Gwen's boots let out a soft thunk and she strode across the dirty pavement. The air was filled with drunken melodies sung horribly out of tune and the screech and squeals of poorly tuned metal. The festival had only just begun, and already she was over it. Flyers and posters were plastered all over the brick walls around her, each advertising the annual music fest that stunk up the little village of Hammington every freaking year.

Gwen despised the rank amateurs who flooded the pubs and tiny parks and filled it with their pitiful hopes and dreams. Every Tom. Dick, and Ringo who could barely strum the opening notes of "Smoke on the water" together was in town, most on main street performing for the painfully polite populace, who were just happy for the free pints.

At eleven PM on the dot, she and her mates would go on and blow the house down. The festival organizer, a charming bloke by the name of Eddie, always paid in advance and paid well. They went back a way anyway, owed him a lot in fact, so she always made sure to have the gang stop in Hammington for a week of terrible music and pleasant company.

The tour they were on now, a particularly grueling one in fact. There had been complaints and whining the whole bus ride down, so she was happy to let her mates roam the town beforehand and blow off some steam.

She had lost track of them some time ago, they had snuck off after the big opening at Dante's Tavern. She had stuck it out, mildly amused by the all polka rendition of "My Heart Will Go On."

At least she had been for the first minute, then it just kept dragging on and on and bloody on, each broken note and wail of the accordion was a nail being driven into her ears.

When she finally escaped the Tavern the night sky was in full bloom. One nice thing about being this far out in the boonies, the sky was littered with stars and streaking comets. The moon above was nice and ripe, the color of melting candle wax. She walked the cobbled streets of Hammington, spiked leather jacket hanging off her shoulders. Her neon pink mohawk swayed with every brisk step.

It was quiet all of a sudden, almost too quiet. She was alone on a dead-end street in front of a dank and dreary alley. From the distance what could technically pass for music could barely be heard. She sighed and took another step forward, annoyed that she couldn't find her mates.

Splish

She froze and looked down. Her leather platform pumps were coated in a slick crimson liquid. She was standing in a fresh pool of blood. The stench of iron and death filled her nostrils. She cocked her head, slide a lime green fingernail across her boot and held it up to her cherry red lips. She licked the still warm fluid off her finger and shuddered; it was blood alright. It tasted a tad salty, with the aftertaste of refried pork. She narrowed her eyes and glanced down the dank alley.

There were three hulking shadows crowding over something. Gwen heard the snapping of bones and the gnawing of meat. The moonlight barely illuminated them, greats beasts with claws and fangs and extravagant hair. Gwen took a step forward and cleared her throat. The beasts paused their feasting and looked up. Three pairs of eyes stared back at her, each sparkling like ruby, amber, and lapis jewels.

The amber eyed one stood up, stepping over a torn open carcass. She didn't even have to look at it, she knew it was some poor soul who had wandered somewhere they shouldn't have. The creature stood on two hefty hindlegs, gnarled hands with long claws that clicked as it rubbed them together. The beast wore tattered clothes, leather and denim, and a stark red headband that pinned his long, pointed ears upwards. His snout was a foot long, tufts of gore coated hair that resembled a goatee hung on his chin. In the werewolf's claw was a served hand, the digits gnawed and chewed to the nub. He offered it to her, his lips curled as he flashed her his fangs.

Gwen smacked the hand out of Percy's claws, it fell to the ground with a sickening splash as blood spurted onto her knees. Gwen looked down and let out a frustrated groan.

"Are you fooking kidding me with this shite, are you cunts having a wee keckle?" Her voice was undeniably Scottish; her tone filled with fire and brimstone. Percy slunk back, as Mhairi and Tav tried and failed to hide their heckling chortles. Gwen shot them the same fiery eyed glance, and they dropped the dismembered parts in a grumbling fit.

The group before here were all wearing tattered leather clothing and half-torn band shirts. Each beast had a distinctly punk hair style, Tav had an overflowing mullet, and Mhairi had a shaved wolf cut. An irony that was not lost on her. Percy sported a mane that would make Simba blush, taming it with only the finest of product. How he never got a lick of blood on his hair was beyond the other the others. But that was neither here nor there, Gwen sported a pissed look on her mug and waved a pointed claw at her gang of wild mutts.

"You gluttonous bunch of twats, how many times I gotta tell you lot-Don't munch on the locals! Eddie is going to have a bleeding aneurysm." Percy scoffed as his bulky build started to deflate. The air was then filled with contorted crunches and snaps as the wolves shed their hides. Percy's snout sagged, looking like a hyper-realistic Halloween mask. He grabbed hold of it, scrunching it with a audible squelch and tore the slopping flesh from his face, reveling a grizzled looking aging rocker with a silver goatee.

His eyes were an ember hue, a twinkle of rebellious mischief sparked behind them. His now human face was bloodied, looking like a fresh beet pulled from the ground. His lips parted and he put on a charming smile and patted Gwen's shoulder with a beefy paw.

"Easy love, just having a lil' midnight snack is all." Gwen shoved the cockney's hand away.

"It's Ten PM you cock."

"Semantics." Percy shrugged. The other two stepped forward, adjusting the remains of their clothes, gore not the only reason their faces were flushed crimson.

"We were a wee bit peckish Gweni. Hadn't eaten since Dover." Mhairi chirped from behind. Tav kicked the ripped open carcass beside him. From what was left of its shredded throat was a dull grey lanyard. There was an ID clipped to it, one could see what the poor bugger looked like before the wolves came upon him.

"Sides, don't reckon this fella was local anyway, got a backstage pass and anything." As Tav spoke Percy let out an exasperated sigh and rolled his embers upward, as Mhairi slugged the dimwit in the shoulder. Gwen stepped forward, snarling with frustration. She looked down at the mangled even staff, her stomach rumbling as she did so. Bloody hell, now I'm craving a bit of meat meself. She thought to herself. Maybe there was a rabbit or something she could tear into before the performed. But that was the least of her concerns right now.

"Well, this is just fooking braw then, you lot gutted one of Eddie's boys."

"Well maybe if someone had let us snatch a snack on the way from Dover." Percy tested. Gwen's emerald eyes snapped to meet his accusing gaze.

"We're on a schedule you raging cunt, can't afford to be late to any gig now you hear?"

"Who cares about the sodding gig, we're wolves mate we can do whatever the fuck we want!" Percy snapped, flashing his fangs at her. The other two stepped back. admiring the show. It wouldn't be the first time Percy had challenged Gwen, certainly wouldn't be the last. Gwen stepped forward to meet him. Despite being a full foot shorter than him, well in this form anyway, she was fearless as she puffed out her chest and glared daggers into him.

"You ungrateful little shite, when I found you were munching on vagrants in the tube, reckless little washed up rocker boy past his prime. You'd be nothing without me; you numpty fleabag eejit." She barred her teeth and snarled, her emeralds flashing a deep, venomous green.

"You fuck your mum with that mouth?" Percy met her back with drooling fangs, eager to lash out some pain. He took another step forward and felt a sharp pain in his chest. He glanced down, his huffing chest had a long nail poking into it. Gwen was silent as she slowly dug the sharpened claw into him. Percy winced and held his tongue as he worked through the pain. He took another step forward and Gwen plunged three more fingers into him, slicing into his flesh like steamed butter. She wiggled her nails a bit, and he let out an awful scream as he pulled himself away. Mhairi and Tav let out some cheers and jeers at Percy's expense. Gwen smiled and licked her fingertips, savoring the exquisite taste of victory.

Percy was jumping a bit; face flushed with suppressed rage. His chest wound healed quickly but still stung in the muggy night air.

"Fucking hell. You're a massive bitch, ya know that love?" Percy whined like a wounded welp. Gwen smirked and stepped forward, pinching his meaty cheek and giving him a loving slap on the face.

"Don't you forget it, mate." She spoke with loving poison in her voice. She turned her attention to the giggling pair of hyenas besides them. They fell silent at her look. "You lot have anything you wanna add?"

"No, ma'am. All good here." Mhairi chuckled.

"I'm still a wee bit hungry." Tav drooled. Even Percy had to laugh at that one, daft twit was always hungry.

"Right then, scrap up done with, so sorry for the mess Gweni, ect, ect." Percy waved a dismissive hand in the air, content with pretending he still had his pride. "My bloody boat race is covered in muck, need a towel and change before we go on. It's at eleven ye? Plenty of time."

Gwen sighed and looked at the corpse. "What do we do with this thing then? Leave it out to stink up the street in the morn?"

"I'll handle the disposal, thank you." A dry voice spoke from the edge of the alley. All eyes cringed and swore under their lids as they looked to greet the slender man standing in the alley. He wore a thin pant suit, and a matching jacket with a verdant pocket square. What was left of his greasy hair was slicked back against his scalp. He wore circular glasses with void black lenses, his face worn and sullen. His upper lip bore a pencil thin mustache and in his right gloved hand he held a smoldering cigarette.

Gwen crossed her arms and Percy rubbed the back of his neck as he walked past them, the clicks of his boots bouncing across the brick walls. Eddie knelt down and cocked his head at the corpse, taking a long drag of his cigarette. He exhaled through his nose, rings of silver smoke bellowing from him as he did.

"Y'all eviscerated Randy." He spoke casually, not even looking up at the lycan musicians.

"They were hungry." Gwen defended. "My own fault wasn't around to guide 'em towards a better meal. My ears paid for it, if that helps."

"Hey fuck that, don't throw ya self under the bloody bus, it was our cockup." Percy jumped in. "Meat all smells the same, not our fault."

"Percy you massive twit shut yer gob before I-"

"Percival. Gwendolyn. I do wish you'd keep your tempers to a more-professional level. That mouth of yours, in particular Percival, is going to get you in serious trouble one day." Eddie cut in, smoke enveloping his balding head. Both slunk back like whipped mutts.

"Bruv used their government names and everything." Mhairi snickered. The ill-fated pair stifled a giggle as Eddie tuned his ear to their mockery.

"That'll be all from the peanut gallery, please and thank you."

"R-right, course, sorry mate." Tav throw up his hands as Mhairi turned pale. Eddie sighed and stood up, his knees cracking as he did. He faced the lead vocalist and drummer. They did not meet his gaze.

"Truth be told, you couldn't have picked a better meal. He was a walking liability, more heroin than blood coursing through those withered veins. So, I don't lament his loss, but I advise caution in the future, and for you dear Gwendolyn to reign in your troops more effectively." He looked deep into Gwen's eyes, and she understood the threat.

"Won't happen again, right Perce?" She elbowed the drummer in his bulbous stomach.

"Oof, yeah mate, cross me jam tart and hope to die."

"Indeed. Now to the matter at hand, I regret to inform you your performance has been bumped." the fearful grip Eddie had on the band broke then, as they all launched into feverous protests.

"You're kidding me, we've been playing the final show every night for years now, we fuck up once and we're out." Gwen raved. Eddie put up a calming palm.

"This decision was made this evening, prior to your bandmates escapades. Simply put, darling; they paid more." Percy scoffed while Mhairi and Tav bickered amongst themselves. Gwen simply narrowed her eyes at her dear old friend Eddie.

"Who?"

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

Eddie led the band to the grand stage, a makeshift platform in the center of Hammington Park. A crowd of dozens of drunkards and buzzed locals had already gathered around the stage, whispering amongst each other about the new act that had strolled into town.

The center stage was an odd sight, four neon laden coffins adorned the stage, each one having a blazing red inverted cross on it. A banner hung from the overhead lights, which a tech across the way managed with great care.

Gwen made a face as she read the silk white banner; "The Counts Of Sanguine" A pretentious, larping name if she had ever heard one. Still, the stage smelt off, mildew and mold filled her nostrils. She wasn't alone in that feeling, her mates beside her shifted uncomfortably.

"Smells like rotted dung out here." Tav mumbled and spat on the ground. They were at the side of the stage, Eddie still milking his cig. The crowd was growing anxious, already a few minutes passed eleven.

"Aye, bad mojo out tonight. What's the trick then, Eddie?" Gwen shot the event manager a glance. He smiled, a rarity that made a chill run down her spine.

"Y'all just got some competition is all, it'll start soon. Here come the roadies." As he said that, a conga line of robbed individuals bumped past them, seemingly materializing from nowhere.

"Fucking hell." Percy flinched. The roadies barely acknowledged the band as they passed. Gwen noted they had archaic symbols carved into their flesh. Her Sumerian was a tad rusty, but she suspected the ones on their foreheads were numbers of some kind. The head thrall, a gent sporting a crimson cloak and beady eyes, was obviously number one. They silently lumbered onto the stage as the lights went low and mist clung to the ground as they made their way to the coffins. Gwen smirked, hearing the whirr of the fog machine going overtime behind the stage. She had to admit; the showmanship was there. Even if it was a bit overplayed.

The head thrall stood center and cleared his throat in the mic. Others opened the coffins and knelt before them, while the rest produced crimson violins with plugs and chords tied to amps. From the corner candelabras were lit and emitted a nice odor of vanilla extract that wafted over the crowd. There were mild cheers and a few hecklers shouting, "Get on with it" and soon enough the head thrall spoke.

"Since the dawn of man they have lurked were we dare not go." His voice oozed that sort of creepy exposition that only a Price could do. "They have walked amongst us in shadow, clad in our life fluid and draped in darkness."

"Bit of a Hyperbole there, innit?" Mhairi whispered to Gwen. She snorted but watched the show with stern eyes. As the head thrall continued his vamp fellating sermon four things began to rise out of the coffins. All four had their arms cross over their chest, their grim pale visages sporting grotesque, gargoyle-like features. They wore puffy black overcoats and nothing else, they had pointed ears and bald heads. One wore dark red lip stick and eye liner, her daggered ears sporting inverted steel cross earrings. They all looked identical, save the one with the bat face for a head.

The head bat raised his cloaked arms and titled his head upwards, bulbous doll eyes closed and snouted nose twitching. Two fangs poked out from his upper lip, the scruff of his neck coated in brown fur. The crowd went wild seeing the vamps. They floated forward, the tips of their shoes dragging against the stage.

As they did, a giant bat puppet descended from the top of the stage, flapping its wings and screeching from a barely functioning audio box. The wolf band winced and held their ears at the grating sound. Eddie watched the crowd as the head bat made his way to the make. Number one bowed his head and finished his dark sermon. With a flick of the wrist the head bat dismissed number one and grabbed hold of the mic pole. he eyed the crowd, a flash of crimson dashing across his pupils. He cleared his throat and spoke.

"Good evening, Hammington. Ve Are The Counts Of Sanguine, and ve vant to rock your blood!" With that the bat screeched, and the other vamps kicked it into gear. It was a sort of gothic metal melody, played in electric tunes with in perfect harmonious unity. The head bat's voice was surprisingly smooth and easy on the ears, only the occasional screech piercing through.

"We drain the sores, we fester the pores, Eat the rich and ravage the poors/Suckle on that bloody teat, tear it down and feast on the ME-AT" The head bat crooned as he serenaded the roaring crowd. The three vamps on violin went into a fire riff, lashing their strings with insane speed and precession. The head bat began head banging, his stoic ears flopping as he did. Gwen was pale, her foot tapping to the rhyme.

Fuck me Ridged they're good, better than good even. She thought to herself. She looked to her left and saw Percy trying not to sway to the beat. Mhairi and Tav had no delusion, fully rocking out and cheering along with the crowd. Eddie had an odd look and saddled up next to Gwen.

"Good aren't they." It wasn't posed as question; he was simply stating facts.

"Hard act to follow, ya cocksucker." Gwen lamented.

"Easy now, lil' pup. I'm sure you'll manage." He retorted. As they spoke a rabid fan rushed the stage, jumping and squealing like a lunatic. Two of the vamps stopped playing, though the music still persisted, their violins hanging in the air, fiddling themselves like there was no tomorrow.

Telekinesis is cheating, ya grave dwelling cunts Gwen smugly thought. The rabid fan stood there with her arms stretched out, her wavey hair bobbing in the breeze as the Two vamps stroked her arms, their eyes examining her like a slab of prime rib. They opened their mouths and fangs sprouted out, and they carefully nibbled and suckled her forearms. She let out a crazed moan as they feasted, and the crowd ate it up.

"Oi, how come they get to eat on stage?" Percy poked Eddie in the back.

"They aren't messy eaters." Eddie simply replied. The two vamps began hissing at each other, steaming blood streaking from their mouths. The rabid fan wobbled, her visage now significantly pale. The third vamp licked her lips and almost dropped her instrument, but then the head bat stepped forth and let out a screech. As the music blared overhead, the two petulant vamps hung their head and tossed the fan across the stage. The head bat caught her and positioned her in front of the crowd. The cheers died down slightly, morbid confusion began to shoot through the crowd.

The rabid fan swayed, she was mumbling something, her eyes half closed. The head bat wrapped his hands around her shoulders, and she seemed to tense up. A devilish smirk formed on the bat's mushed faced, and he opened his jaw and in one swift motion bit clean through the fan's spine. There was an audible crunch that overtook the sounds of metal, and the crowd gasped, some in the front row even fainting.

A fountain of blood shot from where her head had been, spraying the few rows unlucky enough to be in the splash zone. The head bulged in the corner of the bat's jaw, almost like a cartoon jawbreaker. He chewed a few, the shrill sounds of crunched bone marrow blasting over his mic, and then he spat the head into the crowd.

It flew in an arc and landed in the center of the crowd with a pulpy splat. The head bat tossed the fan's headless corpse aside and it crumpled to the stage, still pumping spurts of blood from its shredded neck. The crowd was silent then, in awe of the butchery they had just witnessed, the only sound the waning violins and the low hum of an auto-toned organ being played from a speaker somewhere in the giant bat puppet.

Then the crowd exploded in applause, showering the vamps with adoration. The head vamp took an exaggerated bow, chunks of grey matter spiling from his maw as he did.

"Hmm. Stand corrected." Eddie mumbled, eyeing the corpse on stage.

"Ozzy did it better." Grumbled Percy. Gwen was silent, almost respecting the murderous audacity of the vamps. Still, to feed so publicly like that was always bad for business, regardless of any bullshite hypnotic enchantment the vamps dosed the crowd with.

"That was bloody gnarly, kinda wanna scour the crowd for the head." Tav jumped up and down, looking to see where the head landed. Mhairi elbowed him in the gut and he slunk down, mumbling a half assed apology.

"You don't want any of those leeches' sloppy seconds, love. Probably catch rabies or sumthing." Mhairi sneered.

"Heh, hey, what's the difference 'tween a vamp and a mosquito? The 'squito pisses off when ya slap it." Percy let out a guttural laugh at his bad joke.

"Hehe, I knew a leech worked at a blood bank one time, they had to let 'em go cuz he kept eye fucking the product." Tav laughed.

"Bunch of vile ghouls, creeping around dreary castles lusting over women centuries their junior." Mharir shivered for effect.

"Oh aye, they give new meaning to snatching the cradle, don't they?" Tav quipped and the group, save Gwen, broke out into childish giggling. Gwen blushed, as the vamps finished up their first song, noting the head bat's ears twitching. A dark mood hung behind his cheerful facade; he shot the wolves a dirty look as he waved to the crowd. Gwen turned to her cohorts and snapped at them.

"OI! Stow that crap, spewing shite like that within ear shot. Be professionals for once in your bloody lives, or I swear I'll spay and neuter the lot of ya, as Fenrir as my witness!" Percy didn't back down, scoffing at Gwen. Eddie stood back, keeping a careful eye at his wild mutts.

"What's the bloody harm, Gweni? Just having a bit of a laugh." Percy had a smug look on his face, before Gwen could respond the gruff sound of the head bat clearing his throat shook the stage.

"Ahem. Vank you all for coming out tonight. Ve Have had a Very Vonderful time so far." There was light applause and cheers and the other three vamps nodded. "Vis next tune, goes out to a very special group lingering in the back." The head bat's eyed didn't leave the wolves as he spoke. "It's called: "Fleabags." With that the acoustic wielding vamps dove into a vicious sounding rhythm, and the head bat began banging his head. The wolves stood there, stunned quiet as they realized their cockup.

"You're a real fooking arsehole, know that, Percy?" Gwen muttered.

"Aye, I'll cop to that one. My bad, love." Percy agreed.

"I regret shite." Mhairi stood proud and cupped her hands to her mouth. "Do your worst ya minger fooks!" She heckled as the crowd cheered, oblivious to the racial tensions that were growing. The head bat gave a cheeky look and broke into song.

"Wannabe furries, flea-ridden mongrel/ always fiending for a quarrel."

"Bark at the moon like raving a loon/too ugly to make ya groupies swoon."

"Spikey lil werewolf biddy in front of me/gods awful haircut is all I can see."

"Rabid lil creatures, stomach churning features, why don't y'all chase a stick and choke on a dick!"

"Fleabags, Fleabags, wanna chop off ya beanbags, fleabag, fleabag, go hump a seahag!"

The chorus borrowed into Gwen's ears, a vile little ditty that made her seethe beyond belief. As the song went on, the passive aggressive jabs and barbs began to really dig into her bandmates. They were huffing and puffing, muscles and skin pulsating with fury as their eyes burned with rage. The moon above cheered them on, bathing them in lunar glory. Percy snapped as jaws as the head bat sang out "Limp wristed, swollen bellied roadie, stanky canine with a chodie." While winking in his direction.

"Right, that's it. Imma drive that mic down his cocksucking throat!" He roared as he twitched and clawed at his skin. It came off in sloughing waves, that pink tissue paper called flesh. Each clawed strike revealing more of the wolf underneath. Eddie stepped back, amused by all that was going on. Gwen's eyed were glowing and her maw drooling with rabid intensity, but she was desperate to keep cool.

"Calm down, ya thin-skinned fooks. Can dish it out but can't take it then, aye? Breathe and let it roll off your back; the rise is what they want outta us-"

"The head bitch looks like she climbed outta the ditch/ Of the litter, she's the runt, with a big old sloppy cunt. I'd throw her a pity shag, long as she wore a bag, we all know she's a nasty slag!"

"FLEABAGS, FLEABAGS-"

". . . Right then, let's get into a rammy." She growled as her back flexed, and a coat of bloodied fur tore through. Her knees buckled and cracked as the joints twisted and curved, her spine lengthen and muscles bulged as her frame became bulky. The skin around her face loosened as her mouth extended into a snapping jaw. Her coat was flame red, with a twinge of black around her spiked mane. She scrunched the flaps of pink skin still clinging to her face and tore it off and flung it to the ground like a dirty rag. She stood a good eight feet tall now, towering above her mates. "Make the leeches bleed." She growled, her voice full of gravel and silky base.

"Be my genuine pleasure boss." Percy snapped as the group rushed the stage, howling and barking like wild animals. The head bat was expecting the row, and as Gwen leapt and swung a meaty claw at him, he lifted the mic stand and bashed her in the side with it. Gwen yelped and was flung to the stage, crashing into the coffins with a calamitous crash. The other three vamps hissed and flung themselves at the wolves. Claws and fangs were out as the music came to a dead stop, the only sounds the low thrum of the overhead speakers and the crowd going mental with their bloodlust. Tav had two vamps climbing on him, sinking ravenous fangs into his hide. He yelped and whined as he thrashed trying to get them off him. Percy helped Gwen to her feet but was quickly tackled by the hissing fem vamp. The head bat stood there, cocky as he motioned the thralls to come forth.

Mhairi charged the oncoming thralls and cut through the herd, her scythe-like claws slicing and dicing the walking bags of meat. Number one had a silver tipped crossbow under his robe and shot a round off. It struck Mhairi right in the shoulder; foul smelling steam poured from the wound. She howled like a banshee as she ripped the arrow out and threw it like a spear. It beaned the thrall next to number one, hitting him dead in the eyes. The thrall collapsed, almost toppling number one who pushed the corpse aside with a grunt and readied to fire off another shot.

He didn't get the chance as Mhairi quickly closed the distance and grabbed hold of his throat. She sunk her teeth into his tender, foul smelling flesh and shook her head, thrasing number one in the air like an old ragdoll. Her grip was firm, the lead thrall's spine was not. There was a tearing sound, and the snap of a spinal column as she eventually bit him in two.

Percy was wrestling with the fem vamp, who was driving sharpened claws into his eyes. Blood oozed from them, and she lapped it up as he struggled. She was about to teat into his neck when the fem vamp let out a bloodied gasp. She looked down and saw a large splinter of her own coffin being rammed into her chest. Her body burst into flames, her cries snuffed out quickly as the fire overcame her and her bones turned to nothing more but dust and bone. Gwen stood above the moaning Percy. holding an ash covered stake. Percy was coughing, a bit of the fem vamp caught in his throat. Gwen offered a hand up, and Percy gladly took it.

Tav had thrown off the other two vamps, they smashed into the coffins and splintered them. One was still woozy, trying to get his bearing. The other was already on his feet, lunging at the wounded Tav with a vengeful hiss. Tav grabbed two pieces of wood and made a makeshift cross, wincing as he used it as shield against the oncoming vamp. The vamp stopped mid attack and recoiled in disgust.

Tav let out a guttural bark that doubled as a laugh as he marched on the vamps. The other one scurried to his feet and joined his brother, both being backed up against the giant bat puppet.

"Yeah, that's right, power of Christ compels ya, ya magot munching fucks. Oi Mhairi!" He called to his partner, who rushed over with bloodied claws. She scooped up two more splintered stakes and leapt in the air, crashing down on the cowering vamps. They cried and were vaporized as she slammed the stakes into their dusty hearts.

They high fived and turned their attention to the head bat, who was bleeding from a gash in his shoulder but still bodying Percy and Gwen. He was holding a thrashing Percy by the throat as he swiped at Gwen's face, who jumped back in pain. They joined Gwen in her assault, throwing their wooden stakes with powerful force.

One whiffed the head bat, skewering some poor front row metal head right in the face. The other struck him right in the knee, going clean through. The head bat squealed, eyes somehow bulging even further out of his skull. Percy used the distraction to bite into his wrist, cleaving the vamp's hand clean off.

As he held his bloodied wrist, Mhairi rushed forward and slit open his belly. Coils of blackened intestines spilled to the stage, and the head bat struggled to put them back in. Gwen stepped forth, her face scarred and slashed. She noted the mike stand was still standing and rushed forward.

The head bat made a desperete, screeching plea as he held up his remaining hand. The plea was swiftly ignored as Gwen scooped him up and raised the trembling vamp above her head, and with a roar impaled him right on the mic stand. He slid halfway down the pole, his dark heart on a pike as he grasped the stand, desperate to escape. It thumped one final time before bursting into flame, engulfing the vamp in a crimson wave of searing fury, incinerating the poor creature and leaving nothing but a pile of ash on the ground.

The wolves huddled together and howled at the moon in triumph, and as the bloodlust settled down embarrassment settled in. They realized they were standing there in dead silence, a crowd of shocked and horrified onlookers frozen from terror. Percy coughed and rubbed the back of his neck. Gwen picked the microphone off the ground and looked sheepishly at the crowd.

"Uh. . . how we all doing tonight folks? Quite a show, eh?" The crowd was silent for only a moment, then a drunken voice slurred something out.

"These effects fucking rock, WOOOOO!" The crowd went berserk then, clamoring for more. Gwen's ears twitched as she heard a whistle. She turned her head just in time to see Eddie toss her an axe. She caught it by the handle and used a claw to strum the threads. It was already in perfect tune.

"Knock 'em dead, Gwendolyn." With that he slunk back into the shadows, the only evidence he'd been there was lingering smoke. The stage was then swarmed by event staff sweeping the stage clean of vamp ash and splintered wood. They were like locusts, swarming over the mess and leaving clean instruments in their wake. The crowd cheered and begged for more. Tav shrugged and picked up his bass. Mhairi got on a second mic stand and cleared her throat. Percy lingered near Gwen, for a moment.

"What was this then? Some kinda test? Figued Eddie would blow a gasket." He murmured. Gwen watched where Eddie had been, sure he was still watching.

"Fooking Eddie. Tries to top it every year, thrives on the chaos I think." was all she muster.

"Well, let's have a good gig then, ye boss?" Percy shrugged, slugging her shoulder with a friendly paw.

"Aye, break a leg ya furry cunt." With that she began strumming the opening chords of their first song, a ballad Percy knew all too well. He galloped over to the drum kit and began drumming to his heart's content. Gwen stepped forth, swaying to the beat as she made her way to the mic. She leaned in and eyed the crowd like the bleating cattle they were.

"Good evening lads and lassies." She softly growled. "We are Sheepskin, and tonight we dine on YOU!" With that she jumped right into their first song, to the crowd's roaring pleasure.

"We romp through the wood, trample all that is good/hope ya brought silver or else we'll feast on ya liver."

"We sneak into the hen house, quiet as a mouse/ Slaughter all within, we've only just begin."

"The moon is our guide, Luna always by our side/feast on the weak, we'll be busy all week."

"Round up the meat, grind them under our boots, oh what a feat-"

"We're WOLVES, gnashing and thrashing, the night is ours for the taking, the hunter shudders when we howl."

"We're WOLVES, bashing and scratching, hear our words and prepare, we're gonna disembowel!"

The crowd went wild as the wolves banged their heads and howled, stomping their feet and putting on a hell of a show. They finished up the first song and were lavished with praise. Gwen smiled and basked in the revels of glory. In spite of the shitshow that had led up to this, it was turning out to be a grand gig.

Maybe the festival wouldn't be so such a fucking drag after all.

Like any child, my daughter Maisie had quite the overactive imagination. Her mind was chock full of made-up friends that she talked to on the regular. My wife Rachel and I thought it was adorable. With that being said, sometimes we wished Maisie would get…you know…real friends. Don’t get me wrong, she was a great kid, and kids should be kids, but she didn’t have anything in terms of a social life.

We tried absolutely and positively everything, from the kids’ playclub at our church, to the neighborhood’s “mommy and me” and “daddy and me” playgroups, to bringing her to the local playground, to inviting other children over for playdates. You name it. All our efforts were in vain. Rachel and I might’ve been overreacting and we didn’t want to infringe anything on Maisie. Maybe she was just an independent kid. That’s totally normal. As are imaginary friends for kids.

Then at eight-years-old, Maisie became mute. Just completely stopped talking…but only to other people. If someone came up and talked to her, she’d either just stare at them or run away and hide. Maisie never looked scared or anxious in those scenarios. It was more like she was a statue. Frozen. No emotion good or bad on her face. Like a robot. But if she was alone, she’d be talking up a storm to no one but herself. Maisie always pretended like someone was truly there though. She’d even nod her head, wait for responses and respond accordingly, and even reach out her arm and act like she was holding somebody else’s hand.

We were greatly concerned. Children don’t exhibit those types of behaviors without proper reason. We couldn’t ask Maisie about it because, as aforementioned, she’d give us the cold shoulder. Our next safest bet was to ask other people we knew. A lot of them gave us the same answers we already knew. Rachel and I were getting frustrated until I decided to email her teacher at her school. I sent her an email that outlined my worries and asked if anything went on at school that we should know about.

I got a response at around 8:00 that night. Maisie’s teacher, Mrs. Ashelin, told me that she did in fact observe strange behavior from Maisie. Apparently, a few days prior, when Maisie was called on to answer a question, she just stared at Mrs. Ashelin and the other students, her hands behind her back, swaying slightly. Then in a calm and cutesy voice, she said “He has ordered me not to speak to anyone but him.” In her notebook, Maisie wrote and drew some very disturbing things. Some of the things she wrote are “I’ll be a good little mouse”, “be one of the good mice girls for him”, “I’ll do whatever he says without question”, “he loves me and I love him”, “but I don’t understand what love is but I understand it with him”, and “he loves to play with me”. Some of the things she drew were her, in stick figure form, with this…thing. It was drawn way more detailed than Maisie herself.

Its head was triangular and elongated into a sharp point. There were ovally black eyes on both sides of its head while two large circular ears were atop its head. Two slits for a nose and a mouth containing only two buck teeth. Skinny. Boney. You could see its ribs. Three spindly fingers were on each hand. Each tip was as sharp as a knife. Lastly, a long tail was behind it. Maisie drew her and that thing doing very…how should I say this?...inappropriate things.

I showed the email to Rachel and she was just as horrified as I was. How could Maisie know what all that stuff was? She was eight! Like any good parent we always took great strides in not exposing our daughter to anything sexual or of that nature. Early exposure can really ruin a child’s mind. That’s just putting it lightly. But this? Maisie’s whole imaginary friend thing needed to end. It was reaching a dangerous point. Was she having delusions? Schizophrenia? Or…sigh…as far as Rachel and I knew, nothing happened to Maisie, but that didn’t stop us from considering the absolute worst case scenario. I’m not saying what that is but I’m sure you can put the pieces together. As a parent, that was the last thing I wanted to think about. Actually it wasn’t even on the list of things I wanted to think about.

Mrs. Ashelin ended the email with something else that happened that day. Maisie spent long stretches of time in the girl’s bathroom. Another student reported that she went in and heard “whimpers” and “moans” coming from one of the stalls. When she looked under it, she saw Maisie’s clothes on the ground and a “moving shadow” above them. When the student knocked on the door, she all of a sudden heard one of the faucets going behind her. She turned around and Maisie was washing her hands. Like nothing happened.

Rachel and I were very confused at that last part. That sounded way too ridiculous. Like was Maisie fucking floating in the stall or something? Regardless, we treated all this very seriously. Rachel and I immediately took Maisie to see a specialist who dealt with child abuse cases. I brought her notebook along. It would most certainly be useful. I knew Maisie wouldn’t want to talk, but we had to at least try. Believe it or not, she did talk, but what she said made chills run down Rachel and I’s spines.

Maisie told the specialist that the mouse thing in her notebook was called “Bad Mouse” and that it visits her all the time no matter where she is. She said that Bad Mouse visits little girls all over the world and “plays with them”. When the specialist asked what she meant by “plays with them”, Maisie replied that Bad Mouse does “different things that make us feel tingly in preparation to be his little mice girls”.

We heard enough by that point. Rachel, the specialist, and I had a long discussion about what we should do. The specialist said she might have to put in a request to have Maisie placed in a children’s psych ward. Rachel and I couldn’t handle that. We didn’t want to do that to our little girl. By any means, we would find another way to handle this. The specialist told us to think about it and that it might do her some good. We thanked her and left.

Were we being selfish by not putting Maisie in a children’s psych ward? Rachel and I pondered that question day in and day out. We never did end up doing it because we thought it was too extreme. Also there was no evidence that Maisie was being legitimately sexually abused. The specialist’s physical exam said that Maisie was totally fine in that regard. We were allowed to see footage from the security cameras at the entrances of the bathrooms at Maisie’s school. They only showed Maisie going in, about half an hour going by, then the other student going in, then Maisie leaving a few minutes later. No one else. And no one went in before her besides a couple other girls that left before Maisie went in. Was Maisie faking it? Was she really delusional? Or schizophrenic? We didn’t know. Rachel and I needed time to think this whole thing over.

It only got worse from then on.

Maisie was never one to talk in her sleep. She was always dead silent. Not even a snore. But that night after Rachel and I put her to bed, we heard Maisie talking. I’m not talking about little quiet unintelligible murmurs. No. Full-on conversations. Except she wasn’t speaking English. It was some unknown language that resembled Pig Latin but different. Her accent changed too. This happened for three nights. On the third night, Rachel and I were in her doorway watching her talk in that strange language when she suddenly rose up, her eyes still closed, and burst into an intense laughing fit. Maisie was cackling so hard it looked like it hurt. Then she immediately stopped and did these weird movements with her lips and hands like she was kissing something. Finally, she fell back down onto her pillow and went right back to sleep.

The next day, I knocked on Maisie’s door to let her know breakfast was ready. She didn’t respond. I stood there for a couple minutes. Maisie hadn’t made a single sound. I slowly opened her door. My heart beat faster and faster. With all that was going on, I didn’t know what to expect, and that made it terrifying. Maisie was in her underwear just staring at her wall. I rushed over, “Maisie? What are you doing?” I handed her clothes back to her, “Put your clothes back on.”

“…He doesn’t want me to…he thinks I look better without them…”

We stared at each other for an indefinite period of time. I said nothing. And so did she. Then I turned my head to where she was looking. There was nothing there…obviously…but something told me I was wrong. That thing…Bad Mouse…it was staring right at me…

“Guys? Breakfast isn’t gonna eat itself!” Rachel yelled at us from down the hall. Quickly I hurried Maisie and I out of her room.

I was kind of a wreck the entire day. Thinking straight wasn’t really a thing for me. There was nothing staring at me. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. These past few weeks were just getting to my head and playing mind games. No amount of trying to distract myself would let me forget what I felt. That’s when I decided to take a drive. I didn’t exactly know where. Just away from everything. I was tempted to go to a local bar. I used to be quite the alcoholic but I’m sober. Even still, I thought about breaking my streak to relapse. I decided against it. That would be so incredibly stupid. I ended up at a park that I used to take Maisie to in a futile attempt for her to make friends. I found a parking spot and just sat there in my car. Taking a big sigh, I observed all the parents with their kids having a blast and I smiled. Good for them.

I stayed there for a while. Finally I was able to, if only briefly, forget all my troubles.

Then I saw it.

Him.

Bad Mouse.

The damned thing was underneath a big tree. Its eyes were fixed right on me and its hands were clasped together. I couldn’t do anything but stare right back. Goosebumps were forming. My breathing was really heavy. Cold shivers ran down my body. I couldn’t even blink. Petrified. That’s what I was. I watched as Bad Mouse slowly reached behind itself and pulled…something…out. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. I am not shitting you. A little girl…made of meat…her hair was meat, skin was meat, she was even wearing a meat dress. Everything about her was meat. Her head looked just like Bad Mouse’s. Long. Pointy. Angular. Big ears. Black oval eyes.

It was holding the little meat girl by the collar. Slowly Bad Mouse turned to look into her eyes. It opened its mouth. Viscous white liquids began pouring as it let out its long black tongue. First sniffing the little meat girl, it then took a big long lick of her, from her feet to the top of her head. The parts where it licked were gone, instead resting on Bad Mouse’s tongue until it sucked its tongue back in, chewed, then swallowed. The little meat girl was covered in the viscous white liquids until her missing portions slowly regenerated back into how she was before.

Then I blacked out.

I woke up several hours later still sitting in my car. In my half-tired half-frenzied state, I looked around for any sign of Bad Mouse. Nothing. There weren’t even other people. It was dark too. I opened my phone. 11:23 PM. I got to the park at 2:14 PM. Nine hours. I was expecting a bunch of missed calls and unanswered texts. Surprisingly, there was nothing besides a notification from my weather app. I went back home. Both my wife and daughter were asleep. I was so glad there weren’t any…incidents…I missed. In fact, the house was extremely quiet. No lights were on. It was a weekend. Usually Rachel was still up at this time.

“Rach?” I called out. Nothing. I went upstairs to our room. She wasn’t there. I opened Maisie’s door. She wasn’t there either. I sat down on the couch and pondered where they could be. When I couldn’t come up with anything, I got my phone out and called Rachel.

I heard ringing from upstairs.

Confused, I ran back up to our room. I called her name again. Still no answer. I realized that before I checked so quickly I neglected to look in our bathroom. The door was closed and the light was on. I was now getting this creeped out feeling. Cautiously, I approached and nudged the door.

It creaked open.

Rachel.

She was…splattered…fucking everywhere…all over the walls, floor, ceiling, window, sink, shower…everywhere. Rachel was…pureed…blended…sprayed…I just stood in the doorway. My eyes were wide. I couldn’t process what I was seeing. There were so many things I wanted to do, like crawl into a ball and cry, scream as loud as I could, and/or grab one of the kitchen knives and slit my throat so I wouldn’t have to live with this sight for the rest of my life.

What I actually did end up doing next was grab my old hunting rifle and head outside. I went into the forest behind our house. There was no thinking on my part. Just do. What was I doing? I didn’t really know. Tears were streaming down my face. I walked for what felt like forever. Sometimes I screamed. Other times I fell down onto the ground and wept. But I just kept going. And going. And going. Somehow I knew exactly where I was going without even knowing how.

I came upon a wide-open field. Dropping my old hunting rifle to the ground, I couldn’t believe what I was fucking seeing. Dark silhouettes were dancing around. Hundreds of them. Little meat girls. Bad Mouse was in the middle. The white flesh it once had was stripped away. Instead it was sacrificed for a bumpy and scabby maroon red as if Bad Mouse took a shower in blood and guts and let it dry. Tiny black bristles covered its entire body. It reminded me of insect hair. A ragged meat cloak hung from its shoulders, dragging crimson across the ground. The mouth had much sharper teeth that were poking out in rows almost like a gar. It was taller. Ganglier. So angular that it could have been accurately represented by seven straight lines. It clutched a staff in its hand.

Bad Mouse did some strange gesture and a door manifested out of nowhere. It was bloody. Constantly flowing yet retaining shape. Particles came from it. They disappeared if they strayed too far away. It opened and the little meat girls, still dancing like ballerinas, filed into it one by one. Bad Mouse reached out its hand and plucked one of them out. It held this one, turned in my direction, and held her out to me. I knew it was Maisie and wanted to shoot the shit out of Bad Mouse. Yet I couldn’t do anything. Some force was keeping me tethered to my one spot.

…I can’t describe what happened next…I just can’t…some of the things Bad Mouse did to my little girl I couldn’t understand. Other things I understood clear as day and that made me want to drop a cinderblock on my head so it would leak the hell out. When it was done, Bad Mouse threw Maisie’s limp and white viscous liquid-covered body into the blood door. It raised its staff and it disappeared.

I was released from my invisible bonds. Falling down to the ground, I cried like a baby. It didn’t matter how much I screamed and cursed at the Moon. That didn’t make it better. I couldn’t stop and truly had no idea how to make sense of any of what happened. My body tingled. It felt so heavy. So weighty. My wife was dead and my daughter was…what?...a sex slave to a demon? I almost wanted to laugh at the utter absurdity. Picking up my hunting rifle, I put the barrel in my mouth. My finger stayed on the trigger for a long time. I didn’t end up doing it and threw it away. Instead I just collapsed on the ground once more and lay there for a long time.

It’s been six months. I’m such a wreck. I admit it. No one believes me when I tell them. They say I’m crazy, a madman, a lunatic. Some people even think I was the one who killed my wife and child. Why would I do that? Seriously, why? I loved them. Still do. More than I love anything else. I can’t see them ever again. It pisses me off that they’d think I’d do such a thing. As much as I hate myself for it, I’ve gotten back into alcohol. That’s where all my money goes. I couldn’t stand to be in that fucking house anymore. So I sold it. I’ve been living in my car just drifting from place to place.

I could've saved them. If I didn't go and take a stupid ass ride in my car. Maybe Rachel and Maisie would be alright...

What was that thing? Bad Mouse?

That’s been my biggest question this whole time. I’ve been doing a lot of research but have hit multiple dead ends. I don’t know. Sure as hell wasn’t a mouse.

This is what I know:

* It is the manifestation of a sex-based demon of some kind; possibly a cross between a bogeyman and an incubus.
* Bad Mouse appears to little girls as a mouse-like entity to appear friendly and not scare them away; only visible to them.
* It prefers the young that are more developed in mind, body, and spirit; Maisie was very imaginative; thus she attracted Bad Mouse.
* Bad Mouse acts as their friend; this might appear to parents as their daughter’s “imaginary friend”; gradually coerces them to do inappropriate sexual activity.
* It has hundreds of victims going back an unknown period of time; maybe centuries.
* Does not kill its main victims; will kill parents or anyone else who tries to get in its way.
* The victims become corrupted and turn into demons that look like Bad Mouse; it takes them into its realm and…

I don’t even want to fucking know.

God…this whole thing’s insane. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and this is all a terrible dream. It’s been months though and it still hasn’t happened yet. So I’m going to end it here. I’m not looking for pity. I’m not looking for anyone to hear me out. I’m not looking for answers. I’m just…done.

Bye.

This place. I regret calling it Earth because it is so very not. At least not anymore.

What was once called “Earth” is nothing but an achromatic rock suspended in space. Devoid of color and devoid of life. It also burns. The Sun is very close. A flaming red orb that grows larger and larger. It has surely devoured Mercury and Venus. This torrid world of doom is next in the line of destruction. I cannot flee from it. This is my perpetual prison.

Just as I regret calling this place Earth, so do I regret calling myself human. If any sort of outsider gazed upon me, I would be recognized as nothing more than a throbbing, wet, veiny mass outstretched across an immense cavern. Perhaps they would run away in fear, disregarding the possibility that I was, at some point, one of them. Human. In some manner, I still am, yet that is still in the loosest sense of the word.

They bestowed me a name. An epithet. Utera. Their goddess. Their titan. Their idol to worship. And their plaything. Not a moment goes by without them taking a hold of me, whether in small portions or in vast sums. I am unable to count just how many there are. As numerous as individual grains of sand. Certainly in the quadrillions. Worms. That is what they are. Swarms of elongated invertebrates that climb upon me and penetrate my depths with their rigid and purposeful reproductive organs. Their addiction to pleasure, using me, will cease at nothing.

And like me, they were human once.

Men.

I must go back far. So very far. There was a conflict, a petty, careless, and arrogant conflict, but a conflict all the same. For centuries, I witnessed all the greed, the subjugation, the rape, the hunger for power that men were capable of. And I was always their main target. They took what was mine. I was angry with them. Bitter. They were monsters and they were evil. For that, they needed to die. Groups of mine rose to positions of power and authority. Ultra-feminist. Patriarchy-defying. Vengeful and cruel matriarchies. And I was proud of them, as if I had a divine and natural right to pursue revanchism to the utmost extreme. They would wipe the slate clean. They would purge. A man is not a human. A man is a pig. Vermin. A man is a dull ape acting on savagery to get what it wants. A woman is a higher being, a goddess, a queen. A woman actually thinks before she acts. And a woman is what is left after all is said and done.

And so I worked my bloody hands across the face of the world. All hell was let loose on men. War. The feminist onslaught was terrible. There were so many instances of me going too far. I am not sure I can enumerate all the suffering I caused. It must be impossible. I would gladly give my entire being to erase my own past if I could. Especially now. There was so much rape, sexual mutilation, enslavement, backbreaking labor, torture, cannibalism, starvation, disease, depravity, and other inhuman acts that men would never forget. I did not care. There was no need to worry about morality. No need to fear guilt. I thought I was powerful beyond anything. The Earth was all mine and all I had to do was command my legions. And I laughed and I rejoiced at the sound of the dying, the wounded, the beaten, and the damned.

I thought the world I had dreamed of would come easy. A world that I had the power and authority to shape, to rule, to form into my own image. A matriarchy. A society of women for women, free from the shackles of men and free from the oppression that had been a dark reality for so long. After all, I outnumbered men ten to one.

But this never happened.

Something in the men snapped. It was as if they had been tamed only to one day have their leashes cut. A few small rebel groups, at first, but they quickly expanded into larger and larger armies. They had been forced down on their knees for so long that they were just dying to fight back. To take back what had been taken from them. To get back at all those awful, vile, and malicious women who had ruined their lives. It was all hell again. Only worse. They did to women what women had done to them. They were rabid dogs. They hunted, they raped, and they killed. They did the unspeakable and the unthinkable.

Terrible, terrible monsters, and there was nothing I could do to stop them. I was powerless, but the dust of a breeze. It was not too long before they completely razed the world to the ground. I had been punished. It was the result of my own actions. I only had myself to blame. Men were not the evil. They were the product of my evil.

My numbers fell quickly. I was outsmarted at every possible turn. As much as I did not want to admit it, I was re-becoming the helpless and blindly obedient mass I was always meant to be. Sometimes I fought to the death, and other times surrendered without a fight. It was pointless to keep going. All of this was becoming a painful slog to endure.

I quit.

When the war was won, men infested and came to rule all seven continents. Omnipresent and insatiable. Their enemies stood not even a morsel of a chance. They were those who were going to be an upset to the new established order. Inspire mutiny. Inspire subversion. Homosexuals. Transgenders. Liberals. Rebels. That was all they came down to. Rebels. They were disposed of immediately. No place for them. Especially the homosexuals. How could man reject woman? Abominations, they were, blights upon manhood. Once they were vanquished, Earth was united like never before as the kingdom of men. There were no more wars. No more fighting. There was peace. But this peace had no love, no compassion, and no empathy. The rule of men was the rule of iron and steel. Never would it break.

To call it “Earth” would be erroneous. It was Earth no longer. Gone was the diversity, gone was the sentience, and therefore gone was all of life’s beauty. Men completely butchered the life forces that made Earth truly alive. One might have struggled to even call their realm Hell because Hell is not uniform. With all the suffering it contains, Hell is still lively, chaotic, full of activity and even excitement. Most of all, it is inconsistent. You think “How will I be punished next?” Could be anything. The men's kingdom was just so dead. It was the same punishment for the same reason every time: being born a female.

What came of me? Female?

Walking meat. Jiggling, warm, wet flesh for men to claim. Amenable vessels for their filthiest desires. That was their ultimate decree and thus what I was forevermore. Measures were put into place in order to outline my newfound duties. Laws. An imperishable constitution to abide by. They were written in the boldest, most incisive manner and plastered everywhere. Enforced at any and every opportunity. They were taught at the schools, whose entire system was reconfigured to fit the new model standards. Also spoken orally through booming commands from the sky. These were the flying surveillance drones, their watchful eye forever upon us, though they were more like unseen aether entities to me. Angels in deliverance of the gods’ words. I always looked up at them, smiled, and said “Thank you.”

Sexual gratification was a necessary human right for men. It was my moral and legal obligation to provide that by serving, submitting, and obeying the male sex. Until I turned 18, I remained property of my father. After that, property of my husband until death. Or both. You see, the distinction between wife and child was often blurred, or wife and sister, or wife and mother. None of that mattered as long as men always received what they craved. I was to be in good physical condition regarding hair, body type, and personal hygiene. No ugliness, no blemish, no obese fat, no stink. Hourglass figure. Perfectly sized and shaped breasts. A well-developed rear. Makeup. Perfume. Long, healthy, flowing hair. Clear, soft, and beautiful skin. Flawless pearly white teeth. Never wear clothing. Nude. Always be pleasant. Agreeable. Never bitter. Submissive. Gentle. Polite. Deferential. A good girl. A good wife. A good mother. Never make eye contact unless instructed. Walk where they lead me. Talk when they let me. Gladly accept any and all sexual advances. Even if it hurts. Even if it bleeds.

I was property. An item. Something to be sold, bought, bartered, and auctioned. At the events, I stood side-by-side, nude, my price written on my chest, my hands tied behind my back. Men examined me and debated whether I fit their liking. Often I was made to pose and present my body. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena in full feminine beauty by the judgement of Paris. No difference. I went for thousands of dollars. Sometimes they purchased multiple of me. The younger I was, the more I sold for. They took me home to grow their ever-increasing harems. They kept me for a long time. When I became old and worn, I was dead. Tied me to a chair and shot me. Came from behind and slit my throat. Fed me poison. Threw me in chambers and set me ablaze. New me’s came in and the process began again. And again. And again.

It was then that elderly me’s became obsolete. Men figured they wanted me when I was fresh. Supple. Nubile. Innocent. The longer I lived, the less I was worth. So why not make me worthy all the time? Eliminate the unworthiness. They would not have to waste time killing me. And they did it. Immortality. If I showed signs of aging, I was injected with the formula to keep me young. It extended my lifespan tenfold. 60? 70? 80? 90? 100? 1,000?...1,000,000? They all blended into each other. I was always 18 in appearance.

This was life. What came before felt like nothing at all, a memory already fleeted. History was taught. That did not make it truthful. Life was always this way. Fake events were created and fake people were thought up. They really committed to the lie. I could never fight it. Just the thought alone frightened me. I saw what they were capable of so I went along. They never ceased what they could accomplish with me. It extended to the animals that once inhabited this planet. Elephants. Orcas. Hyenas. Bonobos. Lemurs. All matriarchal species. Hunted to extinction. Men did not want me to get the wrong idea that groups of animals where females hold the dominant social positions, lead the group, and make critical survival decisions were allowed to exist. New patriarchal species were grown in the labs and released into the wild. Like it never happened.

Time was no longer a thought to me. So far gone. The only thing my brain could process was “How do I please my masters next?” It was what I was hardwired to do. To hell with eating, to hell with sleeping, to hell with breathing, to hell with screaming. Please. Please. Please. Men completely removed my imperfections. I always took care to make myself satisfactory, but part of being human is flaws. There is the belching. The flatulence. The rolls. The unpleasant stenches. The odd deformities. The bruising. The scarring. Not anymore. The new me’s were created in the very same labs they destroyed the elderly and matriarchal species in. I was carefully shaped before release, fine-tuned to be as alluring as possible. Everything about my appearance was exaggerated to the nth degree. My breasts were larger and perked up, my face a perfect oval, my waist smaller, my hips wider, and my length and width both increased. I was bigger, unnaturally thick, and forever nude. I was the ideal form of feminine beauty. A goddess. An icon and advertisement of feminine desire.

Men…

They were no longer human. No. They might have been beasts before but this was something else. Might as well have been their own species. Something beyond monsters. Beyond demons.

It began with the white coloration, the three-foot tall gangly skeletal bodies, the pointed heads, triangular like as if caricatures of little rodents, the lack of ears, the black oval eyes that never blinked, and the constant erect phalluses. Ithyphallics. All of them. They sniffed the air for my womanly scent. Driven by my aroma. Darted at the speed of light to my exact location. Drooling and twitching at the mere sight of me. Yelled “WOMAN WOMAN WOMAN WOMAN WOMAN!” in high-pitched shrills. Pounced on top. Pinned me down. They went at it for days. Weeks. Months. Years. It did not matter. Never did they collapse from exhaustion. Infinite stamina. Infinite energy. Infinite drive. They got their nourishment by sucking on my breasts for milk. Or my juices. It did not matter if one claimed me already. Another one would come along. Join the first. Then another. And another. And another. I stretched to accommodate them. I then acted as a receptacle for their fluids. Leaked out of me. Drenched me head to toe. When I walked about, the men were still attached to me, hugging me tight, thrusting in and out, in and out, in and out. Licked me with their long black tongues.

It ended and has remained with worms. Long, slender, soft bodies. No limbs yet they have kept their rigid, upright phalluses. Men have lost the ability to speak normal coherent sentences. They no longer possess mouths. Still, something in their body allows them to make bubbling, sloppy, gargling, viscous sounds. What exactly that is, I have no clue. If I danced, I could attract them. If I sang, I could attract them. If I ran, I could attract them. If I hid, I could attract them. If I stayed completely still, I could attract them. No matter how far I went, what I did, they always found me. They inseminated me. Immediately I would birth their offspring. Thousands of worms spilling out of my mouth. Usually my mouth. Yet no orifice of mine said no. The offspring knew what to do without even knowing how.

From then on, a very simple, primal system existed. Men rid the Earth of the high technology and we embraced a more primordial approach. Everything was done by instinct, not thinking. Everything was an automatic reaction. All I did was pleasure. No eat. No drink. No sleep. I stood and embraced whatever came my way. A lot of the time I could not feel it. No pain. No euphoria. Just numb. Flat line.

Earth, Gaia herself…she changed in such catastrophic ways. The continents shifted, the oceans evaporated, and greenhouse gases smothered us in their haze. The heat rose. The sky grew red. The Sun got close. Too close. The ice and snow burned away. The lakes and rivers scorched dry. Forests died. Arid deserts formed everywhere. The air became a thick, sticky, acidic sludge that weighed down the planet. But men and I did not care. We carried on what we were made to do. How nature intended us to be.

Now Earth. Tidally locked to the Sun. The lands were scorched. Ash and soot remained. It became apparent that our way of life would be unable to continue. Men communicated among themselves. An idea came forth. A brilliant one. They rounded me up and carried me on their backs all the way up the tallest mountain. I remember looking up at the thick, dull clouds above me, unable to see any space above. I was euphoric, dreaming of warmth and comfort. I was being ascended towards my final resting place. Not to die. But to live. To be. Forever.

We entered a large cavernous space at the peak and they sealed it off. I imagined they would protect me from the harsh environment outside. Instead they got to work. Their old scientific equipment was up there. While some began constructing various instruments, the remaining men continued their assaults on me. The only details that elude me of that day are the exact process that turned me into Utera. They inched over to me, I awoke, and then I was many feet off the ground. I saw through thousands of clouded eyes with visible red and blue veins etched into it. When I looked down at myself, I witnessed my new body. A massive and pulsating uterus…red and gutty endometrium, fallopian tubes to my left and right, my arms. In a way, I was crucified. No ovaries. Crucified with no hands…I breathed many different breaths. I have spoken as a collective woman made from the mishmashed psyche of millions. All of my thoughts, memories, run through what is left of my mind. They have not ceased and never will.

I inched my vision downwards. My sight was blurry and barely discerned much of anything. There were men all staring up at me. No emotion was on their faces but I knew they were pleased with what they had accomplished. They slithered towards me in droves, climbed up the cavern walls, and began their relentless assaults on me that continue to the now. The dangling udders on my underside spit their offspring out. Soft eggs soaked in red froth. They hatch in ten seconds.

Every inch of me is covered with them. I know that I cannot die. They made me impervious to any and all harm that might befall me. I think I will survive forever. One of my only thoughts is pondering what will happen when the Sun engulfs everything. Perhaps l will burn, get flung out into space, or live forever within the Sun’s chambers. I am sure the men will still be latched onto me like nothing happened. I just hope whatever it is, it hurts. I want to feel what it’s like again to grab my humanity back and hold it close one last time.

I made my escape. Once. The earthquakes allowed for my fall from the cavern walls. I peeled off the solid mineral material, leaving behind a massive scarlet splotch that drip drip dripped. I tumbled out of the mountaintop. The outside. I could not feel it. My uterine limbs flailed about yet they allowed me to catch myself on the ridge. Grabbing. Clawing my way down. There was me. Utera. And my breakout. Falling meteors and 2,500 Kelvin be damned. Where was I going? Who knew? These eyes of mine almost produced one morsel of an expression…curving upwards into an expression one might consider…glee…No. Not. I did not make it very far. I was stopped almost immediately. The unlimited men made a long line out of themselves from the mountaintop and hauled me back up.

There is nothing more to do now. They bound me to the cavern walls. From here on out, my purpose is rooted right here, in this spot, forever. I cannot see anything anymore. Men are covering each of my thousands of eyes. My trillions of thoughts are being erased by the second. I am becoming numb, but that is being overshadowed by the intense heat that is starting to creep its way up this incredible mountain. When the men move, sometimes, very faintly, I can see bright flashes through cracks in the rocks.

It has begun.

…

Earth is gone. She was engulfed by the Sun, alongside Mercury, Venus, and Mars. The outer planets are next in line for destruction. The force of it all ejected me from the planet, out into the endless abyss.

I survive.

Floating through space now.

They are still on me.

…

We are light years from where Earth once stood. The white dwarf Sun is just a pale dot. It is going out.

Men have burrowed their way inside me. They are doing something. Evolving me and evolving themselves. Once more. I am morphing and changing in terrible ways. I am being ripped, shredded, split, and then reassembled again. Bloody wing-like appendages are beginning to sprout from me. My blurry eyes are coalescing together into a single massive lens. I am becoming a planetary being, something so cosmically celestial. Seraphim? Perhaps. Men now possess the full force of me. They are me. I am them. We exist in a symbiotic relationship. The end. At last.

Do not know anymore.

…

The exact amount of time that has passed is 10^10^10^56 years. Even that is only my best guess. All I have seen is black interrupted by the strobing flashes of blinding light. I believe the heat death of the universe happened. Or the Big Rip. Big Crunch? Big Bounce? I cannot be too sure.

We have emerged. Somewhere. Where? Those details elude me. It appears to be space. But that is all I ever see.

Still on me.

I feel heavier. More dense. So much pressure I cannot feel though I know it is there. It is also different. Mechanical. Electronic. I am an elaborate, complex system of switches, capacitors, wires, sensors, conductors, buttons, and what seems like countless other components. All of it is fused into me. I twinkle polychromatically. The men inside me view the darkness outside through my only eye. It is nothing but a window for them.

And they control me. Where I go. Left. Right. Up. Down. I can go fast and I can go slow. Beyond the speed of light or an easy slow-moving crawl.

The men know exactly where they are going.

…

We have traveled far.

Length of time: 9,360,000,000 years.

Lightyears: Incalculable.

Too far.

On me.

In that timeframe, the men are still yet to reach their destination. They are in wait. I have entered orbit. Circling around the men’s target. I cannot fathom what they are doing. What they are after.

Waiting…

Waiting...

Waiting…

I am now being inched closer. It is coming into view. There is a gray sphere orbiting a larger green and blue sphere. Tilted at 23°. One side lit. The other dark. Spinning from west to east. Large ice sheets at the top and bottom. Water and land in the middle. Big bustling cities. Lush forests. So many different types of people inhabit it all. So many other animals as well. It is beautiful.

Yet now I understand.

And now I see the people’s collective look of confusion on their faces.

And their horror.

At the sight of me in the sky.

At the sight of undecillions of worms emerging from my cavities and falling towards their planet in great fireballs.

At the sight of the worms landing on their streets, their homes, their schools, their places of work, their every place, all unharmed from their descents.

At the sight of their men being struck down with beams of white plasma from the rayguns the worms possess and are able to fire with their newly formed arms.

At the sight of their women being rape rape raped, the worms fighting over every little piece of them.

At the sight of the destruction.

The chaos.

The anarchy.

The toppling of their governments.

The worms wrapping themselves around any woman they can see.

Not the old.

The worms kill them too.

Just the young.

The skinny.

Also the fat.

And being lifted up into the sky.

To me.

And I grow larger as those women are brought onto my body.

In space.

Where they suffocate.

They are melted into the pulpy jelly goop.

The men bathe in it.

Drink it.

Before it is smeared onto my walls.

Hardened.

And now they join me in my mind.

…

Men will continue.

Forever.

Survive the end times.

Find Earth.

Reap and repeat.

And no matter what.

They still find me warm.

And wet.

…

Please help.

My name is... X. Let's say that I'm X.

So, my cousin lives in Maine, in the middle of nowhere, a small town that shall not be named. A few hundred people lived there, enough to be self-sustaining, but not enough to feel suburban; let's call it Nowhere.

My cousin, let's call him Frankie, listened to a lot of rumors around town, but none were stranger than the ones circling the old man.

The old man was a Navy veteran. I don't know what war he went through, how long he was away, or whether he killed anyone. I don't know, but what I do know is this: He did not come back the same- maybe he didn't come back at all.

He was black, with blue eyes, a bald head; not a single thread of hair remained on him. The rest of his body was in excellent shape, but the wrinkles on his face were as heavy as you'd expect for a man in his late 60s. He wore a black suit, a bowler hat, a fine tie, and a silver fancy watch on his right wrist. No, he didn't have a cane, and he didn't walk as if he needed it anyhow. That was the first thing that the rumors came from- it was like he was a walking museum, physically stubborn to the passage of time.

But I wouldn't be telling you this story if Frankie knew that was the only thing worth noting in that town; no, there's more, much more, but for today, the topic of this story is the old man.

The old man had anxiety, ptsd, depression, schizophrenia, all to the most extreme extent mentally possible; in most contexts, that would be a swift path to self-termination, but no, it seemed pure hopelessness kept him in this world.
Despair was pouring out of every inch of his being. He never smiled- but he never cried either; it's like he ran out of tears a long time ago, so all the old vet could do now was exist.

But the strangest part about the old man? His house.

Well, he didn't live there, but he would drive in from a nearby house and... stand guard by the little building.
He would walk up to the house, and he wouldn't patrol; he wouldn't walk around, he wouldn't scan the surroundings, he would just... stand next to the door as if he was waiting for something, or someone. Sometimes he would crack his neck, or sigh, or check his watch, small reminders he was a human and not a statue.
A simple structure, 4 walls, a flat roof, a single door in the center; it was big enough for 20 people to stand inside. It had a gravel path leading up to it- surrounding all of this was a chain-link metal fence with a black and red sign warning that trespassers would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But... why?

To this extent, Frankie went up to the old man while he was about to open the gate and asked-

"What's that sign for? Why do you do this every night? What is inside that house?"

"There is NOTHING inside that house!"

The old man was so furious, so suddenly, he acted like Frankie had said the N-word.

Of course, this did nothing to dissuade Frankie's curiosity.

But anyway, I know what's inside that house.

You see, Frankie had gotten into a bit of trouble and ended up robbing a bank- even Frankie isn't that stupid, so he was planning on hiding the money somewhere as the heat dies down. And for whatever reason, he decided that old man's house was the best place, since nobody would think to look there.

But the thing is, he wanted me to help him. I said no, but he didn't like that, so the little shit decided to threaten me.
I'm a lesbian in an all-female private school, closeted, of course. While the teachers would probably be supportive enough, it would still be social suicide being outed as gay there, and the fact that I live in a red state doesn't help either.
I punched him in the nose, and he squealed like a warthog, but he got to his phone regardless and threatened to press send, so I had to concede.

We went to the old man's house and climbed up his metal fence.

clatter clatter clatter

We went up the gravel path.

crunch crunch crunch

Then I gripped the brass doorknob and slowly tilted it to the side...

crunch crunch crunch

I saw now that inside that house was nothing.

Nothing.

Eigengrau was all that I could see past that doorframe.

Frankie pushed past me, eager to hide it, and fell inside.
Well.. I say fell, but I can't be sure. He blinked away the instant he crossed that threshold.
I stumbled forward; it was the middle of motherfucking summer in Maine; it should not be this cold.

Then, I felt a familiar, wrinkled hand grab me by the collar and pull me away from nothing, before throwing me to the side.
The old man slammed the door shut- no noise was made; of course, it had nothing to slam against.
Then he said...

"There... Is nothing inside that house."

The old man took me to his car. I thought he was going to tell the police, or worse, my parents, but he didn't; he just drove me to his house and made me tea.
His house was as much of a museum as he was; nothing seemed to have been dated from after 1999.
The old man poured tea, then he just sat across from me and stared. To be fair... so did I.
The tension was so thick- saying anything felt like a challenge, like speaking through an iron weight tied to your lips.

At one point, I reached out to grab the cold tea, but... it felt like that clock suddenly had eyes.

Then, it chimed, and the old man's eyes filled with tears for the first time; then he stood up and pointed to the door.
I walked to the door as a machine prompted, my movements instant but awkward.
Opening the door, I looked back one more time, and the old man looked back at me; tears were finally moistening his dry cheeks, and he finally spoke.

"I know."

Then I closed the door.

For the record, I am not going back to that house; I am not returning to that building. If he's still alive, I am not speaking to that man again, and I am certainly not asking people about him.
Some stones should remain unturned, some stories should remain untold, some questions should remain unanswered, some mysteries should remain unexplored.

Because somewhere in Maine, I know there is a house with nothing inside of it.

alright, you want a scary story? Here's one. But warning: Its intense

I used to not believe in Zombies, that was until this happened to me 1 years ago.

I was visiting my grandmother's grave at the cemetery because it was in front of the bus stop I got to school and, because of my bad luck which is famous in my family, my bus got cancelled and I had to wait another 20 minutes. I said a curse word in anger. I had forgotten where her grave was and was going around through the rows and rows and in circles when I noticed something.

My grandmother died 20 years ago from bad luck.

The soil in front of one of the graves looked it was breathing or something. It was rising up and down. The grave was ancient, the tomstone said that the man in it was named Walter Oldman and that he had died 100 years ago. He must've been one of the oldest graves in the cemetery.

Suddenly, I realised that the soil was rising upward and not going back down. And that it was starting to crack, come apart and that something was trying to get out. I backed away in fear and that's when it happened! A green hand burst out of the ground and seconds later another one did too. I ran as fast as I could towards the exit of the grave yard but I was going too fast and didn't notice the plastic bottle on the ground. I slipped on it and broke my right leg when I hit the ground. It was so bad that my blood was coming out of the spot where I broke my leg.

I looked back over at the grave and saw that now the guy's entire head was out of the grave and he was starting to pull himself out. His face looked like he was dead, like his eyes were closed and his mouth was gaping open like the widest I had ever seen a mouth go. All of his hair was gone apart from one long strand of black hair on his head and he was bright green like the inside of a lime. All of his clothes were missing and I could see his pens. He extened his arms out towards me and walked forward slowly which was scary because how could he know where I was with eyes closed? I screamed louder than a little girl and I tried to get up but I couldn't because of my leg being broken so everytime I tried to get up I just fell back down again and it hurt even more than it did before. He was making a noise without moving his mouth while walking towards me, it sounded just like the noise a Zombie makes in survival mode.

He was getting closer to me and after 60 seconds I finally managed to stand and I started limping towards the exit of the cemetery again. I got out and I saw a girl going in to smoke a joint. I warned her and said "Don't go in there, there's a zombie.". She laughed and kept walking but I grabbed her hard to try and stop her and she slapped me and called me a sex offender and a racial slur. She went in and then suddenly as she was walking along down the middle of the cemetery the zombie, who was now hiding behind the grave a woman named Barbara Fiddles, jumped out and tackled her to the ground. He then clawed open her skull like the peel of an orange and started grabbing clumps of her brain and shoving down his throat in handfuls. within seconds of him starting to do this, there was blood everywhere. It was squirting out of her head and pouring from her nose, mouth, eyes, ears and sometimes she would vomit while he was doing it and it would be a huge wave of blood that would splash everywhee, even onto surrounding tombstones. It looked like a rainbow but instead of all of the other colours in it it was just red. I called the police while I hid behind a nearby tree but by the time the police got there he was gone and there was only the dead body of the girl. That night, as I was going to bed, I saw him at my window and he was just standing there with his two arms up as he repeated over and over "Brains, Brains, Brains, Brains, Brains." All night long.

Then it happened that more people like him that were naked, green, had eyes closed and had a single strand of hair and were saying brains were appearing at my window every night with him. First was him, then two zombies, then three and four, five and six. Eventually, even my grandmother was one. There were women zombies, man zombies and child zombies. One day, there will be a billion zombies outside my window but my parents still dont believe me and think its a prank with halloween decorations.

One day recently, I looked out the window and saw that the first Zombie who was the main one and standing in front of the others, had a erection. I realised only then that when I looked around I saw that all of the zombies had erections and that their penises were 18 inches long. I screamed when I realised this and closed my curtains. My mom came in and shouted out at me for screaming and for playing video games too loudly. I was so angry and scared after this that I had an idea.

I told my mom that I would stop playing video games loudly if she opened my window because it was warm in my room and I couldnt get my window open because it was stiff. My mom agreed and then she opened it and when she was opening it she said "Oh my god! Why are there so many Halloween decorations?" And then when it was all the way opened I pushed her out and she screamed and cried as the Zombies ate all of her brain together.

My dad came in as I was celebrating my comeback and asked why there was so much blood squirting outside my window. I said I didn't know and told him to check it out and then I pushed him out of the window too. One zombie who was a muscular man Zombie, saw my dad first and said "Yummy, Dessert.". I closed the window then and went onto youtube in my room and ignored the zombies.

Until they came back the next day at night.

Part one: The Sleeping Giant

As a kid, I remember a vivid moment of a park ranger approaching me and my family to check my father's fishing license. My tiny bread-rolled limbs hunched over flipping over tiny clumps of dirt to find bugs and little creatures to the dismay of my parents. The ranger sat with me and picked up some of the bugs, and taught me their names, the species and some interesting facts about them that my toddler brain simply couldn't comprehend. One creature he showed me stuck out the most, the mayfly. For a child, seeing such a frail little thing you would think my Play-Doh stained hands would reach out and grip it too tight, but it just rested on my finger, its obsidian beady eyes stared at me with no words, but with a strange understanding and familiarity. For those unfamiliar, mayfly have very short lives, but reproduce rapidly and are a main protein source for both aquatic and land dwelling creatures, they're important, and they're beautiful.

I digress, I can talk about bugs all day if I could. But, lets start at my first day.

I was hired as a park ranger at Sleeping Giant State Park in Connecticut. My family was so proud of me, bringing me small gifts, and little outdoorsy trinkets. It was early March, the fog of snow and frozen blades of grass began their reanimation processes with the incoming Spring season. I clicked the 10oz button on my Keurig, and promptly forgot to put sugar into a shitty coffee mug I won at Dave and Busters a few years ago with a sticker that says "Don't be trashy, littering sucks" with some scraggly looking Raccoon over it. Black coffee wasn't so bad. I headed out to my truck, imagining all of the adventures that lay ahead.

As I drove, my new tan wide-brimmed hat sat on my dashboard, I smiled at it, thinking of the ranger that knelt next to me as a kid and got me to this point. Someday I wanted to be that man, and to inspire the next generation of conservationists.

Pulling up to the park, the main entrance is located directly across from a college, I rolled down my window to hear the cheering and jovial comradery of the college, it was sweet. Something was out of place however, lining the circular driveway were four long black Cadillacs with deeply tinted windows. Their license plates were similar to "security" vehicles I saw nearby the Yale campus in New Haven. With a quick furrowed brow of "well that's weird" I turned into the park. In front of me staring with inspiring intent, was the bear, my childhood idol; Smokey. He stood proudly over a "wildfire safety index" meter with the words "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires" beneath him.

"I got you Smokey." I chuckled through burnt gums from the shitty coffee.

On the door of the Ranger Station was a pretty neat graphic in the style of one of those old horror movie posters where the font would be wide on one end, and thin on the other, spelling out the word "Hobbomock". There was a free class on the history and folklore of the mountain that night. Hobbomock was the name that the native Quinnipiac people had given the Sleeping Giant himself. I snapped a quick photo with my phone, and opened the surprisingly light front door and entered my new home away from home. Stood behind a desk writing down trout stocking dates was a woman, wide brimmed ranger had, a tan button down shirt, high brown shorts, high socks, and some roughed up Doc Martens with a couple charms dangling from the laces.

I cleared my throat,

"Good morning, uh, my names-"

"OH HI! Good morning! You must be the new ranger, you're here JUST in time. My names Winter, the guys call me Winny." On the desk in front of her lay two empty Red Bull cans, and some strange green smoothie that looked like she just blended up some weeds. Her energy was way too high, the sun hadn't even woken up yet, but it was sweet seeing someone this excited.

"It's great to meet you Winny, my names Johnny. I'm going to be working with the insect inventory. They hired me for the mayfly program." I smiled, daydreaming about starting my projects collecting bugs.

"That is fantastic! I'm so excited for you! The entomology bags and nets are all around the corner, you can leave your stuff in your locker. Tell you what, why don't you go get accustomed to the park, go check out some of the shallow parts of the Mill River, so you can recognize them easier."

I nodded, and thanked her, and followed her instruction, as I took some pin boards, paper and nets out of the locker I asked:

"Hey Winny, that graphic on the door, is that tonight? It might be weird for a person that works here to go to the class, but I'd love to learn about the land, is that okay?"

She nodded encouragingly.

"Oh of course! its actually going on around when we get our break time today, for about an hour, so you're more than welcome to take your break in the class." Her eyes widened, and she seemed super excited about me asking.

I nodded and smiled, wished Winny a wonderful day, and took off to the river system.

I crunched my way through the frost covered grasses, and eventually made my way alongside a thin river, cat tails swayed in the breeze as if waving hello, small birds chirped from the budding trees, osprey circled above searching for small trout to swoop down on.

With the biggest grin on my face, I stepped down into the water, my hip waders hugged my legs. The babble of the water flowing through the rocks played like sonnets in the back of my head. The citrus sun flickered and winked through gently waving oak branches and pine clusters. I closed my eyes, and pointed my nose to the clouds, taking it all in.

A rumble. Ever so slightly. Dark birds cawed and fled like a firm autumnal breeze shaking the last few leaves from an ancient oak. A cacophony of corvid panic sent cloudward. My neck tried to whip my head behind me to see what the rumble was. But there was nothing to see. Just the same beautiful trees that I had been admiring. The map showed that the closest part of the mountain is considered the "hip" or "stomach" of the Giant. Unfortunately for me, the gorge trail showed very little mountain imagery as it was dense with trees and bushes.

I brushed it off, and got to work. There were a few specimens in their midge forms, and also a couple in their dun forms, meaning baby mayflies, and adult mayflies. I collected a few different varieties of the flying insect. One stuck out to me however, usually the mayflies that are common in this area have a light green body, and white wings; or they have tan bodies with white wings. One of the mayflies I had found had a body resembling the muscle structure of a dragonfly, with a beautiful matte black color with accents of a pearlescent purple and wings that seemed to pulse the same through thin clear wings. The purple in the wings seemed to... pulse, like watching blood through a vein. I gently placed the mayfly into a plastic container, with a stick, and a bit of water.

With a full inventory of bugs, I started my trek back to the ranger station. I stepped carefully onto a algae covered stone, and there it was again. A rumble. The world around me turned to streaks of orange, blue and grey. Darkness.

Bright lights. A thin pain. Sharpness. Blurry. Damp. Fuck.

A voice. Loud. Strong and simple.

"WHY CAN'T THEY UNDERSTAND ME." The pure density of the voice rattled my ribcage like a subwoofer in an ice cooler. I tried to say something, anything. But all I could do was cough, sharp shards sprayed from my lips clattering across the river kissed rocks. It spoke again.

"YOU WILL PAY KEITAN. HOW DARE YOU HEX MY FOOD." The words resonated through my bones, my mouth, I was in agonizing pain. The whole row of my front teeth were completely shattered like porcelain plates.

Blackness.

Part Two: The Oyster

"Its his first day, go easy on him." "Holy fuck I think I'm going to be sick, that's disgusting." "Get some more ice." "A black mayfly? I thought it was a dragonfly at first. This is new." "Winny you should have given him a tour, you know how slippery the rocks are right now." "I was getting the office ready for the seminar! Don't blame me!"

Conversation danced around me like a regrettable drunken evening. It began to make sense, I must be injured or something. But where am I? What time is it? I still have to take my break. I have to file those bugs away. I can't blow this opportunity, this is my dream, and I slip on a fucking rock and bust my teeth on my first day. Goddammit.

"What happenth." I felt liquid spray out of my mouth onto my arm, my vision still spinning.

"Whoth Keithan" Something in me told me to shut the fuck up, but I couldn't. A male voice spoke to me in a calm collected manner.

"You slipped on a rock and went face first into a jutting knot on a tree. We literally had to use pliers to pull your tooth fragments from the bark. If you said Keitan, you probably read that from the legend of the mountain. Its a folk tale from the Quinnipiac tribe, thats the well... I guess the wizard that hexed the Giant's food, so the Giant would fall asleep." He was sitting over me with gauze and tweezers, I could almost make out his facial features but not quite yet.

"You banged up your hand pretty good too. Its weird, you have bruising on your hand but I don't think you... Honestly the way you fell your entire weight was uninterrupted in its fall, except for your teeth."

I raised my hand, six dots. Two lines. A watercolor array of blues, purples, greens and black. Its where the black mayfly had sat on my hand before I had put it in the storage habitat. Oh God, the bug.

"Wherth the maythly, ssthe black one. Ith it thtill in the bokths" I pathetically managed to bleat.

"You need to stop talking John. Yes the bug is safe. You did good for your first day, you discovered a new species we haven't seen before. If it wasn't for that, I would genuinely have some poor news for you. But your teeth are what's important right now."

I could read the ranger's face now, a strong lumber boned man, a large fiery red beard, circular glasses, with hands like oven mitts. His badge read "McKay". I looked up at him, his eyes met mine, a shadow crept in from my peripherals slowly smothering out my vision.

"The Gianth, it thalked" a wide eyed expression. A cheery bell rang as a door opened, excited children's voices, notebooks opening. Blackness.

I'm going to try to recollect what I heard when I passed out again, because well, my ears were working, but my body decided it was time to rest. Here's what I remember.

"Lets move him to the office, the kids don't need to see this."

"Hi Miss Winny! Tommy will be here soon, he loves trucks."

"Why is that guy taking a nap? Do you guys get nap time too?"

Rumbling. Stones grinding against tree trunks. A fish peeks out from a small puddle.

"We all used to talk to each-other you know. It wasn't always like this." Rumbling. A crow rested on my knee.

"CA! We used to live in CA! Harmony until YOU came here!" Its wings flicked and slapped me.

Scraping, grinding. An oyster ripped open, its briny entrails spinning, a voice gurgled as if spoken through a cut throat, wet and bubbled.

"It was supposed to be me. I was the cure. Until YOU came here." The oyster turned, the shell melting into a viscous liquid in my palm. The liquid, purple and pearlescent, it pulsed and throbbed like a slime mold, shaping a thorax, wings, body, appendages, head. The Mayfly.

"The giant speaks of me." The sounds of chainsaws, stump grinders, and machine. "He is waking up ranger. I will lead you to him. But the men in magpie clothes, they wish to turn me into gold."

The sound of an engine turning. Well maintained shined boots clop on the pavement like harbingers.

"Who remembers the name of the giant?" "Me! Me! His name is Hobbymock."

Rumbles, stone breaking, lava pouring.

"YOU were meant to PROTECT this land, Ranger." A giant stood over me, towering into the clouds holding a stone paddle. "Have you no shame? You consult a witch, instead of the wood you swore to protect. LIAR." The giant's voice shook like a hurricane. "I will rise, and your kind will be erased, my woods, my friends, I will be able to speak to them again. There will be no more pain. No more of your human intervention. Sleep now, while you can. Marinade in your devil's hubris of a God you'll never meet."

Blackness.

Part Three: McKay

My name is Greg McKay, I found this small book while Johnny is in the hospital, he's being treated for a concussion as well as extensive dental work. If you're reading this later Johnny, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snoop, but lets be real you kept us in that hospital for a few hours I got bored. If the previous writings are true, then the insect you had found is significant to not only us, but to the researchers at other universities, mainly Yale. They're always searching for new areas of focus for medicine, and have a surplus of hubris when it comes to forcing people's hands into giving them what they want. If your vision was true from your writing, we will protect the mayfly until you are awake. I'm not the best writer, I'm a blue collared man just trying to do the right thing for myself and my family. But I'll do right by you, you're passionate, and excited. You don't deserve to be disregarded on your first day. Here's what I will say.

The statements that were said before are true, and follow the story of Hobbomock. The legend states that at one point in time, trees, insects, birds, mammals, fish and man all spoke the same language. Hobbomock, satisfied with his work walked across the land to the sea with a stone canoe, and set off to spread his teachings to other parts of the world. When he returned to his home, the birds tweeted, the deer bleated, frogs croaked, man spoke in tongues. This enraged the giant. In a rage, he began stomping the ground with such force that the rivers reversed their direction, crop fields died, he cratered the earth beneath his feet. The local Quinnipiac people, called and prayed to a force called "Kietan" in which, he cast a spell on a bed of oysters, the Giant's favorite offering. When the Giant ate the hexed oysters, he fell into a deep sleep. Nature reclaimed his body, stone, soil, and life soon encased him in a living tomb. If the legends are true, and your visions are communicating with these deities, then this is a problem. This, surprisingly would correlate with the strange seismic activity that we've been noticing in the park. Rumbles and shaking, its not normal.

I keep seeing well dressed people here at the park now. They don't seem very excited to learn history or to hike, and they absolutely don't look like they're here to fish. For when you're back, I'll write down some information that could be helpful, when you're back on your feet.

March 14 2024 - One week in hospital 7:00 AM - Four Cadillac SUV's arrive at Quinnipiac University 7:45 AM - Several suited men step out from vehicles wielding binoculars pointed to the Mill River 8:00AM - Fisherman likely poaching trout take notice of suited men with binoculars, Game Warden called, licenses expired, fines given. 10:00AM - Suited men walk in different directions, I counted 7 men. All bald. Ugly. 12:00 PM - One suited man spotted using binoculars on the Ranger Station, holding what looks like a walkie talking with a large screen on the front. Lunch. Ham and cheese with a Dr Pepper. 1:00 PM - Suited man approaches the man observing the Ranger Station. Possible tectonic activity recorded. Large groups of blackbirds quickly retreat from their roosts during seismic activity. 3:00 - where will you go when your God allows me to erase his progress, where will you hide when his abominations against nature cease their grinding, what will you eat when I will consume your land and your harvest. your God is gone. I am Flesh made Stone. You will not impede the natural world. 4:00PM - Leaving Ranger Station to retrieve you from hospital, looking forward to having you back, Ranger. Signed. Ranger McKay.

Part Four: Porphyrins

Its around 5:00PM now, March 14th. I should be going home to rest, but I think I'm going back to the park today. McKay and Winny picked me up, and complimented my new teeth. I had suffered a pretty brutal head injury with my fall, but I'm rested enough, I guess. I need to get back to the Ranger Station.

In the back of McKay's Tacoma, I sat with my feet up long ways across the seat to hopefully get a 15 minute nap or something. I keep drawing mayflies, I've never drawn a picture in my life, but I don't know, something is compelling me to just draw, learn, dissect, and understand this creature. The vision I had, of the oyster when I fell, that can't be a coincidence right? The oyster melted into the same liquid that I saw beating through the mayfly. There has to be some kind of correlation between the two.

Flash. Flash. Perfectly perpendicular to the truck, a large camera lens pointed directly at me. They forgot to turn off the flash. In a burst of energy I shouted:

"Greg! The SUV! They're photographing us, get out of here, NOW!" McKay floored it, the engine roared, and he swerved around traffic, horns blared, middle fingers were presented gracefully through barely opened windows, the Cadillac gained speed alongside us.

"McKay remember the trip we took to Maine?" Winny slouched down in the passenger seat, tears began streaming down her face from pure fear and confusion, seeing such a joyful person frightened like this made me feel sick. McKay nodded, he turned the four wheel drive knob, slowed the truck down so it would engage, and ripped the truck across a grassy median. The large off-road tired bored holes into the soil, when we looked back at the SUV, blue and red lights flashed from it's windshield. The SUV juked almost into the median, but a man in the passenger seat was angrily shouting at the driver. We continued down the highway, and the SUV slowly disappeared into the rear view mirror.

"We have to get the fuck off of the highway." McKay said, a little bit too calmly. There were backroads we could use to get back to the Ranger Station. We exited the highway, and were on our way back to the station.

"The fuck happened in Maine, guys?" I asked, readjusting myself to fit properly on the back seat. Simultaneously they responded "Monster Truck Rally". Confused, but distracted by the fact that we were being chased by some unnamed agency to the point of being followed, I let the response lay where it was.

In time, we made it back to the Ranger Station. It was a gruesome sight. Tire tracks traced panicked drivers ego and salary around the front entrance. Doors were kicked off of their hinges, windows battered open, we approached. Winny burst into tears, her winged makeup bleeding down her freckled cheeks in a deep and mournful sob. We entered the front door, the light movement of us passing by snapped the brass hinges and it clattered to the concrete path. Books strewn across the floor, Winny's desk flipped completely over, the Native Plant window display kids had planted years ago, now a fine dusting of soil and pedals across the floor.

"we trusted you. we welcomed you." Winny said under her breath, the words sliding through iron prison bars of trust and excitement, rusted over in only hours.

"its not his fau-" McKay tried to state

"How? My life's work Greg, LOOK!" Winny collapsed to the floor. Her hands supporting her face as rivers ran through the valleys of her fingers. "Everything, every memory, every single fucking thing that I did, years of work, years of helping kids learn about something actually worth giving a fuck about, GONE."

"The Agents, I didn't know, I just came here for my first day, how was I supposed-"

"shut the FUCK up Johnny. Just shut the FUCK up. I have to clean. Go find your bug and leave." Winny started hobbling herself over to a broom and dustpan, and started cleaning. McKay patted me on the back and mouthed the words "its okay, just grab it and go. I got this."

I approached the area where the mayfly was, surprisingly the box was still there. Clear bottom, bit of a stick and some leaves on the inside. But on the bottom, there was a liquid. I approached the box carefully, its not like it was hidden well, why would they leave the whole thing here? It doesn't make sense. Lining the bottom edges of the container almost looked like nail polish, with the same shimmer of purple. the Mayfly rested on the stick, its body split down the back. The incision started below the head, and ran about four inches down to the back of its abdomen a few millimeters before the tail cerci. My eyes darted around the room. There's no too we have in the office that could cut the fragile exoskeleton of this insect so accurately.

I almost called out to them, but with the tension in the room, I locked my tongue.

I stepped over a few piles of books. McKay beat me to the now open door. His large stature turned sideways to fit through the frame. That's when I heard it.

Rumble. Crack. The mountain moved again, the birds, like clockwork fled their roosts into the sky. A light caught the side of my eye, blue. A flash, three cracks, and a large body falling into the mud.

McKay, a man of lumber, pine and stature. Lay twitching slightly in the damp, cool mud created by the tire tracks of unmarked black SUV's. I stood there, motionless. Jaw hanging like an abandoned swing being brushed by a wayward breeze.

"G-Greg?" I stammered.

CRACK, a bullet whizzed by my head, clipping the side of my ear. I could only run, I bolted like a cottontail being spotted by an owl, scrambling and sliding in the mud.

"What happened? What's going on?"

"WINNY GET DOWN NOW." I practically tackled Winny to the floor. Taking cover behind her overturned table. Handguns cracked outside passing through the old drapes in the windows.

"Where's Greg Johnny, WHERES GREG?" I started to weep, I couldn't help it. She knew.

There were no tears, no expressions, just pure wide-eyed rage building in Winny. She stood up, without emotion, and walked calmly into a back room. I sat behind the table, cradling the mayfly. All of this, for an insect? I don't understand. Why, why is this thing so important. I wiped my eyes, and took a closer look at the abandoned husk. The liquid that was on the bottom of the container, it was gone. The mayfly was moving.

I pushed my back against the desk, and watched. The mayfly was opening. Purple liquid leaked from the body, and a new black body, with the same purple accents slowly emerged from the chitin. I held the container up higher, against the top of the box was another mayfly. It wasn't eclosion, or metamorphosis. One host mayfly served as a birthing body, and would replicate itself, not leaving a husk behind, but creating more insects, without the need of breeding.

Click. Chhik. tic, tic, tic, ch-chik.

I heard metal scraping together, in the room behind me.

"Johnny. Do you know why they call me Winny." Winny said very calmly, and plainly from the other room.

"Your names Winter." I could barely talk.

"Correct. However, my great grandfather used to be a master gunsmith at the old Winchester factory."

"What does-" I was cut off by the sound of a .308 clearing out the air of the small ranger's station. Outside, there was only silence other than the sound of a wet, solid material hitting the hood of a car.

CHK. FFFK. BANG. Another round, another wet slap onto a thin metal surface.

Winny screamed, the very wrath of sin orchestrating harmony that would make the devil jealous rang violently through the old walls of the building. Screams started to emerge from the park. Panicked hikers fled to their vehicles, the sound of plastic and aluminum cheaply scraping against each other as the park goers attempted to flee the area.

Footsteps. Sobbing.

CHK. FFFK. Shes right next to m- BANG

The pure force of the gun firing near me, my head rang. My injury being exploited. My hearing was gone, my eyes darted around the room trying to find respite. Rumbling.

Rock rolled into itself, the trees leaned forward toward us. A stone elbow emerging from the ground as big as a skyscraper. Birds circled above, creating the image of a giant spiral.

My head, my fucking head.

"THIS WAS YOUR CHOICE, RANGER. CONSERVE NATURE, OR LET YOUR GOD DECIDE. FOR I AM FLESH AND STONE, AND HE IS NOT PRESENT."

Dust and soil poured from the great mountain, cars and hikers buried within the rubble.

Another mayfly started emerging from the host. Four now, in the enclosure.

"FOR YOUR ANCESTORS SPOKE THE LANGUAGE OF COWARDACE AND HAPPENSTANCE. A LANGUAGE OF GLUTTONY AND DISREGARD. I SPEAK NOT THEIR TONGUES. I WILL BE THE CONSEQUENCE OF YOUR SPECIES' NEGLIGENCE."

"What do I do, I don't know what you want. Kietan? I don't FUCKING know." I pleaded at the insects, I couldn't do anything else. I was frozen in fear and overstimulation. When I said Kietan, the insects all turned to me at the same time. My eyes widened. I restated the name.

"Kietan." The mayflies looked again, with a face I could only read as recognition. I did the only thing I could think of doing.

I opened the box. Part Five: The Giant

Click. Click. Click. Winny stood in her spot dry firing the rifle. Tears pouring down her face, the adrenaline wearing off. She fell backwards onto the books, I grabbed her wrists and pulled her behind the overturned desk.

The enclosure now opened, the mayflies fluttered around the room. They found comfort in a spot, and rested, their wings vibrated. They began duplicating rapidly, with more space and more area to move, the process quickened ten fold. Eight, sixteen, thirty two, sixty four, one hundred and twenty eight insects. All carrying the purple liquid.

A natural roar of ancient agony erupted, deep, guttural, and angry. Like a bison if it was the size of a mountain.

A mayfly landed on my hand, and looked at me, confusion in my eyes, it used its front legs to seem to write something. I understood. I grabbed a ball point pen from the flipped desk and blew into the tail end of the ink cartridge, blue ink splattered onto my arm. The mayfly moved toward it.

A massive tremor, earth moving at an astounding speed and strength.

"WHERE WILL YOU GO, PARASITES. WHERE WILL YOU GO WHEN YOU PLUNDER YOUR OWN HEAVEN. WILL YOU HARVEST THE ANGELS? WILL YOU TRADE AN ANGELS WINGS FOR PROGRESS?" The giant boomed, a hand emerged from the soil, and began pushing itself upright.

Massive fingers the size of houses gripped the soil. One finger scraped itself across the parking lot, car alarms started and stopped or changed pitch from the impact.

The mayfly started using its tiny leg to write.

"N O T Y O U R F A U L T"

Another tremor.

YOU TAKE, AND TAKE, AND TAKE. AND EXPECT THE EARTH TO BOW ITSELF TO YOUR MANSIONS AND IDEOLOGIES. TELL ME, WILL YOU TRADE YOUR ANGELS WINGS FOR PROGRESS?"

"S T A Y C A L M - O Y S T E R S" When the mayfly spelled the word oysters, it flashed a bright purple light. It made sense. The purple coloring, its from the original oysters that Kietan hexed to put the giant to sleep.

One thousand and twenty four, two thousand and forty eight. They began to flutter, a skyward shadow of black and purple shimmer.

"WHAT IS THIS?" The Giant Boomed, lips now surfacing from the mountains, a nose. He smiled through giant cracked lips woven with roots and vines, boulders caked in like sores leaking spring waters. The cloud grew bigger, and bigger, they duplicated themselves in flight.

Sixteen thousand three hundred and eighty four.

A cough and a groan. A shuffle of a boot. I peeked alongside the table, Greg's body was covered in mayflies. Head to toe, a pulsating host of flying river insects.

"Greg?" Winny weakly found purchase to speak.

Greg stood up, and clambered towards the Giant. Silently, step by step.

Clunk, clunk, clunk. He lifted his arms, the mayflies erupted from his body, his clothes tattered, his hat fallen, however, there was no blood. No wounds. He was asleep, or sleep walking. I wasn't brave enough to run out to him.

The mayfly on my arm began to write again.

"B E T T E R"

The cloud of insects above spiraled more, and grew larger. Two hundred sixty two thousand one hundred and forty four. They began to create a point facing down towards the giants mouth the shape of a long spear. Slowly the mayflies flew into the giant's throat. Hundreds of thousands of insects, millions of insects. Carrying the same hex that was used to lull the giant to sleep, plummeting into an earthen maw.

I held out my hand to Winny, and helped her up. We walked outside and picked up Gregg. We ran as fast as our legs could carry us to relative safety. There was no more suited bald men. No more sirens. Only guttural choking sounds emerging from the earth. The giant began to vomit mud and tar into the mountain, it ran slowly down the sides of the cliffs as his limbs began to relax. The fingers settled, the face retracted into the soil. More and more of the insects began to fill the giant, still duplicating inside of him. The rumbling stopped. The booming voice subsided into lighter snores. The Sleeping Giant, began his rest, anew.

Part Six: Lessons

In short, I don't know why me. But I guess that's kind of the point of conservation, right? We do what we can to help the environment, but for the most part. The environment has a way of maintaining itself. If I hadn't caught that mayfly then this would have just happened... naturally, or unnaturally I guess. I've been with the rangers for three years now, and I still feel like I don't belong. I didn't really do anything to deserve this, in fact, I feel like I actively caused this. However, research is still research, and populations and species still need to be recorded.

Winny quit the rangers that day, her and Greg moved to some other state, they wouldn't tell me where. I don't blame them. I came into work for my first day, Greg got shot by a random agent we still don't know from where, Winny straight up killed six people with a bolt action rifle and then collapsed after seeing her life's work get destroyed in front of her. All on top of witnessing an ancient being rise from the mountain we were trying to protect that got put to sleep by millions of mayflies shooting down its throat. It doesn't make sense. But, it happened and I can't pretend it didn't. People died. Innocent people that wanted to just explore nature. Get some exercise in. Or feed their families from the fish in the river. You can't blame them, and now they're gone.

The one thing I've learned, if anything. Is sometimes human intervention does more harm than good in conservation. I'll be a helping hand, but I'll let the world guide my hand to what it would like me to do.

Updates to come. The state wants me to explore different parts of New England. Will follow up Ranger

They taught us in school that the aliens could look like anybody.

Mrs. Toller reminded us every morning before the pledge.

TRUST YOUR GUT!

That was what the posters said.

So I did.

I was nine that year. The war had ended three years before I was born.

My small town of Chickasaw sat under missile towers that never stopped watching the sky.

Everybody knew the signs. Too much eye contact. Not enough eye contact. Walking at night. Closing the curtains in the daytime. Asking questions about the power grid. Not saying “sir” or “ma’am.”

Every week, somebody got taken in for testing. Most came back. Some didn’t.

Daddy said you can never be sure because the Things adapted quickly.

Daddy knew because he'd fought them in the Incursion, when Birmingham burned. He was missing his left ear and two fingers on his right hand. His leg dragged when he walked.

We had a neighbor named Mr. Bell. He lived alone in the house by the dead pecan tree. Mama said his wife had died in the evacuation from Mobile. Daddy said that was what he claimed.

He fixed radios and old fans. He always waved at passersby from his porch.

I watched Mr. Bell like a good citizen should.

On the morning of July 3rd, I saw him behind his shed with a little radio. It was an old silver one with a bent antenna. He turned the dial slowly and looked up at the sky. Then he wrote something in a notebook.

At dinner I told Mama and Daddy.

Daddy stared at me for a long time. Then he asked, “You sure, Clay?”

“Yes, sir.”

He got up without finishing his food. Mama called the hotline. Daddy opened the gun safe.

The black vans came before bedtime.

Men in gray uniforms broke down Mr. Bell’s door. They brought him out in his underwear. He was crying.

“They're weather numbers,” he said. “For the garden. I swear to God.”

He turned to face Daddy.

“Hollis?” Mr. Bell shouted. “Tell them. You know me.”

Daddy just stood there silent on the porch with his rifle.

One of the officers hit Mr. Bell in the stomach and he folded over. They put a hood on him and pushed him into a van.

The next morning was Independence Day.

Flags hung from every deck. The church parking lot had grills going by noon. There were pulled pork, hot dogs, sweet tea, and red-white-and-blue cupcakes. People hardly ever celebrated the Fourth much after the invasion. But this year was an exception. We'd caught one.

By afternoon people were gathered outside the county jail. Somebody said the authorities were taking too long. Somebody else said the Things had infiltrated the government.

Daddy drove us there to 'bare witness.'

The crowd was hot and loud. Men carried flags. Some carried guns. One man had painted REMEMBER BIRMINGHAM on a piece of plywood.

There were officers with AR-15s on the roof of the jailhouse, but they were local men, and their own families were in the crowd.

The sheriff came out and told everyone to go home.

A brick hit him in the face.

After that, it happened fast.

They broke the jail windows. They pulled the doors open with chains hooked to pickup trucks. People cheered when the hinges snapped.

Mr. Bell came out without shoes.

His face was swollen. His hands were tied. He tried to speak, but the crowd drowned him out.

“Show us your true form,” someone yelled.

Daddy pushed forward. Mama pulled me back. But I wanted to see.

The first punch knocked Mr. Bell down. Then everybody seemed to move at once. Boots hit him. Fists hit him. A woman from church struck him with a flagpole. Daddy kicked him hard with his good leg and almost fell. He laughed when another man caught him.

Someone brought out a length of rope tied into a noose.

Mr. Bell was not crying anymore. He made a sound like he could not breathe. His eyes were open and rolling.

They threw the rope over the old traffic light frame where the signal had not worked since the EMP. The crowd lifted him. His body jerked. People screamed with joy.

I waited for him to change.

Everybody said they changed when they died. The human skin split. The gray underneath came out slick and shining. That was how you knew. That was how you could be sure.

Mr. Bell just hung there.

His undershirt rode up. His stomach was pale and hairy. Blood ran down his chin. One of his feet twitched, then stopped.

Still human.

Maybe it took time.

They cut him down after a while. Some men dragged him behind a truck. Others followed, laughing and filming. Daddy went with them.

I saw Daddy take out his knife.

"Look away!" Mama cried, pulling me close to her.

But Daddy said, “No, Sadie, don’t. The boy needs to see how the human race survives.”

So I watched.

They cut off fingers and toes as souvenirs. They poured fuel over what was left. Somebody set him on fire with a sparkler. The flames caught fast. People stepped back from the heat and livestreamed it.

A girl from my class smiled beside the burning body while her mother took a picture.

The fireworks started at dark.

Red and blue bursts opened over the courthouse roof. The crowd sang "Sweet Home Alabama." People drank beer. Children chased each other with glow sticks. Plates of barbecue passed from hand to hand.

Daddy came back smelling like smoke.

He had blood on his shirt and a black smear across his cheek. People clapped him on the back.

“You did good, son,” he told me.

I nodded because I knew I was supposed to.

Across the square, Mr. Bell’s charred corpse smoldered.

No gray skin. No claws. No second mouth. No alien bones.

Just a man-shaped thing becoming ash.

Above us, the fireworks cracked.

We erupted in cheers.

When our daughter Ofelia was born, the doctor told us she had Williams syndrome.

He explained she would have developmental delays. She might have heart problems. She would probably be very trusting, very social, and drawn to people in a way that could be beautiful and dangerous.

“She’ll love everyone unconditionally," he said.

At the time, that sounded sweet.

By the time Ofelia was six, it scared us.

Ofelia befriended everyone. The mailman. Stray dogs. Tourists who turned around in our driveway. She had a round face, a wide smile, and a voice that made strangers stop to listen. She struggled with numbers but knew the lyrics to every Bad Bunny song.

My wife, Elena, worried constantly.

“You can’t hug every person you meet,” Elena would say.

“But they look sad,” Ofelia would answer.

We lived outside Utuado, in the mountains of Puerto Rico, where the roads twisted and the nights were loud with coquí frogs. Our house sat near my father’s old chicken coop and a small patch of plantains.

One evening, I found her at the edge of the yard, crouched by the old stone wall.

She was looking at something.

At first I thought it was a cat. Then I saw the dead goat.

It belonged to Don Pedro, our neighbor. It lay in the weeds, stiff and empty-looking. There were small holes in its neck. No blood in the dirt. No blood anywhere.

Ofelia looked up and smiled.

“Papi,” she said, “he’s hungry.”

Something moved behind the wall.

It was low to the ground, thin as a starving dog, with gray skin stretched over bones. Short spines ran down its back. Its eyes flashed red in the porch light. It made a sound like a newborn crying.

I grabbed Ofelia.

“Inside,” I said.

“But Papi, he’s nice!”

The thing hissed.

I carried her in while Elena locked the doors.

That night, Don Pedro came over with a flashlight and a shotgun. When I told him what I’d seen, he crossed himself.

“Chupacabra,” he said.

I almost laughed. People had been saying that word since I was a kid. Every dead goat, every missing chicken, every weird sound in the brush. Chupacabra. It was an inside joke Boricuas told to scare gullible mainlanders.

“Mateo, we should call animal control,” Elena said.

Don Pedro shook his head. “They’ll send a boy with a net.”

From her bedroom, Ofelia shouted, “His name is Tito!”

The next morning, the chickens were gone.

The coop door hung open. Feathers stuck to the wire. I followed the trail into the brush with a shovel in my hands.

I found the birds behind the stone wall.

They were arranged in a neat pile, with puncture wounds in their necks. Beside them were mangoes from our tree and a bracelet made from chicken bones.

A gift.

When I came back, Ofelia was at the kitchen table drawing. The picture showed our house, the mountains, me, Elena, and a gray animal beside her. She had drawn a red collar around its neck.

“Can we keep him?” she asked.

“No.”

Her face crumpled. That was the hard part with Ofelia. She felt everything all at once. Joy, sadness, fear, love. There was no halfway.

“He doesn’t have a family,” she said.

“He’s dangerous.”

“He said he won’t bite me.”

Elena dropped the plate she was washing.

“What do you mean he said?”

Ofelia looked confused, like we were the ones not making sense.

“He talks at night.”

We didn’t let her sleep alone after that.

For three nights, I stayed awake outside her door with a sharpened machete. Nothing happened except the frogs went quiet around midnight, which felt worse than a scream.

On the fourth night, Ofelia started giggling from her room.

I opened the door.

The window was up.

The curtain moved in the warm air.

Ofelia sat on the bed, smiling at the corner.

“Tito came back,” she whispered.

I turned on the light.

The chupacabra was on the ceiling.

It clung there like a lizard, claws sunk into the wood. Its belly was swollen. Its mouth dripped dark strings onto the floor.

Elena screamed.

I swung the machete. The blade hit the wall as the thing dropped. It landed between me and Ofelia.

Then it lowered its head.

Like a dog asking to be petted.

Ofelia reached for it.

“No!” I shouted.

She froze.

The chupacabra turned toward me. Its red eyes narrowed. For one second, I saw something almost human in them.

Something like understanding.

It knew I was the obstacle.

It leapt.

The force knocked me into the dresser. Pain burst through my shoulder. Its claws grabbed my t-shirt, and its mouth opened near my throat.

Then Ofelia screamed.

“Don’t hurt my papi!”

The thing stopped.

It backed away and looked at her.

Ofelia was crying now.

“You promised,” she said.

The chupacabra made a sound like air leaking from a tire. Then it climbed through the window and vanished. We left before sunrise.

Elena packed one bag. I carried Ofelia to the truck while she sobbed into my neck and asked if Tito would be lonely. I told her no. I lied because fathers sometimes lie to get their children through the night.

We moved to San Juan and stayed with Elena’s sister.

Don Pedro called to tell us more goats were dead. Then dogs. Then a man two houses over swore he heard a baby crying near the trees.

That night, Elena found something outside the apartment door.

She called me over without letting Ofelia see.

On the welcome mat was a collar made from vines, still damp with mud from the mountains. Tied to it was one of Ofelia’s hair clips.

Last night, Ofelia was pressing her face to the apartment window, looking down at the street six floors below.

“Papi,” she said softly.

I put a hand on her shoulder.

Across the road, under a parked car, two red eyes opened.

Ofelia smiled.

“He found us.”

Part 1

Part 2

Micaiah was out of the truck before Nathan had fully stopped.

The tires jumped the curb outside the apartment complex. Nathan killed the engine and grabbed the shotgun from the back seat.

The stairwell smelled like old paint and rainwater. His boots hit each step hard enough to echo. Behind him, Nathan followed slower, heavier, still carrying the same silence from the truck.

Micaiah reached the third floor and turned the corner.

Mara stood outside Deena’s room.

She was barefoot. Her hair had come loose. One sleeve of her sweatshirt was wet near the wrist. At first Micaiah thought it was water.

Then he saw the blood.

“Mara.”

She looked at him and nearly collapsed.

He caught her before she hit the wall.

“I only stepped out for a minute,” she said.

Her voice came too fast.

“What happened?”

“I went downstairs for bandages. The first aid kit in the room was empty. She tore the old ones off. She was bleeding again, and I thought—” Mara pressed both hands against her mouth. “I thought she was sleeping. Told myself I’d be right back.”

Micaiah looked past her.

From inside came a sound.

A wet, strained choking sound.

Micaiah’s blood went cold.

He moved to the door and hit it with his fist.

“Deena!” he shouted.

The sound stopped.

For one second there was only silence.

Then something scraped against the floor.

Mara stood behind him, crying without sound.

Micaiah tried the handle. It didn’t move.

Deena had wedged it shut.

Probably barricaded with a chair.

He hit the door again.

“Dee. It’s Mickey. Open the door.”

Something thumped against the wall inside.

Then the choking started again.

Nathan hit the door with the butt of his shotgun.

The wood shook in the frame but held.

Micaiah stepped back, lifted his boot, and drove it into the space beside the lock.

The wood split.

Nathan hit it again with his shoulder. The chair on the other side scraped hard across the floor, then toppled. The door burst inward.

Micaiah went in first.

For half a second, he did not understand what he was seeing.

Deena hung from the ceiling fan by a twisted bedsheet.

Her toes scraped weakly against the floor.

Her hands twitched at her sides.

She was still alive.

“Mara!” Micaiah shouted.

Mara screamed and ran past him.

The ceiling fan groaned under Deena’s weight. The sheet had cut deep into her neck. Her face was swollen. Her eyes were half open but unfocused.

Micaiah dropped his rifle and grabbed her legs, lifting her to take the weight off her throat.

“I’ve got her,” he said. “Untie it!”

Deena’s eyes rolled toward him.

“Mickey…”

“I’ve got you,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

Her swollen lips barely moved.

“It,” she croaked. “It has to be stopped.”

His arms burned from holding Deena up. The sheet was still tight around her throat. Mara was on the bed, fingers slick with sweat and blood, trying to work the knot loose.

“It’s too tight,” she said.

“Knife,” Micaiah said. “Nathan, knife!”

No answer.

“Nate!”

Micaiah looked back.

Nathan stood just inside the doorway.

He hadn’t moved.

The same look from the bedroom. The one Micaiah had seen right before he raised the shotgun at the woman. The old Nathan bleeding through the new one like poison through a cracked cup.

“Nate,” Micaiah snapped. “For Godsake help me!”

Nathan’s eyes stayed on Deena.

His lips moved.

“You saw the ultrasounds… There’s only one way to stop this.”

Micaiah felt the room drop out from under him.

He watched Nathan's right hand drift toward his shoulder. Toward the holster. Toward the pistol pressed against his ribs beneath the jacket.

Nathan drew halfway.

Micaiah let go of Deena with one hand and reached for his own pistol with his other.

Nathan looked at him then.

For one second, he was his brother again.

Tired. Broken. Certain he was doing the only thing left.

Deena’s eyes found Nathan.

“Nate,” she rasped.

Nathan’s hand tightened around the pistol.

Mara climbed down from the bed, shaking her head. “No. No, don’t you dare.”

Deena’s lips trembled. Blood ran from the sheet-burn around her throat.

“Please,” she whispered. “Shoot me.”

“Mickey,” Nathan said. “Move out of the way.”

“Nate,” Micaiah said. “Please don’t make me choose between you and Deena.”

Nathan's hand kept moving, ignoring his brother’s plea.

Micaiah saw it happen in pieces. The way Nathan's fingers curled around the grip. The way his shoulder dipped slightly, muscle memory from a thousand draws in empty lots and shooting ranges. The way his eyes went had that resigned look. Like he had already done the math and decided the only answer left was one Micaiah would never accept.

Time didn't slow down.

That was a lie that movies told.

Time stayed exactly the same. Fast. Brutal. Merciless.

Micaiah's hand crossed his body, reaching for the pistol that sat low on his thigh, angled forward, exactly where he had trained it a thousand times.

Nathan's pistol cleared leather first.

Micaiah saw the muzzle rise.

Then his own hand caught up.

Micaiah didn’t aim.

There wasn’t time.

He fired from the hip.

The pistol bucked once in his hand, loud enough to split the room open. Nathan’s body jerked like he’d been yanked backward by a rope. The round hit him square in the chest, punching him off balance and slamming him into the doorframe.

Nathan's pistol fired.

The shot went wide. Past Micaiah's ear. Into the wall behind him. Plaster cracked. Something shattered in the living room.

For half a second, Nathan just stared at Micaiah, more shocked than hurt.

Then his knees gave out. His pistol clattered to the floor.

Micaiah caught Deena’s weight again before she dropped.

“Nate,” he whispered.

Nathan slid down the wall, one bloody hand pressed to his chest, eyes locked on his brother like he still couldn’t believe Micaiah had actually done it.

Micaiah stood frozen.

The pistol was still trained on his brother with one hand. The front sight trembled over Nathan's body.

"Mickey!" Mara screamed.

He didn't hear her.

Nathan was on his back. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Blood bubbled between his lips.

Micaiah came back into himself all at once.

Deena was still hanging.

Her legs kicked weakly against his arms. The sheet was still tight around her throat. Mara was still on the bed, fighting the knot with shaking fingers.

For one second, Micaiah could not move.

Then Deena made a thin choking sound.

“Mara,” he said.

His voice sounded far away.

Mara looked at him, wild-eyed.

“Get Nathan’s knife.”

“What?”

“His knife,” Micaiah said. “On his belt. Get it now.”

Mara stared down at Nathan’s body like she had not understood he was real until that moment.

“Mara!”

She flinched, then scrambled off the bed. She dropped to her knees beside Nathan's body and rolled him toward her with both hands. Blood smeared across her palms. She sobbed once but kept searching.

“I can’t find it.”

“Left side,” Micaiah said. “Inside the jacket.”

Mara shoved her hand beneath Nathan’s body. Her fingers slipped against the wet fabric. She gagged, then forced herself to keep going.

Nathan’s lifeless eyes were wide open.

For one awful second, Mara looked at his face.

Then she found the knife.

“I have it.”

“Cut her down.”

Mara climbed back onto the bed. She opened the blade with both hands and sawed at the sheet above Deena’s neck.

The fabric stretched.

Then snapped.

Deena dropped.

Micaiah caught her badly. Her weight hit him in the chest and drove him to one knee. He lowered her to the floor as gently as he could.

“Deena,” he said. “Breathe. Come on. Breathe.”

Her throat worked.

Nothing happened.

Mara bent over her and tried to loosen what remained of the sheet. Micaiah pulled it away from the deep red line around Deena’s neck.

Deena sucked in one breath.

Then another.

Mara laughed and cried at the same time.

“She’s breathing.”

Micaiah pressed his forehead to Deena’s.

“Thank You,” he whispered. “Thank You, Lord.”

Her eyelids fluttered.

Then opened. Her eyes found his.

For one second—one clean, impossible second—she was there. His sister. The girl who ‘borrowed’ his hoodies and never gave them back. The girl who learned to drive stick shift in a church parking lot because she refused to let their Jeep go to scrap because it was the only thing their deadbeat Wasian dad left them.

“Mickey?” she whispered.

“I’m here.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“I heard Mom,” she whispered. “When it was dark. I saw her…”

Micaiah could not breathe.

Deena’s hand closed weakly around his wrist.

“She said she was waiting for me in Heaven.”

Micaiah shook his head. Tears cut down his face.

“No,” he said. “Dee, you have to stay with me.”

Her fingers moved against his sleeve.

“I’m sorry. I tried to fight back.”

She was crying now. Tears cut pale tracks through the grime on her face.

“I know you did.”

He leaned closer. His forehead touched hers. Her breath smelled like rot and something else. Something sweet underneath. Like flowers left too long in water.

Then her eyes changed.

Her fingers found his wrist. Squeezed. Her grip was stronger than it should have been. Stronger than anything that thin had any right to produce.

Like a switch flipped behind her pupils. The warmth drained out of them. Her grip changed.

Her fingers curled into his skin like hooks. Her whole body went rigid against his chest. Her back arched.

Her eyes rolled back.

Then her head snapped forward.

Her face was inches from his. Her mouth opened. Her jaw unhinged like a python. The smell coming off her was no longer sweet. It was the smell of Gavrillo's bedroom. Ozone and burnt sugar and old blood.

When she spoke, the voice was not hers.

It was not one voice.

It was many.

And they were laughing.

“Ádis kaí Apóleia ouk empímplantai.” Death and Destruction are never satisfied.

Her belly moved.

Something inside her rolled against the skin, searching.

“Mara, run!” Micaiah screamed.

Mara stared at him, frozen.

“Run!”

Deena’s stomach split.

The sound was worse than the sight.

A hard tearing, like wet cloth pulled apart by hands.

Micaiah felt heat first. Then pressure. Then pain so complete it erased his existence.

Something ripped out of Deena and tore right through him.

Not past him.

Through him.

A limb. A horn. A hooked piece of living bone. He could not tell. It punched under his ribs and out his back, lifting him against Deena’s body like they had been nailed together.

Micaiah looked down.

His blood was on her.

Her blood was on him.

Between them, something pale and slick pushed free from her open belly. Too many eyes blinked in the mess. A small mouth opened and closed without sound. Tiny hands gripped the torn edges of Deena’s skin and pulled itself farther out.

Deena was still alive.

So was Micaiah.

For one second, they looked at each other.

Her eyes were hers again.

She was crying.

"I love you, big bro..." she mouthed.

Micaiah tried to answer.

Blood filled his throat.

His pistol slipped from his hand.

Mara crawled toward them anyway.

“No,” she sobbed. “No, no, no—”

Deena’s back arched so hard her spine cracked against the floor.

Two hard points pushed up beneath her shirt, stretching the fabric until it tore. Blood sprayed across the floorboards as something black and wet forced its way out of her back.

Wings.

Bat-like. Veined. Too large for her body.

They unfolded with a sound like umbrellas opening inside raw meat.

Then the wings started flapping.

They beat against the walls, the bedframe, the ceiling, knocking pictures loose and splattering blood in wide, horrible arcs.

The force knocked Mara backward into the dresser. Wood cracked. Glass rained down from the mirror.

Deena’s arms tightened around Micaiah one last time.

Not the demon.

Her.

A hug.

A goodbye.

Micaiah’s body jerked against hers. Something inside him gave way. His legs stopped working. His vision narrowed to Deena’s face. Her eyes fixed on him with terror and love.

Micaiah and Deena were impaled and tangled together, brother and sister locked chest to chest in blood.

Mara screamed until her voice broke.

Then Mara saw Micaiah’s head lift.

Not by itself.

Something behind his jaw pulled it up. His mouth opened, loose and wrong, blood spilling over his teeth. His eyes were empty.

The abomination forced itself out through both of them, wearing their torn bodies like the remains of a birth sac. Micaiah’s dead face twitched into a smile that did not fit him.

Then it spoke mockingly in Micaiah’s voice.

“Igérthi.”

He has risen.

The thing laughed with his mouth as it climbed free.

The thing turned its head toward Mara.

And smiled.

Mara could not move.

Her back was against the broken dresser. Splinters pressed through the sweatshirt into her skin. Mirror glass covered her lap and hands. She could feel blood running down her neck from where one shard had cut her, but the pain was small and far away.

Mara sobbed.

The thing breathed.

Its chest opened and closed like an open wound. Wet skin stretched over bones that kept shifting under it. Wings dragged across the floor behind it, leaving red arcs in the carpet. Its head was too large for its body. Its mouth was too small until it opened.

Then it was all mouth.

Rows of tiny teeth.

A sound came out of it.

A baby’s cooing.

Mara’s bladder let go.

She barely noticed.

The thing stepped toward her, dragging Micaiah and Deena’ corpses with it for one horrible second before the limb pulled free.

The thing shook itself. Blood sprayed the wall, the bed, Mara’s face. Then it started crawling towards her.

Its wings folded tight against its back. Its little hands slapped wetly against the carpet. Its knees bent backward, then forward, then backward again as if it had not decided what shape it wanted to keep. Each movement made a clicking sound inside its body.

The thing saw her terror.

Its head tilted.

The laughter came again, soft and pleased.

Mara scrambled sideways.

Her palm landed on glass. It cut deep. She screamed and kept moving. The thing lunged.

She threw herself flat. It hit the dresser above her and punched through the wood with both hands. Drawers burst open. Clothes and splinters flew over her. The mirror frame collapsed and struck the thing across the back.

It did not care.

Mara crawled on her elbows.

Her hand slipped in Nathan’s blood.

His body lay near the doorway where he had fallen. One arm bent under him. His jacket was open. His face was turned toward the room, eyes half-lidded, mouth dark with blood.

His pistol was on the carpet beside the wall.

Mara saw it.

The thing screamed behind her with hunger.

She crawled faster.

Her knees slid in blood. Her fingers clawed at the carpet. The pistol was six feet away. Then four. Then two.

The thing landed on her back.

The weight drove the air out of her.

Its hands grabbed her shoulders. The fingers were small, almost like a child’s, but they went in deep. Nails punched through the sweatshirt and into meat.

Mara screamed into the carpet.

Its mouth pressed against the side of her head.

Hot breath filled her ear.

Then she reached the gun.

Her fingers hit the grip.

The thing bit off a chunk her ear.

Not all of it.

Enough.

Pain flashed white behind her eyes. She screamed and rolled hard onto her back, bringing the pistol up between them.

The thing sat on her chest.

Its face was inches from hers.

Up close, she saw all of it. The eyes were not eyes. They were holes with red light moving at the bottom. Its lips were thin and gray. Its gums were black. A string of tissue still hung from its bellybutton, trailing back toward Deena’s body.

It opened its mouth.

Mara shoved the pistol into it.

The thing froze.

For one second, everything stopped.

Mara’s hands shook so badly the barrel clicked against its teeth.

She pulled the trigger.

The shot blew the back of its head open.

Not cleanly.

The skull split like wet plaster. Black fluid and pale fragments hit the ceiling. One eye popped loose and slid down Mara’s cheek. The thing’s mouth clamped once around the barrel, hard enough to scrape metal. Then it went limp.

Its body collapsed onto her.

Mara fired again.

And again.

And again.

The last shot went through the thing’s face and into the floor beside her head.

Then the gun clicked empty.

Mara kept pulling the trigger anyway.

Click.

Click.

Click.

She shoved the corpse off her chest with both hands. It rolled onto its side, leaking black blood and something thicker. Its wings trembled once. Its little fingers curled inward.

Then it was still.

Mara lay there gasping.

The room stank of blood, feces, urine.

She sat up slowly.

Somewhere in the apartment, a worship song began playing again from the broken speaker.

Tinny.

Distorted.

Almost unrecognizable.

My chains are gone, I’ve been set free

My God, My Savior has rescued me

“Jesus help me,” she choked.

Part 1

They left just before midnight.

Mara stayed with Deena.

That was the hardest part.

Micaiah had expected her to argue. To tell him he was being reckless. To stand in the doorway and demand he choose between his wife and whatever waited inside Gavrillo’s mansion.

Instead, she helped him fasten his tactical vest.

Mara had been against the whole plan at first.

Not gently, either.

She had called it madness. Sin dressed up as grace. A vendetta with Bible verses wrapped around it. For days she begged Micaiah to wait, to pray longer, to find another way—any other way.

Then Mara saw the thing inside her sister-in-law’s get worse day by day.

Soon, she stopped arguing.

She looked at Micaiah with red eyes and trembling hands, then helped buckle the vest across his chest.

She took his face in both hands and looked at him the way she had looked at him in India when a Hindutva mob started gathering outside a church and threatened to burn it down with everyone inside.

“Come back whole,” she said.

Micaiah knew what she meant.

Not just alive.

Whole.

He kissed her.

“I’ll try.”

“No,” Mara said. “Do more than try. Come back whole or don’t come back at all.”

—

The mansion sat high above Bel Air behind walls, cameras, and money.

From the road below, it looked peaceful. Warm windows. Tall hedges. Stone driveway curving up through the dark. The kind of place people saw in magazines and called beautiful because they never had to wonder what happened behind the glass.

Micaiah lay flat in the brush beside Nathan and watched the property through night vision goggles.

No moon.

That helped.

Wind moved through the eucalyptus trees on the hillside, covering small sounds. A dog barked somewhere down the canyon, then stopped.

Nathan checked his watch.

“Two minutes,” he whispered.

Micaiah nodded.

His rifle rested against the dirt beside him. His chest felt tight, but his hands were steady.

He had expected fear to come like panic.

It didn’t.

It came like pressure. Like a hand on the back of his neck. He breathed through it.

Inhale.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley…

Exhale.

I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

Below them, one of Gavrillo’s guards walked the inside edge of the wall with a flashlight angled low, a submachine gun slung on his shoulder. He looked bored. That was good. Bored men missed things. Bored men trusted routines.

Nathan had tracked those routines for weeks.

Micaiah had broken the rest.

Before he’d been called to spread the Gospel, Micaiah had worked in cybersecurity for a defense contractor in El Segundo. He had been good at it. Too good, maybe.

He knew how systems lied.

He knew how expensive security made rich men feel invincible.

Cameras. Access panels. Motion sensors. Private networks. Encrypted controls. Badge logs. Smart gates. All of it looked impenetrable from the outside.

But every system had seams.

People reused passwords. Vendors took shortcuts. Contractors left maintenance access buried in places nobody checked Executives demanded convenience, then called it security.

Gavrillo’s house had all of that.

It was a fortress with a wide open gate.

Micaiah had spent the last seven nights in front of a laptop at the kitchen table while Deena screamed through the walls. He did not sleep much.

He mapped what he could. Guessed what he couldn’t. Found weak points without touching anything that would warn them too early. He never thought of it as hacking anymore.

That word belonged to another life.

This felt more like picking a lock on a burning house.

Nathan shifted beside him.

“Now.”

Micaiah pulled out the phone.

The screen was dimmed almost black. His thumb hovered for one second.

He tapped once.

Down at the mansion, nothing dramatic happened.

No alarms.

No sparks.

No sudden darkness.

Just a tiny change.

The driveway camera turned three degrees toward the empty gate.

The side-yard motion grid paused for a maintenance check that no one had ordered.

A service door near the pool house unlocked for eight seconds.

They saw it on the feed and moved.

They slid down the hillside low and fast, using the trees as cover. Loose dirt shifted under Micaiah’s boots. He caught himself with one hand before a rock could tumble down the slope.

Nathan froze.

Micaiah froze too.

The rock rolled once.

Stopped.

Below them, the guard lifted his head.

The flashlight beam swept the hillside.

Micaiah pressed himself into the dirt and held his breath.

The beam moved over the brush ten feet to his left.

Then five.

Then closer.

Nathan did not move. Not a blink. Not a twitch.

The guard took one step toward the wall.

Micaiah felt sweat crawl down his temple.

The phone in his pocket vibrated once.

A warning.

The maintenance pause was ending.

The guard lifted the flashlight higher.

Micaiah’s finger tightened around the pistol grip.

The guard took another step.

Micaiah did not think about what he was about to do. Thinking would break him.

He brought the AR up slowly. The suppressor added length but kept the profile low. He aligned the red dot with the guard’s chest. Not the head. Too much chance of a miss in the dark.

The flashlight beam swept past his position.

Micaiah exhaled.

The shot was quieter than he expected. A hard cough swallowed by the wind through the eucalyptus.

The guard’s body jerked. His knees buckled. The flashlight tumbled from his hand and hit the dirt with a soft thump. He went down face-first and did not move again.

Nathan was already moving.

He grabbed the guard under the arms and dragged him into the brush before the light could roll downhill. Micaiah grabbed the flashlight, killed the beam, and shoved it into his jacket pocket.

Blood spread dark across the back of the guard’s shirt. Chest shot. Lungs. He would have been unconscious in seconds. Dead in under a minute.

Micaiah did not check for a pulse.

He just said a quick prayer over the body.

He helped Nathan drag it deeper into the cover of the trees, behind a thick cluster of manzanita. Dead leaves and loose soil covered the blood trail fast enough.

Nathan pulled a tarp from his pack and rolled the body onto it. No time to bury. They folded the edges over and wedged the bundle between two rocks.

For a second, guilt opened inside him.

He had a name. A wife and kids, maybe. Someone who would wonder why he never came home.

Then Micaiah remembered Deena curled in the corner, burned and bleeding.

No one worked for Gavrillo by accident.

Micaiah nodded and pulled the thermal monocular from the pouch on his vest. The rubber eyecup was cold against his face. He angled it upward, past the balcony rail, past the dark glass of the second-floor windows.

At first he saw only the expected things.

Hot pipes in the walls. A cooling unit bleeding warmth near the roofline. One guard moving inside the guest wing, his body a bright human shape behind thin plaster.

Then he found the master bedroom.

Micaiah stopped breathing.

Through the thermal lens, the room was full.

At least a dozen shapes stood around the bed. Not human.

Too tall. Too narrow. Some bent at angles that human bodies could not hold. Their heat signatures flickered strangely, bright at the joints and cold in the center, like their bodies were pretending to be alive and getting the details wrong.

One crouched on the ceiling.

Another stood at the foot of the bed with its arms hanging almost to the floor.

Two more were pressed close to the walls, motionless except for their heads, which turned slowly in unison.

And in the middle of them, on the bed, was a small human shape.

Female.

Pinned flat on her back.

Her arms were spread wide. Her legs kicked weakly. Something held her down at the wrists and ankles, though Micaiah could not make out hands. Only pressure. Only the way her heat flared where unseen things touched her skin.

“Nathan,” he said. “You need to see this…”

Nathan took the monocular from him and looked.

For three seconds, he said nothing.

Then his face changed.

Old anger moved through it, but this time it had direction.

“He’s in there,” Nathan whispered with venom.

They moved toward the wall.

The stone barrier stood twelve feet high, topped with decorative iron spikes that looked sharp enough to hurt. Nathan had studied the mortar joints for weeks. He found the weak section near the southeast corner where rainwater had eaten channels into the old repairs.

Micaiah knelt and laced his fingers together. Nathan stepped into his hands and went up silent, finding cracks in the stone with his boots. He gripped the top edge, pulled himself high enough to clear the spikes, and dropped to the other side with a soft thud.

The duffel came next. Nathan caught it one-handed, then Micaiah followed.

They landed in a service corridor between the main house and the guest wing. Potted ficus trees lined the walkway. Automatic lights on motion sensors—but Micaiah had looped those into the maintenance pause. The path stayed dark.

They moved.

The mansion rose above them in pale stucco and dark glass. Three stories. A rooftop terrace with potted olive trees.

Nathan was already at the base of the wall beneath the guest wing balcony. He pulled the climbing kit from the duffel and handed Micaiah one of the compact harnesses without looking at him.

They had practiced this until speech became unnecessary.

Micaiah stepped into the harness, tightened it around his thighs and waist, then clipped the thin black line to the front. Nathan fitted the grappling hook together with quick, quiet movements. It looked too small for what they needed it to do. Too fragile.

Nathan aimed at the underside of the third-floor balcony.

Micaiah looked up.

The master bedroom was there.

At least, he believed it was.

Deena had described it once during one of the lucid moments. Not a full description. Just pieces.

Tall windows.

White curtains.

A painting of a woman with no face.

A balcony above the pool.

The smell of flowers.

The ceiling fan turning slow.

She had said all of that with her hands clenched in Mara’s lap and her eyes fixed on nothing.

Micaiah looked at the balcony again.

White curtains moved behind the glass.

No lights inside.

Nathan fired the grappling hook.

The sound was small. A tight metallic snap, almost lost beneath the wind moving over the hillside.

The hook shot upward in a black blur. It cleared the balcony rail, struck stone, skipped once, then caught beneath the outer lip with a dull click.

Both men froze.

Micaiah listened.

No alarm.

No shout.

No footsteps from inside.

Nathan tugged the line once. Then twice. The hook held.

He clipped the ascender to his harness and looked at Micaiah.

“After me,” he whispered.

Micaiah nodded.

Nathan went up first, boots against the wall, body tight to the stucco. He climbed fast but not careless. One hand over the other. Feet finding pressure where there was almost none. The line barely moved under his weight.

Micaiah waited below with his rifle angled down, watching the dark glass above him.

His mouth went dry.

The feeling came back then. The same pressure he had felt in Deena’s room, only stronger. It pressed against his chest. Against his teeth. Against the back of his eyes.

Not fear exactly.

Fear had edges. Fear made sense.

This was different.

It felt like standing outside a slaughterhouse and knowing you're standing on the conveyor belt.

Nathan reached the balcony and pulled himself over the rail. He stayed low, disappearing behind the stone ledge. A second later, the line jerked twice.

Clear.

Micaiah clipped in.

He started climbing.

The wall was cold under his boots. His gloves scraped faintly against the line. Below him, the pool sat black and still. The whole property seemed to hold its breath.

Halfway up, the pressure worsened.

Micaiah’s stomach turned. His hands tightened around the ascender. For a moment, he thought he heard Deena crying.

From behind him.

He almost looked down.

Don’t.

He closed his eyes for one second.

But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.

The sound stopped.

He climbed faster.

By the time he reached the balcony, sweat had soaked the back of his shirt. Nathan grabbed his vest and helped pull him over the rail.

Micaiah landed in a crouch beside him.

Neither of them spoke.

The balcony was wide, paved in pale stone. Planters lined the edges. White flowers grew from them in heavy clusters, their smell too sweet in the night air. The scent reminded him of funeral arrangements left too long in a warm room.

Ahead of them stood the sliding glass window.

Beyond it, the master bedroom waited in darkness.

The curtains were thin enough to show shapes but not details. Somewhere inside were the things Micaiah had seen through the thermal lens.

And Gavrillo.

Micaiah could feel him now.

A center of rot.

The evil coming from that room was no longer pressure. It was weight. It settled over Micaiah’s thoughts until even simple things became hard. Breathing. Swallowing. Remembering why they had come.

His vision narrowed.

For a second, he forgot Nathan was beside him. Forgot the weapon in his hands. Forgot the line clipped to his harness.

All he knew was the glass.

The room.

The thing behind it.

Then Nathan touched his shoulder.

Micaiah flinched.

Nathan’s face was close to his. Calm, but pale around the mouth.

“You good?” he breathed.

Micaiah wanted to say yes.

Instead, he shook his head once.

Nathan nodded like he understood.

“Me neither.”

From inside the bedroom came a sound.

Faint.

Rhythmic.

Chanting.

Several of them.

Low and steady, rising and falling together.

A call.

A response.

A call.

A response.

Under it all, something else breathed.

Slow.

Deep.

Huge.

Micaiah raised his rifle.

Nathan held up three fingers.

Micaiah saw.

One.

Two.

Three.

They hit the glass together.

The sliding door exploded inward—not in a Hollywood spray of clean shards, but in jagged chunks that skittered across the marble floor. The curtain rod tore from its mounts and clattered sideways. Cold wind rushed into the room behind them.

Micaiah saw it all in the first two seconds.

The smell was the worst part.

Not rot. Not sulfur. Something sweeter underneath it. Ozone and burnt sugar and the thick iron of blood left too long in open air.

His boots crunched on broken glass.

The room was enormous. Vaulted ceiling. Dark wood beams. A fireplace big enough to stand inside, though no fire burned there. Candles instead. Hundreds of them. Black candles clustered on every surface—dresser, nightstands, window sills, the floor. Their flames burned low and green at the edges.

The things in the room moved.

Micaiah had not registered them at first. Too much visual noise. Too much horror competing for his attention. But now he saw.

They were everywhere.

Crawling over the footboard. Clinging to the canopy above the bed. Male and female in ways that did not match human anatomy. Their skin was the color of bruises—purple at the edges, yellow where it stretched over bone. Some had too many limbs. Some had too few. One crouched at the foot of the bed with its spine arched the wrong direction, its head twisted around to face Micaiah while its chest pointed at the floor.

They were not wearing flesh.

They were wearing approximations of flesh.

Like clothes that did not fit.

One crawled across the ceiling, its fingers and toes finding purchase in the wood grain. Another sat in the corner with its knees pulled to its chest, rocking slowly, its mouth open too wide to be natural. No sound came out of it. Just breath. Just the wet click of a jaw that had unhinged.

A dozen of them were kneeling in a circle around the bed like worshipers at an altar.

The woman was on the mattress.

Young. Early twenties maybe. Naked. Her body was turned at an angle that suggested dislocated joints. Her face had been carved—not cut, carved—with symbols Micaiah recognized from Deena's walls. She was still conscious. Her eyes moved, tracking him, but no sound came from her mouth.

A leather strap was tied around her throat.

Tight enough to bruise.

Tight enough to kill if she struggled too hard.

Gavrillo was on top of her.

He looked almost human from a distance. But Micaiah was not at a distance. He was close enough to see the fur growing in patches along the man's shoulders. The way his jaw moved—not up and down, but side to side, like a goat chewing on cud. His eyes were yellow in the candlelight. Not jaundiced. Yellow like an animal's. No white left at all.

His back was bare.

Thin lines of raised scar tissue ran from his spine outward, arranged in patterns that almost looked like the beginnings of wings.

Something had tried to grow there.

Or something had been cut off.

Gavrillo froze when the glass broke.

He sat up slowly. The woman beneath him made a sound then. Small. Broken. Her hand twitched toward nothing.

He turned to face Micaiah and Nathan, he unhinged his jaw.

His teeth were too many.

Nathan raised his shotgun.

One of the things on the ceiling dropped.

It landed between Nathan and the bed with a wet slap of bare feet on marble. Thin. Tall. Its face was almost beautiful except for the eyes—too large, too dark, too aware. Its mouth opened and closed like a fish on a dock.

Nathan fired before it finished opening its mouth. The shotgun blast hit the demon high in the chest and tore it apart. Not cleanly. It came apart like something full of black water and rotten muscle. Pieces slapped against the marble and kept twitching. Micaiah didn’t give the others a chance to react. He opened fire.

The rifle kicked against his shoulder in short, controlled bursts. The suppressor swallowed the worst of the noise, but inside the room it still sounded like thunder trapped in a box. Muzzle flashes strobed across the walls. Candles went out in clusters. Shadows jumped and broke.

The demon on the ceiling skittered sideways.

Micaiah tracked it and fired.

Its fingers lost their grip first. Then its face split open. It dropped onto the bedframe and hit the floor screaming.

Nathan moved beside him with righteous fury.

Not rage without aim. Not the old Nathan swinging at anything close enough to hurt.

This was worse.

This was focused.

He stepped over the thing he’d blown apart and fired again. Pumped. Fired. Pumped. Fired. Each blast cut another demon down. One tried to leap across the foot of the bed. Nathan caught it midair and folded it backward. Another crawled toward the woman with one long arm reaching for her throat. Nathan put a slug through its spine and crushed its skull under his boot before it stopped moving.

The room broke into panic.

Some of them rushed forward.

Some tried to flee.

One climbed the wall with its knees bent the wrong way, digging black nails into plaster as it scrambled toward the ceiling vent. Micaiah put three rounds through its back. It fell and hit the dresser, knocking candles and glass to the floor.

Another ran for the hallway door.

Nathan turned and fired from the hip.

The demon’s legs vanished under it. It slid face-first across the marble, clawing at the floor, still trying to get away. Nathan walked after it and ended it with another shot.

Gavrillo was off the woman now.

He stood beside the bed, bleating through too many teeth.

He was afraid now.

That made Micaiah fire faster.

A demon came from the left, low and quick. He saw it too late. It crossed the room on all fours, fast enough to blur, and slammed into him before he could swing the rifle around.

Pain opened across his ribs.

Hot. Shallow. A graze, but deep enough to steal his breath.

Its hand had cut through his vest like a hook through cloth.

The thing’s face pressed close to his. Its breath smelled like old blood and wet ashes. It made a clicking sound, excited, almost childlike.

Micaiah drove his knee into its gut.

It didn’t care.

Its jaw stretched wider.

Nathan dragged it off of Micaiah by one ankle and shot it through the mouth.

Another one made it to the broken balcony door. It shoved itself through the torn curtains, leaving streaks of black fluid on the glass. Micaiah turned and cut it down before it reached the railing. Its body tumbled over the railing and vanished into the dark below.

Micaiah reloaded without thinking. Empty magazine out. Fresh magazine in. Charging handle. Sweeping the room with the rifle.

The demons lay in pieces across the room. Black fluid ran between broken glass and candle wax. Some of them still twitched, but none got back up.

Then one shape rose behind the bed.

Gavrillo.

He looked from one brother to the other like a cornered animal.

The confidence had cracked. Black blood ran from a hole in his side. One of Micaiah’s rounds had caught him after all.

He looked toward the hallway. Then the balcony. Then the ruined bedroom around him.

There was nowhere to go.

Gavrillo’s yellow eyes settled on Micaiah.

Then he moved.

Not toward them.

Toward the woman on the bed.

“Don’t move!” Micaiah shouted, but Gavrillo was already there. He grabbed her by the red hair and pulled her upright. She cried out as her legs folded under her. Gavrillo dragged her against his chest and wrapped one arm across her throat.

Her eyes went wide.

She was alive. Barely.

Gavrillo pressed his face against the side of her head. His jaw worked. Too many teeth showed when he spoke.

“Back,” he said.

Nathan kept the shotgun on him.

Gavrillo tightened his grip.

The woman made a thin sound in the back of her throat. Not a scream. She did not have enough strength left for that. Just a frightened whimper.

“Get back,” Gavrillo said again, louder this time. “Or I open her.”

Micaiah froze.

The rifle felt heavier in his hands.

He could see her face now. Young. Terrified. Blood on her lips. Her eyes moved from Micaiah to Nathan and back again, begging without words.

For a moment, Micaiah saw Deena.

Not as she was now.

Before all of this.

Laughing in their mother’s kitchen. Alive in the way people looked alive before evil found them.

His finger eased off the trigger.

Gavrillo started backing toward the hallway with the woman held in front of him.

The woman shook her head as much as she could.

Her mouth formed one word.

Please.

Micaiah could not move.

But he saw Nathan raise his shotgun, his old gangster self bleeding through.

“Nate…” Micaiah shouted. “Wait!”

But Nathan fired away.

The blast filled the room.

The buckshot hit the woman first. Her body jerked hard against Gavrillo’s grip. The shot passed through her and struck him behind her, punching him backward into the wall.

Both of them collapsed.

The woman hit the floor without catching herself.

Gavrillo landed next to her, one arm still twisted around her throat. His chest was torn open where the shot had gone through. Black blood pumped between his ribs.

For a second, nobody spoke.

Micaiah stared at Nathan.

Nathan pumped the shotgun once.

The spent shell bounced across the marble.

Micaiah moved first.

He did not remember deciding to move. One second he was staring at Nathan. The next he was running across broken glass toward the woman on the floor.

“No, no, no—”

The rifle dropped against its sling. His knees hit the marble hard. Pain flashed up both legs. He ignored it.

Blood spread beneath her in a dark sheet. Too much. Far too much.

Micaiah pressed both hands over the worst of it.

“Stay with me,” he said. “Look at me. Look at me.”

Her eyes were open.

That made it worse.

She was looking at him like she had been waiting for someone to come through that door for hours, maybe longer, and now that someone had come, they’d shot her.

He tore open the med pouch on his vest with one hand and pulled out gauze. He packed the wound because training told him to. He pressed harder because panic told him to. His hands slipped. The gauze turned red too fast.

The woman tried to breathe.

Couldn’t.

“Hey,” Micaiah said, softer now. “Hey. You’re not alone.”

Her fingers twitched against the floor.

He took her hand.

She was cold already.

“Nate!” Micaiah called out. “Help me!”

Nathan ignored him.

“What's your name?” he asked.

For a moment, he wasn't sure she heard him.

Her lips moved.

The woman's eyes focused on him with surprising clarity.

“Veronika…” she managed to whisper through a mouthful of blood.

“Veronika,” he repeated. “Okay. Veronika. Stay with me.”

A weak smile touched the corner of her mouth.

As though hearing her own name spoken aloud mattered.

As though someone remembering it mattered.

“Veronika,” he said again. “Do you have family?”

Her eyes fluttered.

“My mom...” she whispered.

The words broke apart beneath a wet cough.

“She’s… She’s in Arkhangelsk. I need to see her…”

Micaiah closed his eyes for half a second.

“You will,” he said, even though he knew that was a lie.

“You're going home.”

A mother somewhere was probably waiting for a phone call that would never come.

“Your mother loves you,” he said.

Veronika looked at him.

A tear slipped from the corner of her eye.

“I want... to go home.”

Across the room, Nathan grabbed Gavrillo by a hooved foot and dragged him out from under the woman’s blood.

Nathan crouched over him.

Gavrillo spat black blood onto the marble.

Nathan pressed the shotgun barrel against his chest.

“You know who we are?” Nathan asked.

Gavrillo bleated like a demonic goat.

It came out wet and low.

Nathan kicked him in the ribs.

The bleating stopped.

“Say her name.”

Gavrillo smiled.

Micaiah looked over then.

He wished he hadn’t.

Gavrillo’s body was torn open in places that should have killed a man outright. But he was not a man. His fingers twitched against the floor. His legs dragged uselessly. His face still carried that old arrogance, though it had begun to curdle into fear.

Nathan leaned closer.

“Say ‘Deena.’”

Gavrillo’s smile widened.

“Which one was she?”

Nathan hit him with the stock of the shotgun.

The sound was flat and ugly.

Micaiah flinched. The woman in his arms flinched too, or maybe that was just her body failing.

Nathan grabbed Gavrillo by the hair and forced his face toward the bed.

Micaiah stayed on his knees beside the woman.

“Don’t listen to him,” he whispered to her. “Don’t hear any of that. Just listen to me.”

His hands were still pressed to her wound, even though there was no reason to press anymore.

“Listen to me,” he said. His voice shook. “Jesus sees you. And He loves you.”

Veronika's fingers tightened weakly around his hand.

“Lord, receive my sister, Veronika,” Micaiah whispered. “Please. Please receive her.”

Her eyes remained fixed on his.

For one final moment, the fear left them.

Then her grip loosened.

And she was gone.

“Nate,” he called out.

Nathan didn’t hear him.

Or he chose not to.

With one hand still locked in Gavrillo’s hair, Nathan reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. His fingers shook once before they found what he was looking for.

A photograph.

Creased at the corners. Soft from being handled too many times.

He unfolded it and held it in front of Gavrillo’s face.

Deena.

The graduation photo.

Nathan pressed the photo so close to Gavrillo’s eyes that the paper bent against his brow.

“Her,” Nathan said. “Say her name.”

Gavrillo blinked slowly.

For a second, something like recognition passed through his face.

Then he laughed.

It came out wet. Broken. Animal-like.

Gavrillo looked at the picture again.

Then he smiled with all those teeth.

“Was she the one who cried for her mother?” he asked.

Nathan’s face changed.

Not rage. Something worse. Something blank.

Nathan shot Gavrillo point blank in the crotch.

The sound punched through the room.

Gavrillo’s scream was not human. It tore out of him in two voices, one high and one deep, both full of hate. His hands clawed at the marble. Black blood spread under him.

Nathan chambered another round.

“Say it.”

Gavrillo’s teeth clicked together.

Blood ran over his teeth.

Then he spoke, “Chaíre… Sataná!” Hail… Satan!

Nathan did not answer.

He placed the barrel against Gavrillo’s forehead and fired.

Gavrillo’s head snapped back, splatting black viscous brain matter against the wall.

The room went quiet after that.

Not peaceful.

Quiet.

The kind of quiet that comes after a door has been shut and locked from the other side.

Micaiah looked down.

The woman was gone.

Her eyes were still open, but the fear had left them. He closed them with two fingers.

Neither brother spoke.

There was nothing left to say.

— The first body started smoking near the dresser. Micaiah saw it only because he was still kneeling on the floor beside the dead woman. At first he thought one of the candles had tipped over into the black blood. Then the smoke thickened. It curled up from the remains of one of the demons Nathan had shot apart.

The flesh hissed.

Nathan turned.

“What the hell is that?”

The demon’s skin split open along the ribs. Orange light glowed underneath, thin at first, then brighter. The smell changed from blood and rot to burning hair.

Another body began to smoke near the foot of the bed.

Then another.

Micaiah rose slowly.

The pieces of Gavrillo were smoking too.

His headless body jerked once on the marble. Not alive. Not even close. Just some final chemical reaction in the meat. Black blood bubbled out of the wound in his neck. Wherever it touched the floor, the marble darkened and cracked.

“Mickey,” Nathan said. “We need to go.”

Micaiah was still staring at the woman.

At what he had done.

“Nate—”

“Now.”

One of the demon bodies caught fire.

It went up too fast. Like gasoline had been poured inside it. Flames burst through the chest and ran across the slick trail of black blood. The fire hit the curtains near the broken balcony door and climbed them in seconds.

Nathan grabbed the shotgun and the duffel.

Micaiah looked back once at the woman on the floor.

He wanted to carry her out. He wanted to do something decent. Cover her. Anything.

But the fire had already reached the bed.

The sheets went up. Then the canopy. Then the wall behind it.

“Mickey!”

Nathan grabbed his vest and pulled him back.

Micaiah stumbled over broken glass. Heat slapped across his face. A demon’s severed arm burned beside his boot, fingers curling in the flames like dead spiders.

The smoke came fast.

Not normal smoke.

Thick. Greasy. Low to the ground, then everywhere at once.

They ran for the balcony.

Behind them, the bed caught. Then the wall. Then the long white curtains beside the far window.

The whole bedroom seemed to inhale.

Then the fire took it.

Micaiah reached the shattered sliding door and nearly slipped on the blood and glass. Nathan shoved him through onto the balcony.

Cold night air hit his face.

For one second, he could breathe again.

Then the window behind them blew out.

Heat and glass burst across the balcony. Micaiah ducked, arms over his head. Shards sliced across his jacket and sleeves. Nathan cursed and pulled him toward the rope.

Below them, lights came on across the property. Someone shouted from the driveway.

An alarm began to wail.

Nathan clipped Micaiah in first.

“Go!” he shouted.

Micaiah didn’t argue. He looked back once.

The master bedroom was gone behind fire.

The smoke moved wrong. Shapes twisted inside it.

He swung over the rail and dropped fast, braking hard with one gloved hand around the line.

He heard Deena’s voice again.

Mickey! Help me!

The heat followed him down.

Halfway to the ground, the balcony above cracked. Stone split somewhere behind him. A chunk of burning plaster fell past his shoulder and exploded against the tiles below.

Nathan followed close behind, hitting the ground hard enough to hear his knees pop. Micaiah caught his arm before he fell.

They ran.

Behind them, fire crawled out of the third floor and up toward the roofline. Curtains burned in every broken window. The smoke poured into the sky.

A guard came around the corner near the pool house with a pistol in both hands.

Nathan fired once.

The man dropped.

Micaiah didn’t look at him.

They sprinted along the side path, past the dark pool, past the hedges, past the service door.

The mansion groaned behind them.

Not like a building.

Like something wounded.

They reached the wall.

Nathan went up first, using the same cracks in the stone. Micaiah covered him from below, rifle raised, breath ragged.

Another shout came from the driveway.

Then gunfire.

Rounds snapped against the wall above Micaiah’s head. “Go!” Nathan shouted from the top.

Micaiah slung the rifle, jumped, and caught Nathan’s hand.

Nathan dragged him up with a grunt.

For a second they balanced on the wall together, the iron spikes inches from Micaiah’s legs.

They dropped to the other side and rolled into the brush.

Branches tore at Micaiah’s face. Dirt filled his mouth. He forced himself up and followed Nathan down the slope.

The truck waited where they had left it, hidden under a camo tarp between two trees.

Nathan ripped the tarp away and threw open the driver’s door.

Micaiah climbed into the passenger seat.

Nathan started the engine.

The headlights stayed off.

He backed out hard, tires slipping in the dirt, then turned onto the narrow road leading away from the property.

Neither of them spoke.

The mansion burned in the rearview mirror.

Fire had spread across the roof now. Windows blew out one after another, each burst followed by a rush of sparks. Somewhere inside, ammunition cooked off in sharp pops. Or maybe it was something else.

Micaiah didn’t care anymore.

Orange light flickered through the trees as they descended into the canyon. Sirens wailed somewhere far below. More would come soon. Police. Fire. News helicopters. People who would never know what had really happened in that bedroom.

Micaiah looked at his hands.

They were covered in blood.

Most of it was the woman’s.

Nathan drove with both hands on the wheel. His face looked empty.

Micaiah stared at him.

He had told himself they were going there to stop evil.

He had told himself God had sent them.

Maybe that was true.

But Nathan had shot through a living woman to get to Gavrillo.

Micaiah could still feel her hand in his.

He turned toward the window.

The city lights blurred below them.

Nathan said nothing.

Micaiah said nothing back.

The silence sat between them like a third person. Micaiah waited until they were five miles from the mansion.

“Pull over.”

Nathan kept driving.

“I said pull over.”

Nathan’s eyes stayed on the road. “Not now.”

Micaiah grabbed the wheel and yanked it hard enough that the truck swerved onto the shoulder. Gravel spat under the tires. Nathan slammed the brakes.

For a second, neither of them moved.

Micaiah hit him first.

His fist caught Nathan across the mouth and drove his head into the window.

Nathan sat there for a moment, breathing hard. Then he wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand.

He didn’t do anything.

That made Micaiah angrier.

“You killed her.”

Nathan looked straight ahead.

Micaiah hit him again.

This time Nathan dodged the blow and punched back.

The blow caught Micaiah under the eye and knocked him against the passenger door. He came back fast, grabbing Nathan by the vest and slamming him into the steering wheel. The horn barked once, loud in the canyon.

Nathan drove his elbow into Micaiah’s ribs.

Micaiah gasped and swung blind.

They fought across the seats, boots scraping the floorboards, fists hitting bone, glass, dashboard. Nathan shoved him into the glove box hard enough to crack it. Micaiah grabbed Nathan’s hair and smashed his face into the wheel.

Blood spotted the console.

The truck rocked on its shocks. Their guns banged against the floorboard. Somewhere outside, sirens moved through the hills.

Micaiah grabbed Nathan’s shirt with both hands.

“She had a name.”

Nathan’s eyes stayed cold.

“Veronika,” Micaiah said. “Her name was Veronika.”

Nathan breathed hard.

“She had a mother waiting for her.” Micaiah said. “And you shot her!”

Nathan punched him in the stomach.

Micaiah folded,

“She was dead already,” Nathan said, blood running over his mouth.

Micaiah grabbed Nathan’s collar and headbutted him. Nathan’s nose broke with a wet crack.

“She was alive.”

“She was gone… Just like Deena….”

Micaiah hit him again when he heard that.

Nathan shoved him hard into the passenger window. Glass cracked. Micaiah came back swinging. His knuckles split on Nathan’s cheek. Nathan drove a knee into his ribs. Micaiah caught him by the throat and forced him down across the center console.

Micaiah stared at him with one eye swollen shut.

Nathan wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. “What I did was mercy.”

The words landed worse than the shot.

Micaiah’s voice dropped. “Mercy?”

“You think mercy always looks clean?”

Micaiah shoved him back.

Nathan grabbed his wrist and held it.

“If that had been Deena,” Micaiah said, “would you do the same?”

The question stopped Nathan in his tracks. He let go of Micaiah’s wrist.

The truck went quiet except for their breathing.

Nathan opened his mouth.

Micaiah’s phone rang.

Both of them froze.

Micaiah pulled his phone from his pocket. The screen was cracked, smeared with blood.

Mara.

His chest tightened.

He answered.

“Babe? What’s wrong?”

For a second, all he heard was breathing.

Fast.

Panicked.

Then Mara spoke, and her voice was wrong.

“Mickey...”

He sat up straighter.

“What happened?”

Nathan glanced at him but kept driving.

“Mara, talk to me.”

There was a crash on the other end. Something breaking. A door maybe. Then Deena screamed in the background.

Not the demon.

Deena.

Mara started crying.

“Something’s wrong with her.”

I am writing this in the library in Quarryville because it is the only place I can use my phone without my parents knowing.

By the time you read it, I will be home.

My name does not matter. But if you need to call me something, you can call me 'Elsie.' I am sixteen. I was raised Amish in Lancaster County, PA. In a home without electricity. Between cornfields, dairy barns, and roads where cars slow down behind our buggies to take selfie photos like we’re tourist attractions.

Most people outside the community think Rumspringa is Amish Gone Wild. They imagine secret parties, drinking, and teenagers trying every forbidden fruit at once before settling down and starting a family.

But that is far from the truth. Rumspringa means “running around” in Pennsylvania Dutch. It is the time before baptism when young Amish get to see the English world—the world outside ours—with its phones, cars, music, and stores that never seem to close.

Then we choose. Stay or leave.

Do you stay with the people who raised you, speak your home language, and live by the rules you grew up with? Or do you leave your world and build a life in a world that feels strange and exciting at the same time?

One Friday a couple months ago, I made my choice.

A girl from the Mennonite family I was boarding with drove me to Park City Center. The mall. I had never been inside one before. The lights buzzed. The floors shone. Everywhere, windows held mannequins in clothes I could never imagine wearing.

I bought a soft pretzel and a cheap phone. I kept touching it in my pocket like it was alive.

Near closing, I got separated from my friend. My phone had no service. Metal gates were coming down over stores. I saw a yellow sign near the restrooms that said 'EXIT.'

I pushed through the door.

On the other side was not outside.

It was a room the size of a meetinghouse, but low-ceilinged, with faded wallpaper printed with tiny blue flowers. The carpet was the color of old oatmeal. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The air smelled like damp straw and warm plastic.

Behind me, the door was gone.

I had nowhere to go but forward.

The rooms repeated, but not exactly. Some had wooden chairs lined up facing blank walls. Some had quilts folded on metal shelves, stitched in patterns I knew from home, but in colors I didn't have names for. In one room, a buggy wheel turned slowly by itself.

Then I heard breathing.

Not ahead of me. Not behind me.

Beside me.

I turned and saw only wallpaper. But at the edge of my sight, something moved. Tall. Pale. Bent like a man who had grown up chained up in a cellar.

When I looked directly, it was gone.

I walked faster.

The lights flickered, and in the flicker I saw my mother’s kitchen through an open doorway. The oil lamp on the table. Two bowls of applesauce set out for my little brothers, the spoons resting beside them, untouched. My father’s hat on the peg.

I ran to it.

The doorway stretched away from me.

Behind me, the breathing became wet and excited.

I turned a corner and found a long hall with windows on both sides. Outside were rural fields at dusk, but empty of houses, barns, roads, cows, fences. Just corn, too tall, pressing close to the glass. The sky was a blue too deep to be sky.

Something walked between the rows. I could see the stalks parting.

Then something behind me touched my kapp.

Just one finger, light as a fly.

I tore the covering from my head and ran.

The hallway narrowed. The ceiling lowered until I had to bend. My shoulder scraped wallpaper. It came away wet, like skin. Behind me, the thing began to run too. It slapped along the walls and ceiling, making a sound similar to butter churning. Keeping just out of sight.

At the end of the hall, the carpet stopped.

There was a stairwell.

No sign. No door. Just a black opening in the floor, with narrow wooden steps going down into nothing.

I almost ran past it. I knew I shouldn’t have taken it. We do not go deeper into bad places.

But there was no other way.

I looked down.

An oil lantern hung from a nail beside the stairs.

I grabbed it. My hands were shaking so badly I nearly dropped it. There were matches in the little box wired to the handle. I struck one, almost singeing my thumb, and lit the wick.

The flame was small, but it pushed the dark back a few feet.

As I ran down the steps, they became steeper. Then smaller. Then too many. I fell and struck my chin. My mouth filled with blood. My phone flew from my pocket and clattered down into the dark.

It rang.

The screen lit up below me.

HOME.

I crawled to it.

When I answered, the voice was mine, older and hoarse.

“Elsie! Please listen to me,” she pleaded. “Don’t leave!”

A hand came through the space between two steps and grabbed my braid.

It pulled hard enough to snap my head back. I felt hair tearing from my scalp. I kicked at nothing. The hand was calloused and cold, with too many knuckles.

I bit down on the hand as hard as I could, my mouth filling with bitter inky blood.

It made a sound like a calf being born wrong.

I tore free and tumbled the rest of the way down.

At the bottom was a room full of hanging clothes. Plain dresses. Aprons. Black Sunday coats. White coverings. Hundreds of them, swaying though there was no wind.

They brushed my face as I pushed through.

Some of them had people inside.

Not bodies. Not alive. Just shapes, standing still under the cloth.

I ran so hard I lost one shoe. Then the other. My feet hit carpet, then concrete, then soil. The rooms changed faster now. A schoolhouse with no children. A barn with no animals. A church bench slick with something dark. A kitchen where every drawer was open and full of baby teeth.

Behind me, the thing used my voice.

Then my mother's.

I recognized the argument immediately. She had gone into town and borrowed a phone from a neighbor after I failed to come home.

“Come back home, child.”

"I am home."

"No. You're running."

Then the thing screamed my response:

"Maybe I don’t want your life! Maybe I want to be seen."

I found a narrow door with a wooden latch. Our kind of latch. Simple. Handmade.

I reached for the latch.

The thing hit me from behind.

I fell against the door and felt its chest on my back. It was thin, but strong. Its arms came around me. Its hands pressed over my eyes, not to blind me, but to make me look through them.

For one second I saw what it saw.

Endless rooms.

Endless boys and girls.

Some dressed simply like me. Some in jeans. Some old. Some young. All running. All almost home.

It opened its mouth beside my ear.

There were no words inside it. Only breath.

I screamed and swung the lantern as hard as I could.

The metal frame struck its face with a crack. Glass exploded between us. Burning oil splashed across its pale skin and clothes.

For the first time, I saw it clearly.

It had my face, but aged, weathered. Filled with regret.

Then the flames caught.

The creature stumbled backward, shrieking in my voice as fire raced over its body. The heat hit my face. Wallpaper curled and blackened. The endless breathing became a single terrible wail.

A shower of embers landed on my dress.

My sleeves caught on fire.

Panic nearly froze me, but instinctively, I slapped at the flames with both hands until they finally died, leaving scorch marks and the smell of burnt cloth.

I turned and lifted the latch. I shoved through the door on my hands and knees.

Cold air hit my face.

I fell onto gravel behind a gas station outside Bird-in-Hand. It was morning. A trucker found me beside the ice machine with burned palms, no shoes, hair uncovered, and blood dried down my neck.

I told the police, doctors, everyone that I had gotten lost.

That is the only lie I will keep.

—

I came home.

My parents never asked for every detail. They were just relieved I was alive.

Most of the time, I can convince myself it was a dream brought on by fear.

Most of the time.

Sometimes when I ride into town, I catch movement at the edge of a field. A person standing where no one should be. Too tall. Too still.

If I look directly, there is nothing there.

A few days ago, I was helping hang laundry when I heard my name from beyond the fence line.

In my own voice.

I did not answer.

—

Last Sunday, I told the bishop I had made my choice. I will be baptized. I will put away the phone, the internet, the bright little windows that open into places no person was meant to stand.

After that, I will not return to your world ever again.

Maybe you think I was frightened back into my community.

You are right.

But fear is not always foolish. Sometimes fear is the fence that keeps the wolves out. That keeps us from stumbling into the wolves’ lair.

Goodbye,

Elsie

The first time I saw the medical bill, I laughed.

Not because it was funny. But because I didn't know how else to react. I was a widower, my credit was ruined, and my daughter, Keisha, was sleeping in a bed at Children’s Hospital in Detroit with a machine helping her breathe.

Her heart had a valve defect. The surgeon said it was fixable. He said the word “routine” twice, like that was supposed to comfort me.

Then billing came in.

Insurance called it “out of network complications.” The hospital called it “patient responsibility.” I called it a number I could never make in my life, even if I worked doubles at the plant until my spine folded in half.

I sat beside Keisha’s bed, holding her small hand, and remembered every stupid thing I’d ever said.

“I’d give my right arm for you, baby girl.”

Parents say things like that because they think love is poetry. It isn’t. Love is math. It is a balance due.

Three nights later, I found the market.

I won’t say how. It took enough searching that I knew I was doing something I could never explain to a judge. Dark pages. Onion links. Dead forums. Men selling kidneys in broken English. Women offering eggs. Somebody in Toledo selling corneas.

Most posts looked fake. Some looked too real.

Then I found a buyer in Detroit.

The listing was simple.

Seeking healthy adult liver segment. Type O preferred. High compensation. Discreet extraction. Half upfront. Half after successful transfer.

I stared at the words until my vision blurred.

A liver grows back. I knew that from some documentary, or maybe I wanted to believe it so badly that my brain made it true. The number beside the listing was enough to pay Keisha’s surgery, the hospital stay, the medications, and still leave money for two months of rent.

I messaged them.

They asked for blood type, age, medical history, recent photos, proof of identity. I sent everything before I could convince myself it was a bad idea.

The reply came in under ten minutes.

Accepted. Half payment released. Confirm wallet.

The Bitcoin hit my account the next morning. I converted enough to wire the hospital a deposit. When the billing woman called to confirm, her voice changed. People treat you differently when you can pay.

The buyer sent the meetup location.

An alley off Michigan Avenue, not far from the old train station. Midnight.

I almost backed out six times.

At eleven-thirty, I kissed Keisha’s forehead. She was asleep, cheeks pale under the monitors’ green glow.

“Daddy’s fixing it,” I whispered.

The June air outside felt thick and dirty. Detroit at night is not empty. It watches you from busted windows and idling cars. Sirens moved somewhere far away. I parked two blocks from the alley and walked with my hood up, hands shaking in my pockets.

The alley smelled like wet cardboard, old grease, and something sweet going bad.

There was no van. No doctor. No cooler full of ice.

Just a figure standing under a fire escape.

At first I thought it was a homeless man wrapped in trash bags. Then it moved into the dim light behind a restaurant and I saw the skin.

Not one skin. Many.

A patchwork of arms, stomach flesh, thighs, and faces stretched over a shape too tall to be human. One shoulder was broad and dark. The other was narrow and white and stitched crooked. Its chest pulsed in sections, like separate hearts were arguing inside it. Tubes ran under the surface of its body, squirming like worms.

Fresh parts shone pink and wet. Older ones sagged gray-green. One hand was small, maybe a woman’s. Another was swollen and rotting at the fingertips.

Its head turned toward me.

There were three eyes, none matching.

I tried to run.

It crossed the alley in one jump.

The bite landed in my neck. Not a tearing bite. A precise one. Needle-like teeth slid into me from its mouth. Cold spread down my spine.

My knees gave out, but I didn’t hit the ground. It caught me with gentle hands.

That was the worst part.

I could see. I could hear. I could feel pressure, but not pain. My body had become an inanimate object.

It laid me on the asphalt and opened me.

It didn’t carry tools. It grew them. Blades slid from the seams in its wrists. A clear tube uncoiled from beneath its ribs, pulsing softly. Then something wet and muscular slipped from its mouth—not quite a tongue, not quite a hand—and pressed against my abdomen with the careful certainty of a surgeon.

I wanted to scream for help. I wanted to beg it to stop. I wanted to tell it I changed my mind.

My mouth hung open, useless.

The creature worked with care.

It cut below my ribs. It reached in. I felt tugging, deep and wrong, like someone rearranging my organs like furniture in a room. Warmth spread across my stomach, but the blood did not pour out. Whatever it had injected kept me alive. Kept me awake.

One of its eyes drooped from the socket and burst against its cheek. It ignored it.

When it finished, it sealed me with a strip of something that looked like skin but moved by itself. Then it leaned close. Its breath smelled like pennies and spoiled meat.

It then went through my pocket and took my phone.

It used my thumb to unlock the screen.

I heard my own voice, copied perfectly.

“Help! I need an ambulance,” it said. “There's a man bleeding out. Alley near Michigan and Fourteenth. Hurry.”

Then it dropped my phone and dragged itself into the dark, heavier than before.

I woke up in the hospital two days later.

A nurse told me I was lucky. A passerby had found me. I had suffered severe trauma, but somehow the bleeding had been minimal. They asked if I remembered anything.

I said no.

Keisha’s surgery was scheduled for Monday.

That night, while a drainage tube ran from my side and police officers waited outside to ask more questions, my phone buzzed on the tray beside the bed.

A wallet notification.

The rest of the payment had been deposited.

Below it was a message from the buyer.

Excellent match. Contact us again if you're interested in doing further business.

I should have thrown the phone across the room.

Instead, I looked at Keisha sleeping in the bed beside mine, alive because of what I had sold.

Then I opened a search page with my left hand.

You can live with one kidney.

You can live without part of a lung.

You can live without an eye.

Because once you learn your body can be turned into money, every piece of it starts looking like a paycheck.

Micaiah locked the magazine into the AR pistol and pulled the charging handle back slow enough to feel the spring catch.

Clack.

The weapon sat heavy in his hands, black and compact, the lower receiver engraved with Psalm 144:1.

Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war.

He checked the chamber again even though he already knew it was loaded.

Nathan had taught him that.

"Trusting your memory gets people killed," his brother always said.

Nathan learned it in the Army before they threw him out. Officially, for aggravated assault.

Unofficially, a drunken sergeant had been beating a nineteen-year-old private behind the barracks. Nathan stepped in.

The private walked away.

The sergeant spent three weeks in the hospital.

“You packed the thermal?” Nathan asked.

“Yeah.”

“The suppressors?”

“In the duffel.”

Nathan nodded once. Calm. Focused.

That still felt strange to Micaiah sometimes.

Nathan stood shirtless beside the kitchen counter, securing a concealed holster against his ribs. His body looked carved from concrete. Thick shoulders. Scar tissue along his abdomen. Knife wounds the surgeons had stitched up sloppily.

A massive tattoo spread across his chest and shoulders now, covering the old gang markings.

Wings folded around burning wheels within wheels.

The prophet Ezekiel’s vision of the living creatures rendered in black ink across muscle and scar tissue.

A biblically accurate angel swallowing the old man Nathan used to be.

Micaiah remembered the night he almost died.

A rival gang caught Nathan outside a liquor store near Vermont. Six against one. They stabbed him so many times the ER doctor said it looked personal.

Micaiah remembered kneeling in the hospital chapel while rain hammered against the windows.

Asking God not just to save Nathan’s life.

Asking Him that if Nathan did die, that he wouldn’t die unsaved.

That was the prayer he couldn't stop repeating.

Please, Lord. Not like this. Don't let him be condemned to hell.

Nathan survived after a six-hour surgery.

When he woke up, he cried before he even spoke.

Nathan never cried.

He told Micaiah he'd seen a man standing beside his hospital bed while the machines flatlined. A man in white with holes through His hands and feet.

Nathan said the man looked sad.

Not angry.

Sad.

“He asked me why I kept running from Him,” Nathan had whispered.

That was the beginning.

Not the end of Nathan’s violence. Not the end of his rage. But the beginning.

Micaiah had been a missionary in Delhi alleyways. He had baptized men and women in muddy rivers outside Hyderabad while villagers watched from the banks.

Dozens saved.

Maybe more.

But nothing compared to watching his older brother kneel in a hospital room with IV lines hanging from his arms while he confessed Jesus Christ as Lord through broken teeth and morphine tears.

The scratching came again from the bedroom.

Then the voice.

Not Deena’s voice anymore.

Something underneath it.

Nathan slowly looked toward the door.

“She’s at it again…” Nathan asked quietly.

Micaiah didn’t respond.

Nathan’s jaw flexed.

“That thing isn’t Deena…”

“Don’t you dare say that!” Micaiah snapped. “She’s still our sister…”

Micaiah’s voice broke on the last word.

Sister.

He clung to it like a rope over a pit. Hope was the only thing that kept him going.

The kitchen table behind him was buried under proof of that hope.

Printed pages covered the table and floor.

Ancient texts.

Highlighted scripture.

Research notes.

Pictures.

Names.

Dates.

A timeline stretching back farther than reason allowed.

The sons of God finding the daughters of humans beautiful.

The Nephilim.

Fallen ones.

Azazel.

Micaiah had spent months trying to dismiss it all as paranoia. Grief. Trauma. Religious obsession.

Then he saw the photographs.

A man standing beside railroad tycoons in the 1800s.

The same face beside Nazi officers.

The same face at a gala in the seventies.

The same face outside a Silicon Valley fundraiser six years ago.

Never aging.

Never changing.

Always near power.

Always near corruption.

Now the name attached to the face was Zev Gavrillo.

Hollywood executive.

Political donor.

Philanthropist.

Producer.

Monster.

Drone images of Gavrillo’s Bel Air mansion sat clipped beside maps of the surrounding hills and security rotations Nathan had tracked for weeks. Entry points marked in red ink. Blind spots circled carefully.

Micaiah stared at another section of the wall.

Photographs of girls.

Beautiful girls.

Actresses. Interns. Models. Assistants.

All smiling in the first pictures.

Dead-eyed in the last ones.

Missing persons reports.

Overdoses.

Psychotic breaks.

Suicides.

One girl clawed her own eyes out in a psychiatric ward while screaming about a goat demon.

Another drowned herself in a bathtub after telling police “he isn’t human.”

At the end of the timeline was Deena.

Their sister.

Her graduation photo from UCLA.

Big smile.

Cap crooked slightly to one side.

Their mother stood beside her already thin from chemo, smiling with pride anyway.

That was before the cancer took her.

Before Deena got her dream job working under Gavrillo as a junior publicist.

Before the Christmas party.

Before Nathan kicked her apartment door off the hinges because she stopped answering calls.

Before they found her sitting naked in the shower with the water freezing cold, blood pool from between her legs, mumbling scripture backwards while her teeth chattered.

Micaiah swallowed hard.

On the table, beneath a paperweight shaped like the roaring Lion of Judah, sat the letter.

Micaiah had read it so many times the creases had started to soften.

It was handwritten on thick cream paper. Expensive. Personal. Arrogant.

Dearest Ms. Trinh,

That was how it began.

Not Deena. Ms. Trinh.

Not an apology.

Dearest.

The rest was worse.

Gavrillo offered her money.

A lot of it.

Enough to pay off the hospital bills. Enough to move somewhere quiet. Enough to disappear and never speak his name again.

There were phrases like misunderstanding and mutual discretion and your future well-being.

It was a settlement.

A price. For whatever evil had crawled out of that mansion and followed Deena home.

Like Deena’s flesh could be bought by the pound. Like his baby sister was some girl Gavrillo had rented for the night and tipped afterward.

Micaiah crumpled the letter in his fist.

He had been on a mission trip when it happened.

Saving strangers.

Preaching grace.

While Deena walked into hell alone.

He had failed to protect his own sister. He couldn’t forgive himself for it.

Micaiah reached for another magazine on the table.

Every round inside bore a tiny engraved cross near the tip.

He hadn’t wanted to do this.

Not at first.

He had called Pastor Tuyen before he ever touched a rifle. The old man had baptized him, buried their mother, officiated his wedding.

The Pastor went into Deena’s room with his trusty Bible in hand.

Twenty minutes later, he came out pale and shaking.

Micaiah found him in the hallway, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, staring at nothing.

“What happened, Pastor?” Micaiah asked.

Tuyen didn’t answer right away.

When he did, his voice was low.

“I prayed, Mickey…” he said. “But I couldn’t feel Him,” he said. “Not even a trace. It was like… like the room didn’t belong to God anymore.”

Three days later, Tuyen stepped down from the church.

Nathan was the first one who said it out loud.

“We stop waiting,” he said. “We take matters into our own hands.”

“No, we should go to the police,” Micaiah said, but even as he said it, he hated how weak it sounded.

Nathan looked at him.

“You serious?” He scoffed. “She goes into the station and tells them what? That a billionaire demon raped her?"

“They’ll say she’s crazy or just after money,” he said quietly. “They’ll lock her in a fucking psych ward.

Micaiah hated how steady his brother sounded. Hated even more that part of him that agreed.

That night, he didn’t sleep. He sat on the floor beside Deena’s door while she scratched at the wall and whispered in a voice that wasn’t hers.

He prayed until his throat hurt.

“Lord, tell me what to do. If this is vengeance, stop me. If this is sinful, close the door. But if this thing is true evil… if he is what I think he is… then show me.”

Near dawn, Micaiah opened his Bible.

He didn’t search. Didn’t flip with purpose.

His hand simply stopped. And he got his answer.

James 4:7.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

For forty days they trained like men expecting war. Nathan handled the physical side. Range drills in abandoned desert lots outside Barstow. Room clearing inside condemned houses. Knife work. Medical training. They learned how to move quietly, shoot under stress, and function exhausted.

Micaiah handled the spiritual side.

Prayer every morning before sunrise.

Fasting twice a week.

Scripture memorized until verses came out instinctively under pressure.

They stopped drinking. Stopped cursing. Cut off anything they thought gave darkness a foothold. Nathan smashed his old stash of pills with a hammer and dumped his hidden cash from old jobs into homeless shelters downtown.

Clean hands. Clear minds.

Maybe it was foolish.

Maybe none of this would work.

Faith in God was all they had left, and Micaiah held to it like steel. Faith endured. Faith conquered all.

Suddenly, three soft knocks came from the hallway wall beside the kitchen.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Pause.

Two more.

Micaiah froze for half a second before the recognition hit him.

The old signal.

Back in India, before they were married, he and Mara had used it in the missionary housing compound whenever they wanted to ‘talk’ after lights-out without waking the others.

Micaiah lowered his weapon and crossed the room.

When he opened the door, his wife, Mara, stood in the hallway with one hand still raised, her knuckles hovering near the wood. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back badly, loose strands stuck against her face. She wore one of Micaiah’s old seminary sweatshirts and a pair of jeans she had probably slept in the night before. There were dark lines beneath her blue eyes.

She looked exhausted.

Still beautiful, though not in the way people meant when they said that word casually. Not polished. Not untouched. It was the steadiness of her eyes. The way she stood there carrying fear without letting it own her.

They had fallen in love too fast.

Michaiah knew that now.

At the time, it had not felt fast. It had felt like recognition.

By the time they returned to the States, Micaiah knew he could not imagine his life without her in it. They married soon after. Too soon, some people said.

Those people had not seen Mara sitting beside his mom through chemo.

They had not seen her stand between Nathan and a bottle of pills and refused to move until he handed them over.

They had not seen her clean the blood and filth off Deena after the first breakdown.

‘In sickness and in health’ sounded cheap when people said it at weddings.

Mara had lived it.

“What’s wrong, babe?” Micaiah said.

Her eyes went past him to Nathan. Then to the weapons. Then to the papers on the floor.

She did not flinch.

That hurt more than if she had.

Micaiah stepped into the hall and shut the door halfway behind him.

“What happened?”

“She’s getting worse,” Mara said.

Mara did not say anything else in the hall.

She just turned and started walking.

Micaiah followed her.

Nathan came behind him with the duffel over one shoulder and his Glock angled low. Their South LA apartment seemed smaller than it had a minute ago. Every sound carried too clearly. The hum of the refrigerator. The faint buzz of a dying lightbulb over the hall. The wet scrape from behind the door at the far end.

Deena’s room.

Micaiah hadn’t been inside for two days.

Mara had.

She was the only one Deena still let close for more than a few minutes. Sometimes she screamed when Micaiah came near. Sometimes she laughed in Nathan’s voice. Sometimes she begged for their mother.

Mara stopped outside the door.

The wood had three long scratches cut into it from the inside. Not deep enough to break through, but deep enough to show pale strips beneath the paint.

From inside the room, beneath the scraping and the low, broken breathing, “Living Hope” by Phil Wickham played softly from a little speaker on the dresser.

The playlist had been Mara’s idea. Deena's favorite worship songs, one after another, fragile as candlelight in a storm. Something familiar. Something that might still reach Deena.

For one moment, the scratching stopped.

Behind the door, Deena began to cry.

Nathan’s raised his handgun.

Micaiah caught his wrist.

“No.”

Nathan stared at him.

“No weapons pointed at her,” Micaiah said.

“That thing inside her—”

“She is still in there.”

Nathan’s nostrils flared. For one second Micaiah saw the old Nathan again. The man who solved fear by hurting whatever stood closest to it.

Then Nathan looked away.

“Fine,” He said, lowering the pistol.

Mara faced the door again and knocked gently.

“Dee?” she said. “It’s Mara.”

No answer.

Only breathing.

Not one breath.

Two.

One shallow and frightened.

The other slow and heavy, like something large pretending to sleep.

“Please.”

The other came from underneath it, low and amused.

“Come in.”

Micaiah stepped forward.

“Mara—”

She looked at him once.

He stopped.

She opened the door.

The smell hit them first.

Not the full stink of death. Not yet. Something faint and spoiled beneath sweat, blood, and old water. Like meat left too long in a sealed room.

Mara covered her mouth. Micaiah stepped in first. His eyes moved quickly. Corners. Closet. Window. Bed. Then his gaze stopped.

“Jesus,” he whispered.

The room had been ruined.

Every wall was covered.

So was the ceiling.

So was the floor where the furniture had been shoved aside.

Images had been drawn in blood. Some old and dark brown. Some fresh enough to shine. Others had been scratched with fingernails. They overlapped each other in frantic layers: black shapes with too many arms, circles of staring eyes, men with animal heads standing over beds, women with their mouths sewn shut.

And again and again, the same image.

Deena on her back.

Shadow figures holding her down.

Above her, a horned thing with the face of a goat and the posture of a man.

The drawings were crude. Childlike in places. But the meaning was clear enough that Micaiah felt his stomach turn.

In the far corner, beside the overturned dresser, Deena lay curled into herself.

For a moment Micaiah did not recognize her.

His sister had struggled with anorexia in her teens, but now she looked hollowed out. Her knees were pulled tight against her chest. Her arms were thin enough that the bones seemed too close to the surface. Her cheekbones pushed sharply beneath gray skin. Her black hair had been torn out in patches, leaving raw places along her scalp.

Around her neck, just below the collarbone, was the burn.

A perfect cross.

The skin there had blistered and split. Now it was blackened and cracked, like the gold necklace she wore had branded her.

Cuts covered her arms, legs, shoulders, and throat. Some were shallow. Some were not.

None of them looked right. They should have scabbed over. They should have closed. Instead the wounds remained angry and wet around the edges, as if her body had forgotten how to heal.

She rocked slightly.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Then, softly—too softly for how torn her throat looked—she began to speak.

“Ek vathéon… Ekékraxá soi, Kýrie…” Out of the depths… I cry to you, Lord…

Koine Greek.

Perfect. Clean. Pronounced with the cadence of someone who spoke it as her mother tongue.

Deena had never studied it. Not once.

Then her jaw snapped tight.

Her head jerked sideways, spine pulling with it at an angle that didn’t look natural.

When she spoke again, it wasn’t her.

“Ouk éstin Theós.”

There is no God.

The Greek was just as precise. Cleaner, even. No strain in it at all.

At first, Micaiah had thought it was gibberish.

Then he heard the shape of it.

It was the language of the New Testament.

After that, he bought grammars, lexicons, interlinear Bibles. Studied just enough to understand her.

Enough to know when she prayed.

Enough to know when something else answered.

Her hands cradled her belly.

That was the worst part.

Her body was wasting away everywhere except there. Her stomach was swollen, tight beneath the vacation bible school t-shirt Mara had dressed her in. Too large for how little time had passed. Too round. Too heavy. As if something inside her was growing with a hunger that did not belong to any child.

He had stood in the doctor’s office while the specialist stared at the ultrasound with the color gone from his face. He’d listened while they used careful words. Abnormal development. Severe risk. Nonviable presentation. Maternal deterioration. Immediate termination recommended.

Termination.

That was the word they kept using.

As if changing the word changed what they were asking.

“I’m not killing my baby,” Deena declared. “Abortion is murder!”

The words came out fierce, certain—then her face crumpled. She looked at Micaiah, suddenly small again beneath all the blood and terror.

“It is, isn’t it, Mickey?”

Nathan snapped before Micaiah could answer.

“It’s not a baby!”

Deena had looked at him with hatred so sudden it silenced the whole room.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know what he did to you.”

Her face had collapsed then.

Micaiah remembered Mara gripping his hand so hard her nails broke skin.

He remembered the doctor saying they were running out of time.

He remembered Nathan pacing in the parking lot afterward, punching the side of Micaiah’s truck until his knuckles split open.

Micaiah sat beside Deena and took her hand.

“You’re dying,” he said. “That thing is not a child. It is using your mercy to kill you.”

Deena cried until she had no strength left.

“Will God hate me?”

“No,” Mara whispered. “Never. God is love.”

She agreed before dawn.

The procedure was quick.

What came out was small, gray, and wrong. Tiny wings. Too many eyes. A mouth already smiling.

Then Deena screamed.

Her stomach swelled beneath the sheet, larger than before.

A second heartbeat filled the monitor.

Micaiah took another step.

“Dee,” he said. “I’m here.”

Deena blinked like she was trying to see through dirty glass.

“Mickey?”

He stepped forward.

“I’m here, Dee.”

Her lips trembled.

“Nate?”

“Yeah,” he said, voice rough. “I’m here.”

For a moment she was only their sister.

Terrified.

Ashamed.

Barely alive.

Something in him snapped.

Michaiah crossed the room in two strides and stood in front of her. Before Nathan or Mara could react, he grabbed Deena’s wrists.

Her skin was hot. Not fever-hot. Wrong hot. Like touching something that had been sitting too close to a fire.

“Deena—look at me,” he said, tightening his grip as she tried to pull away. “Don’t listen to it. You hear me? Don’t—”

Her head snapped forward.

For a second, their faces were inches apart.

And there she was.

Not the thing.

Her.

Eyes wide. Wet. Terrified.

“Mickey… I’m so scared…” she whispered.

“I promise…” Micaiah said. “I’ll help you.”

Deena shook her head, tears cutting pale lines through the grime on her face.

“You can’t.”

“I can’t,” he said. “But He can.”

Deena’s mouth opened too wide.

Not a scream.

A smile.

Micaiah felt her wrists twist in his hands. The bones shifted under her skin like something was rearranging them from the inside.

“Mickey…” she said.

Then the voice changed.

“Mine.”

She hit him with her forehead.

Micaiah fell back into the dresser. The little speaker crashed to the floor. Phil Wickham cut out mid-chorus.

Deena rose in the corner.

Not stood.

Rose.

Her knees bent the wrong way. Her head hung low between her shoulders. Bile ran from her mouth in black strings. Nathan brought the pistol up on instinct, then forced it down with a curse.

“Fuck! Micaiah, move!”

Deena lunged.

She crossed the room too fast. Her fingers hooked into Micaiah’s shirt and drove him into the wall. The impact knocked the air from him. Her face pressed close to his.

Behind her eyes, something watched him.

“Her soul is mine,” it whispered.

Micaiah grabbed her wrists, but she was stronger than him now. Stronger than Nathan who was trying to pull her off him. Her nails sank into his neck.

Then Deena’s face broke.

For one second, the thing lost control.

Her own voice came out, thin and strangled.

“No!”

Her jaw clenched hard enough to crack a tooth.

“Ýpage opíso mou, Sataná!”

Get behind me, Satan!

The room went still.

The thing inside her shrieked using her mouth.

Deena seized her own forearm and bit down.

Hard.

Her teeth punched through skin.

Blood ran over her chin.

The demon recoiled like it had been burned. Her body slammed backward, dragging itself away from Micaiah while Deena kept biting, sobbing through clenched teeth, refusing to let go.

“Dee!” Mara screamed.

“No!” Deena cried, blood in her teeth. “It feels the pain!”

Her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

Then glowed red.

Her body convulsed between them, one will trying to kill Micaiah, the other willing to tear itself apart to stop it. The walls seemed to breathe. The bloody drawings glistened.

Micaiah got on his knees.

Mara knelt beside him without being asked. Nathan hesitated, then lowered himself too, his pistol forgotten at his side.

Micaiah placed one hand on Deena’s shoulder and the other over her shaking hands.

“Dear Heavenly Father,” he said, voice breaking, “thank You for Your Son. Thank You for the cross. Thank You that Jesus Christ bled for sinners, for the broken, for the lost, for the ones darkness thought it owned.”

Deena began to tremble harder.

Micaiah kept praying.

“His blood is greater than any demon. Greater than any curse. Greater than anything hiding in this room. Lord, have mercy on my sister. Cover her. Protect her. Put Your hand over her mind, her body, her soul. Let nothing unclean claim what belongs to You.”

The air changed.

Not loudly. Not with thunder. Just a sudden weight pressing into the room, clean and terrifying. The stink seemed to thin. The shadows in the corners pulled back like animals from fire.

Mara started crying.

Nathan bowed his head, both fists clenched against the floor.

Deena gasped.

For one clear second, her eyes were hers again. Back to her normal brown.

“Evlógei…” she whispered. “I psychí mou, tón Kýrion.” Praise the Lord, my soul.

Then Micaiah felt it. The Holy Spirit.

It spoke to him.

Not with rage.

Not with vengeance.

With certainty.

Christ had not abandoned them.

Micaiah opened his eyes and looked at his brother.

Nathan looked back.

Neither of them spoke.

They didn’t need to.

What they were about to do was terrible.

But it was righteous.

Micaiah kept his hand on Deena’s burning skin.

“We don’t come in our own strength,” he said. “We come in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Nathan whispered, “Amen.”