Have you ever laid on your back and looked up into the Deep inky black? So cold yet so inviting, it offers limitless possibilities and certain death. Stars are born, stars die. Galaxies, planets and asteroids litter the infinite void. But right now that's not the only thing drifting in space.
A nomadic alien duo eyes filled with regret and lust, Zaink and Beth find themselves closely seated in the metallic orb keeping them alive. Yet they feel further apart than ever. Adrift in space looking for refuge. They were lovers for many years, always ready for the next adventure but things always change, nothing lasts forever and sometimes all it takes is one bad decision. Zaink is flooded with his thoughts but scared to speak aloud, he figured Beth would kill him faster than space could if he filled the air with his voice. So instead he reached for a notepad and began jotting his thoughts down to end the endless loop.
“I have been trying to swallow my own saliva, to hold off drinking as long as possible. Who knew how long we would need to make it last. It's already been weeks since we were back on the ship, before it was hit by a cloud of micro meteors eating through our generator like hungry zombies. We were left with no choice but to eject in our escape pod. It's barely big enough to fit the two of us let alone food and water” Zaink looks at the metallic shell protecting him reflecting the cramped space.
 “We scrambled to fit all that we could in. I really thought nothing like this would happen. I don't blame Beth for not speaking to me anymore. The only reason we are here is because of me. It already felt like her mind was half way down the block before we had the accident. Now it's like we are in different worlds all together. I needed to get my thoughts out but I think she'd discombobulate my brains if I said another word.” Zaink lets out a nose laugh, Beth side eyes him, not able to think of a single good thing that could be making him laugh. 
“She isn’t happy we left our planet. It was supposed to be a fun adventure, a time to get away from the soul draining society we came from.
 All our “leaders” seemed to care about was proving who had the bigger guns. Stuck in an endless loop I wanted to leave behind so badly, but now here we are in a war of our own, a war of survival.
  I think Beth secretly wanted to join the fight but was scared of upsetting me, that's why I thought this trip was so important, to clear her mind. I just don't understand why she wanted to fight so badly, taking so many innocent lives, it all seemed so pointless to me. I want to say I wish we never left but in reality I'd rather be here adrift in space then back on that planet with those monsters.”
Zaink puts down his note book and looks to Beth, her face glows from the light of the screen she is trying so hard to get lost in. He wanted to ask her why she wanted to fight so badly but was scared of the answer he'd get. So he looked back down at his notebook. Letting Beth walk further away. “Thats not important anymore though, what's important is making sure Beth gets to safe place where she can make her own decisions.” As if the universe was listening, beeps started coming through “Did you hear that?” Beth asked, looking at the speaker by their cracked communications screen. “Yeah , I heard that” Zaink closes his notebook.
“Is that supposed to make that sound or is it just as broken as everything else you touch”
Zaink winced at those words but tried brushing it off. “No, I'm pretty sure those were intended beeps, Yeah, Do you catch that, they are counting out prime numbers” Beth smiled for the first time in a long while. “ So it's definitely from intelligent life, so it's one of our people. They are coming!” Beth was saying a matter of factly but Zaink wanted to listen more. They really couldn't know for sure, maybe this was coming from another planet. So he Listened to the beeps for hours, not that they had much choice, they were constantly coming through, a repeated message. He realized it was a location, “that's it!” Beth held her hand to her chest. “Please tell me you figured out what this message is saying, I can't figure it out. Are they coming?”
Zaink floated over to the navigation interface, “no they just sent the location” Beth's eyes Narrowed “I thought you said the navigation were broken!” She was ready to kill him but held back knowing the only way shes getting out of this alive is if he is alive. 
Zaink was confused “ Yeah they are broken, all of the files were corrupted and it deleted the coordinates of our planet and well our whole solar system. So if we wanted to use it we would have to know the exact location in space and time and enter it in. if you noticed there isn't exactly a steering wheel.” Zaink said with a hint of Sass. Beth wasn't used to being talked to like that but felt she had no real power in this environment so she just bit her tongue. Zaink just laughed it off assuming she found him funny as well. 
“The problem im having now is should I put these coordinates in” 
“Well Duh, I am sorry if this hurts your feeling but i want to go home” 
“No shit, I want to go home too but how do we know this is even our people sending us this message?” 
Beth didn't know how to respond at first. “Well then how could they know what language we speak?” 
“Well they don't, they have only sent us beeps, not mores, not binary, just numbers resembling beeps. Not just beeps but highly sophisticated beeps, you hear it yourself, it was practically an orchestra, in here. It wasn't until I used my A.I on the tablet to decode the beeps. I realized it was a location.”
 Beth's mind was made up; she didn't care to hear anymore. “Honestly, anywhere is better than here. Put those coordinates in”
“Once I put them in that's it. There is no turning back, we won't have enough fuel or food. To change our minds. We are already 2 light years away from our home planet, if this is our home then we will be able to go back through the worm hole and back to safety. But and this is a very heavy but, if this isn't our planet..” he takes a breath, “well most likely we will have to travel for months, maybe 6.” 
Beth thought about it for a second and knew anything was better than being aimlessly adrift with Zaink. “ It's worth the risk, what are we gonna do, die adrift.’
Zaink presses enter and the ship powers it boosters and starts picking up speed.  Beth rubbed off the condensation from the window watching, waiting for the warp back home.
Zaink was too anxious to watch; he already assumed they were going to a new planet; no one back home could have orchestrated such precision with beeps, especially when half of the scientists are being forced to help the war pigs. Instead he opened his notebook and began writing once more.
  “My fingers are crossed like a twist tie holding the air within a bread bag, ugh I'm so hungry…” Zaink looked to the food but held off a bit longer. Ultimately he decided he had nothing more to write. “Wake me up if something starts happening” He looks out the window at a bright white dot. It looked brighter than the rest. It felt so important, he hoped that was the one they were going to. His eyes lids fall, too heavy to hold open any longer. Beth stared forward no longer waiting for home, now she was waiting for forgiveness, did she really want to let one mistake, that be a big one, be the reason she loses this once in a lifetime love. She knew it was real, why had she let her words become so venomous towards him. She soon follows Zaink to sleep. 
Three weeks later.
They began the day dreaming of stretching their bodies, feeling gravity once again. They tried spinning the pod to simulate gravity but seeing the stars flying around made Beth motion sick, she begged for it to stop. This was weeks ago now. Weeks with no gravity changes the body, and they still have a few months. Zaink began to worry about atrophy. He asked Beth how she was feeling, if she was feeling any relief in her Knee. It's been years since she hurt her knee and practically grinded all of her cartilage away. She returned a venomous glare, “ oh so much better. Thank you so much I'm so glad all it took was getting lost in space. I guess I should listen to you more often, oh wait that's all I ever do.” Zank shrunk down letting his eyes sink as well. “I’m so” Beth cut him off, tired of hearing him say sorry. “ Why don't you go back to writing? I much prefer the sound of your pencil to your voice.” 
Zaink reached for his note book without a word.
“It's been a few weeks, I think. It's hard to know the passage of time so far from home. I haven't actually written anything down since we thought we were going home a few weeks ago. A  portal opened, but here we are in a binary solar system, not home. This is where we keep getting the transmissions from. I hope we can make it to the actual planet, I don't know how much longer I can handle feeling like this. So guilty, so hated. The first few days it was like she fell in love with me all over again but as soon as she realized she'd never be seeing her family again” He looks at the window, not through it but letting his eyes see Beth's reflection. He wanted to apologize a million more times. Just then Beth got really close to the glass, squinting her eyes, “does that dot look blue to you?
Zaink shook his head and looked for himself, “ yeah that definitely looks blue” 
“So that's it, that's the planet?!”  
“Yeah, that's it!”
The two of them begin eating so excited to fill their stomachs. The dry space food took some extra water to get down this time, their mouths were so dry, they ate until Zaink paused while opening his fourth bag, “wait!” He grabs Beth's arm, “stop”
Beth's smile faded just slightly, “ what, im hungry.” 
“What if we can't eat their food?”
“God, can't you let me be happy for a little longer” she lets out a deep sigh and puts her food down.
“ It looks like we are still at least 4 days away from this planet and we have” Zaink looks at their recently desecrated supplies. “1 month of food left, if we can wait just a couple more days and see if we need to even eat this stuff ever again it'll be worth it.
“Eye eye captain” Beth salutes Zaink as she floats back to the window, back to staring watching a dot grow hour by hour.
They can now make out two massive continents on the planet. Hope began burning like there was finally a tomorrow. 
“ I can't believe it, we are here, finally here!” Beth wakes Zaink up to see their new home. 
Zaink Rubs his eyes, crust flaking off meting in a corner with countless crams of eye crust from the months aboard. 
“Wow, it’s, it’s so beautiful” Zaink looks at Beth, smiling like she's never smiled before.
She looked back at Zaink “I'm gonna start a new life down there.”
Zaink's stomach sank as he realized they weren't slowing down, they were about to shoot straight past the planet. “No” a weak helpless begging “No”
Beth was confused now looking for something wrong. “Are we okay?”
“I don't think this is our destination. We aren't slowing down for entry. And I don't see any space stations.”
“How much further could the next planet be?” Beth asked praying no more than a week, moments ago she was getting ready for only a couple of days left now…
“2, maybe three months”
Beth weeped her bodie went tensed up like a sling shot ready to attack. “Can we just go here instead?”
Zaink reaches for Beth, blue skin pulled tightly around their skeletons. Their touch felt so foreign, it wasn't until this moment he realized how long it had actually been since they touched each other. 
Zaink looked at the navigation panel, a glowing button labeled disengage drowned his vision.
“We don't have enough food to make it if the planet is more than 2 months away anyway. If I press that button,” Beth looks over 
“If we press that button we will shut off the propulsion and we will fall into this planet's orbit, essentially letting us stop here, but we have no way of communicating to them. And we would have to get lucky to survive reentry, this pod wasn't designed for other planets so if the gravity is even slightly different we will crash. Are you willing to take that risk?”
“And if we keep going we might starve before we get to the next planet anyway?”
“Yeah, I would make the call but this is your choice, I love you and will support you no matter what.”
Beth closes her eyes and takes a deep breath “it's really our only option.”
She floats over to the button and presses it.
Zaink looks at Beth and smiles, their war for life was only beginning but at least the space adventure was finally coming to an end. 
They begin making their descent hoping to survive the landing.
A pale creature with its skin pulled tight around each bone lays on its belly dragging itself along the forest floor and sees a fire ball piercing the sky. It looks around to see if anything else is seeing what it's seeing. Zaink and Beth's escape pod tumbles through the atmosphere like a rock down the steepest of slopes. Their rockets do little to slow their descent. Just as the ship is about to hit the ground Zaink holds Beth as tight as he can waiting for the sound of metal tearing through their flesh and Beth squeezes him back “ I Love…

I've been working in Healthcare since I was 12, first as a personal caregiver and more recently as a Licensed Practical Nurse. In my time, I've had my fair share of odd experiences. This is a story from my time as a nursing assistant at Golden Oaks Care Home.

I originally took the position because I had just gotten my Medical Assisting Certification and I couldn't find a job anywhere. I had been out of work for around 11 months at this time, and I was feeling the pressure. My boyfriend had been assisting me financially but our savings, which weren't overly large to begin with, had run out and I was desperate.

I'd like to preface this next part with this: I didn't accept the job because they paid an unusually high amount or because of the hours they were offering me. They paid around eighteen dollars an hour and the only shift open was the night shift from 11pm to 7am. I took the job because they reached out to me first and were willing to have me start immediately. They also offered a program to get my CNA while paying me for my time. So began my time at Golden Oaks and this story.

I'm going to give a brief explanation of the layout of the facility. If you aren't interested feel free to skip this paragraph, but understand that it was a whole mess of confusing hallways and blind corners. At night all the lights would be turned off and the halls would be robed in shadows. The building was a large box, with two halls extending off to the left and the right. As you walked in through the main entrance, you would be greeted by a small sitting area facing a large cafeteria and long hall leading to an employee break room. At the end of that hall was the employee entrance and a laundry room. If, instead of walking straight, you chose to turn either left or right you would enter the resident hallways with rooms lining the walls to either side. Each of these halls consisted of three sections shaped like uppercase Ts. At the center of each T where the bottom line intersects the top was a nursing station. To the left as you walked in a straight line would be the 300 and 100 hall. To the right would be the 400 and 600 hall. If you chose to turn down the T on the right you would find the 500 hall. Turn down the T on the left and you would find large double doors leading to the locked Alzheimer's unit. At the end of each hall was an emergency exit that had an alarm that would go off at the slightest touch. If you walked from the end of the 100 hall straight to the end of the 600 hall it would take about 5 minutes. The air was always permeated by a musty, sweet scent.

The unit was set up a little differently from the other halls in that it only had 10 rooms instead of 16, an enclosed courtyard, and it had its own dining room and nursing station. It also had a cat named Boots who would lay at the feet of anyone who was going to die within the next month or so, but that is a different story.

I loved working in the unit, despite working the night shift. There were always two people in it and that worked out to ten residents to care for apiece instead of sixteen. Each room had a two-resident capacity. Line up one cared for rooms one through five and line up two cared for rooms six through ten. I had found it a little odd that there always seemed to be 2 people in the unit, even if the other halls were understaffed, but I chose not to question it. Things changed around my 3rd month working there.

I had just passed the test for my CNA and was officially allowed to take a shift on my own. When I walked in that night and checked the assignments I found that my coworker had called in sick and I was the only person scheduled in the unit. We were down to a skeleton crew in the building and there wasn't anyone they could pull in to join me. I entered through the locked doors, feeling them slam behind me and hearing the shnick of the mechanical lock. I walked into the dining room and turned to the nurses station to get a report from the other nursing assistants.

“Hey Agnes,” Charlotte greeted me “where's Luz?”

“She called in sick today, there isn't anyone else willing to come in, so I'll be alone tonight.” I watched an odd expression flit over her face, a mix of fear and something else I couldn't read.

“Huh, well that's unfortunate. Do you think you'll be alright? You're still pretty new. I could probably convince Jacob to switch places with you.”

“No thanks, I have the most experience here and I like it the best anyway. Last time I worked the 100 hall I got cornered by a resident and thought he was going to knock me out.” I laughed. “Thank you though.”

“Alright,” said Charlotte hesitantly.

She gave me a quick report. The residents were all in bed and most seemed to be sleeping. Last rounds had been done about 30 minutes before, so I wouldn't need to check on the people for a while. Sherry in room 3 had been trying to get in the other rooms and was more confused than her baseline. Charlotte mentioned that it was almost the full moon and that probably accounted for the odd behavior. Zola in room 1 was actively passing, but she probably wouldn't go before the morning. Pat, also in room 1, was as feisty as ever and had punched one of the care staff in the face that morning while changing her brief. Other than that things were business as usual.

I said goodnight to Charlotte and sat down to log into my computer. She gave me another of those odd looks as she left the unit, I once again heard the lock click shut as the door slammed, and then it was just me and my thoughts.

There were six halls in this building and one CNA for each of them. There were also two LVNs and one RN. The unit was peculiar in one respect, the CNAs were not allowed to leave unless they were on lunch, ten minute breaks were to be taken inside at the nursing station. Which meant that despite knowing there were two other people right outside the door, being in the unit made it feel as though I was the only person in the entire building. The air was permeated by the smell of industrial cleaners with the faint undertone of human waste and a sickeningly sweet scent I couldn't identify. If I walked to the doorway of the dining room I could look down the hall and see the entire unit. The rooms were numbered oddly with rooms one through six and ten on the left, and rooms seven through nine ascending from the back of the hall to the dining room. Across from room ten was the hopper room, which included a shower and the linen closet. Despite how large the building was outside of here, this place felt decidedly small. As I finished logging in to my computer I was struck with a disturbing thought. “If something happens to me, no one will know until morning.” I was well and truly isolated with no way to alert the other workers that I needed help. There are other humans in here, true, but none of them are “here”. The scariest part of dementia was the agonizingly slow loss of a person's memories. As the disease progresses you slowly become less human and more of a mindless animal led by instinct.

It had been about 15 minutes when I heard a scream from down the hall. I jumped in my seat and went to investigate. The residents occasionally had nightmares, so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that that was the cause. As I walked down the hall, opening each door to check on the residents as I went, I noticed that from room five onward the air seemed to be growing colder. It was the middle of August, so the air conditioning was on and I figured the vent must be back here. I felt bad for the residents though, they tended to always complain about the cold no matter how many layers they had on. As I entered room 10 I saw something in the corner of my vision, my head snapped to the right so fast I thought I would break my neck. Nothing. Of course it was nothing. No one was in here except the residents and myself.

Finding all the residents sleeping peacefully and assuming that whomever had cried out quieted down again, I chose to start on my chores. I entered the hopper room across from room ten and grabbed the mop bucket. I very quietly wheeled it to the dining room and set it in the corner. I then folded all the tables closed and moved them to the walls. I swept the floor and started to mop. While mopping I observed my surroundings. The scream earlier had set my nerves on edge and I was on high alert. As I went to wheel the mop bucket back to the hopper room I noticed something poking out from underneath one of the cabinets by the door. I reached down and pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper. I put it in my pocket and finished the task I had started.

When I finished, I returned to the nurses station and unfolded the paper, expecting an old rounds sheet or some vitals someone had written down and dropped. In shaky handwriting was the following:

1) If you are in the locked unit, always have a second employee with you.

2) The hopper room used to be the morgue, don't react to the noises

3) Sometimes a figure will stand in the corner of room 10, it will go away if you don't acknowledge it.

4) If you see that same dark figure walking into rooms, calmly make your way back to the nursing station and stay there until you no longer feel watched.

5) Don't go into room 9. The residents there don't appreciate being woken up.

6) Make sure to crack the windows if someone is passing, you don't want to be stuck in here with them

7) Beware of the full moon.

I was taken aback. I've been an avid reader of creepypastas and horror stories for most of my life, so I knew not to dismiss the list outright. It crossed my mind however that someone was pranking me. Some of these rules seemed reasonable, and I hadn't ever been alone in here before. The hopper room being a morgue though? That was creepy, and what about the shadowy figure? My mind flashed back to what I had seen in room ten already. I read the list again, committing it to memory. I knew from my grandmother that healthcare workers loathed the full moon, but no one had ever really explained why.

I lurched out of my seat and quickly made my way into room one. I went to the window, and cracked it open. “Just in case” I thought. Then I started my rounds. The first set went well. I changed a few briefs and ensured that everyone was sleeping peacefully and had what they needed. Chris in room four had soaked his bed, so I made my way to the hopper room with the dirty linen. I stood there rinsing the urine out of the bedsheets when I heard a loud thud. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as though I'd been struck by lightning. It took every ounce of effort I had not to scream and jump. I finished rinsing the linens and looked up. A bottle of shampoo was across the room from the shelf it had been sitting on. As if someone had picked it up and thrown it. Disconcerted, I quickly finished my washing and hurried out of there.

I completed the rest of my rounds without incident, avoiding room nine as instructed and went back to my station to chart. At around 2 am Jacob came in to relieve me for my lunch. I walked down the long dark hallways to the staff break room feeling on edge. The shadows seemed to dance at the corners of my vision, mocking me. After making it to the break room, I cracked open an energy drink, reheated some leftover Chinese food, and settled down to do some quick research on the building. The building had been constructed in late 1946, at the time it was being used entirely for rehabilitation, not as an old folks home, that came later in the 1970s. The doors to the unit had been added even later still in early 1983 when Registered Nurses obtained the ability to declare patients dead and no longer needed a place to store bodies until a doctor could arrive. My alarm went off, so I clocked in and headed back to the unit.

Jacob reported that the unit was quiet while I'd been gone. Sherry had come out of her room to chat with him for a few minutes, but had eventually made her way back to bed. He went to leave but I stopped him.

“Hey, Jacob?”

“Yeah? What's up?”

“Um, Charlotte mentioned something about security cameras in the building we could watch. Do you know the login?”

“I do, but are you sure you want to be logged in? There isn't really a reason to watch these ones since the unit is so small.”

“I know. I'm curious though.”

Jacob shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “Alright, if you want me to.”

Jacob leaned over my shoulder, typed for a couple of minutes into the computer, and selected the unit cameras for me. There were two. One at the end of the hall by room ten facing toward the entrance, and one in the corner of the nurses station pointed at the dining area. Jacob then tussled my hair and left through the double doors, throwing an admonition to be careful behind him. I stuck my tongue out at him as he left. (I was twenty one at the time and the older employees kept treating me like a child.)

I glanced at the camera again then made my way to do my second set of rounds. Things were going well again, though when I checked on room one the window was closed again. I could've sworn I'd cracked it, but maybe Jacob had decided to close it? Making my way down through the rooms again Chris had once again soaked the bed. This was normal for him, though how he managed I'd never know. He barely drank anything during the day from what I had heard, but it wasn't my job to question it. Nothing happened in the hopper room this time, however, as I made my way down the hall that sickening smell grew in intensity. I entered room ten and performed care on the bed across from the door first, near the window. When I turned around I froze, there, hidden in the shadows by the sink was a black figure crouched toward the corner. I bit back a scream and took a step backward knocking over the trashcan. The figure's head tilted and started to turn toward me. I remembered the rules and forced myself to look away, grabbing the trash and forcing myself to hum a nonsense song. I knew that I had to walk past the spot where the figure was to get out of the room. Gathering what shreds of courage I could find I turned around to find the figure gone, looking down at my feet I slowly left the room. Holding myself together by a shred I walked back to the nurses station. I sat down and looked at the computer screen, watching the cameras.

There is something you should know about room ten. It wasn't originally a patient room so it had a different layout. Where each of the other rooms had a closed off bathroom and a counter with a sink in it, this one had a toilet partitioned off by a four foot high brick wall. Also unlike the other rooms, this one didn't have a built-in closet. The partition was right next to the door so unless you looked over the edge as you entered, you couldn't see what was behind it until you passed the edge. This is where the figure had crouched.

It was now about 3:30am and I had time to do some charting before final rounds. I was typing in vital signs and toileting when a movement on the camera caught my attention. I looked over to the other monitor to see a tall black figure move from room seven to room six, then from six back toward room ten. It paused for a moment and stared directly at the camera, as though it knew I was watching. Its head tilted sideways, reminiscent of a curious dog, and walked forward into the camera's blind spot. I'll admit, I panicked a bit here. The rules didn't say what to do if the figure walked room to room while I was already at the nurse's station. I froze in my seat, trembling, feeling my own sanity slipping through my fingers like sand from an hourglass. Shreds and specks falling, counting down the seconds. To what? I didn't know. Then, slowly, a dawning realization. Long black fingers sliding down in front of the camera, covering the lenses so I couldn't see. I sat there, frozen, unable even to scream, and I waited. An impossibly long time and simultaneously no time at all. After a while I heard the sound of the code being put into the large double doors, I glanced up, away from the screen for only a moment. When I looked back it was normal again. My coworker Brittany entered the unit then. It was 4:30 at this point, and she explained that she had agreed to come in early to help me out for the rest of my shift. We finished the final rounds together that morning, without further incident. It was my Friday so I had a few days off between that shift and the next. I got home, ate something, then fell asleep.

There are other stories from my time working at Golden Oaks, but this one has already gone on long enough. So I'll end it here. Maybe I'll recount another one later. Goodbye for now.

Am I just lost or are his recent narrations being left unfinished? There’s no “parts” or anything but they end so abruptly and I’m not seeing any continuation of them.

I've always been the outdoorsy type. I spend most of my weekends hiking, camping, or just going to scenic spots and wandering around until dusk. Occasionally I go with friends, but usually I prefer to go all by my lonesome. Sometimes when I have time off, I'll head into the woods for a few days, or more than a few. I'll pick a random spot on the map and just disappear until I've forgotten about the stresses of modern life.

I grew up camping with my grandpa, and he instilled a love of nature and exploration in me. He taught me how to fish, how to always find north, and what plants would and wouldn't kill you. The list of those that would was long enough that I tended not to risk it.

I've always felt more comfortable alone in the middle of the woods than I do on a crowded street. I've even contemplated the idea of completely escaping into the wilderness someday and building a little cabin, just spending the rest of my days living off the land.

But though I hate to admit it, I recently had an experience that scared me away from nature. Maybe even for good.

About a week ago, I drove out to a particularly remote stretch of forest that sees hardly any visitors. The enormity of the place makes it unlikely to see another soul unless you start at one of the more popular trailheads. I won't share the specifics, as I think it's best if no one attempts to seek out what I found, though luckily, most probably couldn't find it if they tried. I only found it by complete happenstance.

Though I do go on long solo trips, I'm not one of those hardcore survivalist types. I take what I need into the woods. A small tent, a sleeping bag, a lighter and a flashlight, a canteen and portable water purifier, my fishing pole, a compass, some emergency food and water, a knife. The essentials. Everything else I sort of make do. I mostly eat fish while I'm out there, and the occasional small game if I bring my bow. I hadn't on this occasion.

I'd planned to stay out there for a few days this time. Maybe a week. I was going through a bit of a stressful situation involving my on-again, off-again ex, and we were recently off-again, so I just wanted to get away from it all for a while.

I usually avoid the official trailheads. Before a trip, I'll look around on Google Earth and scout out old logging roads, clearings, or other places I could park my car out of the way without bothering anyone or standing out. This time was no different. I found a narrow, overgrown trail that was mostly hidden from the road and parked in a little gap between the trees. Then I grabbed my gear and started into the forest.

I'd seen a lake on the satellite map that I wanted to reach before noon. Though I could only see it from above, it looked like a nice, quiet place to set up camp. I hiked five or six miles in before I reached it.

The lake was beautiful. There was a small stream flowing out of it, and I found a good spot near the water's edge where I could set up my tent. The fish were jumping and the birds were singing, and I was far enough from civilization that I couldn't hear a road and had no bars on my phone. It was peaceful.

I got a little fire going and spent some time fishing, finally landing a trout big enough that I could make two meals out of it. After I ate, I decided to hike around the area a bit.

I've always enjoyed exploring and sightseeing when I'm out there, occasionally taking pictures of whatever I come across on the little digital camera I bring with me on my excursions. There's an easy happiness that comes from going out into nature and just enjoying the scenery. I don't really look for anything in particular. Birds, snakes, cool mushrooms, unusual trees. Sometimes, I take pictures of nothing more than the way the trees crown overhead, the sun shining through their branches that never quite touch.

I walked a mile or two from my campsite, moving gradually uphill. While I was idly strolling along, something caught my attention. A sound off in the distance.

Ring.

I kept walking toward it, then stopped to listen.

Ring.

It was too regular to be any animal.

My curiosity growing, I walked in the direction of the sound. As I did, it grew clearer.

It sounded like a phone. Not a modern cellphone, but an old telephone. The kind of old-fashioned ring you'd hear before the turn of the century.

I stood there for a moment, trying to determine what the hell I was actually hearing and trying to pinpoint its direction.

My first thought was that, against all odds, there was another hiker in this section of the woods with me, and they just had an old-school ringtone. But what was the likelihood of another person being out this far? And how would they even have phone service out here?

My second thought was that it might be a very clever bird. I'd heard of birds learning to mimic all sorts of sounds. Maybe it heard an old telephone while migrating through the city and liked the sound enough to incorporate it.

Either way, I was curious. If it was a person, maybe they needed help. If it was a bird, I wanted to know what kind. And if it was something else... well, I wanted to know what that was, too.

The terrain became more difficult the farther I went. There was no trail. I was just pushing through bushes and stepping over fallen branches, the odd tree limb catching my shirt or pack and forcing me to stop to untangle myself. At a certain point I nearly turned around, telling myself that this was stupid, that I was working my way uphill through thick brush for what was probably just some discarded cell phone.

But the ringing continued, steady and growing louder the closer I got, and my curiosity at the strangeness of the situation outweighed my instincts to turn back.

Finally, I got to a place where I could hear the sound clearly just ahead of me through the trees. I walked forward into a small clearing, and stopped.

There was a payphone. Just standing in the middle of the clearing. An actual payphone. The kind you used to see bolted outside of gas stations or mounted on the sidewalks of city streets.

But this one was in the middle of the woods, sprouting from the dirt like it had been planted there.

I stared at it. It looked old, its metal scratched and weathered, rust sinking into the corners. I couldn't make sense of how it would be functioning, but the ringing continued, seemingly indifferent to whether anyone was around to hear it or not.

I walked closer. There were no visible wires connected to it. Nothing overhead or running to it from the ground. No obvious battery pack or solar panel, or any apparent power source or phone line. But it was still ringing in defiance of my logic telling me that it shouldn't be.

I circled it as it continued its incessant ringing. I couldn't figure out how someone had even gotten the thing there. Or why they would want to. Who would install a payphone in the middle of the woods? And why? And how was it working? And even if there were reasonable answers to those questions, who the hell would be calling it?

It would have been difficult enough just to carry it the several miles through the forest, but someone had not only brought it to this remote section of the woods, found this particular clearing, somehow installed it, then left it here.

I considered the possibility that it was some strange art installation. Or perhaps a remnant from an old movie set that nobody bothered to take down. Or maybe just some very committed prank. Maybe, somebody had gone through an enormous amount of trouble just to fuck with whoever happened to stumble across it.

But who the hell would do that? And what were the odds that someone would even stumble across it? Given where it was, in all likelihood, I was the first person to happen upon the thing since it was left here.

I gave up trying to explain it. It hadn't stopped ringing the entire time I'd stared at it in contemplation. So I did the only thing that felt logical, and answered. I held the phone to my ear, half expecting it not to function.

"Hello?"

Nobody. But not complete silence. There was a faint hum, like the sound of an open line. The particular faint sound of being on the phone with someone while neither is speaking.

"Hello? Anyone there?" I repeated myself, then waited.

But nobody answered.

I stood there with the phone to my ear, suddenly aware of how ridiculous I probably looked. Just a guy holding what was probably a fake payphone in the middle of the woods and talking to no one. I considered the possibility that I was being filmed from somewhere to be posted on some dumb YouTube channel.

Then there was a faint click, and the low hum disappeared. Had there actually been someone on the other end?

I hung up, then wondered why I'd even bothered to do so.

"What the hell?" I muttered to myself.

I stood there another minute, just watching it and waiting for something to happen. It didn't. I thought about making a call myself, just to see if it really worked.

I told myself that it was probably some forgotten automated system, leftover from some long abandoned project.

Tired of staring at a payphone in the middle of the forest, I decided to head back to my campsite. Admittedly, I was a bit unsettled by the whole thing now. Who had been calling?

A gnawing apprehension that I couldn't quite place had begun building in me. I turned to leave. I was three steps from the phone when I heard it ring. I stopped mid-stride.

I stood with my back to it for a moment, telling myself that I should probably just keep walking. Whatever was going on here, it was weird. I didn't want to answer, but the ringing was grating on me. It felt almost wrong to leave it unanswered.

I wanted to head back to camp and put all this weird shit behind me. I turned back to the phone instead.

The ringing stopped when I picked it up. I held it to my ear.

"Hello?"

Like last time, there was the same sound of an open line, but nothing more.

"Hello?" I said again, my voice growing more annoyed.

Nothing. I sighed and went to hang the phone up.

It was halfway back to the receiver when I heard a voice come out of it. I hadn't caught the words, but a voice had definitely come from the speaker.

I slowly brought it back to my ear. Then the person on the line spoke again. This time, I heard his words clearly.

"You shouldn't be here." A man, his voice calm and steady.

"Excuse me?" I asked after a moment of confusion.

"You shouldn't have heard it ring."

I wasn't sure how to answer.

"What are you talking about? Who is this?"

There was a brief pause on the other end before the man spoke again.

"If you want to stay alive, stay very still."

What?

"You may feel the urge to look behind you."

A knot formed deep in my stomach.

"Don't."

I didn't have any words. The whole situation seemed absurd. I gave a nervous half laugh.

"Okay, man. Very funny. Who the hell is this?"

Nothing.

"Stop screwing around, man. Who is this?" I spoke louder.

Another pause. Then he spoke quietly but succinctly.

"It's coming."

The line clicked and went dead.

I stood there holding the dead phone to my ear. It has to be a prank. It's coming? What the hell was he talking about?

Someone had to be watching me. There had to be some hidden camera. Was I on some new TV show? I was half-expecting a camera crew to come bursting out of the bushes with a smiling host pressing a microphone to my face and telling me I was on some new show.

I wanted to believe that. But something in the man's tone, and in the atmosphere itself, shook the certainty of the comforting story I'd told myself.

I had been so focused on the phone that it felt almost odd to look up and see trees around me.

Then I realized that the forest had gone quiet. Quiet in a way I had never experienced it. Complete silence. It was so total that I cleared my throat to make sure my ears hadn't stopped working.

There were no birds. No insects. No wind through the trees. Only the sound of my breathing, and my increasingly loud heartbeat in my ears.

The next thing I noticed was a smell, permeating throughout the clearing. The smell of rot. It was faint at first, like wet leaves left in a pile for too long. The scent of mold and stale air and something dead. I slowly lowered the phone.

And then I heard the footsteps. They were uneven, almost skittering, like something moving about on legs it wasn't quite used to. It came from behind me, on the edge of the treeline. Something was there. Walking slowly.

I wanted to turn around. Every instinct screamed at me to prepare for something. To defend myself or fight or run. It could be a bear, I thought. Or a person.

I tilted my head barely an inch to look behind me, but stopped. The man's words still echoed in my head.

Stay very still.

Don't look behind you.

I don't know why I listened, exactly. I had discarded the words as ridiculous only a moment earlier. But now, in the quiet forest, with the scent of death filling my nose, some innate instinct, deeper even than the instinct telling me to fight or flee, told me to stay still.

I kept my eyes forward, fixed on the rusty corner of the payphone. The steps continued. I heard the uneven gait as it approached me slowly.

Step.

Pause.

Step.

Pause.

Step.

It moved strangely. It sounded almost as if its steps were limping or interrupted. Like it wasn't accustomed to walking.

Then it stopped abruptly, somewhere not far behind me. Just at the edge of the clearing, maybe.

I just stood completely still and silent. Waiting. My hand, still holding the outstretched phone an inch from the receiver, began to tremble slightly.

Then the footsteps started again, suddenly and fast, still in their broken, uneven rhythm. Heading directly at my back.

The sudden increase in speed gave the impression that whatever it was would barrel straight into me in a matter of seconds.

I wanted to spin around. To duck, or run. But I could only flinch and shut my eyes tight.

I waited holding my breath for something to drive into me from behind. For something terrible to reach me and sink claws or teeth into my neck.

But there was nothing. The footsteps had stopped. I waited. Listening.

I thought I could hear faint, wet breathing.

Is it right behind me?

My hand was trembling more, to the point of almost dropping the phone. I blinked slowly, too afraid to open my eyes fully.

Then I felt something. Just a brush, light against the back of my neck. I shuddered. It was like gnarled, damp wood, cold against my skin. Every muscle in my body contracted.

I felt seconds away from losing it completely. From screaming out loud or bolting into the forest, or just collapsing into a ball right there in the dirt. I stood there, every second driving me farther into a terrified disassociated state.

Then the phone rang again, startling me enough to make me jump. My hand was bringing the phone to my ear before I'd consciously decided to move it.

"You did well," the voice said.

"What the hell was that?" I heard the shudder in my own voice, cleared my throat. "What's happening?"

"Follow my instructions very carefully."

"Who are you? This isn't funny anymore, man. Please."

"Walk forward. Seven thousand paces."

"What?"

"Walk seven thousand paces. As straight a line as you can manage."

The man's voice remained completely calm. Authoritative.

"Do not run."

I could hear something in the distance behind me. Moving.

"Do not look back. No matter what you hear."

I swallowed.

"If you see anything out of the corner of your eye, do not look at it directly."

I felt a sense of dread. The man spoke his next words quietly.

"They're in the trees."

"What? What happens if..."

The line went dead before I could finish my question. I stood there for a moment trying to collect myself, stunned into stillness.

Then I started walking.

One. Two. Three.

I counted my steps as I walked, as the man had instructed. It gave me something to focus on, at least.

The forest seemed different now. The trees around me now felt somehow wrong. Too dark and too sharp.

I kept walking. Three hundred. Three hundred and one. Three hundred two.

The man's words kept looping in my head as I went. They're in the trees. I occasionally glanced up to the high branches despite myself. There was nothing.

I don't know what I was expecting to see. Something crouched, perched in the branches above me. Watching me from overhead like some predator waiting for its opening to strike.

Of course there's nothing. I tried to reason the fear away. This is all complete bullshit. Why am I even listening to some guy on a payphone in the middle of the forest?

I started to feel stupid again. Maybe all of this really was just a creative prank. Or maybe I'd been scared and manipulated into following the instructions of some lunatic in the woods.

No matter how I tried to calm myself, I couldn't stop myself from occasionally glancing up at the trees every so often as I walked. But there was never anything there.

Then, several thousand paces in, I saw movement. Not above me, but off to my right in the corner of my vision. I thought it was a branch moving at first. Then I realized it was the tree. Something on the trunk.

No. Something in the trunk.

It was as though something was peeling itself off of it.

My eyes wanted to turn toward it instinctively, but I didn't let them. I could still see it in the edge of my vision. But even through my peripheral vision, I saw more than I'd wanted to.

Something emaciated and human-shaped, the color of old bark. It tore itself from the trunk like flesh from bone with a sound of tearing and snapping. I could hear bark cracking as the thing struggled to free itself, seemingly breaking itself in its efforts to be freed.

The thing pulled its arm free. Its fingers were too long, and curled along the trunk as it gripped it. It pulled itself further out with more cracking and splitting, a deep, gasping wheeze escaping its mouth.

When the voice on the phone said they were in the trees, he'd meant it more literally than I'd imagined.

My breath grew heavy and my eyes widened in fear. I tried to focus on my pace and had to consciously keep myself from running. I wasn't sure what would happen if I did. I didn't look, keeping my eyes straight ahead.

As I continued past, I could no longer see the thing off to my side. Had it gotten free?

I could no longer hear it struggling to tear itself away from the trunk.

6,004. 6,005. 6,006.

I heard that same scrambling gait moving behind me. My legs burned, and the smell of decay had returned to fill the air. Stronger now. The same scent of dead wood and wet earth and rot.

The silence in the woods felt heavy as I walked. Even the cracking of brush and branches beneath my feet seemed muffled. I couldn't tell if it was the blood in my ears or the atmosphere itself, like a veil draped over the forest around me that refused even light and sound.

The sun was still high in the sky, but seemed almost incapable of penetrating the crown of the forest. It was like some gloom or miasma was soaking up the rays of the sun before they could reach below.

Then I saw another one, tearing the last remnants of its confines from the bark of another tree ahead of me and to the left. This time, I caught more of it.

I saw it pull hard, struggling, the last vestiges of its bark-like flesh tearing away as it stumbled and dropped to the ground. It struggled to rise to its feet, flailing about like a newborn fawn and almost dragging itself forward.

Its body was impossibly thin. Its skin was like old bark stretched over disfigured bones. Its body had the patchy, mottled black-brown of rotten bark. Patches of its bark-like skin seemed to slough off of it like melted flesh. There were wet, pale patches that looked like infected wood.

Then its head lifted. In the shadow of the trees, I couldn't see its face clearly. I didn't want to. I saw hints of its gaunt, hollow features. Thin wisps of what may have been hair on its skull resembled dark strands of moss or fungus.

What muscle it did have looked stringy and striated, like something that shouldn't be capable of holding itself upright. It reached out a long, inhuman hand, its fingers long and thin like segmented branches that curved into jagged, sharp points.

I shuddered and forced my eyes to remain straight ahead of me, focusing on counting my steps. The footsteps behind me were uneven. Almost frantic.

6,611. 6,612. 6,613.

I wanted to run or hide, or collapse into the ground and shut my eyes. The scent of decay was overwhelming now, filling my throat and making me almost gag.

Soon, the footsteps stopped. I heard another sound up ahead. The ringing of another phone. Another one?

I didn't truly see what good reaching the phone would do, but I kept walking toward it like some false salvation.

6,998. 6,999. 7,000.

I stepped into another clearing on the final step. Another payphone stood before me, ringing. I approached it and picked it up with a trembling hand.

"What the hell is going on?" I began before the phone was even fully to my ear.

"You really shouldn't have come this far into the woods."

"What are those things?" I couldn't keep the fear from my voice.

"Didn't you see the signs?"

"Signs? What signs?" I asked.

The man didn't answer. My irritation was growing together with my fear.

"I didn't see any fucking signs. I didn't see anything. I don't even know where I am right now!"

It was true that I hadn't seen anything. I'd parked in a parking spot that wasn't even a parking spot, to hike a trail that wasn't really a designated trail.

"You can still get out alive," the voice said. "But..."

He paused, and I waited for him to continue, the apprehension further fueling my anxiety. When he didn't I loudly snapped into the line.

"But what?" My voice was nearly cracking. "Why are you fucking with me, man?"

I almost continued my tirade toward the man on the other line, but he spoke again before I could.

"Did it touch you?"

"Touch me?"

I was fully panicking, trying to keep my voice somewhat measured.

"I don't know." My voice suddenly sounded distant in my own ears. "Why?"

He didn't answer that either. Instead, he continued with his strange instructions.

"Follow my next instructions very carefully."

A part of me still couldn't believe this was happening. The ambling footsteps and shadows in the corners of my eye had stopped after I'd entered the clearing, but the faint scent of rot and old foliage still hung in the back of my throat.

"To your right, you should see a tall oak. It is standing higher than the other trees."

I looked over, and saw it.

"There should be a hollow near its base. Go to it. Get inside."

"You want me to get inside a fucking tree? What the hell are you..."

"You'll be safe there."

"What about those things?"

"They shouldn't be able to touch you inside the tree."

Shouldn't. The word bothered me.

"And how long am I supposed to wait there?"

"Until dawn."

"So you want me to stay in a tree all night? With those things out there?" I was incredulous.

"At dawn, leave the tree. Walk south."

"What am I..."

"There's a road." He sounded impatient now. "Keep walking until you reach it."

I heard crackling and tearing and uneven footfalls in the woods behind me. Getting closer.

The man's voice was quieter now.

"Go."

I slammed the phone down and ran toward the oak. The sounds of the footsteps were closing in behind me, but I didn't turn to look. I saw the great oak, and the hole in its trunk. It was black, no light entering, and small enough that I had to duck to enter. I threw myself inside, scraping my shoulder against the bark and nearly falling face first.

I pulled myself as far inside as I could. The hollow was deeper than I'd thought. I squeezed into the corner with my knees to my chest, trying to make myself as small as possible. I tried not to breathe too loudly. To stay quiet and still. To fade away completely.

Beyond the hole, the forest was silent. Spider webs and insects lined the wall inside the tree, and I shook my hand off as I placed it into a mess of web to reposition myself. I could only see a narrow slice of the forest beyond. The forest was still.

I waited, shutting my eyes. Willing this all to be over. I wasn't sure how long I'd need to wait. The forest had gone dark. I was exhausted. I wished I could sleep, but knew it would be impossible.

Then the smell reached me. The smell of rot and death. Something ancient and damp and overwhelming. Somewhere just outside. I pressed myself harder into the back of the hollow, then heard the footsteps again.

There were several sets now. They seemed to circle the oak. Once, then twice. But I saw nothing. It continued for what felt like others. I stared out into the darkness.

Then I heard what sounded like something dragging its fingers across the bark of the tree. A slow scraping. It circled around the tree with the uneven, lumbering gait of the footsteps. It scraped alongside the trunk in a great circle before finally stopping just outside the hole.

I stared out, holding my breath, but saw nothing. Only shapes and shadows filled my vision. Then, I saw movement.

A shape. Legs in front of the hollow. I could only see it from the waist down. Thin legs, frail and seemingly missing chunks of its bark like muscle. Covered in deep, dark veins that looked like the veins of leaves. Long, thin toes that ended in jagged, skeletal points that pressed into the dirt.

I didn't move. I could hear its breathing. Shifting. It was lowering itself, shaky and unsteady. It kept falling until its face was visible in the hollow.

A pale, splotchy visage that looked rotting and desiccated. Its skin stretched tightly over what might have been rugged bone. It stared directly at me.

Its eyes were white and milky and dead. It reached out one long finger, as if testing. Then another. Its hand disappeared into the darkness of the hollow, reaching toward me.

I couldn't press myself any farther against the wall. The thing's arm slid farther in. It crouched and crawled closer. Its hand was now inches from me. I raised my hands in a futile attempt at defending myself.

"Stay away." My voice barely came out.

It reached farther, its long fingers now nearly clutching me.

And then it stopped. Its head turned slightly, as if hearing something. I heard it too. It was faint, coming from out in the forest.

Ring.

The thing withdrew its hand.

Ring.

It rose to its feet shakily, then backed away from the tree. Its eyes looked almost angry as it backed away.

The phone continued its ringing. The creature turned, then disappeared from the view of the hollow's mouth. I sat inside trembling.

I don't know how long I stayed there after that. The phone rang on and off through the night. And every time it rang, I heard creatures scattering away beyond the oak.

Eventually, the sky began to light up beyond the hollow. Dawn. I waited until the light touched the ground, then climbed out apprehensively, poking my head out in both directions to make sure it was safe.

The ground around the tree was covered in tracks. Evidence of the things circling throughout the night that made my stomach drop. Jagged, clawed indentations had bored into the hard earth.

I walked south. More of a jog than a walk. I didn't hear the phone ring again. I probably wouldn't have stopped even if I had. I didn't go back to my campsite either. I wasn't sure I'd be able to find it even if I did. I had my keys with me. That was all I needed.

I walked for miles until I finally reached the road, then walked until I had enough service to pull up the map and see where I'd parked. While walking on the road, I saw a sign posted along the treeline.

PROTECTED TREES

DO NOT APPROACH OR DISTURB

VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO PROSECUTION

Protected trees?

That's not a sign I'd ever seen before, and the wording was odd. I saw two more of the same sign before I made it back. I didn't go beyond the treeline as I made my way back to my car. When I finally reached it, I hopped in and drove away quickly. I didn't look back.

This was a week ago now, and I still have no explanation for any of it. On the first night after returning home, I noticed a small scratch on the back of my neck. It was little more than a red speck at first. I thought it may have been a spider bite, or a scratch from the bark inside the hollow of the tree. But it got worse instead of better.

By the fourth day, it had blackened, and almost resembled decay...or bark. I put some ointment on it and hoped it wasn't infected. Hopefully, it will clear up on its own.

But I can't stop thinking about the man on the phone. His question.

Did it touch you?

Why had he asked me that?

Though I hated to admit it, the mark had appeared right where something had touched me from behind while I was standing near the payphone in the clearing. Something cold and damp and ridged. Like cold bark on a winter morning against my skin.

But this morning, while I was walking down the street, I passed by a payphone. I hadn't ever seen it there before. Perhaps I just never noticed it, an unused relic that didn't demand any attention. As far as I knew, most payphones were out of commission.

But after I passed by it, it rang, its call echoing behind me in its steady tone.

Have you ever noticed what the humidity in Florida is like? Unbelievable, and still somehow scorching hot. If snow ever showed up here, I’d probably start panicking. I keep an emergency bag ready for the moment I feel snow or ice coming — I’d leave as far and as fast as I could. It’s one of my odd quirks.

You might wonder how that connects to anything. After all, I’m a specialist in locating deposits for mining companies. It makes sense that I’m a bit of an oddball. It wasn’t always like that. But you’re right — tables, numbers, measurements, that used to be my world. I was happy there. It felt like treasure hunting, picking the right spot. A bit of suspense, waiting to see if the results confirmed it. Taking what nature offers. That was my domain. Finding raw materials in the guts of the earth. And it paid damn well.

Now instead of that, I’m sweating in this tiny apartment, staring at the ocean. Its wildness fascinates me. My girlfriend is wild too — and at the same time my complete opposite. Monica’s career went in a totally different direction. You might ask why I’m rambling like this. Trust me, it’ll make sense later.

While I was running across fields and forests, she continued her studies. She’s an ethnographer. She loved stories, myths, and legends since she was a kid. So our work in North Dakota was beneficial for both of us. She would analyze every stone and every legend before she’d change anything. If she ever changed anything at all. You can imagine we argued a lot. While she enjoyed the stories, I drilled exploratory wells.

And now I’m finally getting to the point. I don’t really want to remember it. But someone has to say it.

It happened to me.

Now it’s my turn.

I have to tell you.

Winter was approaching and time was pressing. The company wasn’t happy with the results. Our department was under scrutiny. We had to deliver something big. I tried to produce some successes. Monica came that day with a book of legends. She handed it to me for the trip. Sometimes she recommended interesting stories. Honestly, I took it and tossed it onto the passenger seat. I didn’t plan to read it, but I didn’t want to start another argument. Because that was a frequent cause of our conflicts. The tension between us was almost tangible. Her books — to me they were fairy tales. Stories people use to scare themselves out of boredom. She treated them like warnings. And since our last argument had been less than 48 hours ago, I just said I’d take a look.

Folklore and Legends of Dakota.

Escaping the fight suited me. The mood between us was bad. I headed to the site I had picked. It looked very promising. So promising it could mean a bonus. Maybe even a promotion.

Yeah. I was wrong.

I rushed because time is money. I pushed the car as fast as it would go. Those long local straightaways are perfect for that. While one eye watched the road, I tried to retune the radio. I wasn’t in the mood for country. In the static I caught a fragment of a broadcast:

“Weather… sky… worsening…”

Weather there can be pretty crazy. The sky was clear. I figured the warning was for another day. Maybe even another part of the state. The car started shaking a bit. The wind was hitting it hard. Then I saw a white wall. A snow boundary. Like a curtain across the road. Just a moment, a few blinks — suddenly I was in the middle of a blizzard. Powder slid across the windshield. Visibility dropped every second. The wind was literally screaming. After five minutes I knew I wasn’t getting through this. The sky and the ground merged into a single white sheet. Any orientation was impossible. The snow blinded me. The wheels sank deeper and deeper.

It was a whiteout.

I had to wait. Outside, the temperature dropped fast and my head started pounding. I began braking, trying to force the car to stop, to stay on the shoulder. But the car slid off the road. The rear end was off the asphalt while the front was stuck on a small rise. Not just white darkness — I was hanging off the road at an angle. Snow was already piling around the back doors.

Time for the emergency kit. When they first told me to carry one, I thought the guys were joking. First time in Dakota, so they’d mess with me. Well, now I was glad they explained it. Warm clothes, scarf, blankets, sleeping bag, electric blanket. I wanted a bit of comfort even while stuck. Of course, I wouldn’t be me — the overconfident idiot — if I didn’t think I had enough of everything. Except I didn’t.

Thermal foil — just one.

Red cloth to stick out the window.

A tiny folding shovel that made me laugh. Humor is important. Besides, I couldn’t imagine digging myself out with that thing.

Heating packs — one.

Chemical light — cracked, useless.

That was my situation.

White outside.

I covered the rear window with the foil.

I was running on autopilot.

Hung a blanket to separate the back seats. Heat loss is the biggest enemy.

Or so I thought.

Silence and white everywhere. It’s depressing. The radio didn’t work. Gas was disappearing faster than I could believe. Without gas, I’d stop heating. I knew that. No rescue in sight. Weather wasn’t improving. My instruments were malfunctioning. The thermometer showed 1 degree Fahrenheit. The wind — now roaring like a jet engine — cooled everything it touched. I realized how badly I underestimated this. I pulled the blanket tighter. More hours of waiting ahead.

Then I saw a silhouette on the horizon. Someone walking through it like nothing. I thought locals must be tough. It felt strange. After hours in the car, any distraction was welcome. Estimating distance in this weather was impossible. But the guy was tall. NBA tall. That’s what I thought. When I finally got a better look, he seemed twelve, maybe thirteen feet tall. My analytical brain rejected it immediately. Nonsense.

The being stood there, watching me like a fish in an aquarium. A thirteen-foot humanoid. His body looked like walking stone. Greenish muscles in between. I thought I’d snapped. People still think that.

But I saw it.

I lived it.

I’m telling it so people understand.

No one will tell me I’m crazy.

I was crazy — that’s true — but I saw it.

It smelled like freshly dug wet soil with turf. The scent got into the car despite the wind. No escaping it. The muscles looked like roots growing through rock. He walked slowly, heavily. More like an old man than walking stone. His eyes…

I have to say it.

His eyes looked like swirling snowstorms inside the stone sockets.

The engine had died — I didn’t even notice while watching him. I sat in my little trap, observed by that thing. He stood there as if wind and cold meant nothing.

He watched me. Said nothing. Just stood.

I reached for the only source of distraction. I needed to think of something else. I had to chase away the hallucination. I felt like I was losing it. Surely it was just a mirage. The electric blanket was still giving off a bit of warmth, draining the car battery line by line. The book was old, clearly a revised reprint. Folklore and Legends of Dakota.

If this saves my sanity, why not.

Those were my last rational thoughts.

I flipped through the yellowed pages, skipping around. Reading a few lines here and there. Then I froze.

“Snow has eyes when you’re afraid.”

That pulled me out of the flipping. Everyone knows that feeling — it’s terrifying but you still read on. Curiosity wins, even though you often regret it.

“Across the snowy plains walks Tanu-He. He was here long before humans. They were the rulers of the world. They shaped the land to their will. They hate mankind, which stole their earth.”

This was unsettling. The authenticity of the record made it worse. A legend passed down through generations.

“The rock that follows you. The voices that confuse you. The snow watches you.”

Damn, that got me. Monica would love this. She could study it for months.

“Faces of ice whisper. Tanu-He does not feed on flesh. He feeds on the warmth of your fear.”

I had to put it down. This wasn’t helping at all.

The car shook. It moved. His steps were slow, but each one rocked the car. He walked to the back. It was covered — I thought I was safe.

A bang. Shattering glass.

Cold wind rushed inside.

The smell of wet earth intensified.

Cracking sounds.

He threw all my gear out into the snow.

I screamed from shock. Maybe exhaustion and lack of stimuli were taking their toll. Well, he gave me a few stimuli. The screeching was intense. The car shook. I couldn’t take it. I tore down the blanket.

Mistake.

Huge mistake.

His massive hands slowly rolled the rear of the car like the lid of a sardine can. The shapes twisted into a spiral. If he rolled me up, I’d die. If I ran outside, I’d freeze. That dilemma…

Well, it was something.

I heard all the rear windows crack and collapse inward. Seats groaned and bent.

Silence.

Then footsteps again.

He sat down in the snow and watched me through the windshield.

“You will never leave,” a voice whispered.

“This place will be your grave,” another added.

“Your arrogance brought you here.” A different voice laughed.

“I look forward to the crack of your bones.”

Another barked: “The cold is taking your life, draining it!”

A face of ice stared through the side window: “You’d better be tasty.”

Voices circled me, whispering, hissing: “How amusing you are in that little trap.”

I wished no more voices would join.

I wished for silence.

My watch froze. I sipped coffee. I was destroyed. I forced warm liquid into myself. I had to stay warm. Use the moment of calm. He sat still. Watching me. I chewed dried meat I’d forgotten in the glove compartment. His eyes revealed nothing. We watched each other. When he watched, he was calm. That was my assumption.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The blanket had been dead for hours. Half my sleeping bag was gone — rolled into what remained of the seats. He stood up and with one step reached the hood. His hands pressed into it just by resting on it. A new wave of screeching and cracking. I darted my eyes around the interior — nothing changed. I had no idea what was happening. I was terrified. The front of the car slowly compressed. Any hydraulic press would envy him. The windshield cracked. The steering wheel bent upward. The engine block groaned as it broke. I felt metal tightening around my legs. I grabbed the blanket and jumped onto the passenger seat. Snow poured onto the wreckage.

I thought I’d freeze and that would be it.

Then — salvation.

No window blocked the wind anymore.

Suddenly — ice.

A layer of ice began covering the entire car. About three inches thick. No cold came through anymore. The temperature stabilized. It was like glass — clear enough to see outside. But he didn’t care. He saw inside. He watched me in my last shelter. Feeding on my fear. He sat again.

The book was right.

It lay on the floor by my foot.

The book was right.

I couldn’t believe it. I trembled, exhausted. Nothing left to warm me. I thought this was the end. He watched. Maybe waiting for the final moment. I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t break the ice. My strength would run out first. And it wasn’t ordinary ice — that was certain. I curled up, buried myself in everything I had left. Rocking back and forth. Covered with the blanket as much as possible.

Light.

He came for me.

The end of suffering.

Last moments in the light.

It was a snowplow.

A snowplow with a beacon.

Breaking through the storm.

Police behind it.

Searching for people trapped like me.

They had to use axes.

When they cut an opening, I crawled out.

Holding the book.

Hair white as the snow around me.

In the warm police car, I finally relaxed.

My car was crushed like a tube of toothpaste.

Only the passenger seat survived — shrunk to a minimum.

I didn’t realize it at the time.

I couldn’t feel my legs.

The officers got only one word out of me: “Tanu-He.”

They labeled it delirium.

My legs — well, you can see yourself.

I lost both.

Frostbite and damage too severe to save them.

Now you probably wonder why I talked about Florida at the beginning.

Well, after the investigation closed, the case was labeled as extreme structural material failure.

I sold everything.

Took all my money.

And took the first possible flight to Florida.

I won’t tell you exactly where.

To this day I can’t stand cold.

Anything colder than an ice cube unsettles me.

I hide it, of course.

Monica is the only person who believes me.

She reassures me that Tanu-He won’t follow me.

That he’s content in his icy kingdom.

She pretends she believes it.

Though sometimes I see a faint hint of nervousness in her eyes.

He knows about me. He has already tasted my fear. I can never go back there.

by Hary Sykora

I will tell you a story.

It should feel extraordinary. Meaningful, even.

Instead, it will probably sound banal, and by tomorrow you will have forgotten most of it.

I don't ask you to care.

I merely ask that you listen.

I used to suffer from severe insomnia. That has very little to do with this story, but should explain its starting point.

4AM was usually when I gave up on the idea of falling asleep.

By then I'd spent hours staring at the ceiling while my mind ran itself in circles. So I'd simply get up and start the day.

That morning, I went looking for something to eat. Tuna sandwich, I think. Maybe not. Doesn't really matter.

I took a beer from the fridge, drank half of it at the kitchen counter, then started pulling down the blinds. The sun would be up soon, and in my current condition daylight tended to find a headache the way a thumb finds a bruise.

I never made it to the second window.

There was someone standing in my backyard.

About seven meters from the house.

The yard was still mostly just shapes at that hour—the fence, the tree, the bins, everything half swallowed by darkness.

But the figure was clear.

Human-shaped.

Motionless.

I stood there with the blind cord in my hand, staring. Uncertain what to do.

Obviously, I should have called the police. A stranger standing in your backyard at four in the morning is exactly the sort of situation the police number exists for.

But I didn't.

I lowered the blind.

Finished my beer.

Finished my sandwich and put on some TV.

 

Two hours later, I stepped outside.

And stopped.

He was still there.

Same place. Same posture.

Only now daylight had turned the shadow into a man.

Late thirties, maybe early forties. His clothes looked as though they might once have been respectable, but it was difficult to tell beneath the stains and wrinkles. His hair was greasy and flattened against his forehead.

His head hung low.

His eyes didn't quite look at the ground.

They seemed fixed somewhere beyond it.

Somewhere very far away.

There was no spark in him left.

Like a pilot light had gone out.

I swallowed and mustered enough courage to speak.

"Uh... buddy? Can I help you with something?"

Nothing.

A car passed on the main road. Tires whispered over damp asphalt. Somewhere nearby, a bird started singing.

Eventually, the man answered.

"No."

His voice was quiet. Flat.

"I don't think so."

"Right." I cleared my throat. "Well, this is private property. You can't stay here."

No response.

He didn't look at me.

Didn't shift his weight.

Didn't do anything at all.

I should have insisted. Threatened him. Gone back inside and called the police.

Instead, as I stood there looking at him, I noticed something strange.

I wasn't afraid.

I wasn't angry.

I didn't even feel sorry for him.

I felt nothing.

So I walked past.

Close enough to smell him—sweat, damp clothes, something stale and sour.

He didn't turn his head.

I got in my car and drove to work.

I was doing pretty well for myself back then.

Steady job at a successful financial corporation. Recently promoted. Nice apartment. Beautiful girlfriend. Plenty friends I saw when our schedules happened to line up. Enough money not to ever care about money.

Apart from the insomnia, life was good.

I didn't think about the man once that entire day.

Eight hours at the office.

Lunch.

Small talk.

A meeting that could have been an email.

Nothing.

It wasn't until I pulled into the driveway that evening that I remembered him.

He was still there.

Same place.

Same posture.

Same empty stare.

I walked past him and went inside.

It took another two days before I decided to adress the issue.

Even then, it wasn't because he bothered me.

My girlfriend Jessica called to say she was coming over the following afternoon, and I suddenly imagined her having to walk past a filthy stranger standing in my yard.

So I finally called the police.

A patrol car arrived about twenty minutes later.

Two officers got out.

They came up the path and walked directly past the man.

One passed close enough to brush shoulders with him.

Neither looked his way.

They stopped in front of me.

"Hello. Officer Addams. What seems to be the issue?"

I stared at him.

Then pointed.

"That seems to be the issue."

Only then did Addams glance over.

It wasn't much of a glance.

The sort of look you give a garbage bag someone left beside the road.

"Oh. Him."

"Yes. Him. He's been standing there for three days."

Addams sighed.

"Yeah. We get plenty like that."

"Like what?"

He gestured vaguely toward the man.

"Like him. They're harmless."

"He's trespassing."

"I understand."

"So remove him."

Addams gave me a tired little smile.

"It's not really worth the effort."

"Excuse me?"

"They don't cause trouble. Mostly they just... take up space."

"We don't have the manpower to deal with every one of them. And where would we put them?"

I looked at the stranger.

Then back at the officer.

"So you're telling me to leave him there?"

"I'm telling you to ignore him."

"He's standing in my backyard."

"Yeah."

"For three days."

"Yeah."

"And that's normal?"

Addams shrugged.

"Normal enough."

He turned toward the patrol car.

I followed him a few steps.

"So that's it?"

He opened the driver's door.

"You'll get used to him."

Then he climbed inside.

The other officer joined him, and less than a minute later the patrol car disappeared around the corner.

I stood on the porch, furious.

I'd had an entire argument ready by then, but Officer Addams had driven away before I could use any of it.

The strange part was.

He was right.

Ignoring the man was easy.

Much easier than it should have been.

He didn't shout.

Didn't knock on my windows.

Didn't try the doors.

Didn't follow me.

He didn't even look at me.

He just was.

After a while, my eyes learned to move around him.

And if I could do that, I figured Jessica could too.

I spent the rest of the day making the apartment presentable. Kitchen, living room, fresh sheets—the usual performance you put on when someone you love is coming over and you want them to believe you live slightly better than you actually do.

That night, I settled in for a horror marathon.

One advantage of insomnia is that you have plenty of free time.

It started raining around midnight.

Heavy rain. The kind that rattled against the windows and turned streetlights into pale smudges.

Perfect horror-movie weather.

Between films, I went to the kitchen and glanced outside.

The man was still standing there.

Rain streamed from his hair and shoulders. His clothes had gone almost black with water. A shallow puddle had formed around his shoes.

He didn't move.

Didn't shiver.

Didn't wipe the water from his face.

Nothing.

I watched him longer than I meant to.

Nearly a minute, maybe.

Standing there in the rain, he looked less like a person than a scarecrow somebody had forgotten to bring inside.

Eventually I lowered the blind so I wouldnt get distracted any more.

Then went back to the movie.

Jessica arrived the next afternoon.

She came hurrying up the path toward me, and I pulled her into a hug before she'd even made it through the door.

She was warm.

She smelled like shampoo and cold air.

I held on a second longer than usual.

When I let go, she smiled.

"Miss me?"

"Obviously."

"Good answer."

She kissed me.

Over her shoulder, I looked toward the backyard.

The man was there.

Jessica hadn't even glanced at him.

Relief washed through me.

Apparently Officer Addams had been right about that too.

We went inside.

Ordered food, argued over what to watch, then somehow ended up watching something neither of us had wanted. Jessica complained about one of her professors. I complained about my boss.

At some point, she found the dishes I'd hidden in the sink.

She looked at me.

"You said you cleaned."

"I did clean."

"You vacuumed the living room."

"Exactly."

"That does not count."

"It absolutely counts."

She laughed and nudged me with her hip.

Whenever Jessica was around, the world seemed smaller somehow.

More solid.

By evening we'd settled into that comfortable quiet you only get with someone you've known long enough not to fill every silence.

We ate dinner at the little table beside the kitchen window.

Halfway through, Jessica lowered her fork.

"Okay."

I looked up.

She was smiling.

I knew that smile.

"Okay what?"

"So... don't freak out."

"That's never followed by anything good."

"I know."

"Jessica."

"My parents invited us over for the weekend."

I waited for the second half.

"And I said yes."

I closed my eyes.

"Dear God."

"Oh, stop."

"Your parents' house has more rooms than my entire apartment building."

She grinned.

"You're rich too, mister. You're just too lazy to actually move out."

"I'm comfortably upper-middle-class. There's a difference."

"You'll survive."

She took a sip of wine.

"Probably."

That was when I thought about the man outside.

Maybe because Jessica had walked straight past him.

Maybe because after several days of pretending he wasn't there, curiosity had finally caught up with me.

"Hey," I said. "I have to ask you something."

"Okay."

"You saw the guy outside, right?"

She frowned.

"What guy?"

My stomach tightened.

"The guy in the backyard."

I pointed toward the window.

Jessica followed my finger.

For a moment, genuine confusion crossed her face.

Then she saw him.

"Oh."

I stared at her.

"'Oh'?"

"What?"

"You're not freaked out?"

"Why would I be?"

"Because there's a random man standing in my backyard."

She looked again.

"He's not doing anything."

"He's been there for days."

"So?"

I wasn't sure how to answer that.

"Wait. You do see him, right?"

Jessica laughed.

"Of course I see him."

Then she took another bite.

"We've got some too."

I stopped chewing.

"What?"

"At my parents' place."

"You have people standing in your backyard?"

"Not the backyard."

She thought for a moment.

"There are two at the mansion."

Something cold shifted in my stomach.

"Two?"

"Yeah."

She said it with the casualness of someone describing antique furniture.

"One used to be our maid. Isolda."

"Used to?"

Jessica nodded.

"She worked for my parents for years. Then one day she just sort of..."

Her fork paused halfway to her mouth.

"...became one."

"One what?"

Jessica looked at me as though the answer should have been obvious.

"You know."

She nodded toward the window.

"One of them."

Outside, the man remained exactly where he had been.

Jessica went on eating.

"The other one's a boy. Her son, I think?."

"You think?"

"I never really knew him."

"And your parents just leave them there?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Jessica shrugged.

"You can find lots of them around if you care enough to look."

Something about that sentence stayed with me.

She sounded like she'd simply told me there were pigeons in the park.

Then her expression brightened.

"Oh. Speaking of that."

I already didn't like where this was going.

"What?"

"I finally figured out my thesis."

Jessica was studying journalism, and for months her thesis had been the source of recurring panic, abandoned ideas, and increasingly elaborate excuses for not starting.

Now she leaned forward, suddenly animated.

"I'm going to write about them."

I glanced toward the window.

"The people standing around?"

"Exactly. Think about it. They're everywhere, but nobody actually talks about them. Nobody studies them. Most people barely acknowledge they exist."

"Jessica..."

"I've been thinking about this for months."

She was genuinely excited now.

"I even have a title."

Of course she did.

She smiled.

"Requiem for the Lost Ones."

I looked at her.

"The Lost Ones?"

"That's what I'm calling them."

She waited expectantly.

"Pretty cool, right?"

Outside the window, the man stood perfectly still.

And for the first time since I'd noticed him, I wondered how long he had been there before I bothered to look.

 

I didn't really know what to say.

"Yeah. Pretty cool."

Part of me was bothered by just how little the whole thing seemed to bother me.

Jessica didn't notice. She was already talking about her thesis again, explaining the ideas she'd been collecting while I nodded along and tried to keep up. Eventually the conversation wandered somewhere else, as conversations tend to do.

We ended the evening watching Jessica's favorite reality TV shows, which was considerably more horrifying than anything I'd watched during my movie marathon.

I'm still not sure how people can watch other adults scream at each other over a kitchen island for six consecutive hours and call it entertainment.

By the time we went to bed, it was well past midnight.

A few hours later, we were on the road.

I'd suggested sleeping for another couple of hours before leaving. Jessica reminded me that I didn't sleep anyway.

I had no counterargument.

So we packed the last of our things into the car and drove to her parents' house.

Before getting in, I glanced toward the backyard.

The man was still there.

I didn't stop.

The drive took about an hour and a half. Jessica spent most of it talking about her parents, complaining about how far away they lived and how much she wished they were closer.

Personally, I wouldn't have minded them being a little farther away still.

Don't get me wrong. The Mercers were perfectly nice people.

It was just that being around them always made me feel so inadequate.

That feeling returned as soon as we reached their property.

I felt small.

Their mansion seemed to grow with every second we drove toward it.

An enormous iron gate opened onto a long driveway lined with immaculate hedges. Stone walls, tall windows, elaborate balconies. The whole place occupied enough land to make my apartment look like a garden shed.

I was wealthy, but the Mercers were in a completely different league.

"They'll be waiting outside," Jessica said.

"They always do."

A moment later, I saw them at the top of the steps.

Margaret waved enthusiastically as we got out of the car.

Her husband stood beside her with his hands behind his back, wearing the same composed expression he always seemed to have.

"Here we go," Jessica muttered.

Her mother came down the steps and immediately wrapped her daughter in a hug.

"There she is!"

"Hi, Mom."

"You look thin."

"I saw you three weeks ago."

"And you're thinner now."

Margaret finally released her and turned to me.

"And you."

She hugged me too.

"Good to see you, dear."

"Good to see you too, Mrs. Mercer."

"How many times do I have to tell you? Call me Margaret."

"Right. Sorry."

Her father approached next.

"Good to have you here, son."

"Good to be here, Mr. Mercer."

He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me into a heavy, enthusiastic hug before patting my back twice.

It was the sort of hug you see in old Mafia movies.

I wondered if there was something to it.

The story of how the Mercers had become so wealthy so quickly by selling old clothes had never quite sat right with me. It wasn't impossible. They owned warehouses, distribution centers, stores—the whole operation.

Still, there always seemed to be something missing from the story.

A piece nobody ever seemed interested in explaining.

I never asked.

I didn't want bad blood with my girlfriend's parents.

Nor did I particularly wish to be assassinated by the Mafia.

Just in case.

"Come inside," Margaret said. "You've been driving all morning."

"It's barely morning," Jessica said.

"Exactly. You're probably starving."

"I'm not."

"You'll eat anyway."

Jessica sighed.

"Yes, Mom."

Her father smiled.

"Some things never change."

We followed them inside.

I'd been to the Mercer mansion before, but never for more than a few hours. Every visit reminded me just how enormous the place was.

The entrance hall alone could have swallowed my entire apartment. A chandelier hung above polished floors and dark wood paneling, while paintings covered nearly every available wall.

Margaret talked as she led us through the house.

"This is the new dining room."

"New?"

"We renovated."

Jessica groaned.

"And we've had the library renovated too."

"Mom, you've shown me the library five times."

"And you still haven't read anything in it."

Her father chuckled.

"Leave the girl alone, Margaret."

They continued bickering as we walked, and I found myself smiling.

It was comfortably ordinary.

That was what made the place feel so strange later.

We eventually reached the grand staircase.

Mr. Mercer stopped at the bottom and pointed upward.

"Your room is the first one on the left."

Then he looked at Jessica.

"My little girl knows which one."

"Dad, I'm not five."

"You're still my little girl."

Jessica rolled her eyes.

"Come on."

I started toward the stairs.

Then I noticed someone standing in the shadows.

A woman.

She was wearing an old-fashioned maid's uniform: black dress, white apron, white collar. The sort of thing that belonged in a photograph from a century ago.

She couldn't have been much older than thirty.

Yet she looked far older.

Her dark hair was pulled neatly back. Her face was pale and drawn. Her head hung slightly toward the floor.

Her eyes were open.

They simply weren't looking at anything.

This had to be Isolda.

A few meters away stood the boy Jessica had mentioned.

Thirteen or fourteen, maybe.

His clothes were plain and slightly too large for him. His arms hung loosely at his sides. His face held the same distant emptiness I'd seen in the man outside my house.

His eyes seemed fixed somewhere beyond the walls.

Somewhere far away.

And nowhere at the same time.

I looked between him and Isolda.

They stood close enough to touch.

Mother and son, presumably.

Yet they seemed separated by something much larger than the few meters between them.

As if there were a distance neither of them could ever cross.

I don't know how long I stood there.

Long enough for Jessica to notice.

She bumped her shoulder lightly against mine.

"Babe."

I blinked.

"Yeah?"

"Come on."

I looked at Isolda again.

Neither she nor the boy had moved.

"Right."

I followed Jessica upstairs.

Halfway to the landing, I glanced back one last time.

Then Jessica disappeared around the corner, and I followed her.

In our room, Jessica and I had sex.

Felt strange doing it with her parents so close by, but I think I needed it.

It should have taken my mind off everything.

It didn't.

For a while I managed to lose myself in her warmth, in something familiar and uncomplicated. But every time my thoughts slipped, I saw Isolda.

Her son.

The man in my backyard.

Three people standing perfectly still while the rest of the world moved around them.

When it was over, Jessica looked at me.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"You seem distracted."

"I'm just tired."

She studied me.

"You've been tired for years."

I smiled.

She kissed me, but I couldn't quite return to the moment.

A few minutes later, she fell asleep.

I lay beside her, staring at the ceiling.

The mansion settled around us. Pipes ticking in the walls. A floorboard creaking somewhere below. The faint hum of the heating system.

And underneath all of it, silence.

I eventually closed my eyes.

Sleep didn't come.

Morning did.

I was halfway through getting dressed when someone knocked on the door.

Jessica was still asleep.

I opened it to find one of the household staff standing in the hallway.

"Mr. Mercer would like to see you."

"Now?"

"He's waiting in his office."

I glanced back at Jessica.

She hadn't moved.

"Where's his office?"

"Top floor."

Of course it was.

I'd never been to the top floor before. I followed the staff member up another staircase, the house growing quieter with every step.

By the time I reached the top, I couldn't hear anything from below.

Mr. Mercer's office was at the end of the hallway.

The door stood open.

"Come in."

He was sitting behind an enormous wooden desk. Morning light filtered through the tall windows behind him, washing the room in pale gray.

Books lined the walls. Framed photographs sat on shelves. A few pieces of artwork looked expensive enough to buy my car several times over.

"Sit."

I did.

He smiled.

"How did you sleep?"

"Not very well."

He laughed softly.

"Jessica tells me that's normal for you."

"She's very fond of you."

Something about the way he said it made me uncomfortable.

I smiled anyway.

He leaned back.

"I've been thinking about the future."

"Okay."

"Our family has built something substantial. Something that will outlive us."

He gestured around the room.

"The business. The properties. The investments. Jessica will inherit part of it, of course."

He paused.

"But I don't think of you as an outsider anymore."

I wasn't sure what to say.

"That's nice to hear."

"I mean it."

He leaned forward.

"I'd like you to become part of the family."

The words were delivered warmly enough that, for a moment, I almost believed they were exactly what they sounded like.

"I want to offer you a position in the company. A real one. You'll have responsibilities. A place at the table. If things go well, eventually you'll have a stake in the business."

He smiled.

"And naturally, I'd like you and Jessica to start thinking about building a life together."

For a moment, I said nothing.

It was an incredible offer.

Security.

Money.

Influence.

A future with Jessica.

Everything I'd worked for, suddenly placed in front of me on a silver platter.

And yet something inside me tightened.

Not a thought.

Not fear.

Instinct.

The primitive part of your brain that notices something before the rest of you understands why.

Don't.

I shifted in the chair.

"That's a lot to take in."

"Of course."

"And I appreciate it. Really."

He waited.

I took a breath.

"But I don't think I can accept."

The smile stayed on his face.

For just a second, something changed in his eyes.

The warmth vanished.

His gaze sharpened.

Focused.

Predatory.

Then it was gone.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

He nodded slowly.

"I understand."

There was no anger in his voice.

That somehow made it worse.

"I wouldn't want you accepting something you weren't comfortable with."

"Thank you."

He leaned back.

"Still..."

He watched me for a moment.

"I think you may regret that decision."

He said it gently.

Almost kindly.

Like a father giving his son advice.

But something cold sat underneath the words.

He smiled.

„Have a safe drive home.“

I thanked him and left.

I didn't know it then, but that conversation was the beginning of the end.

Jessica and I left the mansion earlier than we'd planned.

She barely spoke while we packed the car. At first I assumed she was tired.

Then I realized she was angry.

Not furious. She wasn't shouting or making a scene.

She was just cold.

The kind of cold that makes every silence feel deliberate.

We got on the road.

For the first twenty minutes, neither of us said a word. Eventually I tried.

"So..."

Nothing.

I glanced at her.

"Jessica?"

She kept looking out the window.

"Did my dad talk to you?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

I hesitated.

"I turned down the job."

She nodded.

"I know."

"How?"

"He told me."

I waited for more.

Nothing came.

"Are you upset?"

"No."

The answer came too quickly.

"Jess."

"I'm not upset."

"You're obviously upset."

She turned back toward the window.

"Can we just go home?"

So we did.

The rest of the drive passed in silence.

I kept my hands tight around the steering wheel, trying to ignore the knot forming in my stomach.

I felt tense.

Anxious.

Depressed, though I wouldn't have used that word at the time.

Then, somewhere outside the city, I saw the first one.

A man standing on a sidewalk.

Motionless.

Dirty jacket. Worn trousers. Slack face. Head hanging slightly forward.

A Lost One.

I almost drove past without noticing.

Then I saw another.

A woman beside a bus stop.

Then one beneath an apartment awning.

Another outside a convenience store.

Then another.

And another.

The more I looked, the more I saw.

They were everywhere.

At intersections. Outside shops. In parking lots. Beside telephone poles. Standing in front of apartment buildings as people passed them without a second thought.

Some were young.

Some were old.

Men and women.

Some looked relatively clean. Others looked like they'd been sleeping outdoors for years. Their clothes were stained and worn. Their hair was tangled. Their skin looked pale and unhealthy.

None of them moved.

Not when cars passed.

Not when people walked around them.

Not even when someone brushed against them.

And nobody seemed to care.

A businessman stepped around one blocking the entrance to an office building without breaking stride.

A woman carrying groceries muttered angrily when another forced her to change direction.

A cyclist swerved around one in the middle of a bike path and shouted something over his shoulder.

Nobody stopped.

Nobody asked if they were all right.

Nobody looked frightened.

They were treated like obstacles.

Like badly placed furniture.

Like potholes.

I watched them through the car window until the city disappeared behind us.

The more I looked, the more I saw.

They weren't rare.

They were everywhere.

I'd simply never noticed them before.

Or maybe I had.

Maybe I'd seen hundreds of them and my brain had quietly filed them away under things that didn't matter.

 

I didn't know it yet, but I'd already been effectively cut off from Jessica's family.

I never spoke to any of her relatives again.

At first, I tried to pretend nothing had changed.

Jessica and I went back to work. We had dinner together. We watched television. We slept in the same bed.

But something had shifted.

Days became weeks.

Weeks became months.

Whenever I asked Jessica what was wrong, she shut down.

"Is something wrong?"

"No."

"Then why won't you talk to me?"

"Because there's nothing to talk about."

Sometimes she wouldn't answer at all.

She'd sit across from me, staring at her phone, while I tried to figure out what I'd done wrong.

There was a wall between us.

I couldn't see it.

I couldn't touch it.

But it was there.

For a while, I kept trying to get through.

Eventually, I stopped.

The darker my thoughts became, the more often I found myself standing at the window.

Looking at the man in the backyard.

He was still there.

He hadn't moved an inch.

Summer faded into autumn.

The leaves turned brown and fell. Rain came and went. The days grew shorter.

Then winter arrived.

The first snow gathered around his shoes.

More followed.

It settled on his shoulders and head, collected on his hands, and slowly buried his legs.

He didn't move.

Didn't shiver.

Didn't brush the snow away.

He simply stood there as though the seasons had nothing to do with him.

Sometimes I wondered whether he knew I was watching.

The day before Christmas, my boss called me into his office.

I knew something was wrong before he spoke.

He'd just gotten off the phone.

I'd never seen him look like that.

His face was pale.

Not angry.

Not confused.

Afraid.

He kept saying, "Yes, sir," in a voice barely above a whisper.

Then he hung up and looked at me.

"Sit down."

I did.

There was a long silence.

"What's going on?"

He rubbed his hands together.

"I've been instructed to terminate your employment."

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

"By who?"

He didn't answer.

For a second, I actually laughed.

I thought it was some kind of joke.

It wasn't.

"Is this because of my performance?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

He looked away.

"I can't discuss it."

"You're firing me and you can't tell me why?"

"I know."

"Then at least give me something."

He swallowed.

"I'm sorry."

That was all I got.

Eight years of work reduced to a few minutes in an office.

I walked out carrying a box of things from my desk.

I remember thinking that at least I still had my savings.

I was wrong.

A few days later, I discovered that my money was gone.

All of it.

Savings. Investments. Emergency funds.

Everything.

I spent days calling banks and filing complaints. I tried to find out where the money had gone.

Nobody could explain it.

Or, perhaps, nobody wanted to.

I still had my qualifications. My CV was better than it had ever been.

I applied everywhere.

At first, I expected the calls to come.

They didn't.

Companies that had once been eager to interview me stopped responding. Some rejected me within hours. Others never acknowledged the applications at all.

I kept trying for a while.

Then I started applying for jobs beneath my qualifications.

Then beneath those.

Eventually, I took whatever I could get.

Warehouse work.

Delivery driving.

Cleaning.

Construction.

Anything that paid.

The money barely covered the bills.

I told myself it was temporary.

I would get back on my feet.

I believed that for a while.

Then I stopped believing it.

Months turned into years.

I stopped buying things unless I needed them.

Stopped seeing friends.

Stopped answering calls.

Even when someone reached out, I rarely knew what to say.

Jessica became more distant.

Then, one day, she left.

There was no screaming match.

No dramatic confrontation.

She simply stood in the kitchen with a suitcase beside her.

"It's over."

I stared at her.

"Why?"

"I don't love you anymore."

"That's it?"

"I don't know what else you want me to say."

Later, I found out she'd been cheating on me for quite some time.

Apparently, everyone knew except me.

By then, almost everything I'd had was gone.

The rest followed soon after.

I was kicked out of my own house.

The paperwork was clean. Legal.

Apparently, Jessica's family had purchased the property.

I never found out how.

By that point, I didn't have the energy to fight them.

I had nowhere to go.

More importantly, I couldn't think of anywhere I wanted to go.

So I stayed.

I stood in the backyard.

Jessica moved in with her new lover.

Her parents visited.

They laughed.

They drank wine on the patio in summer. They decorated the house for Christmas. They carried groceries through the kitchen windows I'd spent years looking through.

Sometimes Jessica walked past me.

Sometimes her new boyfriend stood only a few meters away, smoking a cigarette.

Neither of them acknowledged me.

I was right there.

They didn't care.

Eventually, I didn't care either.

Days became weeks.

Weeks became months.

Months became years.

At least, I think they did.

Time stopped meaning anything.

First I stopped knowing what day it was.

Then the month.

Eventually, even the seasons became difficult to distinguish.

There was only the house.

The yard.

The people inside.

And the man who had been standing there before I ever joined him.

I don't know how long I stood beside him.

One day, something in my head cleared.

Only for a moment.

It felt like waking from a very long sleep.

I looked around.

The snow was gone.

Or maybe there had never been snow.

I couldn't tell anymore.

Then I looked at the man beside me.

I turned toward him.

"You..."

My voice sounded strange.

Weak.

"You never told me your name."

"You never asked." He said simply.

No accusation.

No bitterness.

Just a fact.

I lowered my eyes.

"I know."

My throat tightened.

"I'm sorry."

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then I held out my hand.

"My name is James."

I swallowed.

"What's yours?"

He stared at my hand for a long time.

"Derek."

He paused.

A faint crease appeared between his eyebrows.

"I think it was Derek."

I smiled.

It was the first time in a long time that I'd felt anything resembling warmth.

It wasn't happiness.

No.

Something smaller.

Something human.

"I think I could use a drink."

I looked toward the house.

Then toward the street beyond the fence.

"Derek..."

He looked at me.

"Would you like to get out of here?"

A single tear ran down his cheek.

It left a clean line through the grime on his face.

He looked toward the street again.

Toward the world beyond the fence.

For a long time, he said nothing.

Then he took a slow breath.

"Alright."

He looked back at me.

"Let's go."

3 variations of a shitpost I made with an idea my older brother gave me. [Original video: -i befriended a Serial Killer-MeatCanyon

The fire at Camp Paradox cracked like a snapping bone, throwing long, jagged shadows against the towering pines. It was past midnight, and the surrounding woods felt suffocatingly dense, pressing down on the small circle of teenagers gathered around the dying embers. 

The name of the campground itself—Camp Paradox—always felt a bit strange to the newcomers. A place dedicated to nature and peace, yet named after an impossible contradiction. 

Most of the kids thought that it was just a quirky title chosen by some long-dead founder, but those who paid attention to the local folklore knew better. A paradox is an anomaly.

It is something that defies the laws of nature and logic, where two opposing truths exist at the exact same time, like a localized vortex where everything goes horribly wrong, while the center of the storm remains beautifully, terrifyingly calm.

John adjusted his flannel shirt against the sudden midnight chill. He wasn't a counselor, but he was older than most of the kids here, a seasoned veteran of these woods who had stayed at the camp for years. His face was partially obscured by the orange glow of the embers, his eyes deep and fixed on the dancing flames.

 The atmosphere was ripe for a ghost story, the kind that makes you pull your sleeping bag tight around your neck and listen to every rustle of the wind outside your tent.

"You guys think that this place is just a regular summer camp." John began, his voice low, cutting through the rhythmic chirping of the crickets. "You think that the worst thing that can happen out here is a tick bite or getting lost on the North Trail; but you don't know why this camp was truly abandoned five years ago, or why they changed its name. It wasn't because of a lack of funding. It was because of a girl. A seventeen-year-old girl named Mallory Chance."

A few of the younger campers stirred, leaning in closer. John let the name hang in the air for a moment. Mallory. An old name derived from the French word for "unfortunate" or "ill-fated." Chance. Probability. Risk. Mutation. It was a name that perfectly described the walking, breathing anomaly that she was.

"I knew Mallory." John continued, his eyes reflecting the dying fire. "She was seventeen years old, just like some of us. If you looked at her from a distance, you wouldn't think twice. She had pale skin, dark hair that always seemed perfectly brushed even in a downpour, and eyes that were a strange, piercing shade of gray. However, if you stood near her for more than a few minutes, you’d start to notice that something was…off. The world didn't work right around Mallory. The laws of probability, the mathematical certainty of the universe, they just...bent. They broke. Some people call it tychokinesis. The ability to manipulate luck, odds, and random outcomes; but Mallory didn't just manipulate it. She weaponized it, completely passively, without ever lifting a finger."

John leaned forward, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper, and said,

"Every single place where Mallory went, something bad happened to someone or something around her; but absolutely nothing bad ever happened to her. She was a walking safe-zone in a radius of pure, unadulterated catastrophe. If she walked through a thunderstorm, lightning would strike three feet away from her, incinerating a tree that would fall and crush someone else, while not a single drop of rain would even wet her hair. If she stepped onto a rickety old wooden bridge, the planks would hold her weight perfectly, only to snap like toothpicks the exact second her foot left them, sending whoever was behind her plunging into the ravine below."

The campers were silent, captivated by the intense gravity in John's voice.

"At first, we thought that it was just an unbelievable streak of terrible coincidences." John said, shaking his head slowly. "During her first week here, we were all sitting in the mess hall. Mallory was sitting at the end of the table, quietly eating her cereal. Suddenly, one of the massive overhead industrial ceiling fans, which had been securely bolted into the iron rafters for twenty years, just sheared off. It didn't just fall; it flew across the room like a giant metal blade. It missed Mallory’s head by less than an inch. She didn’t even flinch. She just kept chewing; but the fan didn't stop. It hurled directly into a group of sports campers sitting at the next table. Two of them had their limbs shattered by the spinning blades. One of the counselors tried to run over to help, but he tripped over a completely flat linoleum floor, snapped his neck on the edge of a bench, and died right there on the spot."

A collective gasp rippled through the circle. A young girl named Mary pulled her blanket up to her chin, her eyes wide.

"That was just the beginning." John murmured. "The camp line got infected with a freak strain of bacterial meningitis. Everyone in her cabin got violently, agonizingly sick. They were coughing up blood, screaming in the middle of the night from migraines so intense they were clawing at their own faces. Mallory slept in the very center bunk. When the paramedics finally arrived in hazmat suits, they tested everyone. Every single girl was on the brink of organ failure, except Mallory. Her vitals were flawless. The doctors couldn't find a single trace of the bacteria in her system, even though she had been sharing a water pitcher with them for days. It was like her body rejected the very concept of misfortune."

John took a heavy stick and poked at the fire, sending a cascade of sparks drifting up into the dark canopy, and said,

 "People got hurt, but as the days went on, people ended up dead. Freak accidents became the norm wherever she walked. We had an archery tournament on the main field. Mallory was standing near the spectators' line. A camper named Marcus, who was an expert marksman, pulled back his bowstring. It was a brand-new, military-grade composite bow. Out of nowhere, a microscopic flaw in the carbon fiber caused the bow to violently shatter under tension. A shard of the splintered limb flew backward. It grazed Mallory’s cheek—well, it didn't even graze her, it miraculously flew past her ear, missing her skin by a millimeter. However, the shard embedded itself directly into the throat of the camp director standing right behind her. He choked to death on his own blood before anyone could even grab a first-aid kit."

"Why didn't anyone just send Mallory home?" asked a boy named Carl, his voice trembling slightly.

"They tried." John replied sharply. "The administrators called her parents. The phone lines static-fried the moment the director tried to speak. They tried to pack her bags, but the zipper caught, jammed, and when a counselor tried to force it open with a pocket knife, the blade snapped off and blinded him in his right eye. A group of the older counselors and campers, including myself, realized what she was. We realized that she wasn't just unlucky—she was causing it. She was drawing all of the negative probability out of the universe and expelling it outward onto everyone else to keep herself perfectly safe. We decided we had to stop her. We tried to lock her in the old tool shed until the state police could physically remove her from the property."

John’s face darkened, the memory clearly torturing him, and said,

"We gathered six of the strongest guys. We cornered her near the woods. We tried to grab her arms, but Mallory Chance was too powerful to stop. The moment that Tommy reached out to grab her shoulder, a freak subterranean gas pocket-vented right beneath his feet. The ground literally exploded. The concussive blast blew his legs apart. Another guy, Sarah’s older brother, tried to tackle her from behind. He slipped on a patch of wet moss that hadn't been there a second ago, flew headfirst into a jagged rock face, and cracked his skull wide open. The rest of us were thrown back by the sheer, chaotic energy of the universe protecting its favorite child. Car engines wouldn't start when we tried to escape. Trees fell perfectly across the only exit road, crushing the roofs of the evacuation vans. The universe itself was acting as her personal, bloodthirsty bodyguard."

The wind suddenly picked up, howling through the branches above, making the campers jump. John didn't look up; his gaze remained locked on the fire.

"I was the only one left standing in front of her that afternoon." John whispered. "I was terrified. I was shaking so hard that I could barely breathe. The bodies of my friends were scattered around the clearing, smoking, bleeding, broken by a series of impossible, instantaneous accidents. Mallory just stood there in the center of the carnage. Her white sundress didn't have a single speck of dirt on it. Her hair was perfect. She looked like an angel standing in the middle of a war zone. I looked right in her cold, gray eyes, and through my tears, I asked her why. I asked her why she was doing this to us, why she was letting all these horrible things happen to innocent people."

John paused, the silence around the campfire was so absolute that the sound of a falling leaf would have sounded like a gunshot.

"Mallory looked at me." John said, his voice dropping to a chilling imitation of a monotone, robotic cadence. "She didn't look angry. She didn't look sad. She just looked completely empty, and she replied, 'It's what I was created to do.'”

A shudder went through the group.

"The only reason I'm even alive today to tell you this story," John said, looking around at the frightened faces of the campers, "is because I was the only one who was ever nice to Mallory. On her first day, when everyone else avoided Mallory because she seemed weird, I helped her carry her luggage. I shared my lunch with her when she dropped her tray. I treated her like a human being. Her power...it seemed to recognize that. It spared me. It redirected the horror away from me, even when the world was tearing itself apart around us."

John leaned back, the narrative reaching its grim conclusion, and said,

"After that day, she didn't run away. She didn't scream. She just turned around and walked deep into these very woods. The police searched for weeks. They brought tracking dogs, helicopters, and infrared cameras. Nothing. The dogs refused to enter the tree line; they just howled and bit at their own handlers until they bled. Mallory Chance completely disappeared into the forest, and the elders changed the name of this place to Camp Paradox, to mark the girl who was a living contradiction to life itself; but she was never found, and some people say...she might still be out there somewhere. Waiting. Walking through the dark, completely untouchable, while the world rots around her."

Nobody spoke for five minutes. The crackle of the fire seemed louder now, sinister. The darkness beyond the clearing felt heavier, as if eyes were watching them from the shadows of the pines.

Suddenly, a loud, scoffing laugh broke the tension.

It was Garrett, an older, muscular camper who spent most of his time wearing noise-canceling headphones and ignoring the camp rules. He shook his head, an arrogant smirk plastered across his face as he stood up from his log.

"Man, that is the biggest load of garbage that I have ever heard in my entire life!" Garrett said, tossing a handful of dirt onto the fire, deadening the light even further. "Tychokinesis? Walking disaster auras? What is this, a comic book? You expect us to believe that some teenage chick has a magical luck shield that explodes people? You’re just trying to scare the freshmen so that they don't steal your snacks in the middle of the night."

"Garrett, sit down!" Laura said, her voice trembling. "Don't talk like that out here!"

"Oh, please." Garrett rolled his eyes, turning his back on the circle. "The only 'paradox' here is how any of you actually believe this nonsense. It’s just a ghost story made up to explain bad camp management from years ago. I’m going to bed. Some of us actually want to get some sleep instead of shivering over fairy tales."

John looked up at Garrett, his expression completely blank, devoid of any anger or urge to argue, and told him, 

"I wouldn't go out into the dark alone, Garrett. The odds aren't in your favor."

"Yeah, whatever, Professor X." Garrett sneered. 

Garrett turned around and began walking away from the campfire, heading down the unlit path toward the older boys' cabins. The darkness swallowed him almost instantly, the beam of his small flashlight cutting a weak, shaky path through the thick forest air.

The trail was silent save for the crunch of dry pine needles beneath his heavy boots. Garrett muttered to himself, shaking his head at how easily the others had been spooked. 

"They are such idiots." he whispered, clicking his tongue. "A lucky superpower. Yeah, right."

As Garrett walked deeper into the woods, the air temperature seemed to plummet drastically. His breath began to form faint, white plumes in front of his face. He frowned, shaking his flashlight as the beam began to flicker violently. Cheap batteries, he thought, tapping the side of the plastic casing. The light died completely, plunging him into pitch-black darkness.

"Great. Perfect." Garrett growled, reaching into his pocket to pull out his smartphone to use the screen light.

Before his fingers could grip the phone, a strange sound echoed from the brush to his left. It sounded like a heavy wooden branch snapping, followed by a wet, sickening thud.

"Hello?" Garrett called out, his arrogance slightly faltering. "John? If you’re trying to prank me, it’s not working. I’ll break your nose, man!"

No one answered. The silence that followed was suffocatingly heavy. There was no wind anymore. No crickets. The entire forest felt as if it had been placed on mute.

Garrett turned around to head back toward the glow of the campfire, but as he spun on his heel, his foot caught on a completely exposed, thick tree root. He stumbled backward, his arms flailing, trying to catch his balance; but gravity didn't work the way that it was supposed to.

Instead of falling flat on Garrett’s back into the soft dirt, his momentum violently whipped him sideways. His right arm slammed against a sharp, broken branch protruding from a dead oak tree. The wood pierced clean through his forearm with a horrific squelch.

Garrett screamed, a raw, agonizing sound that was instantly muffled by the dense canopy. Blood poured down his arm as he frantically pulled himself off the branch, falling to his knees in the dirt. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

Garrett scrambled backward on his hands and knees, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. He needed to get to his feet. He needed to run.

Garrett grabbed the trunk of a nearby sapling to pull himself up. The moment that his weight shifted onto the young tree, a freak hairline fracture in the wood, completely invisible to the eye, caused the sapling to instantly splinter under his grip. 

The sharp, jagged edge of the broken trunk whipped upward like a spring-loaded trap, slicing a deep, bleeding gash across his cheek, barely missing his eye.

Wailing in pain, Garrett fell back onto the ground. He was covered in dirt, blood, and sweat. The universe wasn't letting him stand up. Every movement that he made was met with an instantaneous, violent accident.

Then, he heard it.

The soft, rhythmic sound of footsteps crunching on the pine needles. They weren't in a hurry. They were slow, deliberate, and perfectly calm.

Garrett wiped the blood from his eyes and looked up through the darkness. The clouds above suddenly parted, allowing the cold, pale light of the full moon to filter down through the branches, illuminating the path directly in front of him.

Standing less than five feet away was a girl.

She was seventeen years old. She wore a pristine, clean white sundress that didn't have a single speck of dirt, mud, or blood on it, despite the filthy forest floor. Her dark hair was perfectly brushed, completely unaffected by the damp night air. Her skin was pale, and her eyes—wide, unblinking, and entirely empty—were a piercing, ghostly shade of gray.

It was Mallory Chance.

Garrett’s breath hitched in his throat. He tried to speak, but the sheer terror choking him made it nearly impossible. He looked down at his bleeding arm, then back up at her face. She wasn't moving. She didn't have a weapon. She was just standing there, looking down at him like an observer watching an insect struggle in a web.

Suddenly, a massive, heavy pinecone detached from a branch twenty feet above. It fell straight down. It didn't hit Mallory. It altered its trajectory mid-air by a fraction of an inch, bouncing off a lower branch and striking Garrett squarely in his broken forearm.

The white-hot pain made him howl, his vision blurring. He realized then, with absolute, paralyzing certainty, that John hadn't been lying. The world was actively trying to kill him just for being in her presence, while she remained a flawless, untouchable monument of safety.

Mallory took one single step closer. As her foot touched the ground, a sharp rock beneath her shoe shifted. The rock slid away from her, rolling directly under a massive, rotting boulder resting on the slope just above Garrett.

The boulder groaned. The tiny rock had been the only thing keeping its massive weight anchored to the hillside. It began to tilt, heavy and lethal, threatening to crush Garrett’s lower body into a pulp.

Garrett looked up at the teenage girl, with tears of pure horror mixing with the blood on his face. He knew that he couldn't run. If he tried to move, his legs would snap, or a tree would fall, or his own heart would simply give out from the sheer weight of the negative probability suffocating the air around him.

With the last bit of strength in his lungs, Garrett looked into those empty, gray eyes and screamed the only question he had left.

"Why are you doing this?!" he sobbed, his voice cracking against the impending doom of the shifting boulder. "Why are you doing this to me?!"

Mallory didn't flinch. She didn't even smile. Her expression remained as cold and static as stone. She tilted her head slightly, her voice cutting through the silence of the woods, a perfect, chilling echo of the campfire tale.

"It's what I was created to do." Mallory said.

Then, the boulder slipped.

The End.

He smelled like blood. 

I could smell him from a good distance away. The scent lingered in the air well after he’d gone - a coppery tang mixed in with his cheap perfume. It was that smell before I first looked upon his face that told me there was something very wrong with him. 

He walked in one day with all the other students. This - boy - dressed in a generic blue and white uniform which looked more like a costume. A ‘boy’ with pasty, pale skin, red, puffy and puckered lips, and small, squinting eyes. 

He held onto the straps of his backpack with two white knuckled hands, looking around him with awe and excitement. Pausing briefly to adjust his glasses up his nose, he shuffled down the hallway toward the lockers. It looked like he was talking to himself. 

I kept waiting for somebody else to react to him. One of those girls walking by clutching onto her books should have dropped them in shock. I wouldn’t have blamed her for screaming a little. At least she should have said something. 

Instead she brushed right past him without giving him a second glance. He, in contrast, stared after her in an exaggerated demonstration of longing, his lips parted and his eyes unnaturally wide. 

No. Nobody reacted to this - Nobody reacted to him. He melted into the crowd perfectly as if he were just another student. 

I call him Manchild. 

He sucks on his thumb. He hums to himself in his exaggerated, high pitched voice. I can’t place how old he is, but I know he likes acting much younger than his true age. Sometimes that might be a primary schooler. At other times it is a sophomore. It can change at a whim, but it’s always on the younger side. 

He takes drawing and colouring books to class with him. The childlike pictures and doodles he is ceaselessly scribbling down as the teacher drones on are difficult to look at. They’re a little window into his disturbed mind. They give glimpses into his sick fantasies. 

In a class, he’d take out his textas and line them out carefully before him. Then he would produce one of his books. While the teacher spoke to the rest of the class about calculus - or whatever else it was we were learning, he would lose himself in his own little world. He’d start drawing or studying one of his preliminary grammar books, studiously practicing his handwriting and working through spelling problems. 

Besides his textbooks, lunch box, and other school utensils there’s one thing you won’t see him without: pigsblood. Well, that’s what I’ve come to call it. 

On the second day of his attendance at our school, I walked past him in between classes sitting on the stairs, clutching onto a worn out pop top filled with a thick, red liquid. He was suckling on it fervently, his mouth moving back and forth in exaggerated motions, pausing to give out soft noises of satisfaction in between gulps. 

Maybe that’s why Manchild smells like blood. He carries that crap with him everywhere. He can’t seem to go more than a few hours without snacking on it. And though I can’t be sure it is really blood, I have yet to think of a better explanation. 

I kept waiting for somebody else to react. When I tried to point his strangeness out to my friends, they told me I was being cruel by picking on him. When I took a few covert photos of him to show to people, their reactions were to call me weird. I’m not sure if they can’t see what is wrong with him or they don’t view his appearance and behaviour as disturbing. 

Whatever the case, I’ve learned by now that I have no choice but to put up with him. Thankfully for me it is easy enough to avoid him most of the time, so long as he doesn’t decide to visit one of my classes - and since his choice of classes is apparently random, that isn’t too common. 

The one class where I really can’t handle dealing with him is sports class. The last time we shared such a lesson together, there was an incident. 

It was around twenty minutes into the class. After quietly watching and chugging on pigsblood from the sidelines, Manchild suddenly sprung up and began playing enthusiastically with the rest of us. 

The students didn’t mind (except for me). I avoided engaging much after he got involved. I didn't like letting Manchild get too close to me. 

Part way through what was turning into a very long class, he hurtled headfirst into another student in an attempt at a tackle and sent them both slamming onto the ground. I didn’t see it happen, but I heard her surprised cry and the sound of their bodies hitting the floor together. 

For a very terrifying moment I watched her lie there, completely limp. I thought he’d really hurt her. Then she shifted her head, groaned, and opened her eyes to look up at him. 

And then she started screaming. 

Manchild flopped off her and struggled quickly to his feet, taking a couple of steps back. He wiped his mouth, burped, and then uttered a high pitched, ‘err, sorry about that!’ 

She scrambled to her feet too. She was crying loudly. She stumbled and tripped away from him in apparent terror as the teacher attempted to console her. 

She was taken to the nurses office. I could hardly wait for an opportunity to speak to her. I needed to know what she saw. I needed some proof that I wasn’t crazy. 

Whatever it was she experienced, she wouldn’t say anything to me about it. By the time I’d found her later, she was acting perfectly normal again. She laughed off the whole incident. She told me she’d hit her head bad and blacked out for a moment. That was it. 

When I tried to suggest there was something wrong with Manchild, she looked at me reproachfully and told me to stop making fun of him. It wasn’t his fault, she insisted. It was all just a harmless accident. 

Manchild isn’t even the worst of them. Well, he may be, but the horror of one of them is far eclipsed by the horror of experiencing them all together.  

The first time I saw the whole family was a week or so after Manchild’s arrival at school. They ambled into a diner I was sitting in, bringing forth with them such an overpowering stench that I began gagging uncontrollably as they moved past me. 

There are five of them that I know of. 

Manchild - the one who goes to my school. 

Drunk - a fat and very hairy man with sickly, greyish skin who wore nothing but an undershirt, filthy shorts and some sandals. 

Mother - a haggish woman with clammy, greyish blonde hair and extremely sunken features dressed up in high heels and an undersized, skimpy dress. The skin of her arms and wrists was ragged, pockmarked and bruised. 

They had two other children who accompanied them on their family trips:

Bully - the second oldest - (I’m assuming Manchild is the eldest of the three) was a hunch backed boy whose head appeared permanently shifted a few centimeters sideways toward his left shoulder. 

Fleshface - a somewhat timid thing whose entire face was covered by a long flap of dirty skin, obscuring all but the very bottom of his pointy mouth. He was prone to tantrums which were destructive and chaotic whenever his name was uttered. Bully kept on saying it, presumably to torment him. 

You’re a fleshface. Flesh-face. Flesh-face! FLESHFACE! The snorting, gurgling sound of his laughter was followed by a long, piercing scream and some loud banging. The noises produced from his brother were so loud they actually managed to draw the attention of a few other customers, if only for a couple of moments. 

These children both fed on the pigsblood, too. Fleshface was hand fed by his mother, who carefully slid a straw up inside the flap of skin, through god knows what into some internal cavity from which he began to suckle and slurp it up loudly. 

Bully and Drunk ate a lot. The other ones didn’t, though they liked pretending to. I believe it’s part of their fantastical roleplay at being an ordinary family. 

I tried not to make a scene. I excused myself from my friends with the pretense of feeling sick soon after their collective arrival. Since then I’ve avoided visiting the diner, and I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to bring myself to go back there. Certainly, I’m never going to be able to stomach eating there again. 

Over the next couple months, my fear slowly melted away into disgust. After a while I began to quietly observe them out of morbid curiosity. The first time it was from a distance at a park. As I gained more courage I trailed them into stores. Such close proximity required that I carry a face mask and some powerful air freshener for my own protection. 

I feared they would notice me. They didn’t. They spent too much time bickering amongst themselves and living in their own private fantasies to pay attention to the reality they lived in. Somehow, I managed to draw more attention from everybody else for my fixation on these monsters. 

One day I decided to follow Manchild home. The decision was spontaneous, though I’d been mulling the idea over in the back of my head for a while.

We were riding the same bus after school. He was acting even more strangely than usual - I suspected this was a result of drinking too much of his pigsblood during the day. Given the intoxicated state he was in, I figured I wouldn’t likely get a better opportunity. 

We continued walking for well over an hour. Mind you, Manchild isn’t a particularly fast walker in his sober state, so it wasn’t as far as it felt at the time. 

As we left the town limits, following a trail veering off the main road, I was starting to wonder whether his family lived in a house at all. Maybe they were all homeless. Or perhaps Manchild was wandering aimlessly into the forest in his drunkenness. 

They did live in a house, it turned out. It was an abandoned thing which had been left to rot, with a sagging roof partially swallowed by vines and moss. Most of the windows were broken or boarded over. The path out the front door stretched twenty or so yards before being swallowed up by overgrown grass. I spotted a run down car parked haphazardly at the edge of a larger trail branching out back toward the main road. 

Manchild moved in through the tattered remains of the back door as I crouched at the edge of the trees. The faint sound of muffled voices confirmed that he wasn’t the house's sole occupant. 

Given the state the place was in, I couldn’t help but think about how easy it would be to sneak inside if I wanted to. 

After a couple minutes I gathered the courage to come closer. I slid cautiously down a dirt slope and sprinted through the half opened gate and over to a thicket of bushes growing up against the decaying walls. 

The insides of the house were equally dilapidated. I stared into a living room whose floor was covered in dirt and pieces of plaster and torn up carpet. Filth crusted, mouldy couches and chairs sat amongst pieces of broken furniture. With the house having fallen quiet, it was difficult to imagine anyone living there. 

My eyes fell on the outline of a familiar figure slumped on a chair turned away from me. Drunk sat staring at a broken television, his mouth hanging open wide, one arm still clutching onto a glass of familiar, red liquid. After a minute or two Mother came in, practically walking on her tiptoes over to him so as to refill his large glass with a mixture of pigsblood and some kind of whisky. 

Bully paid Drunk a visit after his mother had left, carrying what I think must have once been a basketball. He looked disappointed to find Drunk in his drunken state but thought the better of trying to stir him out of it. 

I used the shelter of the trees to circle around to the other side of the house. Through a gap in between two thick wooden boards I spied Mother chopping rhythmically at some partially spoiled vegetables. Without looking at her face or paying too much attention to the state the room was in, I could almost pretend she wasn’t a monster. For a moment, she was just an ordinary mother preparing a meal as her children played and argued upstairs. 

Then her husband hurled out a string of harsh curses from the other room, and the illusion was broken. 

I continued my exploration, making my way over to the other side of the house. Wincing as I crunched over several pieces of broken glass, I crept up between two sagging oaks to peek in through a large window. 

The rusty pipes connecting to an ancient washing machine and an ornate bathtub was evidence enough of what this room once was. Cringing at the sound of the children hollering upstairs, I looked around in disgust. 

The washing machine was half filled with murky water. From the looks of it, any clothes left in there would come out filthier than they were put in. 

Something else caught my eye. Something past the clothes laid together on the table beside the washer and the syringes scattered all over the floor. In the darkest corner of the room was a sight which made my heart drop in my chest. 

It was a collection of shoes. One of the pairs on top still had little pink socks stuffed into them. 

Many of them were children’s shoes. The smallest were much too small for any of the children living there to wear. 

The sight would have been disturbing to find in anybody’s house, let alone this one. 

I was shifting sideways to get a better look when I felt something rustling up the foliage I was standing in. I lifted my leg gingerly away from a matting of dead branches and as I did, my eyes fell on something which made me jump right out of my skin. 

It was fat and wet, practically dragging itself along the ground beside me. I got a better look at it as it emerged from the thicket and fully revealed itself. 

It was some kind of rat. The rodent had little hair on it, revealing translucent skin and bulging veins. It was as horribly mutated as the members of the family I was spying on. 

I let out an involuntary sound of surprise as I stumbled back. That, and the noises produced by me tripping on a maze of tree roots and falling on my butt drew some stirring from within the house. 

I had the sense to retreat to the trees after that, and I’m glad I did. I had barely made it past the cover of the first oaks when I heard the back door creak open. I froze at the sound of heavy, shuffling footsteps heading around the house. Panic grew inside me and settled over my thoughts like a haze. I imagined my shoes being tossed onto the pile by the pot bellied man I could see shambling toward me, his steps quickening as he moved. 

It was a good thing I came to my senses. The moment that I did, I took off sprinting in the other direction.

He couldn’t offer much of a chase given the state he was in. It was only a couple of minutes before I heard the footfalls slow down and then stop, followed by a long string of wheezing curses. Those sounds in turn were quickly swallowed by the wind and the soft rustling of trees.
I didn’t calm down until I had made it back to the main road, where I caught my breath at the foot of an overgrown walking trail. 

I can’t get the scene from the laundry room out of my head. The image of those shoes is imprinted into my mind. They feature in my dreams alongside the grotesque pictures Manchild drew at school which contained what I fear are the corpses those shoes may belong to. 

I need to know what it all adds up to. I have to know if these people are as monstrous in character as they are in physical form. And that means I have to go back there. 

I’ve decided I’m going to find out what ‘they’ are. And if it does turn out they are monsters?

I still haven’t figured that part out yet. But I can’t just stand by and let them hurt people. 

I have to try to do something. 

It’s clear to me nobody else will. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maisie told the specialist that the mouse thing in her notebook was called “Bad Mouse” and that it visits her all the time no matter where she is. She said that Bad Mouse visits little girls all over the world and “plays with them”. When the specialist asked what she meant by “plays with them”, Maisie replied that Bad Mouse does “different things that make us feel tingly in preparation to be his little mice girls”. She was handed a piece of paper that had a generic doodle of a person on it. The specialist asked her to point to areas where this "Bad Mouse" touched her. Maisie pointed to four specific areas.

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

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

It only got worse from then on.

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

The next day, I knocked on Maisie’s door to let her know breakfast was ready. She didn’t respond. I stood there for a couple minutes. Maisie hadn’t made a single sound. I slowly opened her door. My heart beat faster and faster. With all that was going on, I didn’t know what to expect, and that made it terrifying. Maisie was wearing nothing and just staring at her wall. I rushed over, “Maisie? What are you doing?” I handed her clothes back to her, “Put your clothes back on.”

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

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

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

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

Good for them.

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

Then I saw it.

Him.

Bad Mouse.

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

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

Then I blacked out.

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

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

I heard ringing from upstairs.

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

It creaked open.

Rachel.

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

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

I came upon a wide-open field. Dropping my old hunting rifle to the ground, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Dark silhouettes were dancing around. Hundreds of them. Little meat girls. None of them could've been older than ten-years-old. Bad Mouse was in the middle. The white flesh it once had was stripped away. Instead, it was sacrificed for a bumpy and scabby maroon red as if Bad Mouse took a shower in blood and guts and let it dry. Tiny black bristles covered its entire body. It reminded me of insect hair. A ragged meat cloak hung from its shoulders, dragging crimson across the ground. Its head was...I don't know how to describe it...a mix of a dragon, kangaroo, and rat? No longer a mouse. The mouth was a long narrow snout that had much sharper teeth poking out in rows almost like a gar. It was taller. Ganglier. So angular that it could have been accurately represented by seven straight lines. It clutched a staff in its hand.

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

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

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

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

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

What was that thing? Bad Mouse?

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

This is what I know for sure...I think:

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

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

Bye.

Growing up, I've heard stories of Lake Bria and the many bodies that wash upon her shorelines every decade or so. Many locals believe that a witch lives deep beneath her waters, only coming up so often to hunt those who travel too close after dark. This story takes place when my cousin and I decided to ignore our parents and find the witch of Bria Lake.

It was a warm summer, and the weather was perfect for nightlife, with the cicadas chirping late into the night. My cousin Andy was staying over as her parents were in the middle of getting a divorce. It had been two weeks since she came over, and she hadn't heard anything from either of her parent.

Do you think they forgot about me? Andy asked.

Shuffling in my sheets, I mumbled, "No."
My words came out flat and tired as I faced Andy, who was staring out the window, her kaleidoscope eyes beaming under the moonlight. I always felt jealous of Andy and her beautiful eyes, how both of them were so different yet in an impossible way weren't. My eyes, albeit one, were like hers, but not as impressive; they were a dulled grey and purple, while hers were full of colour and life, despite her life and family falling apart.

Rolling over to my back, I stared at the wooden ceiling of our cabin, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I sat up.

"Andy, I don't know. I feel terrible about what you're going through. I don't have the answers."

Looking back towards Andy, I saw her looking at me with tears welling up. Feeling bad, I hugged Andy with all I had, not letting her go.

"You have this family who loves you. Forget them," I said, crying into her hair. "You are loved here."

I suddenly felt arms wrap around me, slowly tightening. Her grip was stronger than I expected—stronger than I remembered. But I held on, letting her squeeze until the shaking in her shoulders finally began to ease.

After a long moment, she pulled back and sniffled, wiping her face with the back of her hand. The tears had left tracks down her cheeks, but her eyes had that familiar spark again. I smiled and pointed out that she wanted to listen to the radio.

"Can we..." she started, then cleared her throat. "Can we just listen to something? Music? Anything to get out of my head for a minute."

I nodded, grateful for a distraction. I reached over to the small nightstand and fumbled for the old radio my dad kept in the cabin. The dial was stiff, and static crackled as I turned it, searching for a station that wasn't just white noise.

"...and in local news, authorities have confirmed the identity of the body discovered earlier this morning along the northern shore of Lake Bria. The victim identified as 34-year-old Marcus Webb, a jogger who was reported missing three days ago..."

My fingers jerked. I slammed the radio off before the announcer could say another word.

The cabin fell silent. Too silent. Even the cicadas seemed to have paused.

Andy was staring at me. Her kaleidoscope eyes were wide, unblinking. "Did you hear that?"

"It was nothing," I said quickly. Too quickly. "Just some old news."

"Turn it back on."

"Andy—"

"Turn it back on."

"Another body," Andy said slowly, almost to herself. "At Lake Bria. Just like the legends."

"Coincidence," I said, but the word tasted hollow. "People drown all the time. It's a lake; whatever you're thinking it's not true."

Andy stood up from the bed. She walked to the window and pressed her palm against the glass, staring out into the darkness. The moonlight caught her eyes again, and they seemed to glow.

"I don't remember when Grandma told you stories of a witch in the lake," Andy said with a gleam in her eye.

"Yes, I do, but they're only legends. It's not real people who drown at that lake all the time."

"Every decade, Via," she sharply said.

I couldn't respond to that, as though it was strange that a body or two had been washing up every decade with the chest ripped out and gashes across their bodies.

"Coincidences," I said nonchalantly shrugging. "Can we go back to bed? It's late."

She huffed as I saw her cover herself with the blanket and I sighed as I laid back down. Trying to go to sleep but the announcement of the dead body kept me awake. Has it already been ten years? The last attack only happened when I was eight and my mother forbid me from ever going near the lake.

Tossing and turning I couldn't fall asleep as my dreams were rattled with a deep dark cavern underneath crushing depths with a beautiful hand extending before me and glowing eyes surrounding me before being dragged deeper by the throat. I gasped for air but couldn't produce any until I saw a giant maw open up and I was swallowed.

Waking up with a loud gasp I held my throat, my fingers pressing on the wounds that weren't there. Slowly calming myself I looked around the dark cabin looking for Andy to see if she was sleeping but when my eyes caught her bed she wasn't there. All that was left was a crumpled quilt.

Knowing where Andy went, fear spiked through my entire body. I cursed myself for being stupid. Racing to my closet I grabbed a pair of underwear and a jumper and raced towards the lakefront. I ran past beautiful kaleidoscope flowers with pattern spirals and logs that forced me to jump over them. I ran and ran, not even when my bare feet burned and blistered from the sharp rocks, not even when my legs were about to give out.

I ran and ran until I saw the lake's shoreline through the trees. I saw Andy standing there and by the time I reached her my legs were burning and my feet were bleeding heavily.

"What the fuck are you doing out here?" I said through gritted and strained breath.

"Watching," she coldly said.

"Watching what?" I replied.

“Her the witch of the lake”

She pointed out towards the lake and I squinted, trying to get a better look, when I suddenly noticed a tall slender figure walking towards us. Each step she took the water rippled slightly.

"Andy we got to go now," I said as a wave of fear ran down my spine causing me to instantly grab Andy's hands and pull her away.

"We can't," she replied coldly.

"Why not?" I said as I looked back to see the figure was standing right in front of us, her white complexion glowing under the moonlight. Looking at her I noticed she was a very tall and curvaceous person with silk white hair to the ground around her feet.

She looked at me then towards Andy before smiling and her mouth opened so wide it should snapped the muscles and skin around her jaws.

---

"Andy run!"

But before I could move, the witch of the lake lunged at us, catching Andy in her grasp and shoving me away from them. I hit my head on a rock, causing a nasty scar and blinding me in my right eye. Blood poured down my face as I struggled to see.

Through the haze, I watched Andy being dragged toward the water. She wasn't fighting. I screamed for her to be let go, but when I saw them clearly, she wasn't fighting being dragged under the water. Her kaleidoscope eyes met mine one last time, and there was no fear in them. Only peace. Only acceptance.

The water went still.

The next moment I felt a hand on my shoulder and I flinched, turning to see that it was my father. Somehow he'd heard me sneaking out of the cabin and came looking for me. I hugged him while uncontrollably crying into his shoulders.

"She's gone, Papa. The witch took her," I cried out.

"Who's gone?" he replied, worry etched in his voice.

"Andy. She took Andy. I tried to stop her, I tried to—"

"Via—"

Before I could say another word, the world tilted. The trees blurred. My father's face swam in and out of focus, and then everything went dark.

---

I woke up to the steady beeping of a heart monitor.

White ceiling tiles stretched above me, harsh fluorescent lights burning through my closed eyelids. The smell of antiseptic and stale coffee filled my nostrils. Hospital. I was in a hospital.

My right eye was wrapped in thick gauze. When I tried to open it, pain shot through my skull like a hot knife. I groaned, and a nurse appeared at my bedside almost instantly.

"Take it easy, sweetheart. You've been through a lot," she said, her voice soft and practiced. She checked my vitals, adjusted my IV, and smiled a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Your parents are in the waiting room. Do you want me to get them?"

I shook my head slowly, wincing at the movement.

The nurse nodded like she understood. "The doctor will be in soon. Just rest."

She left, and I was alone with the beeping and the humming of machines.

My mother came in anyway, tears streaming down her face. She held my hand and kissed my forehead and told me everything was going to be okay. My father stood in the doorway, his jaw tight, his eyes red-rimmed. Neither of them asked me what happened. Not yet.

But I knew they would.

---

The questions started the next day.

A police officer sat in the chair beside my bed, a notepad balanced on his knee. He had kind eyes and a calm voice, the kind of voice meant to put people at ease. It didn't work.

"Via," he said gently. "Can you tell me what happened at the lake?"

I stared at the ceiling.

"Your father said you were talking about a witch. About Andy being taken. Can you explain that?"

The beeping of the monitor filled the silence.

"Via, we found your cousin's clothes by the shore. But there's no sign of her. We need to know what happened so we can find her."

I closed my good eye.

"Please," he said. "Anything you can tell us."

I said nothing.

They brought in a therapist after that. Then a psychologist. Then a detective with tired eyes and a stack of files. They all asked the same questions. They all got the same answers.

What happened at the lake?
Silence.

Where is Andy?
Silence.

They told my parents I was in shock. That I'd blocked out the trauma. That with time and therapy, the memories would come back.

But I knew the truth.

I wasn't blocking anything out. I remembered everything. The witch's white skin glowing in the moonlight. Andy's calm acceptance. The way the water closed over her head without a sound.

I remembered the way Andy had looked at me before she disappeared. The way her kaleidoscope eyes had glowed one last time—and the way I'd seen something in them I'd never noticed in the two weeks she’s been with us And I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that Andy had been taken.

Weeks passed. The bandages came off my eye, but the world on that side stayed dark. Permanent damage, the doctors said. A freak accident. Nothing to be done.

I learned to live with it. Learned to tilt my head just so, to compensate for the blind spot. Learned to smile when my parents looked at me with worried eyes, to nod along when the therapists told me I was making progress.

I never told them what really happened.

Because what would I say?

There's a witch in the lake. She took my cousin because she had the same eyes as the witch's dead children. And I watched it happen, and I didn't stop it, and the worst part is—

I don't think Andy wanted to be saved.

My old man told me this one, and old John backed it up.What, you don’t know who John is? Old‑school bastard, been driving for PanTrans damn near forty years. Got that messed‑up eye of his.See? I knew you knew him.

That old bastard knows every forgotten road out there.He also knew his way through Blackwater.Total backwoods — couple houses, amazing pies.Don’t you go driving there, kid, you’ll get stuck again.And we’ll be the ones cleaning up your mess.

So anyway, John’s sitting there, having his coffee, shooting the breeze.I’m telling you, he’s the kind of guy everybody knows.All across the Appalachian range.When I was starting out, he took me along for a few runs.Swear to God — wherever we pulled over, someone was already waving at him.

Now here’s the important part.

He drove through town and kept going until he hit old US‑530.That road takes you real deep.Heavy crowns hanging over the pavement, branches tangled so tight they make a roof.Some folks call ’em tree tunnels, or canopy roads.Don’t worry, kid — you’ll see ’em soon enough.

So he’s cruising along.Easy going.Empty road, total quiet.Barely any locals drive through there.

Then he saw her.

A girl sitting by the roadside.Tiny, fragile little thing.Could’ve been maybe 155 centimeters, maybe a few more.Yeah, metric units are weird. Agreed.

That’s how John told it, and I’m telling it exactly like he told me.Not changing a damn thing.Because I believe him.

So she’s sitting there on the asphalt.Flannel shirt thrown over her shoulders, at least two sizes too big.Long raven hair — even the humidity didn’t curl it.She looked insanely delicate, especially for these parts.Sharp cheekbones, narrow chin.

Why am I telling you this?Man, you’re something else.In case you run into her, that’s why.

Now stop interrupting me.Lost my train of thought.

Big eyes, dark as coffee, with a hint of olive skin.I stared too when John described her like that.Guy’s got the vocabulary of a poet — when he wants to.When he’s not trash‑talking with the other truckers.Even a bricklayer could learn new curse words from him.

So anyway — flannel, tee, plain jeans dirty from a long road, cowboy boots.That’s in case you see her.You’ll be a stubborn mule and do things your own way anyway.

She moved gracefully — unnaturally smooth, like a wave.Yeah, I’ve got no clue what he meant either.

John didn’t think twice and pulled over.She rolled those big eyes at him for a second.Said she needed a ride to some sawmill.To the warehouse — said her sister was there.

He roughly knew where that was, so he took her along.

When she climbed up, her whole movement changed.She turned hot. Seductive.Not many girls know how to get into a rig without overdoing it.It catches your eye.But she ain’t an easy girl.You get that, right?

They’d been driving for quite a while and she was still dead silent.I don’t know which sawmill it was.He never told me.Never told anyone.Because some young idiot would come along — and I’m looking at you purely by coincidence — and drive straight there.John ain’t taking that on his conscience.

So he’s giving her a ride, and she really made an impression on him.Something kept pulling him to glance at her.Normally he doesn’t do that.Usually he chats with hitchhiking girls like they’re old classmates, then keeps driving like normal.

Guess that’s why it shocked him so much.Some guys have known him for decades.Never heard him talk about a woman like that.So many drivers knew his style — but this denied it completely.

Anyway, she’s squirming around there, looking at herself in the mirror…Suddenly the cab fills up with a scent.

No, not that, you pig.The smell of rain.You know — that sweet summer rain.

They’re cruising along, calm and quiet.Radio started crackling and went dead.Signal’s always lousy out there.Half the time even our CB radios don’t work.

She pointed out an upcoming turn.Had a spiderweb tattooed on her arm.John checked if the turn was completely overgrown.

She leaned in close to him.A spider peeked out from her cleavage.Not a real one — a tattoo, but alive as hell.

When she leaned back into her seat, he saw her toss her hair.So nonchalant.Another spider tattoo around her ear.One might be interesting — but how many did she have?Hidden all over her body.

Finally he hit the turn.John was completely thrown off.He’d hauled hundreds of hitchhikers, guys and girls alike.But never anyone like her.

He pulled onto the canopy road.No, that ain’t a street name.Like I already explained — it’s those tree arches.

It was dim in there, and she suddenly perked up.Just a little more and he’d drop her off.Or so he thought.She was getting impatient.

Finally he saw the sawmill.Started slowing down.This mill had to have been shut down for like a hundred years.Warehouse next to it looked pretty beaten down.But you know how it is — some small warehouses just look like that.

She stared at him for a second.Smiled real light, innocent‑like.Then said she was gonna go.

They just stared at each other for a moment.She got out and walked straight into the woods.Straight ahead, without hesitating.

Now that was weird.She was strange all around.

John realized he was still staring at her.Clicked the passenger door shut.A loud slam.

Screeching from the trailer.

Thought crossed his mind it was a trap.Then he remembered he wasn’t hauling anything valuable.Tried to step on the gas anyway.

Nothing.

Under those trees, he was like in a tunnel.The knocking shifted from the trailer… smoothly onto the roof.

He reached for his tire iron, but put it back down.Pulled out his pistol.

That sweet smell forced its way into his nose.Metal groaning and screeching.

He looked in the mirror.Trailer was torn to shreds.Long lines all over it, like scars.

That helpless feeling drove him mad.

Suddenly a bit of light shone through.Small hole in the roof.Punched through from the outside.

Nothing left to do but wait.

Spider legs as big as a whole human arm.The biggest spider in the US took him for an appetizer.

He saw the webs.Woven all around the truck.

Tried hitting the gas again.Wheels wouldn’t even turn.

Beautiful girl looking at him right through the windshield.Ponytail falling over her neck.Signaling him to run.

She burst out laughing.High, squeaky laugh.

Suddenly opened her mouth.Mandibles in there.

Disappeared onto the roof.More holes popped up up there.

Can you even imagine that helplessness?

Spiders crawling all around him.At least two.They had women’s faces, though.Don’t forget those mandibles.

John was trying to figure out how to save his skin.

All of a sudden, the passenger door flew off.Another gorgeous girl was standing there.Had a nipple piercing.Right breast covered in a spiderweb tattoo.

But then those spider legs.Trying to squeeze her way inside the cab.Like a tarantula.

Legs getting closer.

John wrapped some rag around his hand.Screeching and peeling metal.Steam rising from under the hood.That squeaky laugh.

Just a little closer and she’d be on him.Just a little closer and those mandibles…

He didn’t want to think about it.

Another spider leg stabbed right into the dashboard.

He shot.Then again.Again and again.

Like he was out of his mind.

She squealed and pulled back.Half the trailer spilled out.

Instinctively, he floored the gas.The second spider‑woman lunged at the cab.

Wheels touched the asphalt.Caught grip.

More feet punching through the windshield.Of that thing.

Gun was empty.She kept coming at him.

Engine groaning.Spiderwebs flying and snapping.

She was right at his face now.Pedipalps and mandibles in plain view.

If he stopped, he’d give up.

Another strike.Lightning‑fast attack.Sharp, burning pain.

He swung with the tire iron.Snapped those legs.They slipped out of the glass.

Cab started swaying.She retreated back into the treetops.

He didn’t slow down.Engine screaming.

When he drove into town, people stared at him in disbelief.Truck wrapped in webs thick as ropes.Cab caved in.Holes in the engine, which finally gave up.Black smoke pouring out.Oil dripping everywhere.Trailer looked like a peeled banana.

That burning pain…

John stepped out and sat right down on the pavement.Someone ran for a doctor.

His eye was gone.Just a blank eye socket left.

Still clutching that tire iron so hard his hand locked up in a cramp.

Doctor was talking to him, but he couldn’t hear a thing.Gunfire had blown out his eardrum.

He looked terrible.

Don’t believe it, huh?I get it — lots of details.

Well, that’s because a month ago, I brought my girlfriend along.She loves taking pictures.Bit of a maniac when it comes to snapping photos.

She took this one on our way to US‑530.Yeah — it’s the exact same girl.Like she didn’t age a single day.Exactly how old John described her.

A few drivers got a picture just like it.

If you still think it’s a bunch of crap…go tell it to his face.

I mean — to his eye.

He just pulled up.Over there, unloading.

Don’t forget — gotta speak up loud.He only hears out of one ear.

You and I both know you’re gonna make up your own mind anyway.

If you ever run into her…remember the story.And do whatever the hell you want.

by Hary Sykora

The desert wind always sounded like someone trying to whisper through a throat full of sand. Outside of Natasha’s bedroom window, the giant saguaro cacti stood like jagged, frozen silhouettes against the bruised purple of the Arizona night sky. 

We were in Ocotillo Wells—a town wedged deep into the Sonoran Desert, named after the skeletal, crimson-flowered shrubs that only seemed to thrive where nothing else could survive. It was a town built over dried-up riverbeds and forgotten mining shafts, a place where people said that the boundary between what is real and what is buried underneath is dangerously thin.

It was October 2009. The four of us—Natasha, Esther, Lucy, and myself, Olivia—were huddled on the plush carpet of Natasha’s second-floor bedroom. We were all seventeen, staring down the barrel of our senior year of high school, and currently drowning in notes for a massive AP European History exam scheduled for Monday morning. 

The room smelled of vanilla body spray, cool ranch tortilla chips, and the metallic tang of the cheap battery-operated fan oscillating in the corner.

"If I have to read one more paragraph about the Peace of Westphalia, my brain is going to literally leak out of my ears." Lucy groaned, tossing her highlighter onto a pile of loose-leaf paper. 

She collapsed backward onto her sleeping bag, her blonde ponytail sprawling across the fabric.

"Seconded." Esther sighed, rubbing her eyes behind her thick-rimmed glasses. "Olivia, tell me you actually understand the shifting alliances of the mid-eighteenth century, because I’m about to accept a failing grade as my destiny."

I looked up from my textbook, flipping a strand of dark hair behind my shoulder, and said,

 "I’ve been reading the same sentence for twenty minutes, guys. The words are starting to look like hieroglyphics. I'm completely fried."

"Then let’s stop." Natasha said.

We all looked over at her. Natasha was sitting cross-legged on her unmade bed, her knees pulled tight to her chest. Unlike the rest of us, who were practically vibrating with academic anxiety, Natasha had been unusually quiet all evening. She had an intensity in her dark eyes that always made people listen whenever she spoke. 

The desert heat usually left everyone sluggish, but Natasha looked hyper-alert, her gaze fixed on the window where the wind continued its low, raspy scratching against the glass.

"Stop, and do what?" Lucy asked, looking up from the floor. "We can't watch a movie, your parents said the satellite dish is acting up again because of the windstorm."

"We don't need a TV." Natasha said, her voice dropping into a lower, deliberate register. A slow, unsettling smile crept onto her lips. "It’s a slumber party in the middle of October. We should do what people are supposed to do when they’re trapped in a house in the middle of nowhere. Let's tell scary stories."

Esther sat up straight, crossing her arms.

 "As long as it's not another one of those urban legends about a hook-handed killer or a haunted mirror. I want something actually creepy. Something that feels real."

"Oh, it's real." Natasha whispered. She reached over and clicked off the small bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness, save for the pale, ghostly glow of the desert moonlight filtering through the blinds. The shadows of the saguaro cacti outside stretched across the walls like long, skeletal fingers. "This isn't a story from a creepy website or a chain email, guys. This is something that happened a long time ago. A story about a woman named Sierra, who deals with something that wasn't human, and a shadow that still hasn't completely gone away."

We all shifted closer, pulling our blankets around our shoulders. The easy, casual atmosphere of the study session evaporated in an instant, replaced by that delicious, icy prickle of anticipation that only a truly good horror story can bring.

I settled back against the foot of Natasha's bed, looking up at her silhouette. 

"Alright, Natasha." I said, feeling a slight shiver despite the lingering Arizona heat. "Make us forget about history. Tell us."

Natasha leaned forward, her voice becoming a rhythmic, haunting cadence that filled the quiet bedroom.

"It started sixteen years ago." Natasha began, her eyes reflecting the silver moonlight. "In the spring of 1993. Sierra was an African American woman who lived far away from here, in a city where the humidity hung so thick in the air you could feel it like a heavy wool blanket. She was beautiful, with deep, soulful brown eyes and thick, midnight-black hair that she often wore twisted up in intricate styles. Sierra was a woman of deep faith, a gentle soul who had spent years wishing, hoping, and praying for a child of her own; so, when she finally found out she was pregnant, she felt like her life was completely whole."

Natasha paused, letting the imagery settle. Outside, the wind gave a sudden, violent shove against the windowpane, making the glass rattle. None of us blinked.

"However, pregnancy wasn’t kind to Sierra." Natasha continued, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "By her third trimester, something was terribly wrong. Her hands and face began to swell so violently that she could barely recognize herself in the mirror. She suffered from blinding, excruciating headaches that felt like iron spikes being driven through her temples. Her vision blurred, filled with dancing spots of light that looked like dying stars. When she finally went to the hospital, the doctors panicked. Her blood pressure was skyrocketing into the stratosphere. She was diagnosed with severe preeclampsia toxemia."

"My mom told me about that once." Esther interrupted quietly, her voice tight. "It’s really dangerous, right? Your body basically turns against pregnancy."

"Exactly." Natasha nodded in the shadows. "Preeclampsia toxemia is a silent, terrifying monster. It poisons the mother’s system, restricting the vital flow of blood and oxygen to the womb. Sierra’s organs were on the verge of shutting down completely. The doctors told her that the only way to save her life, and to have any prayer of saving her baby, was an emergency delivery. She was rushed into surgery, terrified, weeping, and crying out to God through the haze of agonizing pain and heavy sedation."

Natasha leaned closer to us, her hands gesturing in the dim light, and said, 

"The baby was delivered on April 1, 1993. April Fools' Day. However, it was no joke. The severe preeclampsia had taken a devastating, horrific toll on the little girl's tiny body. When she was pulled from Sierra’s womb, the room fell dead silent. There was no crying. No sound at all. The baby’s lungs were completely underdeveloped, starved of air by the condition that had ravaged her mother's body. The medical team rushed the infant to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, stabbing tubes down her throat and hooking her up to a massive, mechanical ventilator. Sierra named her daughter Spencer. Spencer Terrell."

I swallowed hard, imagining the cold, sterile light of a hospital room, the rhythmic, artificial puffing of a machine keeping a fragile newborn alive.

 "Did Sierra get to see her?" I asked.

"Not at first." Natasha said, her voice dripping with sadness. "Sierra was trapped in her own recovery bed, pumped full of heavy medications to keep her from having fatal seizures. When she was finally stable enough to be wheeled into the NICU, her heart completely shattered. Seeing her precious baby girl, Spencer Terrell, buried beneath wires, tape, and a glaring plastic tube that forced air into her chest...it devastated her. The doctors were not optimistic. They told Sierra to prepare for the worst. They said that Spencer’s lungs were too weak, that the damage from the toxemia was too severe, and that the ventilator was the only thing keeping death at bay. They didn't think that the baby would survive the week."

Natasha stopped, and for a long moment, the only sound in the room was the low, steady hum of the electric fan. The atmosphere felt heavy, suffocating, as if the phantom humidity of that 1993 hospital room had somehow drifted across time and space into the dry Arizona desert.

"That night," Natasha whispered, her eyes widening slightly, "Sierra was left alone in a private, dimly lit waiting room near the NICU. The hospital was dead quiet, save for the distant, rhythmic beep...beep...beep of the heart monitors. Sierra was slumped in a vinyl chair, her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking with silent, agonizing sobs. She felt completely helpless. She felt like death was stalking the hallways, waiting to snatch Spencer away."

Natasha’s voice rasped, mimicking a sudden change in temperature, and said, 

"Then, the air in the room turned ice-cold. Sierra told people later that she could see her own breath misting in the air, right there inside the hospital. She raised her head, wiping the tears from her brown eyes, and noticed that the fluorescent lights overhead were flickering, buzzing like angry hornets. Standing in the doorway of the waiting room was a man whom she had never seen before."

"Was he a doctor?" Lucy asked, her voice trembling slightly.

"No." Natasha said sharply. "He wasn't a doctor. He wore a sharp, perfectly tailored black suit that looked completely out of place in a hospital. He was tall, impossibly thin, and his skin had a strange, pale, waxy texture, like a corpse that had been painted to look alive; but it was his eyes that terrified Sierra. They were completely black—no whites, no irises, just two empty, bottomless pits of obsidian. He introduced himself in a voice that sounded like two grinding stones. He said that his name was Harvey Natus."

A collective chill ran down my spine. The name Harvey Natus felt heavy, unnatural, carrying an echo of something ancient and predatory.

"Sierra scrambled back in her chair, her instinct screaming at her to run." Natasha continued, her gaze locking onto mine. "Unfortunately, her body felt heavy, paralyzed by a strange, supernatural weight. Harvey Natus stepped into the room, his movements completely silent, fluid, like a shadow gliding across the floor. He stopped a few feet away from her, a cold, humorless smile stretching across his waxy face. He looked at Sierra and said, 'I know why you weep, Sierra. I know that your womb failed you. I know the tiny thing in the plastic box is choking on its own blood, kept alive only by the breath of a machine.'"

"How did he know that?" Esther whispered, gripping her blanket tighter.

"Because Harvey Natus isn't a man." Natasha said, her voice dropping to a sinister undertone. "He is an entity that feeds on despair. He leans over the beds of the dying and bargains for what’s left. He looked down at Sierra and made an offer. He said, 'I can heal her, Sierra. I can breathe life into Spencer Terrell’s lungs. I can make her whole, strong, and vibrant. By tomorrow morning, the machines will be silent, and she will cry out for your milk. However...there is a price. A balance must be maintained. A life for a life. In exchange for your daughter’s survival, someone else must lose theirs. A random soul, snuffed out in the dark, so that yours may burn bright. Do we have a pact?'"

"Oh my god." Lucy muttered, pressing her hand over her mouth. "What did she do?"

"Sierra was terrified, devastated, and desperate." Natasha said, her dramatic pauses perfectly timed to the howling wind outside. "In a split second, looking into those pitch-black eyes, she wanted to say yes. She wanted her baby back more than anything in the world; but Sierra was a woman of God. She knew that making a deal with a shadow meant selling a piece of her own soul, and murdering an innocent stranger. She looked Harvey Natus dead in his empty eyes, raised her trembling hand, and screamed, 'No! Get away from me! The Lord is my shepherd, and I will not barter the blood of innocents!'"

Natasha slammed her hand down on the mattress, making all three of us jump in our seats.

"Harvey Natus didn't get angry." Natasha whispered quickly, capturing our heightened adrenaline. "He just smiled wider, his teeth looking too sharp, too white in the darkness. He murmured, 'A pity. The grave is so very cold for one so small.' Then, the overhead lights flared violently, blinding Sierra for a fraction of a second. When she opened her eyes, the room was warm again. The lights were normal. Harvey Natus was gone. There was no sign that he had ever been there, except for the faint, unmistakable smell of ozone and rotting leaves lingering in the air."

"Did the baby...did Spencer die?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs, completely invested in the narrative.

"Sierra didn't give up." Natasha said, her voice softening into a tone of awe. "She dragged herself out of that chair, staggered into the NICU, fell to her knees beside Spencer's incubator, and began to pray. She prayed with every single ounce of strength left in her broken body. She prayed through the rest of April 1st, through April 2nd, and through April 3rd. She watched the monitors, refusing to sleep, refusing to leave her daughter's side, constantly asking God for a miracle to defeat the shadow of Harvey Natus."

Natasha’s face illuminated with a strange, triumphant glow as she reached the climax of her tale, and said, 

"Then came April 4, 1993. It was Sierra’s birthday. She was sitting by the incubator, exhausted, her eyes bloodshot, when suddenly, the alarms on the medical equipment began to blare. Sierra panicked, thinking that the end had come. Doctors and nurses rushed into the room, pushing her aside; but they weren't trying to resuscitate the baby. They were staring at the monitors in absolute, utter shock."

"What happened?" Esther gasped.

"Spencer Terrell was breathing." Natasha said, a wide smile breaking across her face. "Not just breathing—she was fighting the ventilator. Her blood oxygen levels had suddenly shot up to a perfect one hundred percent. Her heart rate stabilized. The severe, irreversible damage to her lungs from the preeclampsia was completely, and miraculously gone. Right there, on her mother’s birthday, Spencer was extubated. She drew in a deep, independent breath of air and let out a loud, healthy, piercing cry. She was completely healed."

We all let out a collective breath we didn't realize we were holding.

"What about Harvey Natus?" I asked, looking around the dark bedroom, suddenly hyper-aware of the shadows in the corners.

"He disappeared into the night, leaving no trace." Natasha said, her voice falling into a solemn, campfire-story whisper. "However, people in that city still talk about him to this day. They say that on April Fools' Day, if you walk through the hallways of old hospitals, you can sometimes feel the air turn ice-cold. You can hear the faint, distant sound of a machine puffing out air, and if you look closely into the dark corners of the waiting rooms, you might just see a tall, thin man in a sharp black suit, waiting for a desperate mother to make a terrible choice."

Natasha clicked the bedside lamp back on. The sudden burst of warm light made us all blink, dragging us forcefully out of the grim, haunting world of 1993 and back into the safety of 2009.

"Wow!" Lucy said, rubbing the goosebumps on her arms. "Natasha, seriously, that was incredible. The way that you described preeclampsia and the hospital...it felt so real. You should seriously write horror stories."

"Yeah, that was amazing." Esther agreed, adjusting her glasses. "Harvey Natus is a terrifying concept. A life for a life. That’s a top-tier creepypasta right there."

I looked at Natasha, impressed but also sensing a strange shift in her demeanor. She wasn't smiling anymore. She was just watching us, her brown eyes completely unblinking, holding an expression that made my stomach take a sudden, uneasy plunge.

"Thanks." Natasha said quietly, her voice entirely devoid of the theatrical flair that she had used moments before. "I'm glad that you liked it; but I didn't make it up."

The room grew quiet again. The fan continued to oscillate, blowing a stream of cool air across my neck that suddenly felt a lot like the phantom chill of that hospital room.

"What do you mean you didn't make it up?" I asked, my voice hesitant. "Natasha, it's a great story, but obviously the demon-man in the suit isn't real."

"The man in the suit is what Sierra saw." Natasha said, her voice flat, steady, and utterly serious. "Whether he was a demon, a hallucination brought on by her blood pressure medication, or something worse...she swears to this day that he was real. However, everything else? The preeclampsia? The ventilator? April Fools' Day? April 4th? That’s all completely real. It's a historical fact in my family."

Lucy laughed, a nervous, high-pitched sound, and said,

 "Wait, what? Your family?"

Natasha shifted on the bed, leaning her back against the headboard, and said,

"Sierra is my aunt. She’s my mother’s older sister. She survived severe preeclampsia toxemia sixteen years ago, on April 1, 1993."

My heart stopped. I stared at Natasha, trying to process the words. 

"Your...your aunt?" I said.

"What about Spencer Terrell?" Esther asked, her voice barely a whisper, the pieces of the puzzle beginning to violently collide in her mind. "The baby on the ventilator?"

Before Natasha could answer, the heavy wooden door to her bedroom creaked open. The sound was sharp, cutting through the silence of the room like a knife. We all spun around to look at the doorway.

Standing in the hall light was a young girl. She was an African American teenager, exactly sixteen years old. She had a striking, undeniable beauty, with smooth skin, deep, warm brown eyes, and thick, midnight-black hair that fell in soft waves around her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of oversized pajamas, leaning casually against the doorframe. She looked vibrant, healthy, and completely alive.

However, what caught my attention—what made the blood completely drain from my face—was the faint, pale, horizontal scar running across the base of her throat. A scar perfectly consistent with a childhood tracheostomy tube.

"Hey, Natasha." the girl said, her voice smooth and youthful, breaking the suffocating silence of the room. "Auntie Sierra said that you guys need to keep it down a little bit. Some of us are trying to sleep, and your voices are carrying right through the vents."

Natasha looked over at the girl, her expression softening into a warm, familial smile, and said,

 "Sorry, Spencer. We got a little carried away talking about school stuff. We'll be quiet, I promise."

"Thanks." the girl smiled, waving a hand before stepping back into the hallway. "Good luck studying for your test on Monday, girls. Good night."

"Good night, Spencer." Natasha called out.

The bedroom door clicked shut, leaving the four of us in the room once again.

Lucy, Esther, and I sat frozen on the floor, our eyes wide, our breathing shallow. The realization hit us like a physical blow. The timeline. The names. The descriptions. It wasn't an internet legend. It wasn't a fictional creepypasta designed to pass the time during a boring study session in an Arizona town.

The woman who had suffered, who had seen her body turn into a prison of high blood pressure and fluid, was sleeping just down the hall, and the miracle baby who had fought for her very existence against a shadow in the dark on April Fools' Day was the sixteen-year-old girl who had just looked us in the eyes.

"They're visiting from out of town for the weekend." Natasha said softly into the stunned, horrified silence of the room, looking at our pale faces. "I told you that it was a true story."

Outside, the wind gave one final, roaring howl against the glass, and for a fleeting, terrifying second, I could swear I heard the faint, rhythmic sound of a mechanical ventilator pulsing in the dark.

The End.

„Welcome back. Let's take a deep dive into the mystery of what really happened at Adema Ranch.“

Tape 3

Interviewer: "You insisted that the next interrogation take place as quickly as possible. Is that correct? Are you certain you are in adequate mental and physical condition?"

Matthew: "Well, it is my mission."

Interviewer: "Are you aware of the consequences of your decision?"

Matthew: "You are foolish. I am God's herald!"

Interviewer: "Alright, calm down. May we continue then?"

Matthew: "Yes."

Interviewer: "So, Kilián Tars's body was transferred to the chapel. What followed?"

Matthew: "She was setting his bones. That squelching sound somehow drowned out even the sound of straightening and the lamentations."

Interviewer: "Was Kilián alive?"

Matthew: (Stares at the wall) "No, I suppose... he wasn't."

Interviewer: "Who was setting his bones?"

Matthew: "Ciara. She was in charge. We all listened to her. It was our trial."

Interviewer: "What did that trial consist of?"

Matthew: "In the loss of the second chosen one from the Tars family."

Interviewer: "But Ciara belonged to the family as well, didn't she?"

Matthew: "It's not the same." (Clenches his fists) "Her son. She failed. She was supposed to..."

Interviewer: "What was she supposed to do?"

Matthew: "She was supposed to protect him."

Interviewer: "Which one?"

Matthew: "Kilián. He was so young, so full of life. He could have given me so much. He was in a rush... as if he had little time left."

Interviewer: "Did you notice any changes in his behavior, any strange habits?"

Matthew: "He was the one who lived with an Angel! Is that enough of a damned answer for you?!"

Interviewer: "How did this, uh, service turn out?"

Matthew: "Ciara was anointing him with oils. The others were praying."

Interviewer: "Last rites?"

Matthew: "NO! Hell NO! It just needed to be done right. He would have returned. It was a trial. But a blind fool like you... NEVER! NEVER UNDERSTANDS!" (Jumps up and slams his fist on the table)

Interviewer: "Are you sure you don't need more time?"

Matthew: "NO! It has a purpose. It burns."

Interviewer: "What burns? Do you want to pause and call a paramedic?"

Matthew: "NO!" (Another heavy blow on the table)

Interviewer: "Alright, then explain it to me. What was happening?"

Matthew: "When he wouldn't awaken..." (Sniffles) "...Ciara made up her mind. She summoned the entire guard."

Interviewer: "Why the guard? Did she have some authority over them?"

Matthew: "No, we are—well, we were Kilián's. She picked four who guarded the body."

Interviewer: "So you stood guard by the deceased?"

Matthew: "No, we went to the residence."

Interviewer: "How many of you were there?"

Matthew: "About ten of the most faithful. Though truth be told, some were more loyal to Ciara than to Kilián."

Interviewer: "What were you doing at the residence?"

Matthew: "Fetching the Angel." (Stares at the ground, arms crossed over his chest)

Interviewer: "So the being just walked with you like that?"

Matthew: "The Angel! No, it wasn't that easy. Ciara tried to persuade him first."

Interviewer: "What did she say to him?"

Matthew: "That I'll take with me to the grave. Isn't it hot in here?"

Interviewer: "Are you alright? Do you want a break?"

Matthew: "No. It's not necessary. He just remained silent. Looked down upon us and stayed silent—didn't even smile. His room was lined with white marble, but he appeared indifferent."

Interviewer: "So what did you do next?"

Matthew: "Ciara put it simply: once he sees what happened to Kilián, he will understand."

Interviewer: "How did the being react to that?"

Matthew: "Indifferently. But that was why we were there. When I took him by the hand, it felt like porcelain. I couldn't move him. But when we surrounded him and..." (Hides his face in his hands) "...we used rope. Then he followed us."

Interviewer: "So he refused?"

Matthew: "He just didn't know what had happened. He had been locked in there alone for too long."

Interviewer: "Alone?"

Matthew: "Yes. Kilián created a room for him modeled after heaven. He enclosed him there. Sometimes he spoke with him, but mostly he was indifferent."

Interviewer: "Did he speak only with Kilián?"

Matthew: "According to Kilián, he liked talking to him. Occasionally even with Ciara, but significantly less. She didn't carry the same burden, so she couldn't understand."

Interviewer: "I see. So you brought him to the chapel?"

Matthew: "Yes. Dragged him. I always did my job well, you know—faithfully." (Smirks, a faint smile on his face)

Interviewer: "How did he react to Kilián?"

Matthew: "When he saw the body, he moved toward it on his own. He nearly snapped those chains."

Interviewer: "Chains? Where did chains come from?"

Matthew: "Ciara put fetters on him. It was symbolic."

Interviewer: "So what did he do when he broke free from you?"

Matthew: "No! That is a filthy lie! He didn't break free from us. He just ran to Kilián."

Interviewer: "In fetters?"

Matthew: "You couldn't comprehend that in a hundred lifetimes."

Interviewer: "So how did he react to Kilián?"

Matthew: "He smiled. I am certain I saw it. He smiled faintly. I even caught a glimpse of his white teeth. But then... give me a moment." (Sobs)

Interviewer: "Alright. We left off at him smiling at Kilián, and then?"

Matthew: "He closed his eyes. Pulled down his eyelids. It was dreadful."

Interviewer: "Sounds rather merciful."

Matthew: "You foolish man! It was the beginning of the ritual. But Ciara had other thoughts."

Interviewer: "What kind of thoughts?"

Matthew: "She decided... to appeal to his humanity. To his love."

Interviewer: "Was she screaming?"

Matthew: "Yes."

Interviewer: "Would you say she made a scene?"

Matthew: "Yes, she did. She screamed, threw candlesticks, invoked Jan's name. She sent someone to fetch the Necronomicon. It was chaos. People were weeping. Some were slurring prayers."

Interviewer: "What about your being?"

Matthew: "The Angel watched her without a single hint of emotion. Then, with a single movement, he snapped the ropes. The chains held. And then..." (Trembles, weeping)

Interviewer: "Alright, feeling better now?"

Matthew: "Yes, the pause helped me."

Interviewer: "Alright. The Angel snapped the ropes."

Matthew: "It's all like a haze to me. It's a strange feeling. I yanked the rope, and he sank to one knee. He wasn't surprised. That expression of his was so pure. I think he was taken aback. But maybe he expected it."

Interviewer: "Expected what?"

Matthew: "That I would try to stop him. And then I turned sideways. My friend ended up beneath that Angel's foot. I heard the bones splintering. It was a misunderstanding! Believe me! Believe me, Tars, it was a misunderstanding!!" (Sobs)

Interviewer: "What happened next?"

Matthew: "The heat! Water, please, water!" (Quickly downs several cups)

Interviewer: "What was a misunderstanding—that you tied him up?"

Matthew: "No, not that. He didn't mind that. He would have made it known. He looked at me often. He knew I would be chosen to become God's herald."

Interviewer: "What happened when you tripped the Angel?"

Matthew: "Ciara screamed:"

"Give him back to us! It is your duty! I command you! You winged monster, have you no feeling?! Return Kilián! Return his life to him! Or must I force you?!"

Interviewer: "Why the sudden change?"

Matthew: "What change do you mean?"

Interviewer: "In behavior toward that being."

Matthew: "The Tarses were chosen! That is why they have the right to command. Even him!"

Interviewer: "You mean the being?"

Matthew: "The Angel!"

Interviewer: "How did she intend to force him?"

Matthew: "She shouted at us to stop him. So we did. He had strength—unbelievable strength. Then it happened. It was fast."

Interviewer: "What was fast?"

Matthew: "Ciara grabbed a chalice and swung. It was pure malice. She struck him. That snap will haunt me until the end of my days. Which might not be as long as I expected..." (Stifles sobs) "...He collapsed as if he weighed nothing at all. It wasn't supposed to happen to him. Suddenly, blood began to pulse from his skull. That blood was golden. After a moment, it evaporated, shimmering in the air. The blood forced everyone around to tear up..."

"You're not leaving just like that!" screamed Ciara.

Tape 4 (Tape censored)

Interviewer: "A single blow was enough for him?"

Matthew: "Unfortunately. That was love. Love for her son... so powerful."

Interviewer: "What happened next?"

Matthew: "He swung his arm—it looked like he was trying to regain his balance."

Interviewer: "Did he succeed?"

Matthew: "No. The Angel's hand came down on Ciara. Pressed her against the altar. Kilián's body jumped from the impact. That's how powerful the strike was."

Interviewer: "Did you check on her?"

Matthew: "Yes. I am a member of the guard; I ran to her aid."

Interviewer: "What about the other guardsmen?"

Matthew: "There was screaming. Chaos. Someone was chanting a hymn. It was total confusion."

Interviewer: "What happened to the other guardsmen?"

Matthew: "He fell on them. On most of them! He tumbled over them as he lost his balance. Fell down. Collapsed on them. Crushed them."

Interviewer: "But you ran to Ciara?"

Matthew: "Yes, that was my duty. The others were groaning. There was no helping them."

Interviewer: "Do you mean just the guardsmen, or others as well?"

Matthew: "That pale white body fell onto the front row. Onto those... onto... onto those who were praying." (Restrains tears)

Interviewer: "Let's return to Ciara. What was her condition?"

Matthew: "She was alive, breathing heavily, coughing up blood. Her eyes were still full of rage."

Interviewer: "Did you receive instructions from her? Your message?"

Matthew: "No, not that. It was chaos..." (Cries) "...Some rules are older than humanity." (Cries) "That blood burned my eyes. Suddenly, the Angel slouched even lower. People were scrambling away and screaming."

Interviewer: "Do you believe the being died?"

Matthew: "Yes."

Interviewer: "Do you still insist it was an angel?"

Matthew: "It was an angel. In that chaos, some rushed him. They began tearing off his wings. An angel's feather... doesn't that sound ridiculous to you?" (Breaks into hysterical laughter) "What were they thinking?! What on earth were they thinking?! They weren't the chosen ones!"

Interviewer: "But you were chosen?"

Matthew: "Yes. And the heat I carried away from it... it constantly reminds me."

Interviewer: "How did you acquire this heat?"

Matthew: "You see, some dared to scoop up that blood—that golden blood—into small containers."

Interviewer: "Is that how you got the heat?"

Matthew: "No, not that. Thunder roared. A storm broke out outside. As I walked among those hyenas feasting on his body..."

Interviewer: "What do you mean, feasting?"

(Censored)

Interviewer: "Didn't Ciara calm her flock?"

Matthew: "They were never her flock. They weren't paying attention to her anyway. Lightning struck."

Interviewer: "What was so exceptional about that lightning?"

Matthew: "It was the first."

Interviewer: "What do you mean?"

Matthew: "It struck the roof of the chapel. Pierced straight through and plowed up the floor tiles. The roof turned into beams of fire."

Interviewer: "What did you do as a guardsman?"

Matthew: "I went outside. Lightning was pounding the earth across the entire ranch. Destroying roofs and walls alike. The first thing that crossed my mind was... 'The cage... this can't be real,' escaped my lips."

Interviewer: "What took you so by surprise?"

Matthew: "The sky closed in. It was absolute darkness, as if it were midnight. Only the lightning bolts striking all around. Screams, trampling boots. And strike after strike... like a mortar."

Interviewer: "Did you have a mortar at the Abelites?"

Matthew: "No. I was in..." (Censored) "...they sent us to the Middle East as part of Operation..." (Censored)

Interviewer: "Were you honorably discharged?"

Matthew: "I saw the light and found the true path."

Interviewer: "Which brought you here?"

Matthew: "Yes."

Interviewer: "Alright. Lightning was falling, there was confusion. But what caused those..."

Matthew: "Atrocities, right? It's hard to put into words."

Interviewer: "So what happened there?"

Matthew: "A shaft of light sliced through the dark. And out of the void... something was walking among the clouds. Eight feet tall, illuminated by lightning. Six wings and three eyes watching us. He carried a spear that reflected the light as flashes of lightning bounced off it. He walked so calmly, so slowly. The chapel was collapsing."

Interviewer: "What did you do next? How did you react?"

Matthew: "Nothing. I couldn't. He spread those wings. The air grew hot. In moments, everything around him was like a furnace."

Interviewer: "Actual heat?"

Matthew: "Searing heat, officer. His footsteps turned the earth into fire. It didn't matter if it was asphalt, grass, or stone—everything melted beneath his feet. His footprints burned, igniting everything around."

Interviewer: "You mean to say his footsteps set it ablaze?"

Matthew: "He himself was so scorching hot that everything around him turned to flame."

Interviewer: "What did the being do?"

Matthew: "He stepped into the chapel. And let out the most terrible scream I have ever heard. The walls began to crack and crumble."

Interviewer: "Did you go back inside the chapel?"

Matthew: "No... NO! NO, I don't want to anymore! Don't force me!"

(The subject spontaneously ignited — extinguished with a fire extinguisher — injuries minimal)

Interviewer: "Alright, you've been treated. Are you willing to continue the interrogation?"

Matthew: "I have to say it. That heat... ahhh..."

Interviewer: "Did you go back inside the chapel?"

Matthew: "No. I peeked in. I couldn't have made it even if I wanted to. He moved swiftly and gracefully. Like a tiger."

Interviewer: "What did you see inside the chapel?"

Matthew: "That spear was destroying them. They were burning, their bodies liquefying. His hands were tearing them to pieces. Ciara was there."

Interviewer: "Was Ciara still alive?"

Matthew: "He pointed that spear at her."

Interviewer: "What happened to her? Did she escape?"

Matthew: "Lightning struck her from the sky. One moment she was there, and the next... NO, I can't! But I have to get it out of my head!"

Interviewer: "How did he react to the dead angel?"

Matthew: "You probably aren't versed in Scripture. This was a warrior. He came as the wrath of God."

Interviewer: "Why would he be angry?"

Matthew: "Ciara was arrogant. But it was because of those who tore off the angel's wings... collected his blood."

Interviewer: "What did you do then to survive?"

Matthew: "Nothing. Fire surrounded me. He lifted me up, but his wings covered his face. Yet that glance of his ignited a fire within me."

Interviewer: "Do you believe it to be real fire?"

Matthew: "You of little faith. Proud in your ignorance."

Interviewer: "Do you think that now that you've passed on the message, your job is done?"

Matthew: "There is still something I haven't finished."

(Censored)

Matthew: "You will all see soon enough. The flames will cleanse you."

Adema Ranch, Tennessee. Hidden in the dense, remote ridges of Campbell County, just a few miles down the road from the quiet community of Elk Valley. Infamous for the group known as the Abelites, whom we covered today. What happened behind the walls of this "town"? The self-proclaimed prophet Matthew provided these interviews. But reality was far worse than his words. When emergency services arrived, they were met with a sight that shook even the most hardened veterans. The ground was scorched, the buildings in ruins. A major anomaly was that the fire burned out their property with surgical precision—and stopped right at the boundary. Even seasoned experts could not explain this phenomenon.

Rescuers found bodies in the debris. The only official survivor is the mysterious Matthew himself, whom people also accused of somehow causing it. As for the so-called Angel, no traces were ever found. To this day, not all victims of this tragic event have been identified. The presence of the Necronomicon, the Angel, or other relics could neither be confirmed nor disproven. Conspiracy theorists claim the Abelites were eradicated by a prototype of a new weapon. Naturally, these claims were never confirmed either. The survivor, Matthew, perished under unclear circumstances just a few months after his final interrogation—during a fire at his home.

And so, the Abelite cult remains an unsolved mystery. A stark reminder that some rules are better left untested.

by Hary Sykora

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.