamber will be able to claim you. You must remain pure, or my work will be undone. You must not utter, you must not falter, and your innocence must be guarded. Without your surgery, I might not be restored." He spoke strangely, almost protectively about me. I was still afraid, and I still thought he was going to kill me.

    No, his plans were far more terrifying, for he planned to leave me alive - and in a kind of Hell, a nightmare, a prisoner of his terror forever. So much worse than death, for death would have set me free of his power over me. Death would be the end, but it just goes on and on.

    I cannot recall what happened in that chamber, but my raven hair grew brittle and white, at what I saw. Demons danced in the shadows, summoned to his resurrection. It was a cruel ritual, and I was the priestess of the abomination. I became his executioner and his midwife, all with the knife and the way. I knew the way, it was his way, and I moved to the rhythm, merely a component of his spell.

    "It is love that binds us. My teacher wrote that I would recognize her for her honesty. He said nothing about she who would recognize me. I must be under your power, for the final day of this life, and you will bring me into the next. Our fate is now intertwined. I must belong to you, or else you do not belong to me. Love is a chain, fate, and the place where our souls touch. That is what you must choose to do. If your will is violated, I cannot come forth. Leave me not in the darkness. Recognize me, and know my name, here in this darkness." He said as he sipped the phial.

    He handed it to me and I drank the rest, unsure if I chose to do so or not.

    Then it was he who lay upon the altar. "I am ready." He breathed, trembling.

    I lifted the knife and somehow there was no blood, as I opened him up. Instead, the darkened chamber filled with light. Then there was a void beyond. It was in front of me, and all around me, and within me. The light coming out of him was in me, and fading. I felt its pain and its terror, slipping into the darkness beyond.

    Despite what he had done to me, I felt sorry for him, seeing where he was going. I pitied his fading light, as it descended. It clung to me, like a newborn, helpless. I watched as he began to fall away from me, and I saw how he was part of me, and I a part of him. It pained me to know that if I did nothing, he would be lost forever in that eternal shadow, and he would cease to be.

    Although I was shaking with fear, and although I have only a vague memory of how and why I did what I did, I reached out, with my mind, my heart, my soul. Whatever part of me reached for him, it was my own will. In that moment his spell over me was broken and I was free. I could have let him descend into that abyss, I could have let him go. Something in me did not wish that, it felt evil to let him go there, like what was beyond, those hungry dancing demons who had celebrated before his fall, like I would be feeding him to them.

    It felt wrong, like casting a baby into the flames.

    For thirteen days he had eaten nothing, only drinking water. His body was purified.

    For thirteen nights he had slept in wrappings so that he could not move, and only at the light of dawn did these bindings fall away. His heart was purified.

    For thirteen baths, he had cleansed me in a sacred pool, and made me whole, so that I could not hate him. His soul was purified.

    He had explained this to me, and in my fear of him I had not understood. I reached for him, with my willpower, with my love - like a mother's love. I pulled his soul from the shadow, and set it neatly where his body lay restored, youthful, a heart cleansed, beating yet again. There I left him, taking off the flowery crown as I climbed the stairs.

    I unlocked the front door and went outside, finding the warm sun on my face, my tears of relief only a moment of freedom. I didn't know that the horror of my world had only just begun. He would never let me go, and I had made him powerful again, all his charm and abilities restored to full.

    He lets nothing go. I would tell foul lies, I would speak curses, but I cannot. I am the opposite of him, and I am in fear of becoming his entirely. As long as I remain unlike him, as long as I am the truth, he cannot get any closer, cannot follow me into the next life.

    For I know the way, and I shall live again.

    0 Comments
    2024/09/16
    17:40 UTC

    90

    Lucid Dreams

    Caitlin was a mischievous child.  When she was just 2, she was able to climb out of her crib, crawl down the stairs, open the freezer, and pull out the ice cream.  She was even able to find a spoon and crawl into a closet to avoid the authorities.  Perhaps to her benefit, she was often foiled in her heist, unable to open the top and get that creamy goodness.  When she was 5, she’d figured out the near infinite complexities of the TV remote, enabling her to navigate to her favorite shows, which included Sponge-Bob, Uncle-Grandpa, and the multitude of Saw movies, which she preferred to The Purge.  This invariably followed her into the evening where she revisited all the finer details in her high-definition nightmare. 

    Her parents were, generally speaking, not the best.  They patted themselves on the back as successful parents for putting food on her plate, not leaving her in the hot car, and keeping her away from the toolshed.  Beyond that, they didn’t win too many Adulting awards.  However, after she’d managed to crawl into their bed for the third time in a week, they began strategizing a solution.  Obviously, simply not watching the terribly inappropriate and terrifyingly scary shows was no longer an option.  So, they researched the problem and found an unlikely article recommending lucid dreams.  That evening, before bed, they sat her down and explained it to her.  “You can control your nightmares if you can wake up inside of them.”  

    Caitlin didn’t know what her parents meant, but she did trust them.  She thought about it into the evening as her eyes grew heavier.  Then she was there, in a dark cave at the top of a cliff.  Deep in the cave was a spider and it was crawling out, pushing her towards the edge.  She was so scared.  She couldn’t think about anything except the terror and … something nudged at the back of her mind.  Suddenly she remembered what her parents said, and that was it.  She was suddenly awake within her dream.  She pushed the spider back into the cave with her mind.  The cave collapsed and she was falling.  She screamed but then remembered, she can control it.  So, she started flying.  The monster came from the shadow and started following her.  She made it her pet.

    Caitlin loved her dreams.  The worse they were, the better.  Her parents began to offer her horror movies because they kept her so calm.  She was excited to go to bed and to fall deep into her dreams where she was a god, and anything could happen.  She was happy.  

    Years went by and Caitlin’s childhood gave way to other thoughts and pursuits.  Her evening nightmares gave way to dreams of romance.  Her nightmares were more focused on the real world… bills, rumors, health.  She was still young when she got her first seizure.  She was taken to the doctor where she was diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease.  It began like Epilepsy, but the disease would spiral out of control over time.  She would be dead within the year.  

    The seizures were scary.  She’d shake, and then… nothing.  She’d wake up seconds later on the ground.  People were staring at her and strangers were approaching.  Time passed and she woke up minutes later, with people holding her.  Sometimes she’d have clothing in her mouth to keep her from biting her tongue.  She had no memory of it.  More time passed and she’d wake up hours later.  She was in the hospital now.  Sensors covered her body, a tube was down her throat, she had a catheter.  Again, she had no memory, no dreams, no loneliness, and not even a memory of darkness.  There was nothing human in it; nothing conscious.  She imagined that this is what death would bring.  Cold empty nonexistence where time didn’t exist.  She thought about it a lot.  

    She was in the park.  She thought about the seizures.  She focused on the fainting, and about snapping out of it.  Her mind drifted back to her childhood fears.  She remembered that first night, that first dream.  And then, as she felt the seizure coming, she remembered the feeling.  She remembered taking control.  Darkness… Nothing… Snap… she was awake.

    Caitlin was looking at herself.  She saw the people around her begin to panic.  She saw the ambulance come and take her body to the hospital.  She followed.  She found herself in a bed.  The doctor was there talking to her parents.  They were talking about her.  She didn’t have long now.  She felt her heart race.  She felt the panic.  She heard the voice of the child inside her that said she could change it, manipulate it, even control it.  Her feet left the ground.  She reached into herself, and she pulled the malignant mass from her skull.  It evaporated into nothingness.  She saw her body tense, then relax.  She saw the doctors scramble to understand the readings from the many sensors hooked to her body.  She laid down within herself and she awoke.

    Caitlin lived a prosperous and wondrous life.  Those around her had the best of luck.  Odd things happened everywhere she went.  Illness faded in moments.  Financial issues disappeared overnight.  People were happy.  The years grew long, and death approached.  Still Caitlin wasn’t scared.  She was familiar with the silent emptiness, the nothingness… she knew it could be overcome.  She knew the truth about lucid dreams.

    2 Comments
    2024/09/15
    14:08 UTC

    46

    A Room For The Night

    It was that time again. Sometime around midnight, I think. The ‬outside was silent, save for the sound of a passing train in the distance, its whistle sounding like a lonesome cry in the dark. I live alone now, in a house far too large for my cat and me. It sits on an acre and a half of forest in suburban Connecticut. The other residents of the neighbourhood are on similarly sized parcels of land. Distant enough from one another that each house might as well be the last on Earth.

    I like my quiet.

    I like my solitude.

    I wasn’t always such an introvert.

    I was startled awake by some nameless horror. A mental monstrosity that vanished the second I opened my eyes. The sweat from my brow mixed with something else on my face. Tears. My eyes stung, and my cheeks were damp.

    ‘Damn it,’ I thought to myself.

    I knew I'd been dreaming about him again. Glancing over at his side of the bed as I absentmindedly reached for the prescription bottles of Klonopin & Seroquel on my nightstand. Those, as well as weekly visits to my psychiatrist, were part of this thing called ‘grief therapy’. It wasn't working.

    His side of the bed was empty. Why wouldn’t it be? He had been dead and gone over a year. I hadn’t washed his pillowcases since the incident. I didn’t want to lose his scent from them. Usually, his aroma brought comfort. On this night, however, it made the memories more piercingly vivid and painful.

    Even after all of this time, more often than not, I can feel him. His presence. It ebbs and flows during the day. He falters but never flees. Every so often, I catch glimpses of him in my periphery. A spectral form that hides as soon as I turn to face it.

    Some find it comforting to see their late loved ones. However, on this unsettling night, I'd reached a point at which the sightings left me with an uneasy knot in my gut. All at once, I felt the need to get out of there. Out of that house.

    I made a decision.

    I cleaned up, then I slipped into my Iron Heart jeans, a green Momotaro t-shirt, and a pair of boots. Hastily, I threw clothes, toiletries, and pills into a backpack, before hurrying out of the house. As I was about to shut the front door behind me, I heard a meagre meow.

    Sasha.

    Our... My tortoiseshell cat, adopted from the Humane Society, was looking at me quizzically. Sighing, I went back inside, put down my backpack, and gathered her travel kit. Beneath that sigh, however, there was relief. I didn't want to be alone. Not really.

    I headed north on the I-95 towards Maine. I really didn’t have a clue as to where I was going, but I was put at ease by both the drive and the sound of Sasha’s purr-snores, underscoring Chris Rea’s “Looking For Summer”.

    Until the memories resurfaced. The cold ones. The fighting, the yelling, the sobbing, and the cheating. MY cheating. Where did the good memories go?

    My stomach growled as though it were empty, and I wasn't sure whether I'd eaten that evening. I hadn't had an appetite for a long time. I was more concerned with feeding Sasha than myself. And she'd been woken, either by my restless murmuring or groaning belly. The bundle of fur regarded me with a look that asked, “What’s up, Papa?”

    Then my belly growled again with surprising intensity. I needed to find a place to stop, eat, and rest.

    'Come to think of it, I have no idea where I've gone,' I suddenly mumbled to myself.

    Not a bar of service on my phone. Not a hint of direction from my GPS. The onboard navigation seemed to be frozen. And the road was approaching a bend, but I did not recall exiting the highway. I started to slow down as an imposing structure became visible. In the midst of trees and fog, it reminded me of a haunted manor from some work of fiction. Unlike something King would conjure, however, this building was beautifully maintained and nicely lit. In bold, timeless lettering, a plaque on the front of the building read: The Whispering Willows Inn.

    I parked and took a moment to collect my breath. Then I grabbed my backpack, used treats to lure Sasha into her carrier, and made my way to the entrance. I recall wondering whether this place would have an issue with pets, but that thought was interrupted by the parting of two oak doors. A man, or teenager, stepped outside to smile warmly at me. It was hard to place his age, as he seemed neither young nor old.

    “Good evening... Er, morning,” I said, attempting a smile.

    The man said nothing in response, but nodded and smiled back. It wasn’t one of those false, polite smiles. It was warm and reached his eyes. A smile that lowered my guard. I made my way through the deceptively large lobby, stepping on lightly coloured hardwood floors. As we strolled towards the reception desk, I took note of the Hotel’s decor.

    Is it Art Deco? Belle Époque? Something else entirely, no doubt. Björn would have known. He knew so much.

    ‘Back in 8 minutes’, read the hastily scrawled sign behind the main desk. Its haphazard appearance seemed at odds with the immaculate aesthetic of the lobby. And when I turned around, I found that the man had disappeared. I was certain he'd been following me.

    After waiting about 10 minutes, I pushed the button to try and speak to someone. Uncharacteristically, Sasha was snoozing. I would've liked her company, as I suddenly felt very alone. Gone was the comforting ambience of the room. Then the sound of a staticky crackle jolted me to attention.

    “Erm, hello?” I ventured tentatively.

    “Good evening, sir,” Came a woman’s voice from the speaker.

    She spoke with an accent I couldn’t quite place.

    “I think... I mean, I’d like a room for the night please. I may extend my stay in the morning for a day or two more. I don’t know yet. Oh, also, I have my cat with me. She’s really well trained and won’t be a bother...” I promised.

    I found myself rambling at that point, flustered and unsure as to why.

    “Very good, Mr. Oxenstierna,” The mysterious woman said. “We have you in Room 222 on the second floor. Sasha is more than welcome here. Please don’t hesitate to contact the concierge, should you need anything, and enjoy your stay with us.”

    The late hour and lack of food was getting to me. I didn’t initially notice the voice pronounced my Swedish surname flawlessly. Barely noticed her name my cat either. But the cogs were starting to turn.

    “Did I even tell you my... Never mind. Don’t you need my ID? A credit card? Something?” I asked, somewhat rattled and disoriented.

    “No need, Mr. Oxenstierna. It’s late. We'll sort everything in the morning.”

    A crackle followed before I managed to respond, and the conversation ended.

    'That was odd,' I muttered to myself.

    The Vanishing Concierge reappeared and escorted me to the elevator. I didn't ask where he'd gone. I wasn't sure I would've liked the answer. When the doors opened, the man handed me what I presumed was my room key. Heavy, old-fashioned, and made of iron. It had the number “222” etched elegantly at its base.

    And when I arrived at Room 222, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was perfect. Not too big. Not too small. Dark, hardwood floors. A nicely sized Persian rug. A double bed. Even a dressing table.

    “Ok, Sashers. Let’s get you situated,” I said to my cat.

    As I busied myself with setting up her litterbox and dishes, Sasha happily left her carrier and made herself comfortable at the foot of the bed. I joined her, perching at the edge of the bed and kicking off my boots. Finally feeling, having fled from my haunted home, peaceful. Finally enjoying a moment of silence.

    Silence broken by a voice which snarled beside my ear.

    “What the Hell are you doing here?”

    I screamed and tumbled off the bed.

    It wasn’t just a voice. It was his voice.

    “Fuck. I’m losing it,” I told myself, panting heavily.

    I reached for my backpack and fished out my meds. There were two bottles. In one bottle was Seroquel. An anti-psychotic prescribed to me by my Ivy League shrink. An integral part of my ‘Grief Management’, supposedly. And in the other bottle was Klonopin. Something to alleviate my anxiety.

    "To take the edge off," The doctor said.

    Both were part of ‘The Programme’. Both were supposed to lessen my grief and anger at the world. At happy fucking couples that passed me on the way to and from work. At everybody and their merry existences. One 100mg tablet of the Seroquel was supposed to conk me out. The Klonopin wasn’ttechnically supposed to be used in conjunction with the Seroquel before bed, but I no longer gave a fuck.

    Again, the 100mg of Seroquel should have been enough to wipe me out. This time, it wasn’t.

    “Are you really doing this?”

    His voice again. Right in front of me.

    “Fuck you,” I said, swallowing both pills down dry. And then some more.

    I'd increased the doctor's dosage from one pill to two pills. I was considering upping my dosage to three. I didn't want to get better. I wanted numbness. Total oblivion.

    Of course, I'd developed a tolerance. I was struggling to sleep easily. So, I started adding Klonopin that I obtained from an offshore online “pharmacy” without telling my doctor. I knew he would only insist I stop, and blending the two actually helped me find some sleep here and there.

    On this strange night, in an unnerving hotel, my stomach somersaulted. It did not approve of being filled with the last few pills in those bottles. It didn't have the usual effect. I felt nauseated, not restful. I was losing control of my motor functions. I may have thrown up, but I don’t remember. The next thing I recall is lying face-down on my hotel room floor. Sasha circled me, voicing her concern with a sharp series of meows.

    I felt as if I were being pulled underwater. Pulled into a realm of my subconscious that I'd never seen before. I may have shit myself too, but I barely cognisant of my physical form. I walked a tightrope between two worlds, barely keeping my balance. Barely wanting to keep my balance. I was so, so tired. But something in my gut told me if I were to succumb to the ‘sleep’, I wouldn’t wake again.

    Not this time.

    I was beyond exhausted. Every inch of my body, mind and spirit became chilled as I decided to stop fighting and let myself drift away into a dreamy, swirling darkness.

    There were no sounds.

    There was no light.

    There was nothing.

    “Am I dead?” I thought. “Is this purgatory?”

    Room 222 faded, and I found myself standing somewhere else. Staring at an empty landscape with only one building in view. My body was suspended in a place not meant for the living. And the structure ahead appeared like some mutated, deformed version of The Whispering Willows Inn. A building half-claimed by the black, unnatural vines rising up from the underworld. I was seeing the true face of the inn, which had always lurked beneath its pretty demeanour. I understood at long last. Understood that the hotel had drawn me into its depths. Sensed my willingness to leave the real world. And it was welcoming me with open arms. Something dark. Something from another realm. And in the doorway at the back of my subconscious, I saw him. The concierge. A tall figure beckoning me into his world. Offering to introduce me to the woman behind the speaker. The silhouette revealed in the top window of the house.

    The only things that seemed to permeate the murkiness of this realm were the cold and the quiet. That bitter kind of cold that cuts into your bones and settles into the marrow. And in that quiet, offering only a slight crackle in the distance, I heard him again. Rising to be heard over the static of the woman behind the speaker. The woman whose hotel had enticed me with its warm lights. Tricked me into stepping from one dimension into another.

    “Why are you here?” He asked, his voice angry.

    “I’m imagining this. You’re not real,” I said, speaking more to myself than Björn.

    “You always ran away,” He said.

    “I... I couldn’t be around you after the cheating. You… You didn’t even bother trying to hide it,” I sobbed, finding the strength to stand.

    I was trying to rid my sight of the hotel in my mind's eye. Break free from that awful plane between existences. Return myself to Room 222. Return myself to Earth before slipping into the other realm forever.

    “You ran away,” He repeated. “I needed you, and you ran away.”

    He started to coalesce into view. And it no longer felt like the medication. Not even sleep-deprivation. It was real. I'd felt it when I first stepped into the hotel. Felt that this was a bridge between existences. And I was staring through a window into the afterlife. Staring at Björn.

    “What the...” I stammered, backing away from the apparition.

    “You ran away.”

    He was solidifying, appearing as I remembered him. Tall, blond, and handsome.

    “No...” I whispered, continuing to back away as my husband advanced.

    The colours of the demonic realm started to swirl, revealing glimmers of Room 222 again. I tried to clutch to that world. Tried desperately to return to the comfort of my bed. Of Sasha. Of anything that belonged to reality.

    “That’s not... That isn’t...” I stammered, burying my hands in my face as he reached for me.

    “You don't want to follow them,” He whispered, drawing my attention away from the terrifying concierge and the woman in the window. "They won't take you to me. They'll take you somewhere worse."

    I whimpered. "I... I don't..."

    "Please stop running from the world," He begged. "You still belong there."

    He took me in his arms, and that coldness dissipated. It was replaced with warmth. Replaced with something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Love. It was a welcome respite from the unrelenting grief. More medicinal than all of the drugs in the world.

    After an eternity in that loving embrace, I felt at peace. Felt devoid of fury and fear. The emotions I'd been enduring for over a year, long before Björn even died. Doctors blamed an ‘aneurysm’ for his death. I blamed the universe. Blamed it for taking such a strong man from the world. My foothold in life.

    And that immovable man was right. I had been running.

    For a year, I had been adrift in a vast nothingness. It was so cold. So warm. To me, it stretched endlessly. Offered far more than the haunting hotel in the centre. I believed the concierge and the woman. Felt that something greater awaited. A paradise with Björn. We wouldn't be parted ever again. But it was a lie. I wasn’t able to form coherent thoughts in this state. I wasn't real.

    In the periphery of my hearing, there came two quiet words.

    “Wake up.”

    Startled, I could feel my senses beginning to regain their function.

    Again. Louder.

    “Wake up.”

    Feeling strength and coherence return to my mind, I paid attention to his voice over the static of the woman behind the speaker. The air felt colder. Felt autumnal again. I was returning to Room 222.

    “Wake up!”

    I opened my eyes. Groggy, semi-functional, and fully aware. My head was throbbing. I sat cross-legged on the floor. Despite the chill, sweat darkened my shirt, and it clung to my body. I could see my breath like smoke before me. And standing over me was him. Not in that demonic world of the alternate inn. No. This was Room 222. This was reality. And he was there. As clearly as I was there.

    Björn.

    The man smiled at me, his image dissipating as Sasha looked me up and down. She looked at him for a moment too. Meowed in a mixture of shock and joy. She saw him. I know she did. Just as I know she was looking at me with a mixture of worry, relief, and comfort on her fuzzy visage.

    While picking Sasha up and putting her on the bed, I caught myself beaming. And to my surprise, I didn't flee the inn. Didn't fear the concierge and the woman. Not anymore. They wouldn't entice me away from this world. I knew that. They held no power over me. So, I stripped off my sweat-soaked shirt and burrowed into the blankets. I slept well for the first time in a long time.

    I could still feel his embrace. His touch. His forgiveness.

    I wasn’t afraid, and I wasn’t running.

    6 Comments
    2024/09/15
    13:21 UTC

    49

    My passed grandpa always visits me in my dreams whenever I stay at his place.

    My grandpa passed away a few years ago. We were really close when I was younger because he and my grandma helped my family raise me (normal in our culture). But from age 12, I went to boarding school in a different city, then to uni until I was 21, and after that, I started working in another city (about an hour's flight away). I didn't have much money, so I couldn’t visit him often. In his last years, he had two strokes and was bedridden, and because of my job, I wasn’t able to spend much time with him.

    One day, I got the call that he had passed. It hit me hard—it was the first death I had to face as an adult, and I felt guilty about not being there for him at the end. After the funeral, I went back to my life in the city, but whenever I returned to my hometown, I’d stay at my grandparents' house. And here's the strange part: I always dream of him when I’m there. In these dreams, he’s not alive, like he knows he’s been dead. It’s like he’s just checking in on us in the dreams. I remember trying to get my mum to come see him in the dream, but for some reason, I couldn’t. It was shocking the first time but I kinda get used to it. (Woke up crying like a baby as well.)

    It's kind of wholesome in a way. I miss him a lot and love him dearly. If you’re reading this or watching over me from somewhere, know that I love you so much, Grandpa.

    This is a true story. I don't know which sub to post.

    4 Comments
    2024/09/12
    06:50 UTC

    215

    I Let My Cheating Boyfriend Drown

    I [F24] let my cheating boyfriend [M28] drown.

    My boyfriend Chris and I have been together for a few months now, that is until we broke up. You see, Chris is a cheater. Some time into our relationship, I found him in bed with another woman. The worst thing about that situation was that the woman was my best friend Samantha, that cold-hearted bitch.

    My friend and I did everything together. We grew up together, worked the same jobs together, and we even attended the same college together. She was the sister I never had. She had my complete trust which made the betrayal that much worse.

    Two years after graduation, Samantha and I went out for a night on the town. That night, two guys approached us, as many tend to do, but these two—my god, these two knew exactly what they were doing.

    Samantha and I were sitting at the bar trying to put on our best-resting bitch faces, the night was long and you can only turn down so many guys before it gets old. We were just there to enjoy ourselves, to dance, to drink, but those plans were quickly thwarted when a few bumbling, bickering, buffiuns pulled out the stools next to us and plopped right down, one on either side of us. They sandwiched Samantha and me between two stinking pillars of testosterone. We braced for whatever corny and rehearsed pickup line these two were about to coordinate, but the pickup line never came. Instead, they ignored us, preferring to shout their conversation over the music, leaving Samantha and me to spectate their shallow interaction.

    "Did you see that beautiful blonde with those icy blue eyes? Good lord, she was spectacular. 110% pure unadulterated wifie material right there."

    We rolled our eyes at his comment before Samantha and I locked eyes in disapproval. The other guy responded in a sweet baritone voice that pierced the booming vibration of the dance music, our eyes turning in his direction.

    "Sir, I believe you are mistaken. No matter how soul-piercing her eyes or how blonde her hair is, you need a girl with an actual brain." Samantha scoffed, fiddling with her golden locks at the stinging comment.

    "Not saying that blondes are dimwitted, but Elain certainly wasn't the brightest of the bunch." The man sitting on my right side continued. The douchebag on Samantha's left, adjusted his hat, turning its tongue towards the rear. His face was now sour, he locked eyes with his friend whilst seeming heavily offended. I surmised that Elain might've been an Ex or something. For a few seconds, the two jousted quietly, Samantha and I slightly cowering amidst the tension, until the two erupted into a simultaneous chuckle.

    "I don't care what you or anyone says about blondes. The stereotypes may be partially true, but they truly do have the most fun." The hat-touting D-bag responded. Samantha stood a little taller in her chair in vindication.

    "If you say so." Said the guy on my right.

    "But honestly, I've always been more attracted to the brunettes with high cheekbones and fantastic smiles." My chair vibrated at the bass in his voice.

    "Do you see anyone like that in here tonight?" Questioned the D-bag.

    "Well, yes I did see one here earlier, on the dance floor. As a matter of fact, I think she was with the blonde you were talking about." By then the realization that they were talking about Samantha and I was setting in. I turned to look at Samantha but she had still not made the connection. 'Maybe the stereotypes are true.' I thought to myself, rolling my eyes at Samantha's slow processing speed. Just beyond the gears turning in my friend's head was the D-bag smiling from ear to ear. He'd noticed that I had caught on. Looking over my shoulder, the handsome baritone mirrored his friend's expression. Meanwhile, you could smell the smoke coming from Samantha's ears.

    The D-bag spun around on the stool spectating the dance floor.

    "Well Chris, do you think anyone here could prove us wrong? If only two girls matching those descriptions were here to show just how fun blondes and brunettes could be." The D-bag stated in an ironic tone. All three of us now awaited for Samantha to finish her thought, we all peered around at each other with high expectations.

    "Oh Us!" Samantha announced with a snorting laugh, her open palm meeting the side of the D-bag's arm, just as mine slapped my forehead. Peering out from behind my hand the sweet baritone eyed me lovingly, showing me his perfect dimpled smile. I tried to return the sentiment but my face reddened at how intently he watched me. He finally extended my saving grace, an outstretched hand in a gentlemanly fashion. As our touch met he introduced himself.

    "Hi, I'm Chris."

    "Neomi," I said with a smile.

    "Pleasure."

    In that instance, my heart skipped a beat. Love at first sight was never my thing, but the way this man carried himself made me want to kick my feet in squeal in excitement. His hair, his eyes, the veins bulging from under his rolled-up sleeves, if I wanted to resist it was hopeless.

    Samantha and the D-bag wasted no time and sprung onto the dance floor, leaving Chris and me to talk at the bar.

    "What are you drinking?" He asked me. My mind was blank, I tend to get awkward around Greek gods. He smiled.

    "Barkeep, two Modelos."

    The night turned into early morning. Samantha and the D-bag, whose name I found out was Josh, never really left the dance floor. Samantha was a high-energy drunk, it was hard for anyone to keep up with her. Josh, however, seemed to have no problems in doing so. Chris and I, on the other hand, still nursed our first beer. It's kind of hard to drink when conversations are so stimulating. Chris was a PA (Physician's Assistant), specializing in pediatric care. He'd just moved to Lincon City after accepting a job at a local clinic. Josh was his roommate from college, who was not as adept as Chris but decided to tag along for the adventure.

    A well-educated, mild-mannered adonis stood before me as the best potential suitor of my life, one who adored children and wanted to settle down in my sleepy little coastal town. To say I was smitten was an understatement.

    "Neomi! Let's go!" Samantha called from the front door of the bar, whilst clinging to Josh's arm.

    "Looks like those two really hit it off," Chris said to me.

    "We're going home!" An inebriated Samantha whined, Jake's face flush and heavy at the liquor's intoxication.

    "Well, we can't let those two go home alone, can we?" Chris said.

    We stood from our stools walking over to meet our friends. As we walked out of the bar, Samantha stumbled over her own feet, Jake being too drunk to catch her, left it up to me to arrest her fall. I clutched her arm, struggling to prop her up. Chris being the gentleman he was, lent a helping hand, Josh, now off spectating the cars driving by in the early morning air, waving at each one like the village idiot.

    Chris's face contorted in his disapproval and then looked over at Samantha and me.

    "Come on I'll walk you guys home." Putting Samantha's arm over his neck he waited for me to lead the way. We started down the street, me leading just inches in front of the group. Josh was trailing behind us like a newborn duckling.

    The whole walk home Chris and I talked about life. Our hopes and dreams, how many children we each wanted, and even when we expected to settle down. I know, pretty heavy stuff to talk about when you just met someone, but I'm a hopeless romantic what can I say?

    Occasionally, turning to see Chris's face as we walked, I could've sworn I saw him glance down at Samantha's cleavage, but blocked it out as my gaze met his perfect smile. Love makes you such a fool.

    Walking into my front door, Chris, Samantha, and Josh stammered in behind me.

    "Just set her down on the couch there," I instructed. Chris obliged, gently leading Samantha onto the couch where she, drunkenly caressed the side of Chris's cheek.

    "You're so beautiful you know that?" Chris smiled nervously at her sudden confession of attraction. I decided he needed help, taking Samantha's arm off his cheek.

    "Okay, Okay, Okay lover girl, you need to rest." Guiding her head down onto the couch cushion, lifting her legs on the sectional, while ensuring a few pillows wedged her on her side for the night. I turned to look at Chris, as he rested his hand on his hips while looking at Josh. Josh was on the other end of the sectional, snoring as a stream of slobber trailed down his cheek. He turned to me.

    "Looks like he's not going anywhere for the night." He huffed frustratingly, itching the back of his head in embarrassment.

    "It's totally okay." I comforted.

    "You guys can stay here for the night I really don't mind." Chris smiled and looked down at our two sleepy companions. He then turns to the clock on his watch, and back up at me.

    "You think these two will be okay on their own?" I looked down at Samantha as she rested somberly.  

    "I think so, why do you ask."

    "You wanna go watch the sunrise on the beach?" I ignored the fact that we live on the West Coast, the sun would be rising at our backs, but I'm sure he knew that. This was just an excuse to spend some more time with me. I happily agreed.

    The sand between my toes and a smile plastered across my face, Chris and I spectated a tsunami bouy from shore as its red spotter light flicked and bobbed in the rough, Oregon seas. Its faint glow illuminated the sea foam as it swashed against its yellow metal exterior. A family of seagulls taking refuge on its many perches for the night. The night was cold as the darkness in the Pacific Northwest tends to be. I rested my head on Chris's shoulder, our backside resting against his fallen sweater. We had reached that portion of the night where there was no need for conversation when two kindred souls could speak poems through a loving embrace.

    I reached down to interweave our fingers. Turning my face towards his stubbled facade, he smiled as his peripheral gaze suspected my doe-eyed lust-filled expression. He slowly swiveled his head, our eyes meeting. His face inched closer to mine. My breathing is now more of a nervous pant, his seemingly matching my cadence. Our lips meet in a frenzy of sparks. For a minute the world didn't exist. There was no ocean, stars, or coldness of night. Just the warmth of his embrace. The perfect first kiss. The perfect moment. That is until the sound of a dying animal screeched through the night.

    Our head snapped in the direction of the tsunami bouy. The family of seagulls had taken flight. Now only a swaft of plummed feathers floated gently onto the yellow bouy and atop of the foamy sea. Struggling on the tsunami bouy was the body of one of the birds, seemingly cut in half.

    "What the hell was that," Chris questioned. A wave of frustration washed over me as some freak National Geographic-style scene had just interrupted my perfect moment. I looked at Chris's stunned expression. He's never lived by the sea, a newcomer to marine life. His bewilderment made me smile.

    "It was probably just a Sealion," I explained. He looked down at me with mild horror. I shrugged.

    "Nature, what can I say?" I returned my head to his shoulder, trying to hide my anger at nature's bad timing.

    As the early morning sun illuminated the crashing waves in hues of yellow, oranges, and red, we finally took to our feet. As we directed ourselves inland, I was halted by a faint whisper that hissed between the swashing of the sea.

    "RRRUuughhh" I stopped and turned back out to sea.

    "What is it?" Chris questioned.

    "You didn't hear that?" I responded.

    "Hear what?" Just then the whisper once again rode its way on the early morning sea breeze.

    "Ruuunnn." It commanded in a ghostly tone.

    "You didn't hear that?" I restated.

    Chris looked at me in confusion. As I stared back at him, not wanting to seem crazy I returned with a dismissal of my previous comment.

    "It's nothing." Chris smiled, took my hand, and led me further inland. Before the shore's sand could leave my view. I heard the sound one more time. This time as clear as the morning sunlight.

    "Run."

    The Sea was threatening me, or so I thought.

    Months had passed, and since that night my love for Chris only grew. Nothing could prevent me from loving him more every day. He was the perfect man in my eyes. He would bring me flowers when I was sad, he would hold me when I was lonely, and he looked at me with as much love-filled ferocity as I did him. I was sure he was my endgame.

    Samantha and Josh on the other hand, only seemed to like eachother under the influence of alcohol. The next morning after that first night we all met, Samantha and Josh somehow found their way into each other's arms. In the clear morning light and without the love potion that is liquor, Samantha's face retortted at the thought that Josh and her might of slept together. She kicked Josh out like some flucey, a drunken mistake.

    I Later explained to her that they did not sleep together to her relief. That, however, did not improve Josh's standing in her eyes. From that day on Samantha couldn't stand the sight of Josh. Maybe it was out of embarrassment for how she kicked him out, or it could just be out of Samantha's fear of commitment. Samantha's always been a one-and-done kind of gal. I always thought it was because she had a hard personality to love, but Josh seemed to mirror that personality. I thought they would've been great together, but alas, Samantha is her own woman and I can't make her decisions for her. From then on Josh was banned from our household leaving Samantha as our permanent third wheel. It was no biggie though, Samantha was like a sister to me and she was always welcome to hang out the Chris and I.

    It was not the first time Samantha had been my third wheel. Growing up I had many boyfriends, and as they came and went, she was there for each of them. A not-so-silent witness to my love fiascos. I remember one time with my first boyfriend at the young age of 18, my then-boyfriend Robert and I were watching a movie at my house. My parents had left town for the weekend and I was left to my own devices. Nestled under my cozy couch blanket, Robert and I started to get a little handsy. His hands were on my hips as his tongue slowly parted my lips. Our steamy makeout session was quickly thwarted when Samantha plopped down on the outside of the blanket, wedging herself right between Robert and me.

    To be honest, I completely forgot she was even there, but then again she never left.

    We popped our heads over the top of the blanket, scowling at Samantha. Her response.

    "Sorry, did I interrupt something?" I could tell that she knew exactly what she had done. That much was evident in her mischievous expression. I know I should've said something to her. I am at fault for not nipping her behavior in the butt throughout the years. That inaction continued to haunt me throughout our friendship until it boiled over, reaching a point of no return.

    Chris was always over at our house, he was my boyfriend after all. That means that Chris and Samantha were always in close proximity. I started to notice that when Chris was over Samantha would always conveniently lose her bra and put on the thinnest white house shirt she could find. She was well endowed these mostly see-through t-shirts didn't hide a thing. That or she would always find the skimpiest little workout shorts in her wardrobe, the ones that ride high and never low. I would often see Chris struggling not to stare and I don't blame him for that, Samantha is beautiful. I would even stare at her myself when she wasn't looking. When someone shoves them in your face it's hard not to look away.

    Chris mostly found the willpower to avert his eyes, to my relief, but Samantha turned up the heat. I would catch her eyes fixated on him at the breakfast table. Her nose crinkled at the thoughts running through her head. She would tease us, saying things like.

    "So I heard you guys had a really good time last night, these walls are thin you know." Chris almost always choked on his cereal at her out-of-pocket comments. She would then quell his coughing fits with a hand placement that tended to linger just a bit too long. Chris fighting not to look over at her freed, breasts.

    Samantha would give him a flirty smile when they passed eachother in the halls, turning her gaze over her shoulder to see if Chris followed her tail feathers. Chris remained steadfast for the most part, but I felt my confidence in him start to waver when I saw him start to glare too long at her from a distance. I tried to dismiss these occurrences as me being the jealous girlfriend. Samantha was my best friend and she would never betray me. That confidence was quickly ripped away when I came home early from work one day.

    Walking into our beach house, the crashing of the far-off waves became increasingly muted as the door closed behind me. I should've been here alone, the house should've been as quiet as a mouse. But off in the distance, I could hear the distinct smacking of lips engaging in a wet embrace. I inched my way through the house and down the hall. I realized that the sound was coming from Samantha's room. I pressed my ear to the door and heard a sensual moan. 'Is she watching porn' I thought to myself. 'No, Samantha was not one for fantasies, she was more of a real action kind of girl. She must've met a guy and brought him over for a light morning brunch session.' I smiled at her 'little achievement'. Pivoting away to give them the privacy they needed, but just as I took my first step, I heard something that made my heart sink.

    "Oh, Chris." The whore moaned out. My knees began to shake and tears started to well in my eyes. I turn to face the door once again. I knew I had to face whatever was on the other side of this passageway, but I hesitated. I don't know why but in that instance I remember the faint whisper I heard on the beach, all those months ago.

    'Run' played over and over in my mind. Believe me, I wanted to, but I could never forgive myself if I never confronted my suspicion. Clutching the door handle, I inhaled deeply before swinging the door wide open. There they were. The sorry sack of shit positioned in between my lose legged whore of a best friend.

    They were so busy being wrapped up in eachother that they didn't hear me burst in. I screamed.

    "Chris!" In that second, he freed himself from her clutches, tossing her off to the side, and ran for his clothes that decorated the floor. Samantha on the other hand, seemed less panicked, opting to hide under the sheets. I swear I saw a smug little look on her face. It angered me so much, but that would have to wait, my cheating boyfriend had yanked the waistband on his jeans high above his navel and was coming to comfort me.

    I hadn't even noticed my tears dripping onto the floor. He approached me both hands spread wide, as if a hug would make things better. I pushed him away.

    "Get away from me!" I screamed. Bending over to throw some clothes at him, unannounced to me I had thrown Samantha's red lacey thong at him. He swatted it away.

    "Baby." He pleaded, inching in again to comfort me. I balled my fist and decked him in the mouth. I don't know where I found the fury, but I knocked him on his ass. His backside meets the floor with a thump.

    "Get out!" He eyed me like a beat dog.

    "You too, you stupid bitch." I hissed at Samantha. Her face finally contorted.

    "Where am I supposed to go?" I was enraged to realize she didn't think there would be any consequences for her actions. Her entitlement made my blood boil.

    "I don't care, I don't care if you sleep under a bridge, I don't care if you shack up with the homeless guy from down the block, I don't even care if you walk your way into the sea and drown. Leave!" Her lips puckered in self-pity. My name was on the lease, what was she to do?

    The two grabbed their stuff, and Samantha questioned me about the rest of her belongings.

    "I'll mail them to you, now get the fuck out." They stammered to the front door, I held the door open as they stepped into the fresh mid-morning sea mist. Chris turned to ask another question but I slammed the door in his face.

    I gripped two handfuls of my hair and let out a mountain of emotion in a scream. My eyelids squeezed tight as I wept. I wanted to burn the world down. I wanted to lay down and cry till I dried up like some beached jellyfish. I had truly never hated life more than I did in that instance.

    Regaining my composure, my eyes cracked open slightly. Suddenly something caught my eye in the corner of the window. I swiveled and spat out in fury thinking either Chris or Samantha were spectating my breakdown.

    "GO AWAY!" I screamed. But just as my eyes met the figure on the other side of the glass, I jolted back in shock falling onto the floor in a panic. In a quick second, I had caught the image of some horrid, monstrous, deformity. Its face was scaly, like that of a fish. Its ears fanned out in a strange web-like fashion, and thought I saw a mouth full of jagged, sharpened teeth. From its forehead had a single long antenna with a little ball on the end. Its finger was gliding on the other side of the window, writing something in the condensation.

    The impact of the hard floor on my backside made me lose connection with whatever was lingering outside my house. When my gaze returned, the monster was gone. On the window, the message it had written out.

    'I told you to run.'

    Goose pimples engulfed my skin. I sat there for a while to see if the thing would peer out again. A few minutes passed, but it never showed. I took to my feet, cautiously approaching the window, half expecting the monster to pop out. But as I looked passed the written message. Nothing jumped out. Instead, I saw Chris off in the distance, on the sandy beach, comforting an emotional Samantha. Rage once again made an appearance. I shut the blinds angrily and stormed off into the dimly lit house. The vision of the monster, dismissed as a product of high stress.

    The coming weeks were as you would expect. I was a heartbroken fool. Spending my days going to work with a cloudy overcast always present, coming home to a messy unkept house, and crying myself to sleep at the memories of both Chris and Samantha. Losing one love was too much, but my best friend too. It hurt way so much.

    Chris would blow up my phone, trying to salvage the situation but the messages went unanswered. I should've blocked him but I found strange comfort in the pain of seeing his name pop up on my phone's notification -banner. Samantha on the other hand, had not even messaged me about her property that was left behind. She had always been a spiteful bitch.

    Soon Chris's begging got to me. He would send me messages saying that he'd made the biggest mistake of his life. That he would do anything to fix this. That he'd dreamed of marrying me and starting a family. It didn't help that I also had these illusions of forever with him. After hundreds of unanswered texts, I finally responded.

    'Meet me at Ocean Lake Beach tomorrow at 11 a.m."

    I know I shouldn't have agreed to meet with him. I am all too familiar with the expression 'Once a cheater, always a cheater", but I didn't know how else to make the pain stop. I was at the end of my rope, my heart was in a thousand pieces and I thought if I could somehow rekindle the love I once had for Chris, this nightmarish hell would go away. I was a dumb girl manipulated by pain and anger, but I felt like I had no other choice.

    Morning came and I walked out to the beach near my house, the same beach where Chris and I had our first kiss. I stood out looking at the same bouy that captivated our attention that first night. There was something about the rhythmic swashing of waves against its exterior that comforted me. Something so warm about the little bell that sounded with its rock, of the gulls that perched on its metal angle iron as they sang their mockeries to the sea. I could spend hours watching that thing bounce around.

    I felt a hand grace my shoulder, which startled me. In that exact second, the gulls on the bouy took flight and a loud splash sounded on the other side metal object, the sight of something large disappearing into the water. I swiveled around to see the hand belonged to Chris. I couldn't help but pounce on him, hugging him as I gently cried into his chest. He grasped the back of my head, letting me release my emotions. After a while, he grasped my face with two hands lifting my head to look at his. He planted a loving kiss on my forehead, and I knew that we would be okay, though there was still much we needed to discuss.

    We talked for hours, walking up and down the beach. Airing out our differences. He'd explained how Samantha had forced herself on him, how she manipulated him, how his willpower slowly broke. I listened intently and for some reason, it all made sense, as many things tend to do when you just want the pain to stop. Soon I had quickly forgiven him for all that he had done. I was just happy he'd come back to me.

    We decided to head back to my house, making one last turn on our many trips down the same beach, I clutched his arm like he was the godly figure I once believed him to be. He looked down at me with the same intensity as the first day I met him. I was so happy.

    As my house came into view, we saw a sunbather lying on the cold ground. Our beaches are not known as the most sunny or radiant, but it isn't uncommon to see sunbathers soaking up the sun's rays in the summer. Today, however, was especially cold. The skies were grey, and a cold front sent the chilly ocean breeze inland. I had even pulled out my warmest summer sweater, for this occasion. Chris and I looked at each other in confusion, but we didn't say a thing, continuing to walk towards the figure.

    The closer we got the more strange the situation was. Now about 100 feet from the person in the sand, I could see it was a woman, naked and bare. 50 feet, she was a brunette with excellent facial structure. 10 feet, I glared over at Chris who gulped at her exposed flesh. I was just about to erupt in anger at his action and at what we had just discussed. Chris shouted, "She's not breathing!"

    I snapped out of my jealousy and watched as the medical professional pressed an ear on her exposed chest. He positioned her properly on her back, raised her chin upwards, planting his mouth on her lip blowing in a huff of air as her chest was forced to expand. I stood arms crossed, not knowing what to do. He kneeled erect, pushing down on her chest a few times before, returning to her face. Again and Again, he battled to save her. She eventually, spit out a lung full of seawater. She gasped and coughed, the air finally filling her lungs.  

    Chris turned to me, 'Call 911' he said frantically.

    "No!" The naked girl shouted.

    "No 911 please!" She begged.

    Chris looked at me and back to the girl.

    "We don't know how long you were unconscious, or how long your brain was without oxygen, you need to go to the ER." He explains.

    "No 911 please." the girl said whilst still coughing.

    Chris scratched his head in frustration.

    "Pick her up, we can take her to my house for now," I said.

    Chris nodded in agreement. Scooping the naked girl up we made our way to my house that overlooked the beach. I opened the back sliding door letting Chris and the girl in. He stammered in with her in tow, letting her fall onto the couch.

    "She's hypothermic! Go find her some blankets so she can get warm!" Chris commanded. In the properly illuminated house, I could now see how blue her lips actually were, and how badly she was shivering. I ran to my bedroom and ripped the covers off my bed, rushing them out to them. I was met with the sight of the naked girl and my boyfriend inches from each other's faces. The girl's face was no longer pale and blue, now a shade of rosy peach and red. I stood there watching for a good while, as they gazed into each other's eyes. The girl's demeanor looked cynical, Chris's face, on the other hand, looked mesmerized in a strange hypnotic limbo.

    I caught the eye of the naked girl, and she slumped back onto the couch, regaining her icy complexion. The look of bewilderment melted off of Chris's face, taking a second to realize where he was. He turned to me as I clasped the bedding.

    "What are you waiting for she could die, hurry we need to get her warm." I rushed over to them engulfing the girl cautiously with the sheets. Chris, seemingly unaware of what I had just seen tucked the sheets underneath the girl's bare skin. I ran over to the gas fireplace and flicked the switch on, the fire roared to life. The naked girl shivered, her eyes closed, losing consciousness. I looked at Chris as he noticed my face contorted in worry.  

    "I think she's just tired." He comforted. The girl stirred, shifting her body over to Chris's warmth. Chris gave a dismissive shrug, almost as if saying 'What can I do, she's freezing to death', and to be fair it was a good point. The girl looked sickly, on the verge of death. I couldn't blame her for reaching for the warmest thing she could find. Just so happened that thing was my boyfriend.

    The afternoon turned to night and the girl slowly regained her color. She was exhausted, only moving to reposition her head onto Chris's lap the whole time she was asleep. I questioned if we should get her medical attention, but didn't want to overrule Chris's better judgment. After all, I wasn't a PA.

    The girl finally, rose to a seated position rubbing her eyes, while glaring around the room. She locked eyes with Chris, giving him a flirty smile. Chris nervously turned to me for help. The girl followed his gaze and saw me sitting on the other side of the couch, arms crossed unaware of what my next move should be. I bit my lip not wanting to say something, who would scold their boyfriend for doing their job? The girl and I locked eyes, I wanted to be angry but her deep dark eyes reminded me of someone I had known, as if I had met this person before. Our interaction must've seemed awkward to Chris because he felt compelled to break the tension.

    "Hey babe, do you think she could borrow some of your clothes?" He was right, we couldn't let her sit here exposed all night. I stood to my feet, the girl's eyes never leaving my face. As I disappeared into the bedroom, I heard Chris trying to get some answers out of the girl.

    "What's your name?" He questioned but I never heard a reply.

    "What happened to you?" Still, nothing was said back.

    "Can we call someone for you?"

    Rummaging through my closet, I found some pajama bottoms and a T-shirt the girl could wear. By then it sounded like Chris wasn't going to get an answer from this girl, but as I walked the clothes out to them I was met with a sight of absolute horror.

    Her arms were wrapped around the back of Chris's neck, her lips seemingly suckling at my boyfriend's tongue, and her eyes peering at me from around my boyfriend's head.

    "Chris!" I yelled. The girl unclasped their faces, moving Chris's head aside to get a better look at me. For a second, her face was expressionless, but then the edges of her mouth gave way to reveal several rows of sharpened teeth. I stood there in shock.

    The teeth slowly started to part, and I could see the inside of her slimy, cherry-red mouth playing with something. Almost as if reading my mind she decided to show me. She pushed the object to the front of her mouth, gripping it with her jagged teeth. It was a severed tongue... Chris's severed tongue.

    I shrieked in terror. The look of demented satisfaction plastered its way across the girl's face. She forced Chris's head to swivel around like a powerless mannequin, showing me her handy work. A stream of blood oozed down his chin, but his face was expressionless. The same hypnotized expression I had seen on his face earlier that day. I wanted to run away but my legs were locked in place.

    I stood there as the girl took to all fours, hunching her back like an angry cat, and her skin began to change. From the pale beautiful skin that toutted on the beach, she sprouted scales. From her dainty little ears grew webbed fans. From the top of her forehead came an ugly misplaced antenna. She had transformed into the creature outside my window.

    It stood on its hind legs taking an awkward step toward Chris's immobile body. I found the strength to plead for his life.

    "Stop." I quivered with fragile bravery, but the creature took a second step, wobbling slightly as if it were new to land. It bent over inches from my boyfriend's body. A long serpent-like tongue slid across the stream of blood coming from his mouth, until its long protrusion found a home down Chris's throat. A bump was visible from the outside of his neck as the creature plunged it in deeper.

    "Please stop," I begged. The creature extracted its tongue from the depths of my boyfriend, its hand sliding on the outside of his jeans it reached its clawed hand into his pocket, pulling out his phone. It turned it on and held it up to Chris's hypnotized face, unlocking it with face ID. It stood up and carefully walked over to me. The creature placed it in my hand with an extreme amount of gentility, cautious not to frighten me. I didn't understand what it wanted from me, as it turned its attention back to Chris. Just then the phone vibrated.

    I looked down at the new text message. My heart dropped at the person it was from... Samantha.

    'Hey baby, are you okay? I haven't heard from you all day. When are you coming home?'

    All the horrid feelings started flooding back to me. The images of my best friend straddling my boyfriend's hips, the smug little look on her face when I caught them, and the feeling of Chris's jaw on the other end of my knuckles. Then it dawned on me, the whole day Chris was baiting me into getting back with him while he was with my backstabbing best friend. I lowered the phone and over at the monster on the couch, while the creature sized him up.

    Its bulbed antenna started to glow in this bright fluorescent white, and for some reason, Chris was drawn to it. He took to his feet, the reflection of the antenna twinkling in his eye. Then the creature took a backward step toward my back door that overlooks the beach. A second step and Chris followed, never losing sight of the bright fluorescent light. I ran over to slide the backdoor open, setting them free into the ocean breeze. I no longer cared what the creature wanted with Chris. For all I knew, it wanted to eat him. If it did, I wouldn't have batted an eye. This lying sack of shit deserved it.

    They inched their way down my wooden porch steps. The creator's webbed feet made nasty sludging sounds with each embrace of the deck. When they reached the sand I was not far behind. I needed to see Chris's fate. The salty sea washed over Chris's ankles, the creature still leading inches ahead. I spectated from the sand, as the two gradually, made their way further into the sea. The waves crashed over Chris's head, only the creature's antenna was now visible. As that too met the water, it gave one last bright pulse before going out completely. The night was once again quiet, nothing stirred. Nothing until the sea bouy's little bell caught my attention.

    I sat down on the beach, watching it bounce on the ocean current like the first day I met Chris. I don't know how long I watched it, but it must've been hours, the sun was now cresting at my back. I was jolted back to reality when Chris's phone vibrated. I looked down at the message.

    'I'm really worried about you Chris, please call me.'

    Samantha was stressing about her man, we couldn't have that. I took to the text keys.

    'I'm okay babe.' I wrote, but my face lit up as I got a grand idea.

    'Meet me at Ocean Lake beach right now.' I messaged.

    'Okay, I'll be there in a few :)'

    I laid the phone down on the sand, taking in a long inhale. As I looked back out at the bouy, a familiar pair of eyes stared back at me. The creature's face parted in a grin, I returned the sentiment.

    I just hope my new little friend here likes the taste of traitorous bitch.   

    17 Comments
    2024/09/08
    16:11 UTC

    12

    ‘Cosmic Disruptor’

    “A nifty little gravity-disruption device of superior design was created for the sole purpose of bringing unpredictable chaos to the cosmos. It was employed a very long time ago, or possibly in the distant future. Time is a circular loop, you know. The ‘when’ doesn’t matter in this context. What does; is that its destructive effects are about to be felt, right here on the place you call home; ‘Terra firma’.

    I offer this courtesy warning so the residents of this buzzing microcosm can get their affairs in order. I hate surprises of this magnitude myself and felt advance notice of the total annihilation of your primitive planet would be fair and appreciated. It’s of no consequence to me if you choose to expend your remaining moments trying to independently verify what I’ve so judiciously explained, or in wasteful collective bargaining for your insignificant existence.

    All of that is between you and your ‘deity of choice’, but none of it will change the outcome. The disruptor served its purpose. It nudged the orbiting planetary bodies enough to cause irregularities and collisions. The once mercurial, and frankly boring programming of the universe was; or will be, effectively derailed. The ensuing chaos of removing ‘tracks from the train set’ put in motion an incalculable number of fascinating astronomical anomalies. One of those significant ‘variables’ is on an unwavering trajectory with Earth.”

    The entire population took a collective ‘shit’ over the morosely-stark news by our unknown interstellar informant. It was one hell of a ‘first contact’ between mankind and whatever alien species the smug SOB was. Delivered in all languages and dialects, the condescending screed was clear enough. Most experts assumed the author was probably the uncredited creator of the ‘disruptor’ device itself.

    Our first clues were the telling use of adjectives such as: ‘insignificant’, ‘primitive’, and boring’ in the warning subtext. It showed a transparent admiration for the events unfolding and lent strong support for the idea of culpability. To anonymously ‘humble brag’ about the accomplishment of screwing up the perfection of life, while cowardly ‘saving face’ and not admitting to being the architect of the problem. It was a chicken-shit thing to do, and suggested this ‘superior alien’ shared more in common with inferior humans it looked down upon, than it might want to concede.

    At the very least, the unknown being was obviously a ‘big fan’ of the gravitational disruptor device, and was unabashedly gleeful of its use in ‘shaking things up’ for our semi-predictable universe. That strongly suggested a bias toward support or being the actual instigator of the chaos. Why even let us know ‘the end’ was coming if it truly cared about our feelings and couldn’t do anything to prevent the global catastrophe? The general assumption reached was, this ‘messager of doom’ was experiencing a tiny remnant of guilty conscience.

    Those not already in a deep-spiraling depression from the doomsday news observed the subtlety in the announcement. They rallied against apocalyptic panic and analyzed the wording for important clues and hidden implications. We had no means of definitive verification that the message giver was also the culprit of our Armageddon event to come, but using that as our running theory allowed for a more calm and collected analysis. Thank goodness for their level heads. They alone formed some strategic plans as the rest of us threw up our hands and basically gave up.

    Our unified response was a carefully measured and calculated feeler, sent by our greatest scientific strategists. The extraterrestrial author had taken great pains to discourage us from begging for our lives. Either it could not stop the deadly ‘variable’ careening our way, or would not. Why pretend to be sympathetic to our fate, if it could prevent the deadly event but refused? The most compassionate thing would’ve been to allow us to remain blissfully ignorant.

    Telling us so we could ‘get our affairs in order’ implied the author wanted us to experience great fear and suffer hopelessness over deadly events which we couldn’t control. That was the opposite of ‘superior or compassionate’. It pointed to flawed vanity and sadistic manipulation. The nonhuman messenger wanted us to beg for salvation. Humanity refused to take the bait. Instead we subtly fished for more specific details. Our agitator correctly predicted we would do that anyway. We just played along with the intellectual chess match for another round.

    “Thank you for the advance alert of our impending doom. We appreciate the opportunity to prepare for it and to savor our final remaining moments. You are most gracious to give us the warning. Since you were not specific, we would like to clarify some details for our final records. Using our Earth geological measurement system of longitude and latitude, would you please share with us exactly where and when this ‘disruptor variable’ will strike our planet?”

    The messenger read the official Earth response with amusement at our predictability, and then with rising aggravation.

    “Humans! There is no ‘when’! I’ve already explained that time isn’t linear. It’s circular in nature! It’s a shame you didn’t evolve and grasp a greater understanding of science and physics! As for your simple equatorial system of longitude and latitude; the coordinates of the 14 kilometer wide asteroid will occur at: ‘21°24′0″N 89°31′0″W. This deadly impact will result in 4km high tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, global earthquakes, and will wipe out approximately 75% of your species. There is no point in trying to avoid it. Now, stop with the pointless questions and prepare for your end.”

    Despite the suspected motives of the mysterious extraterrestrial ‘advisor’, the follow-up response from it greatly relieved the contact committee organizers. The reasons for which would soon bring unexpected calm to billions of human beings worldwide. For all of the alien’s advancements in technology and evolution, there was one area where it still lacked in comprehension. The committee chairman actually laughed when he received the new message. He turned to explain his uncharacteristic amusement to his bewildered colleagues.

    “Those coordinates are the Yucatán peninsula, or the Chicxulub impact! For a species who holds a circular concept of time, warning us about an event which transpired here 65 million years ago, is the same as telling us about it ‘in advance’. We refer to it now as the Gulf of Mexico!”

    The entire room erupted in relieved guffaws.

    “I’ll let our cosmic disruptor know that we’ll be sure to warn the dinosaurs, the next time we see them.”

    0 Comments
    2024/09/07
    18:25 UTC

    10

    Sleepless Vampire Summer Nights (pt2.)

    We tried not to let that ruin the night. We left to get food at Waffle House and attempted to regroup. Kathleen needed the most cheering up, I could tell the elf's near assault nearly got to her. Barri did most of the work. My mind was half in it. I felt as if we were being watched the whole time. Then Kathleen spoke, and it pulled me back in.

    "I just really don't want to die alone," she said.

    "Hey, whoa, where's that coming from?"

    "I don't know, it's just..." she paused over her words like she knew exactly what she meant but was too ashamed to say it. "When he grabbed me, I was like, 'oh my gosh, this is what everyone is talking about on TikTok, like rejecting a man and he kills you, and I'm just like 'I'm dead'. This is it, and no one is here to even care."

    "We're here," Barri added. Kathleen might as well have not heard it.

    "I'm 23 years old and I've never been in a relationship," Kathleen mourned. "No one wants me and no one cares."

    "We want you," I said.

    "Then where were you?" she asked. That shut me down. Neither I nor Barri replied.

    "I'm sorry," she said after a minute of silence. "You saved me, and I know you did, and you always look out for me. I'm just shook a bit and feeling lonely."

    "Come," I said. "Let me fly you to my house. Let's find out what this guy is and how to stop him tonight."

    I flew the girls to my home to search for books to determine exactly what this creature was and how to stop him. I placed both of them on the ground and hobbled inside. My leg would heal in a couple of hours, but for now, I had a limp.

    My mix of confusion, fear, and insult at this attack turned into pure fury. Which made me even madder because I couldn't even stomp properly with one leg. I hobbled. We journeyed in silence, the echoes of our footsteps spoke for all of us. The girls' steps were quiet and full of trepidation.

    Finally, we arrived at the back of the cave where I made my home. Rows and rows of candles with dancing flames greeted us. 

    The girls stopped walking.

    "What?" I whipped around and barked at them, letting my frustration boil over.

    They were huddled together, almost holding hands.

    "Please don't yell," Barri said, and she covered her ears.

    "Sorry," I said. That was the first time I remember raising my voice to either of them, and the feeling twisted my stomach into knots. I stepped toward them to hug Barri. Barri always craved physical affection. She took half a step back.

    "Oh," I said aloud, not wanting to make her feel awkward but because I couldn't believe it.

    "No, wait, sorry, you didn't do anything. Well, you shouldn't yell, it's just--"

    "You live here?" Kathleen interrupted.

    Oh, what a sight they must have seen. I forget how differently we live from you. We are just a darker people in tolerance and fashion. Portraits of my ancestors - men and women - line the wall, all in traditional fashion. They sit crouched in black leather with our family's blanket on them. Their fangs bared, their weapon of choice wet, and the head of the victim of choice on the floor. There were at least 100 pictures on the walls, and many had cow heads, rabbit heads, and chicken heads. We don't eat only humans, but of course, the first pictures they saw were of my oldest ancestors, and of course, freshly cut human heads were on their portraits.

    I hate that I could hear their hearts beating faster, the shuffle of their feet wanting to escape, and the judgment in their eyes.

    "Yes," I said to Kathleen.

    They traded glances with each other and came in. That put my heart at ease.

    I brought them to my library and tried to show off as little of my place as possible. My heart was at ease, but my shame had not left.

    Regardless, together the three of us went through every book in the library to find out what exactly was attacking us.

    "Wait, is this true?" Kathleen mocked. "Kill a vampire, get a miracle?" She quoted the unholy book.

    "How would I know?" I shrugged. "I don't know, some people say we're cursed or not part of God's design or whatever."

    "That would explain your taste in music," Kathleen smiled. "Drake over Kendrick is insane, especially conserving--"

    "It's not true."

    "Whatever," Kathleen closed the book and frowned. "That's mean though. I'm sorry you had to read that; that can't be nice to hear about yourself."

    I shrugged. That level of intimacy made me awkward. It was quite unpleasant to read honestly. Especially since I knew no other vampires, and some days I frankly didn't like myself, so I thought, what if the books were right? What if we were cursed?

    "Hey, did you hear me?" Kathleen rubbed my back with the gentleness a good friend shows. "I'm really glad we're friends."

    "Same!" Barri said as she read a book and then waved it in the air. "I found something about him!"

    We gathered around, and she summarized the passage.

    "It looks like he's a Lusting Elf. The Lusting Elf sees his life purpose is to have everything his heart desires. He'd rather die than not have his lust satisfied. He or his friends will approach a target three times to get what he wants, and if he is denied all three times, he's gone."

    "Okay, great, so we just have to prepare for him three more times, and then we're set," I said, still anxious about the situation. "Let's go home."

    I dropped Kathleen off last and offered to sleep on her couch to help watch over her. I still felt that creeping feeling that someone was watching us. I did leave her side, though, because I smelled the blood of something non-human. I wish I hadn't; this is what happened.

    At perhaps 2 am, while I flew down the streets chasing what I believed could be the man in the plaid suit based on the smell of his blood, something entered Kathleen's house.

    This something cracked Kathleen's door open. The heart-stopping groan of the door roused her from her dream. She had enough time to let out half a gasp before she shut her mouth.

    Something entered her room and slammed the door. It didn't bother with silence.

    "Are you cold?" the thing whispered. Its voice was deep, adult, and male. Its outline barely visible in the room. The only light came from the thread of light from the streetlamps outside that the blinds allowed.

    "Huh, what? What?" Kathleen whispered.

    "Are you cold? You have a weighted blanket, so you're either cold or lonely?"

    "Are you, um, the guy from the bar?"

    "Him? Oh no, not me," it seemed confused at the question.

    "What do you want? Please leave."

    "Oh, well, can't do that. You should have asked me to tell you what I want. I could have done that."

    "What do you want?" she said and reached for her phone in the darkness.

    "Please don't do that! Please don't move!" the thing ordered and took three scratching steps forward, directly toward her bed.

    "Sorry!"

    It didn't reply. It only breathed, loud breaths through its mouth, she assumed. Unsure of what the silence meant, Kathleen wiggled her feet beneath the bed.

    CRASH

    Her lamp exploded in a scream. By force or by magic, she heard the clatter and the resulting drizzling of shrapnel on her floor. Kathleen screamed,

    "I said don't move!" the thing in the dark shouted.

    "I'm sorry," Kathleen sobbed, open and raw. She was terrified, and there was nothing she needed to hold back.

    "You have so many blankets on. Are you lonely or are you cold?"

    "I'm lonely."

    "What do you want other than for me to go away?"

    "Someone to hold me and tell me this isn't happening." Her words morphed into pitiful, childish blabber. The thing did not comment on that. It walked closer and closer still, until it bumped into the front of her bed.

    Thump.

    The bed said, and Kathleen did not respond. She could not respond.

    "Do you want to ask me what I want again?" the thing whispered.

    Kathleen flinched in an attempt to nod her head and then remembered he demanded stillness.

    "What do you want?"

    The thing in the dark thumped twice against the bed frame,

    Thud.

    Thud.

    Then it climbed into the bed. With the gentleness and absence of an Arizona breeze, it pulled back the covers to reveal her toes. The thing in the dark grabbed Kathleen's toe, its hands small, baby-like, perhaps the hands of a one-year-old. Kathleen loved children.

    "Before I begin," the thing said. "I must ask you, do you still deny the advances of my friend. Will you accept him as your master?"

    "No, but we can--" she cried.

    "Then enough," he said. "You won't be lonely much longer. I am a cousin to the Changeling. I am sort of a cuckoo. I will place my body inside of you from my head to the soles of my feet, and I will nest there. You will never give birth to anything that lives, and the babies who die (if you selfishly choose to have them) shall be denied heaven and hell; their souls shall journey to be slaves for all eternity in the other world."

    And then the strange creature parted her legs.

    And that is where I come in, having smelled the blood of another inhuman. I flew back and crashed through Kathleen's window. I grabbed the thing by its neck and beat its head against the floor.

    CRACK

    CRACK

    CRACK

    I eagerly lapped up the blood, relishing my revenge and the opportunity to feast on something great. But the texture, the flavor, the way it oozed - this was not what the man in the plaid shirt's blood would be like. Mouth covered in blood and senses returning, I turned on the lights to see Kathleen huddled under covers, shaking, sweating, and crying.

    "Where were you?" she asked. "I needed you here. I needed you with me. Protecting me!"

    She would say she accepted my apology and understood later, but that night she told me to get out of her house. No more attacks happened for weeks, and things went back to normal-ish.

    When I said there was a 50% chance Barri didn't know what was going on, I meant it. So, perhaps we shouldn't have left her alone at the Lesbian bar.

    Believe it or not, it was my decision to go there. Hear me out, I was a big Drake fan, and there was a certain song on the radio that summer that ran, dissing him. You might have heard it; it was called "Not Like Us."

    Certified Lover Boy

    Certified Pedophile

    Whop

    Whop 

    Whop

    Whop

    Whop

    Whop

    That song.

    It played everywhere, multiple times a night. So, of course, I went to the one spot in town it would never play, or so I thought.

    Long story short, it did play. The song played, and Barri proved again why she was the best dancer out of all of us.

    A crowd of lesbians formed around her, enamored, cheering, and throwing back drinks as Barri crip-walked in a circle to the song. For those that don't know, a crip walk is a dance that members of the Crip gang do, a complicated side-shuffle that impresses at a party.

    Barri had mastered it. I believe she liked dancing because it was so simple. Do good moves, people applaud. Unlike relationships and social dynamics where there were so many lies and half-truths that confused Barri, Barri was too authentic to understand that, and I loved her for it.

    She bore her soul as she danced, slight smiles popping out as she moved. She was so controlled, every movement purposeful. No step wasted. Honest. When she got bored, she simply freestyled until the song called for her to crip walk again.

    She was extraordinary and in her element. I felt it was safe to go to the DJ and bribe her to play Drake while Kathleen somehow found the only other single straight male to talk to.

    The song switched to something more slow and intimate, perhaps "Drunk in Love." Feeling confident and proud of herself, with one finger, she pointed to the crowd and beckoned for someone to dance with her, a slender pixie-cut red-haired girl.

    In the flashing lights, Barri grinded on the girl as Beyoncé serenaded Jay-Z. Confidence growing and alcohol taking effect, Barri sang with Beyoncé and bellowed the chorus and name of the song; "Drunk in Love." Their hips matched in sync, and Barri turned her head so her eyes could see who she sang to as they danced to the tunes of two American legends.

    As the song ended, Barri said her goodbyes.

    Barri looked for us post-song, exhausted but flattered by the love. As Barri walked through the crowd, she was confronted by the aforementioned lesbian.

    "Honey, you did so good," she said and grabbed Barri by both cheeks and kissed her on the lips.

    "Eeeh," Barri screamed. She tended to scream like an anime character at times.

    "What?" the strange woman said. Her red lip gloss smudged.

    Barri motioned to wipe her mouth but froze, debating if that would be rude or not. She decided it was and put her hand down.

    "Like, whoa," Barri said, "You can't just be kissing people." She said and pounded away to the bar. Cautious of the women who Barri thought still stared at her.

    At the bar, she was served by a disinterested muscular woman. She mused over the moment and dipped into depression. She didn't want to hurt the red-head woman's feelings, she thought. She was just dancing. Was it her fault?

    Like Kathleen, she had been hurt a lot and would prefer not to give anyone else that feeling. But she did, she felt somehow she had led on that girl. Her depression spoke to her.

    "Why couldn't she get this? Why couldn't she get people? She was trying to be good, trying to understand people, and she sucked. She sucked. She failed. She got confused. That's all she was, all she'd ever be."

    "Oh, honey," the disinterested bartender said to her, seeming very interested all of a sudden, too interested, frighteningly interested in her as if she was fresh meat to a starving man. Her eyes ate up Barri's body, her smile bent beyond normality, and she leaped over the bar counter.

    Barri leaped back, unsure of what she should do now. No one addressed the menacing bartender.

    "They. Can't. See me. Swee-tie!" the bartender sang. "It's just me and you. I'm glad your thoughts were so loud, you're telling me exactly what to do."

    The bartender was massive, a pale woman that could pass for a viking. Her cold gray eyes aged her beyond this decade.

    "I usually have to dig and dig and dig to find out how to play with one's mind, but you were shouting it," the large woman announced. "Before I begin, quick question, will you submit to my friend the elf?"

    Barri sprinted away.

    "I'll take that as no," she shouted and tackled Barri. "Let's see how many days you'll say no."

    I still do not know what creature this was.

    It was both weightless and held so much mass it made Barri fall to her knees. The woman creature wrapped around Barri like a koala and put her somehow translucent hand in her skull and began to play.

    She made the world black and white and then purple and green, and then settling on only orange and yellow. She switched Barri's vocal motor functions so, although she wanted to scream, it came out a whisper.

    Scared and unable to speak, Barri ran out of the club. Then the thing that played in her skull spoke only to her. "Your want was so loud," she said. "To be understood, and to understand, specifically for one person to do that, one man to hold at night and to understand you. Oh, I heard your request and it shall be denied."

    The woman on top of her disappeared in weight and vision, and yet Barri could still feel her crawling in her head. The monster played a game of mismatch with the words in her brain. She felt herself forgetting the right words - "Hello, goodbye, thank you, my name is, help" - all vanished.

    When to smile and when to frown slipped through her mind. How to get home and how to speak vanished.

    Barri knew how to sit, she knew how to cry. So she did. Her mouth turned into horrible and painful amalgamations as she tried to frown.

    And yet, someone still had mercy on her. 

    "Hey, honey, are you okay?" a group of girls asked as she cried on the sidewalk.

    "No, no, I want to go home," is what Barri wanted to say, but her mind couldn't form the words. Instead, she screamed. The girls ran away. This didn't stop her screaming. She screamed until her voice cracked into oblivion.

    The streets eyed Barri with suspicion and disgust. Barri felt this and mourned how she wasn't able to explain her case. She couldn't explain that she didn't have control.

    The girls ran away from Barri, and Barri away from the world, trying to find us. But her brain jumbled all of them together, and for three days, she lived as a vagrant, as a homeless woman in a dangerous city that cared for no one.

    When we found her, she was shivering in the rain under newspapers beside a garbage dump. Her bright dress from three nights ago was gone. Instead, she wore stained brown sweats and an oversized jacket. I do not know what happened to her in the three days. She never found the words to explain it.

    I didn't want the words anyway; I wanted revenge. The monster could not hide itself from me. It saw I saw her and leaped from Barri. I leaped on it and plunged my teeth into its neck. Cold silver blood sprouted from it and wet my face in vengeful satisfaction. With three mighty punches, she unfortunately got me off of her. It grew strange batish wings and flew into the sky.

    "I will kill her," I said to them, and that is what I set off to do.

    I was so mad it was comical in a way. This creature, this thing, really thought it could escape me. I had bitten into its flesh. There was nowhere it could go that I wouldn't find it. It's a shame too because it blended so well as a human before me.

    She had a job.

    I caught off all the power in her office and stormed through the darkness, like the true creature of the night I was. I'm sure I gave nightmares to everyone, but again, she escaped me.

    She had a boyfriend.

    I came from under their bed like the boogeyman. I knocked him unconscious, and she escaped.

    She had a son.

    I suppose at her ex-husband's house. She thought hiding behind the boy would be enough to save her. She thought I could not be so monstrous as to whisk her away in front of her child, but I was one, and that is what I did.

    Once in my home, I threw her on the ground and got to work. I only asked once where the elf was. She said she didn't know, as expected. I got to work. Knives, ropes, and tools of the trade of torture brought the answer out in 7 sleepless days. She was rewarded with a broken neck.

    She gave me an address to some apartment complex. It could have been a lie, I suppose, but my anger had not subsided. I decided blood must be shed.

    I flew to the third floor of that apartment and crashed through. Glass shattered, and I pounced on a chair I thought was him. It crushed under my weight and split under my claws, but it was not him. I wanted blood.

    I wanted a battle and was met with silence. That made my blood run still. The living room was empty, but I could hear stirring outside the door and in the hallway. I didn't move. My fear of this man was coming back to me. I looked at a mahogany door leading to the bedroom and knew that's where he would be waiting for me.

    I did not want to go, fear still shackled me. Unfortunately, I had no choice. This needed to end tonight.

    I pulled open the door and saw him dead!

    My revenge was again denied! I was shamed. This is not something a vampire does. This is not something a vampire can tolerate. To be denied their vengeance. I didn't even think I'd care. I never knew most of my family, only my mother, and yet I felt all of their long-gone eyes on me. By not killing him, I failed them.

    I shook the dead body and bit into its flesh to taste only dried blood. I spit it on his face and screamed. Someone knocked on the door. My noise had brought onlookers; I had to go. Still full of rage, I grabbed the paper off the bed and read it.

    "Everyone has a cost, boy. Don't blame me. I just had to remind them they were mortal and alone."

    "Nonsense," I thought. And brushed off the note of ignorance.

    Three attempts... I realized as I flew away. Three attempts, and then he'd rather die. The first attempt was that night. The second was to attack Kathleen, and the third was to attack Barri. He was already gone.

    It was already the weekend again, and we all decided to go out. Disappointed in myself for not getting revenge myself as my ancestors would have, I didn't mention he was dead yet. I needed a couple of drinks first to swallow my pride.

    That night we pre-gamed, I foolishly believed things had gone back to normal. In my mind, everything had reset. I was even playing Drake. I showed them one of his songs post-beef, and we pre-gamed and drank until the world shook, and I was singing my heart out and swinging my hips like I was a Brazilian at Carnival.

    Thirty-six in the chest, okay

    Twenty-eight in the waist, okay

    Forty-six in the hips, come swing my way

    Swing my way, drop for me, sing for me

    Bruk your back and bend up your knee

    Badmind gyal can't friend up with me, no

    As I danced, I noticed I still had dried blood on my nails. The blood from her boyfriend, no doubt. It seemed I had become the monster I never knew myself to be, and was that such a bad thing? It was for the safety of my best friends after all.

    "Can you help me zip up my dress?" Kathleen asked.

    Drunk and wobbly, I went into the room of my best friend.

    Kathleen had her back to me, and in the bathroom mirror, I saw Barri behind the door with a stake. And then it all made sense.

    "Kill a vampire, get a miracle."

    "Everyone has a cost, boy. Don't blame me. I just had to remind them they were mortal and alone."

    Kathleen was almost cursed to not have a kid, what she wanted most. Barri was left misunderstood and homeless for three days. They were faced with mortality and decided what they really wanted. They wanted a miracle, not me. I ran out of the room, popped out of a window, and burst into the night air.

    I have found a new cave, not the home of my ancestors, somewhere to die alone.

    There will be no revenge, no grand plan to dominate, nor bats haunting them to alert them of my absence. I didn't want it then, and I don't want it now. I wanted friendship, and you all have denied that from me. So, I must be alone. My mother was right, your mythology was right: blood is all that matters, and blood is what we're all seeking. Blood is what they were born to see. Blood is what I was born to chase.

    There are not many of us vampires left; we will die soon. But I write this note because I am begging you, dear reader, if you happen to run into someone different from you, a little strange, and with some features that scare you - that is to say, someone who is a vampire - if they want to be your friend and treat you as a friend, please be kind to them. I have not eaten nor drunk in so long. I will die in this cave, and I am so sad I will die alone.

    THE END OF HIS TALE

    "So," I said to the vampire, "you prefer to die in this cave instead of being surrounded by monsters?"

    "Yes."

    "But what if humans were as diverse as you in their monstrosity? What if they were capable of disturbing acts as well as great virtue? What if that was not just as a species but for person to person as well."

    "What?" he asked and looked up at me. I tossed away the stake, tore off the garlic, and threw the book against the cave.

    "What if all that garbage really was for my protection, and I meant no harm? What if two girls forfeited college this semester to pay for my quite pricey service fee to find you and simply ask you for forgiveness?"

    "What? No way. No--"

    "And to ask you to come back because they miss you. They knew they were wrong? What then? Would you still choose to stay in the cave? I won't drag you out of this cave, but Kathleen and Barri want you back. The choice is yours."

    0 Comments
    2024/09/05
    17:20 UTC

    6

    Canary's Omen CH5 Excerpt-Gaunt

    It tackled me and grabbed hold of my throat, its long thin claws digging into my flesh and turning the skin of my throat to rock. I clenched my teeth till they nearly shattered and ran my fingernails through the wood, grasping at the shards and bolting upright. I slammed my head into the monsters and gained on top, gripping the neck as it had gripped mine. I wrapped my fingers around and squeezed as the flames crawled up my arms and the hairs of my body lit and exploded like the many fuse strands of a cannon. Before I knew what I was doing, I had already squeezed every last drop of life from the cur that took her from me. As the fire receded and the room grew dark, i realized i was not choking a spirit…but rather…I was choking her.

    “No…no no no no….BEATRICE NO!”

    A single tear ran down her face as the screams from outside deafened me to her final words. I leaned forward and pulled her head into my shoulder.

    “No no my love im so sorry”

    She grazed my cheek with her hand and spoke softly

    “Its alright my love…its ok”

    She took a last labored breath and I watched her once eternal body crumble,the beauty and color in her eyes leaving at the same speed at which i had taken her life. I shook her shoulders as I wept, my tears falling on her own and mixing on the floor beneath. As the building crumbled and fell, I could only utter a few saving words, for any more speech that I could produce would be a fallacy.

    “I didnt know what I was doing my love…you have to believe me I thought I was saving you…I thought…I was doing the right thing”

    But i wasnt, so rarely does the right thing ever feel quite as dark as what I have done. I wandered out of the room, tripping over myself as I made my way down the cracked steps of the inn. People ran by me and screamed as they overtook the rooms, searching for any solace from whatever kind of chaos had erupted outside. I mumbled to myself, just barely breathing as I fell down the stairs and kept trudging. The cold air bit at my chest and I felt the freezing winter surround me…I killed my wife…my love…the one thing that had brought me back from all the hells id seen before…and I killed her. It takes a lot to fix the kind of darkness I had inside me and she had every ounce of ability to save me. But who would save me now?

    “Noone…im afraid”

    I looked up and saw a tall man, his arms exposed to the winters just as mine were. He stared off at the legions of darkness that fell upon the city, his goggles hid his eyes but a faint yellow glow from beneath the mask told me there lie more power then I had ever seen. I looked to him and spoke softly.

    “Are…you one of them?”

    He shook his head, his long beak moving from side to side

    “Not in the slightest. I am a doctor, and I know the darkness you are holding now.”

    I looked down at my ashen hands, the cold terror of the night blending in with my damaged skin and solidifying the cloud that now latched itself to my soul. 

    “I hold nothing, it is stuck to me like an urchins spine. I want it out of me”

    He knelt before me and removed a bottle from his waist, dabbing a small drop of fluid in his palm and pressing it to my skin. Smoke rose from his glove as the liquid seared and sizzled, boiling my flesh as I threw my head back and screamed into the night. He looked up at me and shook his head

    “The miasmas got its hold on you, but this one is quite weak. Ive no idea why it sought you out but as we speak its becoming entwined with your body…and your soul”

    I pushed his hand tighter against my chest

    “Destroy it then, with me attached!”

    He shook his head again and threw me off. He looked down at me with a mixture of disdain and pity, as if he knew what I had done when I turned. As my flesh began to wither away and the bulk that I had grown comfortable in turned to muscle and bone, I turned down my head and began to sob.

    “I just want to be with her”

    The winter bit at me again and suddenly a hailstorm of frozen daggers were bearing down on us, ready to impale and maim anything in their path.

    “Make it right”

    4 Comments
    2024/09/04
    17:55 UTC

    40

    I fell in love with a wooden boy named Woodworm

    All my friends were pointing and laughing as he came trodding down the street. His wooden feet clunked and clacked on the cobblestoned road.

    One of the girls in our group wiped the snot from her nose as she sized up her target. As he came into range she flung a rock the size of a baby's fist at his wooden head. A hollow thud echoed around the street as he fell to the floor.

    “I told you he had an empty head,” shouts one of the girls as the rest fall around laughing.

    My heart broke for him as I stood there watching as he tried to get back on his feet. He stumbled back and forth as he tried to steady himself on his bent wooden legs. The other girls jeered at me as I ran over to help him.

    His faded, painted face made his sad, weary voice sound lost. The only thing that looked real about him was deep, soulful blue eyes and even they seemed void of joy.

    “My name is Lucy, what’s yours?”

    The wooden boy looked away in embarrassment.

    “I don’t have a name,” said the boy as his blue eyes burned into mine.

    “Everyone’s got a name. Even my dog has a name.”

    “My father just calls me boy,” he says in a shameful soft tone.

    His wooden frame was warped and infested with woodlice from years of neglect.

    “I know what to call you. From now on, your new name will be Woodworm.”

    When I held out my hand to shake his hand, his eyes lit up. “It’s nice to meet you, Lucy,” he said as he gripped his cold wooden hand around mine.

    Days passed with no sign of Woodworm. I stood at the top of the street waiting for the sound of his wooden feet to come clip-clopping down the street. Instead, Woodworm's father came stumbling down the street drunk.

    “Have you seen your son, today,”

    He looked at me cockeyed.

    “Who are you?” he incoherently blurted.

    “My name is Lucy. I’m a friend of your son.”

    “Who would want to be friends with that freak?” he said as he stumbled away mumbling to himself.

    Woodworm's father was the local carpenter and drunkard. When he wasn’t busy mending barrels for the brewery he was busy drinking it dry. You always hear him cursing as he staggers home at night with a belly full of whiskey ready to unleash what demons stir in his soul on poor Woodworm.

    The town was busy getting ready for the spring festival, and all the wives were busy scrubbing the year-old grime from the cobblestones.

    I cut left down by the old flour mill and made my way towards the field at the back of the church. As I neared the rusty iron gates, I got a strange smell of burning damp wood.

    When I crossed the clearing, the burning smell intensified. Across the field of bright blue wildflowers, I saw a group of boys dancing around an open fire as two other boys held Woodenworm over the flames.

    “Leave him alone,” I shouted while holding a thick tree branch above my head.

    One of the older boys looked me up and down with contempt

    “This is none of your business. Now go home before we throw you on the fire with him.”

    I brought the branch down on his brutish shaved head, knocking him to the floor. I swung the branch around like a crazy person hitting anything that got in my way.

    The boys left standing, picked their friends off the floor before making their escape from the field.

    I brought Woodworm to the river and threw water on his smouldering backside.

    “That should do it. Just a little scratch.” Woodworm looks to the ground in silent shame.

    “As the boys held me over the flame I wondered if the flames felt as nice as its glow,” he said as he looked down at his wooden hands.

    “Why does your father treat you so badly,”

    A sadness emanated from Woodworm's eyes.

    “My father and my mother couldn’t have kids so he made me. But when my mother got sick he blamed me for dying. He said I was an abomination that shouldn’t have existed.

    I took his hand and placed it on mine before kissing him softly on the cheek. “I’m glad you exist,” I whispered gently in his ear.

    Today was the spring festival, and the people were busy getting their stalls ready. The fresh spring morning brought a happy vibe, and everyone was eager for the festivities to begin. Amongst the hustle and bustle, I caught two of the boys from yesterday whispering to each other before running down one of the side lanes.

    “Knowing those two, I’m sure they’re up to something,” I thought to myself as I followed discreetly behind them.

    I followed the winding lanes to an old abandoned tannery and watched as they disappeared through a broken window. I run to the window and watch them scurry through the dark, damp building, laughing and hollering to themselves.

    The first thing that hit me was the unforgivable stench. I held my nose as I followed the sounds of laughter up a dilapidated staircase. I made my way down a narrow hall to a room with a large tanning pool in the centre.

    The same boys from before, along with some of my so-called friends, stood around jeering as they held Woodworm over the stinking, festering pool of sludge.

    “Go home, traitor. You’re not wanted here,” shouted one of the girls.

    “We want to know if it floats like a boat,” laughed one of the boys.

    I puffed my chest out in defiance. “Put him down, or you’ll have me to deal with,” I screamed”

    “What will you do? You're just a weak little girl.”

    I walked over and punched the boy in the nose. He stumbled before dropping Woodworm to wipe the blood from his face.

    “That’s the second time you’ve embarrassed me,” he bellowed as he came at me.

    He grabbed my neck and squeezed it tight. I fought to get his hands off me, but his grip tightened around my neck. I felt my legs go weak as I gasped for breath. I pushed and shoved when all of a sudden, he lost his footing and fell backwards into the pool of sludge.

    Some of the boy's friends ran for home, while the others stood and watched as their friend struggled to keep afloat before he disappeared into the murky depths of the pool

    I picked Woodworm up and we made a run for the woods. We both kept running and didn’t stop until we got deep into the woods

    Too tired to keep going we stopped and huddled behind a tree.

    “We’re in trouble, Woodworm. I just killed that boy.”

    I felt his cold wooden arms wrap around my waist.

    “It was an accident, right,” he says softly.

    “That won’t matter to these people. Trust me. I know what they’re like.”

    Beams of golden light shone through the branches as the sun started to set.

    “Why are those boys so mean to me,” he asked with a saddened voice.

    It’s because you are different and not like them. People in our town don’t like different.”

    Woodworm looked up at me with sad blue eyes.

    “I dream about becoming a real boy. In the dream, there’s a beautiful woman with arms of fire, and she wraps them around me in a warm embrace,” he said in a soft broken voice.

    “You’re real to me,” I said as I drifted off to sleep.

    I woke to angry eyes staring down at me. I tried to scream, but they grabbed me and stuffed me in the back of a horse-drawn carriage.

    The carriage stopped in the middle of the town center. A crowd of people were waiting and started throwing rotten fruit as we emerged from the carriage. I saw my dad, who barely made eye contact as he hid behind his shame.

    My heart started racing with dread when I caught a glance at the large stack of wood piled in the center of the town

    “What are you going to do to me? I didn’t do anything.” I pleaded

    Three of the town elders sat at a makeshift bench, waiting to pass their judgment on me. They looked down on me from their pedestal of righteousness, judging me with their leering eyes.

    “For the murder of Mr Goldberts, son, what do you say in your defence?”

    I looked around at all the angry faces and realized my fate was already sealed. One of the boys from before stood by the bench and pointed aggressively towards me.

    “She did it. She pushed Henry in the pool.” A feeling of anger rose from the pit of my stomach.

    “He’s a liar. It was an accident. He was trying to kill me, I swear on it.”

    As I pleaded my innocence, a piece of rotting fruit hit me in the face. The crowd started shouting even louder. “Burn the murderer.”

    Men in black hoods began pouring oil on the stacks of wood. The guy that grabbed me from the woods stepped out from the crowd with Woodworm in his grasp.

    “We believe this thing was with her when it happened.”

    He shoved Woodworm in front of the elders, who stared at him as if he was worthless.

    “What do you have to say for yourself?” He looked at me with sorry eyes before looking back to the bench.

    “I did it. I killed him. He was going to kill Lucy, so I pushed him.”

    The three elders started whispering back and forth.

    One of the girls that took the most pleasure in tormenting Woodworm stood from the crowd.

    “He’s telling the truth. I saw it myself. We need to burn him.”

    The crowd jeered and hollered as the elders continued to whisper to each other.

    “We have made our decision.”

    Their eyes focused on Woodworm as he stood there shaking.

    “For the crime of murder, we sentence you to death. Take him away immediately.”

    I felt my heart snap in two as they dragged Woodworm to his death. I ran to the front of the screaming crowd.

    “Please, Woodworm, you can’t do this. You can’t leave me. Please, I love you.”

    He reached down his hand out close enough for me to touch the tips of his wooden fingers.

    “I’ll never forget you, Lucy. You made me feel like a real boy. I love you too.”

    I looked up at his sparkling blue eyes, and the painted-on smile disappeared. The tips of his fingers start to feel warm, and his cold, wooden hands turn silky soft.

    “Look at your hands, Woodworm.”

    “What’s happening to me, Lucy,” he said as the momentary excitement was broken as the crowd pulled me back.

    I stood and watched him turn from a broken wooden toy into a handsome blue-eyed boy, as one of the hooded men set the wood alight.

    The look of sheer terror on Woodworm's face sent me into a hysterical mess. I pleaded for them to let him go, but my words got lost amongst the roaring crowd.

    The crowd went silent as the fire engulfed his entire body, and his unmerciful cries rang out through the town.

    Some people gasped in horror as others walked away in shame. I stood there helplessly when all of a sudden, Woodworm's tortuous screams stopped. The flames started twisting around his body and a sudden calm appeared on his face.

    Woodworm's eyes focused on something within the flames. He beamed a big bright smile as the figure of a beautiful woman appeared. Just like the woman from Woodworm’s dreams, she wrapped her fiery hands around him, engulfing his entire body. The fire quickly dissipates, and all that’s left is a smouldering pile of wood.

    As I sat by the river, hoping to feel Woodworm's presence, I looked out over the blue fields and saw the figure of a beautiful woman and young boy dancing amongst the glow of the setting sun.

    I write my story to let the world know that the blue-eyed boy I called my friend existed.

    2 Comments
    2024/09/03
    18:28 UTC

    172

    My Sister Got her Revenge on Her Deathbed

    I [F40] have a dying sister[F55] who got her revenge on her deathbed.

    My family is like any other large loving family. I have twelve siblings, countless nieces and nephews, and many brothers and sisters-in-law. What can I say, my parents didn't have a hobby. While there may be a lot of love within our large family, we have differences, just like any other dysfunctional household. There is jealousy, envy, and many other differences brought upon by senseless things like religion. Ever since our parents died, my eldest sister was the only thing keeping all of us in line. She was like the second mother we all depended on, never taking sides during a family squirmish, she was the peacekeeper we all needed. Even after she was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, she continued to be the glue that bonded us together. But the end was seemingly on the horizon, for her and for our tight-knit family.

    She was sadly nearing the end of her fight with her disease. After so many years of battling to stay in the land of the living, the good lord was calling her back to him. She was in hospice care. The doctors had ruled out any additional treatments to combat her worsening condition. She had already undergone countless rounds of chemo, radiation, and experimental immunotherapies, but it was all for not. She now lay on the bed of her transition, a comfy hospital-style gurney provided to her by her insurance company. The sad thing is, her insurance refused to pay for the experimental therapies that she needed, but they had no problem footing the bill for her deathbed. Life is full of these little ironies and contradictions.

    These contradictions always have the most impeccable timing, like the fact that none of my sisters-in-law could ever stand the sight of my sister Elinor, but here they were, clutching my sister's hand as it slowly grew colder. Playing at sadness, but through all the tears it was evident that it was all an act. The tears streamed, but you could tell that their emotions were up-played for show. They competed to show the family that they were the sisters who cared the most. It was sad and much of it made me cringe. Even my dying sister would sometimes roll her eyes at the emotional outbursts, but being the loving woman she was, she never pointed out these hypocrisies. She always found it in her heart to plant a loving kiss on every one of their foreheads when they would weep into her chest. She is a better woman than I could ever be.

    Death is never punctual, it runs on its own time. The doctors had given her a week to live after discharging her from the hospital, but she was alive and unwell two months after the day she was supposed to die. In all that time we had never left her alone. All twelve brothers and sisters, nieces, and nephews would make an effort to come and see her at least once a day. At night her siblings would take turns watching her throughout her restless slumber because no one should have to die alone. It is safe to say that her home was a bustling hub of family cohesiveness, a never-ending family gathering. But it is in this constant proximity to each other that the cracks in our love's foundation started to show.

    My sister's breathing had grown heavier, and she could no longer raise her voice to quel any disputes. It broke my heart to see her this fragile, and it angered me that my bickering sisters-in-law had no respect for Elinor's peace.

    That day there were multiple people there to see Elinor. Two of my brothers (and their wives), my eldest niece, and me. We all surrounded her gurney, which was conveniently placed in her spacious living room, rather than her cramped bedroom that would never be able to accommodate the constant stream of visitors. Despite the heaviness of the situation, we as a family had made it a point to try and keep our visits as joyful as we could. We wanted to make sure Elinor was not surrounded by doom and gloom, she deserved to have her last days be as joyous as they could be.

    My brother, always being the storyteller, recounted hilarious stories from our childhoods. In this particular instance, he was telling a story about how our mother had scolded him for putting gum in my hair, a rather traumatic memory for me given that I had to cut most of my long beautiful locks to rid myself of the large patches of bubblegum.

    "She had to get a bowl cut so short it made her look like my little brother." He stated through an exaggerated cackle, his wife bursting into a loud giggle. Everyone turned towards me to make sure I was privy to the joke, but when they noticed my uncomfortable smile, they chuckled nervously. Elinor knew this story all too well, she was the one who failed to unclot my hair, and the hairdresser who sheered me like a sheep.

    Elinor raised a shaky hand and lightly tapped the back of my brother's head, his chair just within arm's reach of her bedside. If she had been in a stronger state, my brother's head would've rocked forward with a thump, but now it was more of a love pat. My brother turned to Elinor, and rather than scolding him for making fun of me, she waved her index finger no. My brother understood the quiet reprimand, his eyes welling at the realization that this would be one of the last times my sister would scold him.

    My sister noticed the tears and outstretched her arm, an instruction for him to bring his head closer for a hug. He obliged and pressed his head against her bosom. She planted a gentle kiss on the top of his head, not needing to say a word her 'I love you' was loud and clear. The interaction was wholesome and heartfelt. It made me sob. I looked around the room and not one eye was dry, that is until I locked eyes with my brother's wife, who touted a mischievous smile. I don't think the sensitivity of the situation registered, she had always had issues with understanding when a joke was up, either that or she simply didn't care. She broke the silence.

    "Yeah, you too really do look alike! Honestly, Christien if you cut your hair I'd probably end up planting a kiss on you by mistake, that strong jaw would make any woman swoon." She erupted into another joyous outburst. All eyes were planted on her and her lack of situational awareness. Even Elinor side-eyed her comment. A heavy awkwardness fell upon the room. Until it was finally broken by my other sister-in-law.

    "Honestly Sherrie, do you not know when to shut your mouth?" She said in a gritted tone.

    "There is a time and place for your bullshit and right now is not the time or the place."

    "Oh spare me, Olivia. You've always acted like this perfect, pristine, pomp princess but your nothing more than a spiteful little bitch." Sherrie spat out in a hiss. Olivia shot to her feet, thrusting the chair back with the back of her knees with a screech as it slid across the tiled floor.

    "Me a spiteful bitch? Well, it's better than being a tone-deaf little whore like you, you arrogant bitch." Olivia's husband, my brother now grasped her by the wrist, instructing her to calm down. Sherrie also rose to her feet, chest puffed and ready for battle.

    "Stop!" Elinor commanded with the loudest scream she could muster. All eyes had returned to my sister, who was now panting with heavy emotion, an emotion she did not have the energy to feel. The two squabbling inlaws locked eyes and dropped their gaze to the floor in disappointment.

    "I'm sorry Elinor" Sherrie apologized, Olivia nodding in solidarity with her statement. Elinor's eyes had become heavy. Her outburst had taken a lot of energy and she was falling asleep. The room cleared out leaving Sherrie's husband, my middle brother, to keep Elinor company.

    A few days later, most of my family was over at Elinor's. It was a Saturday, and ever since my sister got her impending prognosis, we had congregated at her home every weekend to show our support. It was like a big party Saturday. On this day my eldest brother Rob was set to fly in from LA. He had not found the time to come see Elinor, he is a big-shot plastic surgeon and his clients book their surgeries months in advance, it was not until this day that he had finally cleared enough room in his schedule to come see Elinor. You could see that this seeming lack of urgency may have rubbed some in my family the wrong way, but not me.

    I understood that no matter what, life goes on, and while it is important to keep our sister supported it was also imperative to keep our lives and careers functioning and on a good trajectory. Even Elinor had said this herself. I had overheard her speaking to my eldest brother over the phone, instructing him not to worry, that if he made it down or not it was no big deal. She told him that no matter what she would always love him. Despite that conversation, my brother was insistent on coming to say his goodbyes. He spent weeks clearing his schedule to the dismay of many of his high-profile clients, he finally found the time.

    He rolled in driving a fancy rented G-wagon. We live three hours from the nearest major airport, the drive is long and dreary, I don't blame him for getting a fancy car for such a long drive. He has the money after all. His arrival was not subtle. All of my little nieces and nephews ran out to gawk at the blacked-out monstrosity in the driveway.

    "Wow!"

    "Cool!" The kids shouted from outside the house. Most of the adults stayed firmly planted in the living room awaiting his arrival. As the door swung open my brother walked in confidently, head held high in a manner worthy of his profession. His clothes were nice and expensive, but not overboard. His beard was trimmed and neat, and a shiny watch decorated his wrist. My brother may have been well off and could afford many luxuries, but he never touted them in a tasteless manner. I'd say that he was rather respectable with how he carried himself.

    As he made the rounds around the room, politely shaking the hand of my brother's wives, hugging his siblings, and nibblings, I could see several faces contorted as he passed them by. Some looked at his Rolex in disapproval, others rolling their eyes at the aroma of his delicious-smelling high-end calone as it graced their noses. I heard some off-hand whispers aimed at getting a rise out of my brother.

    "Look at Mr. Big Shot over here." One of my brothers commented.

    "It's just too much." A sister-in-law whispered to another.

    "He could've just rented a Prius." Someone hissed. My brother however comported himself like the gentlemen he was, making his way over to Elinor, he clutched her hand and said

    "I'm here sissy." The two broke out into a somber weep. Being the eldest of the family, they had shared the most memories. All those memories flooded back as their eyes met for the last long separated hello. To say that there were many scowled faces in that room was an understatement.

    Two days later, Elinor had taken a turn for the worse. She had lost consciousness the night before and was in the home stretch towards the light. Everyone was there. No one wanted Elinor to pass without their presence. Maybe it was out of guilt or out of love for my sister, I'll never truly know. The living room was crowded, with no room for anyone to even sit, they stood in solidarity. My Eldest brother sat just off the edge of the bed next to Elinor. Everyone's eyes were fixated on her chest as it rose and fell with each strained inhale. It had been a full day since Elinor had started wheezing, a clear sign that the end was imminent. The room was quiet, no one dared disturb the peaceful night. That is until the doorbell rang.

    One of my sisters, Reachl, shuffled off towards the front of the house, while everyone else looked at each other in confusion. Who could it be, everyone was accounted for. That question was quickly answered when my sister's voice echoed through the quiet house.

    "Welcome Father Mathews. Right this way." She had called her priest to give Elinor one last blessing. My heart dropped at the argument this was going to start. You see, many in my family are of different faiths. Catholic, Christian, and LDS. Elinor, however, was Agnostic. She had made it clear that she did not want her funeral service conducted in the light of any religious denomination. My other sister had gone against her wishes, now a religious leader was walking towards a blood bath.

    They walked into the living room. Everyone stared at the Father dressed in his black garments and Roman collar. You don't have to be a messenger of god to know the atmosphere was heavy with judgment.

    "Rachel? What is he doing here?" One of my methodist sisters-in-law demanded. Many other eyes waited for the answer to the question.

    "I will not have my sister die without being cleansed of her sins by the rightful faith."

    "What do you mean the rightful faith?" My Morman brother gritted out.

    "I'm just saying that I want to be reunited with my sister in the afterlife and Father Mathews is here to make sure I do." She gestures over at the man now cowering at the situation he just walked in on.

    "You know Elinor didn't want religion during any of this Rachel, get him out!" One of my brothers yelled. Father Mathews understood and attempted to pivot out of the room, but Rachel grabbed him by the shoulder.

    "Father Mathew, you stay right here." You could see the priest's knees shake at the fury that was being directed in his direction.

    "I don't give a damn what the rest of you think, my sister is getting this blessing regardless if you want it or not." The room erupted in a bustling uproar.

    "It's my pastor who should be the one giving her the blessing."

    "NO! My bishop should be here."

    "Elinor didn't want any one of those here!" The constant yelling divulged into an inaudible mess of shouting.

    "Quiet!" Rob's deep voice finally managed to quiet the screaming.

    "We will respect Elinor's wishes. No one will bring any priest, bishop, pastor, or any other religious figure into this household." Everyone's eyes were angrily planted on my brother.

    "Who the hell do you think you are?" questioned Sherrie.

    "You come in here all high and mighty in your fancy car, and nice clothes and you think you can boss all of us around?"

    "Shut your mouth Sherrie!" countered Olivia. Olivia lunged at Sherrie in a blind fit of rage. Swinging and scratching the two fell to the ground in the squirmish. The room regained its panicked state as they tried to separate the two women.

    "Guys!" Rob yelled, but no one paid him any mind.

    "Guys! Elinor!" A few people finally turned in his direction.

    "Guys!"

    "Guys- she's dead!" The room fell quiet as his words finally registered.

    Elinor had drawn her last breath during the commotion. Everyone was too busy fighting to have been there for her in her final moment. The room was in shock for several minutes until a few people started to cry in sadness.

    Sherrie looked at Olivia.

    "This is all your fault!" She screamed. The two raised their voices as they once again began to battle. Suddenly the lights cut out and the room was dark. A few panicked gasps were heard followed by someone flicking the light switch on and off but the power had gone out.

    Finally, a few people took out their phones to light the dark room. As lights made their way around the living room, shining on many angry faces, they all stopped when they reached Elinor's bed.

    The gurney was empty, and Elinor's body had disappeared. Rob reached out patting the empty bed followed by a panicked "Elinor!"

    "Where is she?" A voice from the shadows called.

    "What the hell? Elinor?" Sherrie said fearfully.

    The cell phones strobed sporadically around the room, some running into nearby doors looking for the sickly woman.

    "Elinor!"

    "Where are you?" I too unholstered my phone, panning the light around the room slowly taking in the panicked situation. I stopped when I reached the sight of Father Mathews frozen in fear, his eyes planted on the corner of the high vaulted ceilings. Eventually, many others shone their lights on the frightened priest. Rachel, the sister who'd called Father Mathews in the first place walked up behind him, carefully grasping his shoulder.

    "Father Mathews?" The priest jolted at her touch, taking a quick glance over at my sister, before promptly returning his sight to the corner of the ceiling, raising a shivering hand with an outstretched index finger in the process. The flashlights slowly panned in that direction and revealed an ungodly sight. Elinor had seemingly scaled the side of the walls grasping the smooth drywall with the dexterity of a spider, she perched herself between the three surfaces with this strange grace.

    I was the one to break the silence.

    "Elinor?" She didn't move, her eyes fixated on the empty walls. again I called out.

    "Elinor?" Still as a statue. My sister-in-law finally chimed in.

    "Please Elinor, come down." In that instance Elinor's head twisted 180 degrees, bones audibly breaking in the process, she let out a deep demonic command.

    "Shut up you stupid bitch!" The room shook at the power of her bass. Everyone dropped their phones in fear. Suddenly the room was dark once again. Screams broke out, followed by the scratching of nails on the tiled floor.

    "What's going on?" Someone called out. In that second the power came back on. I took in the shocked faces and turned my head to where I had just seen my sister climbing the walls. She was gone. I didn't even have time to process the situation Rachel screamed out.

    "Where's Father Mathews!?" On the floor where the priest once stood were ten streaks of blood. Something dragged him off, but he clawed at the ground, fighting to stay where he was. Rachel erupted in a panic.

    "Father? Father, where are you?" She darted from the living room, following the streaks of blood. She vanished down the hall, and into Elinor's bedroom.

    "Elinor?" The question was heard from the bedroom before the sound of a gutwrenching scream. My other brother, Olivia's husband started in that direction but was stopped by my brother Rob.

    "Stop! Don't you move."

    "What are you talking about we have to help them that's our sisters."

    "Did that sound like your sister?" Rob countered, referring to Elinor's demonic voice.

    "But Rachel?" Olivia's husband quivered.

    "We have no fucking clue what is going on, and until we do we are all staying right here," Rob said with grit. My other brother cowered at his command and shied back into the crowd. Just then the sounds of bear feet pitter pattered on the hard floor, down the hall, just out of sight.

    Suddenly, Elinor stood, in the entryway to the living room. Her hair covering her face, but the sight of a cold smile was visible just under her bangs.

    No one dared open their mouths until Sherrie mustered the courage to step forward.

    "Elinor, please stop this." The corners of Elinor's mouth crinkled, her lips slowly parting to reveal a mouth full of sharpened teeth.

    Sherrie's face contorted in fear. Elinor, however, broke out into a cackle, before speaking in her deep guttural voice.

    "You dare command me, you wretched bitch. I've stood here dying while you ungrateful load of misfits squabble at the most irrelevant bullshit."

    "Elinor, I'm--" Before her reply can be worded the lights flicker and Elinor disappears. This time instantly appearing behind Sherrie. The crowd takes a giant step back.

    Elinor inches closer to Sherrie's ear.

    "Tell me why an envious, cold-hearted, dimwitt like you should be allowed to live.

    "Elinor please, I'm sorry. I know I haven't been the most honest and just sister-in-law, but I want to live. Please let me live. I can change. Please Elinor, please." Sherrie, begs as she now stands in a pool of her own making.

    Nestled within the crowd, Olivia stands with her lips fighting not to smile at Sherrie's fear. But that urge is quickly washed away when Elinor calls out her name.

    "Olivia." The crowd parts, clearing a direct passage to her. Elinor turns to face her other in-law. Olivia's lips begin to shake. In a split second Elinor lunged forward pinning the woman against the wall, clutching her by the throat.

    "And you. A sinner amongst the sinful. You stand here smiling like you're not at fault"

    "Please, Please, Elinor" Olivia croaks out.

    "As a matter of fact, this room is full of hypocrites and liars." Elinor lets go of Olivia her feet meeting the ground as she breaks into a coughing fit in her attempt to catch her breath. Elinor, however, raises both hands in the air, swiftly bringing them down. As her arms reach her side, everyone in the room collapses to the floor. It's like gravity increased tenfold.

    "Why should I let any of you miserable pieces of shit live?" Some in the room found the strength to get to their knees where they now beg for their lives.

    "We're sorry Elinor, let us live."

    "We promise to change."

    "We'll be the best, most loving family, please let us live."

    "Liars!" Elinor screams. The room erupts in a flurry of whimpers.

    "Envy, Jealousy, religion, all points of contingent that are breaking this family apart. I will never leave this earth while you pack of cutthroats squabble and claw at each other's throats. I may not be here in body after tonight, but mark my words if I have to come back here to set you hoard of mongrels straight, I will drag each one of you to your deaths." Looking around the room, brothers, sisters, in-laws, and enemies all hold each other in fear.

    "We promise, Elinor."

    "We swear it, sissy."

    "We don't want to die." My eldest sister finds her smile once again as she sees the way everyone supports eachother in their time of need. Even Sherrie and Olivia somehow found their way into each other's arms. Some of my other siblings take shelter in Rob's embrace. A strange peace plasters its mark on Elinor and the sickly appearance she's touted for the past few years changes to one of a healthy radiance.

    Once again the lights cut out. As they came back on Elinor was gone and gravity regained its normal strength. Peering around, all eyes locked on the gurney, where Elinor's body once again lay. Rachel and Father Mathews, alive and well, made their way back to the living room. All eyes meet Elinor's peaceful expression. My sister's message was heard loud and clear. We were a family, and family will never be divided by senseless things like envy, jealousy, or religion.

    It's been a few years since my sister passed, but I'll be the first to tell you that no one has missed a Thanksgiving, a Christmas, or a birthday. No one raises their voice to another. No one fights. We are at peace. The peace that my sister wanted. Let's just hope this peace lasts. Elinor was never one to make idle threats.

    9 Comments
    2024/09/03
    17:07 UTC

    3

    Human - Peacemaker

    2 Comments
    2024/08/31
    21:40 UTC

    10

    Sleepless Vampire Summer Nights Part 1

     I found a vampire in a cave and he told me a story.

    I was an expert on finding things. Simon R. Green's Nightside Series about a detective who could find anything and lived in a world of magic, chance, and monsters inspired me. This was not the first monster I found but perhaps the saddest.

    I stood a few steps into a cave in Arizona, my neck burned from the heat. I only got a glance at the vampire's face as he raised his head to address me. The rest of his body was hidden in the dark of the cave. 

    A pungent garlic necklace hung around my neck, while my sweaty palms gripped a wooden stake.

    He looked tired and defeated. Perhaps killing him would be merciful. He glanced at the stake and put his head back in the dirt. He looked so young, like a teenager.

    "Are you going to kill me?" he asked. His voice cracked, and he sounded parched.

    "Perhaps, this is for my protection," I said and took a small step forward. He didn't move.

    "Do I look like someone you need protection from?" he didn't bother lifting his face from the ground.

    I took another step.

    "Not quite," I said.

    "And that book in your hand. 'Kill a vampire, get a miracle' is one of the lines, yes?"

    "It is."

    I stood above him now. I could deliver a killing blow if I wanted to. He raised his head, his skin so dry cracks formed in it.

    "Hmm, may I speak before I go?" he said. "May I tell you about me and why I am here?"

    "Go on," I said and this is what the vampire said:

    WORDS FROM THE VAMPIRE 

    You and I are the same. We're both so bloodthirsty.

    In fact, if you asked my departed mother, you are so much worse. You, human, do not like blood as we do. Vampires sip the blood of man and beast for sustenance. My mother said you draw the blood of every creature because it excites you.

    My mother said, that even those who faint at the sight of blood are hard-wired to love it, your desire just overcomes you. My mother said, you all will be the last species left on this planet because you are the cruelest. My mother said, across the millennia, it has not been good enough for us to bow to you, but we must be buried beneath you. 

    I cannot even find peace in this cave.

    My mother said, you have slain the Neanderthal, the Jinn, the Denisovans, the Paranthropus, Homo erectus, and even the vampire. 

    That is what I was told for the first one hundred years of my life and I still don't know what to believe.

    To be honest, I didn't care about any of that at the time. My mother lost my focus as she spoke as soon as she said both she and I would be dead soon. I had lived as a home-schooled child in in a small cave not knowing anything about the world for 100 years. She said she was on her last leg of life and I only had 40 or so years left despite my teenage look. She died that month.

    Soon ( in vampire terms) I was going to be dead but before that, I wanted to live. I wanted to party. I've never tasted human blood and I would never be interested in it. 

    There were songs to dance to and women to love. Why were we sitting in caves whining? I flew to the closest city and started my adventure. Then after failing in that city because I did not understand it (I was homeschooled remember) I went to a different city where things were much better.

    I learned to trust humans along the way, all thanks to my best friends Kathleen and Barri. I want to tell you I became their friends over mutual interest, or something noble but that's a lie and I will not lie on my deathbed.

    I met the girls when I was on a tear, going to a club or bar every night and waking up beside something pretty every morning. The hookups weren't important, just bodies for lust, adoration, romance, and memories for a couple of hours and then a bill for Uber in the morning. The night I ran into the girls something was different.

    Kathleen sipped a blue drink and saw me coming. She tapped Barri, a girl who never understood subtlety, and Barri stared at my approach like a child does a new adult. Drunk and horny I sat beside Kath. Embarrassed easily, her face went red almost the same color as her pink dress.

    "Hey," I said.

    "Hey," Kathleen said.

    And then I vomited everything I had drunk in the last hour. The rainbow mix exhausted me and I almost fell out of my chair. Kathleen grabbed me before I could and Barri helped steady me.

    Everything went blurry. I was blackout by this point so this is just what I was told.

    "Oh, no," Barri said. "Are you okay?"

    "Ah, man," a bouncer came by and grabbed me by the shoulder. "I'll get this guy out of here. Sorry, he's bothering you."

    "No, actually he's our friend!" Kathleen interjected.

    Now, why would this girl lie to protect a stranger? She said she felt bad for me but after getting to know her better I know that isn't the whole truth.

    Kathleen was a girl desperate to find Mr. Right. This was her greatest ambition. Now when I vomited on her shoes she knew I was not Mr. Right but the thing is Kathleen had vomited on a shoe or two herself, she didn't even drink, she was that nervous.

    Growing up fat, with a stutter, and bad skin, guys weren't the nicest to Kathleen. 

    Extreme diet and exercise, speech therapy, and puberty changed who she was on the outside but the years of rejection and bullying did a number on her. She was a nervous wreck around men she liked. Her constant failures only made her want true love more. Like Harvard graduates lusted for political power, Kathleen lusted for love. 

    Her lust for love caused her to be a nervous wreck when the opportunity approached. Her stutter returned, and she would tell jokes that weren't funny and she brought an air of anxiety to the interaction. So, when she saw a boy stumble over trying to introduce himself she saw a little of me in her.

    Kathleen and Barri brought me over to a couch. They sat me down and Kathleen went to get me some water. So, it was just Barri and I. Now, this is the part where I start remembering again because I thought Barri's question was so strange it almost sobered me.

    "Did you mean to do that?" Barri asked with genuine sincerity.

    "What... no?"

    Now, one thing you should know about Barri is that she might not have any idea about what's going on at any given time. It's interesting because she wasn't dumb either. She was accepted to an Ivy League school but turned it down to go to a school closer to her family. 

    Barri just had gaps in her wide array of knowledge. I was homeschooled in a cave, I could relate.

    "Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said. “I just know guys have like um, pick-up lines and stuff. You guys can be real tricky." She said tricky in what I'm sure she felt was a funny accent. It was cringy.

    I didn't say anything. My head was spinning.

    "Oh, no, sorry I didn't mean to imply that you were tricky." She patted my back twice. "I'm sure you're a nice guy."

    I looked at her and was greeted by the most unorthodox, unpracticed, and genuine smile I had ever seen in a club or anywhere in my life.

    Now one thing you should know about Barri is that because she had trouble not offending people and understanding people what she really wanted was to be understood and to be good. She was a part of about five different volunteer teams, a consistent church attendee, and was a big sister in one of those at-risk youth programs. As for being understood, she was a constant over-explainer.

    They were flawed, silly people and I loved them for it.

    For the first time since I walked into the human world, I realized I had found some humans I wanted to be friends with. And that's how our yearlong friendship began—a rainbow of impulse and chasing after what we want. 

    I traded sex for friendship that night and never regretted it. It was easy. The girls were a lot like me all they wanted was to have a good time before their first year of college. So, there was no sex but secrets shared, the only thing naked between us was the truth, and we were bound by trust, not fuzzy handcuffs. And I wouldn't take back that experience for the world.

    There was another who did not like it though.

    Perhaps, we all are slaves to our genetics... Do you know elephants hate lions and will chase a lion down to ruin its day? The same goes for whales and orcas.

    There was something from the ancient world that was a proud slave to its genes.

    We clubbed every weekend night and songs steered our summer.

    In July we were singing our hearts out to Chapel Ronan's best song, not Pink Pony Club, not Good Luck Babe but Feminomen

    Hit-like-rom-

    Pom-Pom-Pom

    Get it hot like

    Papa John

    As soon as we entered a club we went straight to the dance floor and earned our drinks through sweat and laughs. After that, we headed to the bar to grab drinks and then decided who would wing for who in the search for love. That night Barri and I left Kathleen at the bar so Barri could wingwoman for me.

    While we were away an old man came up to Kathleen. Much to her chagrin, she always attracted men outside her age range. 

    I don't remember what the girl I liked was wearing but Barri wore a bright yellow dress and had just re-dyed her hair to be blonde.

    "Oh, you like movies," Barri said to my target for the night after awkward introduction and conversations. "Vlad really really likes movies," Barri said again without a hint of subtlety. In truth, she wasn't a good wingwoman at all but that was the fun of it. That's what made all of us laugh.

    "Oh," the woman said, probably surprised by Barri's abrasive approach.

    "Do you have a favorite director?" I asked.

    "I don't know. I like horror," she was nervous. Her drink swayed ever-so-slightly in her hand. "Oh, I saw Get Out recently it's my favorite movie so I guess Peele."

    "You like Get Out better than Peele's other one... US?" I asked.

    "Yeah."

    "Pretty eyes and that little smile you do and blessed with good movie taste. I didn't know God played favorites," I mocked and flashed my smile and thanks to thousands of years of vampire genetics I'm told it is quite good.

    She rolled her eyes but she did do that little smile I liked. My heart raced because I knew what this could lead to.

    Behind us, the old man still chatted with Kathleen. He was out of place for the EDM club we were in. He wore a plaid suit and loafers. The room glowed under the lights of the dance floor. 

    Neon, orange, yellow, and pink painted the club. Dresses, tank tops, and white sneakers flowed throughout the room. This was a place for drugs, dancing, and laughter. What did this old man want?

    I am protective of my friends but Kathleen knew how to get rid of him. She was just taking longer than normal.

    "Whatever," the nameless girl in front of me said. "What about you? Who do you like?"

    "The only one better than Peele right now: Robert Eggers."

    "Oooh he is good," Barri chimed in.

    "Better than Peele? Lie again." She mocked.

    "You think I'm wrong?" I pretended to be aghast and put my hand to my chest in protest.

    "I know you're wrong."

    "Jordan Peele didn't make The Witch," I countered.

    "Well, he didn't," she said and fingered my chest. "You're right about God playing favorites because he definitely made you cute but gave you bad taste." Her touch and her teasing sent me into boyish ecstasy and she knew it. My toes curled and I fought back a larger smile that wanted to greet her.

    "Oh," she said. "It looks like you have a cute little smile too."

    That would have sent me over the moon until Barri chimed in.

    "I liked The Witch," Barri added not understanding at all that I was doing quite fine without her there.

    We both stared at her. She took two big sips of her fruity drink without a care in the world.

    "Shall we dance," I asked the trio.

    "Eeek, let's go!" Barri squealed

    My film buff flirt shrugged and motioned for me to lead her. I did and looked back one more time at Kathleen and considered breaking it up.

    The last time I did she got mad at me because she said he was offering to be her sugar daddy and she was toying with the idea if she should get one. Maybe, she finally decided on it.

    Regardless, we got to the dance floor. I am not a good dancer but more importantly, I am a free man. I'm not afraid to be off-beat or a fool. I will do what my body tells me to do or jump and sing the lyrics. On the third song since we were on the dance floor that's what I was doing. I jumped, screamed, and sang in front of my girl's face and she did it right back.

    Gimme Gimme Gimme

    A man after midnight

    Won't somebody come chase the shadow away

    Yes, it was effeminate. Yes, it was corny but like I said I was free. I was having a great time.

    The girl I flirted with wiggled her finger at me to come closer.

    I pulled my new friend close to me for her to whisper something in my ear, purely for intimacy.

    "That's not your girlfriend right?" She asked.

    "Why? Jealous." I asked. It was my turn to mock.

    "Maybe, I just wanted to give you a little film education at my place y'know because I have such good taste."

    "Why, yes I would like a taste."

    She gave me a playful smack on the cheek and pushed me off.

    "That is not what I said."

    "Sorry, the music is just so loud. It's difficult to hear can you say it again?" I said and stared at her lips, unashamed and making it clear what I wanted to do.

    She bit her lip and glanced at me.

    "Come here again and I'll show you."

    She puckered up. I touched the small of her back and pulled her in. She put her two fingers on each side of my belt buckle and returned my embrace.

    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the old man in plaid grab Kathleen's wrist and pull her out of the chair. Kathleen and I made eye contact across the bar. Her eyes bulged and puffed with fear and tears.

    That I would not stand for. I brushed my date aside and moved with the speed and strength that vampiric blood allowed me. Men dropped as I went through them. The floor of flashing lights and colorful shirts parted like the Red Sea and soon I placed my hand on the back of the man in plaid.

    A mighty push would be enough. He would fly across the room, crash against the wall, and receive a broken body as punishment.

    That's what should have happened.

    Instead, he received the brunt of my power and only stumbled a few feet. He turned to me, his little head full of joy.

    "Oh, you are from the old world too! I smell the old blood on you," his voice was curling, it was like every word was yanked uphill going higher in pitch at the end.

    I was stunned into silence. I helped Kathleen up but didn't take my eye off the plaid man. He frightened me. No one should be this strong.

    "Oh, she belongs to you! If I had known oh, if I had known. I have much gold and a few souls. I will buy her. Name your price."

    "Not for sale," I said. I had never met another nonhuman who wasn't a vampire before and I was not enjoying the experience.

    "Oh, everything is."

    "Not her."

    Barri came behind me and added "Yeah, not her," then gave Kathleen a long list of eternal sorrows for leaving her.

    "Yes, her.” the strange man said. “Yes her indeed and the pitiful one as well."

    "I said, no."

    "My dear son of the Count, do you know I am dying? Do you know what you do to me? You saying no... your resistance... your protection. It only makes me want them more. Are you aware because I have lived 1,000 years I have had everything I want? All that is left is what you want. Now name your price because everything has one."

    A bouncer came from around the corner and tapped the odd man on the shoulder.

    "Sir, you need to leave."

    He eyed the bouncer, all four foot of him eyed the six-foot-plus giant.

    “No,” he said. “I’m negotiating. Don’t interrupt an elf as he negotiates.”

    “Okay, let me walk you out,” the bouncer said.

    With speed, much faster than me, the elf grasped the leg of the bouncer buried his hand in there, and yanked out dripping red bone.

    The bouncer screamed and collapsed to the floor.

    “How will you do that with no legs?” the elf asked and the turned to me. He wiggled the bone in his hand and said. “Now, we were negotiating…”

    He had to see it in my face. He had to see the fear. That was a lot of strength. To much strength. I tried to reply back but my throat went dry. He could talk though he was unmoved as everyone in the club ran out screaming upon seeing the bouncer’s crawling body trying to make it to an exit.

    I somehow found words and mumbled my reply.

    “Is that a number? Go on speak up.”

    “They aren’t mine to sell.”

    “What do you mean, Son of the Count? Have you not made them your slaves?”

    “No… they’re my friends.”

    “Then I will take them.”

    His eyes gleamed with a sickening delight as he tossed the bloody bone aside. I never heard it clatter to the floor. Screams, the bouncer’s gurgling, and the bass of the speakers drowned it out. The elf’s eyes gleamed with a primal hunger, and his body shook with wanting. He stopped looking at me and eyed Barri and Kathleen.

    Kathleen trembled behind me, her fingers clutched my arm,  her nails dug into my skin. Barri stood frozen, her eyes wide with shock. For once she had nothing to say.

    I leaped to him with a punch that could shatter bones, but the elf merely staggered, a twisted smile still plastered on his face. He moved with a fluidity that was both mesmerizing and terrifying, his every step calculated, predatory.

    Without warning, he lunged at me, faster than I could react. I barely had time to raise my arms in defense before he was upon me, his strength overwhelmed me. We crashed into the dance floor, the impact shattered it. My back burned.  My head bounced against the floor. Neon lights flickered and flashed above us to match the quick, violent tempo of the song.

    His hands wrapped around my throat, squeezing with the force of a vice. I thrashed beneath him, clawing at his arms, but it was like trying to move a mountain. 

    “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.” he said. “I am your brother here. You cannot befriend them you must rule them or they will betray you. I beg you. Yield.” 

    “No,” I spat back.

    “Then you will be made to yield,” he said and grabbed my thigh with one hand and pulled out a bone.

    I howled. I cried. I was confused. And I was so angry.

    “It’s for your own good, Son of the Count. These girls…” he stopped his speech as both Barri and Kathleen crashed bottles against his head. They did not affect him. He swatted them away.

    I managed to free one hand. I unsheathed my nails and slashed them across his face. It loosened his grip. I broke free.

    “I guess I deserve that.” the elf said unamused. “We can be done with this boy. Again, I just ask you for your women?.” he rose and extended his arm to me.

    Something snapped inside me. With a primal scream, I launched myself at the elf, sinking my fangs into his face. He howled in pain and I chewed. I chewed like a mad dog and ripped out every piece of humanity from his flesh. The taste of his blood was foul, like poison, but I didn’t care. I bit down harder, my anger gave me strength. The elf tried to shake me off, but I held on and tore at his flesh with all the fury I could muster.

    Eventually, I got off of him and stood above him. He crawled away on his back, like a worm. His nose was gone, I had swallowed an eye and his face was more bone than meat. I felt a gross satisfaction with myself.

    “You… you..” he stuttered and sputtered his words, he only had one lip to speak with now and part of his tongue was torn. “ You would do this to another elder species for them? You have stolen an elf’s face for what? Do you know what they are?”

    “They are friends,” I said. Both Kathleen and Barri helped me up.

    “Oh, this... this… you betray your blood for humanity. They will betray you y’know? You see me as an enemy but one day you will look at me as a friend. Wait until you meet my friends.”

    And with that, he ran away.

    4 Comments
    2024/08/29
    18:17 UTC

    0

    1933 Magenta Italy downed UFO

    "Pentagon whistleblower claims Vatican helped US retrieve UFO from Mussolini" https://nypost.com/2023/06/13/pentagon-whistleblower-claims-vatican-helped-us-retrive-ufo-from-mussolini/

    0 Comments
    2024/08/28
    02:58 UTC

    17

    My New 3D Printer Made Something Terrifying

    Do you still go to garage sales? I love garage sales. I've always walked around my neighborhood looking for garage sales - ever since I was young. I used to hold my Mema's hand, and she'd let me look at everything; look don't touch.

    Most garage sales sell the same things, odd decorations, baby clothes, board games with missing pieces and VCR tapes are so common I don't even see that stuff. Assorted collections of knickknacks, tchotchkes, frou-frous, bottles and boomers don't catch my eye, perfectly arranged and dusted every time, shimmering in the cool weather chosen for the yard display.

    I see the tangled mess of electronics and my eyes scan them for useful scrap. I look at the broken Radio Shack devices and old-school RC. I buy walkie-talkies that have no partner. I count out my change for pairs of leaky rechargeable batteries. I walk away with well-used kits for learning how to wire lights. A Night Bright with a few panels missing is my treasure.

    When it's Saturday and the sun is shining I hop on my scooter and put on my cracked shades and my fingerless gloves and play Macklemore's Thrift Shop as I roll through the good neighborhood and the bad ones too. I stop at every lemonade stand, that's how I stay hydrated. I stop at every yard sale, every sidewalk sale and every block party I can find. I find things lost to time.

    Then came the holy grail, or so I thought. I just stared at the 3D printer with its cracked glass siding and angled gantry. Rolls of filament hung from it like King Tutankhamun's wrappings. Half of a shipwreck lay melted on its bed and the extruder was pointing at it in a timeless pose saying:

    "Look what I made, bruh! Gonna buy me? I'm only eighty dollars."

    I nodded and spoke to it out loud, "I'm going to buy you, but I've only got Jackson, gotta go to the ATM."

    The wiry old gnome who was selling it stared rheumily at me as I walked with a slight skip toward him and his little metal change box. I held out the twenty and pointed at the 3D printer.

    "Will you hold that for me, if I give you twenty now?"

    He nodded and took my money and slipped it into a slot on his metal box, freeing one had from how he was holding it clutched in his lap defensively. "I close up at three. But I'll leave it out fer ya. Just put the money into my mail slot."

    "Sure thing." I agreed. I offered him my hand so we could shake on it and he smiled toothlessly and we had ourselves a bargain.

    "Just one thing, though, the slicers don't work with this. Gotta use the helmet. And one more thing, never give it a bad dream, could be disastrous. You don't have bad dreams, do you?"

    "Uh, no." I felt weird but I told him it was safe with me - no bad dreams.

    I took my scooter to the ATM and got out some cash and went back. By the time I had got there it was a quarter past three already and sure enough he had closed up shop for the day. Everything was gone except my 3D printer sitting next to an oil stain on the weedy driveway. I walked past it to the front door of his hovel and pushed the money through the mail slot as agreed.

    Then I went to claim my prize, loading it into the basket of my scooter and rolling away with a crazy grin on my face. I thought I had the biggest score of my life, I thought it was charmed. I was so sure that from now on, life was going to be perfect.

    I had looked at it already for a brand name or a serial number and found only some odd runic symbols. I'd thought it was some kind of foreign manufacture. When I got home I went on YouTube on my phone and watched all the unboxing videos for 3D printers, trying to figure out which one I had. After a while I gave up on trying to guess and started fixing it up to use it.

    I had a pretty good idea how to get it started, using the dial to turn it on, and when I did it just sat there humming idly, making a kind of jagged purring noise. There was no USB slot, no disk, no input screen - nothing. The only input seemed to be an odd-looking hat with lots of wires wrapped together and plugged into the input for the gantry and extruder.

    Slowly, with a weird feeling, I put the control helmet on. I stared at the half-melted shipwreck. It was supposed-to-be that default tugboat toy that every printer knows how to make. It looked tired and ruined and somehow perilous. I imagined what it was supposed to look like and as I watched, concentrating, the bed started swinging, the gantry adjusted itself and the extruder went to work, unspooling the blue filament to make repairs.

    It hovered in place, moving where I wanted it to go, needing no support structure or coordinate lists. Instead, it just worked with the model already on the bed, caressing it and squirting all over it until it started to look, well, fixed. Somehow it had not only fixed the toy, but it had done so just by my thoughts alone. I was stunned.

    I took off the apparatus and started pacing, completely bewildered. This was no ordinary 3D printer, I realized. It was something entirely different. I ate some ramen and went to bed, dreaming of all the things I could dream up and make. I was going to need more filament - a lot more.

    I went to the library on Monday and got online so that I could try and find out more about it. The sea of all of humankind's knowledge didn't have a single mention of such a device anywhere I could find. Exhausted, I went home and sat and stared at it.

    The filament I had ordered arrived and I went and added it to the roll-o-dex of empty spools, noticing it could take thirteen of them at a time. I wondered if that could be a way to figure out what I had, but no longer really cared. I just wanted to play with it.

    The first thing I did was complete my Warhammer 30K collection, just by reading a Workshop catalog and imagining each figure I wanted. I was laughing by the end of it. Board games with missing pieces were already beneath my level. I wanted more.

    I made Mandalorian armor, Halo helmets and telescoping lightsabers. I crafted My Little Pony models with rainbow manes and tails that looked like fiber. I picked it up and found it indistinguishable from something bought in a toy store. Amazed I wondered what else it could make.

    All night I was sitting there making things with moving parts, after realizing my 3D printer had no conceivable limitations. It worked at lightning speed, making things that I knew should take hours or days in just seconds or minutes. It skipped steps, needing no structure, intuitively working with my mind to make anything I wanted.

    As I sat there, the filament I'd ordered running low, I began to nod off. I'd sat there for nearly eighteen hours making a pile of things. My mind and body were tired, and I should have turned it off and gotten some rest.

    I don't normally remember my dreams.

    When I woke up, something was wrong. I was lying on the floor and there was smoke and sparks coming out of my 3D printer. I got the spray can of fire away from my kitchen and emptied it. Then I stared at what it had made.

    At first, I felt only a vague chill, my flesh creeping into goosebumps. I just looked at the awfulness knowing it somehow, from some deep part of my mind. It was the idol of some ancestral echo, something in all of us, some kind of hideous thing from before we existed, something at the root of all that is wrong and vile.

    I felt sick, as I stared at it. I would describe the nightmare on the bed, but it was like a brown stain, a nasty little leftover of pure evil. It was made with a blend of all the colorful filament, braided and melted and oozing together into a purplish--beige color, a kind of slimy brown, but not a good kind. No, this was unlike any color I'd every seen. It was wrong, unnatural and drove a spike of icy fear into my heart, just from looking at it.

    The toilet hugged me and took my sickness like a kindness. I flushed it, noticing how it was a cleaner and healthier shade that the color of the awful thing that should not be. It occurred to me I should flush the idol, but I worried it wouldn't fit. Instead, I made a fire in a coffee tin and went to go drop it in, hoping to burn it. As I approached the 3D printer I felt a new terror.

    Whatever it was it had grown, somehow, and changed shape, as though it were alive in some way. I didn't want to touch it so I took up a knife from the kitchen and used it to pry it from the bed, popping it off onto the floor. There it rolled or wiggled or whatever it was doing, but all the way into the dark corner behind my old couch.

    I nervously walked towards it, knife raised defensively, sweat on my brow. Had it actually moved? I was already wondering if it had. I pulled the couch away and didn't see it. I leaned down, slowly, and looked.

    "There you are." I said and tried to fish it out from where it was caught under the couch, using the blade of the knife. My efforts only pushed it further back. I felt really weird, and scared, as though it was trying to stay in the darkness.

    I lifted the couch and moved it off of it, and then it started to roll back into its black sanctuary. "Oh Hell no!" I shouted and took the knife and stabbed at it, chipping the hardwood floor and then sticking it, the blade getting the tip bent on the supposedly soft filament. It emitted a kind of chittering scowling noise and escaped the blade's bite to retreat quickly back under my couch.

    I had jumped up, dropping the knife, breathing hard and eyes wide, staring where it had gone. I was so scared I just stood there for a few minutes. I looked to the open door where my tin can fire was burning low. Then I looked back at the 3D printer.

    If it could make such a monstrous creature, perhaps it could make something to protect me. I went to it and put on the helmet one last time. I imagined its counterpart, a warrior of the same size, strong enough to use the kitchen knife and take that thing to the flames. I concentrated, using the link between me and the machine to create the enemy of my enemy.

    When the model was born it saluted me. I blinked in surprise as it leaped to the floor and ran for the blade, just as I had intended. With trepidation, I watched, as it brandished the knife and went under the couch, into the darkness.

    With horror I listened as they shrieked and danced in the darkness under there. Then, wounded and victorious, the slayer dragged the awful squirming thing from where it had tried to hide, and into the light of day. They crossed the floor to the flames, as my heart beat so fast I thought I could die of fright.

    My defender lifted its opponent overhead and then jumped together with it into the flames, which rose around them as they melted, shrieking horribly. When it was over I looked at the 3D printer where it smoldered and smoked, the gantry falling off of it to the floor and the filaments wildly unspooling. The bed cracked and fell into two pieces and the whole thing was just a fried mess of tangled wires. Even the helmet, which I had thankfully removed, was sizzling and ruined.

    I sat down on my couch where it remained at an odd angle in the middle of my studio. I started to cry in relief and from the acrid smoke. When I felt it was truly over I lay down and rested.

    When Saturday came around, I took that weekend off. It took me some time to get over what had happened, and to live with the ordeal I had experienced. I'd had a 3D printer, one with unique properties, and I'll never know where it came from. I wasn't going to go back and ask about it. He'd warned me not to give it a bad dream. I sighed, as I realized the only way to fully recover was to get back to what I love doing.

    Mema would be proud of me, the way I got back into the garage sale game after such a fright.

    It wasn't until the end of the month, though, that I finally got back on my scooter. I had a couple Hamiltons and a Lincoln. I put on my headphones and started up Thrift Store.

    I rode out of my neighborhood, looking for the next sweet bargain.

    0 Comments
    2024/08/27
    23:19 UTC

    145

    I found a dog in my backyard with a camera on its collar. The footage makes no sense.

    I’ve never been a pet person. Or a people person. My life is pretty much a storyboard of my favorite scene with small variations– a clean room, a comfortable chair, a good book, an even better scotch, and some classic rock from the vinyl collection I inherited from my grandfather. I get called boring frequently, and my sisters are always on my case about it, but it’s my life, you know?

    I wake up in the morning when my body decides it’s time. No alarms. No demands. I roll out of bed and head to the kitchen, where my French press sits on the counter. I make a nice breakfast, watch the sunrise while I finish my coffee. My house is on the smaller side, in a boring suburb, but I have it decorated just the way I like–’70s mid-century revival, tapered vintage furniture, geometric art, the works.

    I work from home as a consultant, analyzing data for companies that don’t know I exist beyond the spreadsheets I send them. It’s the perfect job for me—minimal interaction, maximum solitude. The work can be tedious, but it pays the bills. And I get lost in numbers, patterns, and figures. It’s like solving puzzles, and I’ve always loved puzzles.

    Sometimes, if I’m feeling what constitutes ‘wild’ for me, I play music while I work, smoke a little weed. I eat lunch, go for a run, shower, log back on again until I get however far I want to with my work projects, then cap off the day with dinner, a movie, a book, or both, if it’s the weekend. Every once in a while I’ll catch up with an old friend or one of my sisters, but only every few months or so.

    If I'm being totally honest, solitude is what feels safest to me. My mom died when I was still in high school, and after, my dad wasn’t the greatest guy, to put it lightly. I spent my teens cleaning up his messes. Then, to make things more challenging, when I moved out–my college roommate was the same. After all that bullshit, I stick to a routine, keep things simple–no one coming home at 3 A.M. drunk off their ass, no pillow over the head to drown out the screams of adults that should know better.

    I was at the tail end of my usual quiet night in when I saw the dog. Sitting in my favorite armchair, half-asleep, trying to keep my eyes open long enough to get to the end of a chapter of I Am Legend.

    At first, I thought I imagined it, like my brain was so far turned off to reality that I had started conjuring up characters from the story, which if you don't know, incidentally does feature a dog. But as I stared out my window, growing increasingly more awake, I knew the dog was real.

    It was a scruffy-looking thing, covered in mud, right in the middle of the yard. I could tell it was staring back at me through the window. It sniffed the air and sat down, wagging its tail in a way that was so pathetically hopeful it had me sliding on my slippers and down the stairs before I even knew what I was doing.

    The truly odd thing about the dog being there was that it shouldn’t have been able to get in. The fencing I have is a solid eight-foot wall of overlapping wooden slats. I’m in Colorado in an area with a lot of farms, and I had one of the companies that usually handles places like ranches come out to do it. It’s completely gap-free and dug deep into the ground to stop anything from burrowing underneath. The whole thing’s 'built like a fortress', according to my neighbors (it was this whole thing with the HOA).

    So I was intrigued, to say the least. Like I said, puzzles always have a way of hooking me in, ever since I was a kid. My sisters have this inside joke that I’m like one of those folklore vampires, that you can stop me in my tracks if you throw me a tangle of knots.

    I made my way to the kitchen, lit by moonlight and silent except for the hum of the refrigerator. I flicked on the porch lamp, illuminating the deck and the path that led to the unexpected visitor in my yard. I blinked out into the darkness, taking stock of the situation.

    The dog was big. Really big. Much larger than the usual mid-sized kind you see in suburban neighborhoods like mine. Its fur was grayish, shaggy, and matted, and it had obviously seen better days, like a stuffed animal that had been left out in the rain. Maybe a working dog that wandered off a farm, I thought.

    Something around the dog's neck caught the light. At first, it just seemed like a part of the shagginess, maybe a knotted clump of hair. It was a dark, bulky protrusion that stood out against its matted fur. But as the dog shifted, laying down more squarely under the beam of light, the object glinted.

    It was secured by what looked like weathered straps, wrapping around the dog’s thick neck. Curiosity piqued, I leaned in closer to the window, but it was hard to make out the details from that distance. The thought that it could be something like a collar for an invisible fence crossed my mind, but it looked too cumbersome for that. Definitely something more substantial, and odd for a working dog. A puzzle strapped to another puzzle.

    I forgot to grab a sweatshirt, so I braced myself for the chill of the night air, unlocked the back door, and stepped out onto the deck. The porch light didn't quite reach the far corners of the yard, leaving the edges dipped in shadow. The yellow glow clashed with the blue moonlight, making everything–the clean-cut hedges, the angles of distant fences, look oddly disproportionate, out of space and time, like the cookie-cutter model homes on either side of my own repeated infinitely.

    As I edged closer, the gravel of the pathway crunched underfoot, a sharp contrast to the stillness of the night. The dog, noticing my approach, perked up. Its tail gave a cautious wag, and its eyes watched me intently, but it didn’t make any move to come closer or run away—it just sat there, looking somewhat forlorn but oddly expectant in that way dogs always seem to do.

    I stopped a few feet away, giving it space, trying not to spook it. Up close, I could see the object around its neck clearly. It was a camera, and a large one at that, secured with an elaborate harness that seemed out of place against its scruffy fur.

    Intrigued, I crouched down to the dog’s level, carefully reaching out a hand. The dog sniffed the air, its nose twitching. There was a soft, warm intelligence in its brown eyes, buried under hairy eyebrows, clashing with its rough exterior. It stood up, and took a few steps closer.

    “Hey there,” I said softly.

    Without warning, the dog's lips pulled back into a snarl, spitting out a low, rumbling growl. I instinctively recoiled, heart hammering in my chest, kicking myself for not just calling animal control. I had completely forgotten my phone altogether. It was charging upstairs. And now I was in a dominance stand-off with a massive dog with, I soon realized–bigger balls than mine. Fuck.

    It was so tense, I barely breathed. But after a few agonizingly long minutes, I realized he wasn’t looking at me. The dog’s rigid body, pinned ears, and narrowed eyes were angled, fixed intently on something I couldn’t see at the far end of the yard.

    Yet another thing I hadn’t thought of.

    What if something else was out here with him?

    I squinted into the darkness, trying to discern what he might be seeing. But there was nothing.

    As I stood there, waiting for my pulse to settle, I watched the dog closely, readying myself to bolt for the backdoor if I needed to.

    I spoke to him in a low, soothing tone in an attempt to calm his nerves—and mine. "Hey buddy, it's okay. There’s nothing there. See?" I gestured towards the empty corner, as if he could understand. The tension gradually left his body. His ears relaxed, and his tail began to wag, albeit hesitantly.

    After one last lingering glance at the corner of the fence, which unnervingly seemed to loom larger despite all reason, I knew it was time to bring the dog inside.

    I walked back to the door and held it open. The dog seemed to consider his options, then slowly made his way up the steps with a resigned, tired air and passed through the doorway. I shut the door behind us, cutting off the chill of the night.

    Inside, the dog paused, taking in his new surroundings. I led him to the fridge, where I had some cold cuts for sandwiches. Even with as little as I knew about pet care, I figured chicken would do in a pinch. I opened the package and poured the contents into a bowl, setting it on the floor. The dog approached it hesitantly, sniffed, and then began to eat with a sort of polite desperation.

    While the dog ate, I took a closer look at the camera strapped around his neck. The harness was complicated, with adjustable straps to keep it secure. It fit snugly around the dog's broad neck. I reached down and unbuckled it as gently as I could. The dog paused his eating to look up at me, eyes holding a flicker of anxiety.

    "It's okay, buddy," I reassured him, hoping I sounded authentic instead of how I felt, which was awkward. I couldn’t remember when I last talked to a dog. I hesitated for a second, then scratched behind his ears. Seeming reassured, he went back to eating. When I pulled my hand away, it came back covered with a crust, and I winced, not wanting to think too hard about what it had been rolling around in. The harness and camera came free with a little more effort. A scattering of pebbles caught under the straps scattered over the tile floor. With the burden removed, the dog seemed visibly relieved, body relaxing, tail swaying.

    I set the harness on the table and walked to the sink. As I went to grab the dish soap, I noticed the color of the tacky gunk that coated my palm–a deep, rusted red.

    Dried blood?

    My heart leaped to my throat. I scrubbed my hands quickly, watching red-brown flakes swirl down the drain, wondering what on earth I had gotten myself into. I braced myself against the sink and considered my options–which were pretty few, considering how late it was–then grabbed a pair of rubber gloves from under the sink.

    Starting from his neck, where the harness had been, I checked his fur and skin, parting the matted fur as I looked for any signs of wounds. Thankfully, he remained calm, tail thumping lightly on the floor a few times like he enjoyed the attention.

    I couldn't find a single cut. Maybe he had rolled around in a dead animal? Even in my limited experience with pets, I knew they liked to do things that (a big reason we weren’t allowed to have a dog growing up).

    I went to the closet and grabbed an old t-shirt that had been destined for the rag pile. I lathered it up with more soap, and worked the cloth through his thick, matted fur, pulling away layers of that murky red mud—or at least, I told myself it was just mud.

    I toweled him dry and set him up comfortably on an old bath mat. Underneath all the muck, he had wiry gray curls and hair on his muzzle that curled into a little mustache. He sprawled out, looking quite content.

    Then I turned my attention to the camera that had been strapped around his neck.

    It seemed like it belonged on a wildlife expedition, not a suburban stray. I had enough familiarity with similar equipment to know it had all the marks of something expensive being repurposed, including labels scratched off for anonymity. The person that rigged it knew what they were doing, enough to make sure that whoever it belonged to originally wouldn’t be able to prove it was theirs.

    I grabbed my spare laptop from my office and sat back down at the kitchen table, trying not to look too closely at the clock ticking down in the corner of the screen. I felt wide awake, anyway.

    I knew it wasn’t going to be a simple plug-and-play situation. The camera was a heavy-duty piece with a connector that didn’t match the usual USB cables I had lying around. Digging through my junk drawer hoard, I found an old universal adapter kit that seemed promising. I shuffled through the adapters until I found one that looked like it could fit the port. Success. Connecting it felt like a small victory, although I didn’t have anyone to share it with. I looked down at the dog, and he thumped his tail once, like a little sarcastic ‘Congrats!’

    I attached the other end to my laptop with a hopeful kind of skepticism, half-expecting it not to recognize the device. To my relief, after a moment of nothing happening—just when I thought it wouldn’t work—it popped up, listed ambiguously as 'External Device.'

    Opening the camera’s storage, I found a single file. A surprisingly regular .avi. As it loaded, I glanced down again at my new companion, sprawled comfortably by the table legs, watching me with a mix of curiosity and tired calm.

    “You’re welcome,” I said. He blinked at me and thumped his tail again. As an afterthought, while I was waiting for the video to load, I got up and filled a bowl of water, which he slurped with enthusiasm. He made a complete mess of it, but I had to admit he looked cute while he did it.

    Even though I knew the video was loading, it still made me jump when the audio came on.

    “Alright, Auggie, you look great. Ready to be famous?”

    A woman’s face came into frame: pretty, maybe in her mid-forties, with a smattering of freckles on her chin and forehead. The angle was close enough that you could see the laugh lines crinkling in the corner of her eyes as she smiled down at the dog.

    “Auggie?” I asked aloud as I eased myself back in the chair, checking to see the dog’s reaction. His ears perked up, and his tail batted against the ground, the fastest I had seen it move yet. The name suited him.

    In the video, Auggie barked a few times, until the woman laughed and rose out of frame. The camera jostled as Auggie bolted forward, the edges of the frame blurring with the rapid movement. Clay-colored boulders loomed large and vibrant on either side, their jagged silhouettes painted against a cloudless bright blue sky. The ground beneath Auggie's racing paws was a mix of sand and stone that wound through the landscape, broken only by the occasional tuft of scrub grass.

    The frame tilted abruptly. The view skewed, and there was the sound of something skittering–claws on stone. The camera now suddenly showed only a sliver of the bright sky and the rough, shadowed edges of rock on either side. Auggie struggled, his whines echoing off the rock walls. In his excitement, he had misstepped and wound up tumbling into a narrow crack in the earth.

    The footage was chaotic, capturing every frantic movement as he struggled, the camera bumping and shaking erratically with his efforts to free himself. My stomach twisted with anxiety for Auggie, even though I knew he was right next to me without a scratch. I leaned down to pat his head, and he rolled his eyes up to give me an appreciative look.

    “Tough day, eh, big guy?” He snorted and sighed, as if agreeing, then closed his eyes again.

    In the video, somewhere in the distance, I could hear the woman yelling. She must have seen him fall.

    "Auggie, stay calm, boy. Stay calm," she instructed. But despite her words, her tone was frantic. A few minutes later, the camera captured her leaning over the gap, panting as heavily as Auggie, her face and tank top drenched in sweat as she reached down towards the trapped dog.

    "Easy, Auggie, easy," she soothed, assessing the situation from above. Her fingers stretched towards him, but she couldn’t reach far enough to grab hold of his harness.

    With a frustrated grunt, she pulled back, disappearing from the frame. Faintly, I could just make out her saying: “Damn, of all the fucking times… no service.”

    Then silence. All that was left was the unsettling sound of Auggie’s distressed panting and the slight scraping of his paws against the rock as he continued to try to escape.

    Moments later, the woman's voice sounded again, this time brisk with purpose. "Alright, honey, I found another way down. I’ll be right there," she said off-camera before she stepped into view again, sweat plastering her hair to her cheeks, pointing towards the left side of the screen as if he could understand her. And to his credit, the camera swiveled slightly as he perked up at her return, and he followed the gesture.

    The woman’s descent into the cave was off-camera, but after a few tense minutes, Auggie was finally freed, his harness ripping just enough to pull it away from the rock walls. He scrambled up beside her, and she checked him over for any injuries, her fingers running through his fur. She hugged him, relief washing over her face, visible even through the grainy footage. "Good boy, Auggie," she repeated over and over again, her voice thick with relief.

    The woman took a moment to wipe her face with the bottom of her tank top, scrubbing away the worst of the tears and dirt. Then, she stood up and surveyed their surroundings. Her gaze lingered on something to the side: the pathway she had taken to reach Auggie. The camera on the collar captured her eyes tracing back along the dark, narrow tunnel.

    “Shit,” she said quietly. Her expression turned contemplative, then concerned. The footage showed her walking a few steps back towards the tunnel entrance, peering into its craggy brown shadows. The rock was visibly unstable, debris wedged in the place she must have initially come through. For the next hour, she pulled at the fallen rocks, but they didn't budge, only sending a few smaller stones clattering down and raising clouds of dust. She tried the thin rift that Auggie had fallen through but couldn’t get the right vantage, slipping down the sides over and over again. Throughout the process, she screamed for help until her voice was hoarse.

    Apparently realizing the futility of her efforts, she stepped back, kneeling down to Auggie, her face centered in frame as she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. The thin sunlight steaming through the cracks at the surface illuminated her face, accentuating her worried expression.

    “Alright, Aug. No way out but forward, it looks like. Remember I said today was going to be an adventure?" She said, reaching a hand to pet his muzzle. She sighed.

    "I'm sorry, buddy. I should have paid attention to the signs. This is my fault. But I got us into this mess. I’ll get us out.” Her voice was determined. She gave his head a pat, jostling the camera. Then she took out a bottle of water from a fanny pack, taking a sip before offering some to Auggie.

    I wondered what kind of signs she meant. Signs as in, she should have recognized how unstable the land was? Or literal ones, as in, No Trespassing?

    She pulled her phone from her fanny pack, tapping the flashlight on to augment the waning daylight that filtered weakly through the cracks above. The beam of the flashlight cut through the darkness, revealing the uneven, rocky terrain of the tunnel system they were now committed to navigating.

    The footage became increasingly more unsettling as they delved deeper into the cave system. The initial narrow, constricting tunnel opened up into a series of interconnected chambers that, while undeniably larger, had a vastness that was paradoxically claustrophobic. The light from the small flashlight seemed insignificant in the expansive spaces, the beam swallowed completely by the darkness.

    The walls were uneven, pockmarked with deeper pockets and crevices that were disorienting in how similar each footstep was to the last. Stalactites and stalagmites merged into pillars, petrified organic growths that looked almost alien.

    The paths narrowed into chokingly tight squeezes. The worst of the footage showed them approaching a particularly slim passageway, the walls seeming to press in from all sides. The woman had to turn sideways to fit, her back scraping against the rock, tearing her shirt and cutting into the flesh below. The sound was harsh, grating, unnervingly loud. Auggie hesitated behind her, the camera bobbing as he seemed reluctant to follow, but with gentle coaxing and a soft tug on his harness, he obeyed.

    The woman seemed increasingly unnerved as well. Her breathing became heavier, and her fruitless attempts to find service on her phone more frequent. Each breath seemed to bounce off the walls, creating a looping kind of anxiety. The woman paused, shining her light in a slow arc, the beam catching on distant, glistening wet rocks.

    “Auggie, where are we?” She whispered, and it seemed scream-loud after the oppressive silence. “My head is killing me. The pressure down here…” She trailed off. Auggie sighed, seeming to echo her sentiment.

    They pressed on for hours. Only once, they stopped and rested, eating a sparse meal of an energy bar and a plastic baggie full of dog treats.

    It was grueling and heartbreaking to watch. The whole point of it was to try to find out where on earth the dog had come from–and now, what happened to the woman who owned him–but I still felt a pang of guilt when I clicked fast forward. It felt like I was abandoning them, like I should get changed and do something, even though it obviously wasn’t happening in real time. I settled for petting Auggie again, who was so tired that he barely even twitched.

    Then, abruptly, the atmosphere in the footage shifted. There was, quite literally, a light at the end of the tunnel. Bright, like it was high noon sunlight. A tense breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding escaped my chest as the camera moved forward, Auggie’s head angled down towards his uncertain steps.

    “Oh, Jesus. Thank God. Thank God.” The woman said. She crouched down to put her arms around Auggie’s neck, covering the lens in the dark curls of her hair. Tears were visible on her cheeks, smudged with that red-brown mud.

    The hole was positioned awkwardly at the base of the tunnel's end–an irregular break in the cave wall, its edges rough and jagged. The woman approached cautiously, her figure silhouetted against the stark light, measuring the size with her hands before positioning herself to crawl through. She whistled for Auggie, who seemed strangely hesitant to follow her, lingering in the darkness of the cave for a long moment before finally following her. The light intensified, turning the screen stark and white, filling the tunnel's exit with a blinding glow that seemed almost otherworldly.

    As the camera's exposure adjusted, the outlines of a large interior space began to crystallize on the screen.

    It was a room.

    Auggie's camera, jostling slightly with each step he took, revealed smooth concrete walls, and high ceilings supported by thick concrete beams. A stark, utilitarian, manmade space that seemed like a different planet after so much time spent in the jagged confines of the cave system. There were shelves along the wall–sealed water bottles, stacks of blankets, and white boxes with red crosses that must have been medical supplies.

    Despite all the evidence, the realization still dawned on me slowly.

    The woman and her dog had stumbled into some kind of bunker.

    As Auggie padded around the room, following the woman as she carefully explored the space, seemingly as confused as I was, the camera angled back to the wall they had come through. The stalagmites were visible through the torn rock. It looked as if something had burrowed into the side of it.

    Or burrowed out.

    There was something next to the hole, a pile of wires, and maybe some other electronics, but Auggie didn’t linger long enough to get anything more than a blurry glimpse, even when I paused the video.

    Seconds later, there was a hollow clicking noise.

    The woman turned to face it. Auggie followed her line of vision.

    And stared into the barrel of a shotgun.

    My stomach lurched, and the woman cried out, raising her arms. Auggie, who must have sensed danger even if he didn’t know what it was, took a few cautious steps back, growling.

    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–we’ve been wandering for hours, over a full day now, and… We’re not trying to do anything,” she stammered. The shotgun belonged to another woman, tall, painfully thin, with long, stringy blonde hair. She was dressed in a sweat suit that had seen better days, and her hands trembled where they held the gun, which she moved from side to side as if she wasn’t certain to focus on the dog or the woman.

    “Mom?” A voice called out. There was a shuffling noise off-screen.

    “Stay! Stay, Kyle. Stay with Cory and your father.”

    “Please,” Auggie’s owner begged, “I promise, we’re not trying to–”

    “Mom? Is everything ok?”

    “Kyle, I told you to stay…” A small blonde head peered out from the side of the doorway. A little boy, as painfully thin as his mother.

    “Please, I just need you to call 911, or–or I might have service now if you just let me…” The mother and son turned to look back at Auggie’s owner, their faces shocked. They stayed in silence for a while. Auggie turned his head back and forth to watch the stand-off.

    “Come on,” the woman said, gesturing with the barrel of the gun. “If that dog comes for me, you’re both done.”

    “He’ll be good. Auggie’s a good dog. And I'm-” the woman said.

    “No names.” The blonde woman cut her off, her voice flat. I let out a hissing breath, my hands clenching into fists. An ominous thing to say, considering she had already called her son by name. She didn't want to humanize her. I wondered if the other woman realized, if she knew what a bad sign that was.

    Auggie’s claws scraped the concrete floor as he followed the women. He paused and looked at the boy, who looked at him with an intensely curious expression, like Auggie was some kind of exotic species.

    The camera jostled as Auggie followed his owner, her filthy hands still reaching towards the ceiling, as they were forced deeper into the bunker. They moved through a narrow hallway lined with pipes and flickering fluorescent lights that eventually gave way to a more open area. At the far end, there was a couch arranged like a bed, where a man lay connected to an IV stand, his features gaunt and pallid. Beside him, a little boy—Cory, I guessed—sat in a small chair, his unwashed blonde hair matching the woman’s and the other boy’s, his body equally thin and fragile-looking.

    “Sit,” the blonde woman commanded. Auggie did what he was told immediately, facing his owner, who did the same in a banged-up folding chair, one of a few that had been placed in a semi-circle around the couch. The other two did the same, sitting on either side of Cory. The blonde woman never lowered the gun.

    Auggie moved his head slowly, taking in the space around him. It was a makeshift living room, set up in such a way that it seemed more like an infirmary, everything looking out of place against the stark concrete walls. The woman and her two sons faced Auggie and his owner. This strange, palpably tense tableau held for a moment, everyone frozen in place, as if waiting for someone else to make the next move.

    “We used to have a dog.” One of the boys–Kyle–said suddenly. He was still staring at Auggie.

    “Quiet,” the mother said. Then, after a beat, she spoke again. “When did you come from?”

    “It was just outside of the state park, in–”

    “Not where,” she interrupted. “When.”

    “I–I’m not sure what you mean.”

    “Just answer the question.” The woman’s harsh tone made Auggie turn his head to focus on her.

    “Well, it’s 2024,” Auggie’s owner answered slowly. The blonde woman’s face twisted and went slack. She mouthed the numbers silently.

    “But–” one of the boys started. There was a noise as he stood up from his chair, and Auggie turned to look, the camera focusing on the two boys.

    “Don’t, Kyle.”

    “Dad said that would start happening,” Cory said, looking down at the man on the couch.

    “I said don’t,” their mother said, but she sounded defeated.

    “But he did it, Mom!”

    “We don’t know that. She could be lying.”

    “I’m not." Auggie's owner interjected quickly. "What- what year do you think it is?”

    “It’s–” The boy started to answer.

    “Stop,” their mother said, this time more forcefully.

    “Why?” Kyle asked, his voice a whine.

    “Because I said so.”

    “But it’s–”

    “Both of you leave. Go. Right now. To the beds.”

    “Why? What did we do?”

    “Just go, Kyle. Now.”

    There was a shuffling noise, as both of the boys seemed to obey. The woman moved to take the seat closest to the man on the couch. There was a long silence, the only sound in the camera Auggie’s nervous breathing.

    “There’s a war.” The blonde woman said abruptly.

    “I’m sorry?” Auggie’s owner asked haltingly. The blonde woman didn’t answer.

    “I’m just trying to understand… What kind of war? That’s why you're here? Like you're worried about a bomb?”

    “A bomb?” The woman snorted, then barked out a laugh, then another, until it shifted into something indiscernible from a sob.

    “God. A bomb.” She wiped at her face, at her running nose. “I wish.”

    Another long beat of silence, then-

    “They tore it open,” she said, almost too soft to hear.

    “Tore what open?”

    “Everything. Life itself.”

    Life itself? What the fuck?

    “I don't...I’m not trying to make trouble. If you show me where the exit is. Or just- let us go back to the caves?”

    “They’re trying to fix it. The scientists that are left. My husband was one of them. But he came back to us. He says there’s no solution. Only a way out.”

    “Do you mean the cave? We can all go if you want. It’s–” She took a deep breath. “It’s not an easy trip, but I can show you.”

    The blonde woman ignored her, bending down to kiss her husband’s forehead. As she leaned, her hair moved, revealing her neck.

    It was like looking at the middle of an autopsy. The back of her spine, visible above the collar of her sweatshirt, was mottled with bruises. In the center, blackened skin looked as if it was being burned in real time. Blood and pus leaked out of the wound, staining the fabric. It looked like bone was peeking from the places where the skin had given out.

    “We can’t go,” the blonde woman said quietly, still leaning over her husband's prone body.

    It seemed as if Auggie’s owner saw what I saw–at least enough of it to add a tremble of desperation to her voice.

    “Ok, I understand. What about if we just go? Me and my dog?” She shifted in her chair. “Please?”

    “Were you one of the ones he was talking to? Did you know?” the blonde woman asked quietly.

    “I–what? No. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

    “He said he made contact. Before it…” She took a shuddering breath. “It doesn’t matter. They’re destroying the whole thing. It’s not worth it, they said. Not worth losing it all.”

    “Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please–” She stopped, cut off by the sound of the shotgun's safety. Auggie, sensing the tension, made a small growl of warning.

    “What’s the camera for, then?”

    “The camera?”

    “The one on the dog. The big fucking one, right there.” She gestured towards Auggie.

    There was silence.

    “I had forgotten about it. It’s just something I bought online. For–for fun.”

    “Sure.” The blonde woman scoffed.

    Suddenly, there was a rustling. They both turned to the man on the couch.

    “Mike?” the blonde woman asked, laying a hand on his head. “Baby?”

    Another rustling noise.

    The blonde woman started to wail.

    “Oh no. Oh–oh Mike, no.”

    The man shuddered, as if having a seizure. Then, a deep, red stain bloomed on the top of the sheet. It rose, almost like the man was starting to sit up, but his head remained still, shaking, as if being pulled by puppet strings. The sheet continued to rise, almost comically, like a classic Halloween ghost.

    The blonde woman shot up out of the chair. It fell to the ground, clattering. She pointed the shotgun towards her husband–towards the rising white sheet.

    “Mom?” one of the boys distantly called.

    “Stay back!” she yelled.

    The sheet fell to the ground.

    For a split second, there was something there.

    Something long, twisted and bony, dripping with viscera. It… unfurled. Like the body of a man was a cocoon. Impossibly, its face unfolded from the air itself. It was large, featureless as a buffalo skull, but slick and grayish, like it had been pulled from the ocean. Its lower limbs strained awkwardly, as if it was something freshly born, clinging to the rubbery flesh it was still attached to.

    The blonde woman was sobbing hard–too hard. The shotgun slipped to the floor. She scrambled to the ground to try to retrieve it.

    The man's empty skin slipped to the ground as the last of the bony, rotating limbs ripped itself free.

    And the moment the last part of the creature left the man’s body, it disappeared. Like it was never there. I rewound the footage and paused it, just to make sure I didn’t miss something in the shaky footage–Auggie was moving his head back and forth between the chaos–but nothing changed. One second, the creature was there, and the next–nothing.

    At this point, the blonde woman seemed to truly panic. She moved wildly in a circle, the gun arcing in a shivering orbit. The lights overhead flickered.

    Auggie’s owner took advantage of the other woman’s distraction. She bolted out of the chair, grabbed his harness and pulled him towards the door. Auggie was growling, the sound so deep that the camera shook. He dug down, resisting being pulled for as long as he could. Then they raced to the doorway. The two boys, who must have been drawn by the noise, stood together there, eyes wide with terror. The woman and Auggie ran past them, down the hallway, back towards the storeroom they came in. In the flickering lights, the crack in the wall seemed thinner than when they first came through.

    The woman ran to it. Auggie lingered in the doorway, looking down the dark hallway, growling. The lights went out, leaving them in total darkness.

    “Come on, Auggie,” the woman whispered.

    The dog stared down the black hallway. For a long moment, there was silence.

    Then–bloodcurdling shrieks.

    The camera jerked back–the woman pulled Auggie’s harness, forcing him from the hallway. In a crush of moving limbs, she pulled him through the crack in the wall. For a few agonizingly long minutes, the footage was completely washed out, punctuated only by heavy breathing.

    Then, a close-up of the woman’s tense face, bloodshot red eyes. She turned the flashlight on, held near her chin. She was shaking.

    “I’m sorry, Auggie.” The woman said, reaching out a hand to pet the dog. The sentence was laden with a tangle of emotion. There was a skittering noise–a distant rock falling. Auggie turned to look at it.

    Then there was a scream, the sound of something hitting the ground hard.

    When the camera focused on her again, the woman was on her stomach, hands grasping the dirt. She still held her phone, and the light skittered on the cave walls. She dug her fingers in so hard one of her nails came off, blood seeping out. But she was pulled, quickly, forcefully. Again. And again. The crack in the wall was, against all reason, getting smaller, contracting impossibly fast. Something pulled at her legs one last time, and she was out of the cave, until only her bloody nails visible, barely clinging to the sides of the hole.

    And then those were gone too.

    Auggie stared at the now-closed wall like he couldn’t understand what had happened. He whined and pawed at the slim line where the hole was.

    The wall shook–hard. The dog jumped back, watching small rocks shudder on the ground.

    It shook again, like something was beating against it.

    Auggie turned and started running, frantically navigating back out into the cave system. He wound his way through the darkness in a blind run, through passages that seemed smaller, seemed to be contracting, just like the hole.

    After what felt like an eternity but was only about an hour (the cave system seemed inexplicably shorter than before), guided by what must have been scent, Auggie discovered a barely visible break in the wall.

    Once again, he emerged, but not into the open canyon where he had started.

    It was a dark, cluttered space.

    It took me a moment to recognize what it was, as his head frantically searched the room.

    My breath caught in my throat.

    It was a basement.

    It was my basement.

    Auggie climbed onto a pile of boxes, then leaped towards the small window at the top of the wall. He squeezed through the rusted latch and through the narrow opening, his body contorting with effort as he pushed himself out into the night. He sat, panting, in the middle of the yard.

    Just a few minutes later, the last footage was me, standing in my pajamas in the back doorway.

    I don’t know how long I sat at the table, staring at the dark screen, trying to process. But I know as soon as I came to, I ran, socks sliding against the tile, whipping open the door to the basement, flicking on the light switch, bounding down the steps two at a time.

    Auggie must have woken up, because I could hear his claws clicking behind me. I flew past towers of cardboard boxes, past all the other crap I meant to throw away years ago, and then looked at the far corner.

    There was a crack in the wall. One that hadn’t been there before.

    A small one. Not big enough for a dog to fit through, especially not one as big as Auggie. But there was a spray of churned rust-colored earth around it.

    I thought of the footage from the camera, the woman’s hands disappearing behind the crack.

    Behind me, Auggie started to growl.

    So… yeah. We got the fuck out there.

    And I still have a chair against the door. Just in case.

    Not that I’m even sure that would help.

    I haven’t decided what to do with the video yet. I need more time to think through it. I started searching local news sites and social media for any mentions of a missing woman with a dog. Then, I broadened my search, when I realized I couldn't be certain it even happened in Colorado.

    And then I thought: it could have been a movie. Some student film, made before I bought the house. When I moved in, there was shit in the basement. Maybe it was a prank, and someone had lowered him over the fence.

    Then I had another thought that was even stranger–and bear with me, because I know how insane it sounds–but I couldn’t really even be sure that it was our reality to begin with. Whatever was going on down in those caves, if it was real, who’s to say they didn’t go missing from another reality altogether?

    On one hand, it seemed pretty fucking real. The continuous footage, the way Auggie looked when he came here. The crack in my basement wall.

    On the other hand–well, I think that’s obvious. The implications defy the laws of reality.

    Regardless of what’s real, I love Auggie. He’s an awesome dog. He fit right into my life. He keeps me company through the day, goes on runs with me, has a ton of personality. I’m not really in the market to post flyers for… I don’t even know who would be looking for him. A film student from the local college? A government agency? Whoever might know more about whatever the whole thing was.

    He has episodes. That’s what I’ve started thinking of them as, anyway. The times when he stares at a place where the shadows are thick, in the corner of a room, in a dark spot between the trees when we’re on a walk, and the hair raises on his back, and he starts growling. Warding off bad memories, maybe. But it makes me think of all the other times people swear their animals see something they can’t. I think about the creature that seemed to just disappear. The mother’s gaunt, listless face.

    They tore it open.

    I always make sure to give Auggie extra head scratches, a few more treats. To make him feel better. Or maybe to let him know to keep up the good work.

    All in all, I do know one thing for certain.

    I don’t live alone anymore.

    30 Comments
    2024/08/27
    17:38 UTC

    120

    The world sat in silence as they witnessed what they believed was the Rapture

    Scientists, religious leaders, and world leaders all stood side by side in agreement that what the world was witnessing was the end of the world.

    It started with the trees and plants that populated the world. At first, biologists were baffled when every tree and every plant bloomed all at once.

    This sent honey bees into overdrive. Apiarys were overflowing with honey driving down the price of honey plunging the stock market into chaos.

    For a brief moment, the world was a beautiful, colourful place. People saw it as a sign of peace. The 150 conflicts that were simultaneously happening in the world suddenly put aside their differences so they could take a moment to take in the sweet aromas that swept the globe.

    That all changed when people woke up to the eerie sight of birds of all species perched atop every tree, every rooftop, every car and fence.

    Panic began to set in. Religious nuts and fundamentalists started to flood the internet with talks of a biblical event that would result in a global extinction. The brief moment of peace was broken as conflicts between nations kicked into overdrive as they blamed each other for their one true god's anger.

    While the humans fought and bickered, billions of fish, along with sharks, whales, and dolphins, turned the sea around the coasts of Africa into a thick soup of marine life.

    Known as the oldest tree in the world, a lonely “Baobab" located in the centre of Tanzania in east Africa suddenly became the focus of the world's attention. Mammals of every species, including reptiles and insects descended on the location as if they were on some pilgrimage.

    This was where the rapture was to begin. The many who had accepted their fate flocked to the place to have front-row seats to the end of the world.

    The rest of the world sought solace with their families and came to gather together to watch it from the comfort of their sitting rooms. Billions tuned in to watch it. Some cried, celebrated, forgave and embraced each other.

    As everyone sat and debated how the world would end, a big bright light appeared in the sky above the Baobab tree, plunging the world into silence.

    Everyone held their breath as the bright light descended to the ground. The blinding light seemed to flicker and flow as it twisted into a celestial human made of light. Hundreds of butterflies and moths swirled around it as a big booming voice emanated from its core.

    “It's pronounced Jod, not God.”

    The light suddenly disappeared as quickly as it appeared. The mass of animals turned and walked away as everyone just stood there, glancing at each other open-mouthed. Birds went back to flying in the sky and the sea creatures returned to the sea.

    7 Comments
    2024/08/26
    13:54 UTC

    59

    Where I came from

    “Where did you come from?”

    She reached down, gently wrapping her elongated digits around the emaciated infant. His breaths were ragged and his eyes barely opened as she cradled him softly. She ran the backside of her claw across his cheek as he stirred, barely forming more then a cough as his near lifeless body nestled itself in the crook of her arms. She shushed him softly, continuing to stroke his face in a cautious yet loving manner. There was no telling if a child like this could survive, out in the cold for what must have been hours, but if he was to survive, he was in no better hands.

    “Come then sunshine, lets find you somewhere warm to lay”

    She thought of warmth for the first time in a long time. So rarely does a banshee think of warmth, for even when completely tethered to the universe we subsist in, she is barely corporeal on the best day. And almost intangible on her worst. She carried the babe for miles, holding him close the whole time, getting closer then she ever had to the physical world of humanity. Until she came upon a mountain lion, resting easy in its cavernous den, protecting its cubs with a slumbering animosity. 

    “Oh wonderful, this will do nicely”

    She ran her hand along the cats back, lulling it to an even deeper sleep as she placed the child against the warm fur of the mothers belly. The beast, quick to instinct, wrapped itself around the small infants body and began purring. Her nearby cubs awoke and followed suit, nestling themselves into the pile and aiding in the warmth. The young woman looked on and smiled before sitting herself atop a rock, and letting her voice carry the pack into a sense of true ease. She looked over at the sleeping child as he cuddled the large cat and rested his head against the small beasty siblings.

    “I wonder if youd be happier with them…or with me?”

    It didnt take her long to answer that question, as, without thinking, she lifted the baby from its spot amongst the warm cats, and dashed off with him. Noone could blame her of course, the life of a banshee might be the most solitary there is. Created from the murder of a young girl, most often a creative, and usually killed most nefariously. She didn't pick this life, she was quite literally forced into it, the universe’s payback for a man's greed getting the best of him. Who could blame her for taking the infant, if she was doomed to be alone, left to deal with the pain that had been given to her, who could say she didn't deserve some kind of company. So that is what I became.

    I grew to see her as a woman who loved me, more than a mother, she didn't like the idea of mothering so instead she was a mentor. Directing me to the right decisions and keeping me from delving too far into the bad nature that might overtake most men. I grew up in a seaside town, where most sirens and banshees tend to exist, themselves spread amongst the mountains and shorelines like villages across an unconquered countryside. At 12 years old I began to grow curious about my own existence, specifically, the nature of it.

    “Lilith?”

    I turned to her one day, using the name shed been first given almost 2 centuries ago

    “Yes dearest?”

    Many thought this was a pet name…it was in fact my actual, birth given, legal name. Dearest King. I looked over at her as she used her long claws to knit a large collection of vines and moss together.

    “What am i?”

    She smiled at me and put down her knitting

    “Whatever do you mean, you are my precious friend”

    Never got used to that term, even with my less then typical upbringing there seemed something strange about raising a boy and calling him your friend

    “Well yes, but species-wise, what am i? The sirens call me monkey boy…am I some odd hairless monkey?”

    She cupped her hand over her mouth and laughed, the way shed always done. I thought when I was a boy that it was commonplace or some mannerism, but I realized once when I saw her sneeze that if she did not cup her mouth or cover it during involuntary noises, then the glasses she snuck into town to retrieve for me would shatter. 

    “no , you are not a monkey. You are human, like the men who sell us goods and like I was before my accident. You are a bit different then other humans but youre certainly within the same category…that much is for sure”

    I looked down at my hands and how much different they were from hers

    “How am I different? Is it because I live in the woods? Or because I swim with the sirens?”

    She shook her head

    “No…youre different because even with all of the beasts around you, you wont become a monster. Greed and lust, they dont come for you out here they way they do other men”

    That night i laid awake, staring up at the stars and listening to Liliths slow, gentle breaths. I stood up from my bed and began walking, moving slowly so as not to wake her. I didnt know where I intended to go, but where I ended up was most certainly not my target destination. I heard distant cries of laughter and joy as I came to the edge of the woods, and stepped out onto the rough black stone that covered the town. There was a sour aroma that permeated the wooded air, a sort of poison smell that reminded me of rotten bread and molded apples.

    “Hey boy!”

    Someone yelled at me from across the rock, a thin man with silver hair wearing a faded blue coat and a set of leather pants

    “The hell you come from eh? you a runaway?”

    He approached me slowly and I began to back away, fearing he would infect me with the evil that lilith had so often told me about. As he came closer he held up his hands, showing me his gloved palms and speaking slowly

    “Woah now, I aint gonna hurt you none, just seeing if your alright is all”

    I stopped receding and nodded cautiously, speaking softly

    “I am alright, I come from there”

    I pointed behind me to the woods, raising my finger to emphasize I was much farther back then just the edge of town. He nodded approvingly and looked me up and down

    “Yea I shoulda put 2 and 2 together on that one but you know us hicks, we aint so good at math. Lemme get you something warmer though, I dont think its healthy to wear moss everywhere”

    He gestured for me to follow as he approached one of the many vehicles that deafened my ears. This one had large black wheels and a shining frame with a leather seat that matched the mans pants. He lifted the cover of a bag on the back and grabbed a folded up jacket, not dissimilar to his own. He handed it to me and I unfolded it, staring at the skeleton symbol on the back and taking note of the fact it had no sleeves. I wasn't sure how something so thin and sleeveless would warm me up, but I had never been one for caring anyway. I put it on over my moss shirt and adjusted the collar. He nodded as I did so and stopped me when i went to fasten the buttons.

    “Wear it open, chicks dig it”

    I nodded and smiled to him, looking at my back and admiring the design

    “So why do you wear these?”

    He looked at his friends and laughed

    “Its brotherhood man, you wear your colors and you never roll alone”

    I thought about the way I was so rarely with anyone but Lilith, it seemed I always rolled alone, even the sirens treated me as an outcast. But there was evil, among humanity, and men like this weren't too far off from the kind that hurt Lilith. I looked at all of them and began taking the jacket off, realizing I might betray her.

    “Im sorry, but i cant accept this, my…friend would not approve”

    The leader nodded and took hold of the jacket

    “That's ok man, don't sweat it, you seem like a good kid though, so take care of yourself out there”

    I nodded and turned away as he and his friends mounted their vehicles, starting up the roar of the engine and speeding off. There was something so alluring about the way they moved, and how even as separate driven entities, they all kept to the same speed and movement…like they were family. I waved to them as they left, and secretly hoped to myself I had been wrong to return the jacket. I left for home that night, exiting the smelly rock lot and back into the sweet clean air of my wooded retreat. I heard a distant song, one of fear and angst, and I knew I had been gone too long. I raced through the forest as the voice reached a crescendo and I burst into a clearing where I saw lilith, perched atop a rock, crying into her hands.

    “Lilith, what's wrong?”

    She moved her thin blue hands from her eyes and looked up at me, dashing across the clearing and wrapping her frail arms around my shoulders

    “Dear i thought you had gone, i was so worried, where did you run off to?”

    I wanted to lie, but I knew she would see it on my face, and smell it on my clothing

    “I went to town. I met some men who rode steel horses”

    Her face contorted in fear

    “Oh gods, are you alright? Did they hurt you?”

    I shook my head

    “No, they even offered me a jacket, but i didn't take it-

    I looked down at the ground as I struggled to meet her gaze. She took hold of my chin and softly lifted my eyes to meet hers

    “Ive made you think all are bad…haven't I?”

    I shrugged and nodded slowly, she kissed my forehead and sat down, pulling me close

    “If all men were bad…then there wouldn't be a you in the world”

    I looked up at her and cocked my head to the side

    “But there is a me in the world”

    She smiled and nodded

    “And you are a man…meaning that not all are bad”

    I looked at my hands and spoke softly

    “But what if I become bad? What if one day youre not here, and i turn out like other men?”

    She shrugged

    “You should know enough that by now, you could follow the right men”

    I smiled and stood up

    “You should have seen their jackets! They were all frayed at the sleeves and they had a cool skeleton on the back. And those horses! I dont even think they feed them, they just get on and go!”

    She smiled and giggled, watching me emote with increasing lack of social awareness

    “If you want, you can go back, just remember if they do something you know is wrong, let them know and you can always come back”

    I smiled and gave her a hug, holding her tight before leaping off into the woods. I ran all the way, skidding to a stop at the edge of the wood as I saw another group of steel horses and some similar dressed men slowly walking toward the back of the alley. I  was about to wave as I heard pleas as they approached and watched as some of the men laughed and disappeared around back.  I followed slowly, jogging across the lot and coming around the corner. As the situation came into view, a pit in my stomach grew and I could not hold in my voice.

    “HEY!”

    There was rage and fire flowing through my veins as they turned their attention away from the girl, and she quickly took her chance to escape, running past them as they reached for her. As I looked around, I realized these were not the same men from before, but rather an entirely different, much less desirable group. Their jackets were dark black, and had a red demon on the back, its design laughed at me and I felt at ease that they weren't the same. A fat one in the middle turned bright red and approached  me

    “Who the hell you think you are boy, She was ours”

    I spat on the ground in front of him, marking the line to where it would no longer be safe to cross

    She wasn't anyones, leave here now”

    They laughed at me and the big one took a step over the spit, towering over me and looking down as he grinned

    “You let our fun get away, but I think me and the boys could still have a good time…gutting you like a fish”

    He pulled out a long knife and slowly brought it up to my face, I felt the world go silent as the steel brushed my cheek. I kept my scowl steady and held my ground as they began to surround me, maybe id die, but I can die as the kind of man who does the right thing. I heard a loud roar of engines and a crowd of men pulled into the parking lot just out of view, I heard a voice from before panicking and suddenly the bikes turned off and an uproar of footsteps approached my position. Before they could round the corner as the men around me became distracted, I pivoted on my left foot and brought my knuckles up to his fat pack of chins, driving my entire arm upward and feeling his teeth crack as he bit his own tongue. He fell backwards with a solid thud and the group dispersed from around me, crowding the sizable bastard and looking at me with immense disdain. Before any of them could move, the footsteps from behind me finally caught up, and I felt a strong hand on my shoulder.

    “Knew you were a good kid,and it looks like you pack quite a wallop, why dont you put that on”

    I scowled at the men from the opposite gang as the silver haired man handed me the jacket and I threw it over my shoulders. I watched as they slowly hobbled away, mounting their bikes and heading off across the horizon. I smiled and turned to the man.

    “Thanks for the backup, do you want this back?”

    He shook his head

    “Hell no man, that girl you saved was one of us,so far as i'm concerned you've paid your dues. No matter where you go, you wont roll alone”

    I nodded and looked at the vehicles as we came around the corner, taking in the near army of silver chassis.

    “So where do i get a horse?”

    He looked at me with a furrowed brow

    “You mean the bikes?’

    I nodded and looked at the beasts

    “Yes, bikes, these…where do I get one?”

    He patted my back and chuckled

    “You’re too funny man, well get there and figure it out”

    We walked into the building adjacent and the smell of smoke and sour bread hit me again, this time with a pleasant background aroma as well. I sat next to the group at a long table surrounding a group of spigots with large handles. I took in the sights around me as one of the large men toward me and spoke in an inquisitive tone.

    “Hey kid”

    I turned toward him

    “Yes?”

    He laughed at my bewilderment

    “Where'd you come from?”

    4 Comments
    2024/08/22
    18:14 UTC

    0

    Angel Hunters: Nero Zero X

    -Nero 01: New Recruits-

    “Greetings. Glad you could make it on such short notice. My name is William Chosen. I’d like to keep my introduction brief. Who I am and what I do isn’t important. Hate to be informal, but we have a very important mission, and I’d like to begin. If you already know who I am, good. Means you’ve been paying attention. Don’t worry. We’ll have time for my story later.”

    The vampire before you gave you a firm handshake. His eyes were cold like a poker player who was impossibly good at concealing his emotions. Something about him gave you chills. It wasn’t the chilly vampire blood that coursed through his veins like ice water. It was the warm electric and simmering apocalyptic feeling that unnerved you. His heart held a fire that screamed the woes of the damned! An everlasting heat that was as bleak and black as a dying star.

    William assured you not to worry with a slippery smirk. The feeling would go away in time. Everyone reacted the same whenever they met him for the first time. He had an idea why but didn’t want to seem alarming on the first meeting. With all of the formalities out of the way, he thanked you for coming with a suaveness that was both charming and disarming.    

    He checked his Apple Watch and then causally mentioned to you, “You’re probably wondering where we are, right? You’re at the Báthory Estate. It’s a large mansion that belongs to the Vampire Countess of the Northern Kingdom—quite nice actually. I’d be a gentleman and show you around, but it is a mansion, and right now we don’t have time for me to be a good sport. I’m waiting for my last student to show—oh look, there she is. Eh. Maybe I’ll have her show you around since she thinks it’s a good idea to be late.”

    “Sorry! Sorry!” the girl smiled.

    “Late for the first day. Humph.”

    “I know. Sorry, Sensei,” she said.

    “Uh. I’m not your sensei. Whatever, just hurry up and take the last desk so we can begin. We have a lot to cover and only around two thousand or so words.”

    “Okay. Sorry. Won’t happen again.”

    “It better not,” he told her as he gave her an impatient glance and then you a frustrated one as the two of you waited for her to sit down, get back up, sort through her things, and then take forever to stuff her duffle bag under the seat. Her sheathed ninja sword rolled off the desk when she gave her bag a final kick to get it under there just right. She nervously picked her blade off the floor and gave you an awkward look, knowing full well she was making a terrible first impression.

    William cleared his throat in preparation for his address. All three of his students leaned forward in their seats like eager beavers. They could not believe their luck! They were about to get the speech of their lives from their idol. It wasn’t even a question if he’d deliver the goods. He was going to tell and sell the whole Angel Hunters tale with the most epic flashback that showcased one of his gritty battles in the trenches against an archangel. I mean he was a legend after all. One of the most feared vampires in the whole world. I mean he could see the glow in their eyes. That look every young person got when in awe of their favorite superhero or heroine.

    “Hello class. I’m the Liege-watcher for the Báthory Vampiric Demon Clan. Today is a big step towards achieving your dreams. I hope you’re prepared to suffer because becoming an Angel Hunter won’t be easy. Welcome to your new home. The mistress of the estate, my lovely fiancée, Annemarie, is out on business. But I’m sure if she were here, she’d tell you not to touch anything,” he ended his um epic speech with a joke that fell about as flat as a lead balloon.

    The three students looked at one another in absolute astonishment. Maybe they had wax in their ears—No! Oh God, no! The rumors were true! William was about as drab and crab as a stale patty. The teenage boy with the spikey grayish white hair, scared shredded physique, and ashen skin raised a hand. Their sensei tried to ignore him at first, but the boy was persistent in everything he did. He raised his hand even higher and waved it around like a fool.

    “What is it?” William relented.

    The boy glanced over at you and then back at William, his noble sensei. He had the temerity to ask him, “Uh. Yeah, no offense but how are we supposed to make history when you’re the most boring person in the world?”

    The boy made the mistake of mistaking William’s speechlessness as an invitation to make an even bigger fool of himself. He stood and pointed at you, before boldly proclaiming, “I’ll tell you how we can make this story blaze!” He pointed at his befuddled mates and shouted, “Forget about these two freaks! They’re scrubs!” Then he placed a hand on his chest and roared like a lion, “I’m the one you’re here to see! You know. The one with the personality! Plus, the story is named after me, so listen to me carefully when I tell you: the name is Nero Hunter! I will become the greatest Monster Hunter on the planet! I’m the strongest, fastest angel-demon—"

    “Um. Excuse me for a second,” William interrupted.

    Nero folded his arms and murmured, “Wasn’t finished.”

    “I know. And before you finish giving us your speech, I’d like for this to be done in order. Tell you what. Consider introducing yourselves to be the first test. You’ll have to wait, Nero. I think it’s only natural we begin with the youngest squad member.”

    “Fine,” he groaned.

    “Me?” the girl asked.

    “Yes,” William nodded.

    “Jeez,” she muttered under her breath before huffing and puffing in embarrassment. A funny thing happened when she eventually stood her lazy butt up. Her mood changed suddenly when the two of you innocently locked eyes. Her humiliation turned into determination in the form of a bright beam. She gave you a polite wave hoping to make a better first impression. I mean everything did depend on you reading this. She was self-aware enough to know that, or at least she thought she was. Who knows, maybe she’d say something stupid like Nero. Oh God help her if she ever ended up like that miserable basket case of a brat boy. She snapped herself out of her daydream before things really got out of hand and then told you.  

    “Hello, Wonderful Reader! My name’s Linda Landbird. Just turned sixteen. Dang. You just missed my birth bash by that much! It was crazy lit. See daddy is this bigshot ‘next-in-line’ for the NWGO/Illuminati Presidency politician kind of guy. Thanks goodness too because I finally got to throw my party in one of those secret underground bunkers that’s totally supposed to be this big deal no one’s supposed to know about! Oops…” she uttered in hesitation at her own revelation. “Don’t tell anyone I told you that. I’ll deny it if you do! Come on. I’m already in hot water up to my ears. Ugh. Ha. I bet you’re wondering what a sweet girl like me is doing here with a bitter boy like Nero. Easy. See. I’m a ninja by day and an um… uh... reacquistioner by night? Heh. Yeah. That’s it. You see. Some of my reacquisitions got me into a tiny bit of trouble with the stupid shadow government. Daddy got fed up, made a few calls, and what do you know, I’m here. I mean it was either this or jail, so yeah. Now I’m stuck here with you—yay! And him (Nero), gross. I mean I might’ve spent a few days on the run as a fugitive but who cares! My past is so boring! Oh, and I’m a vampire though I don’t know how interested you are in that,” she finished with another smile.

    Nero clapped mockingly. “I knew it!”

    “You knew what?” she snapped.

    “You’re the notorious cat burglar!”

    “I’m no thief! How dare you!” she shrieked.

    “I’m sorry ‘reacquisitioner,’” he chuckled.

    “Jerk,” she said before sitting back down.

    William looked over at the next student. He hadn’t said a word this whole time. Now that’s a pupil I can turn into a proper Angel Hunter, William thought to himself as he shone with pride at the fact. The floor was his. Everyone waited with bated breath as the perfect student stood from his chair and introduced himself.

    “My name is… classified. And I am here as part of an artificial intelligence research program for a secret project that’s also classified. I don’t really care if you like me. As a matter of fact, you probably shouldn’t. ‘Observe’ all you want, Observer. I don’t care about any of this. All I care about is completing my mission. You shouldn’t be here. You should be running home in terror. Go now. Find shelter. Lock your doors. Because when I succeed in my top-secret mission, there will be nowhere to hide. I’m going to destroy you and all of humanity.”

    Linda gave him a quizzical look. “Huh. You don’t seem too excited to be an Angel Hunter.”

    “I could care less,” he bitterly grumbled.

    Nero jumped from his seat and pointed straight at him, shouting, “I do. So, make sure you stay out of my way. I’ve dealt with guys a million times stronger than you!”

    The boy ignored his statement without the slightest hint of emotion and added, “Are there any more questions, Sensei?” He asked before staring menacingly at you as if you had taken the last milk carton. “This isn’t just a story. This is the beginning of the end.”

    William gave you a sly smirk, knowing full well he just ate his thoughts. “Okay so maybe he isn’t as perfect as I thought. Give him some time. He takes a while to warm up to humans.” Feeling mightily annoyed by his implacable students, he folded his arms, leaned against the side of the chalk board and said, “We have to call you something.”

    “You can call me Nano.”

    “And your age?”

    “Age is for humans.”

    “Humor me.”

    The circuitry under his skin glowed a pale neon. It followed the same pathways that veins and arteries would in a real human body. His slight brow narrowed, and his blue eyes flashed like a computer screen as he concentrated on the problem. “17.”

    “Thank you,” William told him before giving you a look that told you, “You thought that was bad. Ha! Brace yourself for the next introduction.” Then he gave you a nudge with his elbow and added a little salt and pepper to the idea, saying, “Sorry in advance if he says anything that annoys you. But he is the star of the show so we should hear what he has to say. Even though this is a long story, and he is a star that is about as far from ready as the sun is from the earth.”

    Nero jumped from his seat like someone had lit a fire under his butt. He raised his fist like a victorious martial arts master receiving a gold medal. The immense power inside him caused a small energy rift. “The name’s Nero Hunter! Newest and strongest Monster Hunter! I’m eighteen and ready to take my training serious.”

    “Angel Hunter,” Nano said.

    “Huh?” Nero asked.

    “We’re angel hunters.”

    “Pfft. What’s the difference?”

    “We’re supposed to be the villains. Remember?”

    “Oh, yeah,” Nero gasped. His ashen cheeks blackened in embarrassment at forgetting the name and purpose of literally everything he had signed up for. Then as if chagrin were a pesky mosquito, he swatted it away like a fly swatter, pointed at you and declared, “You. Yeah, that’s right you, observer person! Ignore what Nano said. You better not run and lock your doors! You better not go anywhere because I have a lot of angelic butt to throttle. You’re going to hate yourself if you miss it!”

    Everyone rolled their eyes at his insufferable bravado. William glared at Nero before softening his expression as he glanced at you. The hint was obvious. Anything said by that guy should be taken with a hefty heap of salt. William was about to say something but hissed in irritation instead, knowing full well Nero was allergic to good behavior. Their noble sensei had had enough. He held up his hand, took a step forward, and addressed his students.

    “Your introductions were terrible. You all failed the first test miserably. But don’t sulk. With that very disappointing performance out of the way, we can move on to something a bit more pleasant. Picking code names. Now before anyone gets excited. I’ll be picking for all three of you since all three of you seem to struggle with putting on your thinking caps.”

    0 Comments
    2024/08/22
    16:12 UTC

    230

    A phone booth appeared outside my house. When I answered it I heard a familiar voice

    I wasn’t sure who put it there, but a phone booth appeared outside my house. I hadn’t seen one in years and thought they were phased out. I wasn’t even sure what use it would be when I always had my phone on me.

    I didn’t give it much notice until It started ringing late one night. I had no intention of getting out of bed to answer it. The ringing lasted all night and only stopped when the sun started to come up.

    The following night the phone started ringing again at the same time as before. I tried to ignore it, but something told me it was urgent.

    I put on my coat before heading out into the cold night air. I stood in the confines of the booth and picked up the receiver and placed it to my ear.

    “Hello, who is this?” I asked.

    At first, all I could hear was an ear-piercing crackling sound before it went silent.

    “Hello, my name is Maryann, what's yours,” said the voice of a young girl.

    I felt uneasy about the whole situation and didn’t think it was safe to give my real name, which, strangely enough, was Maryann.

    “My name is Suzan. How old are you Maryann?” I asked.

    “It's my tenth birthday today. I really like your name. It’s the same name my mother has.”

    I felt a cold chill up my spine because that was also my late mother's name.

    “How did you find this number?” I asked.

    The phone went silent for a moment before I heard shouting on the other end of the phone.

    “That’s my dad. I need to go,” said the girl with a hint of fear in her voice.

    The phone suddenly went dead and all I could hear was static on the other end.

    The next night, as I lay in bed, I thought I must have dreamt it all. It was all just too surreal for it to have happened, but just as I was about to close my eyes, the phone rang again.

    The booth kept me dry from the relentless rain that was pouring down.

    I picked up the handset and was greeted with the same sweet voice from before.

    “Is this you Suzan?” Said the little girl.

    “It is Maryann. How are you tonight?” I asked.

    The little girl let out a deep sigh over the phone.

    “I’m sad, my dad was angry with me for being up late last night.”

    “I’m sorry to hear that Maryann. My dad used to be mean to me all the time as well.” I explained.

    “Did you used to hide as well?” asked the little girl.

    Tears streamed down my face as memories I had buried deep in my subconscious began to resurface.

    “I used to hide in the cupboard under the stairs,” I said as I wiped the tears from my face.

    “How are you able to ring me? I asked.

    “My mom bought me a “Dream Phone” for my birthday, and when I dialled one of the numbers, you answered.”

    Getting a dream phone was one of the few happy memories I had as a child. The phone was off-limits, and if I was caught using it, I would have taken a beating. So when my mom bought me the dream phone for my birthday I remembered feeling so grown up even though it wasn’t real.

    The following day I couldn’t stop thinking about Maryann. I thought what was happening was some kind of psychotic break, but crazy people don’t normally think they are crazy.

    I pulled a box from my attic. It contained things from childhood including diaries I had kept growing up. I wasn’t sure why I kept on to it because I had so many bad memories attached to it.

    I flipped through one of the diaries I had written in around the time I was Maryann’s age.

    I flipped to the entries I had made around my tenth birthday. A feeling of dread crept up my spine as I read what I had written all those years ago.

    “Suzan seems so nice and we have a lot in common.”

    My hands suddenly began to tremble as I read out the next passage.

    “Suzan used to hide under the stairs like me when she was young. Her daddy was mean too.”

    That night I sat up waiting for the call. As soon as the phone rang I ran straight out to the phone booth.

    When I answered Maryann was crying on the phone, and I could hear a man shouting aggressively in between loud bangs.

    “What's happening, Maryann? I asked.

    “My dad is drunk and he’s fighting with my mom.” I’m scared, Suzan, what will I do?” she asked as her voice trembled with fear.

    “You need to put down the phone and run to your safe place.”

    “What about my mom? He’s hurting her.”

    I remember those nights so vividly now when my dad would beat my mother relentlessly, but I also remember when he was bored of beating her, he turned his anger on me.

    “Your mom is going to be ok. You need to get to the spot under the stairs.”

    I could hear the screaming getting louder as if he was making his way to Maryann's room.

    “How do you know that's where I hide?” she asked.

    “That doesn't matter. You need to go now.”

    Suddenly, the phone went silent, and all I could do was pray she made it to her hiding place safely.

    I opened my old diary and flipped the pages. I remembered the date clearly because the fear I felt all those years ago was now raw in my mind.

    “Tonight, my dad was worse than ever, but thanks to Suzan, I made it to my safe place.”

    I couldn’t explain what was happening, but I could clearly remember writing it, but I couldn’t remember talking to Suzan, or in this case, myself.

    I flicked the page to a passage I wrote the night my life changed forever. It was the night my dad killed my mom and tried to kill me. For the little girl on the phone, that date was tomorrow night.

    This time I waited in the phone booth for the phone to ring.

    It felt like I was back there the night it happened. My chest felt tight as if all the air was sucked from the booth, and I could hardly breathe.

    I picked up the receiver before it had time to ring twice.

    “Maryann, are you all right?” I asked.

    “I made it to my safe place just like you told me to.”

    I couldn’t help but smile.

    “You are so brave, Maryann, I’m so happy you are ok.”

    “My dad has been acting even stranger today and my mom has been crying all day. I think she needs to go to the hospital.”

    Suddenly vivid memories of that night invaded my mind. Right before my dad went crazy, I remembered him singing “Tonight the Night" by Neil Young as he wandered through the house looking for my mother.

    Just like all those years ago, I could hear my dad sing that awful song through the phone; I knew Maryann needed to act now.

    “Maryann, I need you to be brave one more time. This time you need to go outside and run to a neighbor's house and beg them to call the police. Tell them your dad is killing your mother.”

    Just as she was about to say something, I screamed at her to run before the phone suddenly went quiet.

    I went back to the house and picked up my old diary. As I flicked to the next page and read the next passage I was suddenly overcome with emotion. This time, it was a happiness I’d never felt before.

    “I was a brave girl last night. I ran to the neighbors just like Suzan asked and the police came and arrested my dad. I’m at my aunt's now while my mom gets better at the hospital.”

    That night I dreamt of a life I never got to live. It was filled with happy memories of my mother as she got older.

    When I woke the following morning the phone booth had disappeared. I was filled with mixed emotions and was sad I wasn't going to get to talk to Maryann anymore. I wanted to hear her voice and tell me everything was all right.

    As I sat there drying my tears my mobile phone rang. I picked it up and began to shake as I looked at the caller ID which read “Mom.”

    My hands trembled as I pressed the answer button.

    “Hey, Maryann. I’m just wondering if you are calling tonight. I’m cooking your favourite.

    25 Comments
    2024/08/21
    21:59 UTC

    5

    ‘Awaiting the Exorcist’

    (A desperate plea written to the papal authorities in Rome)

    “Diabolic possession has ravaged the victim’s frail spirit and mind for many weeks. Her inhabited body is equally battered and broken. Far beyond any possibility of healing or repair. The poor child has lamented and begged for Heaven’s mercy, until words no longer escape her parched throat or cracked lips. Her devout parents and family have remained steadfast by her side, and pray daily that she receives a merciful death. Sadly, it hasn’t come. Is no one listening from above?

    Her possessed flesh retains the tiniest sliver of hope to survive, buried deep within. That is what keeps the tortured waif alive, and also why she cannot escape her unrelenting trials of torment. Seven local priests have tried and failed to bring an end to the sinister occupation of her body. Far too late they realized they were hopelessly out of their depth, and sought to retreat. With dead eyes still cast skyward, their departed souls left this world lifeless and broken.

    In determined escalation, we beg the holy church to summon the bravest exorcist from the Vatican; to cast out the sinister abomination haunting the poor urchin. Her mortal shell festers with malignant disease and bears no resemblance to its previous, angelic form. The abusive curses which spew forth from her forked tongue shock all who witness the appalling sacrilege. Likewise, a foul stench permeates the neighborhood air to warn frightened residents of the supernatural dangers which lurk nearby.”

    —————

    (The vile, demonic testimony recorded emanating from her unmoving mouth; delivered with an inhuman, guttural tone:)

    “Hear me all, you pathetic flesh bags! I anxiously await the arrival of this Vatican ‘exorcist’. I’ve grown tired of playing with your innocent little girl, and mocking the faithless local ‘men of the cloth’. What embarrassments they are to their ‘sacred’ profession! Their once-pious principles were thrilling to unravel, but torturing them was ultimately unsatisfying. I tire of predictable failures. I seek a worthy challenge. Bring me this so-called ‘courageous, incorruptible martyr’. I’ll tempt and humiliate the new ‘saint’; just as I did for the other deviant priests. His secret desires will be uncovered.

    I need a full course meal in depravity for my amusement. After I seize and defile the priest’s trembling body in a demonstration of Hell’s true power, I’ll grant my innocent host her pitiful request to expire. I’ll trade the joy of her miserable suffering, for that of the superstitious fool in the flowing robe. He will flash religious idols and recite powerless scriptures to bore me, ad nauseam. That is, until the mourners weep for him too. I’ll devour his heart and drink the ‘purest’ blood, and…”

    (To everyone’s surprise, the exorcist stepped forth. Having witnessed the violent threats from the shadows.)

    “Asmodeus, wretched fiend and demon of immoral lust! I command you to abandon this innocent soul at once and flee to the bottomless abyss where you belong! Your reign is over. Begone!”

    “NOOOOOO! How do you know of my unholy name? I’m not ready to go, you worthless piece of human excrement! You have absolutely no dominion over what I do. l’ll defy you.”

    “So be it, Asmodeus. I shall be forced to call upon the most high, to mete out punishment for your irascible lies and despicable deeds. You’ve bragged to all of those present how anxious you were for my arrival and yet, you do not seem very pleased now that I am here. Do you in fact, fear the Lord’s justice?”

    “I spit on your so-called ‘justice’; you fraud. This isn’t over. I shall return and make you soil your robes and bow down before me! The girl is free, for now.”

    0 Comments
    2024/08/20
    16:57 UTC

    26

    DO NOT TRUST YOUR FOSTER MOTHER

    That was the subject of the email. The sender of the email was blank. It was a white space where an email address should be. It should have been marked as spam, right? Yet, it rested both pinned and starred at the top of my email. I need your help, reader. Should I believe them, and if so, what should I do? 

    The first line of the email said, "Read your attachments in order". 

    I yelled, "Mo—" to call my foster mother and then slammed my mouth shut. 

    My foster mother was a good woman, in my opinion, a great woman, and I should know.I've lived in seven different homes, and I've only wanted to be adopted by one person, my current foster mother. I've only called one matriarch "mother," my current foster mother. She was the only good person I had in my life, and even she couldn't be trusted, according to this email. That's what scared me. 

    Sheer fear gripped my chest. I gnawed at my fingers, a habit I thought I had abandoned in my new home. My stomach ached. I was sixteen, a tough sixteen-year-old, and I felt like a child again in the worst way. Another adult wanted to hurt me.

    My insides were messed up. I wanted to be left alone and never see anyone again, and at the same time, I wanted to be hugged, have my hair brushed, and told everything would be okay. 

    I slammed my laptop shut and ignored the email. I didn't want to know the truth. I didn't delete it. I couldn't delete it. I had to know. However, I did my best to ignore it. I lasted six hours. I opened it half an hour ago today, and this is what I saw. 

    The email sender wrote: 

    Hello, I have something big to ask you. It's going to involve a lot of trust, but I need that from you, and I have proof to present to you at the end. I need you to kill your foster mom. If you need a gun, I'll get you a gun. If you need poison, I'll get you poison. If you need a grenade launcher, I'll have it to you by Tuesday. Trust me.

    Your foster mother killed my daughter. My daughter isn't coming back. I don't care about your foster mother going to prison. I don't care about justice. I want revenge. Before you become a coward or self-righteous, I want you to read this. Read this as a mother, and then you tell me what you'd do if it were your daughter. 

    Attachment 1- written in the penmanship of a 13-year-old girl. Hearts over I's and all that.

    Hi, Mom and Dad, this is Ivy. I'm leaving because everyone treats me like crap and I'm tired of it. I'm not exactly sure why everyone does. I just know they do. Okay, I don't know everyone in our town, but it feels like everyone in our town does. In the last few weeks, I've met someone outside of town, and they like me. We've been talking every night while Dad's sleeping and you're out of town, Mom. Anyway, I'll be with them soon. Don't worry, they're a responsible adult; they're older than both of you. 

    I haven't told anyone about them yet because they asked me to keep them a secret. They said soon they'll either come to my town for me or they'll teach me how to get to them. Anyway, I'm writing this letter to let you know, Mom and Dad, I'm okay. And don't worry, they're a good person. I know it in my heart. Let me tell you how this got started.

    So, remember how I told you guys my favorite book was "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"? Yeah, so the edition you gave me was great, but the cover is from the movie and not the original art. I'm grateful for the one you gave me. I'll take it with me when I leave, buttttt… It's my favorite book by my favorite author, so I needed one with the original cover. So, anyway, I stole it. Please, don't be mad. The story gets better from here. 

    So, I open the book. It was nice and chilly, and I snuggled under my covers. I didn't lay in the bed though. I was in my covers under the window and let the illumination from the moon and street lamps outside give me enough light to read. I was at the part where Eustace Scrubb enters the dragon's lair. He's a miserable guy at this point. He has zero-likable qualities, so the tension is high and I'm excited to watch him get what he deserves. I'm reading a scene I ABSOLUTELY know , and BOOM, I arrive on a nearly blank page. 

    The only words were dead center on the page, blood red, and they said, "Hello, Ivy."

    SMACK

    I slammed the book shut and threw it across my room.

    "Shut up, Ivy!" Dad yelled at me from his room. "I'm trying to sleep."

    "Sorry," I whispered back. I was afraid the book could hear me. I buried myself in my covers and watched it.

    That book was the first and last thing I ever stole. I really wondered if it knew something. If C.S. Lewis put a Christian spell on it to punish kids who stole. I opened my mouth to pray Psalm 23 then shut my mouth because I realized God was probably mad at me for stealing. I did pray though! I promised I would return the book, and I begged God to not let me get in trouble. I wondered if it was a magic book that was going to tell the store, tell the police, or worst of all, tell you guys. That last part scared me. I know I'd never hear the end of it. And honestly...

    You guys can be pretty mean. You play dirty when you're mad at me. It's like you want to hurt my feelings, and I know you'd be so embarrassed if you heard your kid was a thief. Like, I still remember everything you said to me when I got detention for that one fight in school. You knew I was being bullied all that school year, and I finally stood up for myself. And you guys still told me how much of an embarrassment I was and that I bring it on myself sometimes. That's mean.

    Anyway, yeah, so I was scared to hear that again, and it got cold, really cold.  And I'm sitting there afraid to move, and I hold myself in the cold. I wasn't going to open it, but as I shivered, I got lonely, scared, and curious. I crawled forward toward the book. I pushed it open and flipped to that same page again.

    "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you, Ivy." The new words on the page said.

    SMACK

    I slammed the book closed. I made that 'eek' sound that you guys make fun of me for. I crawled back to my covers in the corner in the moonlight.

    Dad heard it and yelled at me. "Ivy!!"

    "Sorry," I whispered again. I listened to the sound of my breathing and the crickets outside, and then, for a third time, I opened it. 

    "Everything okay, Ivy?" the words said. 

    "Uh, yes," I whispered to it. "Are you mad at me?"

    "No, dear. I could never be mad at you," the words changed again. The initial set disappeared, and then the new words wandered onto the page as if they were hand-written. 

    "Oh..." I whispered, relieved. "How can you speak?"

    The words vanished, and new words came on the page. 

    "That is complicated. Unfortunately, I'm trapped in this book."

    "Oh, no! I'm sorry. How can I get you out?" 

    "You're sweet, dear. There will be time for that. Just wait. You've grown into such a lovely girl."

    "You know me?"

    "Yes," the words said, and I paused. 

    "Who are you?"

    "Take a guess, sweetheart." These words were written with surprising speed. She said she saw I had grown, so that meant it was someone older. And they were someone who could never be mad at me.

    "Granny?" I asked the book.

    "Yes. I'm your granny. You haven't seen me for a long time, have you?" 

    "No," I said. I honestly don't remember us visiting granny. I remember her coming by once. She told me the truth about you though, so I see why you don't let me visit her. 

    "Are you really my grandma?" I asked.

    "Absolutely."

    "Prove it."

    This time it paused for a while. I almost called out to it again, but I didn't want to call it granny if it wasn't really granny. Then finally, Granny wrote again.

    "Look in your heart," the page said. "Look in your heart, and you'll know the truth." 

    And I did. I promise you. I looked in my heart and knew she was my grandmother. Like when I asked you about Jesus, Mom. How did you know he was real? And you said, "You just know that you know, that you know. Deep in your heart somewhere."

    And like my Muslim friend Abir, I asked her why she was so convinced that Mohammad was the prophet and Islam was the truth. She said she had this deep peace and joy in her heart when she prayed.

    I had that. I believed in my heart she was my grandma.

    "Where have you been?" I asked Granny.

    "I've been trapped. Bad men locked me away."

    "It wasn't Dad, was it?" 

    The words didn't come for a minute. My heart pounded. I think you and Mom are mean, but I didn't want to believe you could do this. This was too far. Finally, the red ink appeared.

    "How did you know?" Granny said. "You're so clever, like your mom used to be." 

    "I just did! He can be mean," It felt good for someone to encourage me. 

    "Yes, and unfortunately, he's involved with your mother as well." 

    "Oh, no. How can I help?"

    "You speaking with me has helped a lot."

    "Thanks, granny. Is there anything else?"

    "Well, you can get me out of here."

    "Really?"

    "How?"

    "Oh, it'll take a few weeks or so. You just have to get me a few things." 

    Attachment 2- sloppily written perhaps by an older person.

    My parents did not receive that letter. Excuse my poor spelling or miswritten words. It is painful to write now. My fingers are withered, my back aches, and it hurts to breathe. If anyone was around me, they'd hear it. They'd hear my big labored breaths, but I am alone on the floor. I tried to write at my desk, but I stumbled over. 

    "Help," I begged.

    "Help," I whimpered.

    "Help," I only thought because it was the same as my cries.

    No one would be around to hear it anyway. I lay on the floor downtrodden and defeated. Even gravity's lazy pull-outmuscled me now. 

    It took a month. I gathered everything she needed. A strange cane that was in some thrift store, a heartfelt letter saying how kind she was to me, a letter saying that she was going to help me with a problem I had, and a letter that said she was a reformed citizen. I stuffed the letters inside the book. They disappeared in a melted mess. It was like the paper turned into wax.

    She crawled out face first. It hurt to watch. I imagine it was painful like a baby's birth except no crying, no blood, no stickiness. She came out in silence, smiling, and with skin as dry as a rock. Once her face was out, her neck pulsed and stretched to free itself. 

    Then came her shoulders draped in an orange sweater the color of a setting sun. And I thought that was fitting because I knew my life was about to change. Her arms followed, and then her chest, and then eventually her whole body. My eyes never left what rested on her body though, that horrible sweater.

    I screamed. I yelled and crawled away from the book until I hit my wall and my voice went hoarse.

    "Ivy!" Dad yelled, and his voice broke me. He wasn't mad but concerned. He banged on the door, demanding to be let in, but it was locked and I was incapable of moving forward. If I moved forward, I might get closer to that thing coming from the book. Dad banged and pushed the door. It didn't budge.

    "Ivy!" he yelled, scared for his only daughter. My eyes could not leave the strange woman's sweater.

    People were on her sweater. Living people! Probably around my age. They were two-dimensional, misshapen, and sewn into the fabric, like living South Park characters. They all had oversized heads, sickly slender bodies, and eyes that dashed from left to right. Every eye on the sweater looked at me. Robbed of mouths, they had to use single black lines to speak. All of them made an ominous O.

    "Granny?"

    "Hello, child," she said. Her back was bent. Not like a hunchback but like a snake before it strikes. "You said your town was bothering you, child? I have a gift for you." She picked up the cane before her.

    The door clattered open. Dad jumped in, bat in hand. He swung it once; the air was his only victim. He breathed ferocious, chaotic breaths. I wanted to push him out of the room in a big hug and we both pretend this scary woman didn’t exist. 

    "Ivy! Ivy!" he cried. His eyes didn't land on me. He was too panicked. I never saw him so scared.

    The woman's eyes didn't leave him. They went up and down his petrified body.

    "I'm sorry," she said. "Are you from this town?"

    "Where's my daughter?" he barked at her.

    "So, you live here then? This is your house? I don't mean to be rude. I only mean to do my job. Nothing more. I'm reformed after all," everything she said was so arrogant, so sarcastic, and demeaning. 

    "Where's Ivy!"

    "Yes, yes. Broken door and to speak with such authority and without regard for my questions... you must be the man of the house." 

    She tapped her cane once. Her body left the room. Dad looked for it and found me instead. We locked eyes. I was mute and scared. He tossed his bat away. He ran to me. I pushed my covers off and lept to him, wanting one of his bear hugs more than anything. 

    The old woman appeared behind him. She floated in the air. She smacked his ribs with the cane.

    BOOM!

    SPLAT!

    He went flying into my wall. His body bounced off it and landed on my bed where it bounced again, unconscious.

    The woman smiled at me and shrugged once, then tapped her cane again, and she was gone. 

    The screaming started in my brother's room, and then my dog yelped in my garage, and then the neighbors screamed, and then the whole neighborhood screamed. 

    That whole time, Dad was still breathing, his body bent and distorted into a horrible V shape. He shuddered. He sweated. He leaked from all over, from his mouth and his bowels. 

    I am a monster, Mom. I am so sorry. I did not ask for this. I asked her to stop everyone from being so mean.

    The woman. The liar. The woman who was not my grandmother did come back for me at the end of the night. She stole my youth. Time shredded and slashed at my body. I shrunk and ached and gasped as my future was stolen. My hair grew, grayed, and then fell away. My body ached for sex and then love, and then I only wanted to be held. 

    She said I didn't have much longer. Three days and then I would end up as another soul on her sweater. I am so sorry, Mom.

    Attachment 3 -

    It was a picture of my foster mom. It was all wrong. 

    I didn't know my heart could beat this fast. I typed on my phone under my covers and with my dresser pressed against the door for my safety. Sorry, sorry, I don’t know why I’m apologizing you’re not here with me.

     I keep retyping everything because I miss letters because my hands won't stop shaking. My mouth's dry. I'm so thirsty, but I won't leave this room. I still say it has to be Photoshop, some sort of Photoshop that affects everything because after I saw it, I walked into her room and there was the sweater! And the thing is… I think she knows I know. I gasped when I saw her and she woke from her sleep. She looked at the sweater once then looked at me and I ran out of there. Below is a note from the email writer that I'm struggling to click. I really can't take anymore. I really don't know what this is**,** but I don't want it anymore. I want off!

    I say all that, but I read the note anyway: 

    You see it now, don't you? Who your foster mother is. Next time you see her, she'll be wearing that sweater. Don't be embarrassed you didn't notice until now. She can disguise herself. She can make you think you've known her forever. But now that you've seen a picture of her, you know what she is.

    She is the Old Soul. She isn't from this world. She's from a world where many are as cruel and powerful as her. Don't think I'm getting on my high horse. I know I'm cruel, as well. I know I neglected my daughter. I didn't love her as I should, so she fell right into the arms of the first person who was kind to her. 

    I bet you think I'm a terrible parent after all of that , huh? Well, welcome to the club. It's only me and you in there, and we aren't recruiting new members.  Our only goal is to give Satan your mother back, except screaming, full of holes, and missing a limb or two. Then I'm following her to keep doing the same thing for all eternity. Are you in? I need an answer.

    Guys, I need your help. Up until now, my foster mother has been perfect. What should I do????

    Thanks to a lot of the advice in this subreddit. I did decide to meet the woman who wanted to kill my mom and then kill herself to keep the fight going in Hell. I know it's different but, as I talked to her online and said I'd meet her, I didn't feel too different from her daughter in a way. A stranger talks to you out of the blue and tells you you have some grand purpose to complete. Ivy ended up with her youth stolen and a death worse than anyone deserves. I did not want to end up like Ivy. However, the risk is the right one to take, right? Because it's important to do the right thing. Because it makes other people do the right thing and we're all happier for it, right? 

    And, please don't judge me, but when I write, I try to be honest. I am sixteen years old, I've been in seven different families, and I can never call any of them home. I really hope if I'm good, I can have a home and a family. 

    Ivy thought the same thing though, huh? That if you listen to the right person, they'll whisk you away to a magical land full of sunshine, purpose, art, and people that love you. But Ivy's dead.

    This revelation shocked me as I got out of my mom's car and walked inside the ice cream shop we were supposed to meet. I put on a tough face though and tried to think tough thoughts. I'm not orphan Annie. I'm orphan Bruce Wayne with boobs. Of course, I was scared, though. I was meeting a stranger who could toss me in their van, or pull out a gun and tell me I had to do what they said. 

    I swung my keys in a tight circle as I walked to put all my nervous energy there. I strolled with purpose. I checked my surroundings, all ten of my house keys jingled. If I'm given a house key, I never take it off. If keys to the home need to turn to knives that slice heads, I will be ready. 

    Surroundings checked: it's a summer night, orange skies, and the ice cream store only has a few customers. A couple on a date, a family with a kid in high school, and Ferran, the woman I'm supposed to meet. We make awkward eye contact through the glass. That scared me but, I've met adults who've hated me, so I'm used to not showing fear. I gave a curt nod. She gave a curt nod. I walked in. 

    I ignored her in the booth on the other end of the store and headed straight to the cash register. No games. She won't manipulate me. I decided I wouldn't let her pay for my ice cream or even try to withhold it for a second to chat more.  I decided I'd run this conversation. I even looked at the menu online to know what to order. I knew I planned this to the letter and I knew it wouldn't end with my loss.

    "Hello," I said to the dark-haired man behind the register. "Can I get the chocolate macchiato," I paused for half a second; I was shocked by what I saw behind the counter, then I continued without missing a beat because like I said, I'm Bruce Wayne with boobs. "in a small bowl with sprinkles."

    "Sure thing, anything else?" he said back. 

    "No, thank you."

    "Any toppings?" 

    "Just sprinkles."

    "Okay," he punched in the numbers with a smile but slow unease with the task.

    I waited for my order. I held my arms by my side. I placed two sets of keys on my knuckles. Based on what I saw behind the counter I knew I would be turning my keys into knives. My eyes never left the server at his task. He gave two scoops of chocolate macchiato, selected a medium bowl, and then put them in the bowl. 

    "Have a good night," he said and handed me my food. 

    "You too," I smiled and walked away. The light in the ice cream parlor was too dim.

    Normally fine, unsettling now. I couldn't get great reads on the expressions of others.

    I sat across from Ferran, the woman I was supposed to meet. I noticed she was in a wheelchair. Was that genuine or part of an act?

    "What's wrong?" she asked. 

    "Nothing's wrong."

    "No," she was stern, business-like, like a college professor who didn't care if you passed their class or not.  "Something's wrong." 

    "How can you tell?" 

    "Your face."

    That annoyed me. Most adults and people couldn't read my expressions well. 

    "The problem is," I said, "that man behind the counter hates me. Like throat-crushing-in-your-sleep hate."

    "Do you know him?"

    "Nope."

    "How can you tell he hates you?" she asked, undisturbed.

    "Experience… it's a vibe," I said. "We might need to leave." 

    "What? No, why? I can protect you. I promised I could protect you," she reached out for my hand. I swatted it away. 

    "I can protect myself, and now that I think about it, I don't like how you're not alarmed."

    She rolled her eyes. 

    "What?” She asked. “Do you want me to cry and hug you?"

    "I'm leaving," I said and pushed off the table. When I whirled around toward the door, the man from the counter stood in my path, shaking and holding a gun.

    "No--- no-. You gotta stay here.." he demanded. I couldn't tell if he was more angry or more scared. The other patrons were strange. They didn't duck for cover, they didn't gape at us,  all of them pretended not to look. Those weren't customers. This was a setup. I leaped behind Ferran, dumped her out of her wheelchair, and slammed her to the floor. My keys pressed against her neck.

    "I will slice her open if I don't get answers right now!" I demanded.

    "N-- no-.. No, you give us answers," the man with the gun said, and every fake patron turned to me, accepting the jig was up.

    "The only answer is I'm going to slit her throat if someone doesn't explain what's going on."

    Ferran yelled beneath me, "Your mother is the Old Soul!" 

    "Yeah, and what exactly is that?"

    "She's not from our world. She's from a world of people like her, and she's feasting on us. Someone trapped her in that book and took her to our world."

    "Okay... and who are you people?"

    "Well, I'm ex-FBI and these are volunteers. They've lost someone to the Old Soul and don't like you. You're the only one she's spared. So, they don't trust you. They think you're responsible for their lost loved ones."

    I looked harder at the cast she assembled. They all hated me. Their posture was too stiff, their lips too tight, and a shade of red grew underneath their expressions. If I were burning alive, they'd risk third-degree burns to be the ones to choke the life out of me.

    "But they won't hurt you because we need you. So, how about we meet somewhere else?" Ferran said beneath me.

    "Guns," was my only response.

    "Derrick," she commanded, "slide the gun to her."

    Derrick complied. The gun slid and whisked against the floor.

    "I said guns," I repeated and pressed my knee into Ferran's back.

    "Alright, alright. They're volunteers, not SEALs." Ferran said. "They wouldn't have shot you. Everyone, slide your guns this way."

    They did as commanded and everyone slid their guns across the floor. They slid into a pile and it looked so extreme, so silly, so mean, seven guns all for me. I didn’t believe her. They really all hated me.

    "Okay, if we meet elsewhere,” my voice cracked. I held my tears back but it hurt. They hated me but didn’t know me. I had just lost my foster mom and I was trying to do the right thing by helping these people and they hated me.

    "Fine."

    We met at the only place I felt safe, my foster mother's home. She was usually away in the mid-afternoon and encouraged me to invite a friend or even a boy over... She's um very open and trusting, so I felt kind of sick taking advantage of it.  What if my foster mom really wasn’t evil? Regardless, I did.

    We went into my room. I had to carry her up the steps and then come back for her wheelchair. It was as awkward as it sounds. I don't think any of us were the type of person to make jokes. 

    Once we got there, Ferran judged my room. It's always clean, just a little moody. I've been told it's dark. My posters of Billie Eilish(classic Billie note new Billie I’m still not sure how I feel about that song with Charli), Dream of the Endless (debating taking it down for obvious reasons), and Batwoman (Cassandra Cain) give the vibe that I'm some goth chick, but I find all of them hopeful in their own way. The black bedsheets and dark purple pillows don't help though.

    "I know you said she's not coming," Ferran said, "but can we put the TV on so if she does come, she won't hear us talking? You can just say I'm your girlfriend or something."

    "I'm not gay," I said.

    Ferran squinted in disbelief but said nothing.

    "I'm not gay," I repeated.

    Ferran shrugged, "It's the purple hair."

    "I just like the color..." I mumbled. Then changed subjects. "What should I put on the TV?" I grabbed the remote and clicked away.

    "Whatever is natural. What do you normally watch on TV?"

    "Oh, like stuff on Disney Plus. 'Dog with a Blog' and stuff like that."

    She chuckled, then giggled, then full-on laughed.

    "What's so funny?" I asked.

    "It's just that my daughter felt she was too old for it and here you go watching it."

    "Alright... do you have to criticize everything?" 

    "You see why I'm a terrible mother, huh?"

    I didn't know how to respond, so I didn't. The 'Dog with a Blog' theme played in the back.

    "I thought I was doing the right thing abandoning them," she said. "I'm obviously not an FBI field agent, just a data junkie, so most of my work could have been done from home. " She sighed and rested her hand on her chin. "But I could tell everyone was getting fed up with me, so I left. I said duty calls and no one could argue."

    "I'm sorry... If it helps, they didn't seem fed up to me in the letters."

    "Isn't that crazy? How love works? How merciful it really is." She shed a tear and wiped it away faster than it came down. "Okay, here's a breakdown of our plan..." I held myself and sighed. I wish I could feel that love. 

    She went into logistics. The more she talked, the madder I got. The TV was too loud. She was going into too much detail. And honestly I realized I didn't want to sacrifice everything I had for anybody.

    I paced through the room pretending to listen. My mind wandered and I thought about this time when I was 13. I made friends with this girl, Vicky Vanessa. She talked too much and maybe had slight autism. She was not popular. Anyway, she also still liked Disney Channel, was sweet, and made me laugh. She usually sat by herself at lunch, so I thought that was weird and I asked her to sit with my friends. Long story short, they hated her, they said don't bring her back. So naturally, because Vicky didn't have friends, I chose her. I knew what it was like to not have friends. 

    I loved her and she was ecstatic to have a friend. We spent so many days together. She wasn't stupid, she knew hanging with her was social suicide. She'd always have a grateful twinkle in her eye. And yet, when I moved, she ghosted me. I messaged her on IG, Twitter (not calling it X), TikTok; I even found her on Facebook and I was still ghosted. So, what's the point of all this? When I needed her... when I was being tossed around foster homes, she left me. Why should I give up my perfect life for someone who doesn't care about me?

    "You're not going to go through with it, are you?" Ferran said in the midst of my pacing

    "What? Yeah, of course I will."

    "No, you won't." Ferran was pissed. She pressed her teeth together and wrinkles formed on her forehead. "I see your eyes glazing over. What's the problem?"

    "No, problem. I'm just tired."

    Neither of us talked. The audience laughed and clapped at a pretty bad joke on the TV. I sighed. She called my bluff, correctly. 

    "I like my life," I admitted. "I know it's selfish but I don't want to give it up."

    "And why should you ruin your life for anybody?" 

    "Yes!" The words poured out and I realized I had been holding them in for hours.

    "You should help because evil is an infection and it always spreads. It might take a while but it'll be your turn soon enough."

    "What if I'm immune?"

    "You're not."

    "What if I am? What if I'm the one person the Old Soul cares about?"

    "She's a monster."

    "She's somebody!"

    "Oh... and you've never had somebody."

    "No! So why do I have to give it up?" I was yelling, furious. I slammed my fist on the bed. It left a big black indentation that did not pop up immediately.

    Ferran chuckled at me and looked at the TV.

    "Despite loving 'Dog with a Blog,' you've been through some stuff. Haven't you, kid?"

    "Yes, so don't lie to me."

    Ferran chuckled at the dog typing away on the screen. She still didn't look at me.

    "Molly, this doesn't end with you getting some award, divine or otherwise. The FBI says the Old Soul is too much of a threat to address, so I don't have their funding nor resources. I'm so poor from tracking her down, renting an ice cream shop, and buying bullets, I couldn't even buy you a plastic trophy. You'll be an orphan about to age out of the system if you survive. I'm not adopting you or anything dumb like that. Like I said, I'm killing myself when this ends. I don't want to live. The only guarantee you have is that a bunch of strangers you don't know won't die, a bunch of innocents. A little justice. Is that good enough for you? Yes or no?"

    "Yes," I said, unsure if I meant it.

    The next day, Mom (or should I call her the Old Soul) and I walked up to the front of the ice cream store. I said I'd go with the plan and I was nervous ever since. 

    "Wait," the Old Soul said. Her voice was always cracky and scratched, almost like a teenage boy's. But I assure you, her words were always poised, poignant, and sharp. "Your hair's a mess," she said and came forward to adjust it. Ever since the email, everything about her disturbed me. The way her eyebrows danced as I lied to her, the way she brought her cane everywhere but she never let the bottom touch, and that sweater of victims… their faces always changed. Never smiles. Now many had frowns of concern for me.

    "Oh, you're sweating," the Old Soul said and brushed my cheek. I flinched. I stayed in a home once where I was smacked a lot. Did she know that? Was she toying with me?

    "It's hot, Mom."

    "Not for a girl from Mississippi," she mocked and raised her eyebrows in that dance I found so silly before. I sweated more, my heart ran rapid, and I wanted to run just as fast.

    "It's like 90, right? That’s hot."  We were so close, so close the door. Once inside I at least had allies but here I was exposed.

    "It's 80 and your face is flushed... Oh." The people on her sweater also made the same shocked expression. "Disheveled hair and face still flushed. Molly, did you just see a boy before asking me for ice cream?"

    "Oh," I laughed, relieved. "No, Mom, you're so gross!" I held the door for her and mocked her. "Nasty old lady." 

    "I don't know why you're ever surprised. You know exactly what I am," she laughed and laughed. Did she know I knew? The comment unsettled me. I opened the door for us and we walked in.

    "You want to take a seat. I'll order the ice cream for us."

    "Oh, what manners. We'll have to keep this fella around if he gets you acting like this."

    The mission was simple. Deliver her person ice cream without dying. Everyone else here was backup I hoped we didn’t need.

    I flicked her off behind my back. It's frightening to betray someone, even someone who deserves it. And to turn your back on them? I imagined her laughing at me, her smite would be as wicked as a gator, and her laugh as quiet as the wind. I wanted to look back. I was briefed multiple times that looking back would be a dead giveaway though, suicide. So, I walked forward, almost forgetting how. I took small self-conscious steps and switched my gait at least 4 times. Again, like yesterday, I spoke to the man at the counter. 

    "Hey, I'll take a vanilla and a butter pecan, please."

    "What size?" A single bead of sweat rested on his forehead. 

    "Two medium cups please," he coughed twice just to get that sentence out. Under pressure it appeared he wasn’t the best either. 

    "Any toppings?"

    "Just sprinkles."

    He gave me the price, I used Apple Pay and tipped $2.00. And I waited. Nerves took over my body. I couldn't stay still. I tapped my foot, I watched the clock tick, tick, tick. I rattled my nails against the counter, I sighed deeply and inhaled the magical aroma of an ice cream shop, and I probably made eye contact with every person in the ice cream shop. Ferran sat three rows down directly across from the Old Soul.

    "Vanilla and Butter Pecan," the man behind the counter said. I skipped over to get it. I never skip. I know it was suspicious but my mind was jumbled and I thought it was more suspicious to stop, so I skipped to the Old Soul. It all felt like slow motion. Like I was wading in the water on a raft going up and down, up and down, and I was wading closer and closer to a shark and I had to pretend like it was normal, despite my shaking stomach, despite the world bouncing. Eventually, the world went still when I sat and I slid the Old Soul her ice cream.

    "Aren't you in a good mood!" she mocked.

    "I'm just happy to have ice cream with my favorite woman," I countered.

    "Uh-huh," she said and then took a big scoop of ice cream. She swallowed. It was over. Done. I did my job. I would miss her. It should only take one bite for the poison to kill her. She took a big break to sigh.

    "What's wrong?" I asked.

     "I'm just relieved it's only poison," she said. “And do you know what’s funny. I knew you knew so I was going back home right after this.” She leaped up and slammed her cane on the ground. She disappeared.

    "Weapons out!" Ferran shouted. The clicks of guns whipped through the near silence of the room beforehand. "She can teleport with her cane!" Ferran yelled again. "Keep your heads on a swivel!"

    Sorry, but I'll pass out before I'm able to go into too much detail. So I will say it was um, like finger painting.

    Finger painting. 

    Yes, finger painting would be the best analogy for what the Old Soul did. When a child finger paints, they put their hands in and out of whatever color they want as they, please. They'll leave the project and come back whenever to make big splashes of color that go everywhere. The Old Soul left and returned each time to make someone a bloody red or gutsy green that sprayed everywhere by using her wicked cane. Like a child, she got a lot done in a little time.

    Splish, splash, red blood, and green gas flowed. 

    Slip.

    Bodies fell and slid, searching for safety and vengeance. Blood's metallic scent flattened the ice cream's magical smell. A white bone flew past me. I wasn't scared, I was only an observer. Something in me knew she wouldn't hurt me. Bullets beat against everything. Windows, chairs, tables, people, but none could beat her. None could touch her. One gun slid toward me and would have gone past if not for the pile of blood by my feet. I raised it and walked toward her.

    Only myself, the Old Soul, and Ferran lived. Ferran survived by playing dead. The Old Soul tested her by crushing her legs with her cane, they cracked and bent sideways. However, Ferran was a paraplegic. She felt no pain in her legs.

    Her cane was on the other side of the room.

    "Now, sweetheart, what are you doing with that gun?" she asked, as sweet as marshmallow, and covered in every color the human body contains.

    "Sweetheart," she warned. "Stay where you are. Guns are dangerous."

    "Molly…" she eyed me with malice.

    I placed the gun on her forehead.

    "Molly, get that gun out of my face," she spat at me.

    I had her dead to rights. I couldn't kill her though. I had one question to ask her first.

    "Why did you let me live?" I asked her.

     "Because you're a slut," she said with a smile dripped with arogance. 

    "Wh-what?" 

    "You invited men in here to fix that little hole in your heart that your first daddy made because he had the Midas touch." 

    "Mom, that's not nice," I had I called her mom but I was so crushed. I was reverting to a child before her eyes.

    "You're right, it's not nice it’s funny. Everyone uses you for your body. I know about orphanages, I know about foster care. How many dads and brothers did you tempt?"

    "I didn't tempt anyone!" I swear to you, reader! I really didn’t! I was assaulted by one of my foster mom’s husband and she didn’t believe me! I swear to you!

    "The mothers think you're a liar and I think you're a liar. I know you have nightmares of them. Your yellow-stained sheets don't reek of lemonade. At your age too? What trauma? That's why you can't stop bringing men over. You need someone to hold you and tell you it's okay. You wanted to 'reclaim your body' and I wanted access to men and boys who snuck out and covered their tracks so they couldn't be found."

    "No, no way! They're all dead?"

    "Sweetheart, you think those men in your DMs found you by accident. Aww, baby. Your mother was pimping you out."

    She imitated me. It was my voice and close to perfection. "Why wouldn't he text me back? He was so nice and we had a great time."

    She broke her mocking tone and screeched out a laugh. "Because I killed them, stupid! I killed them and put them on my sweater!" she cackled. "And now, because some woman told you, you're going to be a killer. Does your body feel reclaimed yet? Good luck with a whole new batch of nightmares starring the face of yours truly."

    "Molly, I want you to put the gun down and walk away," Ferran said breaking her attempt to play dead.

    "No, I can-."

    "Yep, you can," Ferran said. "But I've killed a man and she's right. You're bound forever to the first person you kill. If you kill her right here, she'll never die in your head."

    "I can do it. This is what she wants. She wants us to let her go."

    "Guilty," the Old Soul said.

    "Yeah, but it's about what you want. You don't want to see her face in your nightmares. You want to watch Disney Channel. You want to sit down for family dinners. You want a mother. I saw that and tried to take advantage of it. I'm sorry. Let her live. Let her own universe take care of her."

    "I can do it!"

    "But you don't want to. Drop the gun and walk away. She'll find her cane eventually and then she'll leave. That'll be the end."

    And that is what happened. I let her go and the Old Soul did leave our world.

    In my world, things got better.  I'm adopted now. Turns out Ferran felt it would be a better use of her life to be a better mom again than to just end it. Even though the Old Soul is gone, Ferran and I aren't done. There are plenty of people out there being taken advantage of by evil adults, natural and supernatural. We'll be stopping them both. As for the Old Soul, I'll let those of her world stop her.

    Oh, and as for my friend, Vicky, whom I mentioned earlier—the one I thought ditched me once I moved. Turns out she actually passed away, which is heartbreaking. I was mad at a ghost. But you know what? I was grateful I chose to be her friend. I was so grateful that we got to spend time together. I think that's an underrated reward of goodness or whatever. I get to look back on my time with Vicky, and I can smile. If this reaches heaven, Vicky, just know I loved you and I'd choose you all over again.

    2 Comments
    2024/08/18
    22:06 UTC

    33

    I tried to stop a girl from jumping off a building...

    All my life I’ve wished I was that guy. That guy who had the look, the aura, to get girls to love him or even acknowledge me. It felt like all my friends were that guy without real money or success either. A buddy of mine was homeless in Miami until he got a sugar mama. Could you believe it? Wasn’t even looking for it. She found him. She’s good-looking too.

    Tonight at this rooftop party I’ve never needed to be that guy more in my life. A woman stood on the edge of the roof. It looked like she wanted to jump and no one seemed to care. I called the name of my friend who I came with.

    “Oliver, yo Oliver,” Oliver is that guy. He could get her to come down. Instead, he shooed me away with his backhand as he talked to a pretty girl in a blue dress. The girl scowled at me and my neediness. Then she whisked him away and they melted in the crowd of black suits and bright dresses, like a million-dollar splatter painting.

    That’s what I did to women. I was the last one you’d want to get a lady off a ledge. I might be what gets her to take the last plunge of her life. And yet, I shuffled toward her through the crowd. Everyone impresses in freshly fitted New Year’s suits, and dresses that must be flaunted, and they sipped from flutes of champagne that can’t be wasted.

    Every guy ignored me in requesting their assistance.

    The girls ignored my shoulder taps and ‘excuse me’s’.

    I know better than to touch their drinks to get their attention. It’s two minutes to midnight on New Year’s; drinks and kisses are a matter of life and death. I confront the woman on the edge of the roof alone. Out of breath and struck with the loneliness that only a chilly windy night and being surrounded by people but cared for by none can bring I spoke to the girl.

     “You really shouldn’t jump”.

    She turned to me. The skyscraper that towered above her casted blue light on her skin. A sharp gust of wind whipped her purple dress to the left. It was short. She had to be so cold. I pulled off my jacket to give it to her.

    “What did you say,” she repeated. She had an accent, English maybe.

    “You really shouldn’t jump!” I yelled against the wind now. The breeze knocked her two steps to the left and my heart leaped. Luckily, she balanced herself and laughed as she did so. But when our eyes met again the joy vanished. Don’t get me wrong, she didn’t look miserable. Her face held a plain blank expression. I guess she wanted me to go on with whatever speech I was going to give. I won’t lie, I didn't think this far ahead.

    “Life can get better!” I told her.

    That disappointed her. Her blank expression left and she looked like her duty was to console me. Like I was her child.

    “It’s fine. I’ve peaked in life. I don’t want to have kids. All my friends are married with families. I have no desire for romantic love and I’ve seen every sight worth seeing.” And then she waves me off like Oliver did. Like everyone’s done this entire party. Except this time I refuse to be waved off. To me, this was important. I leaped on the platform with her so one gust of wind could end both of our lives.

    “Careful,” she said.

    “You’ve seen everything worth seeing. Are you sure?” I yelled l over the wind.

    “Yes,” her words were clear to me despite her not yelling.

    “Well, then can you show me?”

    She looked disgusted and I felt every insecurity I’ve ever had all in that one moment, every rejection doubled. Then she tested me with her eyes. They strolled up and down my body, no rush, a long laborious gaze.

    “Okay,” the word shot out of her like air from a balloon. She wore a disappointed smile that I didn’t know what to make of.

    “Okay?” I asked and I’m encouraged by the strength of having literally saved a life.

    “Okay!” The word came out like a hurricane and she ran to me and swung me in her chaos in an odd hug/dance.

    We spun and spun. I was no longer in control. She swayed us across the roof until we balanced on the edge. My back faced the city. If I fell I would be a well-dressed stain on the ground. I fought back terrified of the ten-story drop and the wind’s pull that made my fate seem more and more certain. I pressed the toes of my black loafers into the floor because my heels had nowhere to fall. I grabbed her by her hips to push her off and it didn’t even interrupt her dance. I buried my hands in her sides for more leverage, more pressure, and even more pain. Anything to push her off and save us both. She never stopped dancing. I couldn’t stop her. I was caught in her hurricane. The wind was an ally to her. It spun as she spun. My feet left the roof’s edge and we fell from the building.

    We swished in the air. I was breathless. It was surreal. It was unfair. It was two seconds before death. Up and down my chest went, faster than I thought was safe. I screamed until she slowed time or space down. It was impossible. We floated in the air.

    Every color smashed together to make the world white, except her. Her brilliant purple dress stayed the same in this white world. She gave me her dead stare again.

    “Are you sure you still want to live? There’s a cost?” It was weird. She said it like a doctor tells a patient they have cancer, ethereally somber.

    “Yes,” I did not hesitate.

    I landed on the Earth, confused. Nothing made sense. I have been dead. I have been dead and been somewhere else…

     The shock of landing should have killed me. Somehow I was crouched. My knees should have burst. I should have been laid out flat, split open. The blue light from the buildings should have mixed with the red of the innards of my body. The blue light was everywhere that New Year’s night. It even painted the midnight sky blue. The light at this new location was not blue.

    I was somewhere cold. I was cramped. I was naked. I sat at the bottom of ten coarse stone steps that led to a single wooden door. A bulb glowed too high above me and its faint glow was the only thing that brought light. There was a bowl with bread to my right and water with a faint brown tint.

    The room was not quiet. The walls made noise. Skitter-Scatter. Skitter-Scatter.  Something dripped behind me. My attempt to turn and find out made me realize my neck was chained,  as well as my wrist but my neck’s chains were much tighter. I could only look forward and listen to the strange drip and to the skitter-scatter behind me.  I opened my mouth and my tongue was assaulted by the filth and musk in this room. In my peripheral vision, something shuffled in a cardboard box. Was it a victim of wind or was it moved by another life in this dank space?

    “Help!” I screamed. “Help!”

    The door whooshed open. My screams stopped, and prayers were answered.

    One fat, barefoot entered first. Ankle gone. Arches gone. Toes like little fungus on the swollen mass that is his foot. Next came his other foot, another swollen mass, and together they made the room shake. My neck twitched and pinched back and forth in its chains.  I jerked at my chains to escape before this man I could not yet see could help me. He answered my cry but I did not think he came to help.

    More of his frame came into view. More layers and layers of impossible girth in his thighs that rolled out of his jean shorts. His thighs looked to be in a constant state of pain white in some parts and pulsing, painful purple in others. Red pimples littered inches of his legs in random bits.

    He gained speed as he came down those cracking stone steps as if he was excited. He lept like a kid playing hopscotch until he was at the bottom and I saw his full frame. Oh, I wished I’d never called him.

    He had to be seven feet tall. His very presence made me conscious of my own body. I was cut from the Jr. Varsity reserve basketball team for my lack of height. His arms were massive, chunky, ill-formed like two living, writhing, tumorous hornet’s nests. His wife-beater t-shirt could not contain him, he wore it like Kim Possible’s crop top. My wrist bled. I knew this man-this thing- wanted to hurt me and I would not let him. I pulled at my chain to no avail. I did not break through.

    “I want to go home,” I whispered to myself and yanked at my chains. I had nothing. I had nothing to protect me. I was so scared I lost all dignity. I sweat enough to taste it. I rubbed my body against the floor - in a futile attempt for momentum to escape- so hard that my legs bled.

    His face was hard to look at. So, many scratches. So, many human scratches. One was still fresh, blood dripping down his left cheek.

    Bald, hairless, and smiling he said; “Your wish is my command.”

    I opened my mouth to speak. He grabbed my neck. Wrapped his fingers around it. And the only thing that could come out of it was a small gust of meaningless, pathetic, air.

    He placed his other hand on my naked thigh. It was almost like his foot was all fat, and twisted, and his fingers more like stumps, tumors, or caterpillars. But his grip… his grip made me give up on my life. A deer in a snare that knows it’s dead.

    Something banged upstairs. The big man turned. Spittle flew from his mouth as he did.

    “Stay right here,” he said.

    Then waddled toward the steps again. Before he took a step he turned around and laughed.  His shoulders bounced and his body wiggled. Then in two big steps, he was beside me again, dropped to his knees, and whispered in my ear. His hot breath was like a locker room during the summer.

    “This is supposed to be the part where I check out that noise and then someone comes down to save you while I’m gone. But what if I just don’t care about the noise? What if I’m romantic and all I care about is this moment? Do you know what that means?”

    He waited for me to reply. I shook my head as much as I could within the restraints.

    “That means,” he paused. “No one is coming to save you.”

    A blur rushed into the room. It practically flew down. It took the steps in two leaps and slammed something into the skull of the large man. The sound of metal against skin rang through the room. The big man did not collapse.

    Bang, Bang, and Bang again was what it took to drop him. The girl from the roof, still in the purple dress, was my hero today. In seconds, she pulled the keys from the man and thrust them into the locks.

    I had so many questions for her and thanks so much thanks. I’m sure it all waterfalled out of me. She did not respond to any, she merely grabbed my hand and we were gone. Literally gone. We appeared somewhere else in three seconds.

    We arrived in a changing room and for the first time since she rescued me, I became aware of my nakedness. I covered my bits and pushed my back against the wall.

    “I am so sorry about that,” she said

    “Why did you? Why did you bring me there? I was trying to help you.”

    “It wasn’t on purpose,” there was no defensiveness in her voice just as a statement of fact rather than anything else.

    “What are you? What was that?” I talked fast. My mouth was dry. I was so confused.

    The girl in the purple dress reached toward me. I leaped back. Her hand went past me and grabbed a water bottle, a fancy brand on a silver plate. She pushed it toward me. I shook my head at her.

    She opened the cap and drank a chug herself.

    “See, just water. She sat down, crossed her legs, placed the water between us, and waited for me to drink.

    It was such a change in atmosphere. The perfect lights are built into the ceiling above us. The gentle music of Miley Cyrus in the background and this strange girl. I still had my questions. Still had resentment for her. But my world shifted. This girl wanted nothing. If I had sat there for an hour refusing to drink the water she would have sat there with me. Not especially happy about it, content.

    I took the water and devoured the whole thing.

    “So,” I asked after placing the water bottle in the trash beside me. The dressing room was too nice to litter. “You’re just not going to answer any questions. You’re going to toss me in an Old Navy dressing room and expect me to be happy.”

    “Old Navy?” This got a reaction from her. Her eyes bulged and her lips tightened, a sense of disbelief was all over her face. “You’re in Louis Vuitton. She pulled an iPad off the wall behind her. A normal IPad, a shockingly normal IPad considering all that happened beforehand. I watched as it had everything mine had; Twitter, Reddit, Instagram. It all felt so insane to be back to the normal world. She continued as if everything was fine. “This is today’s catalog. Pick what clothes you want. I’ll grab them for you and then tell you what I am and what just happened to you. Oh and don’t forget your lunch order when you spend as much as I do they deliver food. I suggest the omakase sushi. It’s locally sourced. Anything else? Your wish is my command."

    My experience with her was biblical. I explored the world and saw it was good. She made our skin invincible, our lungs content without air, and our eyes magical so we could witness a volcano on the verge of eruption. Reds and oranges you’ll never see burst and flowed around us and she told me who and what she was.

    She was something like ten thousand years old, something like a native of this planet, and something like a genie. For a time, she granted the wishes of men and those who came before men. Three wishes, she made that clear. Our legends understood the limit of three correctly. They did not understand the cost of being a genie.

    According to Jen, the genie and the wish-asker were bound together until death. The man in the basement was one soul bound to her. Sometimes he showed up without warning. He knew exactly where she was at all times. Those were the rules.

    “I cannot keep him at bay,” she said, and this great woman who could make us survive a volcano dropped her head in shame.

    “Hey, uh, there, there,” I said. I was not a good comforter. I reached for her back and rubbed it in small circles. “Not your fault right?” Well, if she was something like a genie I assumed he rubbed the lamp and then I don’t know…

    “Why are you rubbing my back?” she asked. Curiosity overpowered her grief.

    “My mom used to rub my back when I got sad.”

    “Why did she do it?”

    “I don’t know. It’s what moms do to make sad children happy.”

    “Does it work?”

    I smiled, “I don’t know, do I look happy to you?”

    “No,” she laughed with her whole face. Her cheeks rose and went a rosy red shade, her eyes crinkled, and her throat made an inhuman but loving crackle like wood in a winter bonfire surrounded by friends. “You are sad. You might be sadder than me and I tried to jump off a building.”

    “Alright, well. I’m not that sad.”

    She did not stop her strange but pleasant laughter.

    “You were alone on New Year’s,” she managed between laughs. “In a room full of hundreds of people you were alone on New Year’s. Maybe, you should have been sad.”

    Her laughter started to hurt. Every ha ha ha was a reminder that I was not only not that guy, but I wasn’t any guy. I wasn’t worth anything. Until I realized, this girl in front of me was happy. She who had nothing else to live for after ten thousand years found joy in life. That’s beautiful and I helped make that beauty so I laughed too.

     “Hey, Jen, want to hear something funny?”

    “Yes, more, please. This is excellent.”

    “The first thing I thought of when I saw the big guy coming down the stairs is ‘thank God; someone to kiss on New Year’s’”.

    She howled at this and we both rolled and laughed in the volcano. That wasn’t true by the way I was scared out of my mind then. I’m glad it made her laugh though. As she laughed I remembered my mission, it hadn’t changed since the beginning of the night. I had to get this girl to want to live. I felt bad for her and I guess I kind of related to her hopelessness at times.

    So, I tried to remind her of the beauty of life. No longer bound to fulfill any wishes she could do whatever she wanted. I asked for us to live in the Amazon, invisible to mankind and to make us a friend, not prey, to wildlife. We were cleaned by mama gorillas, cuddled jaguars, and asked birds to sing us their best songs. I know women like flowers so each day I searched for a new flower to give her. When I gave it to her she would smile with her lips and not her eyes, a polite, cordial smile. I was trying to make her happy but to no avail. Once, I had given her every flower I thought was beautiful I moved on to plants. One such plant was a bromeliad. It was a bright green plant that held water in small circles near the top of it. I handed it to her. Her whole face smiled.

    “Thank you, Nate!” She said and took the plant from my hands, placed it beside her, and gave me a strong hug.

    “Oh, you're welcome,” I said. “I didn’t know- -”

    She released me from the hug and reached for the plant. No, she reached for something inside the plant. She brought out something small and green from it.

    “I love frogs so freak’n much,” she said and snuggled the thing against her face. It snuggled back.

    “Why didn’t you say you like frogs instead of flowers?” I asked.

    She gave me that dead stare that she always did. I was getting used to it. I said never mind and she went back to snuggling her new friend.

    After we grew bored of the rainforest I asked if there was anywhere she wanted to be. She said no, so I asked for us to be around the greatest creative minds of our time. We floated as ghosts and watched Grammy winners craft albums. Then we walked in empty theaters and she made never-before-seen screenplays of the greatest screenwriters appear on the screen. After that, we traveled the world to see architecture that man hadn’t seen in thousands of years. It was all incredible. I loved this planet. I loved life.

    At the end of all that, I said, “So, Jen how are you feeling?”

    “Good, this was fun,” she shrugged. The frog slept on the top of her earlobe and her smile lit her eyes.

    I did it. She didn’t want to die anymore.

    “So, you don’t want to die anymore?”

    “No,” she was taken aback. Her eyes made a judgemental squint and her neck snaked back. “Why should I live?”

    Okay, time for a speech, I thought.

    “You shouldn’t die because there’s a reason you’re here.” I grabbed her hand. “You’re meant to be here.”

    “Nathan, please don’t say that.”

    “What? I mean, that’s objectively true, we're all here for a purpose.”

    “Nathan, I’m asking you nicely. Please don’t say that.”

    “No,” I challenged, full of moralistic boldness. “You have a purpose.”

    “Don’t say that.” she didn’t have the dead glare. She snatched her hand back. She was angry. This was a boundary I was crossing. However, it needed to be crossed because it was true. She had to know.

    “No, I’m serious,” I smiled wide. It felt like evangelism. Well, good. This is something that everyone should know. Your life is worth living! “You’re here for a real reason.”

    She pushed me with one hand. I stumbled backward, confused. Jen wouldn’t meet my gaze. Her black hair draped down her head and made her look like a ghost or a monster but the strain and frustration in her voice was all too human.

    “Don’t say that to me,” she commanded me and pushed me again with a powerful hand.

    “No, there’s a reason you’re supposed to be here. You do matter.” I screamed at her. I did have to fight back, right? I did have to make her understand this, right?

    She snapped her fingers. That’s all I saw. That’s all I could focus on. The snap turned to a pointer finger and pointed right. We were in a different country.  We were in a hospital. The words written on the hospital equipment and warnings on the chart were in a language I couldn’t read.

    I understood the beep, beep, beep of a heart monitor though. I lost two grandparents to cancer. I followed Jen’s fingers to see a barely conscious teenage girl covered in blue sheets in a hospital bed.

    “Tell her she doesn’t matter then,” Jen commanded. The room shook. The equipment rattled and a siren went off in the hospital. Was it an earthquake?

    “A bomb,” Jen said. “Bombs are on the way. Her leukemia won’t kill her, the bombs will in less than a minute. They will kill you too unless you tell her, ‘There’s not a reason for her to be here and she doesn’t matter’. That’s the logic, right? If you’re still alive you have a purpose but if you die then what? You didn’t matter? You didn’t have a purpose? Tell her that.”

    A crash shook the room again. I refused to look at the dying girl.

    “Jen, what?”

    “I’m going to make it as simple as possible. You said I needed to live because I had a purpose to fulfill. That means if someone dies their purpose is over. Tell that child that their death is part of some grand will or plan. Tell her that!”

    “Jen, I understand. Let’s leave.”

    “Tell her!”

    “You can stop this, you know! You have the power.”

    “I do not.”

    “You win. Let’s leave.”

    “You’re pathetic. You won’t even look at her.”

    “Let me leave!”

    Jen snapped her fingers. Someone screamed. Yamila? Yes, someone screamed ‘Yamila’.

    “Hurry up,” Jen announced between the shrieks coming from outside the room. “That’s her mom screaming her name. We need to leave so she can say her goodbyes.

    I panicked. It was hard to stand. I swayed from side to side. The world spun.

    “Nathan, she wants to see her daughter before she goes. Hurry up.”

    “You could save them all with a snap. I know you could.”

    “Even if I did it wouldn’t matter.  Children die in your hospitals every day. Do they not have a purpose? Should we visit them next?”

    The room shook. I heard her mother stumble and sing a tear-stained yell through the hospital.

    “Yamila!” the mother sang.

    “Look her in the eye and tell her,” Jen commanded.

    “No, you wouldn’t let her die.”

    “Do you really believe that about me?”

    I didn’t. Oh, God, I didn’t. I believed those empty brown eyes could see my skin fray and then go play with frogs in the Amazon. I was scared out of my mind.

    “Look at her,” Jen demanded.

    I did as I was told, and through foggy eyes, I said to the girl, “You do not have a purpose”

    Jen snapped her fingers

    We arrived in an apartment in a place that felt like New York. The stillness of it shocked me, I distrusted it. I still felt the bombs coming. I knew we were hundreds of miles away and overlooked a basic American city in some apartment but I just knew the bombs were coming. They should come. How was that fair? How was any of that fair? Something broke in me.

    “You’re the one who believes that. I don’t. It’s not my fault.” Jen said. Her eyes were dry.

    “You made me lie.” I leaped at her, rage inspired every movement. “I don’t believe that! You made me lie!”

    “It’s the logic of your words,” she mocked.

    “Congrats! You and every high schooler in a debate club can beat me. Congrats!”

    “That girl wasn’t in high school yet, do you think she could beat you in a debate?”

    “Maybe that’s it then,” I scolded her. “We lie because we must to people who die. I will live trying to figure out how to prevent deaths like that from happening and so will you. Do you hear me? So will you for the rest of your days and then when I say you’re done you can jump off that building. Got it?”

    Something possessed me. My body was not my own. This force took over my fist and I swung my fist at her. I didn’t hit her. I swear to you I didn’t hit her. She leaped back, falling. The frog that I had forgotten that rested on her shoulder fell off and I hope it wasn’t hurt. Once landed she put her face to the ground.

    “Yes… master,” she said and her face did not lift from the ground.

    My adrenaline vanished. Oh, oh, no. I backed away from her. My fist pulsed with pain despite not hitting anything. I feared my body was not my own.

    “Jen, I am so sorry,” I said. “And please do not call me master.”

    She did not rise. Her body was so still I wondered if she had lungs and flowing blood. Eventually, she did move. Her eyes judged me once again like they did when we first met. I didn’t dare reach out to help her.  I couldn’t believe I almost hit her. I had never hit anything. I stared at my hand, it swelled slightly and did not feel like it belonged to me. It took effort to curl and uncurl my fingers.

    “You can’t resist it,” she said and picked herself up. “You can’t escape the natural pull of things. It’s how all of you start.”

    “No, no I don’t hit people…”

    “I’m not people. I can’t escape the natural pull either. You will make me submit to you because that is the way,” she stood to her full height now. “That’s how all of you are. That’s your nature. One of the reasons I must die.”

    “I- -I - -” I stammered. “Things could be different and better. Tell me how to make things better.”

    Again she looked me over. She judged me and then collapsed into a seated position on the floor

    “I am so tired of ‘things could get better’.” As she said it I truly felt like she was 1,000 years old. “I am so tired of you people and your empty platitudes. I want you to see how bad things could be and you tell me how things could get better. Imagine with me…”

    “What if I lied,” she said. “What if I wasn’t your friend? What if I was a strange lonely man who happened to stumble on an all-powerful lamp? What if I started as a friend? What if I became more than a friend? What if I changed over time and trapped you in the basement and no one was there to save you? Tell me how much better things get when you’re broken,” she snapped her fingers.

    I blinked. When I opened my eyes I was in that basement again and the large man from before stood in front of me.

     The big man stood in front of me. He was such a sharp contrast to Jen. Jen was always so still and withdrawn I wondered if she was alive. This man’s chest bounced up and down in a frighteningly fast rhythm, a war drum. He shook ferociously and his breath came out so thick I could almost see it. The heat of the room soon had sweat sliding down my back. I was scared but wrath trampled my fear. I’d traveled the world with Jen; she was my friend. So, for the second time in my life, I threw a punch.

    My fist struck his jaw. My knuckle grazed his thick, wet lip.  I waited for his head to rise, for eye contact, I wanted this fight to be fair. I struck him again. His cheek felt like jelly, no more like pudding. Dark red blood shot from his lips.  I wasn’t done.

    “Jen, are you watching!” I cried out. I kneed his gut.

    He howled. I smiled. “If you want a reason to live I’ll give it to you. I understand what he did to you was wrong. But this is how you solve it.  You face your fears!” I yelled and raised my hands in a hammer fist to slam on the back of his neck and paralyze him forever. “You face your fear and crush it like a bug.”

    The big man’s hand flew into my jaw. It knocked me backward. I crashed hard. The big man leaped on me. He let me struggle. Blood dripped from his awful thin smile, and his shoulders bounced in a quiet laugh. I knew there was nothing I could do to get him off me.

    His fist flew into my face. I saw black first then I saw red. So much blood. So much more than what came out of him. He toyed with me. It was over. He poked, prodded, and explored me with his fingers as I were a thing and not a person. I whimpered. He enjoyed that, of course. He snickered and his blood and sweat drizzled on my face. I could never beat him. I cried. There’s no point in holding any emotion back.

    He adjusted his gargantuan frame on me and I wheezed at this form of punishment. He wanted to take his time -it was so unfair- I had to let him. And I got another unnerving feeling that traveled up my spine. I didn’t know what he wanted to do to me. Eat me, torture me, or something worse. He shifted his weight again and crushed my chest. The gasp for breath interrupted my streams of tears.

    Why did I think I could beat him?  I’m not that guy. He placed one meaty hand on my neck and squeezed.

    “Do you know why she sent me to you?” the big man asked.

    His grip was so strong I choked on my thoughts. So I gave him no reply.

    “Because that’s what she is. That’s her nature. We hurt her. She brings you to me and I hurt you. Because I’m the worst of us. I’m the one who got to do whatever I wanted. We traveled the stars and worlds beyond ours and no pleasure was denied me. And this is what you get when that happens.

    “She didn’t tell you her part in all of this, did she? She didn’t tell you what she does to us. She makes us into this. All I am is the result of getting whatever you want for 200 years. Pure hunger.”

    And I understood. I understood what she was and I hated her for it. But I hated him more because I found him so pathetic. That was it? He was offered whatever he wanted and he gorged himself like a suicidal pig. The world was in his palms and he chose to put it on a plate for his fat mouth instead of feeding the hungry. He held the world and instead of helping it he fucked it. He only cared about his mouth and his balls and then demanded to be pitied. His mouth was too high to touch but his balls were on my chest and with new resolve I slammed my fist into them.

    He reeled and reached for them.  His malformed body rolled away and off me. And I saw my mistake. I tried to fight this thing like a man. This thing that saw the evil of the world and only thought of his next meal. I lept up and slammed my foot into his mouth. His teeth cracking was satisfying but I was not content. I pummeled him, alternating between strikes on any part of his body he left exposed. His precious body, the only thing that mattered to him.

    Some lose the right of the fair fight, of honor. Some have thrown away their humanity and should be treated as that new subhuman thing they become.

    I stopped beating him when he no longer could raise his hands to defend himself, when his chest was still, and the blood pouring from his body coated us both.

    “Are you happy, Jen?” I asked the empty room. “The danger is defeated. You are free to live!”

    “What did you do Nathan?” I heard her voice behind me and spun around to see her. She didn’t address the body. She stared at me with the same disinterested, glazed-over eyes, she always regarded me with.

    “Jen, I saved you. Do you want to live now?”

    “No, Nathan. What did you do when you first learned we could do whatever we wanted.”

    “I don’t remember, Jen. It’s been a while,” I pointed to the body. I smiled from ear to ear. I was genuinely happy with my victory but I exaggerated it hoping that Jen would feel my joy. She could relax; the danger was over. “I don’t know Jen, probably traveled somewhere.”

    “Why didn’t you change the world, Nathan, like you asked him to?” Now Jen regards the body with a simple nod.

    “Um I… I…”

    “Because there is a little of him in all of you. You are more empathetic than him… for now. But we’re bound together now Nathan. I have to obey you. You will be him.”

    “No, I won’t, that’s ridiculous.”

    “Do you think you are the first good man, Nathan?”

    She snickered. My smile vanished. My throat was sticky.

    “Good man,” she laughed at the concept. “Good woman. It’s easy to be good when you don’t have power. But you have me now. You can have whatever you want. In a way you’re blessed. Not everyone gets to see how they die. Take a look, Nathan, because in a century or two that will be you.

    I did look at his revulsion, at his filth, at his loss of humanity and I knew it was lost but not so far away. I saw his body for what it was. Was it really so large? Inhumanly large? No, I could be like that if all I knew was lust and gluttony for a century. Yes, that could be me.

    My body shook in fear of my fate. His warm blood dripped down my hands. How long until I was like that and I was squished by a self-righteous child?

    “This always happens?” I asked.

    “Yes,” she answered. Bored again. “It is human.”

    “Then I need to be better than human.”

    “You are what you are.”

    “No, if that is what it means to be human then I demand to connect to something greater.”

    She was silent which was fine. An idea was forming. I had power over her. I would use it.

    “Jen, what are you?”

    “Something like a- -”

    “No, specifically. What are you?”

    “Genjenmuey is my species name.”

    “Then Jen I command you make me into a Genjenmuey and make yourself my master.”

    Jen was petrified; it was all over her face. Her eyes bulged, her face lost color, and she was screaming. “No, no, take it back!” However, her hand moved of its own accord it rose in front of her face, her elbow extended, and she snapped.

    I felt the change. I felt the power. I felt the chain. A weighty invisible link wrapped around my neck and tied me to Jen’s wrist. Jen’s eyes were neither bored nor dead now. They were alive and in awe.

    “We’re bound together now,” I said.”Mutually assured destruction. If I ever harm you. You now have the power to harm me.”

    “Why, Nathan?” she asked.

    “I wanted to be better than him.” I pointed to the body. The puddle of blood was still.

    “Are we to stay together forever?”

    “No, do you still want to die?” I asked.

    “No, well, maybe, this is unprecedented. I am confused. There are horrors even worse than him… I don’t know if this life is worth it. You… you think it is worth it?”

    “Yes, I think a lot of good could happen in between the horrors. May I make a request of you?”

    “Yes, but I might make the same as you,” she said.

    “Go and do what you think is best every day for a year. Even if you think it’s scary or strange do what you think is good. No one controls you now. This is about how you want to leave your mark on the world. Abandon your beliefs about life. They aren’t working for you if you’re ready to end your life anyway. For a year pretend you know nothing. Go attack life with a blank slate. If by the end of the year, you still want to die. Then merely let me know where your grave will be and I’ll put flowers there every year.”

    “Frogs.”

    “A frog?”

    “No frogs. I want frogs there instead of flowers. Like a little habitat. They can come and go as they please but I want my grave to be a home for them. I have always liked frogs.”

    “Deal.”

    7 Comments
    2024/08/16
    19:08 UTC

    10

    Marilyn

    At the Halloween party I saw the joy and hunger leave your green eyes. You were distraught and distant. You told me we had to leave. Even if destruction was the only place left to go. You were my lady in all but name, but the lipstick and mascara made you look like something different all together that day. Your dress was acid green and dark as the day the two of us became lost souls sharing a broken dream.

    Your faded smile will forever haunt me like a scream. It rings in my ears whenever I try to sleep. You never told me your nightmares. You always said you would rather die than let what happened to you happen to me. The knife in your hands… the blood on your lips... A kiss that left a wound that will never heal. Scars and apparitions I can almost feel. Taken by the same lie that almost made you cry.  

    A part of me went missing on the day you went missing. I should have known better. I should have never let you walk out the door. You promised me you’d be right back but instead you disappeared into the unknown. I never got to say goodbye. I’ll never know what happened to you. A call from the undead in the cold undead of night was the closest I'll ever come.  

    I know why you left. I know why you did it. Even though you never said it, I know whatever happened was something you could never bring yourself to utter. How could any secret be worse than this? How could anything be worse than losing you? I watched the life slowly drain from your eyes. You let go of the angel inside and were never the same. Marilyn. Where are you?

    You were just as jaded and tired of the world as me. I know. I could see it in those green eyes. I still see it whenever I close my eyes and think about you. Why did you change? Marilyn. Why did you go? This whole time, you were the very thing you loved. You were the Pegasus on your chest. A girl who could lift the darkness like a match inside a catacomb. Death would be a breath of fresh air compared to the suffering of never knowing. What was your secret? Where did you go?

    1 Comment
    2024/08/14
    17:32 UTC

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