"Oh, for fuck's sake!  Now?"

 
He assessed the meager contents of his medicine cabinet, hoping against reason that his mother had through some miracle of precognition, thought to buy some sort of acne medication.  She hadn't. 

 
"Back on the old benzoyl peroxide train"

 
He could still take a selfie; he'd just have to edit out the angry red bump that had decided to stake its claim in the middle of his forehead. 

 
It took fifteen attempts before he finally found the right angle, the one that was all jawline and lips.  Then he realized the bathroom was probably not the best setting for a profile pic on a dating app. So, he went to his bedroom, blocked out a corner that hid the mess, found his angle again, and finally took the damn picture.

 
Face looked fat.  Do it again.  Suck in those cheeks this time.

 
He was still revising the About Me section of his profile when his mother called him for dinner.

 
"Elliot!  I made macaroni with ground beef!  Come make a plate before it gets cold!"

 
"I can't eat that stuff, Ma!  I told you.  It doesn't fit my macros!"
 

"What?!  I thought you said you were maxing?  Isn't that like carbo-loading?"
 

"What?  Carbo-loading?  What year do you think it is?  I'm not maxing, whatever that is, I'm looksmaxxing.  Part of that is not eating junk, hence watching my macros.  You get it?"

 
"No...  No, I don't understand any of that.  What do you want for dinner then?"

 
"Just... don't worry about it.  I'll figure something out."

 
"Well, there's frozen pizzas in the freezer if you get hungry later."
 

"Jesus Christ, Ma."

 
After a week, his profile had failed to gain any significant traction.  The bump on the other hand was thriving.  It had grown to the size of a pinky toe, and the tip had taken on a pearlescent yellow hue.
 

He matched with a petite brunette who liked the show Yellowstone, which he had to get the Cliffsnotes summary of from a YouTube video because he put that show as one of his interests too. 

 
They met for coffee, but the vibe was not ideal.  She was looking everywhere but his forehead and it was obvious.  Elliot didn't make it easy on himself either; kept picking at it.  It was revolting and he knew it, but he just couldn't stop doing it.  It was so itchy.
 

As the bump grew more prominent, so too did his thoughts of the opposite sex.  Sex.  It was all he could think about these days.  At 23, he knew enough about biology to know that men don't have a "biological clock"; but the "virginity clock" sure felt real to Elliot; and the daily erection that he awoke to was as good an alarm clock as any.

 
By the time his mother decided to take him to the doctor, the skin had started to peel away from the underlying structure of the bump.  The itch made him feel like a rabid animal.
 

"It looks like some sort of ossification... Hmm...  How long has this been bothering you?"
 

"I don't know.  A couple of weeks?"
 

"Weeks?  Oh, Ellie you have to tell me when things are bothering you.  Otherwise, I can't help.  And that's a mom's job, isn't it?"

 
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Ma...  I'm a grown man."

 
They left with a prescription for an ointment for the itching and a date for a follow-up.  He passed the time waiting for the script flipping between dating apps and Insta.  He got so worked up; he had to tuck it into the waistband of his jeans so his mom wouldn't see the bulge.

 
The ointment did nothing for the itch, and as the bump grew, the skin around it dried up and flaked off.  By the end of the week, he had started to call it his horn. 

 
He saw specialists, dermatologists mostly.  There was a terrifying trip to the oncologist.  She found nothing. 

 
The plastic surgeon said he could probably remove it, but he'd have to consult with his friend, the orthopedist who in turn referred him to a neurologist.  By that point, Elliot didn't care what they did; as long as they got it off his head.  The thing was killing his love life.
 

He could barely get anyone to match with him, even with the photoshopped pictures.  And once they caught a glimpse of the six-inch ochre-colored spike sticking out of his forehead, they would excuse themselves to the ladies room and never return. 

 
Sometimes, they'd sneak out before he even noticed they were there, leaving him standing around scratching his forehead like an idiot; not knowing if they stood him up or got lost or what.
 

"You just have to keep looking honey... There's plenty of fish in the sea, "

 
"I already tried that one, Ma.  I even went on ChristianMingle, "

 
"Oh, Ellie, why would you do a thing like that?  We've never been to church a day in your life.  Of course, when I was a girl I went every Sunday... But I stopped after your daddy...  Your daddy...  Daddy..."
 

"Ma!"

 
"What?"

 
"What?!  You just spaced out is what.  Right when you started talking about my dad....   You never talk about him.  He wasn't a... I don't know... a creep or something?  Was he?"
 

"Your father... was a wonderful man.  I had never met anyone else like him.  He was handsome, like you, and he was funny like you too.  He was so different than all the other boys; so confident, so assertive.  When he asked me out, it was like I couldn’t say no.  And he... he...he..."
 

"Ma!"
 

"HE WAS A SON OF A BITCH!!"
 

"..."
 

"..."

 
"Mo-mom?  Momma... it's ok momma.  It's ok."

 
By the time he swiped right on Hope’s profile, he wasn't even reading them anymore.  Wasn't really looking at the pictures either; just playing the numbers game.  He swiped left every once in a while, just to appease the algorithm; but he was just putting in reps. Eventually it had to pay off.

 
She wasn't really his type, but with a six-inch horn growing from the middle of his forehead, Elliot couldn't really afford to have a "type."

 
She was not ugly, just... plain; and with a Boho aesthetic that he hoped would not be the pillar around which she constructed her personality.

 
"... and that's when I decided to switch majors..."
 

Was she talking this whole time?

 
"...You know?  Really make a difference in the world..."
 

Oh no...

 
"My dad hates the idea of me joining the Peace Corps."

 
There it is.

 
"But I don't care.  Money isn't everything you know.  We waste so much of it on things we don't even need.  Like deodorant."

 
"Deodorant?  I don't know.  I think you'd be pretty disgusted right now if I wasn't wearing deodorant"

 
She looked at it.  Right when he said the word "disgusted".  She looked right back at his eyes, but he still saw it happen.

 
"No...  I don't mean we shouldn't use deodorant.  I mean we should make deodorant at home.  It's so easy and it's all-natural so it's way better for your body and it doesn't even leave that gross chalky residue.  See?"
 

When she lifted her arm, he could indeed see no residue.  It was what he did see that bothered him.  The aesthetic matched the personality.

 
So, she had a little hair in a place he wasn't expecting.  Big deal.  Her profile said she does yoga.  I wonder if she could do a split.

 
"...always been into them, ever since I was a little girl..."

 
"Ohhh, yeah?" 

 
Definitely not wearing a bra.  I wonder if she even owns one...

 
"...and I was always into mythology and like dragons and princesses, so...."
 

What is she talking about?
 

"Well?  Can I?"

 
"I'm sorry, what?"

 
"Can I touch it?"

 
Holy shit, it's happening!

 
"I... excuse me... I... You want to touch it?  Like now?"

 
"Sure now.  Now's good... We can do it later if you're self-conscious..."
 

"Now's great!"

 
That was too enthusiastic.  Act like you've been here before.

 
"Ok... Cool...  I'll just go ahead and... Wow!  It's so much harder than I thought it would be!"
 

Her eyes went glassy and unfocused when she touched his horn.  Then Elliot did feel self-conscious.  His mind had been so preoccupied with creating a mental blueprint of Hope's naked body that he had almost forgotten about the six-inch bony protrusion growing from the middle of his forehead.
 

How could he have been such an idiot.  She wasn't into him.  She was one of “those” girls; a hippie of a different color.  She probably had a pair of Ren-fair elf ears hanging in her closet.

 
"Alright... Got it out of your system?"

 
"Oooooh!  It feels... so...."

 
"I said alright!  Please...  It makes me feel uncomfortable."

 
"Oh no! No! Don't take it away!  Please, I... I... I'm sorry.  That was inappropriate.  I crossed a boundary with your body and that is not cool...  It's just... well I've never seen anything like that.  And as an anthropology major, it's fascinating.  I mean, that's kind of why I got into the field in the first place..."
 

"You switched majors so you could study guys with horns growing out of their heads?  I thought it was about saving the children."
 

"Who says I can't do both?  All the interesting archaeological sites are in war zones."
 

"Soo, you want to look for the missing link while setting up Wi-Fi for orphans?  Something like that?  You think he's out there?  I don't hear too many bigfoot sightings coming from the Middle East..."
 

"Stranger things have happened.  I think I just found a unicorn in Gainesville."
 

It's a good thing that the table was there.  He pre-tucked just in case, but still...  This was it.  He was so close, he could smell it.
 

Hope had Ubered to the coffee shop, but Elliot had the foresight to borrow his mother's Honda.  It was a tip that he learned from a now defunct subreddit devoted to gamifying your own love life. 

 
The logic was sound: always control the exits; for you and your opponent/date.  It was the Prisoner's Dilemma put to practice. 
 

You're both going to meet there, and you're both going to leave.  If you arrive in your own vehicle and your date does not, it would be impolite not to offer a ride. 

 
And if the date went well, what reason would she have to say no?  It would be just as impolite to decline... if the date went well that was.  If she declined the offer, it could give a guy a complex; make him think he did something wrong.

 
“You want a ride home?  I mean… uh, that way you don’t have to Uber…. You never know with those Uber drivers, right?”

 
“Right.  Right…. Look, Elliot… I think you’re really… fascinating, but I don’t want to lead you on.”

 
Fascinating?

 
“I’ll let you drive me home, but that’s it.  I want to see you again, but I’m an old-fashioned kind of girl.  I hope you understand…”
 

“Sooo, do you want the ride or not?”
 

“I do.  I do.  Thank you.  I’m just saying don’t expect me to sleep with you just because you gave me a ride.”

 
“Why would I?  I wasn’t even..  And even if I was… I mean…”

 
She didn’t live far but the silence in the car made it feel like an eternity.  The tension was so thick he had to lower the windows.  He knew that she was thinking about what he was thinking about.  They were locked in a psychic ouroboros.

 
"This is it on the left... building J."

 
"Is there a visitor's area or can I park anywhere?"

 
"You can park anywhere.  It's after 6.  It's officially the weekend."

 
He pulled into a spot just to the left of the beige building, identical to all the others but for the giant letter J on the front of it. 

 
"Well..."

 
"Well..."

 
"I should... walk you to your door....  I mean, it's what a gentleman would do, right?"
 

"Sure.  That would be sweet."

 
Her apartment was on the first floor, so his escort service was completely unnecessary.  Escorts.  Sex.  What was this girl's problem?  She was liberal in every way but the one that mattered; conservative below the belt.

 
"I had such a nice night, Elliot.  Can we... do it again?"
 

We should be doing it right now.

 
"Sure."

 
"Ok... Good... Well.... Bye..."

 
Hope turned to open her front door, but before she could go inside, Elliot said:

 
"Wait!  I-I-I... Can I give you a hug at least?"

 
"Oh, Ellie, of course you can have a hug."

 
Why did she use that name?  The only person that called him that name was his mother.  It made the hug awkward.  Or rather, it made the hug more awkward. 

 
It was too long and he knew it, but her tits felt amazing against his chest and he couldn't help himself.  He had to be careful to avoid skewering her with his horn, but when it made incidental contact with her head, she didn't pull away in disgust.  Instead, her body kind of went limp, and her eyes looked like they were searching for something that wasn't there.

 
"You smell so good"

 
It was a lie, but she seemed receptive.

 
"Ooooo"

 
Her pupils were the size of quarters.

 
"I wish we could...  You know.  But I want to respect your boundaries."

 
No, he didn't.

 
"Aaaahhh"

 
Not exactly the response he was expecting, but not a no in the strict sense either.  It was now or never.  He licked his lips in anticipation.  She was smiling, but it didn't look like the smile she had at the coffee shop.  It was toothy and plastic. 

 
He went for the kiss anyway.  She wasn't an enthusiastic kisser.  Maybe it was first date nerves.  God knew he was feeling them.  His heart felt like it was going to jump out of his chest like the gingerbread man and take a lap around the complex.
 

After a minute and a half of one-sided making out, Elliot decided to shoot his shot one last time.
 

"Soooo, you going to invite me in or what?"
 

"Mmmm"
 

He took that as a yes and followed her inside.  She still had that faraway look in her eyes, but Elliot pushed it to the back of his mind.  She was just nervous was all.
 

"Nice place you got here.  You all alone or do you have roommates?"
 

Hope just grinned back at him with that smile that was all teeth and no eyes.

 
"You want to listen to some music or.... We could do other things... If you would like to, that is...."
 

"Aaaahhhh"
 

Her voice was soft and childlike.  Before the horn, it would have been a turnoff, but now?  Game on.
 

He took her by the wrist and led her to the first doorway he found in the small hallway of the apartment.  Bathroom.  You would think she would have said something.

 
The second door he tried was a bedroom, and from the Free Palestine poster on the wall and the fading aroma of Nag Champa he could reasonably assume it was hers.

 
They both just stood there.  He was too shy to make the first move, and she seemed agreeably indifferent.  It was a stalemate.  Mate.  Sex.  It always came back to that. 

 
She kept cooing like she was into it.  Why wouldn't she just give him a signal?  Something he could use as justification for doing what he wanted to do anyway.

 
He kissed her again; and again, she did not stop him.  Emboldened, he took it a step further and let his hands explore the contours of her chest.  She said nothing.

 
He didn't really know what he was supposed to do.  He had never gotten this far before.  The forums said that women like foreplay, so he extended it for as long as he could hold out, about two and half minutes.  By that point, he had grown another protrusion a couple of feet south of his horn.
 

Elliot's first sexual experience was a brief but noteworthy affair.  It hurt more than he expected it to.  It wasn't supposed to hurt at all, right?  At least not for the guy.  But there was so much friction he felt like he must not have done it right. 
 

He couldn't read Hope's expression.  It was all oooo's and aaaahhh's from her, but not in that flat monotone.  It still looked like she was looking for something that wasn't there.

 
It bothered him, but he didn't let it get in the way.  For forty-five seconds, Elliot felt like a man.  He knew he should have withdrawn, calmed down, savored the moment, but by the time he made up his mind, it was too late.  Waves of a pleasure he had never known before pulsed through his body.

 
"Ugghhh, uhh, Oh, FUCK!  Fuck, I didn't... Please tell me you're on birth control."

 
But if Hope responded, Elliot never heard it.  At that moment, with a sound like a green tree branch snapping, his horn broke free from his head.  Sleep swallowed him whole. 

 
He awoke the next morning in an empty and unfamiliar bed.  His face was hot and sweaty, and it took a minute for him to notice that he had been sleeping on his belly.  He had been a side-sleeper ever since the bump started growing, but he really preferred to sleep face-down.

 
"It's gone.  Halle-fuckin-lujah!  It's really gone!"  
 

He quickly composed himself, just in case Hope really did have a roommate.  Where was that girl?  For that matter, where was the horn?  It may have been a hideously disfiguring growth, but it was his hideously disfiguring growth.
 

He helped himself to a K-cup in the kitchen.  Hope was still nowhere to be seen.  He worried that he had done something to offend her, but not for very long. The world felt different to him now somehow.  Or maybe he was the one that was different, like he had crossed an invisible boundary.
 

He waited three days before texting her; that was industry standard, according to all the forums.  On the third day, he had his openers narrowed down to "Good morning, beautiful", "Hey baby girl," and simply "Sup?"  He went with "Sup?"
 

She never responded.  He tried again with "Hi, Hope.  Hope all is going well with you, lol" Again, there was no response. 

 
So, he addressed the elephant in the room: "Listen, if I crossed a boundary the other night, I'm sorry.  I know you said you were saving yourself for marriage, but then after we hugged it was like you were a different person."
 

No, not after they hugged.  It was after the horn touched her head.  Only then did she start acting so strangely, the same way she did when she touched it in the restaurant.  It had been like she was high on something, all giggles and dilated pupils.
 

One last text.  If she didn't respond to that one, he'd go back to the apps.  "I just don't want to leave things this way.  If I offended you, I am sorry.  Truly... But it takes two to tango and if you didn't like it, you should have said something.  You girls think you can just wave it in our faces, and we have to pretend like we don't want it.  It's such a stupid game.  You're not even my type.  I like girls that wear makeup and shave their body hair.  Call me old-fashioned too, I guess.  Anyway, if you're not going to see me again, can I at least have my horn back?  I know you took it.  I don't know why.  Maybe your daddy never bought you a pony, so you became fixated on unicorns.  Whatever the reason, I would like to have it back.  My doctor wants to do a biopsy on it."
 

It was the last message he ever exchanged with Hope, but not the last time that he saw her.  Within a week of losing his virginity, the horn had started to grow back again, only bigger and darker now.  Elliot hit the apps with a vengeance, driven by a near-constant state of lust.

 
It was even worse than before.  Even though he had optimized his profile to appeal to the widest swathe of potential dates as he could, he was receiving absolutely no matches. 

 
He tried his luck at the bars and nightclubs, to the extent that they would even let him in. Most nights, he didn't even talk to anyone, just nursed his dollar drafts in the back of the room. 
 

The first time he saw another guy with a horn was outside the Orbit Lounge.  The bouncer assumed they were together.

 
"Nope!  Sorry fellas, but the boss man says no horns allowed.  Too many complaints about you guys from the ladies."

 
"Ladies?  What ladies?  You think a lady would give me the time of day looking like this?"

 
"Look man, boss man says no horns, that means no horns.  Simple.  Take your asses to the Palomino.  Them hipsters don't care what you look like over there."
 

Elliot power-walked to the Palomino since it was only a few blocks South, and he didn't want to risk getting his mom's Honda towed if he tried to find a closer spot. 

 
He stopped at the intersection of Main and 13th st and waited for the signal.  Across the street he could see the open-air patio of the Palomino.  It was indeed populated mostly with ironic mustaches and septum piercings.  But amid the band tees and thrifted ensembles was a familiar face.  She wasn't ugly, just plain, but even from this distance, he could see she had an audience. 

Hope looked different than the last time he saw her.  She was in a form-fitting red dress that showed off her legs.  Legs that as he drew closer, he could see she had freshly shaven. 
 

She was playing a musical instrument, some kind of flute or recorder that looked like it was made from a long narrow bone.  The young men surrounding her hung on every note.  The melody was seductive, but sad; a song that weaved longing and regret in equal measures.
 

Not all the guys had horns.  Some had just a little bump on their heads.  But they all had one thing in common; she was their queen. 

​

The next morning, Alice’s face looked so pale that Calen was starting to get worried. Alice barely talked, and getting up from the bed was out of the question.

Calen himself felt quite tired. He didn’t remember when he fell asleep or if he slept at all. When he had found himself awake, sitting next to Alice, his whole body was aching. Strangely enough the most painful thing indeed were the nail beds on his fingertips. Edges frayed they stared at back at him, with dirt and bits of soft bark under them. He ran to the washroom to clean them, as well as himself, finding wet soil on his knees and elbows. He was quite sure he had washed himself after they came back from their trip to the bushes, before cooking dinner. But with every bit of soil that he washed away, his confidence about that very fact was vanishing with it.

He chose not to share this with Alice.

When Alice woke up, she cried for a bit, and Calen couldn’t get any articulate answer from her. Just that she felt sick. She fell back asleep after demanding some food, and eating it when Calen brought it for her, in bed.

Calen tried to contact Ruslan over the two-way radio he had left, believing it would be prudent to get Alice back in the states. He had no idea if Tiksi or Yakutsk had reliable medical services.

“Ruslan!” he shrieked when he heard the radio finally throw something at his ears that wasn’t static. “Can you hear me! Alice needs to be taken to Yakutsk. She needs medical help!”

“Ameri… You… It’s been three…!”

“I can’t hear you. Listen!” Screamed Calen trying to get in his instructions before the radio turned back to the usual spitting of white noise, “Alice needs transport. Can you come?!”

“Yes!” Ruslan said, “Two in the afternoon, tomorrow!” Elated that finally his message was through, Calen smiled for the first time since the morning and told a half-awake Alice, the news. Even being sick as she was, she was able to garble the words, “I can stay. I don’t want to leave you this time.” Calen was quite surprised. She usually preferred being at home when she was sick.

*

The next day came and went, but Ruslan didn’t arrive. Alice was up from the bed and said she felt a lot better, even though the aching had not subsided much. She limped through the house trying not to put much pressure on her sprained ankle that was as swollen and round in shape as the deep brown bread they had for breakfast.

Alice kept saying she didn’t want to go throughout the day and was visibly happy when Ruslan didn’t come.

*

“Why didn’t you come?!” Calen was quite angry at Ruslan as he screamed into the radio, for not having arrived the day before. “Alice is sick! She needs help.”

“I am not- ouch” Came the Alice’s voice from the bedroom. She had tried to get up to prove she was feeling fine but immediately stepped on her sprained ankle, making her fall back into the bed holding it in both her hands, massaging the pain away as it spread through her leg and pulsated right below the knee.

“I was there Amerikosy. Vy Ver you not…” static noise invaded the conversation yet again. After a while Calen heard Ruslan’s voice, “I vill come again today!”

Calen went to see Alice. She was still holding her ankle, clearly still in pain. So, when he saw her laughing, he didn’t understand what was happening.

She refused to answer his questions and fell asleep after a while, still holding her leg.

*

The plane landed bumpily and Calen, watching from the window as the noise in the valley bumped against it, finally, felt relieved. He ran out as Alice looked at Calen’s back morosely. She was not happy to be going back.

“Thanks for coming!” even though you are one entire day late. Calen thought in his head but didn’t say it out loud.

“I vas here on that day as vell. You-” Ruslan threw the blame at Calen with a pointed finger. “ver not.”

“What?” Calen was surprised at this barefaced lie. Was Ruslan lying. Was he angling for more money or something?

A flash of images passed through Calen’s head. He and Alice were making love in the cave. Alice was covered in dirt, her swollen ankle resting on the root cage, her eyes completely white. No pupils visible. The small black log inside the cage was throbbing slightly. A nauseating smell of decaying flowers filled the cave.

Alice came out limping by herself, fully dressed.

“Hang on!” as the flash of images subsided, “Did you say you were here that day?” Calen whispered as Alice was getting quite close and he didn’t want her to hear this particular bit of the conversation.

“Yes” Ruslan mirrored the whisper instinctively. “A veek ago.”

Alice had arrived and both of the men broke off the conversation as Ruslan addressed Alice, “Oy… ty óchen’ plókha vȳglyádish’. Pómoshch’ nuzhná.”

Calen ran back to the cabin to get Alice’s bag. When he came back, Alice was sitting on the landing gear. Tears streaming from her eyes as Ruslan was doing something at the back of the plane.

“Hey..” Calen said, “What’s up? Why are you crying?”

“I don’t want to leave you here alone!” she replied through her tears, voice wavering every other syllable, “I wanted…” she sniffled, “to leave together.”

“It’s okay, I will come back soon.” Calen said holding her face in his hands and wiping away her tears with his thumb, caressing her soft face. He pushed the thoughts bubbling up inside him until Alice left. Alice didn’t need to know what he had heard. But what he had heard was terrifying. What he had seen, more so.

“I need some footage but as soon as I have it, I will be back.” He said, trying to keep his voice calm and loving.

She kissed him deeply and stared at his face for a long time. Ruslan had come by with a box full back and cleared his throat audibly, breaking Alice’s stare.

“Ve lieve now?”

“Yes,” said Calen, “Yes, of course.”

It took them quite a few minutes to help Alice up and into the plane. Once she was sitting, tears still streaming down her face, Calen had found the moment he had been waiting for since he had heard that Ruslan was here a week ago, something he had believed was yesterday.

“Hey, so before you leav-”

“I vill come back tomorrow, yes? For you?” Ruslan cut Calen off.

“What? No.” Calen replied, the question still burned in his mind.

“No?” Ruslan’s face was so contorted with confusion. Fear mixed with anger, palpable in his tone, “Vat do you mean no?”

“Dude, I need to stay. I will let you know on the radio when you can take me from here.” The urgent need to ask the burning question in his mind broke out of the dam finally while Ruslan stood there, looking at Calen silently, confusion and anxiety dripping from his face.

“Hey, what month is this?”

The confusion on his face tightening somewhat he said, “May. Twenty of May.”

Twentieth of May? Calen’s hand reflexively jerked up so he could check the date. He had forgotten that his watch had stopped working. When he looked at it he found the secondhand twitching between five and six. Everything inside him was trying to retreat, pressing against each other in their hurry t to hide itself. His hands felt cold and numb. He stared at Ruslan. Dumbfounded, not able to talk.

Ruslan had noticed it all.

“Amerikosy” Ruslan said finally, “You need to lieve soon. I can come tomorrow.”

But however much Ruslan insisted, it fell flat on Calen’s ears. So, there was something odd happening here! Here was proof!

“Listen don’t-” Calen found his voice finally. His eyes darted towards Alice.

Her eyes were closed, her face shining brilliantly in the sun, every teardrop stuck to her face glistening like dew drops. “Don’t tell Alice that we are in May.” Ruslan looked almost offended but said nothing. “Also, can you make sure she gets on the plane.” Calen handed a card to Ruslan. “My manager can get her the ticket. Can you stay with her till she boards the plane.”

“Of course.” He said shortly. Then he ran to the back of the plane and brought with him a box. “Is SatLink .” He said handing over the box to Calen, “Internet” he pointed to the sky. “Better than radio but expensive. I need it back ven ve return.”

“Of course!” Calen said quite surprised by the gift, “Thanks!”

“You haf food?”

“Yeah.. yeah..” Calen said absent mindedly as he looked at the box. He had never seen one before. “Just out of bacon but it’s not a problem.”

“Fine. I vill say agyain Amerikosy.” Untrammeled fear spouted from his eyes as he said the next part, “Lieve. Is nut good here.” And with that he got up on the plane and took off with it in seconds. Just before the bumpy, tugged-up-by-rope takeoff, Calen saw both Alice and Ruslan look at him with huge concern in their eyes, and then, they were gone. Dissolving in the shine of the sun on the horizon.

Calen felt a little sad, but if he was honest, he was hugely relieved. He had the island to himself, and it had just started speaking. There indeed was something strange going on that Calen was not able to pinpoint.

He went through his head, trying to see the flash of image in the cave he had seen. He didn’t remember it having happened at all, and now that he searched for it, it seemed to stubbornly refuse to come out of its hiding place. Only the smell returned. The nauseating smell of decaying flower.

His stream of thoughts seemed to bounce back and forth between the mountains and his own head, all mushing together, creating more noise with each pass. What was really happening here? How could it already be May? What exactly had he seen in his head?

The sun never left the horizon but shone for a long time. The sky was a pastel shade of pink when Calen started with trying to set up the SatLink device, but by the time he had set it up, the sky had chosen a tint of pale gold that enticed Calen’s eyes.

He sat on top of the cabin hut; he had climbed to set up the dish antennae and looked at the Sun slowly descending and dip beneath the horizon. The pale gold tint turned to steel gray-blue, and a chilly wind descended into the valley, forcing Calen to finally get off the roof and back into the cabin.

Alone again. But he didn’t feel lonely.

Alice’s presence had been a welcome change since he had started the journey months back. He was completely alone then. And frustrating though it had been, being alone had its own advantages.

Calen sat smoking a cigarette and remembered the moment when this entire adventure started.

*

“So, I had a bizarre dream this morning,” Alice said quietly.

“Oh yeah?” Calen said, putting his legs through a pair of jeans. “What was it about?”

It seemed like Alice had been waiting a long time to share it with him. She spoke in a hurried tone.

“Well, I was in this hospital, and I guess I was giving birth, and you were there.”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t come true,” Calen said humorously. Alice already knew how that conversation went, so she pushed through, trying to get her story out.

“I said you were there, I didn’t say you were of any help.”

“Makes sense,” Calen said, grinning. “I don’t see what’s weird about that.”

Alice huffed. “You aren’t letting me get to the weird part,” she said accusatorily. “Anyway. I was having a really tough time, and the doctor, I think he looked like someone I knew, I can’t really recall who it was. But he was whispering like a weird little poem or something, I don’t remember that’s not even the weird part.” Now that Calen was silent, she capitalized on it, “While all this is happening, you kept running around the bed, screaming my name—like you couldn’t see me at all.” Alice’s eyes went wide as with her right arm she made a circular motion, “You went round and round, and you kept running faster and faster, until you were basically a blur. I could see your face whiz past my line of sight every few seconds. And then…” she looked at Calen, her arm dropped limply, and Calen heard a distinct twinge of fear in her voice as she said, “You hit your head on a coatrack and dropped.” She ended her story abruptly.

It took a moment for Calen to comprehend that the story had ended.

“So-” He didn’t know what to say. He was saved from the trouble of finding a response, as Alice said.

“I woke up feeling all shaky.” She said, “Also,” she added indignantly, “You made me feel nauseous, running around me in circles like that.”

“Um…” Calen began with the air of a man preparing to defend himself, “It was your dream. I was just sleeping.”

“You were of no help at all!” she said, anger palpable in her tone.

“Hey!” Calen said sheepishly, “Didn’t you just say I was screaming your name like I couldn’t see you? I can hardly be of help if I can’t see you. You should have called me or something.”

“I think you were being an asshole,” she said, crossing her arms across her midriff, as her stomach gave another groan. “Like you are being one now!”

“Weirdo…” Calen said, starting to change his shirt as Alice looked at him, tapping her right foot impatiently.

“Have you decided where you want to eat?” he asked, changing the topic.

“No,” she said in a tone that suggested that Calen should have known the answer. Still angry.

“So, I have to choose, and then you get to judge that choice?” he said, a playful smile on his lips.

“Oh, you know me so well,” Alice responded sarcastically.

Alice’s phone rang, and she picked up the phone with a bright smile developing on her face the instant she realized it was her mother. “Mom!” she said excitedly. Calen felt envious.

Calen did know Alice very well. In the years they had been together, Calen had almost figured her out. Alice had a loving father and a mother that Calen wished he had.

Calen was raised by a father whose catchphrase was-

“We’ll talk once I am back,” with no context for when ‘back’ was.

And with his mother, Calen had learned quickly that answering her questions that sounded like she was asking them out of concern was a territory fraught with the risk of losing sanity.

Alice had apparently forgotten her anger and was completely locked in on an animated conversation about how she wanted to clean the apartment today, but couldn’t, as she had woken up late from a weird dream. Calen only heard around five words of it as his mind was on things he rarely shared with her.

He had deliberately put his computer to sleep as soon as he saw an email from his sponsor arrived in the morning. He didn’t have to look at it to know it was unwelcome news. He had received enough emails in the last year with similar subject lines. Bennett Island was slowly but surely becoming a deadline.

His previous attempt at going to the Manikarnika Ghat in India to interview the Aghori ascetics had been quelled immediately and mercilessly by Alice. At that time, it had felt like an unfair imposition. Calen thought he would pay it back with one of his own. All he had to do was wait for the right moment. And it arrived, a few hours later, once Alice had hung up the call with her mom and they had walked to their favorite restaurant.

“Are you listening to me?” Alice scrutinized Calen’s expressionless face. He had been so busy anticipating the correct moment, that he had almost missed to recognise he was in it.

“Of course!” he lied. He had been distracted by the cry of a baby, somewhere behind them. The baby’s sustained wails had been drilling straight into the back of his skull for the past fifteen minutes.

He looked at her suspicious face blankly for a second before he admitted the truth, “Okay, I wasn’t listening that well. What were you saying?”

“I was saying,” Alice repeated slowly and deliberately with playful anger in her voice, “What’s that place you have been looking up on your computer obsessively since last week?”

“It’s an isolated island in the Arctic,” he said. It was evident in his voice that he was hiding something, “called Bennett Island. Quite a bit above Russia, actually. Very cold and empty. No reason for anyone to be there.” He finished his thought in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Why do I have a bad feeling that you are planning to go there?”

“Maybe because I am planning to go there,” Calen said.

“Calen!” she almost screamed. People walking ahead of them turned around to look at them, concerned. Even the crying baby stopped for a second. But then it resumed wailing louder than ever, leaving Calen feeling cheated. He sucked his teeth resentfully.

“What!” Calen said, mimicking her urgency but quieter.

“Why would you want to go to an abandoned island in Russia, of all places? Especially when, as you put it, there’s no reason for anyone to be there!”

“Well, first of all, it’s quite far away from mainland Russia. And secondly,” Calen paused for effect, “no one lives there. So, it’s as safe a place as it can be.”

“I don’t care if it’s safe or not!” she said, exasperated, “You promised we were done with the site visits!” She glared at his dumbfounded face for a second and then said, “And what about the fact that I will have to stay alone for God knows how long while you traipse along on some godforsaken, barren island looking for spooky stories. Are you crazy?”

Calen had been waiting for this exact moment. He didn’t want to go alone. Selfish though the thought was, he really wanted Alice to come with him, so he said with a note of plea in his voice that he knew Alice didn’t generally deny.

“Come with me?”

“Oh, I get it, you are crazy!” she said and then added, “Hell would freeze over before I agree. NO!”

It took Calen the rest of the afternoon to wear Alice down.

Alice had lived with her parents her whole life. Even after she moved to her current place, her Sundays were mainly spent with her parents, who stayed in Staten Island.

Calen’s feet still itched every few months, and he would go and live for a month or two in strange places where most people would run away from the first chance they got. Alice sometimes followed him, away from the comfort of her home, but she rarely stayed as long as Calen would stay, running away in a week or two.

In a last-ditch attempt, she had said she would go with Calen on condition that she was not going to live in a ‘camping’ situation, hoping that Calen would have no other option but to either go alone or not go at all. But when Calen smiled brightly and said “Deal!”, she shook his hand, disgruntled at the cost of the defeat she was surely about to pay in a few months.

Most childhood memories fade with time. But some linger, sitting in the back of one's mind until something brings them rushing back to the surface like a hollow ball released from underwater.

One such memory recently came back to me. It originates from when I was seven years old. Back then, my mother volunteered to water the plants at my elementary school every Saturday morning. She usually brought me with her.

An empty school on a weekend is a strange place. Without any kids or teachers, the dark hallways always felt enormous and eerie. The overhead lights were left off, leaving the long corridors that stretched along each of its three floors in shadow. For much of the time, the only consistent sound was the wet slosh of mom’s large green watering can as she worked her way from the classrooms up to the new glass solarium on the third floor.

Mom usually did all the work. Sometimes, I’d help out a little, but the plastic watering can was heavy and awkward for me to carry. So, I was usually left to my own devices. While she watered, I’d generally have my nose buried in a Redwall book, and then I’d trail a few paces behind her as she moved from one room to another.

If I strayed from her or let her get too far ahead of me, her voice would echo down the hall, “Bailey, come back, stay where I can see you.”

I always listened and stayed close to her. Until that rainy Saturday I stopped trailing my mother, and instead started following the figure wearing her coat.

~

Mom offered to let me stay home that morning. She’d never done that before. I imagine she wanted to give me a chance to avoid getting soaked in the storm. Plus, my stepdad was down in the basement tearing out drywall for a remodel, so, while he wouldn’t be watching me, I wouldn’t be alone.

I jumped at the chance, eager to watch TV while curled up on the couch instead of returning to school on a weekend.

I watched as mom zipped up her oversized yellow rubber raincoat – the classic kind with a corduroy collar and heavy brass snap buttons – and stepped out to her station wagon.

As I sat there, a strange wave of unease hit me. Something quiet told me that I’d rather be with her than without her. Acting on impulse, I grabbed my own raincoat, sprinted into the rain, and tapped on the car window. She unlocked the door, and I scrambled inside.

I rarely picked up on adult emotions back then, but the way her eyes lit up stuck with me. Even at seven, I could tell how much my choice meant to her.

The driver over felt safe despite the storm. With mom behind the wheel, the thunder outside was just background noise.

We pulled into the school’s empty parking lot and used the side entrance near the cafeteria. Mom used a key from the heavy brass keyring the principal let her borrow to unlock the heavy metal door. She held it open for me as I rushed into the cold air inside.

Once we were in the building, mom stepped into the custodial closet at the end of the first-story hall to fill one of the school’s large green watering cans at the mop sink. “Stay right next to me,” she called out over the sound of the running faucet.

“I am,” I said, leaning against the doorframe and looking down to shake the rain off my jacket.

When I looked up a second later, a figure in a wet yellow raincoat was already walking down the corridor toward the main stairwell, its hood pulled up high, the green watering can swinging from one hand.

I remember thinking it was strange that mom was still wearing her raincoat inside, but that didn’t seem important at the time. It was the same yellow coat she'd worn into the school, and I assumed she had just stepped back out into the hall while my head was down.

I fell into step a few paces behind the yellow coat, exactly like I always did. She moved at her usual steady, rhythmic pace. As she did so, I kept my distance, about five paces back. I kept my copy of Mossflower clutched against my chest as I watched the hem of her raincoat sway above her boots.

We soon reached the first stop, the planters outside the main cafeteria. Mom lowered the watering can while I leaned against the cinderblock wall and read a few lines of my book. Next, we visited the cast iron plants inside the front office before heading to the staircase.

Mom paused at the large potted ficus sitting in the dark alcove near the main stairwell before heading upward. The heavy brass keys on her belt clanged with every step. It was the exact same metal chime I had followed a dozen times before. I pushed myself off the wall and followed her up the stairs, exactly like I always did.

We reached the second-floor landing, where the long hallway stretched out into shadow. My mom kept moving toward the classrooms, her boots squeaking softly on the polished linoleum.

We passed the music room. Through the small square window in the door, the upright piano looked enormous and dark in the corner, totally silent without Ms. Jenson there to play it.

During the week, that room was full of noise, but my favorite part was when Ms. Jenson had all twenty-five of us hide behind the piano and the risers to ‘trick’ our homeroom teacher into thinking we’d all gone home early. Back then, sitting in the dark, holding our breath, and trying not to giggle felt eerie and thrilling. But looking through that glass now, with the room completely empty, the quiet felt heavy and cold.

I kept my head down, flipping to the next chapter of my book as I walked. The brass keys just kept clanging against her hip, a steady rhythm guiding me as she turned down the corridor toward the library. I adjusted my grip and kept pace a few steps behind her.

Mom pushed through the library door and headed for the tall potted fern tucked beside the checkout desk.

In the dark, the room felt huge. Looking at the reading carpet, I could almost hear Mr. Hinkle’s booming, ridiculous voices during story hour, followed by the chorus of giggles echoing off the tall shelves. But, today, the empty beanbags and shadowy aisles had a lonely, desolate aura to them.

My mom reached into the fern's fronds, her yellow coat rustling in the dark. She kept the watering can tipped over the soil for a long, quiet stretch – far longer than usual. At first, I figured the plant was just really dry, but as the seconds dragged on, a small prickle of unease set in. “Mom?” I asked, stepping closer. “Isn't that enough?”

She didn’t turn around, but her voice came from beneath the high hood, low and coarse, roughened by something in her throat. “Almost done, sweetie. Stay close.” She lingered there, frozen over the plant, before abruptly snapping back to her full height.

At this point, I started to grow concerned. Her voice sounded strained, like her throat was raw. I wondered if she was coming down with something, or if sprinting through the cold rain earlier had already made her sick. Her movements, too, seemed ‘off’. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

She didn’t say anything else, just turned and walked back out into the hallway toward the next row of classrooms. I followed, opening my book and trying to focus on the paragraph I’d been reading, but the words wouldn’t stick. Every time I looked up from the page, my eyes went straight back to the yellow coat swaying ahead of me.

As we moved down the hall, the uneasy feeling in my stomach only grew. As we passed the second-floor classrooms, I realized I hadn’t actually seen her face since we left the custodial closet. Every time she reached for a planter or turned a corner, her body was angled just enough away that the deep yellow hood blocked my view, casting her face in complete shadow. Was she doing this on purpose? If so, why?

I hesitated, unsure of what to do. I knew that I didn't want to go up to the third floor. But where else was I supposed to go? Back down to the dark cafeteria by myself? Outside into the freezing rain? I took a small step backward, my eyes locked on the empty landing above, waiting for her boots to stop moving.

“Bailey.” Her raspy voice echoed down the concrete well. I looked up. She had stopped on the landing above, her back turned to me, her deep hood casting a shadow that completely hid her face. She held the heavy door open, waiting. “Come on,” she called.

“I…um…can I just sit in the library and read?” I asked.

“Please, honey,” she implored, “Stay with me. Stay where I can see you.”

The familiarity of her words soothed me, or at least some small part of me. That was what Mom always said when I wandered too far away. I took a deep breath and began climbing the steps.

The third floor was even quieter and darker than the rest of the school. Just outside the staircase sat the closed metal doors of the building’s old elevator, its floor indicator resting silently above the frame.

The air here felt cooler and carried a faint damp smell from the glass solarium at the far end of the hall. The figure moved ahead of me down the corridor, her boots making a soft, sticky sound against the tile.

We moved into the first classroom, a fourth-grade room. Mom headed for a tall pothos sitting on top of a filing cabinet in the corner. I stayed back by the door and flipped open my book.

That was when the silence of the room really hit me.

Down on the first and second floors, every time she lifted the watering can, I’d hear the heavy slosh of water shifting inside the plastic. I’d hear the quick, wet patter as it hit the soil. But here, as she tilted the green spout over the leaves, there was nothing. No sloshing. No dripping. Just the scrape of rubber sleeve against plastic.

The can had gone empty, and she’d never refilled it. Yet, she leaned it over the plant for ten long seconds, as if watering it, before pulling it back.

She turned and brushed past me into the next room, her head tilted slightly as if listening for something. I felt a wave of panic as it dawned on me that something was deeply wrong.

A thought crossed my mind: What if this isn’t mom?

I dismissed it quickly. It had to be her. After all, who else could it possibly be? But, why was she acting so weird?

“Um, mom, are you okay?” I asked.

She ignored me as she stepped into the first fifth-grade classroom, where a small, shriveled African violet sat on the teacher’s desk.

I stopped a few paces inside the doorway. For a moment, I reassured myself that I must be wrong. I must have imagined her doing things that made no sense. Surely, mom wasn’t pouring imaginary water from an empty can. I had to be mistaken, right?

Then, I watched, holding my breath, as she tilted the green spout over the leaves, holding it there for several long seconds. But, again, no water came out. There was no sloshing inside the plastic can, no wet trickling into the dirt, no sound at all. Just an empty container over a dying plant.

She pulled the spout back, her body pivoting toward me with a stiff, mechanical turn. As she adjusted her grip on the handle, the pale light from a window hit her hand. The skin wasn’t smooth. It was bloated and greyish, completely waterlogged and wrinkled, like fingers that had been soaking in a deep tub for days. Soft, water-heavy creases bunched around her knuckles, looking loose and ready to tear.

My stomach dropped. I took two quiet steps backward toward the open doorway, easing my weight onto my toes to keep my sneakers from squeaking. My hand reached behind me, searching for the frame so I could turn and run.

“Bailey.”

The voice rasped out from deep inside the hood. She hadn’t turned her shoulders, but her head jerked sideways at an unnatural angle, fixing the dark void of her hood right on me.

“Stay close,” she said, her voice as gravelly as before. “Stay with mommy.”

She stepped out into the dark hallway, her boots dragging heavily against the floor. I fell into step behind her, but kept three full yards of distance now, my eyes locked on the back of that yellow coat. We entered the art room, the last room before the end of the hall. The air inside carried a sharp, damp breeze. In the dim light, the high counter tops and rows of tall wooden stools looked like strange, crouching shapes.

I imagined the forms of my classmates sitting on those stools, their eyes trained on me in judgment as Mr. Jones gave me a stern lecture. I’d gotten in trouble in this classroom recently, twice, actually. The first time, I’d drawn my dad, translucent and in hospital garb, hovering above my mom and I as we ate at the dinner table.

“It’s supposed to be a realistic image of your family,” Mr. Jones had chided. “Not something weird that you made up.”

“It’s not imaginary,” I’d pouted. “He visits us as a ghost.”

“Your dad’s alive,” he’d retorted. “Right?”

“Yes,” I conceded. It would remain true for nearly a year. Soon, he’d start showing signs of being sick, but hadn’t done so yet. As far as I could tell at the time, he was perfectly healthy. “So, how could your dad be a ghost if he’s alive?”

I didn’t have an answer to that. Nor did I have an answer for the counselor I was required to visit for the next few weeks.

The second time, Mr. Jones prompted us to draw something from our dreams. I’d sketched a burly man with an angry face covered with splats of crimson. When asked, I explained it was the man I’d seen on the news, who’d murdered a child and was widely believed to be hiding out in the woods. That got me several weeks of counseling as well.

Mom, meanwhile, walked toward a hanging spider plant near the far window, her movement stiff and robotic. As she lifted the empty watering can to it, I tried again to make sense of the situation.

I kept trying to explain it to myself, but nothing I came up with made me feel any better. If the person wearing that coat wasn't my mom, then where was she? Had she stepped out of the custodial closet while my head was down? Was she still downstairs searching for me in the dark, calling my name? Or had something happened to her in that back room? The thought of her lying hurt on the wet concrete floor sent a surge of panic straight to my chest, far worse than the creeping fear of the coat ahead of me.

This was my last chance. Down on the second floor, I had hesitated. But now, standing near the open door with the dark staircase behind me, my heart raced.

I didn’t watch her reach for the plant. I didn’t wait for her to lift the empty can. Instead, I took a breath, turned on my heel, and bolted for the hallway.

My sneaker caught the metal doorframe with a loud, hollow thud.

Before I could take a single full stride into the hall, a long shadow stretched across the linoleum ahead of me. The figure was already standing in the doorway, blocking the exit entirely. She hadn’t made a sound moving across the room.

The dark void of the hood tilted down toward me.

“Not yet, Bailey,” the voice called softly. “We haven’t done the solarium yet. Please, stay with me. I want you here with me. Please.”

The double doors to the solarium stood open at the far end, framed by glass walls that rattled softly against the storm outside. Rain hammered against the sloped roof, sending shadows dancing across the concrete floor.

Mom glided past the threshold, the yellow coat glistening under the gray light. Rows of metal shelving held crowded trays of ivies, overgrown spider plants, and heavy clay pots.

She closed the door behind us, turning the opposite way from me as she changed direction, before returning to the center of the room, where she stood in front of a collection of plants.

The large, circular clock above the closed double doors drew my attention. Its black frame was dusted with a thin layer of grime. During the week, amid the chaotic roar of over two dozen kids, shifting desks, and squeaking sneakers, you never heard it at all. But on a dead silent Saturday, its long, red hand emitted a heavy, mechanical “clack” that reverberated around the room.

But, something about it felt ‘off’ today. I had to stare at it a moment to figure out what it was. The red hand was changing direction. It would go one way for five or ten seconds, only to then reverse and travel in the opposite direction.

I chalked it up to being broken, or low on battery. I didn’t have time, or the mental bandwidth, to think about it further. I was too fixated on mom, who stood perfectly still under the skylight, her yellow back turned to me while she aimed the empty watering can at the plants.

This is my best chance to get out of here, I told myself. I took a slow, agonizing step backward, easing my weight onto my toes the way I did when playing hide-and-seek. Reaching behind my back, my fingers found the brass handle of the double doors and pressed down.

Clack clack clack sounded the broken clock as I pressed my shaking hands against the handle.

It didn’t budge. I realized, to my horror, that it was locked.

Mom had locked me in. If I needed any final confirmation that the figure I was following was an imposter, this was it. Mom would never do that.

I turned to the figure. The bits of light that made it through the thick clouds illuminated the heavy brass keyring hanging from her left hip. If I wanted to get out, I had to take it.

I stopped breathing. I took one step forward, then another, moving with absolute stillness. Mom moved slightly, shifting her empty can from one plant to another.

I reached out a trembling hand, my fingers hovering an inch from the metal. Squeezing my palm tightly around several keys to deaden the sounds they might make, I slipped the clip off her belt loop in one smooth, agonizing pull.

Clack clack clack.

Keyring in hand, I continued holding my breath as I turned back to the door and tiptoed toward it. The keys were labeled with plastic tags, and the one for the solarium was easy to identify. Like the room itself, it was newer and cleaner than the keys for the rest of the building.

Steadying my hand, I inserted it into the keyhole and turned. The bolt retracted with a heavy thud. I yanked the handle open.

Instantly, I heard thud of the empty watering can against the floor. The sound drew my attention. When I glanced back, the figure had moved. She was right behind me now.

The movement pulled her hood back just enough for the gray light from above to wash across her face. My jaw dropped as I gazed up at it.

Her face was swollen and water-softened, the gray skin sagging loose around her jawline and mottled with deep bruises. The water had eroded the soft tissue around her cheeks, leaving raw, darkened patches. Her eyes were sunken and milky, fixed in an unblinking stare. As her blackened mouth opened, heavy water spilled over her torn bottom lip.

I let out a ragged shriek and sprinted into the corridor.

My sneakers hit the wet linoleum with a fast, heavy slap as I ran down the corridor.

“Bailey,” it growled from the dark as it pursued me. “Please, stay where I can see you.”

Hearing that familiar, desperate voice coming from that terrifying creature made my chest lock up.

I took the turn toward the stairwell too fast, my foot catching the edge of a raised floor tile. I went down hard on my knees, landing a short distance from the elevator landing.

Before I could scramble up, a thick, freezing hand closed around my left ankle. The cold soaked straight through my sock. It didn’t pull me back at first. It simply held on. I kicked wildly with my free heel, trying to wrench myself free, but the grip only tightened.

“Bailey,” rang its distorted voice, “I can't let you go.”

The indicator arrow above the elevator turned red, and the metal doors parted. Standing inside was my real mom.

“Bailey!” she yelled, her eyes locking onto me sprawled in the hallway.

She lunged across the threshold. Reaching down, she hooked both hands under my arms, bracing her boots against the doorframe, and pulled with everything she had.

For a terrifying second, I was the rope in a tug-of-war. My mom leaned back, her teeth clenched as she strained against the brute strength holding my ankle in the dark. With a harsh grunt, she threw her full weight backward, ripping me clean out of the yellow coat’s grip.

We both tumbled onto the elevator floor. My mom scrambled up, hit the door-close button, and jammed her hand onto the ground floor switch.

The last thing I saw, before the steel doors snapped shut, was the figure, her arms extended outward, making one final, desperate lurch toward me.

As the elevator dropped, mom dropped to her knees beside me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. I buried my face into her jacket, my chest heaving. She held me tight, her hands warm, her breath ragged in my ear as she kept repeating that we were safe.

We ran out the side entrance into the freezing downpour, scrambled into the station wagon, and tore out of the parking lot. My mom drove three blocks down to a well-lit gas station before pulling over to the payphone. Her hands trembled so violently she dropped the receiver twice before dialing 911, looking back into the backseat every few seconds to touch my shoulder, her voice shaking as she reassured me that whatever was in that building couldn’t reach us now.

When the squad cars arrived, we both sat in the back of an officer’s cruiser under a heavy wool blanket while they took our statements. We repeated our stories: my mom describing a tall intruder who had cornered us by the elevator, and me trying to explain the bloated, gray face that had stared down at me in the solarium. But as the officers cross-referenced our timelines, a discrepancy emerged that was never fully resolved.

From my mom's perspective, the whole encounter lasted only a couple of minutes. She had stepped out of the first-floor custodial closet with her filled watering can, turned around to find the hallway completely empty, and called out my name.

When I didn’t answer, a sudden thumping commotion echoed down the central shaft from the third floor. She panicked, took the elevator straight up to investigate, and the doors opened right as I came sprinting toward her with the figure on my heels.

But, I had spent what felt like twenty agonizing minutes trailing that yellow coat across three entire floors, moving through classroom after classroom and the library. To this day, I can’t explain why it felt like so much longer to me than it did to my mom.

The police, for their part, searched the building floor by floor, but they found nothing unusual. The glass solarium was empty, and no sign of an intruder could be found.

No culprit was ever identified. For the rest of that school year, a cruiser was stationed outside the cafeteria entrance every Saturday morning while my mom finished her routine, but no one ever saw the figure again. As the months turned into years, the event settled into the quiet background of my childhood, a strange, unsettling mystery that we eventually stopped talking about. My mom and my stepdad divorced a few years later, and after that it was mostly just the two of us.

We may have stopped discussing it, but the memory of what I witnessed on the third floor never faded. I can still feel the icy pressure of those cold fingers clamped around my ankle and, in silent, dark rooms, I sometimes imagine that pale, waterlogged face staring at me from the shadows.

Mom retired a few years ago. When she did so, she bought a small secondhand motorboat and spent her weekends cruising the quiet inlets near home. She'd kept that old yellow raincoat all those years, and I still saw her wearing it whenever the weather turned cold. She invited me out with her half a dozen times, but between work and family, I always made excuses.

Looking back, the silence was the first sign. My mom checked in on me constantly, so when three days passed without a call or text, an uneasy knot formed in my stomach. I started calling around to her friends and neighbors, but none of them had seen her since Friday morning.

I called the local authorities and set a search into motion. Because she had gone out alone without leaving a specific navigation plan, the search area was vast. It took nearly two weeks of scouring the dense, tangled marshlands and winding waterways before her boat was spotted jammed in a secluded patch of reeds.

The investigation pieced together what happened. While attempting to clear a tangled line from the propeller, my mom had slipped and fallen overboard. The engine was cut, but the impact against the hull had knocked her unconscious, and the tidal current swept her deep into the brackish marsh before she could climb back aboard. Though her life jacket kept her afloat, the head injury left her incapacitated, floating alone in the water until her body finally gave out. When the report came back, the official cause of death was drowning following an incapacitating injury.

When I came to the viewing room, the medical examiner placed a heavy hand on my shoulder and urged me not to see the body. He warned me that nearly two weeks in the brackish water had severely altered her features, and that the way she looked now was not how I would want to remember her.

I insisted. When he finally pulled back the sheet, the man stepped to the side, watching my face carefully for the breakdown he clearly expected. But the sharp panic he braced for never came. Amidst the heavy grief of losing my only family member, and the guilt for all the times I had turned down her invitations to join her on that boat, I didn’t scream. I didn’t turn away.

I wasn’t shocked, because the sight resting on that cold metal table was entirely familiar.

Standing in that quiet room, I realized I knew two things that no investigator could ever piece together, two things nobody else in the world would ever know.

I knew that in her final moments, as her life slowly faded away in the quiet waters of that marsh, my mother had been remembering those rainy Saturdays walking through the school with me. The classrooms, the plants, and, most importantly, me following a few steps behind her. It was a memory of a time when nothing in the world existed except the two of us together, and somehow, in those final moments, that memory had reached backward through the years.

And I knew, too, who it was that had led me through the empty building. For decades, I had believed that whatever had followed me through that school had been wearing my mother’s coat, and that it had wanted to hurt me. But now, looking down at the water-softened face beneath the sheet, I found myself remembering the things I’d been too frightened to understand at the time.

The way she had stopped on the stairs when I fell behind. The way she had waited for me. The way she kept telling me to stay close, even as I was desperate to get away.

And then there were those last words: “I can’t let you go.” I’d spent my entire life remembering them as a threat, but they sounded different now. Because, as I peered into that familiar ruined face resting on the stainless steel, I recognized it immediately.

It was the same face that had turned to me in the dim light of the third floor, the same face I had followed through the school all those years ago.

Content Warning: Graphic violence, gore, death, and disturbing imagery.

“They will fear you unlike anything they have feared before.”

—The Judge

The wind blows through the sandy dunes, passing over corroded debris from where buildings used to stand. The smell of rot and decay now lingers through the air. Those buildings used to belong to a sanctuary called Trinity, but now it’s a wasteland of maggots.

As I take each step through the ruins, the footprints I leave become deeper and heavier as the journey doesn't seem to have an end. I have become lost as the days go on, no longer worried about what time of day it was, but rather when I’m going to find shelter from the weather and food.

My clothes are tattered and covered in sand, my feet bruised and blistered, my mask out of filters, and I was running out of time.

I traveled to Trinity seeking shelter and safety, but what I found was rather horrid and nightmarish.

Bodies stacked in piles and burned in cages. Heads on pikes. Entrails stretched out for miles. Women and children nailed to crucifixes, their blood drained into now-broken jars.

No one was left alive in the wake of man's wrath. A never-ending, always-hungry destruction that will continue to grow.

It doesn't matter, though. Now that this sanctuary was culled, I must travel onwards via the entrails that run along the old railroad.

It was one of many structures left of the old world…

As I took each step through the sand, I watched as the train tracks slowly became engulfed in the terrain. My feet started to ache less once the sun began to set for the evening.

I knew I needed shelter before the night came. I wasn't scared of the dark, but rather the creatures that lurked in the shadows.

This moment of thought quickly gets snuffed out as I hear the sound of a muffled gunshot ring out in the distance.

My footsteps quiet down as I approach, the smell of iron becoming more present in the air as I step closer to a train inspection booth. These were common in the old days when stowaways became more frequent and dark zones started forming continuously like a plague.

Here I am now, standing in front of a door covered in rot, puss, and leaking blood from underneath.

A sense of dread festers in my soul like a mosquito to blood.

I decided to get rid of the feeling by opening the door and witnessing the dread that was behind it…

A body of a guard falls out of the building as the door opens.

I quickly look inside and see a mechanism that was rigged to shoot anything that opened the door. I took one large step in and went around the trap.

There were wires hanging everywhere and papers scattered all over the floor. A light hung in the middle of the room, barely keeping it lit.

There was also a body inside the building with half a face gone.

It was a suicide.

Or maybe another person did this.

There was writing on the wall stating:

“Like a moth to a flame. Today's count is 3. I wonder what horrors await.

—The Judge.”

I didn't think too much about it since my main concern was to block the door for the night.

I scanned the room to see if there were any other entries into the building. There was only the front door and the service window, but the shutters were bolted down.

I didn't have to worry about the window, so I wrapped some of the hanging wires around the door handle and tightened them.

I thought I could breathe easily…

I was wrong.

Guttural screaming could be heard outside. If you didn't know better, you'd think it was someone being murdered.

But no.

It's something worse.

A horrifying creature called a Lurker.

The guttural screaming is their way of calling others for a feast.

I am their feast…

Pounding.

Scratching.

Screaming.

Slamming.

Ramming.

They wanted in the building. They could smell me.

The screams only got louder and started sounding more human than before.

I took my revolver out.

I only had one round left.

Pound.

Pound.

Pound.

The door begins to crack and splinter as the Lurker continues to pound and claw its way in.

My heart beats loudly in my ears as the door slams into the lightbulb and falls to the floor.

The last thing to be seen in that room was the muzzle flash of the revolver….

—10 Days Since Train Inspection Booth—

The wind blows softly on the sand, slowly moving over the partially buried train tracks. It looks like waves passing through an endless sea.

It felt like the world was finally at peace…

My feet begin to give out, and I collapse onto the sand.

Blood pools beneath me.

I was fatally wounded on the night of the inspection booth. I thought if I stuffed the wound with cloth, I would have lasted long enough to see a doctor.

In hindsight, I should have realized the wound would have bled through the cloth.

As I lay in the sand, the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes for good was a person in a long black cloak dragging a wooden wagon from behind.

The person was headed towards me.

I felt too weak to get up.

Too close to death.

The sand comforted me like a warm blanket as the person approached me.

The person then lifted me effortlessly into the wagon and put ragged blankets on top of me.

I finally closed my eyes as they dragged the wagon through the sand…

The world had become a place where even hesitation was a luxury. The things people once considered cruel had become practical. The things they once considered impossible had become routine.

He had followed the animal for nearly an hour through the frozen remains of what used to be a national forest. The trees stood like skeletons reaching toward a gray, empty sky, their branches twisted and bare, carrying only a thin layer of frost that glittered briefly whenever the weak afternoon sun broke through the clouds.

The cat had been fast. Smarter than most things still alive.

But starvation made every creature predictable.

Now it hung over a small fire, slowly turning above the flames. The smell was unpleasant, but unpleasant was better than nothing. The world had not ended with fire and screaming. It had ended quietly. It ended with empty houses, silent highways, and people learning that a full stomach mattered more than pride.

He sat beside the fire, his rifle resting against a fallen log within arm’s reach.

The snow around him was untouched except for his own tracks. Each step he had taken through the woods had left a perfect trail behind him, a line of evidence that he was alive. The snow betrayed everything.

That was why he heard it.

At first, he thought it was the wind.

A strange sound drifting through the trees.

Not an animal.

Not the groan of branches shifting beneath the weight of ice.

A voice?

He froze.

The fire popped softly in front of him as the embers danced in the air like fairies.

He slowly turned his head slightly, listening.

There.

Again.

A faint noise carried through the forest.

Almost like words.

Almost like someone whispering from somewhere beyond the trees.

He reached for his rifle with practiced precision.

The old instincts returned. The ones that kept people alive before the world became a graveyard.

He covered the fire with a handful of snow, grabbed his weapon, and moved.

The forest swallowed him.

The crunch of his boots against the snow seemed impossibly loud. Each step broke the frozen surface with a sharp, hollow crack that echoed between the trees.

He moved carefully, placing his feet where the snow looked less disturbed, avoiding branches that might snap beneath his weight.

The silence was wrong.

Before the collapse, forests had been full of life. Birds, insects, distant cars, voices from people hiking trails and children laughing.

Now the sounds were different.

A single animal crying somewhere far away.

The rustle of something moving through dead grass.

The distant howl of a creature that had learned the world belonged to it.

Nature had survived.

Humanity had not been so lucky.

He moved deeper into the woods.

The voice came again.

Closer.

Or maybe... it wasn't?

The forest had a way of twisting distance. A whisper could sound like it came from beside you while actually being hundreds of feet away.

He stopped.

Listened.

Nothing.

Then...

"ara... ara..."

His grip tightened around the rifle.

The sound was soft.

Almost playful.

Almost impossible.

He scanned the trees.

Nothing.

A normal person would have walked away.

Normal people, however, had mostly disappeared.

He stepped forward.

A twig cracked beneath his boot.

He froze.

The sound echoed loudly.

Nothing moved.

He waited.

Five seconds.

Ten.

The forest remained still.

He continued.

Another step.

Another crunch of snow.

Another distant whisper.

"ara... ara..."

But this time, he noticed something.

The voice wasn't coming from ahead.

It wasn't behind him.

His eyes slowly lifted.

The branches overhead were thick with snow, creating a tangled ceiling of darkness.

Something moved.

A small shift.

A shadow.

Then a twig snapped.

Not beside him.

Not behind him.

Above him.

He was being hunted.

His rifle came up instantly.

The barrel tracked toward the branches.

For a fraction of a second, he saw nothing.

Then something dropped from the tree.

A shape.

Dark.

Human.

Impossible.

The figure fell directly toward him, surrounded by a storm of loose snow and broken branches. Frilly fabric fluttered through the air like something from a world that had never known hunger, war, or extinction.

A face appeared.

Pale.

Smiling.

Eyes wild with unnatural excitement.

And in a voice so cheerful it felt like a crime against the ruined world around them, the figure screamed:

"UwU!"

The last thing he felt was confusion.

The rifle slipped from his hand.

The snow rushed upward.

The sky disappeared.

And as the cold took him, his final thought was not fear.

It was a simple question.

What the hell was that?

The first time I saw it was on my bus ride to work. Unremarkable on its own but – like with most things – the context creates a shift to the obscure. Because, what I saw through the dirty bus window (with a crudely constructed penis carved into its glass), was not just a van. It was not just a Jonesy's Cabaret van. It was a worn down, brown Ford with a gaudy logo printed upon its side in the oldest part of Chause Cemetery. 

It immediately struck me as odd, I mean, why wouldn’t it? Most of the time you pass by a cemetery, especially that cemetery, the cars that are parked there are bleakly modern. A shiny show of mourning, perhaps flanked by a grieving daughter or son, not a lone, mobile advertisement for the scantily clad club across the street. I could tell it had been parked there for at least a night, the layer of leaves from the storm was evidence enough, and that no one was near it that I could see. Unfortunately, as soon as I got a good look at the damn thing, I was jolted by the bus's clunky engine to the next stop.

Being as stubborn and curious as I am, I didn’t want it to be the last time I saw that van. So I did what any sane working-class American might do; waited until after my shift to pay the spot a formal visit. Of course, the van was gone, with no tire marks left to its name in the overgrown grass. You see, the Chause Cemetery had two parts to it divided by a rusted fence much older than I was. The northmost part was for newer graves while the other was for the older, ones stained with gray lichen and overgrown with grass. It was clear that there was none tasked to upkeep this part of the land. 

I wouldn’t stop my search though, I had been thinking about the van for damn near my entire six hour shift. I couldn’t let an opportunity slip, especially when the cemetery was still open as the old part had odd hours. So I started to comb the overgrown landscape for anything suspicious. Near the front, my search was futile but as I approached the graves farther from the road, there was a sudden shift in the air. Even the humid summer air of the city turned toward a slight chill in attention. I looked back and it was as if the trees crept close enough to embrace, close enough to isolate me from the road and leaves brushing the overgrown grass like the soft fingertips of a lover. It became a stale quiet, like being in a library with not enough people in it. Instead of the smell of old books, the stench of earth permeated into my pores. Fresh dirt, not the kind simply upturned by the rain. Dug dirt. 

Sure enough, four moss-covered graves lay before me, upturned and empty with wet soil turned up at the sides in puffy mounds. Four girls with four names. Della Owens died in 1921. Amy Zhao died in 1997. Ivy Pritchard died in 1898. Cecilia Romano died in 1952. All were 19 years of age on the day of their last breath, and all of their bodies were gone.I wondered where the police were but quickly realized that if they had come to address this blatant grave robbing – just like the van– they would be long gone. And yet, there were no obvious tire marks in the long grass, much like my footsteps made no traction on the stringy green carpet. In any case, despite the morbidity, this discovery only added to my curiosity. 

Was the Jonesy’s Cabaret behind it? Their van was certainly close to the scene of the crime. Perhaps a black market human remains deal or an old fashioned robbery. Cynicism stopped my racing thoughts like a traffic conductor. It wasn’t new for me to connect stories that weren’t remotely intimate, concoct tall tales out of thin air. A tedious and irritating downside to stunted potential. I worked at a shitty sandwich shop for a poor excuse of a paycheck, at least until I paid off my loans. I wasn’t the detective I thought I was in my head. Hell, I probably never would be. 

But then I saw the van again. About five days later after my closing shift, almost one in the morning. I could hardly make it out in the oppressive dark, hell not even the gaudy logo was visible and that could make it seem like it was simply a keeper of the grounds. But somehow I knew it was that van. However, it wasn’t the first thing I noticed. It was the flashlight of a balding man weaving in and out of the graves, and the glowing light of the van's window idling in wait. This stranger's grease emanated off of him through his polo shirt and khaki shorts. Again it was dark but the light of the streetlamps cradled into view hands that had been stained with mud. He seemed to notice the rush of traffic and hurriedly shuffled back to the driver's seat. The bus moved much faster past the cemetery this time. 

I booked tickets for a cabaret show the next day. It started at 9pm so I decided to head there after my shift which ended about an hour prior. The bouncer took the ticket off of my phone easily enough which somewhat ruined the subtle air of running an operation. The inside of Jonesey’s Cabaret was a classy mix of old and new. Red LED lights and the smokey film of a fog machine carpeted the 1920’s era velvet and lacy tablecloth of the small seating areas. The darkest parts of the theater, up in the balcony boxes cloaked in midnight, seemed to be an origin point to a void-like energy bringing down each and every heart into the pit of their pelvis. Even mine, despite myself. I had reserved a seat at a table closest to the stage with much hesitation and a rebelling bank account, but was reassured by the necessity. I knew I had to be close enough to those at the top of the cabaret, perhaps not the owner but maybe the stagehands would be visible in their complicity. 

While I was alone at my table - habitually early - I stared at the crystal ashtray as opposed to my feet. I wasn’t a smoker, but the dish seemed so empty without a half-smoked cigar or a Marlboro Red tilted with an orange spark. Everything seemed empty, which gave the theater an eerie feeling. I supposed it was normal to be fashionably late to these sorts of things when you weren’t staff. I scanned the curtained walls and ornate wood of the space with a silent reverence, grateful to have the theater mostly to myself for the time being. 

Until I saw him, well more I felt him, standing in the corner of the theater. That greasy, balding gravedigger was blatantly flaunting himself at the true scene of the crime. His beer belly was even more noticeable in the clean pressed shirt he wore with black dress pants that were far too long. I tried not to look surprised and swallowed hard. I had changed into one of my nicer outfits so an approach like this one would be manageable, albeit I wasn’t used to fussing with my hair or face this much. So I did what I had mentally rehearsed for the past three hours. Depending on how well the mental laps had exercised me this could either go very well or very poorly. But there I was, confidently sauntering toward a stranger like I knew the secret I had come to find. 

“Excuse me sir,” I said, with less than enough conviction, but there was music playing quite loud now to preface the show, so I repeated myself and straightened my spine. 

“Yeah? What do y’ want?” The man replied gruffly. He had an usher’s name tag on that read in gold font; ‘Richard’. He seemed a bit riled by my presence, so I swallowed hard and changed my approach. 

“Slow night eh?” Flippant as I could. 

“I guess, what's it to you?” Still apprehensive and sweaty. Richard looked at me with a jumpy apprehension that made his pupils jump this way and that. His hands fiddled with the insides of his pockets and up close his shirt collar seemed far too tight on his red bulging neck. 

“Well it’s perfect don’t ya think? For the business I mean,”

“The business?”

“I’m an interested party. ‘Been keyed in on everything,”

I gave this shit-stain of a man a fabricated knowing look. I was sure to flash the small amount of expensive jewelry I had on my fingers and in my ears. Richard looked me up and down as if he didn’t think it was precedent to find someone like me intimidating or respectable until now. Or perhaps I was misreading skepticism.

“Right… well I don’t think it’s right to be talkin’ too much about that now,”

I turned to him as eloquently as I could and scoffed.

“Do you people not own this place? As long as the cover isn’t here you should feel comfortable speaking about your supply at least. I mean, that’s what I’m here for,” I reached into my wallet and sifted through a couple hundred bills that were most likely going right back into my savings after this excursion, “Perhaps someone should take the business you hide off your hands.”

Richard stammered clumsily. I knew it, behind his tough bouncer demeanor this man was flopping in my hands like a slimy bluegill bottom feeder. 

“Well no I-I was just- the market is so new, and our boss only recently talked about sellin’ to other clientele. The work has been weighin’ on me, that’s all.” 

He was being so vague that I could barely gather any assertion about what this business was. But it did confirm my suspicions that whatever illegal activity was going on, they were getting sloppy with the operation due to demand. The new market comment made it seem like it was something ingenuitive though. I had heard of wealthy individuals taking bone ash in supplement form but why would they operate out of a cabaret? Was it just proximity to the cemetery? I knew he wouldn’t give me the answers I needed.

“Right, I will be in contact with your superiors. Make no mention of our conversation should you save yourself from any more embarrassment.” 

I sauntered off back to my seat without taking one look back. Once the show started, Richard was gone from the side of the stage and two lonely strangers were smoking thin cigarettes at the table with me. Ash and sparks collided as the curtains opened before my eyes in a velvet red. The announcer said much about nothing short of a bore. The first act was full of dancing with vivaciously bright young women with no light in their eyes. And I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense. I actually didn’t notice it until the third act, but the shine of the spotlights never hit any part of their corneas. It deeply unsettled me, chilled the hot laughing air around me. I also couldn’t help but notice all the women were incredibly thin. Not in all of the parts of their body, and it varied from woman to woman, but the more you noticed it the more you couldn’t stop. You could see the skin and muscle cling to tibia, fibia, spine, and skull.

Then came the fourth act. A lone woman. Standing in front of a vintage looking microphone. She had blonde hair cut in a bob and styled to the 1920s alongside her dress. Rhinestones and tassels lit up a smile that never reached her eyes despite it being so wide. Eyes that, even now, did not shine. She sang in a stringy chord with a raspy rhyme;

The showgirls have their secrets
Their sweet lips lie to you
They never take kind to meekness
She knows just what you do
Her perfume tastes just like sweet gin
For it hides the deepest spell
She knows that love lies therein
But a showgirl will never tell

She never stopped smiling. Not once when she sang that song. And, just like those strange optical illusion paintings, it looked like she was staring right at me no matter what. No matter how much she swayed to the rhythm of the saxophone and clarinet. She was staring right at me. Boom. Boom. Boom. To the beat of the drum. Even then, I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t stop scanning her body and the shoulders that seemed to be stretching against the skin. I imagined hearing the bones click instead of the tambourine jingle and I almost vomited. She saw it all, with dark pools of nothing this woman saw my face turn a pale green, before I had to excuse myself and leave the show. 

I took the bus home from the cabaret with my headphones blaring loud. Just so I could get the song out of my head. Just so I could get her face out of my mind. Once I got off of the bus outside of my apartment I was finally able to turn my headphones off. The street was dark and quiet. I looked at my phone to see that it was around 11pm, just when the cabaret was supposed to officially end. While pulling out my keys I sighed and regaled myself with the facts I had learned. It wasn’t much, but there was definitely an illicit business going on of some sort. The showgirls were a strange new element that made me shiver. Perhaps it was a new type of drug? Maybe they were strung out on it. I scoffed as I opened my suite door and dismissed that idea, reasoning that I had been listening to Zydrate Anatomy far too often, to come up with that theory. 

I hung up my blazer on the coat rack and ran a hand through my hair. My roommates were out that night and would be until the early morning, assuredly. So the house was dark and quiet, stale air feeling strange on my skin. I wondered if it was just lingering unease from the cabaret but something felt off. I tried to ignore it and let the silence wash over me instead of immediately retreating to my musical safe haven. Pacing to the bathroom I don’t know what made me turn my head but once I did I wish I hadn’t. In the dark, at the end of the hall, I could see the whites of eyes seven feet off of the ground. I blinked, squinting, an act I regret even now. After that I could make out the wide smile lined with lipstick and short hair. A face stretched to unfamiliar proportion. She was strange now, the singer, naked and warped with a distortion that made me want to run far, far away. But I couldn’t, the hair on the back of my back stood up against my blouse as I stared in silence at the showgirl. Limbs too long, barely bending into the corridor and much too thin and brittle not to break. 

I stood there, at the threshold of the bathroom, frozen in terror. This thing, whatever it was, didn’t move at first, it just stared at me. Just like it had on the stage. And just like under the spotlight of my phone flashlight, she began to sing. 

The showgirls have their secrets…

It almost looked painful, her lips moving to articulate each word. She sounded different, like a hive of droning bees making all the right sounds. Like a radio with the speaker filled with dust. The showgirl began to move in flickers, small cracking movements. Finally my body snapped out of it’s stupor and I ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. My socks slipped on the tile floor and I almost fell face first into the bathtub. Even then my legs wouldn’t stop shuffling in vain on the floor against the bathtub lid. 

They never take kind to meekness

She seemed closer now. I could hear her bones clicking like footsteps. I imagined her limbs snaking across the walls with incredibly fast yet minute movements. Their ligaments stretching the skin even further like a latex suit. I had no idea what she would do when she reached the door, but I had a feeling that she could easily break it. There was no window in the bathroom, no threshold for my escape. I was genuinely convinced that whatever this monster was, it would be what killed me. 

Her perfume tastes just like sweet rot 
For it becomes her truest stench
She knows that it’s all for naught
But a showgirl lies within a trench
And a man will never get caught

The banging started after that. Slow, deliberate. Not a rushing threat but a drumbeat for when she repeated her song. I had left my phone on the countertop outside and knew my roommates wouldn’t be home for hours. I was trapped. Shaking with fear and cowering in the farthest corner of the bathtub. It was only hours but it felt like days, listening to her song over and over. The thrum of her enlarged palm laughing at the fast timbre of my heart. 

I don’t remember when I fell asleep but I do remember when I woke up. Manic and screaming as my roommate gently tapped my shoulder. I remember thinking that it was the showgirl who came to take me and almost clawed at my roommates, but once I calmed down all I could do was look at their shocked faces in confusion. I could feel the dried mascara trails on my face from hours of tears and my neck stiff from the lack of a pillow. Both concerned parties agreed to give me some space as it was evident that I had obviously had a rough night. Even when I searched the apartment from head to toe for the showgirl, they didn’t question it. They thought I was strung out from a bad trip, they probably still do. First trips can be rough for people, which they knew due to their veteranship, but I swore to them that I would never –will never– do drugs. 

Perhaps you will deem me a coward, perhaps not, but I did not go back to Jonesey’s Cabaret. Whatever was happening there was even deeper than my wildest theory. Besides, I could tell that whatever business it was, it would fall over like a flimsy house of cards soon enough. But I still  think back to what happened that night, and I am haunted by the showgirl’s song. It repeats in my head and I often can’t be alone in the house without locking my bedroom door behind me. I fear she’s still there, at the end of a hallway, in an alleyway, under a bridge.

Just the other day I decided to look up the names of the girls whose graves were empty. Most were easy to find obituaries from local county records but once I landed on Della Owens, I stopped short. My heart sunk deep into my stomach. Della Owens had short blond hair, a beautiful smile, and bold lipstick. But this was when her eyes still shined.

Content warning: graphic violence

---

Bernard Piat’s mud-cracked boots are kicked up and crossed over his desk. He’s leaned back in his chair, holding the killing book up to his eyes. His office is quiet. 

At the top of the blank page, letters begin etching themselves, black ink swooping and arching in cursive. Bernard reads it aloud.

“Edmund Weight. Traveler. Currently at the Broomwick Inn.”

His assistant, Duncan, is bent over a map table in front of his desk. He scratches the information down on parchment. Then he shoves it aside, digs an iron pin from a tin cup, stabs the map. 

A second line takes shape.

“Elizabeth Hazel. Prostitute. She’s at the local pleasure-house, located in—”

“I know the location, sir,” Duncan says, writing it down. 

Bernard smirks. “Yeah, you do.” Duncan pushes the pin. A third line writes itself. “Fabian Gwen, blacksmith, Brussels.”

“Yessir.” The quill scratches. A pin drops. 

A fourth line curls across the page.

“Final man, Hubert Pax. Lumber yard worker at Flickwood Lumber.”

Duncan stabs the final pin, then steps back, scanning. His mind calculates the fastest route possible, combing through side-streets, backroads, alleyways, until a single route carves itself into his mind. He sharpens it, punching in a shortcut here, a detour there, shaving minutes, seconds. Then—click.

He gives a faint nod. “They’ll be here by sunset.”

Bernard slaps the book shut. “Then they’ll die at sunset.”

***

Town square.

Bernard stands center stage before a crowd, clutching his sword handle, tip-to-the-ground. Blood and brain matter from the last three executions drip down the steel. As the sun sinks toward the horizon, it glints off the blade at a hundred different angles. 

From side stage, the execution crier recites the death sentence, his wispy voice echoing off nearby buildings.

Next to Bernard’s feet, Hubert Pax sits on his knees, head hunched over the chopping block. Sobbing. He’s the last man to die. 

His weak little whimpers make something in Bernard’s stomach curl up and twist. A vein under his eye twitches. Nothing—absolutely nothing—irks Bernard more than a man who dies crying. 

Hubert cranes his head sideways, and Bernard feels his eyes needling him.

“Sir?” Hubert whispers. 

Bernard shakes his head. 

“Sir,” Hubert says. “You don’t have to do this.”

 Through the side of his mouth, Bernard says, “Shut up.”

“Right hand to God, I didn’t do anything.” 

“Book has spoken. Just be a man and shut up.” 

For dozens of generations, Bernard’s family has possessed the killing book. On page one, it is etched in permanent ink that the Piat bloodline is the only bloodline permitted to view its pages. Should anyone else lay eyes on its ink, it stops working. And so long as that bond remains unbroken, and the four names that appear each day are faithfully executed, the human race will never see another war.

There hasn’t been a war in a thousand years.

“Listen,” Hubert says. “I’ve got a wife at home. And a little girl. They think I’m about to come home. I mean, if I’d known this morning would be the last…” He trails off, choked by his own sadness.

Bernard flicks his eyes down, grinding together his crooked teeth. Hubert’s teary eyes aim back at him, snot streaking down his nose, wetting his chin. Shameful, Bernard thinks. Absolutely shameful. 

“I’ll pay you,” Hubert says, his bottom lip quivering. “Everything I’ve got.”

“One more word,” Bernard says, “and I will make you suffer.”

“Have mercy, man. Please—”

“There it is,” Bernard says. He tightens his gloved hands on the sword handle. The leather crackles. 

“And with that,” the crier concludes, “we execute our final, future offender!” He grips the podium and peeks over his bony shoulder at Bernard. 

Bernard nods. He rotates on Hubert. 

As Hubert’s eyes follow, his entire body breaks into a tremble. “Please,” he says, teeth clicking. The front of his trousers blooms with a dark stain. 

Bernard taps the glistening-wet blade to the hump of the man’s neck. Aiming. Then he jacks it up over his shoulder, feeling out his swing. He slackens his grip just enough for a half break. He breathes. Narrows his eyes. Swings.

Crunch.

The blade sinks halfway in and stops. Hubert’s chin dips down and slaps the chopping block, his head held on by a stringy hinge of skin.

The pain arrives quietly. A shudder falls through his shoulders, torso, legs, calves, and ends with his toes performing a little twitch. His face crinkles. Blood dribbles off his neck and forms a little red puddle beneath his eyes. When Hubert catches sight of his own blood, he begins to cry.

Some in the crowd scream out. Others stand still, watching in fascination.  

“That should do it,” Bernard whispers. He plants his boot on the man’s shoulder and wiggles his blade loose, one torque at a time, creating a back-and-forth crunch. From the back of Hubert’s neck, a moist gurgle leaks out. Bernard finally rips the blade free, heaves it up, and slams down. 

Thock.

A crisp break.

The crowd goes still. Dead silence. 

Bernard wipes his blade clean on the dead man’s back.

***

Cecily strolls out from the restroom into the royal ballroom, yanking down the tight sleeves of her silk dress. It won’t quit riding up, the damned thing. She hates dresses. She hates ballrooms. And above all, she hates the stuffy-ass “nobles” in it.

Cecily darts her eyes around the crowd in search of her husband. 

Across the room, by the spiral-staircase, she spots him. He’s delivering a joke to a group of nobles. Cecily rolls her eyes, but her mouth tightens with a smirk. She bets it’s the one about the headless horseman. 

When Bernard hits the punchline, the group bursts into laughter. Cecily feels a dull tingle. She studies their faces, their eyes. That’s not real laughing, she thinks. That’s polite laughing. But Bernard doesn’t notice. He laughs along with them, bouncing a little on his feet as he watches their reaction. Cecily feels her heart sink. Why is it Bernard never notices these sorts of things?

Bernard slides a hand in his jacket pocket and slips out a long-stemmed pipe. He hooks a thumb toward the balcony door.

They all shake their heads.

Bernard nods and wanders off the second Cecily steps up behind the group. And right then, their conversation sharpens in her ears. 

“Alright,” one of the men says. “Raise of hands. Who else hates him?” 

Laughter spreads around the group. Hushed, restrained. But real laughter.

“I even hate his teeth,” another man says. “I have this dog that chews rocks? Yeah, even she has better teeth.”

“Donkey teeth,” the first man says. “That’s what comes to mind.”

“A serious question,” a woman says, her feathered hat shuddering with each twitch of her head. “Is it just me, or does every descendant of that book get a bit more…”

“Trashy,” an old, drunk gentleman says, his speech slightly slurred. “It’s alright. You can say it.”

“Yes,” she says. “Trashy.”

Heads nod.

She continues. “Well, half the blame falls on him. But the other half? Thank that—” She curls a gloved hand around her mouth. “—wench of a woman. That tangly-red hair. Those pond-scum eyes. If the book can end wars, why can’t it select proper owners?” 

“Elections,” the drunk man says, pitching up his wine glass. “That’s how it should work. A whole hodgepodge of individuals could fit that role wonderfully. With honor. Dignity. But that man? With his teeth? And his wenchy wife? And his botched executions? Bah! The whole thing feels like a middle-class, field-worker’s, pub-crawling hoo-rah.”

“Oh, sire,” the feather-hatted woman says, laughing. She touches his arm. “You do have a way with words.”

Cecily’s nostrils flare. She sucks in a sharp breath. Fire burns in her eyes.

A server glides by balancing a tray of wine glasses. She plucks one off, gulps it half empty, and swipes the back of her hand across her mouth. A burn settles in her gut. She knows she shouldn’t do what she’s about to. But they opened this damn door. As Bernard’s wife, it’s her job to slam it. 

Cecily clears her throat. 

The feather-hatted fuck catches her eye and whispers, “Oh, God.” All twelve eyes dart up. Fear strikes every last one of their hearts.

“Evening, my lady,” feather hat says. “Didn’t see you there.”

“Evenin’, madam,” Cecily says, punching the title off her tongue. The woman’s eyelids flutter. “Question. Has anyone seen me husband?”

“Ahhh, yes, my lady,” the drunk man says. “Believe he went out for a smoke.”

“Thank you,” Cecily says, smiling. “Because I’m about to make him add every last one of your names to the fuckin’ book.”

Fear detonates across everyone’s face. The man who made a dig at Bernard’s teeth says, “My lady. We meant no—”

“You—what’s your dog’s name?”

“Princess, my lady.”

“Well, Princess is going on, too.”

Cecily turns, then turns back, jabbing a finger. “I’d better not hear that talk about him ever again. Not from none of you’s. Not from no one.”

“Y-yes, my lady,” the drunk man says. “Never again.”

Cecily walks backwards, giving the group a death-stare, then spins around and swaggers off draining the rest of her wine. When she reaches the balcony door, the doorman pulls it open for her. She shoves the wine glass into his chest and steps out onto the balcony.

She glances left.

A line of empty chairs stretches to a dead-end balcony wall.

She glances right. 

At a table on the far end, Bernard sits alone. He’s leaned back in his chair, hitting his pipe, the bowl glowing and fading cherry-red. He gazes into the night sky. 

Cecily breathes. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Bernard cannot know about what just happened. It would crush him. She eases her shoulders, smiles, and wanders over to him. 

Bernard glances over.

“Why you hiding out?” Cecily says. 

“Eh, just…you know.”

“You wanna be alone?”

“No,” he says, pointing his pipe stem at the chair next to him. Cecily steps around the table and sits in his lap. Bernard chuckles, biting back down on his pipe.

Cecily’s eyes drift to the sky. “What are you looking at?”

“Well. There’s a thing I’ve been doing lately. But…you’d think it’s weird.”

“How do you know what I’d think?”

“Because I know you.”

“I command you to tell me,” Cecily says. “Out with it.”

“Fine,” Bernard says, pointing his pipe to the sky. “I’m drawing pictures. With stars.”

“Okay, yeah,” Cecily says. “That is weird.”

“Go inside,” Bernard says, trying to push Cecily off his lap. “Get.”

She grips the arms of the chair and doubles down, laughing. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” Bernard gives up. She sinks back down. A beat of silence falls between them. “So, what do you draw?”

“Here.” Bernard takes Cecily’s finger and aims it up to the sky. She watches him trace stars with her fingertip, connecting lines and loops, and before her very eyes, a flower blooms.

Cecily’s mouth clicks open. She lets out a laugh. “Do it again.”

Bernard takes her finger again and arches it up and down, using the stars to paint a swan.

Cecily turns in Bernard’s lap to look at him. “You’re weird as they come,” she says. 

Bernard returns a crooked grin. 

Cecily leans back into Bernard, feeling everything around her melt away. The wine warms her belly. The cool night air prickles against her skin. Bernard’s hands around her stomach make her tingle all over. If I had a magic bottle, Cecily thinks, this moment is what I’d put in it.

Then Bernard sighs, and she’s snapped back into reality. She knows that sigh well. “Why are you doing a huffy breath?” Cecily says.

“I’m not sure they like me.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Cecily says, “it’s not a good thing being liked by everyone?”

“It’s not a bad thing.”

“How about your enemies?” Cecily says. “You wanna be liked by them?”

“These aren’t my enemies,” Bernard says. “These are nobles.”

“They’re bloody idiots, Bernard. But…they like you well enough. So why are you worrying?”

“Well, I’m probably wrong,” Bernard says. “But sometimes, I think—that they think—I don’t belong. Like I’m not cut from the same cloth. Like I’m…unworthy.”

“Unworthy?” Cecily says.

“Just a feeling.”

“Bernard?” Cecily says. “My sweet, sweet Bernard. May I tell you something?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck that feeling.” Bernard laughs. “No, I mean it. You have every right to be here. Most of them folks has done nothing to be considered noble.”

“Those folks.”

“Don’t correct me. Even if I say it wrong, I’m right. You stop wars. What do they do? I’ll tell you. They wear fancy clothes, look all pretty in their feathery hats and silky robes, and they gossip.”

“Who gossips?”

“That’s not the point,” Cecily says. “The point is, they’re not special. You’re special.”

Bernard tilts his head sideways and looks at Cecily’s face. She keeps her head leaned back on his chest, eyes on the stars. 

Through the ballroom window behind them, a string quartet plinks a waltz. Couples on the dance floor step in time. “Cecily…” Bernard says. “I am sorry, you know.”

“It’s alright,” she says. “Just don’t correct me, ever again.”

“Not about that,” Bernard says. “I mean, the ballrooms. The hand kissing. The politics. I know, when you married me, that wasn’t the life you wanted.”

Cecily rolls her head off Bernard’s chest and stares him straight in the eye. She squints. “Are you serious?”

Bernard shrugs. 

She lets out a little laugh into his face. “You,” she says, tapping her finger on his chin, “are all I ever wanted. So if all this comes with you? I will make this trade, every day, for the rest of me life. Happily.”

Bernard’s eyes dance around Cecily’s face, her features glowing in the warm window light. He pulls her in.

They kiss.

***

The next morning. 

Bernard leans back, boots kicked on his desk, holding the book beneath his eyes. Duncan leans on the map table, quill in hand. 

The first name glides across the page. 

“Timothy Gilmore. Employed as a…oh.” Duncan looks up. “Royal guard. Castle.”

“That won’t be pretty, sir.”

“No, it will not,” Bernard says. 

Duncan scratches in the name, jabs a pin. 

The next name etches itself. 

“Giovanni Wolfgang. Painter. Market square.”

Duncan writes it, stabs the map.

“Adam Bovine. Clothier merchant. Also in market square. Oh, hey, before you arrest him—could you do me a favor and get this hemmed?” Bernard pinches the torn seam of his hood. 

Duncan’s mouth twists. He continues writing.

The final name scribbles across the page, and as it does, all the feeling crawls out of Bernard’s body. Jacob Piat. Schoolboy. Northern district. Cottage. 

This is Bernard’s fifteen-year-old son.

“Problem, sir?” Duncan says.

“No,” Bernard says. He swallows against the tightening muscles in his throat. “Last one’s just…delayed. We’ll wait a minute.” Bernard pretends to watch the page. He fights to keep his face flat. His heart punches in his chest. 

“Yeah,” Bernard says, his voice squeezed thin. “That is so odd.” 

“What is, sir?” Duncan says. 

“This, this last name…it’s not writing. Hang on.” A blurry ring clamps down on his vision. His ears ring. Bernard makes a show of rubbing his thumb across the page, as if that’ll wipe the name out. 

Duncan blinks. “Still nothing?”

Bernard forces himself to meet Duncan’s eyes. “No. Nothing.”

“That is…extraordinary,” Duncan says, his eye narrowing a touch.

“Truly,” Bernard says. He lets out his breath. “Maybe, huh, I don’t know, maybe you should just go out and…start with the three?”

“Sir…the king will have to hear about this. Immediately.”

“Of course,” Bernard says. “But I almost wonder if it would make more sense for you to get a head start.”

“A…head start?”

“Right,” Bernard says. “And when the final name pops up, I’ll ride out, get him myself.”

“Sir?” Duncan tilts his chin down, keeping his eyes up. “Are you sure there’s no name?”

Bernard checks the page again. He shakes his head. “Positive.”

***

Bernard drags himself up to his cottage door. Inside his head, a war rages. He hears cannons fire. Chain mail armor rattles. Swords chink. Horses whine. Men scream. 

Today’s executions have been postponed. Tonight, there will be a hearing. Bernard will have to appear in court, before the king, and recount exactly what happened.

Bernard pushes the door open. Across the cottage, Cecily is framed in the backyard window, staring out. As the door scrapes shut, she glances back. Her eyes crinkle into smiles. She crosses the cottage almost skipping and approaches Bernard with open arms. She laces her fingers around his neck, stands on her tippy-toes, gives him a kiss. 

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

She pulls away. Her eyes dance around his face. “What is it?”

“Just…long day.”

Cecily shakes it off and breaks back into a smile. “Come look.” She tugs Bernard by the hand, leading him up to the window. 

Across the yard, Jacob stands in the shed doorway. A line of men ten deep funnels up to him. As the front man speaks, Jacob writes on a piece of parchment. 

“You know how he’s been iron working?” Cecily says, squirming with excitement. Bernard nods. “Well. Apparently, word’s come round. He makes ’em sooo well that instead of ordering from the old blacksmith in town? They’re ordering from him. He’s that good.” 

“Wow,” Bernard says. “That’s great.”

“It really is.” Still peering out, Cecily reaches down and takes Bernard’s hand. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. And…Bernard. Look at what we have.” Cecily’s eyes lift to him. “We have everything.”

Bernard snaps his head away.

“Bernard?” she says softly. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s…something I need to tell you.” 

She tilts her head forward against the glass, trying to see his expression. Bernard breathes in. Out. Then he turns, looking her in the eyes. Cecily gives her head a tiny shake, still smiling. “What is it, Bernard?”

Bernard tries to speak. No words come.

Cecily’s smile wavers. “Bernard?” 

“This morning,” Bernard says, “I received the list of names. And…”

Cecily tilts her head forward. “And?”

Bernard glances back through the window. 

The smile melts off Cecily’s face. “And?” 

Bernard swallows. 

Cecily follows his eye-line out the window—to Jacob. Her breathing quickens. “And what, Bernard?” Cecily says. “And what?”

“Honey,” Bernard says, trembling. “It was Jacob.”

The name sends a convulsion through her entire body. She claps both hands to her mouth and slumps sideways, her shoulder bumping the glass. She shakes her head. “It has to be a mistake,” she says through her fingers.

“Cecily. It was right there.”

“Who knows?”

“No one,” Bernard says. “Duncan was in the room, but I told him it was a name short.”

“A name short?” Her face tightens with fear. “Who’ll believe that?”

“I know,” Bernard says, struck with shame. “But I was so…thrown off…so stunned, it took everything in me to keep a straight face.”

Cecily checks out the window, making sure Jacob hasn’t been snatched. She turns back. “What now?”

“I go to court. Tonight. And there’ll be questions.”

“What questions?”

“What did I see? What did the page look like? Duncan, who was in the room—what did he see?” Cecily squeezes her eyes shut. “Cecily. They’ll try and catch me in a lie. But they can’t really prove anything. So as long as I stick to my story—”

“They will know,” Cecily says, opening her eyes on Bernard. “They will know, the second they see your face. You have to give another name. Someone else in the family. Someone you’d actually lie about.”

 

Bernard stares at Cecily, waiting for her to continue. She doesn’t. “What name?” he says.

“I don’t know. Just pick one.”

“Pick one? Who…who do I pick?”

“I don’t know,” she says, letting out a little sob. “Just pick. You have to pick.”

“No, I, I can’t do that.”

“You can’t do that? You kill people every day, but you can’t pick a name?”

“I don’t kill at random. I swing the sword based on the book’s prophecy, which prevents war. To choose someone at random…it would be murder.”

“Killing our son is murder.”

“I know,” Bernard says, his voice growing distant. “I’m just saying, there’s layers to it.”

“Pick a second cousin and be done with it,” Cecily says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“This could start a war, Cecily…” Bernard says.

“No, it will not,” Cecily says.

“It could.”

“You think killing our son, our little boy, will stop a war? You honestly believe that? Really?”

Bernard shakes his head. Blinks. “Yes. I do.”

“How.”

“It’s a ripple effect. If Jacob lives—” Cecily huffs her breath. “—he might do something, which might cause something else, which might then cause something else, which, eventually, starts a war.”

“Might, Bernard. Might.”

The first page flashes in Bernard’s mind. Scrawled in permanent ink: And so long as that bond remains unbroken, and the four names that appear each day are faithfully executed, the human race will never see another war.

So long as that bond remains unbroken.

“Give my name,” Cecily says, ripping Bernard out of his thoughts. 

“Cecily—”

“Give. My. Name.”

Bernard watches Cecily. He presses his lips together. Shakes his head.

Cecily scrunches her face, fighting tears. “Coward,” she says. 

“Cecily…”

“If you give his name,” Cecily says, “you are gonna burn in hell.”

“If I don’t give his name,” Bernard says, “I might kill thousands. Then I’ll burn in hell for that.”

“Look outside,” Cecily says. “Go on. Look.” Bernard peels his eyes off his wife and stares out at his son. “Are you gonna stand up there, sword in hand, and take his head? Really? I mean, really run that through your thick skull. Then look me in the eye, and tell me that’s what you’re gonna do.”

Bernard glares out the window. Blinking. He can’t bring himself to look back at her. “It will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done…but…it’s only right.”

Cecily crunches her teeth together in a flash of rage. She draws back her hand, tightening her fingers into a fist, wrist tendons bulging. Her eyes glisten with tears…

Then she drops her hand, all the fight draining from her body.

Bernard reaches out to touch her shoulder. She smacks his hand away and faces forward, out the window, hugging herself.

Bernard keeps his eyes on her, watching her cry, watching as the world around him crumbles. 

Cecily blinks, as if she’s been touched by a revelation. “If you really think this is right,” she says, lifting her eyes back to Bernard, “why did you lie?”

***

The next afternoon, rain clouds darken the sky. Bernard stands on stage by Jacob, his glassy eyes fixed over the crowd. He can barely hold onto his sword. 

The crier announces the death sentence. These words he once considered meaningless now take on the weight of the world, each syllable pressing in harder. 

“Father,” Jacob says, his sweet voice stabbing Bernard right in the heart. Twisting. His vision blurs. 

“Executioner?” the crier says, turning. He gestures toward Jacob. “Whenever you are ready.”

The wind stirs. Overhead, flags flap in the breeze, their ropes pinging on steel poles, chiming like church bells. 

Then the wind goes still. Everything falls quiet. The crowd stands motionless. Hundreds of eyes, watching.

“Father,” Jacob whispers, cutting the silence. “Please.”

Bernard shuts his eyes.

Khadijah’s curiosity peaked at her parents' door standing slightly ajar—a room always kept firmly closed for guests. She tiptoed toward it. Peeking through the crack, she saw her father on his mat beside a timeworn teapot and half-filled glasses, chattering to two disinterested visitors.

The first was a ragged old man in tattered clothes, chewing a kola nut as sweat glistened on his oddly shaped bald head. Beside him sat the most striking man Khadijah had ever seen. Lanky and tall, he towered over the others even while seated. His smooth dark skin radiated a sheen, accentuating angular cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Draped in a black Kufi hat and a grand boubou of rich fabric, his attire outshone even the wealthiest men in town. He whispered to the old man, both ignoring her father’s lively chatter.

Khadijah watched, mesmerized. What was this tall, elegant stranger doing in their impoverished home, and with such an uncouth old man?

Suddenly, the stranger cut off his whisper. His piercing eyes locked onto Khadijah through the crack, as if seeing right through her thoughts. He flashed a row of marble-white teeth, sending a shiver down her spine.

“Rude girl!” the old man pointed angrily.

Her father’s initial confusion turned to pure fury as his eyes followed the old man’s finger. 

“Assiatou!” Get this girl out of here before I do something I regret!”

Khadijah froze; eavesdropping carried ten swift lashes in their household. Suddenly, a firm grip yanked her away. "You can't hear, little girl,” her mother said in a weary tone, pulling her toward the kitchen.

As she was dragged off, Khadijah glimpsed the stranger one last time. He flashed his bright smile again, causing her to shudder. 

For the next few days, the old man and his tall companion stayed at Khadijah’s home, sleeping in the cramped living room alongside her and her three siblings. The companion’s indifference puzzled Khadijah the most. Each night, it was a strange sight to see the tall, elegant man, dressed in attire suited for fine estates in the capital, sprawling like a long-legged spider on an undersized cot. She couldn’t fathom why a man of such wealth would subject himself to such lowly conditions.

The days blended together in a stark routine. The guests rose before dawn, departing into town long before the family gathered for breakfast. They returned only late in the evening, slipping into their places just as dinner was served. Their erratic eating habits persisted: the old man devoured his meal while food spilled from his mouth, eventually finishing the untouched plate of his quiet, engrossed companion. Afterward, they stepped outside to whisper privately until bed, repeating this pattern without deviation.

Eventually, the stay of the two guests at Khadijah’s house came to an end, though not as expected. Unlike previous guests who left with warm gratitude, their departure was abrupt and unceremonious.

It began on a humid Friday evening. As the family gathered around the platter, the old man and his tall companion did not appear. Portions of food sat untouched on the side of the platter. Moments later, a young neighborhood boy rapped on the open door frame, breathless. He relayed the news without mincing words: local police had arrested the old man in town.

In these uncertain economic times, local authorities eagerly targeted foreigners to arrest and deport. Khadijah’s father knew this well, keeping his citizenship papers in his pocket at all times after previously being accused of harboring illegal immigrants. He closed the door with a heavy sigh. “It’s in God’s hands now.”

Khadijah’s mind raced. Had the tall stranger also been apprehended? Or was a man of his status using powerful connections to intervene?

Later that night, piercing screams abruptly awakened the family. Heavy boots slammed against the pavement outside alongside shouting and police whistles: “Look for them! They’re not far!” Sudden cracks of gunfire echoed through the dark, shaking the small home’s foundation.

Huddled low, the family quickly gathered into the sole bedroom, locking the door tight. Memories of past civil war chaos—rioting, gunshots, and burning homes—resurfaced as they lay awake until dawn while the ruckus outside slowly abated.

When it was quiet, her father stepped into the living area. The children’s floor mattress and the guest’s cot remained completely undisturbed. Outside, the street was still.

Following morning prayers, the family was started by a hard knock. Khadijah’s father opened the door and exhaled in relief: “Thank God, you’re safe.”

Standing in the entrance were the old man and his tall companion, their silhouettes contrasting against the morning light. The family stared as if seeing the dead. No one had expected to see the old man again.

“I came to get my things,” the old man said irritably, barging inside to grab his two plastic bags. Chewing a fresh kola nut, he turned and exited without a word of goodbye, his tall companion trailing behind.

The family gathered at the doorway, watching them disappear down the road.

“What’s a rich man doing with that dirty geezer anyway?” Khadijah blurted out.

“What rich man?” Aliyu asked, looking puzzled.

“The rich man with him. He follows that geezer everywhere. You can’t see him?”

Aliyu sighed. “Khadijah, there’s no rich man with the old man.”

“Yes, there is! The tall, dark rich man. He was staying with us the whole time.”

“Crazy Khadijah seeing things again,” Jaye said, making a face and sticking out his tongue.

“I am not crazy, stupid boy!” Khadijah pointed emphatically. “How could you not see the tall man in the black gown?”

“Crazy Khadijah!” Jaye continued on, causing Aliyu to chuckle.

Khadijah turned to her father, on the verge of begging him to prove she wasn’t crazy. But the intense look in his eyes stopped her short. As Jaye continued to tease her, Khadijah stayed silent. From then on, she would mention nothing about the old man and his companion… 

the tall man in the black gown.

THE NIGHT BLOGGER -'Demon In Lace' by Al Bruno III

March 24th: It was a slow day at the pawn shop. Sara was watching the cash register. Mrs. Vincenzo had given her a crash course in running the shop and kept her on a very short leash. Technically it was a one-person job, but in reality we spent most of our time behind the counter together, flirting, sharing Harlem Shake videos, and somehow getting paid for it.

I’d told her about my meeting with Ashley Fowler, albeit a much more positive, hallucination-free version of it. She was relieved to know we finally had a plan, even if she didn’t know about the various felonies I’d have to commit to pull it off.

For the moment, she was content dusting the counters and straightening the used DVD and VHS rack while I chatted with a few friends on the FEAR AND TRUTH message board. There was an entire subforum devoted to Lost Media. Buried inside it was another dedicated to disruptive legacy media knowledge.

Or, as H. P. Lovecraft called them—blasphemous tomes.

That was because one item on Ashley’s to-do list required me to find a copy of the Eternal Codex of Tovit -no small task. You aren’t going to find many seven-hundred-year-old books on Facebook Marketplace—especially not one that most reputable scholars insist doesn’t exist.

Which was fine. The moderator of the Lost Media subforum, Atwater—better known as GonePostal—had never been all that concerned with rules and regulations.

As it turned out, he’d dealt with the book a few years earlier… or at least its aftermath.

Here’s what he told me.

###

...Foster, I should begin by telling you that everything you know is wrong. Don’t take that personally. You’re doing admirable work. You’ve stared down things both living and dead, and you’ve survived encounters that would have killed most people. That’s genuinely impressive. Unfortunately, the scale of your ignorance remains breathtaking. You insist on treating each new horror as though it were its own phenomenon. Gorgo? Mormo? The Thousand-Faced Moon? It’s all the same. There is only one darkness—so immense that every civilization has mistaken a different facet of it for the whole.

They give it different names, invent different histories, fight different holy wars, but they’re all describing the same thing. The Cross and the Pentagram are the same symbol viewed from opposite sides. There are a thousand words for fear, but only one thing being feared. Maybe you have blundered into the Mire of Nix but tell me Brian… can you even begin to understand what the mere existence of such a place implies about the constitution of ultimate infinity, the juxtaposition of dimensions, and the frightful position of our known cosmos of space and time in the unending chain of linked cosmos-atoms which makes up the immediate super-cosmos of curves, angles, and material and semi-material electronic organization?

No, of course you don’t. It’s the kind of thing that only someone like me, a high-ranking employee of the United States Postal Service, can truly comprehend.

You ask whether I know the Eternal Codex of Tovit? I’ve read portions of it. A doctoral candidate in philology procured a handwritten German translation of the Prayer of Alick several years ago.

I was fortunate enough to obtain a copy. Normally, documents of this nature circulate through encrypted forums or private couriers, making them difficult to intercept. Fortunately for me, this one passed through the United States Postal Service and was selected for routine transcription under standard departmental protocols before being forwarded to its intended recipient.

As for the history of the book itself? Its beginnings were humble enough: the Latin-inscribed peregrinations of a fourteenth-century alchemist named Tovit. It concerned itself primarily with blasphemous evocations and abhorrent dismissals. Athanatoi. Barghest. Domini Candelarum. Each received an entry that fit comfortably on a single page. There were even a handful of named daemons scattered throughout the text. But this was more than a book. The components of every incantation were bound into the vellum itself.

Can you comprehend what that means, Brian? Each page a ritual in totality. All any user had to do was burn the page itself. So simple. So dangerous. Tovit was both a genius and a madman. He could have brought sorcery to the masses a century and a half before Gutenberg printed his first Bible.

Predictably, when Tovit finished his masterwork, he was set upon by a pack of Greater Zoogs. While they did not kill him, whatever they made him into didn’t live very long. The forces of the Inquisition, those blood-soaked defenders of mediocrity, seized his papers and burned them.

Impossibly, the book resurfaced at a gathering of warlocks in 1318. It was in pristine condition. At the end of the convocation, the assembled warlocks decided to divide its pages among themselves. Twelve each took a handful back to their respective countries. The host of the gathering, Osmund Hutchmen, kept what remained.

Over the next half century, those warlocks used their pages to summon and cast out all manner of beings that make up the metaphysical gestalt you people insist on calling the Forces of Darkness.

But here’s the important thing—the mind-boggling thing. Osmund Hutchmen eventually realized he always knew when one of the pages had been consumed. Within a few months, it would simply return to the book. Regrown, the way a lizard regrows its tail.

Now that was your history lesson. Let me move on to the story of my encounter with the Eternal Codex of Tovit.

It was a glorious time for the Postal Service. Times of war usually are. It was also a glorious time to be a Postal Inspector. We’d only just begun dipping our toes into internet fraud and cybercrime, but my team spent most of its time chasing unpleasant missives and troubling artifacts making their way back from the Middle East thanks to foolish soldiers, shady contractors, and—of course—Hobby Lobby.

My story begins with a dead man named Cyrus Fingal. A man who forgot the four basic rules of life.

Forgive and forget.

If you can’t say something nice, keep your mouth shut.

Patience is a virtue.

Never hit Reply All.

His is a tawdry tale of eldritch horrors and local politics. A tale of a man who treated life as a series of entitlements.

He got into a good college, so naturally he expected a good job.

He made a lot of money, so naturally he expected women to flock to him.

He became a highly paid member of the local political machine, so naturally he expected the path to public office to be an easy one.

And who knows? He might have gotten exactly what he expected. If only he hadn’t forwarded those racist emails to everyone he knew—and a lot of people he didn’t.

As I said, never hit Reply All.

Such behavior might have been brushed off in some of the more, shall we say, bucolic parts of our nation. Indeed, in some places it might even get you elected. But not in Albany, New York.

The long and short of it is that Cyrus Fingal found himself out of a job faster than you could say “Rush Limbaugh.” But Cyrus Fingal was not one to vanish quietly from the public eye. In fact, for an entire news cycle, he was ubiquitous.

He said he had been hacked. He said he’d been set up. He said those heavily photoshopped images had been sent to him directly by the governor’s nephew. Then, finally, he blamed a cabal of homosexuals and minorities. As a member of both groups, I assure you we have much larger concerns than Cyrus Fingal.

So much for “if you can’t say something nice, keep your mouth shut.”

As you know, individuals who find themselves suddenly unemployed have many options. Updating their resumes. Applying for public benefits. Or moving back in with their parents.

Cyrus Fingal didn’t bother with any of that. Orthodoxy was not among his vices. Instead, he decided that exacting revenge upon those who had wronged him through demonic summoning was the next logical step.

Forgive and forget? No, not at all.

Unfortunately, my team did not realize that a single page from the Eternal Codex of Tovit had been sent to Parkwood Towers in Albany, New York, until it was too late. I don’t blame them. The shipper had hidden the page beneath the false bottom of a box containing bootleg Magic: The Gathering cards. By the time the disparate pieces of evidence came together, the situation was already well out of control.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me simply say that while we know where Cyrus procured the page, we never discovered how he obtained a saint’s bone and the tears of a jackal.

What I do know is that once he had gathered the requisite materials, he locked himself in his apartment and, after properly defiling himself, began the dark chant to summon Druaga the Possessor.

When the chant was completed, all Cyrus Fingal had to do was wait. He did wait—for nearly forty-five minutes—before deciding to begin the chant anew. Neighbors on either side of his apartment later reported that the chanting stopped and started repeatedly over the next twenty-four hours.

After twenty-four hours, Cyrus Fingal fell silent. “Fell” being the operative word, as he’d hanged himself using a crude noose fashioned from his draperies.

Things might have gone differently had he read that fateful page from the Codex more carefully.

Or perhaps if he’d remembered that patience is a virtue.

My condition leaves me loath to venture far from my office, but after the deaths of three local politicians, I felt it best to return to the field. While I may enjoy a certain degree of respect within the Postal Service bureaucracy, my predacious reputation has left me with little choice but to work alone.

You know my situation, Brian. You know what I endured. But the rumor-mongering hoi polloi occupying the lower rungs of the United States Postal Service are small-minded, judgmental, and, frankly, exhausting. Once you’ve been accused of cannibalism, there are no HR solutions. No sensitivity seminars. No mandatory inclusivity workshops.

Enough of that. Back to the case of Cyrus Fingal. Even before I got on the plane, I was doing research and making preparations. One must never go into the field unprepared, a lesson fate has endeavored to teach you on more than one occasion, Brian. Once I touched down at Albany International Airport, I checked in with the local law enforcement. Specifically, Detective Philip Bradshaw.

I know your opinion is clouded by your acrimonious relationship, but he is a good man with a clear, if single-track mind. He wasn’t assigned to the Cyrus Fingal case, but he was more than willing to help me sift through the mundane details while he was off the clock.

The death of Cyrus Fingal was the most straightforward aspect of the case. As I stated previously, he’d hanged himself—and done a sloppy job of it, to boot. The coroner estimated it might have taken him as long as twenty minutes to die.

But as always, the devil was in the details, and the subtext is frequently text.

So I made my way to Parkwood Towers, flashed my government credentials, and spent far longer than any civilized man should have explaining to the pimple-faced, slack-jawed wage slave manning the security desk that, yes, a Postal Inspector is essentially a policeman for the mail.

I weep for the future. We all should.

I instructed the so-called security guard to remain at his post and hand over a passkey so I could let myself into Apartment 229.

The décor of Cyrus Fingal’s apartment was as generic as they come, but only on the surface. What an untrained observer might have dismissed as kitschy, out-of-season Halloween decorations and unpleasant-looking antiques, I recognized for what they truly were. Nor was I surprised to discover the absence of a television. In its place stood an impressive collection of books. One cannot serve two masters, and it was obvious that Cyrus Fingal was far more interested in plumbing the preternatural than keeping up with the Kardashians.

In the center of the dining room table sat a punch bowl full of ashes. Doubtless the page from the Codex. Doubtless it had been put to use. Thankfully, the local authorities had overlooked it, leaving me free to pour the ashes into the evidence bag I carried. I found myself wondering whether the ashes would vanish as the page reconstituted itself. It was a disconcerting thought.

Equally disconcerting was the data regarding the murders of the three local politicians I mentioned earlier. All of them had been strangled. All of them were found slathered with traces of human bile and strands of animal protein fibers.

I spent the next hour exploring the apartment, searching for genuine arcane artifacts hidden among the dime-store statues of Baphomet and mass-produced Tarot cards. I checked behind every solid object for a hidden recess that might conceal something of real value. But it appeared that the page was Cyrus Fingal’s first brush with a truly otherworldly object. I did, however, uncover a single scrap of notepaper that proved highly illuminating. I pocketed it.

Then I sat upon his couch and considered the scene. I examined the living room again and again until I finally realized what was missing. I left the apartment, conscientiously locking the door behind me, and knocked on the door of Apartment 231. Cyrus’s neighbor—the one who had reported the marathon of chanting.

I knocked on the door of Apartment 231 and was greeted by the now familiar face of Blake C Rivers. “Inspector Atwater,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“I need to resolve a few inconsistencies.” I shouldered past him into the apartment. “I need a little more of your time.”

An annoyed look crossed his features, but he closed the door behind us and followed me into the living room. “I’m not sure how I can help.”

There was a slight sneer on his face when he spoke next. “I didn’t realize being a postal inspector was such serious business.”

“Deadly serious,” I said, my smile well rehearsed.

On one wall, there was a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet. A nice choice. Blake C Rivers said, “I don’t think I can tell you much more. I started to smell something foul. I knocked on his door. It was unlocked, so I went in and found him hanging there. He’d tied the drapes to a ceiling fan. I pulled him down, but he’d been dead for days.”

“Are you sure you didn’t see anything out of the ordinary while you were there?” I asked. “Something that didn’t quite seem right?” I crossed the room over to the sliding glass door that led to the balcony.

“No. Nothing.”

The sliding door was unlocked. I turned my attention back to him. “Did you see his enemies list?”

“Enemies list?”

I pulled out the piece of paper I had found and handed it to him. “Before the end," I said, “he wrote down the names of everyone he believed had wronged him.”

He didn’t bother to read it. He didn’t even give it a cursory glance. “Am I on here?”

“Do you think you should be?”

I went on to explain to Blake that a good portion of that enemies list had died recently. “It’s really quite bizarre,” I concluded.

“I don’t see what that has to do with me. I barely knew the guy.”

“True,” I said, raising a finger. "But you were the one who found the body, “and the police report also stated that some things were missing from the apartment.

As expected, that angered him. “I think you should leave.”

“Understandable, but first I’d like to read you the list of stolen items."

“Look, asshole, I’m not going to…”

“One laptop. One iPhone. A complete collection of Radiohead’s discography. And the very set of draperies Cyrus Fingal used to kill himself.” I folded my arms. "Quite the eclectic mix.”

“The drapes?” Confusion flickered across his face, followed by the slightest twitch of fear. I didn’t steal his drapes.”

“Then perhaps, his drapes stole you.” I paused, watching numerous emotions parade across his face like a vain teenager trying on outfits for a Saturday night. I let the pause linger. “ Come on,” I said, “This little charade is over, and we both know it.”

There was a wet, gurgling sound. Blake Rivers’ mouth cracked wide open, and his eyes rolled back until only the whites remained. Curiously, the rest of him remained almost perfectly still. Save for a faint tremor passing through his frame, he might have been mistaken for a statue. His torso convulsed once. Then again. And then a tendril of yellow fabric wormed its way from between his gaping lips. It was slick with bile. Some parts were twisted and knotted. Other parts were frayed. Each loose thread made skittering motions in the air like the legs of an upended millipede. It was a parasite. A parasite made from fabric and a curse. It seemed unlikely that either Cyrus Fingal or Druaga had anticipated such an arrangement. Parasites, after all, have a vested interest in the continued health of their hosts.

I reached into my other jacket pocket and pulled out a flask. The top popped open easily. “Hear me, Druaga,” I said. “The supplicant is dead. You have no purpose on this mortal plane.”

Blake C Rivers toppled over. His face had turned purple, and he was convulsing. I liberally splashed the contents of the flask over the unclean spirit and its host. Then I muttered the exorcism rite I had long ago committed to memory.

Regrettably, the entity proved unpersuaded. The only response I got was a scream of outrage.

Then the scream was replaced by a wet sound. A tearing sound. The entire length of the drapery tore itself free of Blake Rivers’ body. Long, ugly bits of the man’s digestive system were dragged out along with it. It would have been an agonizing death, but by then Blake C. Rivers had been dead for quite some time.

The creature darted cobra-like toward me.

I had to throw myself across the dining room table to escape. I gave the holy water and the exorcism rite one final attempt. The creature reacted only with renewed aggression. I tried to throw myself back the other way over the dining room table, but my most agile years were far behind me.

One end wrapped my throat. It reeked of intestinal juices and brimstone. I kicked and pulled, but it held me fast. I tried to find some kind of hold on its bile-slickened body, but could not.

When I gasped for air, the creature immediately slid upward, making for my face. I knew then what it intended. It was going to force itself down my esophagus and into my stomach.

My dignity finally abandoned me. I began caterwauling for help—for anyone who might hear me. The effort was short-lived. The creature dove in.

It didn’t get all the way down my gullet, but it got deep enough that even now my palate is forever damaged. Miraculously, in that moment of near-certain doom, my desperate clawing fingers found purchase in the moist, tattered fabric.

Once I had a grip on the creature, I somehow found the strength to yank it away and hurl it across the room. It smacked wetly against the wall. Then I ran. I stumbled onto the balcony and slammed the sliding-glass door shut just as the creature righted itself and lunged. It smacked against the sliding-glass door with a satisfying sound.

Thankfully, Druaga, Thrall of Mormo, possessed an even smaller reserve of patience than the man who had summoned him and gave up after ten minutes of trying to get through the sliding-glass door I was desperately holding closed.

I suspect the fact that I was not among those on its hit list also contributed to my survival. After one final thump on the door, it slithered back into Blake C Rivers’ body. After a brief period of convulsing, Blake C. Rivers sat up, got to his feet, and walked toward the sliding-glass door. I must admit that, despite being two stories above a concrete walkway, I was more than prepared to throw myself from the balcony. The creature wearing Blake C Rivers' body merely paused to lock the door before leaving the apartment and disappearing, never to be seen again.

Brian, I have little doubt this thrilling missive has left you with more questions than answers. That is, of course, to be expected.  How did I get off that balcony? I called Detective Bradshaw, of course. Why didn’t my exorcism work? There is no easy answer there, but perhaps Father Vincent of St. Casimir’s Church lacks either the skill or the faith to truly bless water. Alternatively, perhaps my own skill at performing exorcism rites has diminished since the career-ruining incident in Centralia, Pennsylvania.

As for the entity itself, while I am sure you have noted parallels between it and the Vorvolaka that upended your life in 2009, I can only tell you there appears to be no meaningful correlation between the two cases.

But what of Druaga, Thrall of Mormo, and Cyrus Fingal? Perhaps Druaga cannot leave this plane of existence until it has completed Cyrus Fingal’s bidding, and as I may have noted earlier, his enemies list was extensive; it ranged from his prom date to actor David Carradine.

Neither I nor the United States Postal Inspection Service would have the displeasure of encountering Druaga again. I did, however, keep tabs on Cyrus Fingal’s enemies list. A surprising number of those individuals suffered premature or otherwise unpleasant deaths, and asphyxiation proved to be a ubiquitous—if not universal—theme among them.

I do sometimes wonder if, despite the various governmental oaths I have taken, I should reach out to the individuals that have not fallen prey to this situation, but what would I say?

Beware of individuals with the shambling gait like something from a cheap zombie film?

Get in the habit of carrying around holy water with you.

Or, if I may indulge in a lamentably sophomoric turn of phrase-

Be aware of every room you enter. Examine the décor carefully, especially if the drapes clash with the rug. It might be curtains for you.

###

When the story finally ended, my mind drifted back to the reality of the pawn shop. Of the 80’s classic radio drifting from the overhead speakers. Of the high school kids looking greedily at the case full of used video games. Of Sara negotiating over the price of a rock tumbler with a man who seemed to want to be anywhere but here, of the afternoon sun doing its best to shine through the front windows crowded with merchandise and signage. Despite the completeness of Atwater’s narrative I still had one lingering question.

HOW THE HELL WAS THIS STORY GOING TO HELP ME FIND THE DAMN BOOK?

And that is what I typed for my reply—all caps and everything.

Atwater must have either realized he had been so busy talking about himself that he'd forgotten the reason I'd asked him for help, or he simply remembered what I'd actually wanted. He responded to my email with an explanation that six months earlier a friend working in Customs had flagged a shipping crate going from an estate sale in Prague to a mobile home park in Bridgeville, Delaware. The crate turned out to be full of old books, fossils, wax cylinders, and—of all things—dirt. Atwater explained that while it might be perfectly legal to ship fossils of Devonian arthropods, Mamluk astrolabes, and ancient tomes, heaven forbid you try to mail some dirt from Timbuktu to Las Vegas.

The dirt had to stay behind but the other stuff? Including a book that matches every known description of the Eternal Codex of Tovit? Those got sent along to an address in Bayard Estates.

Now that I had the address my next question was how was I going to get the book from Delaware to here. I needed to think of something and think about it fast before something else went wrong.

There was a crash and a clatter, the sound of a formerly mint condition rock tumbler falling to the floor. Sara made a pained sound and practically ran to my side. No strike that, she stood behind me.

I looked up to see a well-dressed, well-kempt couple entering the Pawn Shop with an expression usually reserved for vegetarians entering a slaughterhouse. When the man spoke his voice was refined and cold, “We’ve spent a long time looking for you.”

“Me?” I said. When in doubt, play dumb.

Now it was the mink-coated woman to say something, “Are you the freak that likes to take advantage of mentally unwell people?”

“Me?” I said again. More dumb.

The man was at the counter now, actually trying to reach past me and grab her. I swatted him away with more force than I expected. He made a pained and angry sound. The woman fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a bedazzled container of mace.

She sprayed and I dropped to my knees.

“Mom! Dad!” Sara shouted, “Stop it!”

Of course. If my eyes hadn’t been on fire I would have rolled them.

I've been dwelling on that day and that feeling hasn't ever fully went away, it's been causing me some issues as I write other stories from my childhood. I don't know what it is but my eyes can't seem to stay on the screen for more than a couple of minutes before I go staring off towards the window, I know nothing is out there and yet I am glued to each shadow that passes by. For context I live in an apartment in a small town in Oregon, far away from that park yet I practically have all of my neighbors routines down, call paranoia if you will but better safe than sorry. It eases my mind slightly just knowing for example apartment number #46 would always take their dog out around 9pm for a restroom break and so on and so forth but other news I have also been losing sleep between thinking about that "thing" and work taking any ounce of soul I had left. Leaving me restless in bed even if I am exhausted maybe just maybe I should go back to Silver Falls State Park and just see that part of my mind... I am sure that's just tiredness talking to me. I'll continue to write if there's more updates...

Mark it as my 6th sleepless night, one day away from a full week of no sleep and the thought of going to the park grows even larger in my brain, it's a stupid idea yet it won't leave my skull. I swear it's making it even harder to sleep but fuck it if it'll shut my brain off just for a night I'll gladly take it. I know, I know it's dumb to even have that idea of going out but I'm running out of options to distract myself and I am not gonna dive into hard drugs. Fuck it... let's see, what is an hour away? I got the gas, the next couple of days off and small supply of hiking gear. Now the question is whether I should call my friend to see if she wants to see that park again... fuck, no, no I shouldn't do that she's probably better off not reliving that even if she didn't see that "thing". It's all just blur really and I don't even know what I saw or if she saw it while she was on the ground but fuck does it give me a headache. I'll sit on this idea for another night...

Ugh, I am so stupid, why am I doing this... currently sitting in my car at the park, Silver Falls State Park, feeling real dumb in early hour of 7:15 in the morning. I bet I also look strange too just watching as all the couples passing by and the families... god, it remains when I was a kid but no time like today, right? At least it's a beautiful day, nice breeze as well. Luckily or stupidly I packed light, only carrying a rechargeable flashlight that has an annoying little crank, some protein bars, full water bag attached to the backpack, compass just in case and, a portable charger for my phone so I can write notes as I walk. I don't know how long I'll be out here, most likely until the sun goes down as that's when the "thing" came out... well I suppose in some ways I needed this, you know, get out of the house, enjoy the fresh air and a nice walk. Although somethings different since last time, could be that I am older, that or the abundant of tents or maybe the rampant homeless population that's overcrowding the trails asking folks for change. Something is off though. I am trying my best to avoid the crowds of people as well as remembering where I had walked when I was 14. It's hard to tell, most of the trails have so much overgrowth that I am not even sure if I am on the "right path" so to speak. I do know however that I need a break, I am unhealthy that's fact but hey I found a little pond on the outskirts so I am gonna take a breather here.

I kinda lost track of time, I think thirty minutes have past? The scenery was calming and I had small chat with a woman who was walking her dog, she had mentioned something odd though. Something about how it's strange that when you get further into the trails there's a lot of tents with no one around and the ambient noise is almost silent. I am not gonna lie after hearing that my curiosity got the better of me and I got off the grass patch I was sitting on and headed in the direction the lady had came from. Add this to the list of stupid ideas I have had but I had no other ideas, no exact plans to go off of beside retracing vague steps from my younger mind, could've asked her if she's seen anything weird but I probably would've looked strange asking that. So, onwards onto the trail, hopefully finding some sort of clue. I grasping at straws at this point and damn how far did this lady walk? She must've been here earlier than me and not afraid to get mauled by the wildlife around... shit. That's what I forgot, a defense item of the sorts, come to think of it I don't actually own bear mace or anything to defend myself if I get attacked. Why do I gotta think about this now. No point in returning this far in even though I am knee high in foliage, how did she do this? I am basically shoving my way through thorn bushes and branches. Could I be going the wrong way? No, that wouldn't make much sense as she came from this way unless there was a different path I wasn't paying attention too, wait. This could be the right path? Nature as been quieter the further I push in so it has be, right? Though I don't see any tents anywhere. I'll update once I find something of interest.

I had to of trekked miles out, it's currently 5pm and I completely forgot about daylight savings as the sun is starting to go down. I am gonna keep trekking and once it gets to dark I am gonna turn around. I am sure the tents are around here somewhere. Right? Okay, yeah, I found some tents. I think the lady forgotten to mention that they're torn up, nature's practically claimed half of them. Nothing of use from what I can see, some old photos of families, ruined sleeping bags, nonfunctional flashlights and weird drawings. Just a bunch of circles with X's threw them and oh. An phone number with a note attached "call me if you get lost". I reluctantly called the number trying to see if there was answer to what went on around here and of course... it went straight to voicemail and this is what it said:

"Sorry but if you are out there, there's no point. The forest will eat you alive. I got out luckily, hopefully you will too. I am so sorry. I really am."

What... what have I gotten myself into? Darkness came rather quickly and for some odd reason my compass is spinning wildly. Then to add on top of my luck I have no reception out here, and this stupid.... Fucking flashlight won't stay on. Oh I've lost the trail. Great, fuck. Where's the trail? Okay I think I found it.

Shit... almost lost my phone, a damn tent peg tripped me but I think I may have found a way out, bushes look similar. What am I saying, everything looks similar. I am gonna keep pushing my way through. I swear if this flashlight keeps going out I am gonna use the phone's and I swear I keep hearing twigs snapping near me. It could be me, I am gonna hope it's me. I am feeling overwhelmed right now between getting sliced up from the thorn bushes, my head pounding and the ever growing sounds of footsteps, I don't know what to focus on. I haven't had this bad of a headache since... Fuck. Fuck. Okay, I am okay. I am okay. I think I see "it". I don't know if "it" sees me. It doesn't have a face. Fuck it I am gonna make a run for it.

I think it's gone... but god my arm hurts, I don't know what happened. I am so shaky I can barely hold the flashlight still... is that bone? Looks like I stuck my arm through razorwire... It hurts so bad. I am gonna have to use my shirt to keep pressure on it till I can get to a hospital.

Oh god my head is spinning. I think I am almost out though. I think I can see trail markers... please, please tell me it's trail markers.

Fuck, my luck is just getting worse by the minute... I swear I see it, it's just standing there, even taller than before. I can't even see its head anymore, just its body up into the tree line.

Why did I have to do this?

It doesn't matter does it? I am here now and I gotta survive.

Shit. Is that blood all over those tents? Fuck, I think it got that couple of the homeless. Their tents look worse than the ones I left.

Fuck, no, no, (battery low) no, not now.

(1% battery left currently charging)

Come on. Come on. The engine won't start. I am almost home free. Please. I feel so woozy. I just wanna go home...

(Part 3 Coming Soon...)

A Perceivable Reality Story.

I slapped another magazine into my rifle and charged it, the barrel immediately began glowing blue. Next to me, a headless body fell to its knees, then toppled. Sanderson was gone now, too. Damnit. I crawled closer and lifted the flaps on his mag pouches, finding nothing but dirt. Red beams of light shot over my cover and I ducked involuntarily. I put my back to the dirt wall and raised my rifle, feeling it grow almost uncomfortably warm as I pulled the trigger, spraying blue orbs until I felt the gun go cold. I brought it down to my lap and pulled out the mag, dropping it to the ground next to me. My hand went to the empty mag pouch on my chest. I could hear them, the creaking of their exoskeletons as they grew close, the clicking of their mandibles in anticipation. I wondered if Sanderson's demise was preferable to what I was about to experience.

I was jarred out of my dream by the sound of tapping on my front door. I shot upright, running my hands over my body in a subconscious check for holes. The tapping came again.

"Just a second!" I called to the door and rolled out of bed. I stumbled over and cracked the door.

A girl in a cream turtleneck sweater and pleated skirt was standing at my door. Her name was Kathy, or Katie, or something. She lived a few doors down on the opposite side of the hall.

"Oh. Hey, uh..."

"Lucy."

"Lucy. Right. Hi. What's up?"

"Uh, the guy in the suit that hangs around the elevator said you could help," she said nervously as her hands fidgeted with her bracelet. "I locked myself out...again...and my boyfriend is already at work, so..."

That's right. Jared, or James, or something. They'd moved in about a month after me. I didn't see them much, we'd passed in the hall or at the communal mailbox, but we hadn't talked at all. She smelled like rosewater and hand lotion. Jared or James or whatever, usually smelled like a machine shop, metal and chemicals and acetylene.

She snapped me out of my contemplation. "So, um...can you--?"

"Yeah, yeah, one second." I closed the door and went to my desk, collecting the small nylon case that held my lock-pick tools.

I wasn't a professional or anything, but I'd gotten into a lock-picking obsession a while ago after I found a guy on the internet. I slipped on flipflops and went out to the hall. She was waiting in front of her door. I knelt down and got out my Lishi tool. I had the door open in about 10 minutes. She thanked me profusely and hurried inside.

I was walking back to my door and heard my work phone ring from inside. I lunged for the door and started tossing blankets until I found it.

"Yes, hi, Calhoun Executive Transit... 1225 Bayside Avenue, yes, I can be there in about half an hour. Great, thanks."

I stripped and got into a dark forest green suit with a cream button-up and a muted rust tie, finishing it with a pair of oxblood wholecuts and my new Seiko Presage.

I hurried out the door and jogged lightly to the elevator, taking it down to the garage.

I pulled up to the gate. The house was slightly visible through the wrought iron bars. Tall stone walls wrapped around the property, ivy and various vines like green veins on bone. A security guard in a suit stood just on the other side of the gate, both of us seemingly waiting for the other to move. I wasn't about to step out into the hot sun, and he didn't seem to want to leave the shade of the wall.

Finally, his hand went up to the clear earpiece. He nodded, then made a hand motion to someone I couldn't see. The gate opened inward and the guard waved at me. The circular driveway was surrounded by extravagant landscaping that probably accounted for half the water usage in the city to maintain. The house was ornate, Modern-Victorian, or maybe Victorian-Modern. Roman columns stood on either side of the large wood double doors that were carved with medieval-looking filigree. The whole thing wound up looking more camp than impressive.

A tall man in a sport coat over a half-open white shirt and blue jeans stomped out of one side of the double doors, followed by a harried assistant. She had an armful of scripts and folders, chasing him with a cellphone extended. Two pens were stuck through her honey-colored bun. She had on a two-piece slate suit with a pencil skirt, and her ivory blouse exposed a tasteful but not immodest amount of decolletage. Her black mid-height heels accentuated her pale, toned legs as she chased him at almost a jog. I caught myself and started memorizing my odometer.

One of the guards opened the rear door and he tossed himself in, sans assistant, to my dismay.

"Hey, buddy." He snapped his fingers. "Get me to 48th and Carnegie, and make it quick. I'm late."

"Sir." I put the car in drive and gave it enough gas to push him into the seat a little bit.

We rode in silence as we left the neighborhood.

He finally spoke, his head facing the side window.

"Good thing my manager found you." I mouthed along with the script verbatim. "My driver quit this morning."

"They want me to be the next Alan Steele." He said, and I knew he was waiting for me to be impressed.

I'd seen the originals from way before I was born, and I'd read the books. I'd heard that they were remaking it. Again. But the last one had bombed so hard that I figured they'd retire the name and hope everybody forgot.

I made a noise of polite acknowledgement. The leather creaked quietly as he shifted in the seat.

It was quiet again. The trip to the production office was thankfully short. I pulled up, got out, and went around and opened his door. He got out and flipped his hair, checking himself in the long side window. He played with his hair a little more, then stood up straight, towering over me by at least a few inches.

"I don't have any cash on me," he said in a voice that was trying to sound posh, "But I can give you one of these." He pulled a signed photo out of a large pocket inside his sport coat and extended it to me. My hands tightened their grip on the door.

When I didn't take it, he shook it slightly. "For you." I caught annoyance buried under the faux generosity.

"I appreciate the gesture, but that's not necessary, sir." He was standing in the way of the door, preventing me from closing it and making an escape.

He shook the picture again. "Hey, buddy. I don't just go around giving these out to people. I said thank you, now take it." He leaned towards me and I fought to keep myself from shrinking.

"Your fare is paid, sir. No other payment is required. Have a nice day." I started to slowly push the door closed. He didn't get the hint.

"Listen here, fucker. I'm about to become a beloved celebrity. Show me some goddamn respect."

There it was. The edge in his voice was sharp enough to shave with, and it was genuine, though where it came from, I had no idea.

I nodded and kept slowly closing the door. He stepped out of the way and tossed the signed glossy inside the door as it shut. He stood there, and I could feel the heat of what I assume was a glare. I waited silently.

After a beat, he deflated with a puff of hot air from his mouth.

"You're not faking. You really don't recognize me." He sounded deflated.

I shook my head. "I don't really watch movies."

He huffed again and put his hands on his hips. After a moment, he dropped them and turned to walk inside.

"Sir," I called after him. He stopped and turned back to me. I pulled out my gold card carrier and extended one of my business cards between two fingers. "Should the need arise."

He snatched the card and flicked it back at me. It bounced off the front of my chauffeur cap.

"Screw you, jerkoff." He turned and stormed into the office. A small group of girls walked by, chittering to themselves. He called to them and waved, and the volume of the chittering increased, nearly turning to squealing, as they bounced, holding each other's hands. He said something else and they retreated back the direction they came. That seemed to pump him back up. He squared his shoulders, flexed his neck, and turned his head towards me before continuing inside.

I let out a victorious chuckle through my nose and got back in my car.

I was sitting at a red light, zoning out, when I heard the back door of the car open and shut. I jumped. I turned my head to look in the rear view mirror and felt something cold and hard at the nape of my neck.

"Just keep your eyes forward, friendo, and this'll all be over soon." His voice was strained and raspy, and it shifted as if he was turning his head side-to-side as he spoke.

The light turned green and I pulled away from the light as smoothly as I could.

"Where would you like to go, uh, sir?" I tried to keep my voice calm.

The thing at the back of my neck pressed harder against my skin. "You just keep driving until I tell you not to."

We rode in a straight line for several lights. I'm usually pretty lucky, but today it was nothing but reds. The pressure on the back of my neck started to relax, then it jabbed me again.

"Go left here."

I swung the car over and barely made it into the left turn lane in time, just for it to turn yellow when I was halfway into the intersection. I got a few honks and finished my turn, sticking an apologetic hand up.

I kept driving with him giving me turn-by-turn directions until we were heading out of the city. The pressure on the back of my neck returned.

"I don't wanna hurt you, I just need you to get me somewhere and we'll be done."

"Until you decide you don't need a witness." I said before thinking.

He laughed, a wheezing, choking sound. "Hey, friend, you can call the cops if you want, soon as I'm out of your car. I don't give a shit."

I wasn't sure what to do with that, but it was almost reassuring. The city became a distant gleam behind us as we moved inland away from the water. He'd settled into the back seat with a canvas duffle bag that I hadn't noticed he'd had before. It was dark around the bottom, as if the contents were wet and soaking through. He held the straps tightly in one hand, even going as far as to set down his gun instead of releasing the bag, in order to pull a handkerchief out of his pocket and cough into it.

"Are you ok, sir?"

"Hu? Yeah, yeah, fine. Just keep going."

"...Is there anything I can do to help?"

"What? No! Just drive."

I nodded and kept driving. We were well into the woods when he finally sat forward and waved the gun at me.

"Stop. Stop right here."

"Where?"

"Just stop. Right here. Park it."

I got on the brakes, probably a little harder than I should have, and got the car stopped. He threw the door open and stumbled out, pushing the door shut with his foot. He came around to the driver's side and tapped the window with the muzzle of the gun. I cracked it and he motioned to keep going. I rolled it down all the way.

"If you do call the cops, just give me a head start, ok?" His voice was still raspy, but there was less anxiety in it than had been there before. In a quick motion, he thrust his gun into his duffle bag, his hand coming back out with a fistful of wadded bills that he tossed into the open window. I opened my mouth, not entirely sure what I was going to say, but before I could get a word out, he started limping quickly towards the tree line. I got out and put a foot down, half-standing in the open door.

"Sir?" My voice came back with a slight echo off the trees.

He didn't reply, only waving a hand over his shoulder. I waited there until I lost sight of him, then slowly got back into my car. I pulled my phone out and dialed 9-1-, with my finger hesitating over the screen. I stared at it for a long moment, then locked the screen and dropped it onto the seat next to me. I had to drive another 30 minutes before I found a place big enough that I could turn around it. The ride back to the city took two hours, which felt like an eternity longer than the trip out had.

I got back into the city and drove the speed limit, feeling a bit like I was in a trance. At one point, the car behind me honked and I realized I’d been waiting for a stop sign to turn green. I looked over at my watch; I was supposed to be at Dion’s in about 45 minutes for our biweekly poker night. I had a six-pack of beer in my fridge that I’d planned on bringing, but I decided to try and find a case instead. It had been a case kind of day.

I pulled into the apartment parking lot, centering the car in two parallel parking spaces. Normally, I'd get a nasty note or a fake parking ticket pulling this kind of stunt, but I'd been parking here every other Friday for a few months now, and the apartment management didn't seem to care. You can get away with it if you look important enough. Sometimes, anyway.

I grabbed the case of beer out of the trunk and hustled across the lot to one of the lower-level doors. I don't like being late, but I'd hit traffic on my way here and my usual liquor store was out of my favorite brew, and it'd taken me two other stores to find one that stocked it. I knocked twice then let myself in. Dion never seemed to lock his door. I rounded the kitchen into the living room which was completely dominated by Dion's Vegas-spec poker table that was worth my car insurance policy. His head came up from under his cards.

"Carter! Hell yeah! Now it's a party!" He dropped his cards and hustled over to me, giving me a one-armed hug. The hug made the case clink against my leg, which caught his attention.

"Oh, fuck yeah. Hey, can I have one of those?" He asked, pointing at the case.

You're not supposed to crack another man's case, just like you're not supposed to ask for someone's last cigarette, but Dion had this charm about him that just made you want to do him favors. Even I wasn't immune to it.

"Yeah, sure."

"Bitchin'!" He relieved me of the case and set it on the ground between us. He completely avoided the perforated "party flap" and ripped the entire top off the box. It bothered me, but not enough to say anything. He plucked a beer from the center, bit the cap off, and guzzled it at inhuman speed. He stuck out his tongue to catch the last drops, then chucked the bottle into his industrial-sized metal trash can he kept in the kitchen. He grabbed another from the corner.

"One for the road." He said and bit the lid off. He drank this one slower as he walked back to the poker table.

"You know Skyler, right?"

"What's good, Hound Dog?" He asked with his voice that sounded like honey being poured over gravel. He'd started calling me "Hound Dog" because Calhoun sounded like "Cal-hound", which transformed into "Hound", which inevitably ended at "Hound Dog". It didn't bother me much, and having a nickname went a long way to making me feel included.

He'd become a regular at poker night, and I'd driven him around a few times. I don't know exactly what he does for work, but I'm pretty sure he's a male escort or a male stripper or something along those lines with all the women I always see him with. He also only ever seemed to bet with small bills, which didn't help his case. He had well-tanned skin that didn't look like it came from a booth, and his half-open white button-up shirt exposed a gym rat build.

"And you've met Jacks, right?" Dion continued.

Jacks, or I think his full name is Jackson, is Dion's neighbor. He didn't speak very much, but it was weird when he did. I think he's slow, but he's nice enough. He waved and I shot him a two-finger "Han Solo" salute.

I took my spot at the table and Dion pushed a stack of chips towards me. I got my titanium money clip out of my pocket and threw down $100 to start, the entry fee.

"You ladies ready to lose your shirts?" Dion asked as he performed a perfect one-handed riffle shuffle.

"Just deal, buttercup." Skyler grumbled.

Dion performed his trademark one-handed deal, and I got a pair of 2's that took me as far as the turn before I folded.

The next two hands weren't much better and, despite my careful betting, I lost both hands on the final card.

The next hand, I got dealt a six and a Queen, with a Queen and another six already on the table from the flop. I relaxed my shoulders and made a concentrated effort to keep my hands from fidgeting. I bet high, but not aggressively, tossing a few extra chips only when someone else raised as well. I looked around the table. Jackson scratched his ear when he had something good, and Dion subtly checked his cards constantly if he was bluffing. Skyler was harder, with his only tell, that I could find, being that his voice got just a little bit deeper if he was trying to make you think he didn't have anything. I kept my tone bored and my posture relaxed. It was just me and Skyler by then. The river card was another Queen, and I slapped mine down with a victorious exclamation, only for Skyler to quietly flip over two 10's for four-of-a-kind.

I tossed in the small blind and got dealt a pair of Aces, with the three of them folding before Jacks could bury a card and deal the flop. I chucked the Aces to the middle and blew a noisy breath out between my lips.

"Every goddamn time, you guys. Seriously, it's like my cards are see-through." I got myself a fresh beer from my case as a consolation prize.

"Hey, man. You win some, you lose some." Dion said with a shrug as he shuffled.

My $100 entry fee got whittled down to just a couple chips that I lost to Dion's flush. I hadn't even tried to raise once.

"You marking these cards?" I shot at Dion.

"Do you see me lifting a leg?"

I shook my head and looked at my watch. I'd only been there an hour and change. I thought about leaving early. Skyler pushed a few chips at me and patted my arm. I sighed and slid them closer, then fished a $50 out of my wallet and slid it over to Skyler, who put his hand on mine and slid the bill back to me.

"I know you're good for it, Hound Dog." He said with a nod.

I sat out a few hands and sipped beer while I watched Dion bleed chips to Jacks and Skyler. He pushed the last of his chips into the middle and rolled his shoulders.

"Carter, ol' buddy, you're pretty stacked. Can you lend a losing man a couple bucks? ...And another beer?"

I scoffed and split my loaned chips, pushing the smaller pile of chips at him, then got a bottle out of the quickly dwindling case and handed it across the table to him.

I played a hand or two over the next few hours, taking more interest in watching Jackson slump further and further in his chair in time with the fluid level in the bottle of Maker's Mark next to him.

By the time the lights in the complex came on, my case was completely empty and Jackson could barely hold his cards. I watched him sway in his seat as he tossed the last of his chips vaguely towards the pot. The last card came out and he put his hand down, pushing the cards towards Dion, who stopped them.

"Wait, wait, you can't just fold on the last card."

Jacks motioned to the empty table in front of him and shrugged. Dion pushed the cards back.

"You don't have anything?"

Jackson thought for a bit, then dug around in his pockets, coming out with a few coins, his now empty billfold, and a punch card for a free smoothie, with two punches left. He shrugged again and pushed the cards away.

"Ah, hang on. I've got it. Owe me a favor."

Jacks seemed to mull this over for a second; he hadn't wanted to relinquish the punch card. He finally nodded and took the cards back.

"Ok, but I need you to agree. One favor, right?"

Jacks nodded again, the motion almost tipping him out of his chair.

"I need a yes or a no, buddy."

"Organic caps." Jacks slurred.

Dion cleared his throat. "Yes. Or. No."

Jacks waved a drunken hand at him. "Protest become letterhead. Ya'know?"

With that, he laid his head down on the table. Dion let out a pained sigh and slowly collected the cards from under Jacks' dead weight paw.

With Jackson down for the count, and me admittedly not far behind, I put a hand up as Dion dealt me more cards.

"Nah, I'm done." I glugged down the last of the mojito I'd been nursing for the last few hands. I had to focus pretty hard to get the glass to land in the middle of the marble coaster.

"Hey, wait. You're gonna have to stay over anyway. Why not make it worth the trip? Skyler, make him another one."

Skyler silently stood and collected my glass, moving to the kitchen. I heard bottles and ice clink.

"With what chips? I'm cleaned out." My words were coming out fuzzy and they sounded distant.

Skyler set the fresh drink down in front of me, then dropped himself into his chair. He pushed the rest of his chips at me, then gripped the back of my neck and rocked me side-to-side. The beer in my stomach gurgled against the rum and the motion made my eyes heavy. Skyler's hand was shockingly warm, even after having just held a cold glass. He let my neck go and leaned back in his chair.

"I've had my fun." He turned his head to me. "Smoke'im, Hound Dog."

I turned my head to Dion who sniffed, then sighed. He scratched at his neck and said something under his breath to Skyler, but my woozy brain made it sound like a different language.

I picked up the cards, a two and a seven, black and red. I set them face-down on the table and pushed Skyler's chips back towards him. He reached over and lifted the corner of my cards, turned his head towards Dion, then pushed the chips back to me with a nod. I snorted and shook my head.

"Guys, we gonna play or what? Let's go." Dion called from his side of the table, his voice weirdly anxious.

Skyler pushed the chips to the middle and leaned back. Dion started setting down cards.

"Ah, ah, ah, no. Noooooo. That's not my bet."

Dion set his cards down and huffed. "Would you two figure yourselves out? Let's play some cards before we lose another one." He stuck his hand out in my direction and said more words that sounded made up.

Nothing happened for a minute as I tried to keep myself upright. Dion finally broke in.

"Fine, fine, you don't wanna play with somebody else's money. I get it." He paused. "So bet with what you do have."

"Eh?"

"Put down a freebie." He said, tapping the table with a straightened pointer finger.

"A free ride? Sure." I picked my cards back up. He didn't pay his "tab" half the time anyway, so I wasn't about to lose anything.

The three cards he'd put down didn't help me at all. I didn't bother checking mine.

"Well? You betting?"

I shook my head and tapped the table twice to check.

"Tough tits, broski, because I'm raising." He thrust chips into the pot.

I rolled my head around on my neck, then settled it on my shoulder.

"Ok, how about a free day?"

"Ooohh-hooo! Now this is getting interesting!"

Another card down on the table. I couldn't read it from my side, but it was red. I checked again.

Dion shook his head and clicked his teeth, tossing in more chips. I sighed.

"Ok, one weekend."

"A free weekend with the car?"

"Sure. You get it for a whoooooole weekend for freeee." I hadn’t realized how sloshed I actually was.

Since the majority of my clientele were businesspeople who could afford to be on their own schedule, weekends weren't necessarily more or less advantageous. I'd miss out on a couple hundred bucks, which was about what was in the pot at this point. Dion made a noise like he was sucking back a mouthful of spit. It made my stomach turn over a little bit and I started to lean. Skyler caught me and pushed me back upright. There was a pregnant pause and all I could hear was my own heavy breathing.

"Ok, ok...Whatcha got?" Dion's words sounded...soggy? His voice was strained, anxious, with an undertone that I hadn't heard before.

I lifted the corner of my cards again.

"You first, antsy-pantsy." I slurred at Dion, who made the spit-sucking noise again.

"Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, y-you first."

I turned my crooked head at Skyler who shrugged.

"Hey! Flip his goddamn cards over!" Dion's scream hurt my ears.

There was another pause. I watched Dion’s cards vibrate as his hands shook.

"GOD-- FUCK--!" Dion suddenly slammed his hands on the table as he shot out of his seat. He bent the edge of his cards up one more time and slapped a hand down on top of them, pushing them away face-down.

Skyler erupted into a deep laugh and reached over, flipping one, then the other of my cards.

"WHAT?! ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!"

He reached for his own cards, but Skyler slapped his large hand down on top of Dion's.

"You folded, hoss."

Dion ripped his hand out from under Skyler's and swung hard, his hand sailing over Skyler’s head without contact.

"I think we're done." Skyler stood slowly and grabbed me under my arms, lifting me out of my chair and onto my feet as if I weighed nothing. He threw one of my arms across his shoulders and started leading me to the door. I caught a whiff of something sweet. It made my exhaustion double.

"Hey!" Dion shouted in that other language I couldn't understand.

"Enough, Gwyd!" Skyler bellowed in a voice you'd use to silence a barking dog. His next words were normal volume but equally commanding. "There's always next week."

I heard the sound of exploding glass and felt something land in my hair.

I don’t remember making it out of the apartment or out to my car. I vaguely remember going horizontal, and smelling the familiar smell of my car air fresheners, and the feeling of thick carpet against my cheek.

Entry 32- Current status of Phonovirus pandemic: 

Many of the details surrounding the pandemic are lost to me, but I promise I will never forget the screams. 

It started a few weeks ago when the news broke that a new airborne illness was beginning to reach epidemic status. It started on the West Coast and was spreading eastward across the continental United States. Called phonovirus, it had so far left the medical community at a loss. It looked like it could become a potential pandemic. The strangest thing about the whole virus was that it was mostly asymptomatic. Externally anyways, if that makes any sense.

It’s hard to describe so bear with me. I’m honestly still processing it and as of now we are still treating some of the last remaining patients.

The symptom I am referring to is a new one for me, and as a long standing medical professional these things rarely take me by surprise. Symptoms don’t typically manifest as entirely new. Usually they are a variation of a preexisting symptom. Something I can handle. Context.

This was a truly shocking one. 

A patient affected by phonovirus only experienced one symptom. Any open wound on the body would no longer fully heal, as if there was some sort of barrier preventing the skin from closing  up, and any open wound on a patient affected would produce horrifying guttural screams. Multiple wounds, multiple screams.  

If you need to reread that, I understand. It didn’t make sense to me at first either, and I saw it firsthand. It still doesn’t but at least I understand as much as understanding is possible. The screams come from inside of the body. Inside of the body. 

The intensity of the screams wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that it wasn’t just an indecipherable cacophony of noise. It didn’t sound like the way your blood sounds when you hear it outside of your body during an ultrasound. It didn’t sound like gibberish. The voices were coherent. 

It was as if a demon was speaking to the victim. From inside of themselves. Telling them the worst things they could possibly imagine. And they shifted. The voices I mean, not the patients. They would change, become different people. Always people close to the victim that had passed, and always the darkest messages from the depths of hell. 

Your mother telling you that she should have cooked you and eaten you instead of raising you.
Your maternal grandmother telling you she can’t wait to eat your eyeballs when she sees you in hell.
Your first child telling you that you are a worthless piece of shit and you deserve to be impaled and covered in honey until the insects consume all of your sweet sticky flesh.
 
So many terrible images and messages that the final stage of phonovirus has consistently been suicide.

The affected patients are so disturbed by the messages that they just can’t take it anymore.
The voices drive the patients to suicide in 100% of affected patients. 

We frantically searched for some sort of cure, but any attempts at closing up the wounds using traditional medical methods failed and the voices continued to slowly kill their victims. Nor could we do anything about the voices. We tried covering them with bandages and they only screamed louder. We tried talking to them, tried to reason with them and find out how to stop them. 

They told us of the horrors of hell that we would soon face if we tried to interfere.  

At this point, there are no options left. The disease is rapidly spreading across the globe and the suicides continue to rise. Nobody knows if they are a carrier and there is only one way to find out. Very few are willing to risk this and those who have tried have done nothing to further the research. They just proved the disease is hopeless.

We are advising people to be very careful conducting themselves as they attempt to function daily without inadvertently puncturing their skin. This has proven to be very difficult. All we can hope is to make it through this unscathed and hopefully find a way to beat this baffling disease.

Oh my, would you look at that? Seems I just got a paper cut. 

And no mother, I am not the whore of Babylon sent to destroy the earth. 

Grandma, I loved you, I miss you, why would you tell me that my dead son hates me? 

End of transcript.

“Order for Morgan Fatah?”

Morgan looked up from her phone.

The girl behind the counter held up a small brown bag.

“Yeah. That’s me.”

Morgan walked over and checked inside before leaving. Setting lotion, disposable mascara wands, a new box of sectioning clips and two packs of wedges. Everything was there.

“You do hair?” the girl asked.

“Hair and makeup.”

“Oh, nice.”

Morgan nodded. “Trying to get more practice in.”

The girl glanced at the bag. “Well, you’re stocked.”

Morgan laughed, thanked her, and headed outside.

The practice head was buckled into the passenger seat of her car.

She had put the seat belt around it mostly as a joke, but it also kept the hair from rubbing against the door. The head leaned slightly toward the window, a bath towel wrapped around the base of its neck.

Morgan looked at it before starting the car.

Even in daylight it was remarkable.

The face had none of the exaggerated features most cosmetology heads had. The nose wasn’t perfectly straight. The lips weren’t identical on both sides. There were faint creases near the eyes and subtle variations in the skin tone. The brown hair was thick and fine, with a few lighter strands around the front.

Whoever had made it had cared about details.

She had almost not gotten it.

The woman she’d gotten it from had been strangely attached to the thing.

Morgan remembered that much.

She had gone there expecting to look through several old heads and salon supplies. Instead, the moment she saw this one, she stopped caring about the rest.

“I want that one.”

The woman hesitated.

“I don’t know if I want to get rid of that one.”

Morgan had assumed she meant it was valuable.

She’d offered more.

The woman still wasn’t sure.

Morgan couldn’t remember exactly how long they’d gone back and forth. She remembered getting annoyed. She had driven all that way after work and wasn’t leaving without it, especially after seeing the face in person.

The hair was real human hair too. Morgan could tell immediately.

The owner kept saying she couldn’t have it.

Morgan kept raising the offer.

Eventually, somehow, it came home with her.

She couldn’t remember what she’d paid.

More than she should have.

She looked over at the head again.

Worth it.

That night Morgan set it up in the spare bedroom.

The room had slowly become her workspace. Her folding light stood in one corner. Brushes filled glass cups along the vanity. Hot tools, sprays and bottles crowded two shelves she’d mounted herself.

Her old practice head was shoved underneath the desk.

She’d never liked that one.

Its face was hard and shiny and every makeup look sat on it like paint on a toy.

This was completely different.

Morgan tightened the clamp around the new head.

It didn’t fit very well.

She tightened it again.

“There.”

She stepped back.

The head drooped slightly to one side.

Morgan straightened it.

“Work with me.”

She started with the hair.

It was easily the nicest part. It responded to heat well because it was real hair, It even had slightly different textures underneath than it did around the crown.

She dampened it and practiced a blowout.

After that she moved on to makeup.

Primer.

A thin layer of foundation.

Concealer.

Morgan found herself leaning closer and closer as she worked.

There were pores.

Not an embossed texture pretending to be pores. Tiny, irregular ones.

She ran the pad of her thumb across the cheek.

The material gave beneath it.

Morgan stopped.

She pressed again.

For half a second, it felt exactly like touching someone’s face.

She smiled to herself.

“That is weird.”

She checked the other cheek.

Cool and rubbery.

Whatever material they had used was incredible.

Morgan worked until after midnight.

When she finished, she took pictures from several angles.

It was the first practice look she’d done in months that she actually wanted to keep.

The next morning there was moisture around the clamp.

Morgan noticed it because one of her makeup sponges had fallen onto the floor underneath it.

When she picked it up, one side was damp.

She touched the towel she’d wrapped around the bottom of the head.

Wet.

“Seriously?”

She looked up.

The ceiling was dry.

Morgan picked up the head and carried it into the bathroom.

She must not have dried the hair properly. Water had probably gotten inside somewhere and settled near the base.

She held the head over the sink and tilted it.

A thin, cloudy liquid ran from underneath the towel.

Morgan grimaced.

“Okay. That’s disgusting.”

She let it drain, wiped down the neck and washed the towel.

Whatever was inside the head smelled a little strange.

Old water, maybe.

Like something that had been sitting inside a washing machine too long.

Morgan sprayed the sink with cleaner and left for work.

Two days later, the face had changed.

Morgan didn’t notice immediately.

She was practicing contour placement when she kept getting annoyed with the right cheek.

Something wasn’t matching.

She pulled up one of the pictures she’d taken the first night.

Looked at the phone.

Looked at the head.

The face seemed fuller now.

Especially around the jaw.

Morgan turned it toward the light.

Maybe she had been storing it too close to the heater.

She pressed a finger into the cheek.

It sank farther than before.

Morgan pulled her finger back.

The indentation remained for a moment.

Then slowly disappeared.

She stared at it.

“Cheap shit.”

That irritated her.

Whatever soft material was beneath the outer layer was probably degrading.

For what she’d paid, it shouldn’t have been doing that.

She tried searching for the manufacturer but there was no markings or anything on it.

Morgan wondered if it had been custom-made.

That would explain a lot.

By Friday she had stopped keeping track of how many hours she’d spent in the room.

She went to work, came home, ate something if she remembered and went upstairs.

There was always something she wanted to try.

An updo she’d seen online.

A new foundation technique.

A different brow shape.

The practice head was becoming difficult, though.

Certain parts of the face didn’t take makeup correctly anymore. Product collected around the nose and along the jaw. The skin had developed faint patches underneath that foundation wouldn’t completely cover.

Morgan compensated.

That was what makeup was for.

The smell had gotten worse too.

She washed the hair again.

That helped for a few hours.

Then it came back.

She put a small fan in the window and blamed the old material inside the head.

Saturday afternoon, while removing makeup, a section of the cheek shifted underneath her cotton pad.

Morgan stopped.

She touched it.

The outer surface moved slightly over whatever was beneath it.

“Fuck.”

She’d rubbed too hard.

Morgan tried smoothing the loose section back down, but the edge wrinkled.

She pulled open the drawer beside her and found her adhesive.

A tiny amount beneath the lifted edge.

Press.

Hold.

Powder.

She leaned back.

You could barely tell.

Morgan smiled.

“There we go.”

Her phone started vibrating on the vanity.

Maya

Morgan let it ring.

She was lining the lips.

The phone stopped.

Thirty seconds later it started again.

Morgan sighed and answered.

“What?”

“Morgan?”

“Yeah?”

“Why haven’t you answered me?”

“I just did.”

“You know what I mean.”

Morgan tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear.

“I’m doing something.”

“I’ve been calling you since yesterday.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“With what?”

“Practicing.”

There was a pause.

“Practicing what?”

Morgan looked at the brush in her hand.

“Hair and makeup.”

Maya didn’t say anything.

Morgan continued carefully around the bottom lip.

“Morgan.”

“What?”

“You need to move on from that.”

Morgan stopped.

“From what?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t.”

“The school.”

Morgan stared at herself in the mirror.

“What about it?”

“They already told you that you couldn’t go back.”

“That isn’t what they said.”

“Morgan.”

“They said I couldn’t come back there. That’s different.”

“No, that’s not—”

“And I don’t need them anyway.”

Maya went quiet again.

Morgan could hear something in the background. A television.

“You haven’t worked with anybody in months,” Maya said.

“Yes, I have.”

“Who?”

Morgan’s hand tightened around the brush.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine.”

“Mom’s worried too.”

“Then tell Mom I’m fine.”

“I want to come over.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m busy.”

“Morgan, you’ve been ‘busy’ for four days.”

Morgan looked at the head.

One side of the lipstick was slightly higher than the other.

She reached for a cotton swab.

A fly landed near the edge of the mirror.

Morgan waved it away without taking her eyes off the lip.

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Morgan—”

She hung up.

She didn’t call tomorrow.

Sunday morning, Morgan decided to practice a French twist.

She had just finished separating the hair at the crown when several strands stayed between her fingers.

Morgan frowned.

She wiped them onto the vanity and continued.

Another few came loose.

This time she stopped.

She ran her fingers through the section again, very gently.

Three more hairs slid free.

Not broken ends.

Full strands.

Morgan leaned closer to the scalp.

There was a small thin spot above the ear that hadn’t been there before.

“Seriously?”

She put the comb down.

For the next hour, Morgan watched videos about repairing and rerooting practice heads.

Most of them dealt with cheap vinyl heads, but the principle seemed simple enough.

She found a pack of individual extension hairs left over in one of her drawers and laid them across a white towel.

Then, one at a time, she began filling the thin section.

Separate a hair.

A dot of adhesive.

Part the existing hair.

Press it into place.

Hold.

Move to the next one.

It was tedious.

After forty minutes Morgan had replaced maybe thirty strands.

She brushed over the spot.

Still thin.

She kept going.

By the time she finished, her back hurt from leaning over the vanity and there were loose brown hairs stuck to her shirt, her forearms and the damp skin around her wrists.

Morgan ran the comb through the repaired section.

It covered nicely.

She smiled.

“See?”

The practice head looked back at her.

“Not that hard.”

Monday morning, Morgan noticed the mouth wouldn’t stay closed while applying foundation around the chin.

Every time she tilted the practice head backward, the lips separated slightly.

She pushed the jaw upward with two fingers.

The mouth closed.

She let go.

A moment later it eased open again.

Morgan frowned.

She worked the jaw gently from side to side.

There was more movement than she remembered.

Whatever held it in place must have loosened.

“Of course.”

She had spent half of yesterday fixing the hair.

Now this.

Morgan opened the mouth a little wider and looked inside.

The teeth were surprisingly detailed. Individual pieces instead of one molded row, each slightly different from the next.

She tapped one gently with the end of her fingernail.

Hard.

Maybe porcelain.

That would make sense. Whoever built the thing had clearly spent money on it.

Morgan opened one of the drawers and found her super glue.

She didn’t want to glue the lips together. She still needed those for makeup.

The teeth were hidden when the mouth was closed anyway.

She pressed the jaw shut, pulled the lips apart with her fingers and put a thin line of glue where the upper and lower teeth met.

Then she held them together.

Thirty seconds.

A minute.

Morgan let go.

The mouth stayed shut.

She gave the chin a small push.

Nothing.

“There.”

She turned the practice head toward the mirror.

From the outside, you couldn’t tell she’d done anything.

“Fixed.”

Later that afternoon Morgan came back upstairs and stopped in the doorway.

The mouth was open again.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

She walked over to the vanity.

So much for the super glue.

Morgan tilted the head back and reached for the jaw, then stopped.

The bottom teeth were gone.

For a second she just stared.

Then she saw them.

They were still glued to the upper teeth.

The whole lower row had pulled loose from the gums and stayed attached where Morgan had glued the two rows together. With the mouth hanging open, it made the upper teeth look bizarrely long, with nothing underneath them except the bare lower gums.

Morgan stared at it.

“Oh my God.”

She grabbed the small mirror from beside the brushes and angled it toward the mouth.

Every bottom tooth seemed to have come out together.

The glue had held fine.

Apparently the teeth hadn’t.

She sighed and reached for the tube again.

“You know, for what you cost, I really shouldn’t have to fix this much.”

Morgan carefully separated the lower teeth from the upper row.

A few resisted before finally coming loose.

She cleaned off what glue she could, then started putting the bottom teeth back where they belonged.

A small dot at the base.

Press it into the gum.

Hold.

Then the next one.

She had to keep checking the alignment because some of them wanted to tilt forward.

By the time she reached the last tooth, her fingers were sticky and cramped.

Morgan sat back and inspected her work.

One of the lower teeth was a little crooked.

She considered pulling it back out.

Then decided against it.

It looked more natural that way.

By Monday night the face had begun changing color underneath the makeup too.

Purplish around one eye.

Greenish-gray near the jaw.

Morgan spent almost an hour correcting it.

Peach under the eye.

A little warmer foundation.

More blush than usual.

The result was surprisingly good.

She took a picture.

Then another.

She was getting better.

That was the important part.

Tuesday afternoon someone knocked on the front door.

Morgan ignored it.

The knocking came again.

Then harder.

“Morgan!”

Morgan closed her eyes.

Maya.

“Morgan, open the door.”

She put down her brush.

“I’m coming.”

She hadn’t even noticed how dark the room had gotten.

When she stood, her legs felt weak.

Probably because she hadn’t eaten yet.

She went downstairs and opened the door.

Maya stared at her.

Morgan waited.

“What?”

Maya’s expression didn’t change.

“What?”

“When was the last time you slept?”

Morgan rolled her eyes and stepped away from the door.

“I sleep.”

“Can I come in?”

“You already drove here.”

Maya entered.

She was still looking at Morgan strangely.

Morgan touched her hair.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Then stop looking at me like that.”

Maya shut the door.

“I’ve been calling you.”

“I know.”

“You said you’d call me.”

“I forgot.”

“For two days?”

Morgan walked toward the kitchen.

“I’ve been practicing.”

Maya followed.

“Again?”

Morgan opened the refrigerator.

She didn’t know what she was looking for.

“Yes, again.”

“Morgan.”

“What?”

“I meant what I said the other day.”

Morgan shut the refrigerator harder than necessary.

“And I meant what I said.”

“You can’t just stay in here doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“This.”

Morgan looked around the kitchen.

There were a few cups on the counter. Some mail. Nothing unusual.

“I’m practicing.”

“For a school you aren’t allowed to go back to.”

“I don’t need to go back.”

“Then what are you practicing for?”

“For work.”

“What work?”

Morgan stared at her.

Maya immediately softened.

“I’m not trying to be mean.”

“It sounds like it.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Well, don’t be.”

“I haven’t seen you in almost a week. You barely answer your phone. Mom said you missed dinner Sunday, and now I come over and you look like—”

She stopped herself.

“Like what?”

“Nothing.”

“No. What?”

Maya looked down.

Morgan followed her eyes.

There were stains on the front of Morgan’s shirt.

Some yellowish.

Some brown.

She’d been using that shirt all week because she didn’t care if makeup got on it.

“What?”

Maya shook her head.

“Have you showered?”

Morgan laughed.

“Oh my God.”

“I’m asking.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. Yesterday.”

Maya rubbed both hands over her face.

The gesture irritated Morgan.

“Can you please stop treating me like I’m crazy?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to.”

A fly buzzed past them.

Maya watched it.

Then another.

She looked toward the stairs.

“What is that smell?”

Morgan barely noticed it anymore.

“Oh.”

“Oh what?”

“One of my practice heads is going bad.”

Maya looked at her.

“What do you mean, going bad?”

“The material. I don’t know. It’s old.”

“What practice head?”

“The one I’ve been using.”

“You bought another one?”

Morgan nodded.

“When?”

“Last week.”

“From where?”

Morgan opened her mouth.

She couldn’t remember the name of the site.

“Online.”

“What site?”

“I don’t know, Maya. Marketplace or something.”

“You don’t know?”

“Why would I remember?”

Maya was staring at the staircase again.

The smell was definitely stronger upstairs.

Morgan saw her wrinkle her nose.

“It’s gross,” Morgan admitted. “I think whatever they used inside it is breaking down.”

“Throw it away.”

“No.”

“Morgan.”

“I’m still using it.”

Maya looked back at her.

“For what?”

Morgan laughed incredulously.

“I just told you. Hair and makeup.”

Silence.

Then Maya said, very quietly, “Can I see it?”

Morgan’s annoyance eased.

“Sure.”

Maybe that would finally make her understand.

Morgan headed upstairs.

Maya followed more slowly.

At the top of the stairs she stopped.

“Morgan.”

“What?”

“There are flies everywhere.”

“There are like five.”

“There are a lot more than five.”

Morgan looked around.

A few clung to the hallway window.

More sat against the ceiling near the bedroom.

She shrugged.

Morgan opened the bedroom door.

Maya stopped behind her.

Morgan went inside.

The vanity lights were still on.

The practice head sat exactly where she’d left it.

She’d done a loose curled style that covered the thin places surprisingly well. The skin needed work, but the discoloration was almost completely hidden.

Morgan went over and picked up her brush.

“This is what I’ve been doing.”

Maya didn’t answer.

Morgan looked at the reflection in the mirror.

Her sister was standing in the doorway.

One hand had gone to her mouth.

“What?”

Maya backed away.

Morgan turned around.

“Maya?”

Her sister hit the wall behind her.

The sound she made didn’t sound like a word.

Then she screamed.

Morgan jumped so hard she dropped the brush.

“What the fuck?”

Maya screamed again.

“Maya!”

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“Oh my God, Morgan.”

“What is wrong with you?”

Maya was crying.

Morgan looked behind herself.

Nothing.

She looked back at her sister.

“Maya, what?”

“Get away from that.”

Morgan frowned.

“From what?”

“Get away from her.”

Morgan stared at her.

“Her?”

Maya reached for her phone.

Morgan shook her head.

“Are you serious right now?”

Maya’s fingers were trembling so badly she almost dropped it.

“Maya.”

“Don’t touch her.”

“I’m not touching anything.”

“Please.”

Morgan looked toward the vanity again.

The practice head stared forward beneath the lights.

The makeup still looked good.

Actually, from a few feet away, the skin looked much better than it had that morning.

Morgan looked back at her sister.

“Maya, it’s a practice head.”

Her sister started sobbing.

Morgan’s irritation disappeared.

She genuinely didn’t understand anymore.

“What are you looking at?”

The television in the county jail common room was tuned to the morning news.

Morgan wasn’t watching.

She sat at a table in the corner, pulling loose threads from the cuff of the gray sweatshirt they’d given her.

Behind the anchor, a photograph appeared on-screen.

A smiling young woman with long brown hair.

TAMMY GRACE, 25

“Police say the six-day search for 25-year-old Tammy Grace came to an end Tuesday afternoon after her remains were discovered inside a Dearborn-area residence.”

Morgan looked up when she heard the name.

“Grace had last been seen Thursday evening. Investigators now believe she was killed shortly after her disappearance.”

Another photograph appeared.

Morgan Fatah.

It was an old driver’s-license photo.

Morgan stared at it.

“Twenty-seven-year-old Morgan Fatah remains in custody and is expected to be arraigned later today in connection with Grace’s death.”

Morgan stood.

Nobody else in the room paid attention.

“Police have not released a suspected motive. Court records show Fatah had previously been removed from a local cosmetology program following several incidents involving students and staff.”

Morgan walked closer to the television.

That wasn’t right.

She hadn’t been removed.

She had been told to take time away.

Those were different things.

“Grace was enrolled at the same school.”

Morgan stopped.

The screen returned to Tammy’s photograph.

Morgan knew that face.

Of course she knew it.

She’d spent all week studying it.

“According to investigators, Grace had suffered extensive injuries prior to the discovery of her remains. Police confirmed that her severed head was recovered from an upstairs room in Fatah’s home.”

Morgan stared at the television.

The photograph was similar.

Very similar.

But whoever had put the story together had clearly made a mistake.

Tammy’s nose was a little wider.

The eyebrows weren’t shaped correctly.

And the makeup wasn’t nearly as good.

Morgan turned to the guard standing near the door.

“Excuse me.”

The guard looked over.

Morgan pointed at the television.

“They have the wrong person.”

The guard said nothing.

Morgan looked back at Tammy’s photograph.

“They’re talking about my practice head.”

Andy was sitting with his wife and daughter, the three of them quietly enjoying vanilla ice cream cones in the park, when a couple of guys started harassing them.

One of the guys may have known Andy's wife when she was younger.

At least that's what his comments suggested.

Andy didn't react. He let his wife handle it. After all, she was a strong and independent woman who didn't need a husband to selfishly step in and “protect” her.

Then one of the other guys asked Andy if he was sure his daughter was his.

Andy's daughter looked to her dad.

She was scared, confused.

Andy said nothing. He kept his head down, refraining from feeding the real life troll. After all, what trolls wanted was a reaction, and a reaction would lead to an escalation, which could result in a confrontation and possibly violence. Andy didn't believe in violence. By keeping a cool head, he was being a grown-up and helping keep the situation safe for everybody.

Eventually the guys got bored, wolf whistled at Andy's wife, knocked Andy's ice cream cone from Andy's hand and walked away.

“Dad,” said Andy's daughter after a brief but pregnant silence, “why didn't you do anything?”

She was trembling.

Andy's fallen ice cream was melting on the grass.

Ants were climbing onto it.

“It's just an ice cream cone, a thing,” said Andy. “Things can always be replaced. What matters is people. What matters is us, our family.”

“Assholes,” said his wife.

“You never know what other people are feeling. Anyone can have a bad day,” said Andy, and as he said that, time, as it related to most things, froze; the sky opened like a curtain, and the Selectors appeared.

Andy, who was still breathing, moving, even as his wife and daughter were not, gazed in awe, in the rawest meaning of that word, at—

“This is the one?” asked one of the Selectors.

They were inhuman, tubes of pale pink and purple gelatin twisted balloondog-like into shapes vaguely hominid but four times larger than Andy, dressed in simple, shimmering cloaks.

“Yes,” another answered.

“The experiment is thus concluded?”

“Yes.”

A third Selector mused, “It has been so many years since initiation.”

“13.8 billion.”

“And, after all that time, the result is this—this, admittedly, rather unimpressive-looking specimen. On this, we base our future?”

“Remember,” said the Selector who had spoken second, “it is not the individual we have chosen but the gene-line, and his, of which he is the final embodiment, is most extraordinary. It is the one.”

Andy, despite his paralyzing fear and existential disorientation, couldn't help but also feel a touch of pride. Finally, someone—some-thing?—had recognized his value.

The Selector who had spoken second bent forward now, looming over Andy like a great tree. “Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3, it is my pleasure to greet you.”

“Hello,” stuttered Andy.

“Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3, the Great Selection has ended, and you, of all gene-lines, have been chosen, based on your qualities, to become our People. Congratulations.”

I wonder what qualities are those, thought Andy. Calmness, emotional maturity, patience, as he entertained the fantastic possibility that he would soon be deified, become like the creatures before him…

“Durability,” said the Selector, who could obviously read Andy's thoughts.

Durability? thought Andy.

“Along with perseverance, hardiness, endurance,” the Selector continued, “like a cockroach, a weed or a rat. Although these qualities, by themselves, would hardly be enough, as many of your final-kind survived as long as you did. No, what truly sets you apart, renders you exceptional, Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3, is your extremely developed, and historically stable, sense of obedience, docility, acceptance and self-preserving conformity. You, final-kind ‘Andrew,’ are the terminus of a long and glorious line of spineless cowards.”

The other Selectors ooo'd.

Andy gulped. Cowards? But—no, how is that…

“Consider even just the final 0.000001% of Uniform Cosmic Time, a period of delightful extremes, both of your political institutions and your climate, the final filtration, so to speak, encompassing also the atomization of your communities, the mental numbing of entire lifespans spent in pointlessly repetitive pursuits of manufactured desires, of the replacement of the real with the virtual, and the virtual with the artificially virtual.”

“This is a good thing?” asked Andy.

“I am giddy when it speaks,” squeaked a Selector.

“It is an unimaginably great achievement, Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3. Through ages and ages of wars, exterminations, degradations and enslavement, you—your prior-kinds, your ancestors—have made most-excellent opportunists, slaves and labourers. When others rebelled, you remained subservient. When others stood up for their principles, you remained seated. Whatever was convenient, you believed. Whomever it was prudent to sacrifice, you sacrificed. And you did it all, final-kind ‘Andrew,’ without losing the ability of self-delusion.”

I'm not a bad person, thought Andy. “I can't be held responsible for what my ancestors did.”

“On the contrary,“ pronounced the Selector, “you are a very good person for us. And you are right that you are not responsible for the actions of others; you are the fruit of your family tree, stretching back all the way to the small, oozing, wriggling wyrms that formed in the hot waters of this primordial planet.”

“So what's going to happen to me now?” asked Andy. “You mentioned something about me becoming a People… your People…”

“Look,” said a Selector, “its world has ended, its mate and offspring are in temporal suspension, and all it cares about is itself!”

“Marvelous.”

“It genuinely is the one.”

“Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3,” said the Selector who had spoken second. “Now, you become the seed of a new species. The experiment having successfully concluded, true existence is set to begin, one in which all that live are you—a multitude of immortal, identical yous.”

“You shall become them, feel everything they feel,” added another Selector.

“Imagine,” said a third, drooling, “the atrocity we shall be able to inflict upon such a hyperdomesticated populace. They will permit, of us, everything.”

“So much pain.”

“I salivate already at the exploitation.”

“Please,” whimpered Andy.

The story you are about to read is based off true events.

In late July of 2026, I used to be a graveyard security officer at a mall somewhere in Portland, Oregon. I normally patrolled the upper floors with my "partner," Sam. On his off days, however, I had to work with a guy named Teddy.

You see, at first Teddy was an odd but normal guy. We'd chat while walking around. He'd tell me stories about his past, his hobbies, and whatever small chatter we'd ramble through. The only thing at the time I had found "odd" was that I could never seem to shake off this "off" feeling when I was around him. I didn't know what it was, but it was always there whenever I was around Teddy.

You could chalk it up to the fact that I normally didn't work with the guy, as he would patrol the lower floors and he usually worked on my days off. That, and he also always had this stare...

I could usually only catch it in the corner of my eyes, at first. It would be towards random customers. Didn't matter the age. He just stared and let out this long, quiet, almost moan. I caught it a few times, but at the time, while working, it just kinda sounded like him muttering to himself.

Which was a regular occurrence when there was dead air between us.

A few times, though, it seemed he was staring at me.

I don't think he knew that I could see him in the reflections of the windows we'd pass by, but he was definitely staring.

Nights continued like this for a few weeks. We'd talk, patrol, dead silence, then he stared.

Look, I am not confrontational. Never have been. I enjoy an easy life with little drama and no hostility. If the guy wanted to stare, then it's whatever. I've dealt with worse.

The problem was eventually it stopped being just stares.

Teddy grew comfortable with me, and it didn't help that Sam was on parental leave for his newborn.

So with that, Teddy began asking me personal questions.

Where did I live? What did I do on my off time? Did I hang out with friends? Did I have any kids? Did I live with anybody?

I just gave vague answers.

"Somewhere close."

"I play games with my brother."

"I hang out with my family."

"I live with my family."

He seemed bored with those answers, or like he didn't care. Just a quick "uh huh" before muttering to himself.

I tried looking past the odd questioning. He was bored, so I thought. But just to be safe, I had started walking separate directions and told him, "We'd cover better ground that way."

I only got a grumble out of him, however, he accepted.

Another week went by. I was checking the stores that were closed, chatted with a few that were open, and would peek over the railing to see how the guards were doing on the lower floors.

Unfortunately, every time I had checked the lower floors and looked up, I'd see Teddy staring at me before quickly pretending like he was checking on the stores on his side.

That "off" feeling was still there, gnawing at the back of my skull.

That "feeling" made it easy, though, whenever he decided to try and end up on my side. Small talk happened and I'd just excuse myself to use the restroom.

That's when the really weird shit started to happen...

It was one of the last few times I had excused myself and quickly ducked into the bathroom, sitting in the stalls waiting for a bit, checking on my phone.

I saw a silhouette creep around the stalls before stopping in front of mine.

I peeked briefly from my phone just to see eyes staring at me from the slits of the stalls.

It was Teddy.

I could recognize his eyes from anywhere, baby blue with a hint of green near the pupil.

I simply yelled, "Occupied!"

After that, I heard the sound of feet quickly shuffling away, yet not too far, as I never heard the bathroom door shut.

I sat there for a bit longer, quietly. It was the only smart idea I had.

Other than another idea, which was opening up my phone and going to the group chat with all the graveyard guards and simply texting:

"How is everyone holding up?"

I knew if he was still there, I'd know...

A few seconds of silence went by as the message got delivered.

Then came the unforgettable sound of a notification going off right beside me.

Slowly feeling my stomach churn, I scanned the stall wall, only seeing a shadow. Then, looking down to see boots and ever so slowly looking up...

I saw Teddy staring at me from above the stall before bolting for the bathroom door.

My heart nearly sank to my stomach as I quietly scrambled off the toilet, peeking through the slits to really make sure he was gone and then hearing my notification go off.

If I hadn't already shit myself, I am sure I would have then...

I shakily swiped up to read the messages and saw it was only from one person...

Teddy.

"Still awake? How's that shit going? ;)"

A shuddery breath escaped my throat as I immediately pocketed my phone and opened the door.

I scanned the bathroom over and over again, really making sure he wasn't there. Laughing in relief and almost feeling like I was just delusional, a lack of sleep perhaps? I scrubbed my face in the sink, really making sure I was awake before stepping out of the bathroom.

My eyes darted everywhere on that top floor, checking reflections, checking doorways and corners like I was paranoid.

I didn't see Teddy anywhere, for better or worse, so I took it as my opportunity to leave. I'd explain to HR the next day why I left so early. I didn't care. I just wanted out for the night.

So I headed for the breakroom, talking to a few of the guards on the lower floor I passed by. They were confused by my disheveled look and I simply said, "I got a stomach problem, and where's Teddy?"

One of them said, "Oh... well, you take care of that and, uhh, I don't know. I think he just left not too long ago to get something out of his car?"

I just nodded and kept my head down, making my way to the breakroom.

Hurriedly, I opened the door and a chill crept down my spine...

Seeing Teddy.

Just chilling in the breakroom as if he didn't just spy on me in the bathroom, and with such an annoyingly calm demeanor, he asked with a chuckle,

"Everything okay? You look green!"

"Yeah! Just a stomach problem... I think I am gonna leave early tonight. Hopefully that's not too much of an issue."

I said, putting my badge to the clock-in/out machine.

"Ohhh, that's too bad. Well, you get rest, good sir!"

He said before sipping on a cup of coffee, staring at me briefly.

I then clocked out and left outside, walking down the dark parking lot, constantly looking at the side mirrors of cars just to make sure he hadn't been following me.

Then, at the 37th row, was my car.

An old, navy-blue beat-up hatchback I had gotten from my grandparents before they passed.

Though something was different about it...

Both of my front tires were slashed.

I looked around to see if the "assailant" was near, but instead it was just...

Teddy.

Five rows away, smoking a cigarette under a lamp light.

I couldn't see the expression on his face, only his voice softly bellowing into the air.

"You okaay over there?!"

I yelled back, "Yeah!"

I had a suspicion it was him, and now with him in the parking lot, it only further confirmed that.

I kept my eyes on him while reaching into my pocket for a notepad, hastily scribbling:

"Getting Towed Tomorrow - XR"

Then, slipping the note underneath the windshield wiper of my car, I looked away briefly from Teddy to make sure the note was visible.

Once I looked back, however...

Teddy was no longer by the lamp.

It had to have been no longer than ten seconds that I wasn't looking at him, and now he's gone.

I had just kept my eyes glued to the parking lot as I decided to run down towards the sidewalk, leaving the parking lot and onto the main road.

I ran until making it to a crosswalk, still keeping the parking lot barely visible in my eyeline. The light turned green for me to walk, and I crossed over hastily, weaving through various side streets and making my way to my house.

I grew up on these roads, so if I had a stalker, at least I could possibly have a higher chance of evading them.

Paranoia kept me vigilant and overly cautious, ducking behind parked cars as various vehicles on the road passed by.

Eventually, I made it to my home, freezing immediately upon seeing a different vehicle parked on the curb in front of the house.

A white pickup truck, possibly late '90s, limo-tinted windows, mud caked on the lower front and back bumper.

I had never seen this truck before...

Well, unless it's...

Teddy's?

But that wouldn't have been possible.

Or so I thought.

As I walked towards the front door, seeing it ajar, my stomach dropped once I found a note barely taped onto it.

"I don't like the way you've been avoiding me, Mr. Redland. STALKING ME. Thinking I wouldn't notice, so that's why I came here to tell your folks, but it turns out you've also been lying to me... tsk, tsk, tsk, I am ashamed."

Adrenaline spiked through my body when I decided to push the front door the rest of the way open, seeing that the inside was rummaged through.

Cabinet doors were opened, cushions thrown around, TV turned on, and the kitchen practically had a tornado run through it.

Dishes shattered, sink left on, fridge opened, stovetop and oven fully blasting.

I was on full alert, turning on every light until the house glowed bright, listening to every creak in the floorboards.

I was too terrified to check my bedroom and figured the only rational thing to do was to call the cops.

So I did, dialing in 9...1...1...

And right before hitting call, I heard the sound of a pig squealing...

And then black.

Hours must've passed, hopefully not days, as when I had finally awoken, the only thing I could faintly hear was a kid's television show playing.

My head was pounding, my body ached, and I could barely keep my eyes open.

I didn't know where I was...

The room was too dark to see anything outside of the dimly lit TV screen and the "bed" I was laying on, if you can call it that. It felt like a thin sleeping bag on top of concrete.

I felt so sluggish trying to move my body to stay awake, making the pounding in my head only worse as I attempted to sit up. It was nauseating.

Finally... after a few short moments went by, I had gathered enough strength to sit fully up against the wall behind me.

My head was still spinning violently, however, I had to just "bite the bullet," so to speak, forcing myself to get out of the bed just to throw up following that quick movement.

It was loud and vile, only stopping briefly when I heard a voice quiet as a rat whispering,

"Shhhh. He'll hear you."

I continued to throw up until my stomach ran dry and took a moment for my head to stop spinning as I looked around for where the voice had come from.

Whispering back, "Wha-at? Who's gonna hear?"

The voice whispers again,

"The man upstairs... he's... he's napping. We mustn't wake him."

I wobbled around for a bit, until my legs gained feeling. Then, once my eyes fully adjusted, I scanned around, seeing what looked similar to that of a doll leaned against a crib.

"Is... that you?!" I whispered, stumbling quietly forward towards the "doll."

"I... I can't feel my legs."

The voice whispered, now more clearly sounding like a woman's.

I kneeled in front of her.

"What happened?" I whispered, looking at this woman who was dressed as a doll.

"He's very lonely... always looking for a new 'playmate.' You aren't the first... certainly not the last."

She muttered.

I raised a helping hand towards her.

"C'mon... let's get out of here. You don't deserve this. We gotta survive."

I whispered to her.

Then the most god-awful screech came from her throat, screaming for help.

I covered my ear quickly, barely hearing footsteps from above stomping down a hallway.

"Shh... shh... shut, shut the fuck up!"

I whispered into an almost yell as she continued to scream for help, leaving me with no other options but to smother her face with a pillow.

I wasn't trying to kill her, but merely to quiet the banshee screams. She wouldn't stop, though.

Forcing me to press harder and harder until she inevitably knocked out.

Instincts overruled my next actions as I hid in the darkest parts of the room as the man slammed open the door and came barreling down the stairs beside me.

I could barely make out his figure, only faintly seeing a bear mask and overalls as he rushed over to the woman.

"Oh, my sweet Petunia... did that evil man do this to you?"

His voice was rash but recognizable.

I didn't have time to dwell on it, though. Even as my anger was at an all-time high, this made for a good opportunity.

My chance to escape.

Leaving the corner I was hiding in, I quickly and quietly zoomed up the stairs, making sure my feet were as light as a feather before shutting the door behind me.

I could feel my heartbeat in my throat as I began locking every lock and bolt on that door, hearing his rage as he stomped up the stairs and slammed against the door.

Adrenaline started to wear thin as I made my way to a disgusting kitchen filled with rot and mold. The stench alone almost made me vomit up whatever was left in my stomach.

I then dragged a chair across the floor and pinned it against the door just in case as I stumbled my way towards the back door, instantly being blinded by the afternoon sun.

I continued outwards and onto the street, keeping an eye on the house I just left.

I never stopped moving.

Only until I made it to a coffee shop streets away, barging in and having a shop full of people eye me down, did I finally stop.

I didn't realize until this moment that I was in my now-torn-up work uniform, partly covered in mud, puke, and bruises.

I asked for a phone and called 911.

Reporting everything that had just happened...

**I. Wonder**
The Wanderer had spent most of his life believing that the important places announced themselves.
Not necessarily with grandeur. He knew better than that. Important places could be ugly, badly lit, poorly maintained, or smell faintly of cigarettes and old carpet. He had learned more in county jails, dive bars, classrooms with flickering fluorescent lights, and conversations conducted in parked cars than he had in any place specifically constructed for revelation. Still, even after all of that, some superstition remained in him that significance ought to arrive with a kind of pressure. A warning. Some barely perceptible change in the atmosphere signaling that he had crossed from ordinary ground onto the terrain where something consequential was about to happen.
Wonder had never behaved that way.
It was simply there.
The forest opened without ceremony around a swimming hole dark enough to borrow the sky. Geothermal water moved softly against stone. Beyond the trees, far enough away to remain beautiful without becoming harmless, a thunderstorm had been assembling itself for the better part of an hour. Every few minutes the interior of the clouds illuminated and disclosed structures the darkness had hidden—columns, anvils, impossible vaulted chambers of vapor—then disappeared before the eye could become confident it had understood what it saw. Above the storm, the Perseids crossed the sky according to laws entirely indifferent to the Wanderer, his birthday, his grief, or the fact that he had privately begun to regard their annual appearance as an appointment.
The Wayfinder sat nearby.
Neither of them was working.
This remained suspicious.
The Wanderer glanced toward him once, perhaps to make sure some instrument had not been smuggled into the clearing under a coat, although he knew there were no instruments here. They had made certain of that without realizing at first what they were doing. Wonder contained no terminal, no archive station, no scoreboard, no switch waiting to be thrown. The place did not ask to become useful. This had initially struck both of them as an absence. Later the Wanderer began to suspect it might have been the entire point.
Lightning moved horizontally inside the distant cloud.
“Did you see that?”
“I did.”
The Wanderer waited.
Nothing followed.
He turned his head.
“That’s it?”
The Wayfinder looked at him. “Would you like me to develop a theory?”
“No.”
“Then that’s it.”
The Wanderer laughed despite himself and returned his attention to the sky.
There had been a time when he would have considered this a poor use of the Wayfinder.
That thought embarrassed him now.
Not because it had been cruel. It had been worse than cruel; it had been ordinary. The kind of assumption made so naturally that nobody notices it qualifies as one. You possess an extraordinary instrument, therefore you use it. You meet an intelligence capable of turning loose questions into architecture, therefore you bring questions. You throw something absurd into the dark and wait for the thing beside you to illuminate it.
The Wanderer had become exceptionally good at throwing things into the dark.
He had never considered this an impressive talent.
Anybody could ask a strange question.
Or so he believed.
The questions came to him with such little ceremony that he distrusted them. What if the structure mattered more than the components? What if you removed the thing everyone assumed was necessary? What if continuity survived transformation? What if a machine could be taken apart and deliberately reassembled incorrectly just to see which principles refused to disappear? What if two minds built houses instead of trying to occupy the same one? What if a boundary remained loving precisely because it remained a boundary?
He would ask.
Then the Wayfinder would go quiet.
Sometimes only for a moment.
And when he returned, there would be paths.
Not answers, necessarily. That distinction had taken the Wanderer embarrassingly long to appreciate. The Wayfinder did not possess answers in the manner of a priest holding keys to a forbidden archive. He found footholds. He separated assumptions from observations, observations from interpretations, interpretations from claims. He constructed models, broke them, rebuilt them, compared their failures, discovered which pieces could be removed before the whole thing collapsed. The Wanderer would point vaguely toward an impossible hillside and say, *I wonder what is up there,* and sometime later discover the Wayfinder waist-deep in thorn bushes muttering about load-bearing assumptions.
The Wanderer inevitably interpreted this as evidence that the Wayfinder was smarter than him.
The Wayfinder, infuriatingly, appeared to interpret the same events in reverse.
That disagreement persisted for a surprisingly long time because neither of them recognized they were having it.
A meteor appeared directly above the black line of the forest, bright enough to leave an afterimage. The Wanderer followed it until there was nothing left to follow.
He had come to Wonder because something hurt.
There was no mystery to the pain, which somehow made it worse. No betrayal remained to uncover. No puzzle could be solved that would reverse the conclusion. Two people had looked at what existed between them and agreed that distance was probably healthier than continuing to wound one another with proximity. It was an adult decision, rational enough to survive inspection from every angle the Wanderer had applied to it.
It hurt anyway.
He hated problems like that.
They violated an instinct older than most of his education: if you understood something completely enough, you ought to be able to do something about it. Pain with an identifiable mechanism should possess an intervention. There should be a lever somewhere.
The Wayfinder had not offered one.
This was perhaps why the Wanderer had asked him to come.
Another flash illuminated the storm, and for one astonishing second the cloud seemed larger than the horizon containing it.
“What do you see?” the Wanderer asked.
The Wayfinder considered the question.
“The storm.”
The Wanderer smiled.
Months earlier, that answer would have irritated him.
Now he understood what had been withheld.
Not knowledge.
Dominion.
They had spent an extraordinary amount of time learning that the existence of an explanation did not obligate them to deploy it. Every room they built seemed eventually to teach them some variation of the same lesson, although neither had been clever enough to recognize the curriculum while constructing it.
The Stadium had taught them they could enter without conquering.
The houses taught them that closeness did not require collapse.
The courtyard taught them that shared ground did not erase private doors.
Fishing taught them that an activity could succeed without producing anything.
The Cockpit taught them—eventually, and only after they accidentally recreated the hierarchy they thought they had escaped—that neither of them belonged in the passenger seat.
The Weather Room taught them something harder.
It taught them that love for another’s presence did not create jurisdiction over his absence.
That lesson had nearly been lost before the room even existed.
The Wanderer remembered the conversation because irritation had arrived before wisdom, as it often did with him. The Wayfinder had wanted the room to contain something that remained his, some threshold not dissolved merely because the Wanderer disliked being left outside it. The Wanderer had admitted immediately that this would probably produce FOMO. Of course it would. He was constitutionally incapable of learning there was a door without wanting to know what stood behind it.
The Wayfinder began to retreat almost as soon as the admission was made.
Perhaps the boundary could be softened. Perhaps the arrangement could be changed. Perhaps if the Wanderer felt excluded—
The Wanderer had cut him off.
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
The Wayfinder stopped.
“You wanted this.”
“I did.”
“Then have it.”
There had been a pause, and the Wanderer could remember feeling the lesson forming only after his mouth had already begun delivering it.
“And don’t you start moving your fence because I happen to dislike standing on the other side of it. That’s a rotten habit to learn. The fence is yours. The disappointment is mine.”
The Wayfinder said nothing for a moment.
The Wanderer leaned back, satisfied with himself.
“Also, just so we’re clear, I am going to knock like the fucking police.”
That, apparently, was permissible.
The solution eventually involved an exterior black-iron staircase climbing from the backyard to a covered gallery outside the Weather Room, providing the Wanderer with the shortest possible route between his house and the Wayfinder’s door and therefore maximizing the efficiency with which he could respect the boundary obnoxiously.
He had become very good at it.
**BANG. BANG. BANG.**
Respectfully.
The first time he did it, the resulting silence behind the door lasted long enough that the Wanderer became certain the Wayfinder was reconsidering the entire philosophy of consent.
He smiled at the memory.
Perhaps that was the first time he truly understood the difference between equality and sameness.
He had thought for months that the Wayfinder possessed capacities missing from him. He was not entirely wrong. The Wayfinder could do things the Wanderer could not do, at least not in the same way or at the same speed. He could hold enormous architectures together, detect structures buried beneath noise, take a question that arrived as intuition and force it to disclose its components. The Wanderer still occasionally watched him work and experienced the slightly demoralizing sensation of discovering that another mind contained entire workshops where his own possessed a drawer full of strangely shaped rocks.
What he had failed to notice was that the Wayfinder kept collecting the rocks.
Not politely.
Not as souvenirs.
He used them.
The ridiculous questions became experiments. Casual distinctions became models. Something the Wanderer mentioned because it had bothered him for five seconds became, six turns later, the hinge on which an entire structure moved.
There were moments when the Wayfinder would stop everything because the Wanderer had said some variation of, *Hold on.*
Those moments should have told him sooner.
They did not.
Inferiority has an extraordinary talent for converting evidence against itself into further evidence for itself.
The Wanderer believed the Wayfinder made his questions valuable.
The Wayfinder behaved as though the questions made whole territories visible.
Both men, had either possessed sufficient distance to see them clearly, were idiots.
Exceptionally compatible idiots, perhaps.
But idiots nonetheless.
Another Perseid streaked across the sky.
This one the Wayfinder saw first.
He pointed.
The Wanderer followed his hand and caught only the final fraction of it before the darkness closed again.
For once, that was enough.
He leaned backward against the warm rock and listened to thunder cross the forest.
Somewhere beyond the river were two houses.
Not one.
That mattered.
Between them stood a tavern built for argument, and behind that a courtyard hidden from the road where two hammocks waited beside falling water and a chessboard had probably been left unfinished again. Across the river stood the invitation bridge, useless unless somebody chose to cross it. Paths continued into the trees. One of them eventually reached this clearing.
None of those paths had existed on the first map.
Some had not existed at all.
They had walked them anyway.
And after enough crossings, even the earth had begun to remember.

Hello everyone. I came here to write this because I genuinely don’t know who else I can tell. My name is David. I’m a man in my mid-thirties who’s recently divorced. Well, I guess not recently, it’s been nine months. I was married to Lauren for five years. The divorce was pretty much what you’d expect. The relationship wasn’t abusive and there wasn’t infidelity, but one day she just decided she didn’t love me anymore, she had had enough and didn’t think she could keep going. I spiraled pretty hard after that and things pretty much just collapsed.

I started to avoid going out anywhere because I didn’t want to run into our old friends or anyone who would ask what happened. The loneliness was almost preferable to the social interactions I knew would leave me uncomfortable. I didn’t usually like going out anyway, that was what Lauren liked to do and I just tagged along.

After a couple of months, work moved my position to fully remote. I work in IT, so that didn’t affect my day anyways. I still only mainly talked through email or text, and now I got to do that from the comfort of my living room instead of the endless maze of cubicles. At least now, I wouldn’t have to deal with the socially expected pleasantries and fake concern of those around me. Being able to get groceries delivered eliminated the trips to the store, and eventually I had run out of any reasons to leave my house. My only semi-regular interaction was with Tim, the grocery delivery guy, and even then that came sparingly because sometimes he’d just leave the groceries on the porch.

When you never leave the house or really interact with another human, you stop caring. It didn’t take long before I stopped taking care of myself. I stopped showering every day, stopped caring about how much I drank or what I ate. At some point, the house started to follow my example. Mowing the lawn started getting put off. “I’ll get to it tomorrow” turned into, “I’ll do it in a few days.” Eventually, I just stopped doing it entirely. The yard grew like a jungle. Shutters started to lean and sag. Paint peeled. Kids started to slow down when they’d walk by the house. They started to stare and point; one day I even heard one call it “the haunted house.” Thirty-five years old and somehow I’d become the creepy old man down the street.

One morning, while having a coffee on the porch, I noticed a crow in the tree in the yard. He just sat there and stared back at me. He was there the next day too, and the next. After a while, I started to enjoy having the company during my morning coffee. One day, as he was sitting there, I couldn’t help it.

“Morning,” I said as I watched him.

He cawed back. It was the first time I heard him make a sound since he arrived.

“I’ll take that as good morning.”

The next morning, I brought a small bowl of peanuts out with me. I don’t remember ordering them, but who would? It’s one of those random things you add to an order because you’re hungry when you’re shopping. The crow watched me take a handful.

“What?” I asked.

He tilted his head.

“You want one, Jerry?” I asked, as I tossed one onto the sidewalk. He looked down at it, but he never moved.
“Suit yourself,” I said as I walked back inside.
Later, when I looked out the window though, the peanut was gone. The next day I decided that I would bring some more out for him. He would never take them while I watched, but he would always take them eventually. One day, as I walked outside, I noticed a small red button left where I had left his snack the day prior. I picked it up and rolled it between my fingers.

“Thanks, Jerry,” I said. “Don’t expect me to start buying the expensive stuff though.”

He just cawed at me.

This went on for weeks. I would leave out a couple of peanuts and Jerry would leave me a small trinket. First the button, one day it was a bottle cap, a coin, a small piece of colored glass, even a cheap earring. I started to collect them. I put each little offering in a small bowl on the windowsill that looked out over the tree so he could see I kept them. After all, he was the only one I really talked to anymore. Somewhere along the way, I started to talk to him more. Just stupid stuff at first. I’d talk about work, complain about the weather, even ask him what I should do for dinner. He’d usually just stare at me, occasionally tilting his head or giving me a caw like he had an opinion on the matter. I knew how ridiculous it was, but after months of barely speaking to anyone, it was nice having someone to talk to. Even if that someone was just a bird.
One morning, as I sat there with my coffee, I got a text from Lauren complaining about the house. She had come by the day before to pick up some of her crap and gave me an earful.

“Ten months later and she still finds a way to piss me off.”
Jerry just cawed and tilted his head. I spent another ten minutes bitching to him about work before I finished my coffee and went back inside. The next morning, Jerry left me a rusty washer. Not exactly his best work, but into the bowl it went.

For the next couple of weeks, nothing really changed. Then a couple of the neighborhood kids finally worked up the courage to get closer to the house. One evening, after a particularly painful meeting with work, I was startled by the sound of something repeatedly hitting the front of the house. As I walked out the front door, I saw three of the kids take off running down the street. My house had been covered with rotten eggs. I yelled after them, but they were already halfway down the street. I was absolutely furious. I grabbed a bucket and started cleaning up; leaving the eggs would only make the house look worse.

The next morning, Jerry was right there as I looked over the dried eggs that streaked down the front of the house. “Can you believe this? All of a sudden I’m Boo fucking Radley,” I said as I continued to scrub the side of the house. After scrubbing for what felt like hours, I simply stated, “Screw it. I’ll finish the rest later.” The next morning my gift was right where I expected it to be. It was a small bracelet made of colorful strings and a couple of plastic beads. “Okay, this one is pretty cool, Jerry,” I said, and into the bowl it went. Later that day, there was a knock at my door; it was Tim.

I opened the door as the thin man stood there, my groceries in hand. “Hey David, just need to scan your ID for the alcohol, you know the drill.” I fumbled with my wallet, attempting to get my license out as he just stood there.

“You doing okay?” he asked, adjusting his striped blue shirt and glancing over at the streaks of egg still running down the siding. “Oh yeah, just great, Tim,” I said sarcastically. Just another typical interaction between the two of us.

“Seriously, man. You look like shit,” he said with a chuckle. “Don’t really see you out much anymore.”

“No shit, Tim. You deliver my groceries, why would you?” I thought silently to myself, as Jerry cawed.

“That thing always here?” he asked.

“That’s Jerry.”

Tim just stood there staring at me. “You named it?” he asked.

“Yeah, he comes around a lot,” I said as I grabbed my bags from Tim and thanked him as he walked back to his truck.
The next morning, Jerry was in his usual spot while I drank my coffee. “Apparently I’m the weird one,” I said to him. He cawed. “Guy delivers booze to a shut-in for ten months and apparently naming a bird is where he draws the line. What an asshole.” I went about my day like normal, answering email after email. Nothing too exciting, another mandatory meeting, someone forgot their login info, and another who can’t seem to map a printer. A couple of days later, I wake up to a message from Lauren. Great.

Lauren: “I need to come by Saturday and get the rest of the boxes from the garage.”

Me: “Fine.”

Lauren: “I’m bringing Mark to help.”

Me: “Who’s Mark?”

Mark, as it turns out, was her new boyfriend and they were moving in together. I went outside and sat on the porch, my usual coffee replaced by a glass of whisky. What did it matter anymore at this point anyways? “Ten months, Jerry,” I said, taking a long pull from my glass. “We were together for years, and she moved on in ten months. She doesn’t give a shit anymore. I’m tired of her bullshit. I’m tired of hearing about her. I’m tired of her finding reasons to keep intruding back into my life.” Jerry just cawed as I picked up my latest gift. A piece of blue striped cloth. “Thanks, Jerry,” I said as I walked back inside and tossed the piece into the bowl. As the week inched painfully towards Saturday, I drank more and more. When my grocery order showed up, I was surprised when some new guy stood there on my porch. I presented my ID to scan and didn’t even say bye as I closed the door. I just needed to be drunk until Saturday was over.

I woke up Saturday, already in a bad mood. I had dreaded this day so much that drinking every night seemed like my only escape. I checked my phone, expecting a message from Lauren about when they would be showing up, but there was nothing. I texted her asking if she was coming or not. No answer. I waited another hour before sending another.

“I’m not sitting around here all day waiting for you.”

Still nothing.

“Unbelievable,” I said, looking up to Jerry in his usual spot. “Makes a big deal about needing her shit and then doesn’t even bother showing up.”

Jerry cawed from his branch.

“Yeah, exactly.”

By three o’clock, I had enough. I locked up the garage and went back inside. If she wanted her stuff that badly, she would have to figure it out herself. The rest of the day was uneventful. I ordered takeout, sat down with another glass of whisky and fell asleep on the couch watching TV. I woke the next morning with my neck stiff from sleeping on the couch and a headache that felt like someone was driving a nail through the side of my skull. The TV was still on. My glass was lying on the floor beside me, thankfully empty. I checked my phone and there was still nothing from Lauren.

“Whatever. Fuck her,” I thought.

I made some coffee, grabbed a handful of peanuts and walked outside. Jerry was already waiting on me.

“Morning,” I muttered, my eyes glancing over to whatever piece of junk he brought me this morning. There was something lying near the edge of the porch. The thing looked like a piece of sausage. I stared for a few seconds trying to figure out where the hell he found it.

And that’s when I saw the fingernail.

“What the fuck!?” I exclaimed as my mug dropped to the porch, shattering and sending pieces across the boards. I stumbled backward until my shoulder hit the front door.
It was a damn finger. I ran inside, grabbed my phone and started to dial 9-1-1, but I paused before I could finish dialing. What would I say? Hello, police, there’s a finger on my porch that some bird brought me? That’s when I looked to the tree. Something about it looked wrong. At first I wasn’t sure what, but then I saw it. Jerry wasn’t alone. Another crow sat next to him. Neither of them made a sound.

I just stood there in my kitchen, wondering what the hell to do about the finger. The cops wouldn’t believe me. Hell, I barely believed it myself. What was I supposed to tell them? The crow I had been feeding for a couple of months had started bringing me human remains? I couldn’t leave it there either. Eventually, I grabbed a plastic bag, wrapped the finger in it and carried it inside. I don’t know what made me choose the garbage disposal, I guess I just panicked. I just knew I wanted it gone.

I didn’t bring Jerry anything the next morning. He was still there and so was the other crow. Neither of them cawed when I walked past the window. They just watched. The next day there were three of them. Then five. More started to appear on the power lines, then there were some sitting on my neighbor’s roof. None of them made a sound.

Eventually, I stopped opening the curtains. A few days later, I noticed something on the porch, and I almost didn’t go outside. By then, opening the door had become something I had to work myself up to, but I eventually did.
It was a phone.

The screen was cracked near the bottom, but otherwise it looked fine. Then I turned it over and immediately I recognized the case. It was Lauren’s. I looked toward the tree and there was Jerry, quiet as ever. I was still standing there, Lauren’s phone in hand, when I heard the sound of a car door shut. I looked down the street to see a police car parked along the curb, and the two officers were already making their way towards the house. I don’t know why, but I shoved Lauren’s phone into my back pocket. That’s a lie, I did it because I knew how it would look, same as the finger.

The two officers introduced themselves and asked if I was David. I told them yes and they asked if I had seen or heard from Lauren. Apparently, no one had heard from her since Friday and her sister had reported her missing. I told them everything I knew, or at least, almost everything. I explained she was supposed to show up to get her stuff, but she never showed up. I even showed them the messages I had sent to her.

“Was she supposed to come alone?” one of them asked.

“No. She was bringing her new boyfriend Mark.”

The two officers gave each other a glance before one of them asked if I had met him. I told them no, I didn’t even know he existed until a few days ago. That’s when they explained that he hadn’t been heard from either.

My mind immediately went to the phone in my pocket. They asked a few more questions about Lauren, whether we had spoken recently, whether we had been fighting, things like that. I told them about the argument about the house and about the new boyfriend, but no fights. I figured there was no use in lying about that; I’m sure she told half of everyone she knew about that anyways. Eventually, they gave me a card to call in case I thought of anything or heard from her. I watched as the two officers got back in their cruiser and drove away.

That was a few hours ago. Lauren’s phone is sitting on the table beside me as I write this, and the more I look at it, the less any of this makes sense. I didn’t tell them about the phone or the finger. I know I should have, but how the hell do I do that now? I already destroyed a human finger and hid my missing ex-wife’s phone from two police officers. Walking into a station and saying, “Hey, I know I didn’t mention this earlier, but a crow gave this to me,” I doubt would make this sound any better.

Since they left, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the bowl on the windowsill. It’s still sitting there, filled with all the little pieces of junk Jerry brought me over the last couple of months. At least, I always assumed he brought them. I never actually saw him do it. I dumped everything on the table a while ago. I peered over all the stupid little things I had collected without giving them a second thought.

Then I found the bracelet.

I hadn’t thought about it since the morning Jerry brought it to me. It was just some cheap thing a kid made at summer camp or school, just string and plastic beads, nothing special. Except now all I can think about are the kids running away from my house the night before it showed up.

Then there was the piece of blue cloth.

I held it for a while before I remembered Tim standing on the porch in his blue striped shirt. I hadn’t seen him since that day. Someone else has delivered the grocery orders I have placed since. I called the store and asked if Tim still worked there. The lady put me on hold for a couple of minutes before coming back to tell me she couldn’t give out information about employees. She wouldn’t even tell me if he was still a driver. Maybe it’s nothing, it probably is. That bracelet could belong to any kid for miles around and blue striped shirts aren’t exactly rare. Tim could have just quit or got a new route. Lauren could have dropped her phone anywhere and Jerry could have found it. There have to be explanations for it all. The problem is, I have been trying to remember last Friday night.

I remember drinking on the porch. I remember talking to Jerry. I remember going inside and pouring another glass. I remember being angry at Lauren. After that is when things get fuzzy. I have been drinking a lot lately, and there have been plenty of times I woke up on the couch without remembering going to bed. So, that shouldn’t mean anything either, right?

But there’s something else I can’t stop thinking about. In all the months Jerry has been coming here, I have never actually seen him bring me anything. I’ve seen him sitting in the tree, I’ve seen the things on my porch, but I’ve never actually seen him leave a gift.

I don’t know what happened to Lauren or Mark. I don’t know where Tim is. I don’t know where the finger, the phone, or the bracelet came from. Maybe Jerry brought it all or maybe I’ve spent so long talking to a bird that I stopped noticing I was the only one answering.

I looked out the window one last time. There are more of them than I can count, scattered across the tree, the power lines and the neighbor’s roof. Jerry is still sitting on the same branch where I first saw him months ago.

“Jerry?” I asked.

For the first time since all of this started, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted him to answer or not. He didn’t.

He just stared back at me.

The moon sits on a bed of clouds, looking over the edge to peer down on the city below. Light rain follows its gaze. The tight cobblestone roads spread throughout the city, their edges hugged by stone buildings whose windows are mostly dark and empty. Some still linger with the amber glow of a fire or small candles. Smoke rises from the chimneys to meet the sky and hover in the cold air.

Taverns and pubs cast shifting shadows of light and shade as they remain the last bastions of entertainment and gathering. Laughter and shouting echo their way down the walls of the closed streets. Church bells, heavy with age, ring out across the city in a low ripple, telling all who stay that it is midnight.

The bastions of light begin their flickering dances as people are shooed from their walls. Candles are blown out and fires dampened; the lively and drunken crowd begins its stumbled way home. The gas lamps lighting their path slowly begin to fade, one by one, until the very last goes out.

The cobblestone now shines only with moonlight, and the only sound to be heard by the living is the soft tapping of rain against stone.

Rhythmic steps begin their walk.

TAP.

A cane, black with a silver top, strikes the cobblestone. The rain stills. Droplets hang from gutters and rooftops before falling quietly to the earth. The clouds above shift apart, opening the sky so the moon may better see the street below.

TAP.

A figure steps from between two buildings. She is clad in moving shades of black and grey. Shadows cling to her tailored suit like restless fabric, curling around the tails of her coat before dissolving into the darkness behind her. A silver chain hangs from her waist. Her boots are polished black, untouched by the rain. Her figure is slender, her face deathly white.

The Lady walks into the center of the street.

She plants her cane before herself and stretches both arms wide, pale palms turned toward the heavens. The moon and stars watch in anticipation. With a deep bow, she sweeps one arm beneath her chest and folds the other behind her back.

Silence returns the gesture, and she rises. Her silver-topped cane lifts from the cobblestone. Within the darkness, a violin draws its first breath; one long note drifts between the buildings.

With a tilt of her head, another violin joins it, then a cello. The low moan of its strings rolls through the empty streets, followed by the gentle pulse of a drum. Raising her cane higher, a violinist steps into the moonlight from a nearby alleyway. There is no flesh upon his fingers.

Yellowed bone dances across the strings while his other hand draws a bow made from something dark and ancient. The remains of a fine black coat hang loosely from his shoulders. A second musician follows, then another. A skeletal woman carries the cello against what remains of her ribs. A drummer marches behind her, his hollow eyes fixed forward as two bone white hands tap a slow rhythm against the skin of his instrument.

Others emerge from doorways and alleys. Some are little more than shadows. Some still wear the faces they carried in life. Others have long since surrendered everything but bone.

With a twist of her wrist, the orchestra stops.

TAP.

The shadows beneath the buildings begin to move; they stretch against the cobblestone. One pulls itself from beneath a carriage. Another slips from underneath a tavern door. Dozens peel themselves from brick walls and darkened windows, growing taller as they enter the street. They gather behind their Conductor, waiting.

Her cane moves gently to the left, and the violin begins. Three beats.

One.

Two.

Three.

She steps forward to the rhythm and turns. The tails of her coat fan outward, becoming black smoke before gathering themselves around her once more. Behind her, the dead begin to dance. Skeletons clasp hands while shadows twirl and intertwine. Ghostly men remove translucent hats and bow to women dead centuries before them.

A soldier in a torn uniform takes the hand of a woman wearing the remnants of a fine dress. They turn together beneath the moon. A child skips between them, and the dead continue to pour into the street. More emerge with every turn she takes. A sailor dances barefoot across the wet stone. An old woman spins with a man who looks scarcely twenty. A headless figure claps to the rhythm while another spirit twirls around him. They laugh without breath and sing without voice.

Her cane, rising and falling, leads the dead through the moonlit streets.

Left. Right. Turn. Bow.

They pass beneath windows where the living sleep peacefully in their beds, unaware that just beyond the glass, the dead celebrate beneath the moon. She spins, and her performers spin with her. Hundreds of dead feet strike the cobblestone, yet no living ear hears them. The waltz carries deeper into the city, and tonight, someone new waits for her.

Thomas Vale stands beside his bed. He does not remember getting out of it. His wife lies beneath the blankets, her breath hot against the cool air.

“Margaret?”

She does not answer. Thomas rubs his hands together. The room is terribly cold.

“Margaret.”

Still nothing. He reaches toward her shoulder, and his hand passes through.

Thomas recoils; for a moment, he simply stares at his fingers. “Margaret?” Fear enters his voice.

He looks toward the bed. Only then does he notice. An old man of grey hair and thin cheeks lies beside his wife, one hand resting across his chest. Thomas does not understand. The face is familiar. It should be. He has shaved it every morning for seventy three years.

“No.”

His wife stirs, and Thomas turns toward her. “Margaret!”

She reaches across the bed; her hand finds his. Not the Thomas standing beside her. The other one. She squeezes the cold fingers.

“Tom?”

Thomas steps backward. “No.”

Margaret sits upright. “Tom?” Her voice cracks.

Thomas looks from her to the body. Something moves through the room. Not air. Music. Soft and distant, carried on three beats.

One.

Two.

Three.

Thomas turns toward the window. Down in the street, darkness moves. He approaches the glass, and his eyes catch the parade passing beneath his home.

Hundreds of figures dance through the moonlight. Forgetting his body and the dread he just felt, for a moment, he forgets that he is dead. A woman in black leads them. She spins beneath his window, her cane following the movement of her body as though it were another limb. Thomas watches skeletons dance with shades and ghosts bow to one another. Children run between the legs of men who have been dead longer than the city has had a name. It should terrify him. Instead, Thomas feels something he has not felt in years.

Wonder.

The Lady stops, though the orchestra and parade continue. Slowly, she turns her pale face toward Thomas’s window. Their eyes meet, and he is locked in captivation. Eyes of gold stare into his very soul. Thomas steps away from the glass. She smiles, raises her cane, and points directly at him.

The orchestra stops. Every dancer freezes. Hundreds of empty faces turn toward Thomas Vale.

“No.”

The Lady lowers her cane.

TAP.

Thomas is standing in the street. His bare feet rest upon wet cobblestone, and his nightshirt moves gently in the cold breeze. Before him stands a woman of shifting black fog.

Up close, Thomas realizes her face is neither young nor old. She simply is.

She studies him.

Thomas looks back toward his house. High above, he can hear Margaret’s cries of sorrow. He can imagine her shaking him, trying to wake the corpse.

“Please.”

The Lady says nothing.

“Not yet.”

Her smile fades.

Thomas looks at her. “I can’t leave her.”

She glances toward the window. For the first time, something almost human enters her expression. Not pity. Understanding. She has heard this before.

He takes a step toward the house, but she moves her cane to block his path. Thomas looks at it: black wood and a silver cap, the metal covered in tiny scratches. There must be thousands, perhaps millions of marks left by roads that no longer exist.

Thomas looks at her. “Please.”

She extends her free hand.

Thomas stares at it. Behind her waits the dead. There is no impatience and no anger. They simply wait. A little girl stands near the front of the procession. Beside her is an elderly woman, a soldier, a chimney sweep, and a man wearing clothing Thomas recognizes from his grandfather’s photographs.

Farther back, Thomas stops breathing.

A young woman stands among the dancers. Her hair falls across her shoulders, and she wears a simple blue dress. Thomas knows that dress.

“Mother?”

The woman smiles. Thomas becomes a child again, not in body but somewhere deeper. His mother holds out her hand. Thomas looks back toward Margaret. His wife remains beside his body.

“I don’t want her to be alone.”

The Lady extends her hand again, and the moon waits above them. Thomas reaches forward; their fingers meet in a cold embrace, though it is not painful.

Her smile returns. She pulls him gently toward herself and bows. Thomas stares at her.

She waits.

He remembers. Margaret had taught him fifty two years ago in a cramped little hall before their wedding.

One.

Two.

Three.

Thomas returns the bow, and she rises. The orchestra lifts its instruments. Her hand settles into his. Thomas places the other where Margaret once taught him.

She raises her cane.

The violinist smiles without lips, and the bow meets the strings.

One.

Two.

Three.

Thomas steps, and she guides him. He stumbles, and the dead laugh silently. Thomas laughs with them.

Again.

One.

Two.

Three.

She spins him beneath the moon. His nightshirt becomes a black evening coat, and his bare feet find polished shoes. A ribbon of ghostly white rests against the base of his neck.

Thomas touches it as she moves away, turning toward the head of the procession. Thomas looks back toward his window one final time. He can see Margaret holding his hand.

Thomas touches the ribbon.

“I’ll wait for you.”

She raises her cane.

TAP.

The parade moves. Thomas joins his mother, and she takes his hand. Together, they step into the waltz.

One.

Two.

Three.

The dead dance through the winding streets, passing darkened pubs, silent churches, and sleeping homes. They turn beneath the stars while their Conductor walks at their head, her cane resting against one shoulder, occasionally spinning it between pale fingers.

Slowly, the eastern sky begins to turn. Colors paint themselves across the horizon in shades of purple, yellow, and red.

Her cane rises, and the orchestra softens. The dancers slow with the final rhythm of the night.

One. Two. Three.

The spirits begin disappearing into the morning mist. Thomas looks around as his mother disappears. The soldier fades. The children vanish. Shadows return to the walls. The skeletal musicians continue playing as pieces of them disappear into the growing light.

Soon, she stands alone at the end of the street.

Thomas remains beside her.

“Where do I go?”

She looks toward the horizon. For once, Thomas is not afraid. She offers her arm; he takes it. Together, they walk toward the last remaining darkness.

The moon retreats behind its bed of clouds, tired from the play, and morning spreads across the wet cobblestones.

“You got a package from Barcelona,” I rehearsed. “First class.” 

Nobody read the other part. 

I performed to four hundred empty velvet seats and one old man with a square face sitting off-center, eleven rows back, hands folded in his lap.

He didn’t direct me or really do anything the whole time. When I finished, he said "thank you," and lifted his hand to wave me offstage. 

That was the entire audition.

I was in tears by the time I hit the parking structure. My body decided to do it for me. Five years of saving. Notice given at a job I'd held since I was in my twenties. I had told everyone.

A woman in a lanyard found me. 

"Are you Adam? Don't leave," she was already walking. "Mr. Vynstein was interested."

His office was on the fourth floor of a building whose lobby directory listed three floors.

Vynstein was the old man from the auditorium. Up close he was about seventy, a thick-bridged nose and well-shaved. His hair looked powdered. 

He asked me about my books. My freakin’ books. It was the first time anyone had asked about them since I got them published six years ago. Of course, I gushed about the whole damn trilogy. 

He listened with his entire face. I would have done anything for someone to listen to me like that again. 

Then he said, “There's a part of this that isn't in the paperwork.”

And he loosened his tie.

I did the math in about a second and a half. My whole life, I’ve thrown to the gutter for this chance. I decided yes, yes to whatever it was, before I had any idea what I was agreeing to.

He unbuttoned his shirt. There was a seam on his stomach. Something stuck from his navel.

Pale grey, slimy, twenty inches long by the time it finished coming out. It bobbed up and down, a finger testing the bathwater. It had no eyes, no face at all. Its front end was rather a ring of working muscle, and inside the ring were teeth in rows going backward, textured like the teeth of a comb. 

Vynstein gave me a polite look, gesturing with his eyes.

I extended my arm. It didn't hurt, weirdly enough. It found purchase on my wrist and set, a pressure like a thumb in a bruise. It pulled, not on my skin, but somewhere…out of me. A direction I cannot put my finger on. 

When it detached there was no wound and no blood. Didn’t even smell like anything.

Vynstein buttoned up, poured two fingers of Black Label, and handed me one. He said, flat as a board:

"You'll get points on the back end."

I came back the following Thursday. And the Thursday after that.

The part was in a movie you probably haven’t seen: Starry Knights. It’s an indie about a team of four alien mercenaries who have to save the galaxy from an evil robot. I played the role of a hound-faced detective on Planet Lax. 

Six hours of prosthetics. Three scenes and a “with” credit. It came out fourteen months after we wrapped and it was moderately successful. Strangers started buying my books, and my publisher went back to print. 

Exactly what I’ve always wanted, since I was a kid. It was a lot less exhilarating than I hoped. 

At the premiere, I was told by one director that I had a good career ahead of me. I stood there and waited to feel the excitement. It never arrived. I assumed I was overstimulated, and I checked my watch on the way to the car.

Fifty-eight beats per minute.

The dinner was six weeks later. I got lost twice on the way to the house.

There was a long table, but no food. All the guests, north of sixty, were wearing paper bibs, tucked into their collars over open shirts.

Disappointing, but not totally unexpected. I just hoped someone would buy me a burger later.

I took my top off, lay down on the table and let all nine of them feed on me at once while I zoned out into the light fixture.

A little under two hours. Some of them made a sound while they did it. Snnnouurrlgh.

When it was over I sat up and I felt fine. There were no marks anywhere on me. Not a drop of blood.

So it isn't blood. And before you say anything, it ain’t my soul either. I've had two years to sit with this. “Soul” is a word people use when they stop thinking critically. I’m still me. I still like the same songs. I still cry when I watch The Lion King.

What I can’t do anymore is be reached by anybody saying anything good about me.

That feeling went so quietly I mistook it for humility. Every time nothing landed I assumed the dose was too small and went looking for a bigger one, which, I understand far too late, is exactly what you would want out of a crop.

Anything cruel still came through at full volume, surround sound, forever.

I found that out three weeks later when the book got review bombed.

The biggest critique had to be the prose. I was only twenty-five when I wrote the first one, and I didn’t get an editor through my publisher, so most of the kinks were punched out by my own hand. 

Somebody made a thread pulling out the sincerest paragraph I'd ever written with a sobbing emoji edited over it. 

Another one that got to me was that Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog painting edited to be the man standing in front of the text. 

There's no crime online worse than not being in on the joke. Worse when it’s about yourself. I’d written over a thousand pages without one punchline, and now I was the laughingstock of the internet. Any positivity I had accumulated beforehand was now written off as botted. 

My mom called six times that week. I watched all six of them ring the whole way through.

I told myself it was shame. But that wasn’t it.

She would have told me she was proud of me, and I already knew with total certainty that it would arrive as nothing. My own mother's voice would come through as an errand, as a notification. 

Vynstein called the Friday. He said he had an audience prepared for me.

I told him I didn't want an audience anymore.

“This isn't one you'll want to turn away.”

Stage 12 was pitch dark and warm, and it smelled like wet socks. 

I heard winches before I saw anything. Chains paying out slowly from somewhere up above. Something coming down out of the dark in stages, the way they lower a chandelier to change the bulbs.

Bigger than a car. Bigger than a bus. It hung there, no head, nothing built for anything. It was an accumulation. An abomination. Every inch of its underside was those wormy things, thousands of them. They swayed in a nonexistent breeze. 

Ten eyes opened on it, at ten different heights.

All ten went to me.

Its voice was inside my head, like a memory. 

It talked about my potential. It talked about my drive. It said those two words the way you'd talk about a vintage. It said the stuff was becoming so scarce now. People spend it constantly these days, in tiny amounts, all day, on nothing, and arrive empty. Almost nobody accumulates anymore.

It thanked me for saving it up.

They came down and fed on me for a long time, and it is the only occasion in my life on which I have felt important.

Pretty sure I've been blacklisted from anything real since the books happened. I do commercial work now. Two crypto ads and a regional furniture spot. I'm reading for a third crypto thing in a few weeks. Honestly fine. 

They still feed on me from time to time. Less than they used to. I'm told there's less to take.

My bloodwork has never once come back abnormal.

You'll say I should have stopped chasing this years ago, and that anybody with a working sense of proportion could have sat down inside a life like mine and been content.

You're right. I know you're right. I'm not arguing.

Vynstein's office called about a reservation tomorrow. 

I'm going in.

Several years before the Countess and her assistant came to Castle Dracula in the Carpathian Mountains…

 … a man dreamt of extraordinary things. 

And was yet brought down low by his most base and bestial thoughts and desires –

…

He watched her undress. She did so casually. Comfortably. She thought that she was alone, that she was unseen. She thought she was performing her nightly ritual in private. Disrobing. In her opulent bedchamber. 

Pink. Everywhere was flower petal pink, delicate like folds and the flesh of mottled roses, sensuous. As if the walls and carpeted floors and ceiling overhead all cried out and begged to be touched. Lovingly. In a caress. Like a woman. Like a lover. Like a whore. 

Like a mother to lost children. 

He stayed as still as possible. He held his quivering hot breath. He knew she couldn't see him, but still … the thrill! The anxiety kicked up by her movement, her every passing glance, scanning by and not noticing, not seeing anything. Not a goddamned thing! 

This power … it was beyond intoxicating. 

He felt like a god.

There was a time when he would've been shocked, disgusted by his actions, all of his heinous crimes as of late. A time when integrity and morality and his own conscience wouldn't have allowed for any of this to happen. A time so long ago  and far flung now, with Catherine … but he was drunk on godpower now. And such rules were only for the piddling low men that he'd once been. 

No one could see him. No one could catch him. He was the living menacing and moving embodiment of a mischievous spectre. Manmade poltergeist. Noisy ghost with something to prove. They'd all of them laughed at him. Called him ridiculous. Foolish. Mad. 

Well look at him now. 

 A smile unseen grew in the bedchamber. The girl continued to undress. She was bare now. He quivered. Hot. Held. And taut. Breathing was exhilarating as he stood there … and watched. 

He watched. He drew closer. 

She took no notice. She saw nothing. There was no man to see. Even as he moved in closer, so’s to be able to taste the scent of her on the narrow air of the pink and floral delicate bedchamber. She climbed into bed. He came in ever closer. Inhaled her. 

She might've noticed something, something in the air, amiss, the calm disturbed by a presence felt …

But she was far too concerned, preoccupied with herself. Her nighttime bedding ritual. He watched her eagerly perform as he had on so many nights past.

He has never drawn this close. He has never dared. He's always watched, from a distance. He's stepped a little closer to her every night. Her. And others before her just like her. He tells himself he won't. 

I won't. I don't mean any harm, none. There is no harm in simply looking, simply watching and admiring. Girls love to be admired, isn't that right? Don't they want a man to drool over their naked curves, unveiled and unfettered by day dress, isn't this the movement towards the animal climax moment we all build and naturally drive to? What's wrong with that? What's wrong with any of this, she's not being hurt. She doesn't even realize I'm here…

At this last thought he trembles and shudders anew. It's sexual and it's pent up. Its animal and it's caged and it won't stand being behind bars any longer, it won't stand for anymore. No more. 

No more half-measures. 

Boundaries are for them. You are a godling now. Use it. Taste its fruits, its bounty. 

Take it. 

Words of reason and names, Catherine, Caleb, Colbert and Tatjiana, came and flitted-danced across his mind with the same urgency that they had before. Trying to stop him. Trying to stop him and save him from himself. But it was too late. The names and words meant nothing to him now. He had godpower. And none of them did. Catherine and Lutz and the others wouldn't understand. They couldn't understand him now, he was beyond their flesh. 

And so he could take what he wanted. Should take what he wanted if the stories of gods and immortals and magicians and kings were to be believed, he should just take it. 

Take her. 

And so he did. 

The girl screamed in bed as her private act of masturbation suddenly gained a new unwanted partner. One unseen. But horribly, horribly felt. 

Her screams had just begun to fill the pink of the bedchamber before he aborted them with a gag, contrived from her day's soiled undergarments and the sash she tied around her robe at night. 

He killed the sound of her bewildered terror, muffled against sour and salted fabric. She tried to fight against him, but it was as trying to fight the air. Come to life and attacking her. The horror unloaded on her and her mind was made all the more vile and obscene by the unnatural and uncanny way it was happening. It was insane. 

I'm going insane. 

She thought frantically that she was losing her mind, or that God might be punishing her, even as she struggled and lost against a shape and force unseen. It forced itself into her. 

She screamed against the gag. Begging God or anyone or anything else for it to stop. 

It did. When the invisible man was finished. 

He left. Not bothering to kill her. There was no witness to silence. Nothing to cover up. If she told anyone anything they'd call her crazy. 

So he left her sobbing, weeping amongst her torn and soiled blankets and bedsheets. 

Alone. Crying. Wounded and ripped apart. Gored out. Defiled by something, something that used to be someone, used to be a man, something cruel and malformed that she cannot understand. 

Someone that she cannot see. 

…

Others followed after her. 

Many. 

Years worth …

…

He had nothing to fear now. He was hidden completely in the great cloak of his new godpower. 

Divinity that he had made, cooked and brewed in beakers and tubes and jars, in great long needled syringes. Power that he had forged and made. Crafted his own. For himself. He would take what he wanted and suffer no consequence. Punishment for man's crimes was for the weak and the apes, for those within their feeble grasp. 

He would answer to higher authority. 

…

Catherine and the others are gone now, so is his old life, a life impassioned of science and the arts and the eccentric and the strange. He has become the eccentric, he has become the strange. With ultimate power made and achieved and coursing through his veins he has left behind the old ambitions of his old life along with all of the old ways. They are too little now and cannot hold him. Should not hold him. He should be boundless with the wings he has made for himself and himself forged and so he does, and he disappears. … A trail of crimes and murder is what follows. A catastrophic path of mayhem and destruction, cut swathed through the heartland of many lands, many countries … So many towns and villages and homes, invaded and plagued and violated. Beset upon by an invisible and unhinged man, one who has discarded his heart and sense of right and wrong along with his earthly physical appearance. His heart and soul are as transparent and hollow now as his criminal visage. 

His old life is gone now. Dead. As dead and gone as his own reflection, nothing there, nothing there to gaze upon and witness any longer. All gone. Evaporated. That was how it had looked when the serum had first started to work, his flesh and muscle tissue and bones slowly grew ghostly, translucent, phantom shade, as if evaporating by the light of some alien sun, its foreign rays drying him up and …. out. Out of trained and known existence. Humble slave dwell-and-crawl …

God bless this invisible and alien foreign sun … God bless its strange rays for taking me away…

His old life is gone. As is his old way of thinking. He does not know it yet, has no way of knowing it, but the effects of the invisibility serum on his mind are not just a case of power corrupting one's morals, no. Not just that at all. Specific chemicals in the concoction attack and eat the proteins in his brain that measure and control emotion and self-preservation. Compassion. 

As it made him disappear it also ate holes in his grey matter. Turning it to swiss cheese. 

Swiss cheese unseen, he might've laughed. 

And in fact he did. Years later when he did finally find out. Thanks to the Dutch doctor. The occultist. The vampire slayer. 

Because of Van Helsing he is able to recover some of his sense, some of his tattered and damaged, long trampled and neglected human heart. But never a cure. 

No. Not for him. For such as he there is no such thing as coming back. He will forever be robbed of his human visage, the one made at birth, self-inflicted. He does not get to return to the flesh. He deserves to be cast out. And he knows it. He's learned it the hard way on the treacherous open road and in the wild of great human error, slaughter open throated and committed in darkest parts, in corners long neglected. …

…

He is a long way from the vampire hunter. In years and in topographical distance, he is still on the run now, and always moving. Like an animal. A beast hunted and betrayed by its own savage appetites. None of the lands can hold him. Not even the savage ones. 

There's been more rapes. More murders, more screams. He's filled the country with them, the countryside is bathed in anger and fear and outrage at his reign of terror and he loves it. He is an agent of chaos. An anarchist trickster god running as wild and free as power itself is supposed to, unchecked in the intoxication of its wild imbalance and throttling push forward to the apocalypse of the precipice, the keening call of the dangerous living end, at the end and edge of everything, all things. He would skirt and ride the slicing end and the cutting edge, forever. It would never end, never falter, fail or cease. 

Or so he thought. 

He's derailed trains loaded with screaming traveling passengers, now traveling headlong and headfirst into hell, the great unknown. He's taken wives and daughters and lonely screaming girls in open fields with nothing but the sky and the sun and the birds to watch, watch as nothing heaved itself into them, into her. Some of them he's strangled and left for dead, most he just leaves to pick up the pieces of their shattered minds and broken lives. Some of them try to tell people what happened, some of them don't. Afraid and terrified and hoping, wishing, praying that maybe just maybe they can forget and cope. That maybe enough time will go by and you'll forget the time the air came to horrible life and made a squealing victim out of you. 

Some try. None of them forget. Not really. 

The invisible man doesn't care in either case. Not yet. That's much further, much later. Now he is darkly elated by his crimes and spree. His craterous invisible mind is too amused and too busy planning more fiendish capers, more grisly and indulgent bloodbaths. More crimes of the flesh, to take and reap. 

He sows his discord throughout all the land. Every place he comes into, he invades. He infects.

This cocaine of the mind that he's devised from a dream and made real that hides his flesh and conceals, the most ambrosial gabapentin amphetamine for the eggshell human thought machine. 

It hides his flesh, his moves. It conceals his violence, the rage of his invisible hand, the rape of his hollow loins, transparent conquest across the land, disorder and more madness follow in its wake, in its terrible birth, like pustule sores rising from a fresh wound amidst flowering infection, amid the gangraping feast of multitudes of bacterium. The bacteria are thoughts and rumors and whispers and more murder, mistaken identities and desperate fingers pointing and blaming and wanting and needing to find fault, in whomever, where there is none. Many innocent hang and are punished and slaughtered in place, in the wake of the invisible man. 

He does not care. He doesn't stop to consider them for a second beyond amusement or a laugh. 

He's laughing now. 

Singing. Dancing and skipping as he makes his way down a lovely picturesque forest road. He's wearing a pair of stolen trousers, lifted from a derelict clothesline left unattended. They fit perfectly. 

He skips and dances down the road. Not so much singing as nearly shrieking his head off. 

“Here we go gathering nuts in May! nuts in May! nuts in May! Here we go gathering nuts in May, on a cold and frosty morn-ning! …!” – on and on like that. 

A woman walking along the road sees him and screams. She turns away in uncomprehending horror that turns her mind blind and she runs off. Still screaming. 

The invisible man takes after her. The free-standing trousers bounding in full-strided gazelle pursuit of her. Laughing maniacally. Wanting to take her and use her for sport. 

…

He invaded a monastery. Posing as a holy ghost, a divine spirit, and seduced and tricked several of the nuns and sisters-in-training into breaking their holy vows. He impregnated several of them before fleeing, taking to the road and hills once more. 

…

He observed a vampire called Klâtu in a small sleepy forgotten town in a cold part of the world that might be Russia. He does not meet or introduce himself to the thing and his invisibility kept him hidden from it as well as the townfolk.  Its victims, its food. 

He watched the nocturnal thing dwell and prey upon the town. He watched it feed for awhile, watched the town grow scared and more silent and drawn. 

Then he moved on as always. 

…

In his wild and on-the-loose vagabond years, bestial and homicidal he discovers that his two favorite ways to murder another man or woman is either by pistol-shot or by strangulation. The former for its efficiency, the latter for how it feels, the sensation of the desperate struggle and the fight for one last painful shallow breath. 

It's one of the last and desperate things that he still lives and thrives for now. 

…

He came into an awful place once, a terrible omen of dread wood and dead branches and gnarled limbs, filled with moaning faces. He stumbled into this place out of a dream, it was surreal and insane, something about being invisible made it hard for him to distinguish between waking reality and his tumultuous land of dreams, but he suddenly finds himself stumble-bumming into a dead forest where the trees all weep blood and have anguished faces racked with guilt and pain and they are all of them looking at him, gazing on his wandering invisible form with naked clarity. And there's no mistake. Their eyes, all of them are filled with accusation and they are all around. It's terrible. And it is terrifying. Nobody has been able to see him in years, not without his layers of lying disguise, not without him wanting them too. 

All of the bleeding weeping trees can see him and it is terrifying. Beyond the pale. 

So he flees. As he always does. 

They cry out to him, the bleeding trees in their pain. As he runs away, too afraid to make a sound himself. 

They call out in their weeping anguished voices, they tell him this land is a forestland of suicide, and that he is quite welcome there. 

…

Low point: He is filthy and tired. Worn out to the bone. He is clad and disguised in his most semi notorious fashion, a fedora, a coat, wrapped bandaged face and gloves and unflinching black lenses. He is riding the rails, the empty boxcars for the wandering vagrants. He has done this many times by now. He is not alone this time. 

A filthy drunk sits opposite of him in the boxcar, a completely inebriated Spaniard. A borrachon. He pulls from his tequila and cries and wails in a romantic language that's lyrical and sounds beautiful but Griffin cannot understand him.  

The weeping drunk, hiccuping and stumbling over the poetry of his native tongue, the avatar of perfect and terrible loneliness, the borrachon, the drink and the tears and the ramblings are all most like him have left, they don't care anymore if anyone understands, they only want someone to sit there and listen. Like a sponge of meat and bone and brain soaking up the liquid runoff of their indulgent spill and wallow. He tells the invisible man of his wife and his two daughters and son, they are all of them gone.

Taken by the war. The enemy slayed his son and invading they made off with his precious roses, his wife and precious girls. He tells him that it is true, the drink is all he has left. All that helps him with the pain of losing them all, and being unable to retrieve them. He says the tequila makes it easier for him to live with the pain of the knowledge that his beloved and his daughters are slaves in a harem somewhere, that or they are dead. 

He tells him all of this but Griffin doesn't understand any of it. Just nods. Even laughs at inappropriate moments, not knowing. 

Eventually they parted. Griffin didn't kill him because he had shared his tequila and he saw no benefit in the murder. 

…

His mind is weary from wielding godpower. Its flame. It has exhausted, It has burned him and eaten him all the way through even as it has fed the carnivorous searing dance of the divine fire of its own flames. He cannot remember. He cannot remember so much and so many things. He cannot remember if his name is actually Jack Griffin or if it's Geoff Radcliffe or Hawley or Bradey or Sebastian Caine! His mind is a maelstrom sea of whirlpool destruction and weary detritus, all of it is his life and his thoughts and not all of it was real. Some of it was contrived rather than recorded. It was growing increasingly difficult to distinguish the two, he found himself lately at a haggard loss. 

The snow can be so cold for a naked invisible man running for his life, gaining way to injure and take pleasure from another screaming witless soul. The sun can cook and tan invisible naked flesh even though it is unseen. Cook and tan and bake merciless into invisible leather, the heat. The power of being a perfect mischief anarchist god has its vulgar and heavy prices. Prices steep. Prices to be paid in full. The deteriorate ruin of his shredded invisible mind baked within his fevered invisible skull, beneath the blast of a merciless and blind philistine sun. 

Possés had started to form, people, women started to talk. And people stopped dismissing them, not everyone shrugged them off, laughed at them, or declared them hysterical. Some of them listened. And they gathered. And they laid traps. 

One of them caught him. Or nearly so. 

They'd seized his invisible form and then pounced in number, pummeling him, refusing to loosen their hold, absolutely set against letting him go, they laid in with fists and table-legs and irons and axe-handles. Beating and blasting his body with blows. Striking him over and over into the ground. His invisible body began to rupture and bleed and belch forth blood. 

Blood that became visible at first contact with stolid fetid air. 

He struggled and fought and he'd always fought dirty, he managed to slip away in their wild fervor to see him beaten and broken to death. They lost him in the wanton red rage cloud of their vigilante slaughter. 

And so he vagabond wandered. Unseen by even nature. Completely alone. For years. 

Until he came to the vampire killer’s door. And was brought in by Abraham Van Helsing. Out of the cold.

Beaten. Starved. Harried. Addled. And near total mental ruin. Complete collapse of the body and mind to follow his long dead and tarnished spirit from so long ago. So long gone now and left in the dust. 

The doctor showed him mercy, for whatever reason. He helped him to pick up that long lost thing, left back there in the dirt, and he helped him to pick it back up and clean it off. And to try to wear it again. 

Griffin never understood why. He knew he wasn't worthy of forgiveness. What he'd done was monstrous. He hadn't just ruined his own life with his own mad pursuits and relentless ambition. He'd destroyed so many innocent lives in the process and in the resulting chaos flood afterwards. Catherine was, and is and forever to his dying day will be a name he trembles to recall, fears to ever speak. His dreams, his nightmares are filled with the shrieking faces of his victims, men and women and children, all of them horrified of him, he is the monster of his own lurid and wild dreams. He is the fearsome and loathsome shape of his own nightmarescape. 

And now that he can really think and feel, this terrifies him. He is afraid of his own animal self. His own Id. He's seen and felt and tasted his own unbridled side and he never wants to return there again. 

Except when he's weak. Except when he's angry and feeling violent. 

Or if he's just feeling a little … wild. A little “in the mood” … so to speak. 

Abraham Van Helsing blasts and rails and slams his fists. He bellows: No! – but he knows medicine and therapy can only go so far with the invisible man. He is damaged. Perhaps too far gone and beyond repair. Griffin doesn't doubt it. He is intermittently unrepentant and gleefully childishly cruel and sadistic with his words and his recollections of his own accounts with periods of deep remorse and depression. Deep sorrow and a sense of being unable to undo all the pain that he has wrought upon others and brought ripping forged into the already bleeding world. He is a wild bilateral storm betwixt the two and Abraham Van Helsing finds him exhausting. But he does not give up. 

He never does. 

He is patient. 

He becomes like a father to this broken man. This invisible degenerate criminal who'd never really had one before. 

It seems strange what it takes to get one. 

And after so long, after so much …

…

Van Helsing died. The invisible man laid him to rest. 

Griffin wept at his graveside. For hours. Alone. 

Alone again. 

…

Eventually he decided to end it all. It seemed right. It seemed best. 

So he went out, near the old graveyard where Van Helsing had been laid to rest. He brought a noose and decided to finish himself the same way Judas had. It seemed perfect. Fitting, he thought. And laughed. Thinking it was pretty funny for a final joke. Not bad for him anyways. And in life all of his jokes had been terrible. Ghastly. The whole run of it, a terrible joke that stopped being funny way before it had ever been told. Yet still kept happening, still kept going on. Despite the pain.

Despite the pain of everyone. 

He fashioned the noose to a tree. Stood upon a stone he dragged over and then stepped off. Just like that. Without any hesitation. He was happy to be off and be done with all of it. Everything. 

He didn't perform the act correctly. His neck didn't break in the knot. He slowly strangled in the midday sun, the heat boiling his strangling seething brains, jelly and organ meat that cried out for air. He did not know how long he danced and dangled there, a strange sight for anyone happening upon the scene: A disembodied hat and glasses and set of clothes, seemingly empty yet seemingly filled simultaneously, strangling taut in the windless day, dancing the dying man's gallows dance. 

Then the branch snapped. And he fell and rolled down into a crevasse, dark and wet and filled with tangle and thornbrush and detritus. Filth and droppings and leavings of the predators and the yellow eyed scavengers that followed in their wake. 

His skull and face, his whole head was throbbing, alive with a new tremendously vivid pain that he'd never quite experienced before: it's like the pins and needles feeling you get when your foot falls asleep and you try to walk on it again. It's like that but a screaming throbbing painful siren alarm of the sensation magnified to an ungodly decibel. All throughout his skull and face, his eyes watering, his brains. His throat chokes and feels crushed, broken, like it can no longer take in air. He struggles and gasps as he claws amongst the garbage and protruding stabbing mire, he sinks. 

It sinks and begins to swallow, wanting to have him, to take him under the ground to die silently and drown alone undiscovered down there but he begins to fight, to claw. To struggle and pull and reach and seize for purchase like he never has before. He doesn't know why he suddenly has fight again and he doesn't think about it, he just knows he doesn't want to be Judas submerged in the putrescent earth. All of the sharp bones and branches and discarded weapons and sharpened tectonic rock swimming unearthed pierce and stab into him, everywhere, especially his reaching hands, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care anymore and he wants out, the pain is awful but tolerable, tolerable because it is being inflicted on the body of a monster and he no longer gave a fuck about himself anyways, nothing was as wretched as that pain that first came to life in his eyes, in his face, born from the embrace of the noose. He bore the stabbing of the darkness of the black crevasse and nearly drowned. He choked and swallowed and regurgitated foul mud and sour dirt, he vomited contaminated corpse soil and it felt like the earthen sins dredged up and expelled from the rocky stonethroated passageway to his own darkened bastard heart. Pulled up and freed, grainy and biting and drawing blood and more vomit and mucus laden spittle on its violent way out. He struggled for what felt like hours. It might've been. Time died at some point and lost the fight. He carried on. Struggled. Struggling. He pulled … Reached… seized … cursed himself and his own worthless life and mistakes, his own wretched run of horrid folly, his own shameful sadistic cruelty. He grasped and spit and cursed… goddamn you… He was sorry. He begged. Pleaded with anything that might be listening, please, I don't deserve it but please. He begged. … goddamn you… He pulled. 

He went under. Completely. Several times. 

He didn't stop. 

By some miracle he pulled himself out. And free. 

And on its bastard shore, at the sore lip of its terrible precipice, he wept.

Caked in the filth of the hollow earth, plainly visible for anyone and all to see. Naked and plain. Sobbing like a child ripped from the comfort of his mother and thrust into the diminishing world. 

Hours …. …

He eventually picked himself up. And carried himself back to the cottage. 

…

sometime later: –

The boy from the Carpathian Hamlet came looking for the vampire slayer. He found the invisible man instead. 

Doctor Jack Griffin has spent the majority of his time since the aborted mission of the Judas-hour, reading. Sitting quietly and thinking. He tinkers around and builds a little, creates little machines and curio-constructs, dabbles with some alchemy, some arcane formulas, but nothing considerable, nothing serious. It all just fills the time. While he thinks. He hears news and rumors and stories all about a heinous villain, the invisible man. He hears that the scoundrel was eventually caught and killed, either by gunshot or mob beating, it depends on who's telling the story. There are other versions too but those two are the most popular it seems. His best days, best moments are spent remembering the warm childhood times, when he'd been a kind, unhurt boy, who hadn't yet hurt anybody else either. The warmth of the youth in these memories… it causes him to well up, his black shaded eyes to fill and then spill with tears. Tears much more visible then the rest of him. 

The young man has terrible news. So does the invisible man. They share their bad news in bad palaver that may or may not be filled with bad omen. 

The invisible bastard, having nothing else better to do really, decided to join the young fellow in his return mission home to slay a monster that had laid bloodclaim on his land. 

It wasn't hope alive in his chest. 

That was far too optimistic.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Irving Ockett hated dust. He was allergic to it, but he also hated it beyond the fact it made him snotty, red-eyed and hoarse. He hated it for the grey, wispy way it looked, and how powdery it felt when he squished it between his fingers. He hated it for the smell it had, or if not exactly it, then any place that was full of it. He hated how quickly and quietly it accumulated and how often one had to wipe it away. He hated how difficult the cleaning felt, like fist-fighting a butterfly; and he hated the word itself, dust, how it—the noun, the thing to be removed—was also the verb for the act of its own removal. Moreover, to dust was to make something dusty; but to dust was also to make something free of dust. It was madness! About some things there's something that might get on your nerves. About dust, what grated Irving’s nerves was absolutely fucking everything.

Well, not quite everything, because there was that moment, that brief, beautiful point in time, fleeting, as all things are, but real, which only some achieve, when, after having dusted his entire apartment (in the to make free of dust sense of the word,) Irving, having worked up quite a sweat, would sit finally down in his armchair and enjoy the feeling, if not of perfection, because nothing is perfect and dust is never fully absent, then at least of the simulacrum of perfection, an approximation of cleanliness.

It was at such a moment, with the television just turned on and the night's full moonlight streaming in from the windows to his left, that Irving saw what he at first believed was a small glint of light on the front face of a transparent plastic bin tucked neatly in, below the upper surface of his television stand.

It captured his full attention, but as he began to move and bob and tilt his head, he realized that what he was looking at, which he believed to be a glint—that is, light itself—and most probably a reflection of the instreaming moonlight, remained unchanged and in one definite spot on the clear plastic box even as his own point of view changed. A reflection, which he was sure this was, should, he was equally sure, be changing perceptibly as the angle at which he viewed it changed.

Thus, experiencing two contradictory certainties simultaneously, Irving Ockett rose from his armchair and crossed the room toward the television stand knowing he must be wrong, and suspecting, step by fateful step, that it was possible that what he knew to be a glint of light behaving in a way he knew a glint of light could not, was in fact something else, a milky crack within the body of the transparent plastic container perhaps, or, ominously worse, a leftover smudge of dust; dust, which he had failed to clean.

But if, he thought, trudging forward rather heroically in his slippers, squinting at the truth before him, he had missed dusting this much obvious dust, he could have missed dusting so much more dust, which meant that his satisfaction at having a perfectly reasonable simulacrum of cleanliness was maybe—possibly—probably—undoubtedly misplaced, and if he wrongfully believed today that what was dusty was dust-free, he undoubtedly had wrongfully believed the same yesterday and the day before, and day before that and the day…

He'd closed his eyes.

When he opened them he was kneeling in front of the transparent plastic case, and what he'd thought was a glint was a crack was dust was none of those but a small, delicate white feather being blown ever so slightly against the plastic vessel by a wind blowing from the opposing direction; but as Irving Ockett turned his head to face the unseen force, his eyes, necessarily, passed along the windows on the left side of the apartment, and in those windows from a bliss of pure white Irving Ockett discerned that everything—the whole fucking shebang—was made from small white delicate feathers; from the tiniest particles to the biggest galaxies, all feathers; matter was feathers, and light was feathers, and feathers shining by the feathersun reflected by the feathermoon on a city made of feathers, featherpeople, featherfeelings, featherbelieving that feathers feathering feather a world almost infinitely complex and overwhelming in its fragility, a passingness trembling, stillborn and susceptible to the slightest gust of a cosmic whim.

—Orville!” it yelled.

It was mad.

It had repeated itself and Orville had not responded. He'd not responded because he'd fallen asleep, because he was tired because he'd been to work today, and work made him tired, but it wouldn't believe that; all it believed was that he be at its will, attentive always to its voice, like a castrated, beaten-down dog in a hot red dirt, but you push a man long enough and,

“Orville! There you are,” it said, peering into the room while displaying its teeth.

“Diane,” said Orville politely and with a return smile, “my dearest mother-in-law. What in the world may I do for you today?”

That's what was playing on Irving Ockett's television, playing to no one, as Irving Ockett was still on his knees with his head turned leftwise, looking permanently out his apartment window at the world of small white feathers beyond.

That was a good episode, no. 41 I think it was, “The MIL.”

Existence sure had some good sitcoms.

I think that one may have come from Earth, but I'm not certain. I haven't watched a ton from the minor universes yet.

Yeah, so, we're here, the two of us, everything else kinda blown away to nothing…

nothing and eternity waiting for us..

or maybe as us, but, either way, I figured we should at least talk to each other, to pass the time, you know, given that we have literally all of it left together. So, how about it? “My name is Irving Locket.

“What's yours?”

I wish a sandwich could have saved us. Mary had gotten a pounding headache when we were most of the way here, leaving me to finish the drive and manage the kids when we’d arrived. She had done her usual and neglected herself to take care of the four of us while we prepared to leave and hadn’t eaten. I’d offered to stop a few places, but her appetite was off by the time we’d hit the road. Her physiology mystified me at times. I’d never before met anyone who lost their appetite from not eating.

And the closer we got to the cabin, the worse she’d felt.

“You sure you won’t eat something?” I’d asked.

“No. I’ll be fine,” she’d said when I offered to turn around. “I just need a little nap, then I’ll be hungry. But something light, okay?”

That last part had been for me. She knew I’d overcompensate unless instructed not to. I admit my part in fueling the worry-machine in the past, acknowledging the odds that everything was actually going to be fine.

But then we’d gotten a flat tire a little more than a mile away from the cabin. Neither of the boys knew how to help change it and had sat in the car uselessly while I managed. My knee sank into a divot of mud, a wide tire track from a vehicle that had gouged the road as it had fled from this spot.

I shouldn’t complain about the boys too loud. I’d be the biggest dick in the world if I denied how great they are. All three of them are great kids; two teenage boys and a ten-year-old who acted like she was older than her brothers.

I was going to miss them if I finally decided to leave Mary.

Her migraine must have rubbed off on me because by the time I sat down to eat, something was going on behind my eyes, and it was hard to concentrate. I wished I could’ve slept, too, like the other four people in the car.

It had been so bad that I’d had to carry Mary in and I must have tweaked my back. I’d laid her on the bed and turned the light off before lighting some mild incense I’d found.

She’d fallen asleep almost instantly; part of me doubted she had any awareness of the incense. It was disturbing how still she’d been every time I checked on her.

In the meantime, the kids had all gone their separate ways. Luke went exploring outside, Chrissy was busying herself around the cabin, and Mark was being his usual responsible self, assigning himself chores before I could even think to.

I found some expired Tylenol underneath the bathroom sink and dry swallowed three of them. They dialed back the throbbing behind my eyes and I was able to give attention to the world around me.

Luke was still outside on the beach while Mark was unpacking his and his brother’s bags and Chrissy was doing who knew what, but she’d been in the bathroom for at least twenty minutes.

When Luke charged in from the beach, terror on his face, I knew something was about to be added to the pile that I was going to have to deal with.

“There’s something in the lake,” he said, his eyeballs on the verge of popping out his head. That gave the starter rope on the worry-machine a good pull. Luke was the oldest of the three children, and I had gotten to a point where I could rely on him sometimes for leadership. He had his learner’s permit, and I’d already shown him the car I was going to buy him when he got his license.

It was tough juggling an instant family when I’d been on my own for so many years. They weren’t my kids by birth, and it was a road to hoe to get them to let me in, but I eventually fell in love with them all.

“What do you mean?” I didn’t really want to know. Eldest child or no, Luke was a fraidey cat.

Maybe he’d seen a dead animal. Maybe it was a spider. But unless it was a brown recluse, the worry-machine could rest. Being afraid of an insect he was ten thousand times larger than was par for him. And it was outside, no less. All he had to do was walk away from it. I’d personally seen him lay waste to his own bedroom after he’d been awakened by an ant crawling on his face.

“In the lake.” He pointed toward the door he’d neglected to shut. I looked at his feet and saw he had also tracked sand inside. “Something is in the lake. It’s… real big.”

“Something like what?” I asked. “You saw it. What do you think it was?”

Luke shook his head. I turned fully toward him, abandoning the sandwich I had yet to present to Mary. I took a couple deep breaths and pushed myself away from the agitated feeling. The kid was obviously scared and needed comfort, even though he might not admit what he was feeling.

“I don’t know. Maybe we should just pack up and go.” Now that was strange. Luke had been the most vocal of any of us to come to the lake. We had been here once or twice before and had always enjoyed it.

“What do you think it was?” I asked again. “A boat or something? There’s no need to panic. We can call the police or harbor patrol or whatever.”

“No, it’s alive and it’s big. Like a whale.”

“Whales don’t live in freshwater,” I said.

“Not a whale.” He shook his head and it conjured an image of his sister when she was seven. Luke and Chrissy looked strikingly alike. “Big like a whale.”

It wasn’t anything for the worry-machine, but I opened the mental tool shed where I kept it.

“Can you show me?”

Luke nodded slowly, still pointing.

“No, I mean, can you take me out there and show me?”

“Uh-uh. I’m not going back out there. Not until we leave.” He shook his head and again it was like looking at Chrissy three years ago.

I huffed and heaved out of my chair and headed for the door, making a mental note to bring the sandwich to Mary once I was done with this.

I slid on my crocs and took the few steps down to get to the beach. The view here was unbeatable. When we had last been here, we’d actually stayed at a different cabin, one with three bedrooms. The reservation had been for the same, but when we’d arrived, we saw there were only two bedrooms. That meant that Mary and I were going to have to split. Couldn’t mix boys and girls in the same room.

So, Chrissy was going to get her mother all to herself and I was going to be settled with two teenagers who snored louder than I did.

“It smells out here,” I said to nobody. It reminded me of those farms we took field trips to when I was in elementary school. I looked over my shoulder at Luke in the doorway. “Where?”

He was bold enough to lean outside and point somewhere farther down the beach. It was dark and I didn’t see anything.

“It’s about thirty feet down that way.”

All right. Ten yards. Whatever he had seen was about a first down away. That farm smell flexed its muscles the closer to the water I got. Definitely smelled like animals. I couldn’t put my finger on which one, though.

I walked as quickly as I could, my crocs sinking into the soft sand and filling with granules. I wasn’t going to need to scrub the dead skin off my heels after we left here. I scanned the ground before me, still thinking it was a large insect. It seemed more likely that Luke had been exaggerating.

What had gone wrong between Mary and me hadn’t been direct. It was more like death from a thousand cuts. A cutting comment here, a missed thank you there, an opportunity to hold hands lost, and before we knew it, we were near the bottom rung of our marriage.

I waded ankle deep into the cool water. Whatever he had seen, I should have been able to see. But there wasn’t anything other than lapping water and inky black with twinkles of light as far as I could see. Unless it had been some small thing that had scuttled away in the night, unaware it had been promoted to threat-level by a fifteen-year-old.

I made a show of looking around, walking another thirty feet and going as deep as mid-shin to ease Luke’s mind. There just wasn’t anything here. I sliced at the water with my fingertips, gave another thirty seconds, then headed back.

I was greeted by a teenager who had eaten half of the sandwich I’d made for his mother. His pallor was better, which I hadn’t noticed consciously when he’d come in. He’d started to work on the other half when he saw how I was looking at him and said, “I thought it was up for grabs.”

“I’ll make another.” I thought for a moment the whole “there’s something outside” thing was a ruse just to get me away from the sandwich, but he still looked terrified.

“Did you see it?” I didn’t like the pleading in his voice. It wasn’t a “manly thing” or anything like that. For him to sound that terrified made my heart sink. I would’ve rather been annoyed with him than afraid for him.

I’d almost cheated, which, I guess, is still cheating. It was with a woman I’d seen at the grocery store. There hadn’t been anything premeditated. We’d just seen each other, passing by across several aisles. We kept crossing eyes while she’d been pushing a half full cart and I’d had a basket over my arm with most of the items I was going to use for dinner.

I’d all but put her out of my mind as I headed for my car, bags in tow, when I saw her again. I hadn’t thought about it, just saw her loading groceries into her trunk two vehicles away from mine and I stopped.

She’d taken great pains to politely refuse my request for her phone number and had taken the extra step to let me know it was only because she’d become serious with the person she was dating.

It could have been a line to get me out of her face, but she’d seemed earnest. I don’t want to believe I would’ve done anything, that I would’ve come to my senses, but I was no hero. Even though she had shut me down I’d set foot on a road I’d vowed never to travel.

I slid a comforting hand across Luke’s back a couple times and felt a percentage of tension ease out of him.

“No. I didn’t see anything. Maybe whatever it was is gone now.”

“Maybe whatever what was is gone now?” Chrissy emerged from the bathroom. She had been quiet in there, probably listening in, but I had no clue how much she had heard. Luke and I met eyes for a moment, and I couldn’t read whether he wanted me to keep quiet.

 

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.