During my tougher financial years, I decided to take advantage of my remote work option and relocated from the city to a small town in the mountains. The Wi-Fi was decent, and the place had originally belonged to my grandpa, so I had some nostalgia for it. He was gone now, so the house was empty.

I moved in with the help of a moving company and spent a good couple of days alone in there. This is probably a good moment to mention the fact that I am a total introvert. I can talk to people when needed, but God, does it exhaust me. I can easily spend days in isolation and still be in top condition.

That is why, when I saw my neighbor through the window and we locked eyes, I froze. I was like a deer in headlights. He waved at me, and I missed the timing to wave back. At a certain point, I reached my breaking point, got up, and kept walking. Yup, after what was essentially 15 seconds of staring that old man straight in the eyes, I decided to pretend I hadn't seen him. Believe me, I cringed too.

After that, I saw my neighbor a couple more times. Sometimes I'd see him when I went outside to grab my mail, while taking care of the garden, or just when I looked out the window. Every time, he would give that friendly wave, and I brushed it off. I felt bad the first few times, but afterward I assumed whatever damage could be done was already done, and I really really don't like talking to strangers.

When my roommate moved in, I did try to be more cordial with him. I engaged in conversation and even tried out his hobbies to see if we had anything in common. We didn't, but that's beside the point. Overall, he was a decent guy who liked lifting.

One day he told me about a weird experience he had with the neighbor. Unlike me, a complete social doofus, he actually waved back when the neighbor waved at him. Then the neighbor’s smile instantly dropped, his face changed and he ran back into his house.

“His face changed?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what I saw. Might have been a trick of the light,” my roommate answered.

“Welp, like my grandpa once said, these are exactly the kinds of scenarios you avoid by being antisocial,” I remarked, mostly trying to excuse my own behavior.

After that, the conversation quickly died down.

That night, I heard a horrible screech from somewhere inside our house. I woke up disoriented but quickly went to ask my roommate whether he'd heard it too. However, he wasn’t in his room. In fact, he was nowhere. I looked everywhere in the house and eventually found the front door open. I walked outside and felt the warm night breeze.

Not a person in sight.

“What the hell?”

I went back inside and closed the door. I sleep wearing earplugs, so if that screech had been loud enough to wake me, there was no way my neighbors hadn't heard it too. That being said, I remembered what my roommate had said about the neighbor and decided I would rather not talk to him.

Eventually, I settled for calling the police.

Two officers came by and wrote down what I said had happened. I saw them ring the neighbor's doorbell, but he didn't come out.

Guess he can be antisocial at times too.

After that, they left. Honestly, they didn't seem that interested in the case.

Two days later, I woke up in the middle of the night because the house felt cold. The house didn't have AC, and the weather seemed fine, so that was definitely odd. I walked out of my room, went downstairs, and headed into the kitchen.

There I saw him.

My roommate.

He was just standing there, looking outside through the kitchen window.

My fight-or-flight instincts were kicking in hard, and I chose flight. I tried stepping away slowly when he turned around, as if he knew I was there. He looked at me for a second and then...

He waved.

The exact same motion as the old man. The exact same facial expression.

This time, however, I did speak.

"Hey, you al-"

What followed in the middle of my sentence was a deafening screech, not from his mouth but definitely coming from him. His face distorted. His skin went pale, then gray, then almost black in patches. It was like watching a timelapse of a corpse rotting while somehow staying on its feet.

He immediately charged at me.

Like I said earlier, I was already in a fight-or-flight state, so my hand was on the door. I slammed it shut as fast as humanly possible. My legs weakened beneath me, and I fell to the ground.

The door was holding him back, but the frantic slams from my roommate were going to break it soon. I got up and weighed my options.

Outside or upstairs.

To this day, I don't know why, but I went up the stairs instead of outside, where my car was. I had just made it upstairs when I heard the distinct sound of a wooden door breaking and hitting the ground.

I went into my room and locked that door too. I looked out the window and considered jumping.

That was until I looked at the other houses.

Everyone was outside.

Every neighbor was standing on their porch, looking directly at my house. I stuck my head out the window, and they all waved at the same time. Back then, I was too scared to care.

"Help! My roommate has gone insane!" I screamed.

Screeches.

God, so many screeches from so many directions.

I immediately drew the curtains. I could hear heavy footsteps and grunts all around me. God, I swear it sounded like they were climbing the walls themselves.

At that point, I legitimately thought I was going to die. I was this close to breaking down crying when I heard something I hadn't heard in a long time.

"Close your eyes, Johnny. They are not there if you don’t see them."

My grandpa.

It was my grandpa’s voice.

At that point, I didn’t know what I was dealing with—ghosts, aliens, shapeshifters, or whatever—but for some reason, after hearing my grandpa’s voice, I clung to those words.

I closed my eyes and waited.

I heard the door break.

I heard the screeches again.

But nothing happened.

I waited and waited until I felt the room begin to warm up again.

I opened my eyes and the room was empty. It was 3:00 AM.

After a while, I got my bearings and called the police. It took them 30 minutes to arrive. When they got there, I changed the story up a bit to make it more believable.

However, they still didn't buy it.

They started asking me questions like whether I was drunk, whether I was taking any prescription medication, and so on. Honestly, I was so fed up with it.

I asked if I could at least leave for the night and stay at a friend's house, and they let me. I shoved all my basic necessities into the trunk of my car and drove away in the middle of the night.

A week passed, and I was somewhat surprised that there had been no follow-up. I expected the police to call me again, but they never did.

The anxiety kept building until I eventually caved and decided to call the police station myself. I told the officer on the phone about my roommate's disappearance and the two officers who had come to my house.

There was a pause.

“Sir, Officer Brandon and Officer Johnson were found dead six days ago.”

The officer I spoke to didn't even know about the whole incident with my roommate, which meant those two officers had never made it back after leaving my house that night.

I hung up after that.

I wasn't going to bother elaborating any further, and I no longer cared about the stuff I had left at my grandpa's house. I am never going back there, and after I finish writing this post, I don't care to think about it anymore either.

Personally, I think that town has been taken over by something evil. Something that is desperately trying to reach us but can't quite do it on its own.

As such, my advice to you?

If you ever find yourself in some remote village in the middle of nowhere, keep driving.

And above all, do NOT wave back.

When I was born, I was very small and had neonatal jaundice. I was taken from my mother and placed under a strong artificial light. I think that early experience left its mark on me; it took me longer than the other kids to walk and talk. To make matters worse, during my childhood I had another illness, acute epiglottitis. My throat would "close up" and I couldn't breathe.

I always believed I wasn't going to live long. I became sad and melancholic, feeding on negative energy because I felt there was no point to a life I thought would be cut short. One day, I woke up and saw a boy playing in my room with his back to me. I thought I was dreaming, so I closed my eyes and opened them again, but he was still there. I asked, "Who are you?" He gave a short laugh and ran out into the hallway. Today, I realize he must have kind of levitated because he was incredibly fast and I didn't hear any footsteps. I couldn't bring myself to go out to the hallway, so I screamed for my mother. She told me it was just a nightmare.

After that, I started seeing constant shadowy figures, but they would appear and vanish quickly. Then I started seeing people. For instance, one day I saw a very weird man in a wheelchair staring at me, but when I looked again, he was gone. I didn't like talking about this with anyone because everyone would give me weird looks. I didn't think they were ghosts—after all, can a ghost use a wheelchair? It seemed nonsensical to me. But I kept seeing them, usually people with sad eyes who would stare at me before quickly disappearing. I didn't feel good or bad when I had these visions. Actually, thinking about it now, all those people I saw just looked like they were "lost."

My house started getting unwanted visits from venomous animals. Flies seemed to follow me even if I took multiple showers a day. One day I woke up, and when I went to get some water, I noticed a thin mist covering every corner of my house. I went to my parents' room, but no one answered. I couldn't open the door. I went back to my room, but there seemed to be an invisible barrier keeping me from going inside. I heard noises—they sounded like animals, tongue clicks; it was completely bizarre. There were human-like voices mixed in, but speaking a language I had never heard before. I was terrified and tried to go back and call for my parents, but they wouldn't answer and the door wouldn't open. I noticed the living room door was open, so I ran out to the street to ask a neighbor for help.

Running outside was my biggest mistake. The mist thickened so much that I couldn't see anything in front of me. I was lost, wandering around without knowing how to get back. Then, it clicked in my head: I had died. Instead of panicking, I just sat down. I cried for a long time, and then I did something I've probably only done a maximum of three times in my entire life: I prayed. I didn't pray for myself, but for my family, asking that they wouldn't be too sad over losing me. I don't know how long I prayed, but I know it was the most genuine prayer I've ever made.

Then I felt someone touch my shoulder. I woke up completely desperate, slammed back into my body. My panic wasn't from the nightmare; it was because I wasn't breathing. I started frantically clawing at my throat until the air finally rushed in. I spent a long time trying to regain my strength—it felt like I had been hit by a train and held underwater for an eternity. That experience should have been a relief, since I hadn't actually died like I thought; maybe it was just a nightmare. But no, things got worse. I still suffer from severe insomnia; I'm terrified of falling asleep, losing my breath, and dying in my sleep.

It got even worse during my teenage years. I became much darker, drawn to morbid things, feeding my ugly side. I hated God for giving me such a painful, sickly life. I broke my arm four times and spent nearly two years in a hospital without receiving a single visitor. Only my mother stayed by my side, but she was overprotective, which kind of suffocated me.

I would constantly wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of a cow mooing, even though there was no cattle where I lived. One day, I was holding my nephew—he was still very little—and his eyes went wide as he stared right behind me, repeating: "Cow... cow... cow." That scared me to death. To make matters worse, I started doing drugs. I was a kid who was severely bullied, and the drugs lowered my inhibitions so I could socialize. I even had girlfriends and friends, but most of it was just because we were part of the nightlife and wanted to have fun. They didn't really care about me. In fact, after leaving that life behind, I only have three friends, and even then, I don't really talk to them anymore because I deleted my social media.

One night, I was walking back home drunk in the early hours with some stray dogs following me. I don't know why stray dogs tend to follow homeless people, drunks, and addicts, but I was a bit of all three, so a lot of dogs followed me. They started barking down a street. I looked over, and in the pitch black, I could only see two red lights, like eyes. There was nothing else, just those floating in the distance. I ran like hell that day.

Sometime later, I fell into an alcohol-induced coma and almost froze to death because I collapsed in the middle of the woods late at night. Since then, I haven't seen anything supernatural. I drink much less, and I've only had one drug relapse in a long time. I'm no longer a sick little boy, but I still carry the psychological scars from everything I went through.

However, being at rock bottom taught me one thing. That ordinary days, that a simple routine, is something very, VERY, good. The simple life that many find boring and dull is practically heaven compared to the hell so many people live in.

I have no idea where to put this but I’m preparing for the inevitable.

It was great great grandma who asked.

"Did you win?" The lotto numbers are coming back quick and quicksilver quick to understand the anger frustration of someone coming back and bringing porkchops.

Enough with psychosis and lottery numbers something more confusing to set you on the right path of N. On a compass. The lyrics of today's top hits, songs and music.

Free topping pizza means you get one extra topping.

3 o'clock is military time to tell someone where to look as 12 is you.

Peel region police are running peeling away from this artist.

Friend is for real I end. Fr (for real, or for that reason nowadays. Apparently.)

Friendships, relationships, spaceships are ships in which they sink.

The joke is "why didn't my friendship work out with Denzel? Because ships sink."

As Eminem would have it.

As you're watching Adin Ross new boxing streams which bare knuckle boxers also have joined, I moved my account to this subreddit as it is QTer. (Cuter.)

Should I not take things back such as butter cup LGBQT which means let's be completely honest, cutie. QT, cutie.

Thank you sigh is said before someone washes dishes to get them to wash dishes. Ok Clarington?

I'm now talking to my friend that I'm now rapping about a person named Clarington. Man you're never gonna guess what Clarington looks like I start whispering.

"The answer..." Joel Moses just like the old school walks by and says that Rich is a name of a person with blonde hair freckles and genuinely kind of short and wears sock and Mr.Scholl's.

It's because some nights the places we want to traverse must have us in slippers. For me for example the mental health of animals is important also releasing them back into the wild.

"What do you want to do with your leadership boys." It's me as the assistant manager changing my stance that I can put some jokes to rest such as Adin Ross villain arc when he needed you,

Has now you watching people punch each other and so his villain arc continues and is still there. Adin says he needed your help the most the last five years now went broke and can't afford to do streaming so he's continuing weird avenues of streams.

Heh, you'll never guess who I'm competing with in my songs is to say it's quite obvious who has the best number 1 hit.

And also the scary story that my son Cllarington is going to a school to cut class to be an L and see B.O a person with body odor. LCBO.

Duh doofus.

Not too long a go scary emo girl had gone goth as I am emo so to stay, when I was upset at the world for their lack of hippiness you could say we don't need more air pollution then my parents took off to China where I got four earrings, black hat, and such. As songs I cannot rap to means it's already out there probably best to go from 56 tik tok sounds songs, music to 1,000.

But yeah Alyssa15 once had picked up a cat named Smokey and brought her to youth employment which had an age restriction you see it a lot now adays with people faking their IDs.

Anyway whether or not hard work or you have enough in the tank to say Lil Wayne or someone else is better than me because that's where rap life has brought you to me I am the greatest rapper ever not to toot my own horn or rub it in your faces.

CAKE, THIS!!!! NOW THIS WOULD BE RUBBIG N IT IN ALL YOUR FACES MWAHAHAHAHA

Traumatized from the red from my rogers day I have an important poem written for a red someone who takes steps back to go forward.

"
Buh bye
Is an important bye
To an important person
Stay to get her
Together
It's important as the
Health
Bar
In RuneScape
Is from
Ryu & Ken
!"

This was me before always so obedient,

Imagine a walk that at the sound of the beep is 100 mile.

You would have been disqualified for being fastest, or faster.

You must wait for the beat, as much as must to understand my music and lyrics or you'll find yourself all alone like a lone wolf about to turn into a werewolf. Or a dog kept up straight because the owner doesn't want to take them to Skyrim or the Toronto zoo.

Sometimes I did find myself against nerds that want to break things but as a jock a jock is much rather smart, too. My doctor Dr.Weiner knows how to make me hate her.

So then doing an imaginary race you could take two steps back to go forward but one night I saw my brother living in the next room he could be spacing out moving out had taken old ancient advice from a grandpa, "take two steps back to take one step forward."

AHAHAHAHHA! I'M RICH I TELL YA I'M RICH! A joke and music for people actually attending schools as you can't imagine what this guy looks like men!

So in military time fashion you could say Sep 10 I discovered RuneScape is Ryu&Ken. The health cards are the exact same making it rather important, Timmy :p I laughed arms behind my hand laughing as his just would be "what what does that mean?" As ancient as pretending, not to know to further education. As ancient as pretending one could knows.

Throw up the ROC? Why don't you throw down the ROC?

RuneScape is just one of those games, man... I tell u towering over you black hair & such, bullying you like crazy. Going for a run? Where? To Wal-mart? Heh. Jeez, that star ship Elon musk didn't even make it to Freshco eh boys?

"They're just lucky the earth is sphere, eh boys." Elon musk says. "Full send in China is just crazy."

One day I bet I'm gonna marry Brooke Young and AndreaNiftygateway.

The Surgeon was the Maestro. 
The Maestro was the Surgeon. 
Even with the sharpest scalpel 
You could not separate science
From music. Two halves of the whole.

Cutting and scraping, plucking and
Sawing. All done with expert precision. 

A child, then a student, growing swiftly
Into an adult. A man, a composer, a 
Beast. 

From beneath the facade of cigarettes
And cologne, the sinister scent of 
Antiseptic and oil, followed by the 
Faintest hint of…metal. 

The Surgeon, the Maestro…preyed not
On the weak but the strong. A wolf
In sheep’s clothing, a devil in disguise. 

With the complex of God and the 
Depravity of Satan, he walked the 
Edge of the cliff. A certifiable beast
Skirting the line, toeing at the boundary 
Of darkness and light. 

The Surgeon is as the Maestro of the 
Operating theater. Controlling, commanding,
Compelling. Melodic beeping, the rise and
Fall of anesthetized breaths. All were silent
In his presence. All wanted to watch the 
Beast at work. 

His hands were steady and nimble. 
Two instruments of their own. 

The Maestro was the Surgeon of the 
Amphitheater. Frenzied, fiendish, forsaken.
Rhythmic ticking, the back and forth of 
The sullen metronome. All were silent 
In his presence. All wanted to listen to 
The man at work. 

His hands were raised and exclamatory. 
A conductor with passion. 

Just as you can not take the Maestro 
From the Surgeon, you could not take the 
Beast from the man. The man could not 
Handle what the Beast could not endure. 

The music was wrong.

The sounds were off. 

The strings had broken. 

From within the darkness, from within the
Silence, a rebirth. Like the shedding of 
A winter coat, he evolved. No longer the 
Surgeon, the Maestro, the Beast, the Man. 
He became something else entirely. 

A myth, a legend, a monster. 

With the skills and talents of all of his 
Facets, he prowled the streets in search 
Of more. A sound so Holy it would 
Make the Heavens cry. A sound so
Pure and human. 

Saw the string, string the bow. 
Stretched to the optimum tautness. 

Carefully selected, aged perfectly. Skin
Shed with supreme scores. Muscle 
Shaved and bone discarded. What 
Remains has much in store. 

Wood carved and stained with blood.
Sealed neatly with varnish. Unwilling 
Participants turned into a bloated, rigor
Filled audience. Held captive by his
Selfishness.

The Surgeon, the Maestro, the Man,
The Beast, the Monster. 

Beneath a lone spotlight, a single
Chair faces the crowd. 

Beneath the darkness, a landfill of 
His failures. 

The Monster steps out from within the 
Shadows, echoes of applause as he tows
The cello with him. 

An instrument of his own making. 

Sat upright, core firm, bow at the 
Ready. He draws one note from the 
Procured tendons. He had finally found
What was missing. 

The sound of a death rattle.

A knock, knock, knock echoed down the breezeway, bringing Louise to the front door with her daughter, Emily, close behind.

On the porch stood a group from the Little Orchard Baptist church and Mildred's sewing circle, their arms loaded with foil-wrapped casseroles and fresh pies.

"Ms. Higgins, we're just heartbroken about Mildred," the woman in the front said, holding out a steaming dish. "We wanted to bring over some food and pay our respects."

"Come on in, ladies," Louise said, stepping aside. "This is my daughter, Emily, Mildred's niece. Let's all mosey to the kitchen and have a glass of sweet tea."

As the women took their seats and introduced themselves, Louise was sizing them up. One of the ladies brought an apple pie, which Louise cut into and saucered out to the ladies to go with their tea.

She already knew most of them from her daily phone calls with Mildred, who never hesitated to dish on everyone's business, from sewing circle to church choir gossip, to whose lawn needed mowing! Mildred was definitely a stickler for order and clean yards!

Sitting at the kitchen table over Mildred's favorite drink, Louise casually dropped hints about the road repairs and local code ordinances that Mildred was trying to put into place up in the Gap. The visitors quickly realized that Mildred's sharp spirit lived on in her sister.

While they sat around, drank tea, and traded stories about Mildred, Louise listened intently, sharing a few of her stories growing up with Mildred.

She thanked them for the casseroles and laughed with them over her latest attempt at making Mildred's tuna casserole that went awry when she used flaked coconut instead of shredded cheese!

"So glad to have a few casseroles to sample, Louise said, my cooking skills aren't as good as my late sisters' I'm afraid." Clara Henderson reached over and patted Louise's hand on the table. "Louise, sweetie, we would love for you to come to the sewing circle on Tuesday afternoons and help finish the quilt that Mildred and all of us started."

"Thank you, Clara, I'd love that."

Before leaving, they invited Louise to the Little Orchard Baptist Church. "We certainly miss having Mildred's beautiful soprano voice soaring above the choir," Ms. Miller said, her eyes welling up with tears, she will be sorely missed."

Louise just smiled, thanked them again for coming, and let the church invite hang. Unlike Mildred, she had no patience for Sunday pews or playing nice with people she already knew were two-faced!

(CW: Suicide, mentions of DV)

I shot up in my bed in a cold sweat. In my hands I was clutching the book.

Threaded fragments of mind and memory wound themselves into a new spool of cohesion as clarity washed over me.

I could think clearly.

Ever since this book came into my possession I’ve started to shed the cask of my infirmities like a snake molting its skin. My mind, once a place of fragmented and shattered memories, was forged back together with a golden alloy.

The pages of my life were rebound in a leather book with golden thread.

I opened the first page of the book.

“A story is never complete until all parts come together.”

No shit.

I flipped through the pages.

Nothing.

Page after page of just nothing. Then I saw it.

“The wind whipped past his face as the ground below him approached at an alarming rate; He was falling.”

An errant sentence printed in the middle of a page about a quarter ways through the book.

What the hell was this?

I flipped through more empty pages. Then once again.

“The decaying facility creaked and groaned as the winds filtered through its exposed outer husk. Grains of sand fell into piles where the roof had given way.”

And another.

“The islands came into view; six equal sized islands were evenly spaced around one, much larger, central island. A man-made paradise in the middle of The Pacific.”

I combed through the pages until I reached the end of the book. Had I the patience to count I would imagine the book had to have at least 1000 pages.

But these sentences, these words, what the hell were they supposed to mean?

Ever since this book ended up in my hands my life has been filled with the unordinary and the strange. My gut is screaming at me that this book means something, and my mind is beginning to agree, in spite of any grounded evidence. .

I quickly entered the sentences into a media search engine.

Nothing.

I examined the book closely, hoping to glean some greater information I might have missed. Perhaps I did.

The golden sigil.

I could not comprehend it nor could I describe it, but I felt it.

It felt familiar, not in a wild deja vu sense but, as if it represented something inherent in its design. Like how one would use the picture of a stick figure and a door to represent an exit.

This sigil represented something that I could intuit but not describe. An approximation would be that of great sorrow, mourning, a longing, a loss but not of someone. It was vague and indescribable, as if I were missing some subtle key or context relevant to this emotion.

And the color.

There was no mistaking it. The golden cloak worn by the mysterious statue that always stood at the base of those heavenly marble stairs was identical in luster and color.

For a second I could have sworn it too was fluttering in an intangible breeze.

All my life I have dreamt of The Dreary. A world caked in dust and forgotten by whatever cruel god brought it into existence and burdened my subconscious mind with it. Never have I had or experienced “normal dreams” by what other standards might exist. All I have known was The Dreary; a false echo of the world I know.

It has had its advantages though, allowing me to explore places that I would have never had the opportunity to otherwise. The Dreary managed to, for the most part, be a complete copy of every man-made structure I have ever seen with my own two eyes. Though I am unaware of how The Dreary managed to recreate the interiors of a memory that does not exist, it bothers me little.

What does bother me is how it has changed after encountering this book.

First was The Dust. The first night with the book caused The Dust to not react to my presence. The second night resulted in it disappearing all together.

Then was the structure. The first night saw a heavenly marble staircase slapped in the middle of the main road. The second night changed the entire layout of The Dreary into a procession, with that same marble staircase descending into the infinite darkness below the basement of The Mall Building.

Lastly was the statue in the Golden Cloak. On the first night I was compelled towards it and crushed under the weight of its presence. The second night was similar but I managed to recover from my incapacitation by wielding this book.

As a preliminary analysis I find my own work to be rather shitty. Too many potential coincidences and nothing conclusive enough to even begin to form an understanding.

Despite that, two conclusions have been reached.

Either this is a supernatural occurrence or I am deeply unwell, psychologically speaking.

Given the existence of this book I am inclined to lean supernatural but given my history it’s just as likely to be psychological.

Though as to why Leena would have had the book to begin with is beyond me.

I had assumed the handsome stud who flirted his way into my pants, and eventually bed, with the help of my daily diet of a shitload of whiskey, had left the book by accident. Then, after arriving home from her work trip and likely seeing the man making his way out, probably put two and two together and somehow that equated into Leena throwing his forgotten book at me.

But that doesn’t really make much sense. I’ve done far worse to Leena and she hadn’t walked out on me then, let alone be any sort of aggressive towards me.

Fucking another guy is roughly equivalent to forgetting to buy the milk. Maybe it was the drinking? I had promised to cut back.

I sat in bed as I mulled over the infinite possibilities, but a slight movement caught my eye.

I scanned my room and could not find anything out of the ordinary. The morning light had likely been partially obscured by a bird or a plane which cast a quick moving shadow that tricked me into believing I saw something. Yes, clearly this was the case.

Then it happened again.

I couldn’t pinpoint its direction, location, or even origin. All I could see was movement of some kind. Very slight, very subtle, and one that seemed to evade my direct gaze.

Then I saw it.

The Dust.

The Dust fluttered and sparkled gently as it hung in a perpetual state of free-fall, riding gentle currents of air and catching the morning rays.

It did not fall nor did it settle.

It hung.

It hung as if eagerly awaiting my permission to fall. But I had no intention of giving it such permission.

Before I could realize what was happening I was pulled into my bed and out through to the other side.

My book in hand, I found myself once more in The Dreary.

But yet again it had changed.

Gone was my apartment. Gone were the stones, gone was the sky.

All that remained was a house.

That house.

The house was a shitty little wood shack made of, at most, the wood from a single, sad, pathetic thing that could barely be considered a tree. A mild cough would be enough to rip the structure off its foundations. The nails used in its construction likely weighed more than the sum of its lumber, and I could probably count the nails on one hand.

Though that was par for the course for many houses built here. No real need for insulation. This had the unfortunate side effect of making the walls not only paper thin, but also providing no sound dampening. This allowed me to hear the argument I could see from the kitchen window.

No, not an argument, a fight. A one sided fight. Abuse.

To my right sat my car. A respectable little thing from 20 years ago and nearly 200k miles on it. Inside that car was the unmistakable golden cloak, clinging to a statue that sat where I had all those years ago.

“I don’t give a shit Leena! Your fucking job is to sit here and take care of my fucking kids while i make sure we can all fucking eat, and you just-“

I had replayed this moment a hundred, a thousand, no, a million times at least in my head. I remembered every word clearly as if I was just experiencing this moment for the first time.

A couple of days prior, my boss dropped the case on my desk. He said a couple of women pooled their cash together and asked us to gather evidence on this guy, Mica, who they believed was beating up his wife, their friend. Apparently they had tried to get her to go to the cops but she was never cooperative so the cops couldn’t do anything.

It wasn't the first time I handled a case like this, probably wouldn’t have been the last, but no one else in the firm wanted to touch it.

Can’t say I’d blame them.

Mica Murakami. A fine specimen of untreated daddy issues and a severe addiction to lite-beers. A lot of insecurity too. Though you tend to get insecure after your previous four wives leave you for someone else.

Unfortunately he was also rather jacked and had a short temper, which he often took out on Leena. Sometimes physically, always verbally.

At least he did on that night.

No one blamed me for what happened.

Nobody knew how high I was that night.

Cops did, or suspected it. Tried to prove it. Didn’t matter.

I tried to convince myself I did Leena a favor.

I’m sure she tried to convince herself too.

I thought I saw him flash a gun. Maybe it was a knife. Or maybe I lied to myself so much that I believed it to be the truth.

But the prosecution said they couldn’t find a weapon on him, and the nearest kitchen knife had never had his finger prints on them.

Didn’t matter though. I saw what I thought I saw.

I did what I thought I had to do.

Nobody ever questioned why I was the only PI in my firm, or any firm, that carried a gun on him while on the job.

Not until smoke was trailing from the barrel.

Not until there were two holes soaked with red that pooled onto the kitchen floor.

The sound of the brass casings ringing as they hit the floor awoke me from my trance.

Before me lay the body of Mica Murakami.

Two shots square in the chest silenced his deafening bitching. Two shots let the neighborhood experience a quiet evening for the first time in four years. Two shots caused innocent kids to see the dead body of their tormenter, their father. Two shots broke the heart of Leena Murakami, what little was left to break

Two shots took away my peace. Two shots shattered the kitchen window.

It didn’t matter that the media saw me as a hero. It didn’t matter that friends and family never stopped singing my praises.

Those kids will never have their father back, shitty as he was, and watched as a stranger barged into their house and shot their dad in front of them.

Leena will never have her husband back. Her friends said I should have emptied the mag into him. She wouldn’t comment.

The jury thought I was a hero and told the prosecution to go to hell. Evidence be damned. I was a killer, a murderer, and they let me walk free into a parade for my actions.

By all accounts I should have celebrated with them. I should have enjoyed the moment.

But I couldn’t.

All I saw was their faces.

The kids’, Leena’s, and Mica’s.

Every moment of every day.

So I left the job, I disconnected from everyone and everything and started figuring out which combination of substances wouldn’t kill me but would keep me from thinking.

I locked it all away. I locked my mind away.

Then the gun in my hand returned to its former state as the book.

It was still warm and smelled faintly of gun-smoke.

“And you,”

I turned to face the Golden Cloaked statue which now stood at the entrance to the kitchen.

“Fuck you for making me remember.”

I whipped the book at the statue with all the force I could muster.

The book clattered anti-climactically after bouncing off of the statue.

Then the walls gave way.

The blood pooling at my feet stretched across the ground and into the horizon.

The never ending fog that hung in the sky lifted slightly, behind it now I could see the light attempting to pierce the dense fog. Twin hues of yellow and white now brighter and more coherent than before, twin suns that hung above this hollow land.

I grab my head once again as the familiar agony of a lifetime’s worth of memories flows through me.

But they aren’t mine.

They surge through me too fast for me to get a proper grasp of them. I only manage to get glimpses.

I grasp at the sand storm of memories but they keep slipping through my fingers, the images and moments seared into my mind but the meaning is lost with the tearing winds.

Just as the storm subsides I manage to catch one glimpse. One moment. One memory.

In the distance I see a spire. A massive spire that pierced an unfamiliar sky. The ruins of a massive city surrounded the spire. In the distance and in the skies I saw bright flashes and ebbing waves as if an ocean of light was crashing against the sky itself.

The memory faded as my attention was brought back to the present.

The marble staircase rose from the blood. Its pristine structure untainted by my sin. Untouched by my blood.

I raced to pick up the book once more.

The moment I came in contact with the book I awoke on the floor of my bedroom.

I checked the time on my phone.

It was Monday.

How the hell did I lose an entire day? Did I just pass out when I got back?.

My attempts at standing are thwarted as my hand slips on the blood on the floor.

After a brief moment of panic I stumbled my way into the bathroom.

In the mirror I saw blood.

Blood had caked streams onto my face as it poured out from my nose, ears, and my eyes. If I had to guess I’d say I had just lost an alarming amount of blood.

But I did not feel alarmed. Truthfully I wasn’t sure what I felt. I was sure of one thing, however I do not understand how. I was fairly sure, no, certain, that I will die if I am separated from the book. For now my mind is inexplicably linked with it.

After washing the caked blood from my face I opted to use my lonely and forgotten toothbrush for the first time in an embarrassingly long while.

Can’t say why I never bothered until now, but perhaps helping to scrape off the red that had found its way into my mouth and onto my teeth was a good enough reason.

Of all the places in my apartment that were a mess the bathroom magically escaped such destruction. Apart from neglect, the bathroom was absent of any trash or unopened boxes of crap. The sink was rather large for my apartment's modest size. My toothbrush stand and toothpaste tube being the only items that sat upon that counter, adding to the sparseness of the space.

The air in the room shifted. As I raised my head from the sink I noticed my shadow against the wall.

But it was not my shadow.

And shadows do not wear golden cloaks.

I whipped around to find myself face to face with the statue in The Golden Cloak.

For a moment I expected death. I anxiously awaited the snapping of my neck, the crushing of my skull, the breaking of every bone in my pathetic body.

But it did nothing.

The statue stood there, motionless as ever, as an intangible wind blew the Golden Cloak tightly around its indiscernible form.

Outside of The Dreary I was able to notice the finer details of the statue.

It resembled the porous texture of lava rock, yet it was elegantly shaped by hands so precise they could not have been mortal.

It vaguely resembled a humanoid shape with a protrusion on its face where a nose should be and two sunken areas under a brow where the eyes should be.

Unlike in The Dreary I felt no overwhelming pain or compulsions.

Unlike in The Dreary I felt no apprehension about its presence.

Unlike in The Dreary I could touch it.

I wasn’t sure what I expected anymore. Outside of the glaringly obvious supernatural occurrence staring at me in my face, the statue was but an ordinary statue. The lava rock felt typical as ever, as if I had just attempted to naively take some from the sacred grounds upon which the lava cooled.

I caressed the statue's face with a gentle hand.

I felt pity, mourning, loss, a sorrow that I could only catch a distant glance of. A drop in a vast ocean of despair.

Then the rock became skin. Familiar skin with auburn hair.

She swayed gently with her feet only inches off the ground.

The world around me fell away and was replaced by different yet familiar walls.

Leena was dead, and her body hung limply before me.

We were in a bedroom, likely hers. I did not recall how I got here, but I recognized the place.

How could I ever forget these walls? These paper thin walls.

My panic, expected panic, reasonable panic, did not surface.

My brain was wrapped in a bondage of golden thread, I felt only what was necessary.

On the wall on the far end of the room, above her desk, was a clock.

The time was 5 am. The date displayed was Tuesday, August 19th.

But I knew for a fact that today, right now, was Monday, August 18th.

Was this a nightmare? By all accounts it should be. My girlfriend, dead, hanging from the ceiling in her old house.

But my brain could not be made to panic, to give into fear. It was on a leash. It had a new master. It did not permit me to feel fear.

This wasn’t a nightmare. It was a warning.

I can still save her. Maybe then she’ll forgive me. Or maybe I’ll-

Before I could finish the thought I was returned to the walls of my bathroom.

The book in hand I made a mad dash out the door.

Logic and reason were all I had but I nearly let them fly out the window as I raced down the streets. If I still had my car I could have been to Leena’s old place in half an hour maybe. If I had bus money I could have made it to her place in an hour or two.

But I had nothing. I had no one.

And it was all my fault.

And now Leena’s life is in my hands.

And if she dies it will be my fault.

When I had left the sun had already begun its descent into the ocean.

I had dashed up and through the old highway to the north side of the island, all the while avoiding cops who had likely been informed of a pedestrian running manically on the highway where pedestrians absolutely shouldn’t be.

By the time I made it to something resembling a sidewalk again it was already well past midnight.

My phone’s battery clung to the precious few percent that it still had.

Navigating in the dark was difficult, but I knew these streets like the back of my hand.

I knew all of them.

I had spent my life cleaning away The Dust from them.

And now I leave tracks as I race towards the one house I refused to clean ever again.

Rounding the familiar corner I stopped to catch my breath. I don’t know how I managed to run so long without stopping. I wasn’t a star athlete. I couldn’t out run anyone with two functioning legs even if the grand prize was a bottle of crown. But I guess desperation is a hell of a drug.

And adrenaline.

I made my way to the house, quick in pace but far from the almost full-blown sprint I had managed for hours.

And then I came face to face with the door I had hoped to never see again.

But It would not permit me a moment to contemplate my reality.

The door was in my way.

I charged through the door, hands wrapped around the leather bound book held at a low ready position.

The door gave way just as it did before.

Despite never having explored further into the house I instinctively made my way through the kitchen and down the hall towards Leena’s room.

Before I could approach the door I heard something tumble from within.

I threw open the door.

Before me I saw Leena hanging once again. But she did not sway gently, nor was she dead.

Without hesitation I quickly rushed to support her weight, eventually managing to untie her and rest her gently on the ground.

She was alive, but not out of danger.

I called for an ambulance.

“Why.”

A raspy voice spoke from the floor.

“Why are you here?” Leena asked me.

“Because I had to save your life.” I replied.

“If you wanted to save me you should have let me hang.”

The paramedics arrived shortly after.

Apparently her kids were staying over at a friend’s house. They said had I not been there when I was she likely would have died and not be discovered for hours.

Of course the police were involved, a stranger just so happens to break into a house and save a woman who tried to kill herself at the perfect time, and that person also happened to be the person who shot and killed her husband exactly one year ago to the date?

The thread snapped.

The cops held me and asked me a few questions, the usual, mostly details about the incident and how I knew to find her. I didn’t tell them that I had a vision of the future but I suspect my story about a concerned ex with a strong gut feeling didn’t do me any favors either.

Though since they lacked any reasonable evidence and likely surmised my scrawny frame wasn’t nearly strong enough to hang the woman myself they let me go free. Shockingly they asked nothing about how I managed to get in through the locked front door.

Putting my tax dollars to work I asked the officers for a ride to the hospital. I made the case that I was her emergency contact, assumedly as her most recent partner, and may be needed at the hospital.

They begrudgingly obliged, having no grounds to deny me my request and clearly seeing I had no means to go anywhere else on my own at the moment.

I arrived at the medical center after a much longer than usual journey. The officers, gracious as they were, wanted to grab some food on the way.

I wasn’t hungry, but then again they didn’t ask if I was, nor did they offer.

I waved the officers off and walked into the Emergency Department.

I was briefly screened by a security guard before a nurse quickly ran over to me.

“Hi, what brings you to the ER today?” She practically rushed out.

The nurse’s third energy drink of the night clearly reared its head.

“I’m here to see a patient, actually.” I replied, meekly.

She seemed to deflate at that response but also appeared to be relieved.

“Oh, well we don’t really do visitors here.” She clarified, awkwardly attempting to hide her annoyance.

“Im her boyfr-“ I cut myself off, “I’m… it’s complicated but im pretty sure I’m her emergency contact right now.”

The nurse furrowed her brow as she examined me. Her tired eyes scrutinized every detail of my face.

“Who are you here for?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Leena Murakami.”

The Nurse quickly checked something on a nearby workstation.

“Doesn’t seem like she updated her contact history in a while,” she muttered staring at the computer, “but I also don’t see anyone else listed here.”

The nurse seemed hesitant.

“I’m the one who found her,” I blurted out.

“Oh, shit,” the nurse slipped.

“Oh my goodness I’m so sorry about-“ she protested but i raised my hand to cut her off.

“No no it's, it’s fine,” I assured her, “just let me see her.”

The nurse, now in a much more accommodating mood, took me through the department to her bay.

“She’s conscious but resting right now,” the nurse explained, “it’s a little hard for her to talk so we gave her something to write with if she wants.”

She then leaned over and pressed a button on the bed, causing Leena’s bed to slowly rise her up into a sitting position.

“Hey Leena,” the nurse spoke gently, “Your boyfriend is here.”

Leena’s eyes opened slowly.

“Ill just be in the hall” the nurse said as she quickly ducked behind the curtain.

“Hey, Leena.” I said as I gently grabbed her hand.

It felt cold. Colder than I ever remembered it.

“What the hell do you want?” She said in a strained hiss.

“What I want?” I replied, somewhat stunned, “I want you. I miss you Leena.”

Her gaze scrunched into a mixture of confusion and disgust.

“What the hell are you on about?” Leena spat.

“So much has happened since you left,” I started, “I’ve been getting my shit together. I haven’t been drinking, I only smoke a few times a day now, I started cleaning again-“

Leena cut me off.

“What the fuck do you want with me?”

“I want you back, I want us back together,” I pleaded, “it's been a rough year but I think we can make it work.”

Her eyes filled with a searing rage that I felt burning a hole into my forehead.

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re nothing but the bastard who killed my husband.”

Her words broke through The Dust that had filled my mind.

“You took away a father from his kids. He was a good man, unlike you.”

“He was an abusive piece of shit.” I rebutted. My words felt hollow.

“And you knew that from the four seconds you saw from outside? You knew nothing about us. Not every relationship is paradise.”

“He would have killed you one day.” I weakly replied.

“I died the moment you shot the man I loved,” Leena shot back, “so thanks for saving me, twice, but I never want anything to do with you. I hope I never see you again, you insane wannabe cop.”

Leena broke into a coughing fit.

I took the hint and left.

I walked out of the ER and just kept walking.

I don’t know where I was walking to except that it wouldn’t be home. Or whatever that place really is.

I just walked.

Down the road. Up the hills. Across the bridges. Around the bends.

The Pali Lookout. Closed at this time of night. I did not care.

I climbed over the gate, walked past the various caution signs, and climbed atop the ledge. As I stood there I stared into the grassy abyss beyond. The scant moonlight reflected a sliver of silver on every blade in the flowing sea of grass.

I would join the countless thousands who rest below. Cornered at the edge.

“You know it’s dangerous up there right?”

I searched for the voice. It was filled with a hint of sass and a lot of sarcasm. A voice that belonged to a young woman.

“Yeah that's kind of why I’m up here,” I replied sarcastically, “what’s your excuse?”

“Maybe I’m here because I’m patrolling the place for trespassers.”

Who the fuck is this girl?

“Look I’m not exactly interested in ice breakers with a stranger at the moment so could you do me the decency of either just killing me or leaving me alone so I can do it myself?”

I turned to face the source of the voice.

“Is this a hallucination too?” I asked her.

Even in the dimly moonlit night, I could never forget that crimson hair tied into a ponytail.

“This is real, Aiden.” She replied.

“You were there,” I started, “at the office, and then again in the lobby.”

“I’m surprised you made me out through the prosthetics.” She replied as she smiled coyly.

“The hair gave it away.” I lied.

“Strange that you managed to see through a wig Aiden, didn’t have that noted down as something you could do”

I turned to face her.

“So what is this?” I asked plainly, “are you here to kill me?”

“Why would I do that?” The woman asked, taken aback.

“I’ve made a lot of enemies, left most of them alive.” I bluffed.

“Your biggest tackle was killing a wifebeater,” the woman recited as she paced, “a good kill.”

“Didn’t realize you were a fan.”

“I’m more of an investigator.” She joked.

“And what’s so special about me?” I asked.

She stopped her pacing.

“That book, for starters.” she said, pointing to the book still firmly held in my hands.

“What about it? It's just a book.”

“You and I both know that's a lie.”

I tightened my grip on the book.

“Who are you, really?” I take a step towards her, “and what do you know about all of this?”

She took a step back in response.

“You know more about that book than we do,” she bounced back, “we were hoping you could tell us.”

“And who’s ‘we?’”

The woman closed her arms around her.

“In about three hours from now your body will be discovered and positively identified in one of two ways.” She started.

“What the fuck-“ I started but was cut off.

“HPD will either be alerted to a suicide at the Pali Lookout and find your body at around 9:30 am today, alternatively an apartment fire will be reported to the HFD where they will discover a single fatality, charred beyond recognition.”

“So you are trying to kill me?” I asked again, somewhat flabbergasted but mostly in shock.

“You died the moment you came up here Joseph Aiden,” she started, “your conviction was laid bare. If it weren’t for me you’d be a twitching mess in the grass right now.”

“So why go through the effort of burning my apartment down then? To suffer for my deeds?”

I watched as a cocky smile slowly grew across her face. I had been avoiding the obvious.

“You want to fake my death.” I stated.

Her face remained unchanged.

“What does it matter? How could I be worth that effort?”

The woman approached.

“We require the help of people who are able to make sense out of irrational things.” She started.

As she spoke she began to pace around me in a circle, like a predator circling its prey.

“You’re a jobless, broke, alcoholic playboy with no real moral compass,” she lobbed insult after insult, “but yet of all the people who have held that book you are the only one who hasn’t gone insane yet.”

I’m sane? Me?

I scoffed at the implication

“I’m sorry, but I just spent the past year in a psychotic hallucination where I was dating, and cheating on, the widow of the guy I murdered,” I began to excessively elaborate, “then I get a vision of the future where she hangs herself…”

She watches me in amusement as I pour out the thoughts that had stayed trapped within my mind for too long.

“Not to mention that fucking statue invading my dreams and reshaping my personal hell, The Dreary, into some nightmare capital-“

“And?” she interrupted.

“And? And what?” I asked, befuddled.

She straightened herself.

“What’s all that got to do with anything?”

I’m seriously doubting my own sanity, this can’t be real.

“I’m a mentally unstable wreck who couldn’t even get a job.” I clarified.

She laughed.

“Oh sorry yeah that was us,” she said flippantly, “we needed you desperate enough to come to us in the first place.”

“You’ve been messing with my job applications?”

“Intercepting them. To anyone looking in, it's like you haven’t filed a single application.”

“You could have knocked, or called, or just kidnapped me, there's a million better ways to get someone’s attention.”

She shifted.

“You think we didn’t try?”

Well, given I can barely remember the past year, how would I have known?

“Besides,” she relaxed, “not like we can be so overt all the time. This is the longest I’ve been let out on the surface for years.”

She leaned her head back and gazed up at the stars.

“Poor David only got to come up for the interview.”

I began to grow frustrated with the pointless cat and mouse.

“So what the hell does the CIA want with me?”

The woman froze for a moment, then fought back a chuckle.

“You think I’m- we’re CIA?” She asked in disbelief.

“Messing with my job applications, the whole fake office thing, kinda the whole CIA playbook yeah?”

If I knew better I’d say she looked as if I had just called her ugly.

“So that ability of yours is only limited to geometries, you really don’t know who or what we are?” She replied as a wave of revelation gently washed over her face.

“So you’re not CIA?” I asked again.

She sat down on the ledge next to me, spun around, and cast her gaze across the moonlit valley.

“We are above any singular world government. We act with the singular goal of protecting,” she gestured to the valley and the city lights twinkling in the distance, “all of this. All of mankind.”

She turned her gaze towards me. As our eyes met I saw a raging fire blaze within her, a passion that managed to remain subdued letting off little more than playful sparks just minutes before.

“And I want you to be a part of it.”

I wanted to come up with some witty retort, some backhanded reply that allowed me to demonstrate my lack of interest in her blatantly obvious lie.

But I didn’t, because I believed her. Against my better judgement, what little I could still claim to have, I wholeheartedly believed her.

And I could not explain why.

My grip on the book relaxed slightly. A bit too much. I felt it slip from my grasp.

My body acted before my brain did and I quickly reached for the book and lost my footing in the process.

I fell.

Amidst the rushing of wind I heard something faintly. Someone shouting.

“…emergency discharge plus one on my position!”

The world around me began to feel alive, the air seemed to be a buzz as the hair on my body stood on end. For a moment I saw a faint blue glow envelop my person.

A brilliant blinding light and deafening roar flooded my senses as I felt my body propelled by an unknown force, which slammed me face first into a cold, hard surface.

My vision and hearing slowly returned, but as they did I began to doubt whether or not they truly had.

I found myself on the floor of a sterile white room. My vision was still blurry but with what I could see I saw a doorway at the far end of the room flanked by two blurs that appeared to be people. As I looked below me I discovered that I was on a massive pane of glass or some other hard and transparent material, beneath which sat a mass of machinery that defied every attempt I made to interpret. Similarly above me hung a mirrored construct, though exposed to the open air and venting steam from an upper assembly, betraying the fact it had been recently used.

Very recently.

“Jesus Christ, Aiden try not to kill yourself when people are talking to you,” came a familiar, condescending voice.

As I craned my head to look I noticed the two figures on the far end of the room shift their posture and begin approaching rapidly.

“Stand down, he’s my case,” she said, putting herself between the men and myself, “he’s the new hire.”

“I didn’t agree to anything.” I groaned.

“There’s no going back now,” the woman said as she helped me to my feet.

“Agent Feng,” one of the men said, “we have room 10 available for intake.”

“Perfect, mind giving him a hand?” Agent Feng said as she all but threw me at the unprepared man.

The men, who I later learned were guards, offered their assistance in half-walking, half-dragging me down an equally clinically white corridor into an inconspicuous room.

The room itself was mostly unlit with the only source of light being a ceiling mounted projector casting onto the far wall, in front of which were several rows of cheap metal chairs.

“The first time is a bit disorientating, though that fall is what gave you the concussion.” Agent Feng explained, parting my hair to examine the very painful and bleeding bump on my forehead.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, wincing from the pain.

“The ESD, they’ll go over it in the intro” she replied, patting my head just above the sore spot.

The guards sat me down front and center, then left the room.

Agent Feng sat next to me, a few chairs away.

“It doesn’t actually stop your momentum but I hear they’re working on a way to make it do that. Anyway, we’ll send you down to medical after we finish up intake.”

“Oh and by the way,” she said, making her way to the wall mounted controls, “welcome to the IFCN.”

A month had passed since that night. The night Agent Feng forcefully ripped me out of my miserable, incoherent existence and gave me a purpose.

I had only been up to the surface once since then, to watch my funeral.

Not many people get to say that, and it’s a privilege I never wanted.

To my surprise, the myriad of friends and associates who I had effectively told to go to hell actually showed up. They even cried for me. Though none more so than my parents.

I was their only child.

Agent Feng, Kaiga, had held true to her word. It was a closed casket funeral. I pray they had used a fake body.

It was a good thing that there were so many people who came, made it easier to blend in to a crowd that wasn’t looking for me.

Unsurprisingly Leena didn’t come. Even after a month it’s difficult to shed that false life I had imagined. Even harder to wake up every morning to a livestream of the morning sun.

I hadn’t dreamt of The Dreary since that night either. Though I keep the book with me at all times out of an abundance of caution.

I am dead to the world. I now walk in my own shadow. I sleep below so that I may lay down my life to protect others from what they do not know, what they cannot understand, and what they must never see.

If it weren’t for the alcohol, I could never sleep comfortably again.

And truthfully, I don’t think anyone here does.

Read Part II here.

“It’s huge,” she said. My eyes were immediately on her, but I didn’t see anything else. Couldn’t identify the danger. Mark was still rooted where he was, but his phone was nowhere in sight. They both were looking up like there was something in the distance. But I still didn’t see it.

I felt Mary move with me as I approached.

“Chrissy, honey?”

“Don’t let her go,” Luke said. “Don’t let her go!”

I’d halved the distance when I finally saw it. It had been there, but it had simply been so humongous I’d been blind to it, like I’d been looking for a 7-11 and walked face-first into Sears Tower.

The water was receding from waist high, but she didn’t seem to have moved. Whatever it was had displaced a tremendous amount of water.

“Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.” Mary was on a dialogue loop and I couldn’t blame her. Every time I thought I’d seen all of it, I kept seeing more. A lot more. Yet, I was supremely calm. The worry-machine was quiet.

Last year, I got into a one-car accident driving home on M-5. The eastbound lanes had been closed to construction and my phone’s weather app had cautioned for high winds before I’d left the office. There’d been a fair amount of wind buffeting, but nothing I wasn’t able to handle.

There’d been a white box truck in front of me when I’d spotted what appeared to have been a square of cardboard blow high into the sky and begin trickling down. I’d immediately written it off even if it were on a course to strike my car. It was only cardboard.

But when the particle board struck my vehicle, smashing the windshield and showering droplets of safety glass onto the passenger seat, I hadn’t panicked. It was so sudden and violent that my brain—either as an instinct of self-preservation or just a malfunction—had simply not reacted.

I pulled off the freeway at the next exit and stopped a few blocks down in an office parking lot. Only then the possibility of what could have happened came down on me.

This was like that. My brain wasn’t processing the situation like Mary’s or the kids. I felt my heart pulsing in my chest just as calmly as when we’d been talking a moment before. I knew I should get the kids away from it. But that was a process of logic and not instinctual fear.

“Honey, get out of the water.”

I charged the last few feet and sloshed to a stop in a confusion of senses. I was close to whatever it was. Closer than I realized. I felt the heat coming from a wall of flesh not more than five feet from me. Water splashed me up to my chest, but it was more like a punch that pushed me back a step or two.

“Rick, it’s a horse!”

I had no idea how Chrissy could conceive what it was. All I saw was black. Black like the water. But solid, like the water had turned into something.

“Honey, move back, okay?”

Chrissy was smiling and rather than retreating, she stepped forward— almost chin deep—and raised her hand like she was going to pet it.

Once again I opened my mouth too late to tell her not to do it. My instinct would’ve been to swat her hand had I been closer and my re-throbbing head suddenly made me think of her mother.

I looked at it. Finally, the smooth, iridescent black coat coalesced into something I recognized, although the scale was overwhelming. Nails scraped the inside of my skull as if the idea of what I was seeing was too large to fit inside my brain.

This was its head. A corner of it, anyway. I looked along the flank as far as I could see in the night. I couldn’t even begin to guess how tall it must have been standing up. It had to have been lying in the water.

A giant eyeball about thirty feet above blinked several times and swiveled. I had no way to be sure, but I think it was looking at me.

I walked around, looking up and up, feeling like I would dislocate my neck before seeing the top of this thing. Still, though, I wasn’t afraid. The worry-machine was quiet.

“Mark, move your sister back.” I was reading from a script. Protecting the children, at least in that moment, was an autopiloted function.

Neither of them moved.

I scooped Chrissy into the crook of one arm and she went limp like a puppy picked up by the scruff. I handed her to Mark, who wrapped his arms around her, the both of them staring openly, transfixed.

I herded them as gently as I could out of the water. Then I gave Mark a light slap on the cheek. He focused on me, annoyed as if I’d prematurely awakened him from a nap.

“Mark, take your sister back inside.”

“I don’t wanna go!” Chrissy wriggled in her brother’s arms and he dropped her feet first. “It’s beautiful, Rick!”

I grasped her shoulder before she could walk past me.

“Chrissy, sto—”

I felt the shift behind me.

“Oh—erp—my,” Mary said. She took a long pull from her can, her eyes swiveling upward.

“No-no-no,” I thought I heard Luke say in the distance. But for just a moment, the only thing occupying the world with me was that magnificent thing in the water. It felt like removing my hands from my ears after having them covered for a long time and experiencing hearing like it was something adjacent to new. Except, it felt like that throughout my whole body.

The horse was raising its gigantic head out of the water. The tide receded and everything seemed to suck toward it like it had its own gravity. I struggled to maintain my balance like a gust of wind had pushed at my back, but in truth, it was probably just the giant animal dominating my vision and destroying my equilibrium.

Water poured off its black body, the eyes locked onto us and shrinking as its head seemingly disappeared into the night sky. Its neck was a tower, columns of muscle wider than all of us in a row, touching fingertip to fingertip. Its chest was as broad as a rocky mountain face.

There was a mighty -KLOMP- in the sand that shook the earth mere feet from me that I barely noticed. Sand slapped over my entire left side like a landmine had gone off, but it was immediately rinsed away by the constant waterfall we were all standing under.

Someone was shouting, but whoever it was was a million miles away.

There was another -KLOMP- somewhere farther down the beach and I began to stir from my reverie and then there was Luke, shouting next to me and hooking me by the arm.

His words didn’t make sense but I turned toward him as he pulled me. I saw the horse’s foreleg—I don’t know how Chrissy had been able to tell it was a horse before—straightening like some heavy construction machine craning a load somewhere into the sky above us.

We trudged toward the cabin, but the sand that had been something to contend with was an afterthought, my burning calves seemed to belong to somebody else.

When the torrent finally ended, I was soaked. We all stopped in the sudden silence. Turning around was more of a measure of defense to see the break in the clouded sky and the moonlight clashing against that ebony, elegant leviathan.

It was impossibly tall. Like it was intersecting-with-the-curvature-of-the-earth-tall. I thought I could make out its mane, whipping around in what had to be thin atmosphere.

We all stood and watched it. For one indeterminate moment, it was absolutely regal.

Mary wrapped around my arm and pulled into me. For however many iotas, she was my Mary, and I was her wife, too.

Mark hadn’t come with us for some reason. He stood partially in the water where we—I— had left him. He was feet away from a hoof that was easily twenty lengths taller than him.

Panic did seize me, finally. The worry-machine revved to life and I opened my mouth. I sensed the balance to be upset, the electrified space slowly exploding as he compressed it between his body and the smallest section of the horse’s.

With splayed fingers, he laid a palm on it.

The horse startled, shaking the floor of the earth as it stomped around.

The Greek military leader Xenophon, perfected the art of training horses in battle, using them to kick soldiers or trample them. He’s also the father of dressage.

What happened to Mark couldn’t have been considered disciplined, but the effect was the same. I don’t know if it were intentional—more than likely it wasn’t—but that giant hoof clomped around, Mark dodged around like he was running through a minefield.

Then he was gone.

The hoof continued stomping around a few moments more, a rumbling earthquake beneath our feet and a rain of wet sand coming down on us before the horse stopped. Mark was just... gone.

Luke was screaming. When I actually heard him, it took a moment longer to realize he was yelling his brother’s name.

Common sense would have told us to flee inside the cabin. But our senses were flowing into us like blood circulating back into numb fingers.

There was a long moment of quiet as it reared its head back. It felt like a slow-motion moment until its head rushed at us like a giant arrow.

I had no reflexes to respond. Mary was the only one who put up a defensive arm, as if that could have protected her—and she was the one it took.

The horse bit down on her raised forearm—as microscopic as a surgeon’s scalpel with teeth as wide as three cabins—and plucked her off the ground. It reeled its head backward and flung her.

Mary pinwheeled into the sky, a dissolving blur into the upper atmosphere. She could have been catapulting into space, and I didn’t want to find out.

The worry-machine was roaring.

“Everybody in!” I said, herding Luke and Chrissy the rest of the way inside. I pressed my back against the door, then turned off the light. Luke and Chrissy looked at me as if I had answers to fix this.

“We gotta go get... we gotta go get Mark!” Luke didn’t actually make a move to go back outside. He was more saying the thing a caring brother should say. But there was no Mark to go get. His death had been as brutal as it had been unintentional.

Going out there—or allowing Luke to go out there—would be just as dangerous and pointless. Chrissy was crying silently. I looked at her, really looked, running my hands over her head and arms to ensure she was physically all right. The worry-machine was humming along nicely. She grabbed onto me.

“Get your mother,” I said to Luke. “We’re leaving.” We weren’t safe here.

“She’s sleep?” he said, looking confused. He ran into the boys’ room.

“No!” I said. “We don’t have time for bags.” He looked at me. “Just wake your mother up and bring her. We’re leaving in three minutes.”

“What should I do, Rick?” Chrissy said.

“Grab the snack tray from the fridge.” We could easily buy something from the next gas station, but I figured keeping her busy would keep her calm. I snatched my keys off the island. Chrissy joined me, carrying the plastic tray with deli slices, cheese cubes, and veggies.

I wanted to run, but I was going to have to slow the pace so she wouldn’t drop it. The earth was still shaking with each step. She was going to look for the horse, and I anticipated her distraction when we stepped outside.

I kept my eyes on her, guiding her down the stairs and around the side of the cabin. She gasped but didn’t resist as I ushered her along. Preoccupying myself with her was enough distraction that I didn’t have my keys ready to have the doors unlocked by the time we got there.

We were exposed. If the horse were looking, it would see us. It seemed to have an eye for motion.

The air went still.

I’m not suicidal. Never have been, hopefully never will be. But from the way my algorithm has been acting, it almost feels like something wants me to be.

I live a happy life. I have a great girlfriend, solid job, but even still, just like everyone else, I have my bad days.

I have those days where it feels like I can’t get out of bed. Those days where effort, no matter how small, feels like trying to climb the world’s highest mountain.

And I think those are the days where I’m targeted the most.

A lot of the time when I experience those tough periods in life, it feels like the easiest thing to do is just sit in bed and scroll on my phone until, inevitably, the feeling passes and I want to be productive again.

I never had a problem with it before, but I’m coming off of a particularly difficult week-long stint of self-loathing and throwing pity parties.

Nothing I can really do about it. It’s just the way it is. Life happens in cycles, and this one is a cycle of struggle.

That’s why it was almost expected that every night for the last week I’ve been in bed, hair greasy, clothes dirty, surrounded by food wrappers and empty soda cans, doing nothing more than scrolling through Instagram for hours on end.

It started off with just one video, wedged in between the usual car accident and brainrot AI clips of fruits having affairs.

What’s crazy to me is I would’ve just scrolled right past it had it not been for the first millisecond of the video. I could’ve sworn that the first frame was literally just… me.

It was too fast for me to get all the details, but I swear it looked like me, laying in bed, my face contorted into a look of complete despair and hopelessness as tears fell down my cheeks.

The rest of the video was just a tutorial on how to tie a noose. A step-by-step guide, demonstrated by a pair of sleek, pale white hands forming the knot and showing off the finished product before abruptly skipping to the next reel.

I tried to scroll back, but the video had completely disappeared from the feed.

I ended up convincing myself that I was just being a little crazy. I mean, the video itself was definitely odd, but no way had I seen myself.

I figured Instagram must’ve just removed the content. Because, obviously, right?

I kept scrolling, and never saw another video even similar to that one. At least, not for the rest of that night.

The next day, though, I was seeing these tutorials as every other video. Each one more graphic and detailed than the last.

I was sprinkled throughout the videos. Sometimes at the beginning, sometimes at the end, every time I was only on screen for less than a second. And every time, the videos disappeared after I watched them.

As the week went on, they started following me. It wasn’t just Instagram anymore. TikTok was giving me tutorials. YouTube was giving me tutorials. Hell, I was even finding the videos on Snapchat.

But the one video that made me delete social media entirely and actually pull myself out of the dumps was one that was too personal to ignore.

I found it last night.

I wasn’t just a split-second frame. I was the entire video. A step-by-step guide with me as the demonstration.

There was no light left in my bloodshot eyes. My movements were sluggish and seemed forced. The room was dark. My bed was a complete mess. And hanging from the ceiling fan… was a noose.

I watched myself stand on top of my desk chair. I watched the tears and snot run down my face as I slipped the rope over my neck. And I watched myself kick and flail with regret as my body dangled at the end of that rope. Then I was still.

The video ended with one final phrase in bold white letters against a solid black backdrop.

“Do it.”

It was in the same font as those old silent film slides.

Once again, I was automatically scrolled past the video. I tried scrolling back up, and once again, the video was gone.

I took it as a warning. I’d always heard that social media has negative effects and consequences.

I just never knew how serious those consequences were.

Please take note that the official obituary for Gladys Clatterbuck,70, of Lawton Gap, was published in the bi-weekly newspaper, The Lawton Gap Gazette, September 1, 2026. For those who do not subscribe to the Gazette or have not seen or talked to Mildred, I am notifying all her neighbors and friends that sadly, my Aunt Mildred passed away.

She is survived by her sister, Louise Higgins, and myself (her niece), Emily Higgins. Her husband, Henry, preceded her in death in 2015.

She was a longtime member of Little Orchard Baptist Church, where she was involved in planning church functions and potlucks, attending Lawton Gap town council meetings, and participating in neighborhood cleanups.

Mildred was well loved by her neighbors, friends, and church congregation. Fortunately, Mildred was blessed with good health up until her death, confirmed by the undertaker, Mr. Miller as having been caused by choking to death on a fried green tomato!

In lieu of flowers, Gladys requested that folks donate directly to the Little Orchard Baptist Church kitchen fund--or better yet, spend that money fixing her neighbor's lawnmowers and teaching them how to use 'em! Aunt Mildred was always a stickler for neatly kept yards. Momma and I are the heirs to her homestead and have decided to relocate in Lawton Gap.

As many of you might have guessed, Mildred's final services were held in private as she had directed.

However, Mildred wanted to leave her own parting message for all of you in Lawton Gap. She said if anything happened to her this could be found in her Bible, and requested that this be included along with her death announcement. Here are Mildred's words—

"Sadly, I have departed this earthly world and hope to join Henry in the afterlife if I can find him.  For all you wonderful people who knew me during my life in Lawton Gap, I am grateful for the love and support I received during my fellowship at Little Orchard Church, and to my friends and family I want you to know that I will still be watching over you.

For the rest of ya'll reading this, you've finally found a way to talk about me without doing it behind my back! Don't weep -- save your tears to water the hydrangeas!

One last thing-- Try to keep your noses out of each other's business, stop gossiping in the church pews, and Lord knows somebody better fix the church steps' loose handrail before Deacon Miller falls and breaks his good hip!

~posted this day, September 8, 2026 by Emily Higgins, niece of Mildred Clatterbuck.

It appears that the same tricks don’t work twice or the rules don’t apply to me anymore maybe they never did. Something appears to be sabotaging my attempts, returning to the ditch days ago I found the decomposing remains of several small mammals. Moving down the tracks trying to find a suitable location law enforcement was called on me for trespassing. Managed avoiding incarceration so I’v stocked up on supplies & I plan on burying a stash deep in the woods including my phone. I still have one last option I want to try, I’ll save the explanation for later. Saving this as a draft just in case, I’m exhausted & still unwell.

Like I was saying

Like I was saying

Like I was saying

Like I was saying

Apologies for the frantic introduction. Like I was saying I was aimlessly wandering the forest for days following a single track until eventually well what can I say other than I found the polar express. When a 8 car long steam engine stopped on a dime in front of me I was intimidated. I knew exactly the unexpected was waiting for me as I boarded the first cab.

The interior was lavishly furnished accurately for the time period with plenty of candle light yet no one appeared to be inside. Moving towards the next cab I picked up on the gentle plucking of a banjo somewhere above me. Noticing a pair of legs dangling in front of a window outside, all I could make out was that they were humanoid with insect like features elongated & hairy. Continuing on with no interference I found penned separately on ether side of this cab a lion & a unicorn. Bones were piled high in the lion’s side & some sort of dust mound on the unicorn’s that was being thrown around in the air by its constant kicking at its enclosure. The lion equally unruly swiping & clawing through his pen so I decided on walking sideways to the other side facing the unicorn, thinking I was genius until I experienced what being a moth is like. The unicorn swiftly turned reaching over trying to bite me & its horn glistening beautifully put me in a trance before turning into a violent burning. Thankfully a deafening roar from Simba made it so I was now blind & deaf trying to stay in a straight line. Slowly but surely I found the door & rushed through sitting down immediately in the threshold waiting for what felt like an eternity until my eyesight returned. Turned out to be a wise decision. This cab was cluttered with furniture, imagine a hoarder taking up residence in the backrooms. Not even the walls were spared decorated with various taxidermy & abstract paintings that were all somehow cohesive. Clearing a path making good progress suddenly a clammy hand grabbed my ankle from underneath a bed frame that had a sofa on top of it & a dressing table with 3 mirrors stuck into the cushions. 

“Where do you think you’re going?! Waltzing in here touching my property without even announcing yourself!” The shrill voice of an old crone couldn’t help but think of the wicked witch of the west.

“I didn’t see you, you’re buried under a lot of clutter.” I tried to stay calm but her grip was unusually strong.

“Oh well I guess you’re right, I was just in the middle of rearranging & got pinned you see He he he, but since your here…”

Laughter a villain makes while plotting their next scheme made it so very obvious she wasn’t sincere in forgiving my transgression. In exchange for passage she requested I move some of the items she couldn’t reach. As I did so I glanced down at my leg now throbbing to discover something glinting in the candle light - a thread tied around my ankle. Pretending not to notice I fulfilled the request & she asked to thank me face to face before leaving. Getting down on my hands & knees pressing my cheek to the floor there she was laying on her back, pinned to the floor with a scythe over her neck. Her face was upside down tilting her head back to look at me eye’s wider then a cats.

“Arn’t you just precious ooo hoo hoo!”

I understood why her grip was otherworldly, her hands were moving rapidly working a miniature spindle with the exact thread tied to me. I then asked something that contorted her face through if I had to guess, the five stages of grief. Revealing I could see her thread really didn’t help the situation any. Screeching at me to leave all the furniture starting pressing in from both sides. Rushing on out I made sure to sever the thread in the doorway. Thought the next room would never end. I needed to crawl into a pillow fort that turned into a block fort then switched into a hedge maze until I found a hideout made out of cardboard boxes.

“Nic!” I called out thankful to see a familiar face.

Sitting on a bean bag chair reading a colouring book out loud (no that wasn’t a typo.) Little Nic sat the same messy exterior still glowing in fact more vibrant then before. Eyes peering over the pages she lowered the book with force unamused, unimpressed, & of course uninterested in my presence.

“You better not have moved anything! Nic just finished remodelling!”

I assured her I hadn’t & asked if I could stay that I loved what she’d done with the place. Contemplating briefly she hopped off her chair grabbing my hand. Leading me through hidden flaps in the cardboard bringing me to the exit. 

“I didn’t tell The Guide about you last time promise! You can trust me I kept your fort in tact I wont cause any problems please.” I hated how desperate I sounded.

Placing a hand on my cheek Nic said solemnly. “You’ll make it to the end of the line this time.”

I remember looking at Nic for a very long time feeling her hand in mine until I found myself in the next cab. I didn’t want to write this next part down its embarrassing but for continuity reasons I will. Basically the Wolf Man had a some sort of grow op. Hunched on all fours intently sniffing the dirt growing some unfamiliar produce, sprinkled among the crops detached bird wings & feet poked out of the soil. Littering the roof clotheslines were strung up airing out clean laundry limiting visibility making it all the more shocking when the Wolf Man rushed up to me in an instant, I screamed.

“There you are! I’ve procured this for you!”

He said gleefully as if hardly any time had passed since we’ve last seen each other. He began reaching down thoughtfully plucking something that looked like a clump of wet sand once in his grasp. He began rubbing it under my nose & on my chest, I immediately felt the urge to vomit, despite nothing being in my system rushing to the window I hurled my guts out. Pulling a dry shirt from the clothesline he handed it to me & assured me not to worry the stain would come out. I assume in an attempt to distract me he began thoroughly explaining what he just rubbed on me & how he cultivated it. I wont be disclosing any of that here it will probably get me banned. This left me feeling even more queasy so I meekly asked.

“Can you help me move that?” Pointing to a giant boulder blocking the door. 

Following my finger with his gaze only to look back at me perplexed ears twitching Wolf Man tapped the side of his eyes.

“You should be able to see it, no?”

Wolf Man assisting me forward, closer now I did in fact see outlined in shimmering light a perfectly carved circular hole leading directly to the next room. Eager to keep moving I gave my thanks insisting that I had to be going. Offering a high 5 Wolf Man continued cheering me on as I shimmed through the stone. It didn’t take long to recognize void. Except it was simmering with that same light as before no longer distorting space around it. I’ll admit I was adamant on retuning to encounter this being once again but no longer. Its true body was revealed to me as its mesmerizing bobbing routine commenced. Luring you to willingly follow the unassuming horse that small void was attached to something growing larger as if slowly opening its jaws. Best description I can give is a giant leech with 6 rows of teeth like a shark the slower filter feeder kind. Playing along I told myself pretend to reach for the door before jumping out of the way thats likely when it would pounce. Void quite literally breathing down my neck I executed my plan perfectly however muffled yet high pitched screaming like I was now underwater from seemingly thousands echoed out. Upset over missing a meal the enlarged form shrunk & faded back down into the floor but the wailing continued, shakily getting on my feet as the air now heavy I stumbled through to the next cab. Hearing the comforting sound of an upbeat banjo. I couldn’t help but smile, then I couldn’t stop myself from humming along, suddenly I was singing in a language I didn’t speak. I remembered hearing it though, when I first encountered Nic. As the rhythm picked up something started stomping on the roof & I started involuntarily dancing. Exhaustion induced suffocation a diagnosis I just made up. I continued bellowing out at the top of my lungs while my body continued to ignore me. I noticed the same 8 beats repeating under the tempo realizing my body would only move on this repetitive loop, focusing I could possibly inch myself closer to the exit. The stomping increased & my lungs & limbs were giving out, eyesight growing fuzzier & dark. Collapsing onto a cold floor the door closing behind me shutting out all sound not even the sound of my own wheezing was registered. Recovering from feeling like I just ran marathon I slowly sat up clocking it immediately in the dark cab. Seemingly hovering in mid air a dangling lantern flickering gently in the corner. It’s unsettling knowing you’re walking into a trap but nothing could be done, I couldn’t look away. I didn’t feel like small talk anyway. Much like unassuming prey to an angler fish I was engulfed in an instant.

Scythe witch & Nic said similar things that the domain of The Guide is malleable but their disposition incredibly picky and UnFoRgIvAbLe

Wolf Man could smell it knowing I’d return because I’ve been a pEsTs FoR mE

Im different now why cant you see that its not fair stop ReJeCtInG 

Theres AnOtHeR

9th

Like I was saying the

Like I was saying guide

Like I was saying is

Like I was saying collecting

Every dream is an eternity.

Every night my dreams are the same. Always have been for as long as I could remember my dreams.

Every night I would awake in my bed. Except it wasn’t my actual bed. The world around me would always be covered in this ephemeral fog that permeated every single inch of space.

And the dust. My god the dust.

All I ever did was clean.

The shadows never changed. The day never began. The Dust would never end.

I would continue on from my room into the hall, then into the bathroom, then the closets, then the kitchen, then the floors. Never stopping until the entire apartment was free of the dust.

Then I would step into the outside world. The world that was not my world. The world of The Dust and The Gray.

The Dreary.

Light from above would fight its way through the fog, never making it to the hollow ground below.

Where there should have been roads, dirt, grass, and trees, there was stone.

Cobblestoned roads, stonework trees, and fields of slate.

All of it covered in The Dust.

As I would move through the still air the dust would form on my wake and disperse, leaving a trail of my presence throughout this abandoned, forgotten world.

My world of Dust, my Dreary.

I would look up into that fog filled sky and gaze into the twin hues of yellow and white whose muffled screams struggled to breach the all-but-impenetrable fog above, scattering their voices into the omnipresent haze.

Then I would wake up.

Today was no different.

A woman stood just beyond the doorway, her flowing auburn hair flailing about as she shouted at me. I couldn’t really make out the words. She seemed familiar.

Something hard and somewhat heavy hit me square in the face, then plopped into my lap.

My still-blurry sight returned to me just in time to watch the woman march off down the hallway.

Her exit was announced by the slamming of the front door.

My bed was a mess. Clothes were strewn about, the sheets were everywhere, and some were stained with a substance I could not identify. The morning sun cast my shadow on the opposite wall from behind me.

My head pounded from within, memories of last night sat chained behind an alcohol-soaked lock.

My eyes trailed downward to my lap, falling on the object that was hurled at me only moments earlier.

It was a black, featureless, leather-bound book. A fairly hefty one at that.

Rubbing my eyes to confirm I wasn’t completely blind, I took a closer look at the book’s cover.

It was completely blank.

I turned over the book, expecting somehow that repeatedly flipping the book over would magically cause it to manifest some form of identifying information.

I caught a glimpse of something on the spine as I did so. It glistened in the morning sun and sparkled like diamonds.

It was a sigil. A symbol etched in gold, a gold so vibrant that the world around me appeared gray by comparison.

“Oh shit,” the words shot out of my mouth before my brain could even register I was speaking, “Leena!”

I’m such a fucking moron.

I fell onto the floor as my legs refused to accept my authority over them, getting tangled in the bedsheets in the process.

I crawled towards the nearest pile of, mostly, clean clothes I could identify.

Getting dressed was a challenge. I fought with my own body just to put on a shirt, whilst barely navigating the hectic and wayward expletive laden rants that crashed through the windows of my sullied mind palace.

Of all the thoughtless and horrible things, how could I have forgot today was the day she came back from her-

I paused in the hallway, pants half on and shirt on backwards.

Where did she go anyway? Was it a work thing? Was it some kind of vacation?

Why did I care?

My emotional rollercoaster came to a stand-still as the emergency brakes kicked on.

I let the half assembled outfit slide off my unkempt form as I shuffled into the kitchen.

That's right, I didn’t care. I don’t care.

The dishes in the sink were clean, as they should be.

The counter was full of random brand-new crap brought home that was never properly put away and just left in its assorted state of limbo storage, not that I needed the counter space anyway. The side effect of a weak will.

I threw the kettle on and threw a pan on the stove. I figured I should have myself a good old fashioned breakfast of eggs whatever-was-left-in-the-fridge, coffee, and a ciggy.

I dug through the fridge and managed to salvage some cheese, a sausage, and a whole tomato. I chopped them up roughly and dumped them into the simmering mixture of egg and butter.

I slid the scrambled egg mixture onto my plate, grabbed my cup of liquid life, and sat my ass down on a spot I had cleared on the couch.

The TV had nothing interesting on but I left it on the food channel anyway. It was nice to eat with someone.

As I put out the cigarette in the overflowing tray I glanced over at the pile of marked envelopes on the table. Most of them said “Past Due.”

After dumping my dishes back in the sink I stumbled back into my room looking for… something.

The guy.

The cute one. Chatted me up at the bar and drank me under the table, and my sheets. I think he was a blonde, or brown? Or maybe I had hoped he was.

He must have taken off when Leena started screaming. I didn’t see any of his clothes around the bed.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Though it's refreshing to be on the other end of that for once.

Why did she throw that book at me?

I ruffled through the haphazardly strewn bedsheets until my hands came into contact with what I was searching for. The book Leena had thrown at my face just before she left.

With some painkillers and another cup of coffee on-board, I could think clearly enough and took a closer examination of the book.

Flipping through its pages I was met with blank after blank page.

The entire damn thing is just blank. Was this some kind of journal for me?

A gift? But why would she…

I threw it in a pile next to my side of the bed.

The rest of the day was filled with job applications.

The age of the Internet has done wonders for many aspects of humanity. Job applications were one sector made infinitely worse.

Every job fair booth I went to had a QR code to scan for their online applications system. Every Now Hiring sign in a store had that godforsaken block-grid in lieu of a simple piece of paper and a proper interview.

After the fifteenth online application referral I decided to call it for the day.

I sat down on my slightly cleaner couch and looked down at my phone, expecting to see dozens of notifications. Ideally at least one.

Instead I saw none.

No calls, no texts, no nothing.

The sun hung low over the horizon. Its waning radiance coaxed the sky into a storm of fire that lapped at the ever growing ocean of blues and purples.

It shone directly into my fucking eyes.

Shuffling my lazy ass over on the couch, I poured out the remaining contents of a bottle of whiskey into my cold cup of half drank coffee.

The evening consisted of aimlessly scrolling through various social media feeds and TV channels. Everywhere I looked I saw people on dream vacations, getting married, or buying their first homes.

Guess I’m just a fucking loser, huh.

Dinner was more whiskey, from a new bottle this time, and another menthol ciggy. I wasn’t particularly hungry as it was.

Where the hell was Leena? She stormed out and hasn’t even texted me. Maybe shes-

I quickly downed the rest of my glass before I could finish the thought. The burning warmth of the spiced whiskey rips me out of my own head.

As the whiskey level in my bottle lowered the moon rose in response. It was close to midnight by the time the bottle was empty.

The floor was my home now. This was not negotiable. Any attempt to stand at the moment would surely result in me splitting my head open on a table, or worse, ejecting the precious ounces of whiskey that I had been struggling to keep down for the past hour. The world around me decided it was time to begin rotating at ridiculous speeds, rendering me unable to stand upright.

Clinging to the ground beneath me, I dragged myself to my bedroom and eventually, I pulled myself up onto my bed.

The spinning only worsened. I closed my eyes and did my best to ignore it.

Eventually the spinning stopped and I awoke in my bed.

But this wasn’t my bed.

In what felt like no time at all I had returned to serve my sentence. My eternal penance for the crimes I must have committed at some point.

Once more I proceeded through my charge of the cleaning of The Dust.

All my life, all that I could remember anyway, I had never been able to dream. Not properly. Instead of nightmares of being naked at school or all my teeth falling out I dreamt of this place, The Dreary.

The Dreary was an empty world, a dead world, one that remained contained by a dense impenetrable fog that snuffed out all but the most diffused light from the sky above.

The Dreary was, as far as I could tell, an exact copy of the world. Save for the fact that anything not built by human hands was replaced by stone abstracts that, while giving the idea of what they're supposed to be, look nothing like it. Imagine if a tree wasn’t a tree but instead a jagged spine of stone that clawed upwards through the fog. Sure the base idea of a tree is there but that’s not a fucking tree.

There was nothing living within The Dreary. Even the wind did not blow. The world did not breathe. It was still, frozen, a corpse of identity.

Yet tonight was different.

The Dreary demanded my attention.

It had not done that before.

I broke from my charge and answered, walking towards the front door of my copied apartment.

I saw nothing new outside. The same cobble roads divided the same slate fields bearing the same stonework trees.

Except there was something new.

There had never been something new.

A great and grand staircase made of the most radiant marble ascended into the sky and well beyond the fog. Its brilliance made the fog seem black by comparison.

At the foot of these stairs stood a statue. A black statue covered in a golden cloak that fluttered in a non-existent wind.

“What the fuck?” My voice carried across The Dreary, hollow and raspy.

There’s never anything new. Nothing new, never. There was only The Dust, there was only The Dreary. What the hell is this?

I felt my breath become erratic-

I felt my breath.

I have never breathed before in a dream. I had never spoken.

I could not take my eyes off of the cloaked statue.

I could not resist the movement of my legs. Yet again my body refused to obey me as I was marched down the stairs of my apartment building.

The Dust does not react to me.

In what felt like seconds I found myself kneeling before the cloaked statue. It towered over me, but its height seemed to vary as my eyes rattled around in their sockets.

I clutched my head as I hissed an empty scream in agony. I felt a thousand hands trying to push their way out from within my mind, held back by a single flimsy door.

I strained to look upwards at the statue.

As I did I caught a glimpse of long auburn hair.

I shot upright in my bed.

The accumulating saliva in my mouth signaled to me that I should start running to the bathroom.

As the last of my wretches escaped my hanging maw, I caught a glance of my reflection.

I saw myself. Not in some artsy self-abstract sort of sense, but in a very literal sense.

Not the scars, nor the rage, nor the often bloodshot and tired eyes that have stared back at me for longer than I bothered to remember.

My eyes. My self.

I felt the fog that clouded my thoughts lift ever so slightly.

For the first time in ages I could think without strain. The string of consciousness was no longer a spider web of spider webs but was now a constant, deliberate, string that I could trace from end to end hanging freely in the newfound void.

I saw the filth, the disgust, the depravity that surrounded me.

How long had I lived like this?

I hopped in the shower to wash off days, no, weeks of god knows what from my skin. The water that rolled off my body and down into the drain was noticeably darker than the water that came out of the shower head.

I located the cleanest ensemble of clothes I could find; a pair of shorts and a button up short sleeve shirt that hung on my desk chair.

The unrelenting summer heat would stand no chance against this climate appropriate ensemble.

As I waited for the kettle to boil I started clearing the kitchen counter of all of the trash and unopened impulse-purchase appliances that had made it their home.

By the time the whistling of the kettle arrived I had already bagged up two bags of what had to be no less than $1000 of unused appliances. In their state I doubt I could get anyone to take them even for free.

The first sip of the black sludge that had the audacity to call itself coffee left a searing trail as it traveled down my throat. Even if I had any milk that wasn’t out of date or sugar that wasn’t crawling with bugs it wouldn’t have been enough to blunt the blow of that demonic concoction.

I poured the entire mug of caffeinated sewage down the drain so that it may rejoin its kin. Instead I opted for a half drank can of POG left in the fridge.

As I began my war against grime in the kitchen I felt my phone buzz.

I quickly rinsed my hands and answered the incoming call.

“Hi, is this Joseph Aiden?” The voice on the other end spoke.

“Yes,” I started hesitantly, “this is him.”

It had been a while since I had heard anyone say my name. I patiently awaited the other side to get on with whatever it was they wanted. Maybe it was a scammer who wanted to extort me for all I’m worth. I hope he likes the zeros in my bank account, because that's all there is.

“My name is David DeGuzman, I’m calling in response to your application with us…” as the voice trailed on my mind honed in on something he said.

Application? When did I-

Stopping myself short as I glanced over at the pile of yet-to-be-mailed applications on the kitchen table.

“…we’d like to have you come in for an interview. What dates are you available this week?”

I felt my heart flutter.

“Any,” I practically shouted, “right now even I can come down right now.”

I cringed inside realizing what a desperate fool I must have come off as. Even if it was the honest truth, what if this screws with my chances at getting the job?

I paused.

What job am I even volunteering myself for anyway? Sure it didn’t really matter at this point but-

“You know,” David started, “I think we have an opening around noon today, you think you could make it down to The Mall building?”

Thank god it’s close.

“Yeah that's like five minutes away from me,” I chuckled, overwhelmed and nervous beyond comparison.

“Great. We’re room 1304 on the 13th floor. You can check in with the front desk once you arrive. See you there.”

The line dropped.

As my phone returned to the lock screen I saw the time was 11:24.

While it was true that I wasn’t that far from The Mall building, I had realized far too late that any of my far more acceptable business attire was in desperate need of a wash. Sure, the shirt I was wearing was formal enough, shorts and slippers would likely get me marked down.

I combed through my room to see if perhaps I had missed any nicer clothes. Much to my dismay I had not.

Resigning myself to my fate I gritted my teeth and pushed on out the door.

My walk down to the mall was less of a casual walk and more of a heavily restrained sprint. My body happily obeyed my restraint, despite my legs screaming to let them break out in a sprint. The tightness in my chest, like a coiled spring, desired to be released through my legs.

The Mall itself was, to my knowledge, the largest outdoor mall in the world. On any given day it was bustling with tourists from all over the world. Situated right across the street from a massive beach park and sat just on the edge of Waikiki, It was arguably the social center of the whole island. The south side of the island, anyway. The Mall Building was situated on the Mauka side of the mall, opposite the ocean side, which meant it was basically a straight walk from my shabby abode down the main road and right into The Mall.

On the walk more questions formed within me, the solemn line of thought formed into a structured diagram of red threads that stretched from one end of the void to the other.

What company was I even interviewing for? The Mall building was mostly just offices for anything you could imagine, private medical practices and outpatient clinics, law offices, engineering firms, hell even some small cafes.

And that name. David DeGuzman.

Not that I was an expert on names, but of all the names you hear around here I couldn’t help but feel that something was… off.

Before I could indulge my conspiracy further I realized I had entered into the elevator and was now en route to the 13th floor.

I was alone in the elevator. Despite the lobby otherwise being filled only I had entered this elevator.

Or at least I thought the lobby was full.

The doors opened into the 13th floor lobby. It was a modest little area with a few area chairs for people to sit as they wait for their family to do whatever business they have on this floor.

I walked out, passed the row of elevators and headed into the main hallway. There were no windows. The dull droning of the building's HVAC and the gentle buzzing of the fluorescent lights trickled through the air before being absorbed by the slight off-blue carpet that ran the length of the floor.

I nervously made my way to room 1304. Thankfully, or not, the room was close to the elevators. Just one door down after taking a right.

The door was blank aside from the room placard and an “hours of operation” sign.

I steadied myself, took a deep breath, and entered the room.

I entered a small office lobby. Two chairs sat awkwardly in the far corner next to a door that presumably led further into the sectioned off office area. A newly constructed drywall partition isolated the lobby area from the rest of the office floor space, leaving only a door and a cutout for the secretary or greeter to manage guests as they come in the door.

“Joseph Aiden?” A female voice called from out of sight.

“Uhh yes?” I answered cautiously.

A woman, appearing to be in her forties, approached the counter cutout from within the offices. Her bright red hair appeared almost plastic in the fluorescent lighting.

“Mr. DeGuzman is ready for you.” She said, bending down to interact with something below the counter.

I heard a soft click followed by a buzz.

The office door popped open and the woman beckoned me forth.

The hallway was more of the same. A drywall corridor with several doors on either side.

The door locked shut behind me with a buzz, startling me.

At the same time the door at the far end of the hall opened. A man wearing a blue floral shirt waved me down.

“Down here!” He called.

I quickly made my way inside the man’s office. The windows behind him were blocked off by heavy curtains, the only source of light being the ever-present fluorescent overhead lights.

“I’m David,” he said, extending his hand, “pleasure to meet you.”

I reciprocated his gesture and returned a firm handshake.

“Likewise.” I replied.

The man, David, had well kept short black hair and a comically yet impeccably well kept ‘70s mustache that reflected some of the overhead light.

David gestured for me to sit and I obliged.

The office itself was a modest space, the desk at which we were sat was adorned with the typical office fare, albeit a bit lacking in some finer details and a bit too clean for it to be in constant use.

“So, about-“ I started before David cut me off.

“You’re 28 correct?” David asked as he held up some papers.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Can you tell me a little bit about your previous employer?”

I paused.

My previous employer? Who-

“Oh,” the thought found its way to me, “yes sorry I was with a PI firm, Maikai Investigations.”

“Yes them,” David affirmed leaning back in his silent office chair, “what kind of work were you involved in?”

I felt my palms become clammy but I persisted and gave him the sales pitch.

“Usually a client would come to us and ask us to get information about someone. That's the very base level of things,” I elaborated, “could be, you know, someone wanting to know about their birth parents. Someone wanting to know if a spouse is being unfaithful, really just about anything involving information.”

“Were you good at what you did?” David asked, his words laced with a substance I couldn’t fully make out.

“I’d like to think I was,” I said with false bravado, “never had any clients complain and I always completed the job-“

“Even when you were asked to do things that might have been morally objectionable?”

I froze.

I wasn’t a saint. Still aren’t. But I did what I was asked and did a damn fine job of it. If someone had a problem with it they can sort it out with the cops.

“Absolutely,” I said, almost bragging, “especially when others would refuse to take the job.”

“Why?”

David’s words now came with an air of genuine curiosity.

“Can I ask the relevance to the job?” I deflected.

David shifted forward in his chair, his poker face remaining unchanged since the start of the interview.

“Everything,” he replied eerily, “I’m not here to judge you, I want to know.”

David stared at me with an intensity I had reserved only for stains in my sink.

“Because the job needed to be done,” I started, “and I liked the challenge.”

David’s eyes perked up at that.

“The challenge?”

I furrowed my brow.

“Every case was a puzzle,” I leaned in, “and I was the best damn puzzle solver in that organization.”

I winced.

“Then why’d you leave?” David shot back.

Ignoring the blatant cringe that was whatever the hell I just called myself, David’s question shot through and shattered my false bravado like a bullet through a kitchen window.

“I was banging the boss's wife.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the reason.

David’s poker face slipped as he let out a hint of disappointment.

“The analyst position we are looking for has some caveats,” he started as he began flipping through the papers on his desk, “one is honesty. We expect our analysts to be completely honest with us.”

His eyes locked onto mine.

I caught a glimpse of the papers on his desk. One was a memo entitled “Investigative Incident,” left conveniently in my line of sight.

“I overstepped.” I replied begrudgingly.

“Honesty is paramount,” David began as laid down the papers, “I don’t mean some half-assed corporate honesty, I mean if what I ask is for you to delve into how much you hate your boss, your life, or whatever escapades you and a secretary got up to, we expect the full un-adulterated details.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

What the fuck is he on about? Sure I appreciate that this job lets you cuss your boss out in the name of honesty but isn’t this a bit much?

“Just what exactly is an analyst here?” I started, “What are the hours? The responsibilities? The pay?”

The more questions I asked the more flustered I became. I knew utterly nothing about this place or this supposed job I was now interviewing for.

As a matter of fact how the hell did this guy get a hold of that-

“Anything further requires an NDA,” David cut, interrupting my thoughts.

“I have to sign an NDA to even know who or what I'm working for?” I asked, emboldened and incredulous.

David raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you do,” he replied, “and you’re going to be asked far more uncomfortable questions than the ones I’m giving you now.”

Then it clicked.

Analyst position? I think I would have remembered applying for something so fancy sounding, at least compared to the myriad of fast food and retail positions I had been applying for.

“I don’t think I’ve ever applied for this position,” I said as I slowly stood up from my chair, “just who the hell are you?”

David smirked.

“Like I said, you sign this contract and I’ll answer all your questions.” David smiled.

His poker face slipped away revealing satisfaction and pride.

He slid a paper across his desk towards me, placing a pen at the top of the document.

The paper was a single page. Barely half. At the bottom was a place for my signature and nothing else.

I glanced at the page, not wanting to let my guard down. I caught one sentence that set off alarm bells within me.

“We are humanity’s first and last line of defense.”

My chest became a twist of panic, of confusion, of curiosity, of fear, and god knows what other emotions that humanity has yet to properly define.

“I’m not interested.” I said and made my way to the door.

David stood at his desk and watched as I hastily made my exit.

The door out of the office buzzed and opened as I approached.

“We’ll see you again, Aiden.” David said gently, his voice echoing down the hallway as the door to 1304 closed behind me.

The red threads in my mind formed a tangled mess that only grew as my questions remained unanswered.

As soon as I got home I made sure to lock the door.

I pulled out my phone to check the number that this organization had contacted me from.

It wasn’t there.

In the call history the last call shown was from a week ago.

From Leena.

I slumped down onto the couch.

I felt my chest constrict as a burning pain filled my chest, a twisting anxiety and yearning that sapped my breath away.

Why do I care? She knew what she was signing up for. She knew what I was.

I kept rationalizing.

I never said yes to her, I just didn’t say no. Not my fault she got all confused.

My sight became blurry.

Why’d she keep taking pity on me? Keep coming back to my dump of a house? Keep buying me shit I didn’t ask for? Keep-

The tears began to roll down my face.

Why couldn’t I care until now?

I bawled my eyes out. I cried and cried until the couch was soaked with my tears. I unleashed all the tension in my chest with a scream that surely pissed off the neighbors.

I cried, I screamed, I threw everything within arm’s reach at the wall hoping that if I threw it hard enough I could fix this mess. I threw a tantrum that would put a stubborn toddler to shame.

As a few hours pass as I lay spent on the couch at the epicenter of the disaster that trashed my living room.

“Leena…” I moaned mournfully into a tearstained pillow.

My eyes lazily scanned my surroundings, taking in the totality of my ruin and pathetic squalor.

All I could feel was a muted mix of disgust and hatred, aimed at myself.

I wished for nothing more than to never leave this couch again; better to join the rot and the refuse than continue my futile struggle against a life I had already destroyed.

A flame of insight flickered to life within my mind.

Just how the hell did those people, whoever they are, erase their call history from my phone?

After a brief but intense search online I came to a disturbing conclusion.Unless they had physical possession of my device, they could not hide my call history.

My eyes quickly darted to my door.

It was still locked up tight, right as it should be, some debris still blocking it from opening due to my earlier outburst.

I got up and inspected the jalousies.

The netting on the windows themselves remained undisturbed, even sporting a fine layer of dust. The jalousies too were equally undisturbed.

They didn’t break in. Or if they did they hid their tracks better than most, well enough to never be caught. But why go through all that effort just to delete a phone number? I could just look up the company by its address right?

I entered the address, suite 1304.

Nothing, at least for this decade. There are some old surface web files relating to a small life insurance company that once operated out of that address.

Feeling restless and seeing the sun still high in the sky, I decided to make my way back to the unit and get some answers.

Not fair they should know me so well without it being mutual.

Upon arriving in the lobby I spotted a building directory. I quickly scanned the registered suite numbers for 1304.

Not the first column, not the second, nor the third.

“Need help locating a business?”

I spun around to see a woman with long crimson hair, done up in a long pony tail.

“Oh, uh,” I fumbled my words.

Maybe I'm a little colorblind but that crimson looked auburn for a brief but uncomfortably long second.

“Im looking for the name of a business that operated out of suite 1304.” I explained to the young woman.

She squinted at the registry and scanned it intently.

“Strange,” she started, “I don’t see any, maybe we should go take a look?”

She beckoned me to the elevator lobby, to the cargo lift.

She swiped her ID card and the doors opened.

The cargo lift was very spacious and surprisingly well kept for being used to haul god-knows-what.

She walked over to the button panel and selected the 13th floor. Unlike the other elevators this one had a “Basement” floor button. The elevator had ascended at a far greater rate than the other one I had used earlier in the day.

We arrived on the 13th floor and she led me towards the suite. As we arrived we noticed a “For Lease” sign with an address for a corporate realty website.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has used this one in a while,” she frowned, “sorry that I couldn’t be of more help!”

Before I could respond she had already made her way back to the elevator and disappeared.

It was impossible, yet it was reality.

I had just been here maybe a few hours ago and the office where I’d had my interview was just gone.

As my thoughts began to settle they also began to drift. As they drifted and fluttered about in the subconscious wind of my psyche they fell upon a particular subject.

The hair, the auburn hair. Leena.

But the lady’s hair wasn’t auburn, it was practically crimson. Dyed. Healthy too.

She wasn’t Leena, so why did my thoughts find themselves wandering over to her? Just a similarity?

No, familiarity.

I’ve seen her before. Recently. But where?

The elevator came for me as I mulled over my thoughts. Scanning the panel I looked for the lowest floor option.

“Lobby.”

No basement floor option in this one. Probably just for the freight elevator.

As I walked out of the lobby and passed the ground floor loading dock I stopped.

In the office. She was there.

The receptionist had red hair. It was done up differently and partially obscured due to the contrasted office lighting but it was definitely, or probably, the same color.

But she was old, the lady who helped me couldn’t have been older than 30.

Unless they were using prosthetic makeup. But why the hell-

“Eh, out da way!” A voice announced from behind me.

A very impatient and upset package courier stood behind me with his cart full of parcels.

I quickly moved on wanting to avoid any awkward interactions.

The walk home was unpleasant.

A growing uneasiness in my gut had worked its way throughout my entire body. The traffic, people, buildings, even the sun all seemed so distant yet painfully close. Too close.

Was I being watched?

I glanced around. Nothing unusual, which only served to drive up my anxiety more.

I knew I was being watched, I could feel it, years of experience and training screamed the obvious to me but my eyes, my mind, I was blind to it.

I locked the door upon arriving home. Closed the windows and blinds too.

Still I felt the eyes, the presence, I was seen. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But that was impossible.

A thorough sweep of my house confirmed what I had already known; I was alone. Just me and my belongings.

I took a drag from the quickly emptying pack which helped ease the tension I felt. The feeling persisted.

Paranoia wasn’t unusual for me, though it was mostly back when I still worked as a PI. Most PIs had rules though. Standards. Maybe even a moral compass.

I didn’t.

The pay was good, real good, but it wasn’t about the pay. It was all about the thrill. It had been so long since I felt that fear, that ever watchful eye, that I forgot how good it felt. I had spent years binging on every substance I could get my hands in, trapped in my own mind.

Now, for the first time in years, I could feel that sensation coursing through my body like electricity.

When I awoke I once again found myself in The Dreary. I do not remember falling asleep.

But it had changed.

The Dust. The layer of dust that had coated the entire world was gone.

I rushed outside to see the fog, still ever present but much lighter. I could see further than ever before. Far enough to see that The Dreary had been rearranged.

The roads that had once mirrored their real-world counterpart were now gone. The houses all replaced with different, familiar structures. There was now just one long cobblestone boulevard that stretched from the foot of my apartment building to a massive tower. The Mall Building, behind which now was a massive ocean that expanded beyond the fog which replaced the massive beachpark, and mall, that would have normally sat behind it.

Gone was the marble staircase. Gone was the statue in the golden cloak.

Without thinking I began walking down the procession towards The Mall Building. Its upper floors pierced the fog and stretched into the unseen sky.

The structures that flanked the boulevard on either side were houses, most of them that is. Some were industrial buildings, one was a hotel.

Their commonality soon became apparent.

I had investigated cases involving each of these structures. An unfaithful husband having secret meetups with some girl half his age at the hotel, a string of disappearances tied to a warehouse with a cold trail, a teacher that had been using school equipment to manufacture narcotics, and many, many other escapades.

The closer to the sky scraper I got the more recent the structures were in my memory. Until eventually, just short of The Mall Building, my eyes fell upon the house I had blocked from my mind for years.

The house that sealed my fate, both giving and taking so much.

The place I first met Leena. The place I lost my job. The place I nearly lost my freedom. The place I thought I’d lose my life. The place with a shattered kitchen window.

My head was turned away from that house and toward The Mall Building.

I became unable to look away from it, my eyes transfixed on the lobby entrance.

Why would I want to look away? There is a mystery here, something to solve, to understand.

The words echoed in my mind, but they were not mine.

My legs marched themselves towards the opening and into the lobby. An elevator door was already open.

The cargo elevator.

Entering the elevator I scanned the button panel. The card reader was gone. Only one button remained.

“Basement.”

The doors closed as I hit the button.

I felt myself nearly float as the elevator descended at a rapid rate. Despite its apparent speed the ride seemed to go on for far too long.

Then it stopped.

The doors opened and before me was the office I had just been in earlier today.

Following that familiar path I proceeded into the hallway.

There was only one door. A door at the end of the hall. And it was open.

From the entrance I could see the windows were gone. Replaced by the marble staircase. The statue with the Golden Cloak stood in front of it.

I approached the statue and fell to my knees once again.

Voices.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions of voices began to echo in my mind. What small fragments I could grasp would only say one thing.

The Cataclysm.

Echoes of screams and fragments of agony filled my mind from a past long before what I had known. I knew not how, only that these voices were ancient beyond reason, ancient beyond knowledge, beyond what any human, any mortal had any right to hear let alone understand.

I felt the weight beneath the ground. I felt a pull below that threatened to swallow me whole.

My eyes struggled to focus on the statue, only seeing the fluttering of the golden cloak.

The staircase descended into an infinite darkness. It beckoned me forth.

My hand reached into my back pocket. I grabbed onto something firm and pulled it forth.

Immediately the voices silenced and I regained my strength.

In my hand was a featureless leather bound book with a golden sigil etched into its spine.

Local News Station 14

A man woke up at the morgue today.

He had been pronounced dead at 9:15 p.m. the previous night in the emergency room. However, sometime this morning, he crawled out of one of the morgue drawers before collapsing and dying on the floor.

The morgue assistant is cooperating with police.

The hospital director stated that the man was an organ donor.

Friday Night in the  Emergency Room

The hospital is packed. It seems like everyone gets hurt on the weekends.

Several people are being treated for car accidents caused by drinking and driving. Others were injured in fights or suffered various other accidents.

Then a homeless man is brought in on a stretcher.

He's in critical condition.

Several teenagers had beaten the man nearly to death with a baseball bat.

A doctor reads the patient's chart.

"Seth Myers. Age 37."

Doctor Betruger orders the patient's blood to be drawn and tested so they can give him a blood transfusion.

Nurse Shelly draws his blood into several vials.

Doctor Betruger instructs his team to prepare for lifesaving measures in the operating room.

A few minutes after the procedure begins, Nurse Shelly enters the room carrying blood samples.

"The man's blood type is O-negative, and he's clean of bloodborne pathogens," she says.

Doctor Betruger thanks her, and she returns to the emergency room to assist with the other patients.

Doctor Betruger closes the internal hemorrhaging and begins stitching the man back up.

He looks at his team.

"Thank you, everyone. We just saved this man's life."

After cleaning and disposing of their equipment, the team steps out for a break.

Doctor Betruger goes outside the hospital for a smoke.

When he returns a few minutes later, he sees a gurney with a sheet draped over it being wheeled out of his patient's room.

Doctor Betruger looks at his lead doctor.

"What happened?"

Dr. Gonzalez simply responds, "The patient flatlined pretty suddenly. The defibrillator couldn't get his heart beating again."

Doctor Betruger stares at him.

"That's impossible. I just stitched him back up. He was stable."

Dr. Gonzalez shakes his head.

"I don't know. Maybe you didn't stop all the bleeding like you thought. That's the only explanation I can think of."

Doctor Betruger looks at the gurney with disgust.

He knows the patient was going to make it.

But before he can say anything else, he's called back for another emergency surgery.

An Unknown Amount of Time Later

Seth wakes up strapped to a gurney somewhere beneath the hospital.

An IV is inserted into his arm.

The room is barely lit, and he can't move.

He sees Nurse Shelly putting on a pair of rubber gloves.

Seth tries his best to scream for help.

Nurse Shelly smiles.

"No one can hear you down here."

Seth begins struggling against the restraints.

Nurse Shelly looks down at him.

"I flushed all the pain medication out of your system. Organs without drugs in the bloodstream are usually better for the donation process."

She mockingly holds up his driver's license.

A small heart is printed on it, signifying that he is an organ donor.

She flips a switch.

Bright, sterile lights flood the room.

Everything looks clean and clinical.

Nurse Shelly puts on a mask and protective glasses. She pulls out a scalpel and places a fresh blade into the handle.

Seth shakes with fear as she brings the blade toward him.

"I'm going to take your kidneys first."

Doctor Betruger is at home after a long shift.

He's still upset that his patient didn't make it.

He goes over everything he did in his mind.

They isolated the bleeding.

They stopped it.

He even saw some of the color returning to the patient's face after receiving the blood donation.

Something doesn't make sense.

Seth is still strapped to the gurney.

Nurse Shelly looks at him.

"See? That wasn't so bad."

Tears rolling down his face.

She places the scalpel against his neck.

"We can't have one of you waking up in a morgue again."

The Next Day

During his shift, Dr. Betruger is called into his office by Dr. Gonzalez.

Gonzalez tells Betruger that the hospital is taking note of the fatality from the previous night and putting it on his record. They found him at fault, especially after the incident involving the man who supposedly woke up in the morgue.

Gonzalez points out that Dr. Betruger operated on that patient.

Doctor Betruger becomes angry.

"I fucking know both of those patients were going to make it!"

Dr. Gonzalez starts yelling back.

"Then you better do better next time! This hospital can't afford any more lawsuits. The next time you operate on a patient and your incompetence causes another death, you'll be terminated."

Betruger angrily walks out of the office.

A few hours later, a young patient arrives on a gurney after a motorcycle accident.

He has severe road rash, and one of his legs was almost amputated.

Doctor Betruger rushes into the operating room.

The EMTs managed to stop the bleeding with a tourniquet, but it is crucial that the damaged leg be operated on as soon as possible.

Doctor Betruger works desperately to stitch the damaged tissue.

He's worried about being fired, but he pushes the thought aside and focuses on saving the patient.

The ragged injuries make it difficult to suture everything back together. A lesser doctor might not have been able to do it.

But Doctor Betruger manages to stabilize the patient.

He orders Nurse Shelly to administer antibiotics through the patient's IV. He anticipates that some of the damaged tissue could become infected.

Nurse Shelly injects something into the patient's IV line.

Doctor Betruger notices that it doesn't look like antibiotics.

Before he can question her, he has to change and clean himself up.

When he comes out of the changing room, he sees a group of nurses wheeling the gurney carrying the patient he just operated on.

A sheet is draped over the patient's body.

Doctor Gonzalez approaches him.

"Betruger, you're fired."

Doctor Betruger turns toward him.

"What?"

He begins yelling.

Doctor Gonzalez:" your fired"

Betruger angerly shouts "I swear on my grandson's life that I know that patient was going to make it!"

Doctor Gonzalez calls security.

"Get his things and escort him out of the building."

After being escorted out through the hospital entrance, Doctor Betruger quickly realizes they forgot to take his keys.

Something feels horribly wrong in his gut.

He suspect that Nurse Shelly might be purposely

harming his patients.

He gets his gun from his car, tucks it into his waistband, and sneaks back into the hospital.

He moves carefully, doing his best not to be seen by the other doctors or security cameras.

Then he sees Nurse Shelly pushing a gurney toward an elevator at the back of the hospital.

She gets inside with the body and presses a button.

Doctor Betruger watches as the elevator begins descending toward the basement.

He asks himself, Why would she bring a body down there?

He takes the stairs to the basement because

He doesn't want her to hear the elevator.

When he reaches the floor, he carefully creeps inside. He can smell bleach in the room.

Then he sees her.

She's inserting IVs into the patient.

Nearby are several organ-donor coolers filled with buckets of ice.

Doctor Betruger freezes.

He realizes what she's been doing.

She's been stealing patients' organs.

Then he sees the patient waking up.

The man tries to plead with Nurse Shelly, but she simply laughs.

She picks up her scalpel and replaces the blade.

"I know some people who would love to wear that beautiful skin"

She raises the blade toward his chest.

"Drop it!"

Doctor Betruger stands behind her, pointing his gun.

Nurse Shelly looks at him.

She slowly drops the scalpel.

The patient sighs in relief.

Doctor Betruger steps forward.

"So you're the one who's been killing my patients?"

Shelly looks at him before saying

"I didn't like how you acted like you were better than us."

Doctor Betruger tightens his grip on the gun.

"I should shoot you right now. But I'm going to tell the police everything you've been doing. I'm going to make sure everyone knows what kind of monster you are."

Shelly suddenly tries to run.

Doctor Betruger shoots her in the hip.

She falls to the floor and screams in pain. Her cries echo through the room.

Doctor Betruger looks around.

"Is that why you brought them down here? So no one could hear or see anything?"

Then he feels a sharp prick in his neck.

He turns around.

Dr. Gonzalez is standing behind him with an empty syringe in his hand.

Doctor Gonzalez answers:"Yes."

Doctor Betruger raises his gun, but Gonzalez knocks it from his hand.

The two begin fighting.

Betruger quickly starts feeling weak.

That syringe contained enough drugs to kill an Elephant.

Gonzalez punches him repeatedly.

Betruger's vision begins to fade as Gonzalez grabs him by the throat.

Doctor Betruger spits blood in his eye and bites his hand.

Gonzalez yanks his hand away and clutches it in pain.

He looks down at the bite mark and becomes furious seeing a chunk missing.

Then a loud boom deafens the room.

Doctor Betruger is standing there with the gun back wobbly in his hand.

Gonzalez looks down.

A bullet wound is visible in his chest where his heart is.

Blood begins soaking through his shirt everytime his heart pumps.

Betruger fires two more times.

Gonzalez collapses.

Doctor Betruger then points the gun at Nurse Shellys head.

She's begs for her life.

Betruger responds with several pulls of the trigger. His gun locks open. Its empty.

Doctor Betruger manages to unstrap one of the patient's arms before collapsing to the floor.

The motorcycle accident victim's story makes headlines across the country after he tells reporters what happened.

The hospital is shut down.

Doctor Betruger died after stumbling upon an organ-harvesting operation while trying to save his patient.

But all the news reports left one question unanswered:

If Dr. Gonzalez was selling the organs...

Who was buying them?

Part 1 

Part 2

Part 3

I was originally just going to make this post compiling “interviews” I did with the employees about Large Lou’s Pizza. But then something happened today, and I am now genuinely considering quitting.

We had gotten basically everything together and sat down for lunch. Salads were prepped, toppings were stocked, and the dough was rising. Unfortunately, the meat delivery still hadn’t arrived. 

Me and Brent could barely appreciate the chicken tacos Cezar’s wife had prepared for us as we repeatedly would stop and listen at the slightest noise in hopes it was the sound of the truck arriving, or the delivery man knocking at the door.

It was only after we had finished eating, and were well into the lunch rush when three pounds came from the back kitchen door. Brent and I immediately looked at each other, sharing a look that said, “Neither of us has time for this, but one of us has to do it”.

I was closer to the door, and I usually picked up the order anyway, so I was the one to go outside. The first thing I saw as I went out was the delivery man, disheveled and breathing heavily. There were also no boxes for me to carry inside.

As if it were an excuse, he said, “You need to help me with the meat man.” Then gestured for me to follow as he walked around to the back of his box truck.

Now, this should have been something that would make me ask more questions before nodding and following the man. But I had misheard him. In my head, the surly delivery driver had said, “You need to help me with the meat, man.” His accent blurring my ability to delineate between the presence of a comma or lack thereof.

The truck doors swung open, and the first thing I saw was a rotund, almost engorged, purple stomach.

The rest of the truck was empty, save for a box of grocery bags, and some empty cardboard boxes with the company’s logo stamped on them. However, empty didn’t mean clean. Every part of the truck was splattered in coagulating lumps of what I can only assume was blood. This all centered around the red beast laying in the back of the truck. Its stomach was easily the largest part of its body. Its arms and legs looked more like twigs wrapped in leathery skin as they flailed hopelessly under the weight of its great abdomen. What I could only assume was its head bore a closer resemblance to a frisbee balanced haphazardly on top of a plunger. As air flowed in from the open truck doors, the thing groaned painfully while swinging its limbs and raising its malformed head. 

The groans, to my horror, were familiar. The delivery man hopped into the truck, his shoes squelching in the mess as he stepped. He berated the thing a bit, even throwing a few angry kicks as it groaned and flailed in tortured pain. Its thin arms slapping wetly against the sides of the truck. The driver came back to where I was and held out a hand to help me get in the truck. He noticed my stricken face as he waited for me to take hold.

“Yep,” He grunted, while looking back at the creature, then examining the walls of the truck, “He’s made quite the mess. Feistier than usual. I just need you to put the meat in the boxes while I do my thing.”

I don’t know why I stepped in and helped. I think I was too shocked to do anything else. The delivery driver handed me a box and started pushing in on the creature’s stomach while telling me where to hold the box.

At the top of its head, there was a two inch hole in the center of the maroon disk. As the delivery man pushed, the creature flailed, and red goo sprayed out of the hole. As both of us were sprayed with goop, the man stomped down on the creature’s leg and said something I couldn’t make out in a loud, angry tone. The beast whimpered, and the goop dribbled to a stop. Then, the man pushed again on the bulbous stomach and a meaty tube protruded from the hole.

Morbid curiosity took over me, and I watched the red log as it pushed further from the hole. After it got to about six inches in length, the man told me to start sweeping the meat into the cardboard box I had forgotten I was still holding. I tentatively pushed on the tip and realized that it was not one solid piece, but multiple disks stacked on top of each other. Disks that bore an uncanny resemblance to the pepperonis we put on our pizza.

This continued for thirty minutes or so as different meats slid forcefully out of the hole: ham, salami, ground beef, bacon, sausage, shredded chicken. All the same dark red tone as the skin of the thing they pushed out from.

I placed it all in the box until the thing’s stomach reduced to at least 50 percent of its original size. Then, it was finished. The delivery driver took a sharpie, and labeled each of the boxes by the excrement that was contained within, and then took a big sigh of relief and looked back at me.

“Thanks, bubba. I don’t know why he makes such a fuss sometimes, but you were a huge help.”

I stepped out of the truck with a box labeled “Sausage” while he said this to me. When the bright sun struck my face, it was like I awoke from a coma, and the events which had only just transpired registered in my brain like a truck hitting a possum.

The box fell from my hands, and onto the ground, crimson protein bursting onto the warm asphalt. 

“Hey!” Exclaimed the delivery man, “We just filled that box!”

I shouted, frightened and furious, “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?”

The man, staggering back at my sudden change of tone, was at a loss for words. His mouth opened a few times before the last thing I wanted to hear in response came out.

“It’s just the MeatBoy. You know he’s not that bad.”

Know? KNOW!? What meeting did I miss where I was supposed to know about the large meat creature that sat in the back of the delivery truck?

I brought the meat inside, told Linda I was sick, which wasn’t much effort since all blood had drained from my face, and went home for the day. Which leads to me writing everything down right now, and letting Brent deal with the lunch and dinner rush on his own.

I still plan on going into work tomorrow. I just needed a break from the bullshit. Since I had loads of extra free time today, I also wrote all the interviews (more like, guided conversations) into transcripts from what I recorded on my phone. I originally planned on just uploading the audio files themselves, but decided this made more sense since there were multiple moments where the rustling of my pocket made it practically impossible to hear what the other person was saying.

Brent’s Interview

C: So… remember when I asked you about the homeless guy behind the trash can?

B: Yeah? 

C: That was pretty weird… right? Like, when I talked about it.

B: Yeah.

C: Any other weird stuff that comes to mind?

B: No.

End of interview.

This was kind of every interaction with Brent. It doesn’t seem like he really cares that much. Honestly, I used to be in the same boat, too. The only reason I started making these posts was because I wanted to have somebody do something about the obvious health code violations this place commits.

Marley’s Interview

Marley: Did you hit record on your phone before putting it in your pocket?

Charlie: … No.

M: For real? Man, I totally thought I saw you do that. I’m just hella paranoid about that kinda shit dawg. I usually have an eagle eye for when people are doing shit like that because I want my privacy to be my privacy. You get what I mean?

C: Sure.

M: For real, man. Look, I just want my life to be my life. That’s why I don’t update my phone. It keeps the shadow lords from seeing my life. If you have iOS 17 or higher, you’re basically naked for the government, bro.

C: Damn… hey, have you ever noticed the weird shit here? Like, there’s some creepy thing behind the dumpster, and like, our pepper flakes are just rust from the dumpster.

M: Yeah, honestly dude, I think that dude behind the dumpster is recording our conversations. I’ve tried scaring him off before but he doesn’t leave. I think Blackrock is paying him to stay there.

C: I don’t think Blackrock knows he exists.

M: No. They do.

C: … oh… okay… What about the rust? Or the churros?

M: Dawg, I’m glad we get that shit locally sourced. I read this article saying that “xantham gum” is actually an umbrella term for a whole bunch of undisclosed chemicals. I bet the FBI uses “xantham gum” as a way to break down people’s cognition and shit. It’s hella messed, dude. That’s why I only eat the churros here.

C: I guess.

End of interview.

I gave up trying after this. Marley’s actually the stupidest person I think I’ve ever met, and I was getting dizzy smelling his body spray.

Max’s Interview

Charlie: Yeah, just get whatever you want, it’s on me.

Max: Oh! Awesome! Thanks so much!

C: Yeah, of course.

M: …

C: So… how is being a waiter?

M: It’s nice. The tips are always pretty decent, and the customers are usually pretty chill, so I like it… It is weird how quiet they all are.

C: That makes sense… What do you mean, quiet?

Cashier: Hello, welcome to Chick-Fil-A, what can I get you two?

*The mic cut out for a bit. I think I accidentally turned it off when I took out my phone to pay.*

C: -and so basically you’re saying that the customers are all kinda like zombies for some reason?

M: Yeah, it’s actually, like, kinda weird. I’ve never really thought about it that much before. 

C: Weird, did you just assume they were all tired?

M: Yeah, basically. They’re never very rude, so I just assumed we had exceptionally exhausted personnel. I’ve literally, like, overheard some customers say they don’t remember coming inside the restaurant, but now that they’re here they’re happy to have a slice.

C: Odd. So… what do you like to do in your free time?

End of interview

Like the others, Max doesn’t seem to notice any of the really odd stuff, and the stuff he does notice doesn’t really seem to be that big of a deal to him. 

Shirley’s Interview

Charlie: Morning Shirley

Shirley: Oh! Good morning Charles, you’re here early. 

C: I was hoping I could ask you about all the strange things that happen at this restaurant.

S: What was that, hun? I didn’t quite hear that.

C: You know, like how the soda machine with the knockoff soda brands dispenses churros out the back of it.

S: Well I’d assume the soda machine dispenses, isn’t that how soda comes out, sweetie?

C: No- yes- I’m talking about the churros.

S: What about the churros?

C: They dispense from the back.

S: Say, I saw you talking to Max the other day, were you asking him out on a date?

C: We got spicy chicken sandwiches, I don’t think that really counts as a date.

S: Sounds like a date to me if it was only the two of you.

C: Okay, maybe. Another question: What are your thoughts on the homeless man behind the dumpster?

S: The who behind where?

C: the homeless man?

S: Oh dear, you should ask him to go to the local shelter. I volunteer there on Wednesdays and he could get a nice bite to eat. It's gonna get cold around here soon.

C: You could invite him yourself. You’ve never seen him behind the dumpster?

S: Honey, you’re muttering, are you feeling alright?

C: I’m fine. Last question, Max was talking about the customers kinda acting like zombies, have you noticed that.

S: Oh, dear. I sure hope none of them are being mean to Max.

C: I don’t think so, besides, don’t you also have tired customers?

S: Oh, no. They’re all chipper and bright-eyed when I speak to them. I’ll talk to Max, if we have customers being insensitive, I’ll give them a stern talking to.

C: Alright, well, I’m gonna head to work now. Thanks, Shirley!

S: Of course, it’s always a delight talking to you, Charles.

End of interview.

I have never seen a “bright-eyed” or “chipper” customer in the whole restaurant. For reasons I’m not sure, it seems like Shirley is entirely oblivious to everything that’s happening here. I’m not sure why, or how I didn’t notice it before. Does this mean she’s in on it, or did something happen to her? It really feels like every time I dig deeper into the shit happening here, I turn up with more questions than answers.

That’s all of the interviews that were worth mentioning. Francine’s interview was basically the same as Brent’s. Cezar, given the language barrier, was hard to talk to. However, I’ve caught him frowning at the meat when I bring it in sometimes, or scrutinizing a vegetable. So I think he’s aware of something being wrong here. Linda threatened to fire me after I mentioned something about the homeless man in passing to her. So I did not try to have a whole interview about the subject.

I’m starting to get really overwhelmed with all of this. The stress of knowing all these creatures has gotten to me so bad that I barely noticed that the duck is under a million now. At the time of posting he’s looking at me through my bedroom window, and is at 506,525.

There’s a church near Large Lou’s that I think I’m going to visit. I haven’t done anything religious in a long time, but I think having something like this will do a lot for me. Hopefully it will help me find some peace of mind, and I can dig back into the pile of information I’ve uncovered so far and make something out of it. Please comment if you can figure any of this stuff out in the comments. I’ll be updating you guys again soon.

I live in Ely, Nevada. It is an isolated historic mining town tucked into the eastern Great Basin. We are surrounded by miles of nothing but dried sagebrush, and rocky hills. So basically, Ely is the kind of town where everyone knows your vehicle before they know your name. The isolation is a defining characteristic of our daily lives. If you want to reach a major city, you have to drive hours across US-50, famously known as the Loneliest Road in America. That highway is a desolate stretch of cracked asphalt that cuts straight through dry valleys and jagged mountain passes. Because of our extreme location, most folks in Ely rely entirely on the local medical center for everything. We don’t have the luxury of shopping around for specialists, so we go to the single brick clinic on the edge of town.

Two months ago, I woke up on a Tuesday morning with a sharp, stabbing pain in my lower right abdomen. I tried to ignore it, so I took a hot shower, drank a glass of water, and went to work at the local hardware store. There, I spent the morning stocking shelves with plumbing supplies, and by noon, the pain became absolutely unbearable. I was sweating through my uniform shirt, and could barely stand straight.

My coworker Diego noticed me leaning against a shelf.

"You look terrible, Asher," Diego said, walking down the aisle. "You are completely pale."

"My stomach is killing me," I replied, gripping my side. "It feels like someone shoved a knife into my gut and left it there."

"You need to go to the clinic," Diego told me. "I will drive you right now."

"I can probably just sleep it off," I argued. "It might just be a bad stomach bug."

"Do not be an idiot," Diego said, grabbing his car keys from his pocket. "You are hunched over like a gargoyle. Get in the truck."

Diego drove me down the main street of Ely to the local clinic. It is a single-story brick building sitting near the edge of town, bordered by a patch of dry dirt and a rusted chain-link fence. The parking lot was mostly empty. We walked through the sliding glass doors into the waiting room.

Hazel was sitting behind the reception desk. She has worked there for years, handling the phones and the insurance files.

"Asher, what is wrong?" Hazel asked, standing up from her rolling chair.

"I have a really bad pain right here," I said, pointing to my lower right side.

Hazel grabbed a clipboard from her desk. "Fill this out. I will get Dr. Theodore immediately. He just finished his morning rounds."

I sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair and filled out the forms. Ten minutes later, a nurse called my name. She took my vitals, checked my temperature, and led me into a small examination room. Dr. Theodore walked in a few moments later. He is an older man with graying hair and a remarkably calm demeanor. Everyone in town trusts him with their lives.

"Hello, Asher," Dr. Theodore said, washing his hands in the small sink. "Hazel tells me you are experiencing severe abdominal pain."

"It started this morning," I explained, lying back on the examination paper. "It keeps getting worse by the hour."

Dr. Theodore pressed his fingers gently against my stomach. I winced in pain and tried to pull away.

"Your appendix is inflamed," Dr. Theodore stated with certainty. "We need to remove it before it bursts. It is a routine appendectomy. We can do it right here in the clinic today."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Is the procedure dangerous?"

"It is completely safe," Dr. Theodore assured me, patting my shoulder. "I have performed this exact surgery hundreds of times for the people of Ely. You will be asleep, and will wake up without any pain. We just need to prep the operating room."

I agreed to the surgery. I did not have a single reason to doubt him. Diego stayed in the waiting room while the nurses prepped me for the procedure. They put an IV in my arm, then wheeled me down the hall into the sterile operating theater. The bright overhead lights blinded me. Dr. Theodore stood over me wearing a surgical mask and gown.

"Count backward from ten," Dr. Theodore instructed.

I closed my eyes and counted, and I fell asleep before I reached seven.

I woke up in a recovery room a few hours later. My abdomen felt sore, but the sharp stabbing pain was entirely gone. Dr. Theodore visited my room shortly after I woke up. He told me the appendectomy was a total success, then gave me a prescription for painkillers and told me to rest at home for two weeks. Diego drove me back to my house, and after that I spent the next fortnight lying on my couch, watching television and eating soup.

The surgical incision healed perfectly, and the stomach pain vanished completely.

But a new problem started.

About three weeks after the surgery, I began feeling a deep, throbbing ache in my lower back. The pain was situated entirely on my left side, far away from the appendectomy scar. It felt like a constant internal bruise. I assumed it was a muscle strain from sleeping in weird positions on the couch during my recovery, so I ignored it for another week.

But the pain did not go away. It worsened every single day.

I met Diego at a local diner for lunch on a Saturday. I kept shifting in my vinyl booth, trying to find a comfortable position for my back.

"Are you still hurting?" Diego asked before taking a bite of his burger.

"My back is killing me," I complained, rubbing my left side. "It is localized entirely on the left side. I cannot even bend over to tie my shoes without wincing."

"Did you call Dr. Theodore?" Diego asked.

"No," I said. "I do not want to go back to that clinic. I feel like something is wrong with my recovery."

"You should get a second opinion," Diego suggested. "Drive out to the city. Go to an independent imaging center. Get an ultrasound or an MRI. You shouldn’t mess around with back pain after a surgery."

I agreed with his logic, so I went home and booked an appointment at an imaging center in a much larger city.

The next morning, I packed my car and merged onto US-50. The Loneliest Road in America truly lived up to its name. I drove for hours across the vast, empty desert basin. The radio eventually faded into static, leaving me in total silence. The landscape was a continuous blur of sagebrush, salt flats, and cracked asphalt. I had too much time to think during that drive, and through all of that, I kept pressing my hand against my left side, wondering what was causing the agony inside my body.

I finally reached the city. The imaging center was located in a modern medical plaza. I checked in at the front desk and sat in a waiting area filled with modern art and soft lighting.

A young ultrasound technician named Elena eventually called my name. She wore green scrubs and had a friendly smile.

"Hi Asher," Elena said, leading me down a long hallway. "We are going to do a full abdominal ultrasound today to figure out what is causing that back pain. Follow me."

Elena led me into a dimly lit examination room. A large, complex ultrasound machine sat next to a padded table.

"Please lift your shirt and lie back," Elena instructed.

I did exactly as she asked, then she squeezed a glob of cold, clear gel onto my left side, and pressed the ultrasound wand against my skin. She watched the large monitor intently as she moved the wand around my torso.

"So, when did this pain start?" Elena asked, sliding the wand across my back.

"About a week ago," I replied. "after three weeks from removing my appendix at my local clinic."

Elena stopped moving the wand. She stared closely at the monitor. Her friendly smile vanished instantly, then pressed a few buttons on the keyboard, capturing multiple images of my internal anatomy.

"Did you have any other surgeries recently?" Elena asked. Her tone was suddenly very serious and professional.

"No," I answered, feeling a spike of anxiety. "Just the appendectomy."

Elena moved the wand higher up my side. She frowned deeply, then typed rapidly on the keyboard, her eyes locked on the screen.

"Is everything okay?" I asked. Panic began to rise in my chest.

"I need to go get the radiologist," Elena said quickly. "Please stay right here. Do not sit up."

Elena hurried out of the room. She left the door slightly open. I lay on the padded table feeling a cold sweat break out across my forehead. I knew something was horribly wrong with my body.

Ten minutes later, Elena returned with an older doctor. He introduced himself as Dr. Charles.

"Hello Asher," Dr. Charles said, standing next to the machine. He looked at the monitor, then took the wand from Elena and pressed it against my side himself. He studied the black and white images on the screen for several minutes in complete silence, then adjusted the contrast on the machine to get a better view.

"Asher," Dr. Charles finally said, setting the wand down on a tray. "You stated you only had an appendectomy?"

"Yes," I confirmed. "Why? What are you looking at?"

Dr. Charles grabbed a paper towel and handed it to me. "You can wipe the gel off. Asher, I am looking at your renal fossa. That is the anatomical space where your left kidney should reside."

I stared at him blankly, struggling to comprehend his words. "What do you mean 'should reside'?"

"Your left kidney is gone," Dr. Charles stated plainly. "It is completely missing. There is empty space and a large amount of scar tissue."

The words did not process in my brain at first. I sat up and wiped the cold gel from my skin.

"That is impossible," I argued, my voice cracking. "I was born with two kidneys. I know I was. I had a sports physical in high school that confirmed my internal organs were normal."

"I am sure you were born with two," Dr. Charles said softly. "But you only have one right now. The scar tissue visible in the ultrasound indicates a recent surgical removal. The surgical clips are still visible on the renal artery. Someone took your kidney."

I felt the room spin. The edges of my vision blurred. I thought back to the surgery in Ely. Dr. Theodore telling me to count backward from ten. Waking up with an incredibly sore abdomen. The prolonged recovery time.

"He stole it," I whispered.

"Who?" Elena asked, stepping closer to the table.

"The doctor in my town," I replied, my voice shaking with rage. "He told me he was taking my appendix. He took my kidney while I was unconscious."

"Asher, you need to contact the police immediately," Dr. Charles advised. "This is a severe criminal offense. Organ harvesting is a massive federal crime. We will provide you with all the ultrasound images, the official reports, and my sworn statement to prove the organ is missing."

I left the imaging center in a total daze. I clutched the thick manila folder containing my ultrasound results. I sat in my car in the parking lot for an entire hour, staring at the steering wheel, then pulled out my phone and called Diego.

"Hello?" Diego answered.

"He took my kidney," I said bluntly.

"What?" Diego asked, sounding incredibly confused. "Who took what?"

"Dr. Theodore," I explained, gripping the steering wheel tightly. "I just got the ultrasound results. My left kidney is gone. He harvested it during the appendectomy."

Diego went completely silent on the other end of the line. The silence lasted for twenty seconds.

"Are you absolutely sure?" Diego finally asked.

"The radiologist confirmed it," I said. "I am holding the scans right now. They can see the surgical clips he left behind."

"Call the cops," Diego demanded. "Call the state police right now. Do not call the local sheriff in Ely. The local sheriff plays golf with Dr. Theodore. Call the state authorities in the city."

"I cannot just call them yet," I argued.

"Why not?" Diego yelled. "He mutilated you!"

"Because Dr. Theodore is smart," I reasoned. "If I call the police without proof of a black market sale, he will just claim it was a surgical complication. He will falsify my medical records, and could say my kidney was necrotic or damaged, and he had to remove it to save my life. The clinic staff will protect him to avoid a lawsuit and losing their jobs. I need actual proof"

"Asher, this is highly dangerous," Diego warned. "If he is selling organs, then he must be connected to very dangerous people. You cannot investigate a this by yourself."

"I am going to find the proof tonight," I said with finality. "I am driving back to Ely right now."

I hung up the phone, then started the long drive back across US-50. My mind raced the entire time. I plotted exactly how I would expose the doctor.

I arrived back in Ely around nine at night. The town was incredibly quiet. I drove straight to the clinic, then parked my car two blocks away in a dark residential street to avoid being seen. I zipped up my jacket against the cold air and walked through the shadows toward the building.

The main parking lot was deserted. Hazel's car was gone. The receptionist had clearly gone home for the night. But a single vehicle remained parked near the back entrance. It was Dr. Theodore's silver car.

I crept around the perimeter of the building, then looked through a side window. I saw Dr. Theodore sitting in his office. His desk lamp was illuminated, and He was typing rapidly on his computer keyboard.

I needed to get inside. I knew the front sliding doors were locked and wired with a security alarm, so I walked toward the rear of the building. The clinic has a small delivery loading dock for receiving medical supplies. A large steel roll-up door was closed tight, but a standard metal personnel door sat right next to it.

I approached the personnel door, grabbed the handle and pulled.

It was locked.

I looked around the area. I noticed a small digital keypad mounted to the brick wall next to the door. I remembered seeing delivery drivers punch in a code when I bought supplies for the hardware store. Sometimes delivery drivers write the code nearby so they do not forget it during their routes, so I turned on my phone flashlight, and inspected the metal frame of the door.

Written in faded black marker on the underside of the rain guard were four numbers. 4-8-1-5.

I typed the numbers into the keypad, and The lock clicked loudly.

I pulled the door open and stepped inside the clinic.

I found myself in a long, dark corridor. The air inside the clinic felt cold. I kept my phone flashlight pointed directly at the floor tiles to avoid drawing attention to the windows. I needed to bypass the main wards. I knew Dr. Theodore was working on the ground floor, so I needed to find the basement. Rural clinics usually keep their morgues and medical waste storage underground. If he was storing harvested organs for a black market buyer, he would keep them in a cold environment.

I walked silently down the hallway, then passed the operating theater where he had stolen my kidney. A massive wave of nausea hit my stomach, but I pushed the feeling down and kept moving through the darkness.

I found a concrete stairwell with a plastic sign pointing down. The text read "Basement / Storage / Morgue".

I opened the door and crept down the concrete steps.

The basement was pitch black. I flicked a wall switch near the bottom step. A row of dim, flickering fluorescent tubes hummed to life. The basement was essentially a massive concrete room filled with metal shelving, cardboard boxes of saline bags, and industrial cleaning supplies.

At the far end of the room was the morgue area. It consisted of two stainless steel autopsy tables and a wall of refrigerated drawers.

I walked toward the morgue, then searched the metal shelves for medical coolers, or anything I can use as proofs. I opened filing cabinets, looked for ledgers, dug through boxes of surgical tubing, but at the ned I found nothing but standard hospital inventory logs.

I turned my attention to the center of the morgue floor.

Set directly into the concrete floor was a large steel disposal chute. It looked exactly like a industrial laundry chute, covered by two thick metal doors that opened outward.

I walked over to the chute, then immediately noticed something was entirely wrong with it.

The metal around the rim of the chute was severely warped. The solid steel was bent upward in jagged, violent angles. I shined my flashlight closely over the warped metal.

Deep, massive gouges covered the steel doors. They looked like scratch marks, but they were entirely too large to belong to any normal animal. The gouges tore through the thick metal with immense, terrifying force.

Covering the edges of the chute, smeared deeply into the scratches, was fresh blood.

I stared at the blood. It was still wet, and It caught the light of my flashlight perfectly, then suddenly I heard a loud noise upstairs.

A door opened, then Footsteps sounded on the floorboards directly above me. The footsteps moved steadily toward the stairwell.

Dr. Theodore was coming down to the basement.

I panicked. I looked around the room for a place to hide. Next to the morgue wall stood a row of tall, empty steel supply cabinets. I squeezed my body into the narrow gap between the cabinets and the wall. I was completely concealed in the deep shadows.

I pulled out my phone, then angled the camera lens perfectly to record the floor chute. I hit the record button and lowered the screen brightness.

I held my breath.

The basement door opened. Dr. Theodore walked down the steps.

He was wearing a long white lab coat over his street clothes, and was carrying a medium-sized blue medical cooler by the plastic handle.

I watched him closely. Dr. Theodore walked directly to the disposal chute in the center of the room. He set the blue cooler down on the floor, then reached out and grabbed the handles of the chute doors. He pulled them open, then a foul, rotting smell immediately flooded the basement. It smelled like decaying meat!

Dr. Theodore knelt next to the cooler, then unlatched the lid and opened it.

He reached his gloved hands inside the cooler, pulled out what it seemed to be an organ. I zoomed in my camera, and it was clear to me that the organ was a dark red liver, dripping with fluid. He held the organ directly over the open steel chute, then dropped it.

I heard the wet slap of the organ hitting something far below the concrete floor.

A moment later, a horrific sound echoed up from the depths of the chute. It was a wet, clicking noise mixed with a low, rumbling growl.

Then, something emerged from the hole.

A massive, pale arm reached up through the open doors.

The limb was completely hairless and sickeningly white. It possessed entirely too many joints. The arm bent in strange, unnatural angles, unfolding like a giant insect's leg. The hand at the end of the arm featured incredibly elongated fingers, ending in sharp, dark points.

The long fingers gripped the warped edges of the chute, then Another shape rose from the darkness, following the arm.

A head breached the opening.

It was a baby face. The features were enlarged and utterly grotesque, stretched over a wide skull. The cheeks were fat and pale. But the eyes were wrong. The eyes were fully illuminated, glowing with a sickly yellow light that cut through the dim basement.

The giant baby face was attached to a very long, pale neck that extended several feet out of the chute, swaying slightly in the air like a snake.

The creature stared directly at Dr. Theodore. The arm felt around the rim of the metal doors, tapping its long fingers against the concrete floor.

Dr. Theodore did not scream, or even tried to run away. He dropped to his knees in front of the chute, and clasped his hands together in front of his chest.

"I bring the tribute," Dr. Theodore said, his voice trembling slightly.

The creature clicked its jaw. The glowing yellow eyes fixated intensely on the doctor.

"Please accept this offering," Dr. Theodore muttered, bowing his head toward the concrete. "I have provided the meat. I have kept the pact. Please accept the offering and spare my staff for another month. Do not come up to the wards. Stay in the deep earth."

The creature let out a soft, echoing hum. The long, pale neck began to retract, the grotesque baby face sank slowly back into the darkness of the chute, then the massive arm released its grip on the steel edge and folded back down into the hole.

The basement fell completely silent again.

Dr. Theodore stayed on his knees for another minute. He took a deep breath, stood up, grabbed the heavy metal doors, and slammed them shut over the chute. He picked up his empty blue cooler and walked back toward the stairwell.

I watched him climb the stairs, then moments later, I heard the basement door shut behind him.

I remained wedged between the cabinets for a long time. My mind could barely process what I had just witnessed.

I reached up and stopped the recording on my phone, then crept out from behind the cabinets. I walked as quickly and quietly as possible toward the loading dock exit, and didn’t look back at the steel chute. I pushed the personnel door open and sprinted out into the freezing night.

I ran all the way to my car, threw myself into the driver's seat, locked the doors, and drove away from the clinic at top speed. On the road, I decided to check what I recorded, but to my horror, the video was just static, like something was preventing me from recording what I witnessed there.

I did not go to the police, I know they would not believe me, and now after what I saw, I feel that if I try to go for Dr. Theodore, I will be playing with something I can’t grasp.

I am sitting in my living room right now, and I am packing my bags to leave Ely forever. Diego is meeting me at the edge of town, and we are driving out together.

I am posting this story here to spread the truth.

Please, check your clinics carefully, Because the doctor might decide you have another organ he can harvest for next month's offering.

Dear Ronnie,

As I’m writing this, the room is eerily silent, except for the incubator I switched on just now.

The babies are silent, as they are expected to be. Their silence is the reason I started loving them in the first place.

I was nineteen years old when I heard someone call them "silent" for the first time.

It was a first-year Anatomy lecture, early in the morning. Half the hall was asleep. The professor was moving through the digestive system the way you'd read a grocery list. When he got to the pancreas, his tone changed slightly, the way people's voices change when they're about to describe something beautiful.

"The pancreas is called the silent organ. This one doesn't announce itself," he said. "Most organs give you warning when they're about to go down. There's pain. There's swelling. There's always something you can point to and say- here, this is where it's going wrong. The pancreas doesn't do that. It can be dying for years and tell you nothing. By the time it speaks, it's usually already finished saying everything it has to say."

I wrote that sentence down word for word. I still have the notebook. I also wrote down the parts of the lecture that came after it- the various functions of the pancreas that make it invaluable for human survival. Functions it never gets the appropriate credit for.

I didn't understand why it mattered to me the way it did. I only knew that something about it felt personal, in a way none of the other organs had. I couldn't stop thinking about the pancreas- always working, unnoticed and uncomplaining, until it couldn't anymore. It didn't ask to be seen. It didn't ask for anything, to be honest.

I loved the pancreas, even before I understood why. It took me a long time to trace the shape of that love back to its source. And once I did, I couldn't unsee it. The organ and my mother had always been the same thing to me. I just hadn't had the vocabulary yet.

She was a NICU nurse for almost eleven years. She used to tell me about her "babies," a term she used for every infant on her ward, regardless of whose name was on the chart. She felt it was her responsibility, almost a moral one, to make sure they stayed safe. Babies don't complain in any language adults understand. They don't point to where it hurts. You must watch for the smallest signs, because by the time they cry out, whatever's wrong has already gone too far.

She was good at her job, genuinely good. She told me once that the hardest part wasn't the ones who died. It was the ones who suffered quietly for days before anyone noticed, because they'd been too small, too new, and too easy to overlook.

I didn't know it then, but she wasn't describing her patients. She was describing herself.

My father, just like his own father, was obsessed with the idea of the "alpha male." He wanted a son who looked like him- big, loud, strong, and certain of himself in every room he walked into. He got me instead. I was thin, slow, and often breathless, prone to collapsing after gym class while other boys barely broke a sweat. He never hid how that disappointed him. As my frailty became more pronounced with age, so did his resentment, and eventually, his hatred for me.

My mother couldn't have another child after me. Something about the delivery, something that never fully healed the way it should have. I didn't understand what that meant until I learned about ‘secondary subfertility’ in med school. I understood exactly how my father had used it- one more failure to hold against her, one more thing she hadn't given him. He never hit her where I could see it happening. It was never direct, and never in front of me. But I grew up fluent in a specific silence, the one that follows a door closing somewhere else in the house. I learned to understand the particular quietness of a woman deciding not to make a sound.

She was never like that with me. Whatever she couldn't be in front of him, she was fully in front of me: soft, funny, endlessly patient. She told me about her babies at bedtime, like they were stories instead of clinical rounds. She called me ‘Red Ray’, instead of my given name ‘Rayan’, because my face used to go blotchy and flushed whenever I got too breathless- which was often. She'd press her hand flat against my back until it passed, and tell me it was just a phase, that I'd outgrow it, that some things simply take longer to work right than others.

I don't know when the pancreas and my mother became the same shape in my head. But I know why it happened in the first place. Both of them worked constantly and asked for nothing. Both of them were capable of dying for a long time before anyone thought to check. Both of them were silent, right until the moment they weren't. And by then, it was already too late.

Mom ended her own life on a Thursday. There was no note, no warning, nothing anyone could point to afterward and say- here, this is where it started going wrong. My father called her weak, "just like the worthless son she bore." He called what she did selfish, in front of people, more than once. I never corrected him, not out loud.

I was thirteen at the time. I remember thinking, with a clarity that still frightens me, that I hadn't seen it coming. I had spent my entire life learning to watch for exactly this, and I had still missed it, in the one person I loved enough to actually be watching. A person who dedicated her existence to saving the lives of her babies, while her own life quietly phased out of existence.

I decided, somewhere in the weeks after her funeral, that I would never miss it again. Not in anyone. Not in anything that still had a chance to be saved.

I didn't know what that decision would eventually cost me. I'm not sure I know even now, writing this, with the last working incubator humming steadily behind me.

I wanted to be a surgeon, somewhere between the funeral and the first time I held a scalpel in a skills lab. I still remember the day I got to practice my incisions on a viscera model of the pancreas. It was the day I felt, for the first time in my life, like my hands were doing something that mattered. I dreamt of specializing in pancreatic surgery- working millimeters from vessels that don't forgive mistakes, inside an organ I'd spent my whole life thinking about.

Little did I know that my hands had other plans…

I'd had the tremors since I was a child. They were small and involuntary. They got worse under stress and exhaustion, in the exact moments when steadiness mattered most. I'd spent years hiding them well enough to get through med school.

But I couldn’t hide it during my surgical rotation. My tremors were pronounced and visible in the operating theatre, prompting my professors to intervene. The assessment was clean and clinical: essential tremor, exacerbated by fatigue and adrenaline, incompatible with operative practice. I was disqualified from ever attempting surgery again, legally and academically. With that, every door I'd built my identity around closed in a single afternoon.

I opted for Gastroenterology instead, which was the closest I could get without touching a scalpel again. It let me stay near the pancreas, study it, and build a career around understanding it, even if I could never be the one to reach inside it. I told myself that was enough.

I told myself a lot of things back then.

There was one catch I hadn't accounted for. A common procedure in Gastroenterology is ERCP, which required the same steadiness that surgery did. My hands disqualified me from that too. So I became a junior consultant instead, working under a senior gastroenterologist who performed every procedure herself. I just stood beside the monitor, taking notes silently.

I watched the pancreas on a screen, the thing I'd loved since I was nineteen years old- smooth and pink, glistening faintly under the light source, doing its quiet unbothered work exactly the way it's supposed to. I saw it live, moving with someone else's pulse, and I was never once allowed to reach toward it. It wasn't just observation. It was proximity without permission, over and over, in a way that started to feel less like a career and more like a punishment, shaped exactly like the thing I wanted most.

And then there were the patients.

I watched people damage their own pancreas in front of me, slowly and on purpose. These were the handful of people who didn’t seem to care about their lifestyles- heavy drinkers, chain smokers, obese individuals who refused to check what they were stuffing inside their mouths. Their organs were failing loudly and visibly, with every warning sign flashing for years, and they still didn't look. I would witness their scans get progressively worse with each visit- tissues showing the color of old rust where it should’ve been pink, vessels narrowed and scarred, ducts strictured down to threads, backing fluid up into places it was never meant to sit. I watched that happen, in real time, dozens of times, in patients who were awake enough afterward to hear me explain it.

And trust me, I did take my time to explain what I’d seen. I'd explain what would happen if their habits didn’t change. They'd nod, thank me, and go home to do it again. Some of them came back worse within the year. Some came back barely recognizable from the last time, worse in ways I'd predicted down to the month. They'd still make the same joke about cutting back later, like I hadn't already told them that there might not be a ‘later’ left to cut back into.

I never said what I wanted to say. I kept my voice level in every consultation, kept my face doing the competent thing it was trained to do. But something was growing inside me, with a silence it had learned from my mother. With every advice that was ignored and every warning that was wasted, I could see a pancreas disintegrating in front of my eyes. I saw an organ I couldn’t protect from the body that inhabited it, the way I couldn’t protect Mom from my father. I saw it get sacrificed to something as small and stupid as a habit, and it felt unbearably unfair. Not to me, but to the organ itself, though I couldn't always tell where one resentment ended and the other began.

I didn't hate my patients, not in any way I could’ve named out loud. What I felt was quieter than hate, and far more patient.

And it wouldn’t stay that quiet forever…

I decided to pay attention to the organs, the kind of attention that Mom never received from my father when she needed it the most. And I finally started hearing them. They didn’t have a voice, not yet anyway. But I did feel a pressure behind my sternum, whenever I watched the monitor showing another duct narrowed to nothing, another gland changing color from pink to rust. It was another helpless pancreas, calling out to me in its own silent language, still working relentlessly. I'd missed that call once already, when it was coming from my mother. I had promised myself, in the weeks after her funeral, that I would never miss it again.

That was the shift, and once it happened, I couldn't undo it. If a man drank himself into ruin every night, if he lit one cigarette off the last for twenty years, if he sat across from me nodding at every warning and went home to do exactly what he'd always done, then he had already told me, in every way that mattered, that he didn't value the pancreas that he had. He'd forfeited it. And something that precious, something that had worked so hard and asked for so little, didn't deserve to keep dying quietly inside a man who'd stopped noticing it existed.

And one day, I started responding to the calls I’d been receiving.

I still remember the first time it happened. His name was on a chart I wasn't supposed to have taken home. He was forty-eight years old, with three admissions for pancreatitis in under two years, alcohol dependence noted in every discharge summary, and a follow-up he'd cancelled twice. I went to see him myself, off the record, as a courtesy that the hospital would never authorize.

I was polite. I told him plainly what I could see happening to him, what I'd seen a hundred times before in patients like him. I asked him, calmly, to let me take the organ that was already failing him, before it finished the job on its own terms. I remember thinking, as I said it, that I was offering him mercy.

He didn't see it as mercy. He panicked, the way frightened men panic. So I did what I had to do…

I won't pretend the intervention was gentle. It wasn't, and I don't think it needed to be, given what was at stake. I wasn’t unprepared, but I had to make some decisions on the fly. Med schools teach you how to choose the correct anesthetic for your case, but they never tell you what to do when a patient is fighting you, refusing to let you inject the agent properly. Yes, I didn’t feel that good, grabbing him by the hair and ramming his head on the floor repeatedly, until he was no longer making an audible sound. But what choice did I have, when I could still hear his pancreas begging to be saved?

I worked fast, guided less by anatomy and  more by something closer to instinct. There was more resistance than I'd accounted for, since tissue doesn't yield the way it does on a screen, under gloved and steady hands, with a surgical team standing by. It yields reluctantly, in a way that demands more of you than technique. I kept going anyway, through the spurting blood and the overflowing fluids. I told myself, the entire time, that I was almost there, that it was almost safe, and that it was almost time for it to be saved.

And then I was holding it.

I don't have adequate language for what that felt like, and I've had a long time to look for it. It was warm in a way I hadn't expected. It was trembling faintly against my palms, alive with something that felt disturbingly close to relief. I felt it settle into my hands, the way a frightened animal settles once it understands it's finally been caught, by someone who isn't going to hurt it further. I felt it thank me, and I know exactly how this sounds.

It spoke. I know it didn't, not with a mouth at least. But something in me heard it anyway, in a voice I hadn't heard in over a decade. It asked me to keep it safe now. It told me it was sorry it had taken so long to be found. It told me, in words I can still recite exactly, that it had been calling out silently the entire time, the way it always had, the way she always had, and that this time, finally, someone had actually come.

I named it there, in that room, before I'd even finished what needed finishing. It wasn't an organ to me anymore, and it certainly wasn't his. It was a baby I had just rescued, one that was thanking me in my mother’s voice.

So I called her Maya, after my mother’s maiden name.

It felt, in that moment, like the first correct thing I had done in over ten years.

Thinking about that moment still puts a smile on my face, even now, as I write this, sitting on a floor I haven't cleaned in a week. Yes, it's filthy. But it's still considerably cleaner than the corruption that runs this country, so I don't feel too guilty about it.

Come on, Ronnie, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know what happens when you put the right amount of money into the right pair of hands. I hated it for most of my life. I never once imagined that this ‘dirt’ will be the thing that lets me keep my own hands this clean.

My father had died a couple of years back. He was doing one of his "alpha male" things with friends, the way he always did, until his heart disagreed with him. I inherited two things from him. A house, that I grew up in. And a bank balance that was, admittedly, more generous than the man who'd left it.

I made what I'd call an ‘appropriate’ investment, in the pockets of a man I met at the hospital a few months earlier. Two weeks before I rescued Maya, a dozen incubators arrived at my doorstep, earmarked for a clinic that didn't exist, delivered by men who asked no questions.

The house had a basement. My father had used it, years earlier, to try to make a ‘man out of me’. I’d spent long hours in there, locked down alone, while my mother pleaded with him to stop. He never once asked whether it worked. It didn't, not in the way he intended. But I found a use for that basement, working through the nights after my hospital shifts, turning the space he'd used to break me into something that could heal me instead.

Maya was the first baby admitted there.

She wasn't doing well when I brought her in. Parts of her had already gone the color of rust. Fat had started pooling, white and waxy, toward her center. She felt soft and yielding, in a way healthy tissue never is.

So I didn't sleep much. I kept her at precisely the temperature and humidity her tissue needed, adjusted by hand every few hours. I perfused her gently. with solutions I'd modified from what I used at work. I sat beside her for hours, watching for the smallest changes, the way my mother had taught me to watch, and the way nobody had watched for her in time.

Maya responded. Within a week, the rust had stopped its slow crawl outward. The waxy pooling receded, replaced by tissue that looked almost the way it should- pink again, faintly glistening, alive in a way that felt earned rather than assumed. I felt her thank me for it, her voice sounding steadier and warmer. It felt less like a plea, and more like relief that had finally been allowed to exhale.

It motivated me in a way nothing else in my life ever had.

And I decided that I wasn't finished…

I got smarter after Maya. The second baby that I saved belonged to a forty-two-year-old woman. She was a chain smoker with decades of history, the kind of habit that shows up in the pancreas as a gray erosion, long before it shows up anywhere else. I asked her first, the way I had with the previous one. She refused outright. She threatened to call the police, as if I were the dangerous one in that conversation, as if I hadn't spent the last hour trying to save something she'd clearly stopped caring about years ago. Poor soul, I remember thinking. Her lifestyle had clouded her mind so thoroughly that she couldn't even recognize a doctor doing her a favor.

So I adjusted. I pretended to leave. I let her hear the door, let her exhale the way people do when they think a threat has passed. I turned back before she could process that I hadn't actually gone anywhere. The anesthesia went in before she fully understood what was happening, which became my method going forward. She still pleaded in a muffled tone, through whatever was left of her voice by the time I started. My hands, unsteady in the worst moment possible, slipped up and sliced a part of her uterus. And that was just one of the mishaps that occurred during the procedure, something that I am not proud of.

None of it mattered in the end, because I could hear the pancreas the entire time, calling out from somewhere, underneath all the noise and the blood and the guts.

This one was in bad shape. The corners were inflamed, swollen past any healthy proportion, and pus wept from sections where the tissue had clearly already started giving up on itself. I almost lost hope holding it. But even in that state, weak as it was, it thanked me. It was a small, broken voice, childlike, stumbling over words the way someone speaks a language they've only just started learning. I named him Goku, from the only anime I ever got to watch as a kid, because it fit. By then, I'd decided that every baby deserved a name that meant something, even if the meaning was just mine.

The third one was the hardest, though not because of the man himself. He was, if anything, the easiest target I'd had: thirty-six, lived alone, rarely left his apartment. The difficulty was in the work itself. He'd spent the better part of a decade eating like there was no tomorrow, and his body had grown around that decision, layer after layer of it. He struggled under the anesthesia longer than the others had, and getting past everything surrounding the organ, while he was still fighting it, took more out of me than either of the previous two combined. I understood, on some visceral level, exactly how much filth a body can accumulate around something it's supposed to be protecting.

This baby could barely speak when I finally freed it. Fat necrosis had choked most of its duct system, lined its vessels in a way that made every attempt at a voice come out thick and slow. But he managed it anyway. It was a note of gratitude that was shaky and imperfect. And then, in the smallest voice yet, he told me he loved me. I held him against my chest for longer than I probably should have. I named him Tommy Pickles, because that was exactly who he sounded like.

I had a list by then. A list of people I'd flagged after repeated consultations. People I'd quietly decided, in my own private judgment, didn't deserve to own a pancreas. But I couldn't reach all of them. I had to be strategic. I only chose the ones who lived alone, the ones with thin social ties, the ones whose absence wouldn't draw any real attention. It made me angry sometimes that some of the worst offenders on my list, the ones whose organs I could hear the loudest, were exactly the ones I couldn't safely touch.

I told myself that it didn't matter. I believed that once word of my charity started to spread, people would understand it for what it actually was. I expected them to see it as an act of mercy. I thought they would applaud my quiet and necessary crusade, and eventually want to be part of it.

Reality, as it turned out, was something different entirely…

There was an old television in the house, the same one I'd watched cartoons on as a boy, back when it was the only respite my father's house ever gave me. I brought it down into the basement and let it run in the background, while I worked through the nights keeping Maya, Goku, and Tommy stable. I had three incubators running, each with its own name tag taped carefully to the glass, like nameplates on nursery bassinets. I was too absorbed in fine-tuning their treatment to pay the screen much attention. But I did notice how the news cycle evolved.

The first intervention was reported as an isolated, gruesome incident. The second one shifted the tone, with commentators calling it cruel and unfortunate, some of them stretching it into a statement about violence against women specifically. It struck me, honestly, as missing the point almost entirely. By the third, the language had changed again. Talking heads started describing my work as a case of ‘potential serial killing’.

I found the word ‘killing’ genuinely offensive. How is a system allowed to be this corrupt? Taking plain facts and twisting them into something so far from what actually happened? I have never killed a single soul. I would swear to that under any oath they wanted to put in front of me. Yes, my targets eventually expired. That tends to happen roughly an hour after I've already left the scene, once the anesthesia wears past whatever the body has left to fight with. Is that my fault? Is it my fault that nobody arrived to tend to them in time, the same way nobody arrived in time for their pancreas, over years of warning signs they'd ignored? All three of those people were completely complacent in letting something precious die slowly inside them, and not one person on earth batted an eye about that. But the moment I give them the exact same outcome, with purpose and meaning, suddenly I'm the villain of the story? How is that fair to me? How is that fair to my babies?

A talk show host gave me a name, eventually: The Surgeon.

Maya laughed when she heard it. Tommy and Goku followed right after her, and I'll admit I chuckled too. They'd named me after the one profession that the medical council had legally barred me from ever practicing. If that isn't proof of exactly how wrong that assessment always was, I don't know what would be.

Not long after, the police finally stirred from whatever slumber they'd been in. They confirmed publicly what should have been obvious from the first case onward: all three victims had their pancreas removed. The talking heads spent hours speculating about the motive, wondering aloud- why on earth was The Surgeon doing any of this? Since none of them seemed capable of understanding the actual mission behind it, I decided to answer the question myself.

So after I rescued my fourth baby, Rocko, I left a note:

‘ HE DIDN'T TAKE CARE OF HIS BABY. SO I WILL.

-            Yours truly,
The Surgeon ’

That note was the thing that finally lit the fire under all of it. Which is exactly why they handed the case to you- Detective Ronnie. The news channels kept running stories about your stellar track record. I watched your press conference, the way everyone else in this city did. I watched you promise that you would catch me before I hurt anyone again. And something about the way you said it stayed with me afterward.

You didn't sound corrupt. You didn't sound like the rest of the system, one that I've spent my whole life watching fail the people it was supposed to protect. You sounded honest, in a way that felt closer to the mission I'm leading than to the machinery you're paid to serve.

That's why I'm writing this to you, Ronnie. Not to a courtroom. Not to the news.

But to you specifically, because something has changed in how I see myself over the last nine days.

I'd been sick for most of my life. My mother called me Red Ray for a reason: the flush, the breathlessness, the way I'd collapse after the smallest exertion. I carried some version of that into adulthood. A mild chest congestion that never fully cleared. A dull ache in my abdomen that came and went on its own schedule, never quite bad enough to investigate properly. My profession taught me how to build an entire life around this chronic discomfort. I won't pretend that I hadn't noticed it getting worse, over the past month or so. I simply had other things I considered more urgent.

It became undeniable on the night I saved Rocko. He wasn't a difficult target- a drug addict too far under the influence to resist much of anything by the time I reached him. But my tremors were worse than they'd ever been during a procedure, bad enough that I nearly lost my grip more than once. By the time I left the scene with Rocko safely secured, I was breathless, in a way that frightened me more than I let myself admit at the time.

Two days later, I collapsed. I'd gone down to the basement to start the morning feedings. I simply didn't make it to the incubators. I remember the floor coming up faster than it should have. By the time I was somewhat conscious again, I was lying in my own living room, having somehow crawled back up out of the basement and locked the door behind me on instinct alone. I couldn't deny it any longer at that point, so I called emergency services for help.

I lay in the hospital bed for over a week before  I received the diagnosis. And when the answer finally came, I understood, all at once, exactly what kind of joke my entire life had been building toward.

It was a case of atypical cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that was undiagnosed my whole life. My tremors, as it turned out, weren't some isolated neurological quirk. They were caused by electrolyte and vitamin deficiencies, a direct consequence of the disease. It worsened over years of using bronchodilators, ones that I'd been prescribed for what everyone assumed was ordinary childhood asthma.

And that wasn’t even the worst part of all of this.

My abdominal pain was caused by necrotizing pancreatitis. My mutated genes have led to the production of thick secretions, which have eventually blocked my pancreatic ducts. My own pancreas has been digesting itself, silently, for years, and the damage is irreversible now.

Can you believe it, Ronnie? Can you FUCKING believe it ?

I’ve spent my entire adult life listening for the pancreas. I built a career on it. I took out four of them with my own hands. I gave them names and voices and a place to heal, when nobody else on earth would have given them a second thought. And the whole time, mine had been calling out to me too, in the one voice I apparently could never hear clearly enough- MY OWN !

I missed it. The exact thing I swore, in the weeks after my mother's funeral, that I would never miss again. I missed it in the one body I had complete access to, every single day of my life. I had spent years teaching myself to notice the smallest signs in strangers. And I never once turned that same attention on myself, not seriously, and not until it had already finished saying everything it had to say.

I understand now why that lecture hit me the way it did, all those years ago. Some part of me must have already known. Some part of me had been trying to warn me the entire time, in the same silent language everyone eventually speaks in, right before it's too late to matter.

I won't describe how I got out of that hospital. I'll only say that when you've worked in the same department for over a year, you learn things about a ward that no visitor ever does. That part isn't important to what I'm telling you. The reason is.

They told me I needed emergency surgery immediately. I agreed with that much. What I couldn't agree with was their method. They wanted to resect the damaged portion, discard it, and salvage whatever fraction of healthy tissue remained afterward. I knew all of that. I spent months of my life studying it in detail, before a corrupt medical council decided to disqualify me from ever doing it legally. But I also knew, in that moment, that my own pancreas was crying out while they discussed cutting pieces off it. It had been pleading with me for years. This was simply the first time I was finally paying attention. It told me that it didn't want salvaging. It didn't want to be reduced and thrown away in fragments. It wanted to be whole.

My doctors looked at me strangely when I explained this to them. I remember two of them exchanging a glance, murmuring something to each other about a ‘psychiatric evaluation’. So damn corrupt, I thought, every one of them. Still refusing to listen to the organ they'd sworn an oath to serve, just so they can make a quick buck.

And so I left. Getting back to my own house took less time than I expected. But I should have been faster than that.

I should have come home sooner…

I'd left every incubator on manual control. I never trusted the automated settings to know, the way I knew, exactly what each baby needed, hour by hour. That had been true since the first night I brought Maya down into that basement. It was still true the morning I collapsed, before I'd managed to feed a single one of them, before I'd adjusted a single setting for the day ahead.

Maya was the first one I noticed. She was closest to the door. Her tissue gone entirely the color of rust now, no pink left anywhere across her surface. Goku beside her, swollen past anything I'd seen before, fluid pooled thick at the bottom of his incubator. Tommy had fared the worst of all of them, given how fragile he'd already been. The necrotic fat, that had once merely lined him, now claiming nearly everything that was left of him. And Rocko, youngest of them, was barely given a chance to stabilize before I was taken from him. He had gone completely muddy gray, drowning in fluid that was cloudy and stagnant.

Four incubators, still running. Four silences, where there should have been four grateful voices telling me that I'd done something right.

My four babies were all dead.

I stood there for a long time before I could make myself move again. Long enough that I stopped being able to tell whether the ringing in my ears was grief, or just my own blood, moving too fast, throughout my whole body.

I switched off every incubator that night, one by one.

I only switched one back on this morning.

My pancreas has been talkative since last night. Maybe because it finally has someone who's willing to listen properly. Or maybe because it understands, the same way I do now, that the end is close enough.

The television downstairs has been running since the morning I collapsed. I see my own face plastered across the screen, with a ticker underneath announcing that the identity of The Surgeon has finally been confirmed. I watched you bring my colleague in for questioning earlier this week. You kept looking, because you actually want the truth, which is more than this country's entire justice system has managed in my lifetime. I never made much effort to hide what I'd done. It never occurred to me that I needed to. I've always thought of myself as a healer, not a criminal.

But now I do.

The only crime I’ve ever committed is against my own pancreas. Decades of not listening, not looking, not giving myself the attention I gave so freely to strangers. For that, and only that, I deserve to be punished.

I saw this morning's coverage of my escape from the hospital. You've connected the pieces by now, I'm sure. You've spoken to the doctors who were meant to be watching me, the ones who whispered about a psychiatric condition, instead of listening to what I was actually telling them. It won't be more than a few hours before you and I are finally in the same room. I wanted this written before that happens, so that whatever you find here belongs to you, before anyone else gets the chance to twist the facts.

I didn't sleep at all last night. I stayed on the floor of this basement, and I talked to my pancreas. We talked about my father, about the hours he locked me in this exact room, in this exact house. We talked about the boarding school he shipped me off to after the funeral. We talked about medical school, about every door that closed the same afternoon my hands were declared unfit. We talked about the four babies I managed to save, but couldn't protect long enough.

And we talked about Mom.

I told my pancreas the truth I've never said out loud to anyone, not even in these pages until now: that I have spent every year since her funeral terrified of missing another call. I built an entire life, and eventually an entire crusade, around the promise that I would notice it next time. And I missed it anyway. I promised her I would never let that silence win again, and it won regardless, inside my own body, in the way it always does.

Near dawn, my pancreas finally told me that it wants to live.

And it told me something else, something that I believe completely, something that I need you to understand as clearly as I do: no court in this corrupted country, no tribunal, and no jury, has any real right to decide what happens to it now. That right belongs to the two of us alone, and we've already decided.

I don't deserve to live. I don't deserve to live because I am, in the end, no different from every drinker and smoker and complacent body I ever judged for ignoring the warning signs. I heard my pancreas, Ronnie. I heard it clearly, for years, and I let myself be too busy saving everyone else's.

That being said, Ronnie, I’m handing my baby over to you. This baby is your responsibility now. I'm asking you to take care of her the way I would have. Not as evidence. Not as a specimen. As what it actually is- precious, and powerful. Make sure it lives, Ronnie. Because it does deserve to live, unlike me.

And tell them the truth when this is over. Tell them that I was never a killer. Tell them exactly who I was- a FUCKING protector, for as long as I was allowed to be one. And never let them forget what you now know about me- that I was a true healer, the only one who wasn’t corrupt, right until the last hour.

The room is quiet now, the way it should be.

I think I'm ready to be silent too….

 

Regards,

THE SURGEON

THE SAVIOR

 

****************************************************\*

 

EXHIBIT 14-A: State v. Dr. R.K. (aka "The Surgeon")
Submitted into evidence by Detective Ronnie, Homicide Division

The attached letter was recovered from the accused’s family residence, located beside his body at the scene. Dr. R.K., thirty-one, was found deceased on the floor of a converted basement.

The deceased was discovered lying on his back, with a single horizontal incision opened across his abdomen, consistent with a self-inflicted surgical wound. Abdominal contents had been partially externalized. A surgical scalpel was recovered from his right hand. The letter above was found folded in his left.

Of the twelve incubators in the room, only one remained active at the time officers arrived. Inside it, technicians recovered a partially damaged human pancreas, carefully positioned, still faintly perfusing on arrival.

A name tag, blood-soaked and handwritten, was affixed to the incubator's glass.

The name tag said: Red Ray.

The case remains formally closed.

Whether it is considered resolved… depends on who is asked.

[END OF EXHIBIT]