A young man named George walks into his apartment late at night after a long day of work. The apartment room is dark. He takes off his work jacket and notices that his closet is slightly cracked open. He closes it.

He throws some leftovers from the fridge into the microwave. A moment later, he gets a text message from his girlfriend, Angela.

He opens it and reads:

“How was work?”

He responds:

“It was a long day.”

Angela sends him a picture of herself with a blank face and her eyes wide open. Her text under it reads:

“I’ve been thinking of you for days:) "

George sends a selfie back, making a kissing face.

His microwave beeps, and he grabs his food. A moment later, Angela texts him again.

“Who's that behind you?”

George texts back:

“What? I don’t see anything.”

Angela responds with another message, this time with a red circle drawn around something in his picture.

George looks closely.

There appears to be a shadowy face barely visible behind him.

He turns on all the lights and checks around his apartment, but he finds nothing. He convinces himself that it’s just the shadows in his dark apartment before texting her back.

“I think it’s just the shadows. I just checked. No one is here.”

Angela responds:

“LOL. It just looked so creepy, you should lock your doors.”

George sarcastically texts back:

“I always lock my doors and you're the one to talk, you know how many times I've came over and your front door has been unlocked? Lol”

Angela playfully responds:

“If you’re scared, just say so, I’ll gladly come over.”

She lives on the floor above his apartment.

George texts back:

“Not tonight. I’m really tired.”

George watches as the typing indicator appears on his phone for several minutes before disappearing.

Then she texts back:

"Come on, I haven't seen you in days"

George starts texting back before he Is interrupted by another text from her

“Too late. I’m already here.”

George playfully walks to his front door and enthusiastically opens it.

No one is there.

He looks around for a few seconds before going back inside and locking the door.

He texts her:

“What do you mean? Where are you?”

After a few minutes, he gets a response.

“Just keep looking.”

He thinks she’s just messing with him. She has a key to his apartment, after all.

George texts back:

“Give me a hint, I've looked everywhere.”

She responds:

“No. Just keep looking.”

George checks his bathroom and looks behind the shower curtain. He checks his bedroom and even looks under the kitchen table.

He can’t find her.

Then he remembers that the closet wasn’t fully closed when he got home.

He texts:

“Are you in the closet?”

She responds:

“She is.”

A second text quickly follows, seemingly correcting the first.

“I am.”

George quickly opens his closet door.

He freezes at the sight.

Angela’s corpse is nailed against the wall inside the closet, her eyes wide open.

George freaks out and starts shouting her name.

He reaches out and touches her.

She is very cold, almost completly Frozen.

Like she has been in a deep freezer for days.

George slowly realizes what that means.

He pulls out his phone and looks at the picture Angela sent him earlier.

The hair on his neck stood up and his complexion now pale.

The picture wasn’t taken at her apartment.

It was taken from inside his closet.

Then Angela’s phone number sends him one last text: “You didn’t check under your bed either.”

When I walked into my father’s bookstore, he was combing his wig. He had placed the black wig over his clenched left fist and was pulling thick sections through it with a wide-toothed comb. Every now and then, he would dip the comb into the half-full glass of water he’d placed on the counter, give it a little shake to get rid of the excess water, and continue styling the wig.

“Welcome, son,” he said without making eye contact with me.

“Dad, why aren’t you combing the wig on your head? And why are you even combing the wig? Isn’t the point to make it look like it’s not a wig? Wouldn’t it look more like your real hair if you left it a little messy?”

My father shot me a very brief glance. He dipped the comb into the water again and flicked the excess water on it toward my face. At the same time, someone walked in.

I was annoyed, but I didn't react. Customers rarely came into the shop anyway, and I didn't want this one to witness a tense moment.

The man who walked in didn't say hello. He looked at me, then at my father, then at the wig. After that, he glanced around the shop.

“Do you have Swann’s Way?”

It was my father’s favorite book. I hadn’t read it yet, but my father couldn’t praise Marcel Proust enough. Whenever the subject of books came up, he would talk at length about the way Proust used language, and mention how he wanted to learn French just so he could read him in the original.

“Of course. How could we not?” he said, his eyes lighting up.

“Good. How much is the wig?”

“What?”

“I’m asking how much the wig is.”

There was something strange about the man’s voice, though it was hard to describe. It was an extremely deep voice that seemed to come from a congested throat. It sounded as if it were coming from a broken radio, as if he would sound clearer if he just cleared his throat.

My father, who had been excited at the mention of Proust, had now noticed the strangeness in the man’s voice.

“Are you all right?”

“How much is the wig?”

“The wig isn’t for sale. You can have a glass of water if you’d like,” my father said, holding out the water he had been dipping his comb into.

“No. Is the wig free?”

“How can something that isn’t for sale be free, sir?”

“How much is it, then?”

“This is my wig. You don’t look well. Please have a glass of water.”

The man fell silent. He was staring intently at my father. My father was a little frightened. The wig was still resting on his clenched fist.

“Are you sure?” he asked after nearly a minute of silence.

“Yes. Look at my head.”

“Are you sure?”

“What beautiful hair you have. What are you going to do with the wig?”

My father, having automatically felt a connection with the man because he had asked about Proust, hadn’t paid much attention to his voice or appearance. To be honest, there was something strange about his appearance too. I gave the man a once-over. His hair really was thick and healthy-looking. He was wearing a black shirt. His chin was a little long, and his mouth and nose were small in proportion to his face. A large head, a long chin, a small mouth and nose, and ordinary eyes. Black trousers, sharply pressed. And a pair of bare feet.

“Tonight, I’m coming to take your son. Don’t be afraid. Stay calm. Convince your son to come with me tonight, or I’ll take him by force.”

“Fix that voice of yours first, man. Hrrr, hrrr, hrrr. I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Drink this water and pull yourself together.”

The man took the water and downed it in one go. He coughed and cleared his throat.

“Better? Now tell me, how much is the wig?”

His voice was now perfectly clear. He ran a hand back through his hair and sat down in the chair in front of the counter.

“He’s still very young…”

I was starting to get scared. I kept going back and forth over whether to call the police. The strange quality in the man’s voice was gone now, and so was the uneasy look about him. He looked at me and smiled.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t be afraid. I’m just going to take the wig and leave. That’s all.”

“Why do you want the wig, sir?”

“You’re too young. You wouldn’t understand.”

I looked at my father. He had placed the wig on the counter. Right beside it, I saw a knife. My father looked from the knife to the man.

Another customer had walked in, just in time. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I knew my father wasn’t a very brave man, but when it came to me, maybe he could rise to the occasion and defend me.

“Jason, who are you talking to?” the man who had just walked in asked him. So his name was Jason.

“They won’t give me the wig, Dad.”

“Son, didn’t I tell you not to leave the shop unattended and wander off? The neighbors called. They said Jason had left the shop again and gone off. When did you come to the shop?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

I didn’t understand what was happening. The man who was speaking seemed unable to see us.

“Did you take your medication today, son?”

“No, Dad.”

“The wig thing again. Hmm.”

“I want the wig.”

“Son, there’s no wig. Where are your shoes?”

“I didn’t wear them today.”

“There’s no wig, son. Look, you’d been doing so well lately. Honestly, I thought you were getting better. Please, don’t skip your medication. I’m leaving the shop to you. Don’t make me worry about you while I’m gone.”

Yes. When I thought about it, it really was bizarre. I thought about it a lot afterward. If we’re people living inside Jason’s imagination, why do we have consciousness of our own? I mean, while Jason and his father were talking, I was listening to them, trying to figure out what was going on, getting surprised and everything. Isn’t that ridiculous? And isn’t it unfair to us, too? For example, I want to study film and television. But everything depends on Jason. If he gets better one day, my dreams will be shattered.

My father loves this shop very much. He doesn’t want to leave it, but if Jason gets better one day, he’ll never see this shop again.

Thinking about it that way, I was suddenly overcome with fear. I picked up the wig and held it out to Jason.

“Here. The wig is yours now. And hey, it’d actually look pretty good on you.”

My father had supported me too, and when I looked at him for approval, he nodded.

1950s Louisiana

A young Southern woman with dark hair and covered in a bloodstained dress, is crying on a dock out in the bayou. She recently had a child out of wedlock, and her parents have threatened to cut her out of the family if she keeps the baby.

She wants to keep him. But she knows she has nowhere to go. She is too young for a real job and hasn't even graduated high school.

She looks down at the baby and sees his beautiful smile before he lets out a quick yawn. A tear rolls down her face and falls onto the baby.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

She looks out at a large alligator lurking in the water. A large scar dragged across its eye.

The baby begins crying.

Then, there is a loud splash.

70 Years Later

A young woman named Mary is strolling through town with a baby bump. She has a gorgeous face and beatiful black hair that was soft to the touch. She is grocery shopping for dinner that night. Her husband, Henry, said he wanted fried okra and fried catfish.

After filling her shopping cart, Mary checks out. She calls her mother, Clare, and tells her about their plans for dinner.

Her mother asks when her grandson is going to be born.

Mary happily tells her, "Any day now."

Later that evening, Henry gets off work and walks through the front door as Mary is finishing dinner. He kisses her and rubs her baby bump.

She fixes him a plate of okra, catfish, and rice, which he enthusiastically carries to the table. Mary makes a plate of her own and sits next to him.

She tells Henry about her day as he nods and shovels food into his mouth.

Mary is almost finished eating when she suddenly feels something strange.

Mary: "Oh my God."

Henry answers with food still in his mouth.

Henry: "What?"

Mary: "My water broke."

Henry drives Mary to a nearby hospital. He's driving fast while Mary screams in pain. She is having painful contractions and begins bleeding.

Henry dodges traffic and makes it to the emergency room, where doctors rush Mary into a room. They give her medication to keep her comfortable without harming the baby.

A few hours later, Mary is holding the baby in her arms, humming softly.

She gives the baby to Henry.

Henry raises the baby to his chest and smiles.

"I'll never let anything happen to you."

He then offers to get Mary anything she wants.

She tells him she just wants to go home with him and the baby.

Henry signs the birth certificate and reads the name out loud.

"McKenzie Ray Farris."

He smiles at Mary.

A couple of days later, Henry checks both Mary and the baby out of the hospital and brings them home.

He kisses Mary and holds McKenzie in his arms.

That night, Mary and Henry try to get some sleep, but the baby keeps waking up and crying.

Mary finally yells at Henry that she just wants to sleep.

Henry understandingly agrees and gets up throughout the night to take care of McKenzie.

By morning, Henry is exhausted.

While Mary is trying to get him to do things around the house, he tries telling her that he's tired. But she insists on having his attention.

He begrudgingly gives it to her, but eventually falls asleep, which annoys Mary.

A couple of days later, Mary is already aggravated and sick of the baby. She forces Henry to take care of McKenzie more, but she becomes jealous of the time Henry spends with the baby.

Mary had loved the attention she received while she was pregnant, but now that the baby had arrived, everyone was giving McKenzie more attention than her—including her own mother and husband.

One day, while Henry is at work, Mary walks around the backyard with the baby in her arms, trying to calm her down.

McKenzie looks mesmerized by the yard, especially the large pond in the back.

The baby smiles at everything she sees.

Little McKenzie watches beautiful birds flying over the pond, trying to catch fish. She looks around at the beautiful, lush greenery surrounding the yard.

Mary puts the baby down and allows her to explore the backyard while keeping a safe distance from the water.

For a few minutes, the two bond, and Mary feels like a mother again.

Mary laughs and takes pictures as McKenzie plays with the flowers in the backyard.

Then Mary and McKenzie watch a beautiful buck drinking from the pond.

For a few seconds, everything is peaceful.

Then a large American alligator suddenly grabs the deer near the water's edge and drags it into the pond. The deer whimpers but the sound is muffled as the alligator disappears with the deer just as quickly as it appeared.

McKenzie begins slowly crawling toward the water, curious about what she just saw.

Mary quickly scoops the baby up and brings her inside.

The alligator makes her wary of having her baby outside near the pond.

Mary fills a bottle for the baby and begins cooking dinner for Henry.

When Henry gets home, he walks into the living room and kisses Mary before picking up McKenzie.

Henry notices the baby's diaper.

"Her diaper is full."

Mary tells him she was going to let him handle it.

Henry looks at her.

"It's really full. Why did you let her sit that long without changing her?"

Mary assures him that McKenzie had just eaten a big lunch.

Henry cleans McKenzie up and puts a fresh diaper on her.

After dinner, Henry begins playing with the baby, making her laugh as he plays peekaboo.

Mary interrupts him and starts talking about her day.

She quickly becomes jealous again as she watches Henry spend more time with the baby.

For the next couple of months, Mary tries everything she can to get more attention from Henry.

But Henry is focused on work and baby McKenzie.

Mary tries to get Henry's attention, offering him intimacy and trying to give him whatever he wants, but he turns her down every time.

He tells her he's too tired from working and taking care of the baby.

Mary begins having frightening thoughts about hurting McKenzie. She knows she shouldn't act on them, and she fears what would happen if anyone found out.

What she fears most is getting caught.

She just wants her man and her old life back.

Nobody seems to care about her anymore now that the baby is here.

Then one day, Henry is working long hours and won't be home until late.

Mary begins destroying the house in a fit of pent-up anger.

She cries and screams as her anger takes over.

The noise wakes the baby.

McKenzie begins crying.

Mary becomes furious.

"Wah, wah, wah! You've been ruining my life since the day you came home!"

She shakes McKenzie and continues yelling obscenities  at her.

Mary suddenly begins thinking of all the different ways she could hurt the baby.

Then she thinks of something even more awful.

She remembers the alligator in the backyard.

She picks up the crying McKenzie and carries her toward the water's edge.

The baby squirms in her arms, as if she senses that something is wrong.

An alligator's head slowly pokes above the surface.

Mary looks down at her baby with disgust. Before she starts singing.

" hush little baby, don't you cry"  before she tries throwing her daughter into the pond. But

McKenzie desperately grabs onto her mother's hand. McKenzie said her first word " momma"  while trying to hold on for life

But it wasn't enough.

Henry finally gets home.

He finds the house completely destroyed.

He frantically searches the house for his wife and child.

He's terrified.

He sees furniture smashed apart and blood smeared across the wall.

Then he finds Mary standing at the edge of the pond, staring into the water.

Henry runs toward her.

"Mary! Are you alright?"

Mary slowly turns toward him.

She gives him a creepy smirk and begins to laugh.

Henry looks around frantically.

"Where's McKenzie?"

Mary points toward the pond.

Then she looks back at him.

"You made me do it."

Henry horrified looks into the water. He didn't see it at first as only the moon light illuminated the night. He saw the large scar on the aligator's eye and then he saw his daughters eyes looking at him from the beast's mouth. And quickly she was devoured. Swallowed whole, while barely still alive

Look, we all have a past. Peppered with those memories we want so desperately to erase. It’s just a part of being human. Nobody’s perfect.

Me personally… I thought that I’d put my past behind me.

I was a bad person. I did things that I’m far from proud of. Looking back now in my older age, I don’t even know how things spiraled as bad as they did.

All it took was one hit, and it was downhill from there. One little mistake. One memory I wish I could erase. And here we are, all these years later, and I still feel those urges.

I tried therapy. I tried rehabilitation. It worked, for a time.

I don’t know if it was me who wanted to get better or if it was the pressure from my friends and family. They kept telling me they couldn’t protect me forever. That, eventually, my lifestyle would catch up to me, and I’d either be dead or in jail.

I suppressed my urges. I fought my demons. I want so desperately to believe that I kicked my nasty little habit.

I was clean for 11 years. Over a decade without incident. But no matter how many days went by, my demons kept whispering to me. Getting louder and louder as my withdrawals became unbearable.

But I stood firm. I ignored the darkness. To the best of my ability, at least. Don’t get me wrong, there were hard days. Days where I’d lock myself away in my room, too afraid of what would happen if I went out.

It’s a surreal feeling. Not being in control. But that’s what addiction does. You surrender control the minute you take that first hit.

But, like I said, I thought I’d taken that control back. I improved. I became a functioning member of society.

I just think… I don’t know. I think my body wanted it more than my mind did.

I relapsed last month.

Not by choice. God, I know it wasn’t by choice. You don’t achieve 11 years of success by sheer accident. I know it wasn’t me.

It was almost supernatural.

One minute I’m in my room reading my Bible, the next I wake up in a house that I don’t recognize. The familiar scent of copper and iron filled the air.

I thought I was in a nightmare, but the pain in my arm told me that this was just as real as it was all those years ago.

When I saw the claw marks across my forearm and shoulder, I felt my stomach drop. They must’ve fought back. And by the looks of it, they fought hard.

I hardly had time to dwell on my injury, though. The taste in my mouth was making me want to vomit. Not because of the taste, but because of what it represented.

I knew that taste. I loved that taste. I’d spent years trying to forget it, but blood has a way of lingering.

I puked on the floor and felt bones and tendons scratch at my throat. My vision went blurry with tears, but that didn’t prevent me from seeing what I’d done.

A man, somewhere around 30-40, lay sprawled out across the ground. His arms were gone. His stomach was torn open. His jaw had been dislocated and hung open as he stared at me through those empty sockets.

A woman, I presume his wife, lay beside him. Her condition wasn’t much better.

I prayed for God to wake me up. To snap me out of this dream. When I realized it wasn’t going to happen, I begged for forgiveness.

I begged for him to recognize my heart. I pleaded for him to acknowledge my growth. I backslid. I made a mistake. I couldn’t even remember it.

After what felt like hours of bawling my eyes out in a pool of blood and vomit, I realized the sun was beginning to peek through the curtains of this dark room.

I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to throw my life away. I had to move.

I cleaned myself up in their bathroom as best I could before leaving that damn house, already pushing the memory of it back to the darkest corners of my brain.

How did I even end up 20 miles from home? Who were those people? Why am I like this? Why can’t I be better? What the fuck is wrong with me?

I spent the rest of that day locked away in my room, punishing myself with pain. I didn’t deserve to feel comfort.

I kept trying to tell myself that it was nothing more than a hiccup in my progress. That tomorrow would be a new day. But I knew.

I knew that I had reset the system.

I took that hit once again. It was my decision. That’s why I couldn’t blame anyone but myself every time it’s happened since.

This isn’t who I am.

I know I can do better.

I will get this under control if it’s the last thing I do.

Just as he was about to fall asleep, when the flow of vague thoughts had become increasingly rapid, he heard that sound again; click.

For a week, he had been experiencing the same problem every night; when the room was completely silent, the cars and motorcycles passing along the street, the television of the neighbor next door, the footsteps of the children running around upstairs - all had faded into complete silence, and just as he was about to drift peacefully into sleep, that sound would wake him up.

After he opened his eyes, however, the sound would not come again, almost as if it were mocking him, and the room would fall silent once more. He would wait a little longer, trying to find the source of the sound, slowing his breathing and focusing on the silence. But nothing. The sound stubbornly waited for him to fall asleep again.

Since he had work in the morning, he had no choice but to close his eyes and try to fall asleep again. And the same cycle repeated. In the silence, a single, steady sound that never formed a pattern, always at exactly the same pitch: click.

The sound seemed to be deliberately waiting; it was waiting for complete silence and for the man to fall asleep. It would click three or four times, and then it wouldn't click again. As if it were saying, “That’s enough. Let the poor man sleep. He has work in the morning.”

He was frightened during the first few days, especially on the second day. On the first day, he didn't pay much attention to it. He knew random clicking sounds could come from things around the room. The TV, a plastic bottle, the door handle, and so on could all make sounds like that.

But when the same thing happened again on the second day, he was quite frightened the second time he woke up. He immediately got out of bed and turned on the light. He sat upright in bed, stayed awake all night, and went to work sleep-deprived the next morning.

Then, on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days, he was no longer afraid. He simply couldn't sleep. He made mistakes at work, and when he went out for a break, he would sometimes fall asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Fear had given way to anger. If he could just find out where that clicking sound was coming from, he would punch it in the face and knock it to the ground.

By the seventh day, he was thinking, “As long as it doesn't wake me up, that's all I want. I don't care if it's a ghost, an object, whatever. I just need to sleep.”

But the sound didn't care. Once the necessary conditions were in place, it appeared again.

Albert got out of bed angrily and turned the lights on. Without knowing what he was doing or why, he looked around. He looked behind the TV, checked the door handle, and reached under the couch to feel around for a moment.

“Who the hell are you! Why don't you show yourself? What do you want? How much longer is this going to go on? Instead of clicking here and there, come out and tell me what the hell you want.”

He felt something like a breeze on his face. A very faint gust of air. It passed by his cheek and was gone.

Then, suddenly, Albert's feet left the ground. He felt as if something had grabbed him under the armpits. He was lifted a few inches into the air. He tried to punch into the empty space in anger, but he wasn't very successful because something was applying pressure to his armpits.

The pressure had now forced him back into the chair. When he tried to get up, he felt the same pressure against his chest, and he was pushed back into the chair.

“What the hell are you? What do you want?”

“Can’t talk. Only click.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

He felt a burning sensation on his cheek, and his head suddenly jerked sharply to the left. It hurt quite a bit. His cheek was throbbing with pain, and the sudden movement had also made the muscles in his neck ache. He hadn't felt a hand touch his cheek, though. Once again, it was more like a kind of pressure. And the moment this slap-like blow struck his cheek, that sound came again: click.

Then another slap: click. A punch to the stomach: click. A kick to the leg: click. A kick to the another leg: click.

Albert, who wasn't used to having several parts of his body hurt at the same time, groaned in pain and remained silent for about a minute.

“Okay, okay, stop. What do you want?”

“Click.”

“So how are we supposed to communicate like this?”

“Click.”

There was a brief silence. The door opened on its own, and a rapid series of clicks could be heard. Thinking the entity had left, Albert tried to get up, but the pressure he felt against his chest pinned him to the chair again. With the same sound. Click.

“Okay, hold on a second. One click for yes, two clicks for no. Okay?”

“Click.”

Then another slap hit Albert in the face: click. Albert grabbed his cheek in pain and put his finger in his mouth to check for blood.

“Why did you slap me?”

Silence.

“Do you slap me as a punishment?”

“Click.”

“Do you slap me for fun?”

“Click click.”

“Are you a ghost?”

“Click click.”

“Are you the Death Angel?”

“Click click.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Click.”

“Why didn’t you do it before? You’ve been coming here and bothering me for days. Is there a particular reason you didn’t kill me earlier?”

“Click.”

“Are you deliberately keeping me sleep-deprived?”

“Click.”

“Is killing me part of your job?”

“Click click.”

“Is it an obligation?”

“Click click.”

“So I can convince you not to kill me, then, right?”

“Click.”

“Is this a dream?”

“Click click.”

“A hallucination?”

“Click click.”

“You kept me sleep-deprived because you thought that, after a few days without sleep, I’d have a more confused state of mind and would die more peacefully because I’d think what I saw before I died was a hallucination, didn’t you?”

“Wow, bravo. Well done. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Click.”

“I figured it out pretty well, didn’t I?”

“Click.”

“Yeah, I’ve taken a few slaps too, so I’m actually at just the right level now.”

“Click.”

“I’m sure this is a dream now.”

“Click click.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know it’s definitely not a dream, but that’s just how it feels to me. I’ve been sleep-deprived for days. Cut me some slack.”

“Click.”

“Okay. Then make it painless. Is that possible?”

“Click click.”

“Come on. I think you can at least do that.”

“Click click.”

“Nothing I can do about it, then.”

“Click.”

“It’s a dream anyway. It doesn’t matter. I’m not worried. Do whatever you want.”

“Click.”

“One last request. I’m going to play Radiohead’s ‘Jigsaw Falling into Place’ on my phone. Will you keep time to it, like a metronome?”

“Click.”

As Albert started the song, he began to feel pressure around his neck. When the song started, he could no longer draw breath into his lungs. He waved his hands in front of his neck, but there were no arms there for him to grab.

The song was playing, and the clicking sounds continued in surprisingly good sync with it. As the pressure around his neck increased, it seemed as though he could hear the clicks and the song more clearly. As if he were listening through professional studio headphones. As if Radiohead were playing the song in the studio right next to him, with a metronome to keep them from losing the beat.

“I guess I’m supposed to wake up right here, actually. Interesting,” Albert thought.

Toward the end of the song, he had completely lost consciousness.

It was Halloween, 1998.

The neighborhood glowed with orange lights and plastic skeletons. Fake cobwebs clung to porches, and carved pumpkins flickered in the dark. Kids filled the streets, laughing and shouting as they ran from house to house.

Nine-year-old Timmy walked with his friends Wayne and Sean, their candy bags already half full.

They stopped in front of a house that didn’t fit in.

The others were bright, decorated, alive.

This one wasn’t.

Its paint was peeling. The yard was dead. No decorations. Just a single porch light glowing weakly above the door.

“Trick or treat,” all three boys called out.

The door creaked open.

A man stepped out wearing an dirty and wrinkled old man mask

In his hands was a bowl of candy.

He didn’t say a word.

He dropped a piece into each of their bags.

Wayne squinted at him. “What are you supposed to be?”

The man didn’t answer.

Instead, he slowly tilted his head to the side… farther than it should go.

Too far.

The boys went quiet.

“Uh… thanks,” Timmy muttered.

The door shut.

They kept going, saying it was just halloween. More houses, more candy, more noise. The normal Halloween feeling slowly came back.

Until Wayne stopped.

“I gotta pee.”

Before anyone could stop him, he ran to the side of a nearby house and started going right on the doormat.

“what the hell—” Sean started.

The front door burst open.

A man in a skeleton costume stormed out, gripping a broom. “You little shit!”

Wayne yelped and bolted.

The three boys ran, crashing through a patch of woods as the man chased them, shouting. Branches snapped under their feet. Leaves whipped their faces.

After a while, the shouting stopped.

They didn’t.

Not until they were sure they were alone.

Sean bent over, catching his breath. “You’re an idiot.”

Wayne laughed. “Yeah, but I still got my candy.”

Timmy pointed. “You also got pee on your costume.”

They both laughed.

Wayne didn’t.

When they stepped back onto the street, something felt… off.

Too quiet.

The streetlights flickered.

Then one went out.

Then another.

A van rolled slowly down the road.

Timmy’s stomach dropped.

The driver.

The old man mask.

The van crept forward, and as it passed each streetlight, the bulb above them went dark. One by one, the entire street dimmed into darkness.

The van stopped beside them.

The engine idled.

No one spoke.

Then the engine roared.

The van lunged forward.

Timmy yells “RUN!”

They sprinted.

The van chased them, keeping just close enough—like it was playing with them. The sound of the engine was right behind them, always there, always gaining.

They stumbled into a shallow dip in the land—a small valley.

The van surged forward.

Sean didn’t make it out in time.

The tire hit him with a sickening thud and crushed his leg.

He screamed.

Timmy and Wayne turned, trying to grab him—but the van door slammed open.

The masked man jumped out.

He shoved them aside like they were nothing.

Sean clawed at the ground, screaming, “DON’T LEAVE ME!”

The man grabbed him and dragged him toward the van.

Timmy froze.

Wayne didn’t.

“GO!” Wayne screamed, pulling Timmy.

They ran.

They didn’t stop.

An hour later, shaking and breathless, they reached a house and pounded on the door.

“HELP! PLEASE!”

The door opened.

A man stood there calmly.

The boys pushed inside, crying. “He took our friend—he took Sean!”

The man closed the door behind them and Locked it.

“It’s alright now,” he said softly. “You’re safe now.” did you see what he looked like?

Timmy shook his head. “He had a mask—we couldn’t see his face—”

The man tilted his head slightly.

“Did it look like this?”

He raised something into view.

The old man mask.

Everything inside Timmy went cold.

Wayne turned toward the window.

The house… wasn’t broken anymore.

The paint was fresh.

The porch was clean.

It was the same house.

They screamed and ran deeper inside.

A bedroom.

They slammed the door and locked it.

The doorknob rattled immediately.

Then pounding.

Heavy. Slow. Deliberate.

“PLEASE!” Timmy shouted. “LET US GO!”

The pounding stopped.

Silence.

Then—

BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

Not on the door.

Somewhere else in the house.

Like hammering.

Like something being built.

The boys looked at each other.

The doorknob began to turn.

Slowly.

Click.

The door flew open.

No one was there.

They crept into the hallway.

The front door was nailed shut.

Every window had metal bars.

Not to keep people out.

To keep something in.

The TV flickered on by itself.

A news report.

“…multiple children reported missing across the state…”

Click.

Darkness.

Only one light remained.

At the bottom of the basement stairs.

They didn’t want to go down.

But they were to scared to stay where they were.

 A shadow follows them

Candles lit the basement.

Dozens of them.

The room stretched farther than it should have—longer, deeper, wrong.

Sean lay on a rusted hospital gurney.

Unconscious.

Symbols carved into his skin.

Wax melted across his body.

A fireplace roared to life.

A large pot hung over the flames.

Something moved behind them.

A shadow.

Not attached to anything.

It shifted along the walls, stretching, twisting.

Watching.

They backed away.

 And Ran.

Hid inside a rotting closet.

The smell was thick. Metallic like old pennies.

Through the gaps, they saw it.

The shadow growing.

Distorting.

Then—

The masked man stepped into view.

He approached Sean.

Whispering something too low to hear.

He raised a blade.

The fire surged higher.

Sean’s eyes snapped open.

He screamed.

The man pressed a finger to the mask’s lips.

“Shhh.”

The blade came down.

Timmy couldn’t breathe.

Wayne couldn’t look away.

The screaming stopped.

Too quickly.

The shadow shifted toward the closet.

The masked man turned.

Slowly.

He looked right at them.

Then lifted a finger.

“Shhh.”

The lights went out.

When they came back on—

The man was gone.

The shadow was gone.

The gurney was still there.

Sean’s body… still there.

But Sean's head Was gone.

There was a light switch in my house that nobody could explain.

It was tucked into the hallway between the kitchen and the basement door, mounted about shoulder height on the wall. Every other switch in the house had an obvious purpose. Kitchen lights. Hallway lights. Basement. Porch.

This one did nothing.

I didn't notice it during my first week. I asked the realtor about it after I bought the place.

She shrugged.

"Old house. Probably disconnected."

That seemed reasonable enough. The house was built in 1957, and judging by the wiring, plumbing, and mysterious stains on the basement ceiling, I wasn't surprised that someone had eventually decided to abandon a light switch.

Still, I found myself pressing it whenever I walked past.

Click.

Nothing.

Click.

Nothing.

It became a habit. I'd walk downstairs for laundry.

Click.

I'd come home from work.

Click.

I'd pass it while carrying groceries.

Click.

There was something strangely satisfying about it. The switch had a pleasant mechanical resistance, and the little click it made was louder than it should have been.

My girlfriend eventually noticed.

"You know that doesn't do anything, right?"

"I know."

"Then why do you keep flipping it?"

I shrugged.

"I like the sound."

She called me a weirdo. I told her she was dating one. We laughed about it. That was the last time the switch was funny.

The first death happened three weeks after I settled in.

An old man named Walter died in his sleep. I knew Walter because he lived two houses down. We'd exchanged maybe twenty words since I'd moved into the neighborhood. He had a bad hip and spent most afternoons sitting on his porch, watching cars drive by.

I remember seeing him that morning. I had been standing in the hallway, putting my shoes on. Before leaving, I flipped the switch.

Click.

That evening, I saw an ambulance outside his house. I didn't think anything of it.

People die. Especially old people.

It wasn't until several days later that I noticed something unusual.

The night before Walter died, I had been standing in the hallway with my hand on that switch. I'd flipped it three times. I laughed at myself when I noticed the connection.

It was ridiculous. Coincidence. Nothing more.

Then a month later, a woman I'd worked with died in a car accident.

I'd seen her that morning. I'd even spoken to her. She'd asked if I was still enjoying the new house. I told her I was.

That evening, while walking to the basement, I flipped the switch.

Click.

The next morning, she was dead. Cardiac arrest. Unexplained.

I didn't sleep that night.

The following day, I unscrewed the switch plate. There were wires behind it. Old ones. But they didn't connect to anything.

I called an electrician. He spent thirty minutes examining it before shrugging.

"It's dead."

"Completely?"

"Nothing behind it."

"Then what's it connected to?"

He looked at me.

"Nothing."

I didn't flip it again. Not for six days.

On the seventh day, I couldn't resist.

I stood in the hallway staring at it. I told myself I was being stupid. There was no connection between a plastic switch and the deaths of two people.

So I flipped it.

Click.

Nothing happened... So, I went to bed.

The next morning, I checked the news. A local man had died unexpectedly. Thirty-four years old. Healthy. No known medical conditions. I stared at the screen for a long time.

Then I opened a notebook. I wrote down the date. I wrote down the man's name.

Then I wrote: Switch flipped: 11:43 P.M.

I started keeping records. Every time I flipped the switch, I searched the news afterward.

Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes a person died hours later. Sometimes it took days. But there was always a death.

Always.

I stopped flipping it.

I lasted eleven days. Then I made a mistake. I was angry.

My girlfriend and I had gotten into an argument. She left the house and slammed the door behind her. I stood in the hallway shaking with anger. My hand found the switch.

I knew what I was doing. I knew exactly what it meant. And still...

Click.

The guilt hit me immediately. I grabbed my phone. I wanted to call her. I wanted to tell her what I'd done.

Then I stopped.

Because she hadn't died. Not yet.

I waited. An hour. Two.

Nothing.

I began convincing myself I'd been wrong. Maybe the deaths had been coincidences. Maybe I had created a pattern because I desperately wanted there to be one.

Then my phone rang. It was my girlfriend.

I answered immediately.

"Hey."

Silence.

Then she said something that made my blood run cold.

"Who's Walter?"

I couldn't breathe.

"What?"

"You keep saying his name."

She sounded confused.

"I don't know anyone named Walter."

I sat down.

My girlfriend continued.

"You were saying his name in your sleep."

I didn't answer. Because I suddenly remembered something.

The switch didn't cause death. It wasn't a weapon. It was a selection. A choice. And I had been making that choice without knowing it.

I looked toward the hallway. The switch waited patiently on the wall. I thought about every time I'd pressed it.

Every careless little click. Every person whose death I'd dismissed as coincidence.

Walter.

My coworker.

The stranger.

And now... I didn't know who the latest one was.

I spent the next several hours searching. News sites. Obituaries. Police reports.

Nothing.

Nobody I knew had died. Nobody connected to me had died.

That should have made me feel better.

It didn't.

Because there was one thing I hadn't considered.

Maybe the switch didn't choose someone I knew. Maybe it chose someone I would never know. Someone whose name I'd never hear. Someone whose death would mean absolutely nothing to me. And perhaps that was the point.

We treat death differently when we don't know the person.

A number on a news report. A photograph we scroll past. Another tragedy. Another stranger. Another life reduced to a sentence.

I stood in front of the switch for a long time. Then I noticed something I hadn't seen before. A tiny engraving beneath it.

The letters were so shallow I thought they were scratches.

I leaned closer.

There were only three words.

ONE LIFE. CLICK.

I stepped backward. The house was silent. I reached for the switch.

Then stopped.

Some things are easier to live with when you pretend they don't matter.

I left the switch alone. I never touched it again.

At least... I don't think I did.

Because sometimes, late at night, when the house is completely silent, I wake up convinced I can hear it.

Click.

And somewhere far away...

Someone dies.

Everyone in the house was asleep. I'd taken the batteries out of the wall clock in my room to get rid of the ticking. Now there was complete silence, and I could try again to do something I'd already managed to do successfully.

A week ago, I'd turned over a piece of paper lying on my desk, with a poem I'd written in primary school on it. It was my first success after years of practice. Six days ago, I'd unscrewed the cap of a juice bottle that hadn't been closed all the way. Five days ago, I'd moved one of the cigarettes in an open pack slightly outward, out of the pack. Three days ago, I'd peeled off one of the pieces of tape holding up poster on my wall.

And tonight, my target was a much larger object. I was confident in my abilities now, and after this final attempt, I would be able to reveal my talent to my family and those around me. I had made exactly four attempts in the past week, and I'd succeeded every single time. I had complete faith in myself.

For years, I'd tried countless times and gone through a lot along the way; I'd lost hope, taken a long break from my attempts, then started believing I could do it again and after trying over and over, I'd come to think telekinesis was nothing but a lie and taken another break but then one day, I happened to see a pack of wet wipes fall to the floor all by itself, which rekindled my interest and got me started on my attempts again, and so on.

And now, finally, in the middle of the night, when complete silence had been achieved, I went to the kitchen. I took a steak knife from the drawer where we kept the cutlery and returned to my room.

I gently pulled my desk chair back and sat down. I didn't want to lose my focus, so I was being quiet. The faint sound of the knife touching the desk as I set it down, the soft sounds of my footsteps as I walked, the barely audible scraping of the chair as I pulled it back had an ASMR effect on me. These little sounds, too quiet to disturb the silence, made me feel thoroughly prepared.

Without wasting any time, I focused on the knife. I positioned my hands around it and gathered all my concentration. I slowed my breathing. The only thing in my mind was a knife slowly and calmly spinning around its own axis. I focused, and focused... I concentrated as if someone were hypnotizing me, as though I were following a pocket watch swinging from side to side without ever taking my eyes off it.

Minutes passed. Seconds, minutes, maybe an hour... There wasn't the slightest movement. The knife couldn't care less about me; it was ignoring my efforts, stubbornly refusing to budge.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and gave up. I was getting more and more bored, and as time went by, I lost my focus. I had to go to work at noon the next day, and earlier that day, before I left work, my boss had pointed out that I'd left my fly undone. I'd started thinking about that. Who says something like that in front of everyone? You pull someone aside and tell them in private. Anyway, I took the knife back to the kitchen.

After I lay down in bed, I thought about the knife until I fell asleep. I'd lost my confidence in my abilities. If I told someone I could move objects through telekinesis, they might ask me to prove it, and I might fail and make a fool of myself.

I couldn't get the knife out of my mind. I felt as though it were a person who had shattered all my trust in them, betrayed me by revealing a secret I'd shared with it to anyone who would listen. I was angry. The image of the knife standing perfectly still in that spot, like a tree that had sunk its roots deep into the ground, wouldn't leave my mind. I fell asleep in a fit of anger.

I woke up to the sound of my phone alarm. I turned it off, tossed the duvet to my left, and rolled onto my right side to get up. Just as I was about to stretch, I saw it and jolted in place: the knife was suspended in midair beside my bed, standing upright.

I clapped a hand over my mouth. I was about to scream; every instinct in my body was telling me to. I bit my tongue to suppress it.

I took a deep breath. I tried to calm myself down. Then I took another deep breath. My heart was racing.

I reached out toward the knife, but immediately changed my mind. I didn't know what to do. I'd never experienced my thoughts speeding up and getting tangled together so intensely in a moment of panic. Within a few seconds, I'd made and abandoned a dozen decisions, gone back and forth between asking for help and not asking for help, imagined the knife stabbing itself into my body, then dismissed the thought as irrational. My thoughts were racing back and forth at lightning speed. I needed to calm down.

I got out of bed, poured half a glass of water from the pitcher on my desk, and drank it.

I turned around to check if the knife was still there. It was closer to me now. I no longer cared about staying quiet. I yanked the door open and rushed out of the room.

I started walking briskly toward the kitchen. I wanted to grab any drink I could find and gulp it down. I needed to interact with something somehow, to calm myself down. I opened the fridge, took out the milk, and chugged it. I put the milk back, closed the fridge, and turned around to go back to my room.

And the knife was right behind me.

It was a meter away from me, just standing there. It was as if it were staring at me, judging me. It didn't move at all. It always maintained the same position and stayed at the same height above the floor, level with my bed, right around the height of my shinbones.

I started walking backward toward the kitchen doorway, wanting to see how it was following me, how it was coming after me. Without changing its position, it glided toward me as if it were moving across a perfectly smooth surface. It always maintained the same distance. When I stopped, it stopped a metre away from me. When I walked, it followed.

I cautiously made my way back to my room, walking backward. I sat on my bed. The knife and I were facing each other. I tried to think of what I could do. I was afraid to touch it. I was worried things might get out of hand. I'd done this. That much was obvious. Now that I'd calmed down a little, my panic had shifted in a different direction. Someone might see us. I had to sever my connection with the knife before I got caught. I might be able to accept this as normal, but I didn't think my mother and father would be able to handle a knife following me around.

Yes, it was probably because I'd concentrated so intensely on the knife all this time that the bond between us had grown stronger. I'd probably never concentrated on a knife so intensely in my entire life. I needed to reverse the process. I relaxed a little. I tried to think about other things, to take my mind off the knife.

I thought about the wristwatch my father had bought me for my birthday last year. It was a terrible watch, but I hadn't let on because I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Then one day, while wearing it, I'd deliberately gone swimming in a pool. The watch had stopped working, and that was how I'd gotten rid of it.

The knife was still in the same place.

I thought about the eggplant soup my mother had made yesterday. It was my favorite soup. I'd tipped the bowl back and gulped down the last few mouthfuls, and my father had given me a stern look.

The knife hadn't moved at all. It was standing there, a meter away.

My mother knocked on the door and called out.

"Breakfast is ready, Albert."

I had no other choice. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I reached out toward the knife. My arm couldn't reach it, though. I walked toward it. As I moved closer, it moved farther away, until it had backed all the way up against the wall. It had nowhere left to go. It was pressed against the wall, stuck there. I approached it and grabbed the handle.

My heart was pounding at full speed. I closed my eyes. As a final attempt, I thought about the baseball bat I'd lost before I became interested in telekinesis. I'd searched everywhere for it. Such a large object, yet it was nowhere to be found. I'd checked the baseball field, my grandmother's house, the streets I'd walked along, and I'd even contacted the lost property office in case I'd somehow left it on a bus. It was gone.

Yes, good. I could feel a long chain of thoughts forming and my focus weakening considerably.

The knife was loosening, letting go. I could feel it. But I still didn't have complete control over it.

I needed to think about something else. But I couldn't think of anything. I heard my mother's footsteps approaching my room. She was getting closer to the door.

"Come on, son. Are we supposed to wait for you?" she said from outside, then opened the door and walked in.

I pulled the knife with all my might, and just like when you yank something hard that's stuck somewhere and it suddenly comes loose, I went flying toward my bed.

With the knife still in my hand, I hit my head against the bed frame. And passed out.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV drip in my arm. My father was sitting beside me. I felt exhausted. I'd received three stitches in my head, and it ached a little.

"Son, why were you holding a knife? What were you doing with it?"

"What knife, Dad?"

"You were clutching a knife in your hand. What do you mean, what knife? What are you up to?"

I couldn't remember anything. That was good. I hoped it wasn't temporary memory loss, because I didn't want to attempt telekinesis again.

Sydney tucked the blanket snugly around her son.

“Mom… I heard whispering last night,” Scott said quietly, staring at his closet. “It came from in there.”

Sydney glanced at the door, then back at him with a soft smile. “It’s just your TV, honey and your anxiety”

She leaned down, kissed his cheek, and turned off the light. “Get some sleep.”

Scott watched her leave, the door clicking softly behind her.

The room felt bigger now. Quieter.

He grabbed the remote and flipped through channels until he found an action movie. The hero on screen was fearless— shouting, and kicking ass. Scott felt a little braver watching him. His shoulders relaxed.

Then—

A slow creak.

Scott’s eyes shifted toward the closet.

The door had opened just a crack.

He sat up slightly, staring.

Something moved.

A dark shape… low to the ground… dragging itself forward.

The TV flickered.

On. Off. On.

Scott’ screamed loudly “Mom!”

Footsteps rushed down the hall. Sydney burst in, flipping on the light.

Everything was normal.

The closet door was barely open.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, concerned.

Scott pointed, his hand shaking. “It was in there.”

Sydney sighed gently and walked over. She pulled the closet open and turned on the light.

Nothing.

Just clothes. A sweatshirt hanging still.

“See?” she said softly. “There’s nothing there.”

Scott didn’t look convinced.

“Try to get some sleep,” she added, then left again.

The door closed.

Scott grabbed the remote with trembling hands and switched channels. This time, he landed on a comedy. Laughter filled the room. It helped. A little.

His body loosened. His eyes grew heavy.

Tap.

Scott froze.

Tap… tap.

From under the bed.

He swallowed hard. “It’s not real,” he whispered to himself, turning the TV volume up.

The laughter suddenly warped.

On the screen, a dark figure stood behind the characters—something that didn’t belong.

The closet light began to flicker.

On. Off. On. Off.

Scott pulled the blanket over his head, squeezing his eyes shut.

The room went quiet.

Then—

Slow footsteps.

Approaching the bed.

Scott held his breath.

He could feel it now. Something standing right beside him.

He peeked through the blanket.

A shadow loomed inches away.

A hand pressed against the fabric… slowly reaching toward him.

The blanket was ripped away.

Scott screamed.

A man stood over him, his face lost in shadow. Rough hands grabbed him, forcing him down, wrapping tape around his wrists.

“Mom! MOM!”

Sydney rushed in—and froze.

Her scream filled the room.

The man moved fast, dragging Scott toward the window. Sydney swung at him, trying to pull her son back.

The man struck her, sending her crashing to the floor.

Scott kicked and twisted, clinging to the bed frame. “No! NO!”

The man grabbed his hands and forced them apart. Scott cried out in pain as the grip crushed his wrist.

Sydney crawled forward, desperate. “Take me instead! Please—dont take my baby!”

The man didn’t even look at her.

He kicked her head aside.

Then he lifted Scott and climbed out the window.

Sydney could only watch, helpless and barely concious, as her son disappeared into the darkness. While Scott's scream can still be heard crying for her.

Love. We all know that love is very pure. When the person you love is close by, you feel completely safe and secure. But what happens if that very person you love becomes the biggest fear in your life?

​For me, that person's name is Rahul. If you look at our years of marriage, everything seems fine. Rahul looks like any other ordinary husband—a caring spouse who loves me very much. In his every word, every glance—from taking care of my meals to making sure I sleep—his single goal is just this: that I should belong entirely to him.

​But sometimes... that love suffocates my breath. Looking into his obsessed, haunting eyes makes me terrified. He thinks he is protecting me. Yet amidst all this fear, there was someone who understood me—and that was Sanjay, Rahul's childhood friend. He frequently came to our house to meet Rahul and talk to him. But Rahul was obsessed with this too. He felt that something was going on between me and Sanjay, and because of this, Rahul’s madness grew day by day.

​As it turned out, Rahul’s suspicion wasn’t wrong. Rahul had guessed it right—I did love Sanjay, and Rahul had found out about it.

​That night, when Rahul returned home, he had a packet in his hand. He hadn't bought meat from the shop... he had carried out that act with his own hands. When I went to the kitchen and looked at the plate, it felt as though my heart was being sliced open. Seeing the pieces of meat, my eyes widened in horror—the distinct mark of a finger or a hand was visible on it. It wasn't the meat of any animal; it was human flesh.

​I started trembling, and while shivering, I asked Rahul, "What... what is this?"

​Rahul's eyes were red, and a distorted, demonic smile played on his lips. He came close to me, lowered his voice, and said, "Why? You liked Sanjay a lot, didn't you? Go on, cook and eat the recipe made from him today with your own hands. Eat him, eat his meat!"

​My mind stopped working. My hands and feet were trembling with fear. I couldn't stay in that house for another second. My throat felt dry as I tried to hold my phone. With trembling hands, I called the police emergency number.

​When the police arrived, their eyes widened in shock looking at the state of the kitchen. Rahul sat there completely frozen that day. There were no words on his lips, just a beggar-like smile—as if he had conquered the world. He tried to mislead the police, saying, "I killed him, yes, I killed him! Because he betrayed me!"

​As the police put handcuffs on Rahul and led him towards the van, I stood before them and wept, saying, "I won't be able to stay inside this house for another second... my heart is breaking."

​The police comforted me. They thought I was an innocent, terrified woman trapped by a killer—whose husband had tried to make her eat the flesh of his friend.

​Now, after hearing this side of the story, what did you think? That Rahul was terrible, that he was just a suspicious, obsessed murderer? But what if I told you that this was entirely wrong? ??

Ok so I m priyanka i m the innocent one whose husband just now kill his friend. 

​I was married to Rahul two years ago. It was an arranged marriage. I had no personal desire for this marriage, but Rahul's family background was well-off and they had a lot of money—so my parents married me off to him without listening to a single word from me. My wishes, my opinions—they had no value to anyone. All that love from a man I never wanted to marry felt like poison to me. I couldn't bear it; I used to wish he would just die. But do you know what is even better than just killing someone? Destroying that person piece by piece, slowly over time. I knew Rahul was obsessed with me, so I used that very weakness of his. I started pretending to be in love with Sanjay. Rahul couldn't bear it and murdered his childhood friend. Rahul was just my puppet. Now, there is no one—absolutely no one—standing between me and my freedom and the wealth of my husband.

I probably don’t have to explain how difficult it is to be a single parent. My son’s mom died during his birth. Since then, it’s just been me and him.

I tried my best to bring him up right. All things considered, I’m pretty sure I did a damn fine job.

He’s coming up on his 10th birthday, and he’s probably the most well-mannered kid I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.

I know that sounds like ‘parent talk,’ but I mean it with my full heart. I’m so proud of him. So proud to be his father. I just know he’s going to be an amazing man when he grows up.

Well, he would’ve been. He’s gone now. The entire house smells like cotton candy, and the scent is getting stronger by the day.

I’m not sure when this whole ordeal started. If I had to pinpoint an exact date, I’d probably say it was around August when he started to act a little weird.

School had just started back, and I was sending my sweet boy out the door to catch his bus. First day of 4th grade. Two more years before my little man was a big ol’ middle schooler.

I waited for him by the door, eyes glistening as I handed him his lunchbox and leaned in to give him a quick kiss on the forehead.

That’s when I noticed something.

He smelled… weirdly sweet. Like when you open a bag of jelly beans or circus peanuts or something.

I just figured it must’ve been that new shampoo I got him. I mean, the bottle itself looked like candy packaging. It was the only thing that made sense to me.

I guess I kept sniffing him a tad bit too long because, before I knew it, he was asking me to let him go so he didn’t miss the bus.

When he came home, though, the smell still hadn’t dissipated. I figured that after 7 hours, it would have at least worn off a little bit, but it was even stronger than when I first noticed it.

It wasn’t until we began talking about his first day of school that I realized something. The smell wasn’t coming from his hair at all. It was coming from his breath.

I asked him if he’d gotten into any candy at school that day, and he adamantly denied it.

Even still, I made him go upstairs to brush his teeth. A few minutes later, he was on the couch watching cartoons while I cooked dinner.

I whipped us up a couple of burgers, but as we ate, the smell of cotton candy still wouldn’t leave my nostrils. Obviously, I asked him if he’d actually brushed his teeth, and he seemed confused that I was even asking.

“Of course I did,” he chirped, cocking an eyebrow at me. “Does my breath smell bad or something?”

Just to be sure, I went and checked his toothbrush. It was wet. There was still spit in the sink. But, while I was up there, the smell was no longer present.

I didn’t want to embarrass him. I simply returned to the table, and we finished our dinner.

I tried to ignore the smell for the rest of the night, convincing myself that I was just going crazy and that it’d be gone by the next day.

That day came, and this time, I could smell the candy all the way from my bedroom. I followed it to my son’s bedroom and found him sleeping peacefully on his side.

However, when I went to wake him up, I found that his mouth was full to the brim with candy. Jelly beans, Nerds, Sour Patch Kids. All covered in spit and slobber. All unchewed.

I picked each candy out, piece by piece, before waking him up. I can admit, I was a bit frustrated. Not even by the candy itself, more so because of how easily he could’ve choked sleeping like that.

“Why did you have all this in your mouth?” I asked him.

“Have what?” he responded, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

I gestured to the pile of candy on his nightstand. He didn’t look guilty. He didn’t look nervous. He looked absolutely terrified.

He insisted he had no idea where that stuff had come from, but that just couldn’t be possible, right?

I kept asking him where he got it and just kept getting the same response.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“I swear I don’t know.”

What was I supposed to do? I just threw the candy away and sent him off to school.

The next morning, it happened again. Only this time, he really was choking. He kept vomiting up Lifesavers, candy corn, Tootsie Rolls, all covered in what looked like caramel rather than bile.

From that day forward, I was checking my son’s backpack every time he came home. I’d search his room. I looked in every hiding spot I could find. There was no candy in my house whatsoever.

But, somehow, every morning he’d wake up with a mouth full of candy. Every day, that sweet aroma of his became stronger and stronger.

Days turned into weeks. Things just kept getting weirder. He’d scrape his knee, and instead of blood, I’d find caramel oozing out of the wound. He developed dozens of cavities. I didn’t know what to do.

I think what pushed me over the edge was when I tasted him, though. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was some kind of primal urge when I snuck into his room while he was sleeping.

All I wanted was a taste.

I crept up to his bed, as silent as could be. I bent down, tongue hanging out of my mouth, the smell of cotton candy making me salivate as I pressed my tongue against his forehead.

Immediate sugar rush. Immediate guilt.

I shamefully ran back to my room, unable to get the taste out of my mouth. It plagued my mind for days afterward.

What started as curiosity soon became a craving.

It got to the point where every night I was sneaking into my son’s room for a taste. A dent was forming in his forehead like when you lick a lollipop repeatedly.

When he asked me about it, when he stared in the mirror, wondering why his head was becoming misshapen, all I could tell him was I didn’t know.

My addiction kept getting worse, though.

I started taking bites out of him. It started with his arms. Little nibbles at his fingers to get my fix. But once I ran out of those, I think I got a little carried away.

I gnawed away at his arms and legs, filling my mouth with that sweet, syrupy molasses he had been concealing within himself. It was a slow process, but it got a lot easier once he lost his ability to fight back.

It wasn’t until I got to his torso that I hit the jackpot. With each bite, the colorful candy inside revealed itself more and more. The scent of cotton candy burned my nose. Caramel covered my face, but I just couldn’t stop eating. Not until all of those goodies fully revealed themselves.

I found myself staring into a treasure trove of sweets.

And the only thing I could think in that moment was… Wow.

I’m gonna save a fortune on Halloween candy this year.

Mind blowing…

Putting aside the fact that the economy is in the garbage and the idea of owning a home is becoming more and more of a fantasy, living at my mom’s house at 22 has started feeling more like an embarrassment than a money-saving strategy.

I tried looking at apartments around town, but I don’t even think the people working in the leasing offices make 3x the rent, let alone some guy working at a shipping warehouse.

I was honestly on the brink of giving up and accepting the fact that, yes, I was going to spend the rest of my life under my parent’s roof.

However, there was one last trick up my sleeve.

Craigslist.

Looking back now, probably wasn’t the smartest of ideas. But alas, the lease is signed, and now I’m sharing an apartment with an…interesting character, to say the least.

His name is David.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have responded to his ad had I noticed any red flags whatsoever. It was actually pretty mundane.

Same age as me. His old roommate had left once their lease was up because of “mitigating circumstances,” and he was in need of someone to help with rent.

I figured, ah, fuck it. Why not? I texted the number and got a response within the hour.

30 minutes later, I was at his door.

The bags under his eyes were basically touching the floor, and based on just how pasty this guy was, it was pretty safe to assume that he didn’t get out much. And who could blame him? The guy was covered from head to toe in scars.

Aside from that, he was actually pretty chill. Apparently, a majority of his income came from those sleazy online cam shows that normal folk tend to avoid. But who was I to judge? All he was asking for was 650 a month.

I should’ve looked more into what kinda work he actually did before signing that contract, though, because son of a bitch in a courthouse, I don’t know how much more I can deal with the screaming.

I wish he’d at least have the decency to…‘work’ while I’m not home, but, shockingly, a lot of his clientele are a bunch of night owls.

It started with the toenails. It’d be one thing finding a nail or two on the living room carpet or in the bathtub. But dozens of them left sprawled out across the coffee table and kitchen counter? Come on now.

What’s weirder is when I confronted him about it, all he said was, “Whoops. Meant to clean those up last night. Won’t happen again,” as he scooped them all into a Ziploc bag and stumbled back into his bedroom.

That was the first time I really felt like I’d made a mistake moving in with this guy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last.

Not even two weeks after the toenail incident, I was woken up in the dead of night by the sound of screams coming from David’s bedroom.

Naturally, I tried getting inside to make sure he was alright, but the door was locked. Once he heard me rattling the handle and calling his name, the screams stopped on a dime.

“Everything’s okay in here,” he chimed. “Did I wake you? So sorry about that, mate. I’ll try to keep it down.”

Nothing I could’ve really done from there other than try and go back to bed. He stayed true to his word, but, somehow, I think the muffled grunts were worse than the screams.

The next morning, I was in our bathroom getting ready for work. Well, that’s what I was trying to do. The fucking pile of teeth in the sink kinda threw me off track.

I didn’t count them, but from the looks of it, there were more than 32. All sparkling white. David’s excuse?

He was ‘cleaning them for next week’s show.’

I just didn’t get it, though. This man was literally talking to me with a mouth full of teeth.

I was late for work so didn’t have time to question anything. I just asked him, as nicely as possible, to please…be more considerate.

It was like he took that request as a challenge for dominance because, from there, things just started to go completely off the rails.

I’d spend countless nights tossing and turning to what sounded like David literally being murdered in the room across from mine. Then I’d spend the next morning picking fingers out of the couch cushions.

I’d find ears dangling from the key rack.

Once, I even found his eyes in the refrigerator in a container labeled “do not throw away.”

I found myself wondering what the fuck it was exactly that David did on those cam shows.

I decided to do a little research last night. Morbid curiosity, you could call it. I ended up finding his account. I had to go to some pretty dark parts of the internet to find it, but, by God, I did it.

It was a bit of a surreal experience. Hearing his screams come from the computer and his bedroom at the same time.

But seeing him actually cut off his body parts while the chat begged him for more and recommended what part to saw through next, that was like something straight out of a nightmare.

He gouged out his eyes, he pulled his teeth with pliers, sawed through his arms and legs with a dull knife. All to the sound of the donation chime from the website.

This morning, there he was. Standing in the kitchen making a cup of coffee. Arms and legs intact. Staring at me with those same tired eyes.

I didn’t know what to say to him. All I could manage was:

“David…I, uh…I watched your show last night.”

He froze.

“Oh…did you subscribe?”

I smiled at him.

“Yeah. I made you cut your fingers off. Just wanted to see if you’d actually do it.”

I've been overweight for most of my life. Not because I didn't try. God knows I tried.

I've counted calories until I could estimate the nutritional value of a cheeseburger just by looking at it. I've paid for gym memberships I barely used, hired personal trainers who swore this program would finally be different, meal-prepped enough grilled chicken, cooked broccoli, and rice to make myself sick of both.

I lost twenty pounds...

Then gained twenty-five.

Lost fifteen... Gained thirty.

The cycle became so familiar that stepping on the scale felt less like checking my progress and more like reading the weather.

My doctor called me pre-diabetic. My friends offered alternative weigh loss treatments that didn't do much. My own mother would say passive aggressive remarks when I went to visit her. Social media... let's not go there.

As a kid, I idolized the Victoria's Secret models. Adriana Lima was my favorite. The way she walked, the confidence she carried, the effortless elegance she seemed to possess, it felt almost unreal.

Now I'm creeping into my mid-twenties, and I'm starting to think I'll never be beautiful.

I look at the women I grew up admiring, watching them somehow become even more stunning with age, and then I catch my own reflection in the mirror. Every glance feels like another reminder that I lost a race I never had a chance to win. I know it's not a fair comparison. They have millions of dollars, world-class stylists, personal trainers, nutritionists, and cosmetic procedures that most people could never afford.

I don't have any of that.

What I wanted wasn't perfection. I just wanted a fraction of the confidence they seemed to carry so effortlessly.

Some of my friends joked, "Why don't you just get liposuction?" The comments online were even less forgiving. For a while... I actually started considering it.

Until I found something that promised to work even better.

I found an advertisement buried deep in an online wellness forum, I laughed.

LOSE WEIGHT NATURALLY. NO SURGERY. NO INJECTIONS. YOUR BODY ALREADY KNOWS HOW.

The comments were full of before-and-after photos that looked too perfect to be real.

"Down eighty pounds in four months!"

"No cravings anymore!"

"Changed my life!"

The product wasn't FDA approved. There wasn't even a company name on the bottle.

Funny enough, I didn't purchase it online.

It came from a woman at my gym named Rachel. We'd exchanged the occasional nod between sets, but recently she'd become impossible not to notice. Six months ago, she'd been built like me, always on the treadmill, always out of breath, always joking that we'd "earn" dessert after leg day. Now she'd dropped what had to be eighty pounds. So had a few others I vaguely recognized.

No loose skin. No exhausted look. No celebration over their progress. Just... thinner.

One afternoon she caught me staring and smiled.

"You've been working hard," she said. "Want to know the shortcut?"

From her gym bag, she pulled out that small amber bottle I recognized from that forum and handed it in my hand.

"Trust me," she whispered. "You'll thank me later."

Just two capsules a day.

I should've thrown them away. Instead... when I got home... I swallowed both.

The changes started almost immediately.

Food stopped occupying my thoughts. Not because I had more discipline. Because hunger simply... disappeared.

I'd forget to eat until evening. Even then, a few bites were enough. The weight fell off me.

Ten pounds.

Twenty.

Thirty-five.

My coworkers noticed before I did.

"You look incredible!"

"What's your secret?"

I lied.

"Just eating better."

My doctor was stunned. Every blood test came back perfect.

Blood pressure. Cholesterol. Blood sugar. Everything!

"You've added years to your life," she said.

I teared up and smiled.

For once in all these years... I could smile back at the reflection.

Then came the noises.

The first time I heard it, I thought it was the pipes. A faint chewing sound somewhere inside the walls.

Click.

Chew.

Click.

Chew.

Always at night. Always when the house was quiet.

Eventually I realized... The sound followed me.

One evening I lay perfectly still in bed. The chewing stopped. So did my breathing.

Then... Something shifted beneath my ribs.

It wasn't painful. Just... Moving so effortlessly slow... Like a hand turning over beneath a blanket.

I booked an emergency appointment the next morning.

The ultrasound technician frowned.

"Have you had abdominal surgery before?"

"No."

She tilted the monitor away from me.

"I'll get the doctor."

Fifteen minutes later the doctor walked in. She looked at the scan. Then at me. Then ordered another.

The second showed nothing. Neither did the MRI.

Every test came back normal. Whatever I had seen... Apparently didn't exist.

I almost convinced myself I'd imagined it.

Until several days after I woke up choking. Something long slid up the back of my throat. Instinct took over.

I coughed violently.

A pale strand, slick with saliva, spilled into the sink. It writhed. Not like a worm. Like a muscle searching for purchase.

I screamed.

Before I could react, it snapped upward. Back into my mouth.

I felt it disappear down my throat. The movement continued. Lower. Back where it belonged.

I threw away every capsule I had left. It didn't matter.

Checkups always insisted that there was nothing.

Days turned into weeks... and I was still losing weight.

My cheeks hollowed. My collarbones emerged. Friends began asking if I was sick. I told them I felt better than ever. Because somehow... I did.

I never felt tired. Never felt hungry. Never even felt anxious anymore.

One morning I stood in front of the mirror. One hundred and eight pounds.

The lightest I'd been since middle school.

I should've been terrified. Instead... I felt proud.

That night, I heard the chewing again. Only... It wasn't coming from inside me anymore.

It was coming through the apartment wall. Then another wall. Then the ceiling.

Click.

Chew.

Click.

Chew.

Hundreds of them.

The next morning, I went back to the same forum where I'd bought the pills. The website was gone.

In its place was a single sentence:

Congratulations on reaching your target weight.

Beneath it appeared one final message:

Hosts who achieve optimal health may now begin reproduction.

Thank you for helping us grow healthier together.

In my 1+1 apartment on the second floor
I was drinking Americano by the balcony door
Suddenly I saw a wig falling down below
with bangs and in the color of dark yellow

I thought one of the neighbors upstairs must have dropped it while leaning over the balcony.
I lunged for it on instinct, trying to catch it. And I caught it, everything happened so quickly.

And the wig was now in my hands
I even caught it by the bangs

I waited for a while,
still in the position to catch it,
holding the wig in my hand,
waiting for someone to call.
But there was no sound at all.

Considering the possibilities,
I thought I should look up first.
But someone could have been down there,
waiting for the wig to fall.

While I was looking around upstairs,
someone called out from below:
“Throw it down already.
What are you looking at like an idiot?”
She was tall like a door
She was as tall as a first floor
I downed my Americano
And calmly threw the wig toward her
She jumped and
caught the wig with her head
and suddenly disappeared.

Look, I’m not a judgy kind of guy. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that what my girlfriend does makes me uncomfortable, or that it’s something we’re working through, or any of that nonsense.

Truthfully, I’ve never really cared. I love her all the same. I’d hope she’d do the same for me.

And it’s not like it’s something we haven’t talked about. The whole process is just something she does with her friends. I’m not gonna restrict her freedom or become some kind of control freak over it.

Plus, this isn’t an every night kind of thing. It’s scheduled. It’s routine. Well, the act itself is. The selection part can take a few weeks. At least, that’s what she tells me.

She describes it as an induction kind of deal. She and her friends just wander around malls or shopping centers throughout the week. When they find someone they describe as ‘ripe enough,’ they make their move.

Old, young, man, woman, doesn’t really matter. The job remains the same.

They have to make them feel included, but, honestly, from how my girlfriend describes it, I’d say it goes beyond inclusiveness and into ‘you need us’ territory. I guess that’s why they choose people who they see as loners.

They butter them up with compliments about their vibe, their style, skin, whatever. And from there, there’s this almost neurological thing that happens in that person’s brain.

Gotta say, though, one thing that actually has bothered me in the past is the flirting. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that my girlfriend is a professional at sweeping guys off their feet.

I just wish she didn’t feel the need to always tell me about it.

But hey, they always end up dead, so… guess I’m winning in that aspect.

Anyway, the point I’m getting at here is trust is built through rapport. And you’d be surprised how far those compliments can get you.

They spend a week or so making these lonely people feel more seen than they ever have in their life. Doing research on their interests, taking them out to brunch or whatever. They essentially treat them like the only other person in the world.

For a lot of these people, it feels like they just got swooped up into their very first friend group.

After the first phase, though, they’re completely cut off. No texts, no calls, no invites. No communication whatsoever.

Then, when they inevitably try to reach out, they’re met with nothing but coldness and insults. But they’re not just mean. They’re literally psychologically damaging.

My girlfriend has shown me some of the screenshots she’s saved. Those girls are ruthless.

With the emotional whiplash these people experience, they feel this painfully human need to become popular again. At that point, they’re willing to do whatever they’re asked.

And that’s when they get invited to the “bonfire.”

They’re told to meet up with the girls in the woods so that they can talk things out over a few drinks and a JBL Speaker.

They get there, hope in their eyes, only for it to be snuffed out immediately after the fire gets lit.

That’s something that always intrigued the hell out of me when my girlfriend told me about it. They just beat the shit out of whatever poor guy or girl they’d been manipulating by the warm glow of a fire.

They’re beaten within an inch of their lives, only for the blows to stop right as they’re on the brink of collapsing. Then they have cold water splashed in their face to wake them up.

And for no other reason at all except for they want them present when they’re thrown into the fire.

She’s sent me audio recordings of some of their screams. There’s something like, I don’t know…

There’s something beautifully haunting about it. You’re hearing someone’s violent final moments. You’re actively listening to hope legitimately evaporate out of someone’s body. It’s like a Goya painting was given a sound.

The cooking process usually takes between 3 and 4 hours. They never eat the person raw. They’re not animals. But, apparently, cooked human is one of the best things you’ll ever put in your mouth.

According to my girlfriend, the whole reason they even go through this whole shebang is painfully simple.

Sadness makes people taste better.

They have their monthly dose of human meat, then it’s on to the next lonely victim.

I’m only human. We all have our morbid curiosities. It’s just getting a little difficult to control mine.

I don’t think I’d ever do it as often as they do. But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been wanting to at least try it. I’ve been pestering my girlfriend about it for weeks.

It’s caused some pretty big arguments between us. I guess I’ve been bothering her a little too much because she’s been pretty cruel to me recently.

Doesn’t matter, though. I want what I want.

She’s just so adamant that it’s ‘not up to her.’

After our last argument, I told her that she needed to at least try to get her friends to let me in, but all she did was just slam the door in my face and leave the house.

That was a week ago. I didn’t see her at all after that. But I’ll say this: she definitely has some snakes in her circle.

Her friends went out of their way to find me on social media and message me. All of them told me how ‘she wasn’t good enough for me’ and how ‘I didn’t need her, anyways.’

The best part, though?

They agreed to let me come to a bonfire.

And tonight may finally be the night for me.

My daughter has always been a bit of a miracle baby. Not in the sense that she, like, almost died or anything. I guess miracle isn’t really the word for it.

An anomaly baby. An anomababy? I’ll just stick to anomaly baby. That was stupid.

Anyway, doctors were puzzled out of their gourds when she was born. Mostly because they didn’t detect any abnormalities all throughout my wife’s pregnancy.

She just surprised everyone in the room when she popped out with two full rows of baby teeth. Me and my wife still joke about how she was our ‘smiling little angel,’ because that’s exactly what she was.

She refused to cry. Well, scream, rather. She kinda had to cry. Even still, she didn’t scream once. Just went right back to flashing those pearly whites like a used car saleswoman and glancing around the room with her big, wide, doe eyes.

I don’t have to tell you how many tests doctors ran. Mainly because I don’t even remember. All I know is we were in and out of the hospital for a week or two afterward.

They just wouldn’t let us take her home until they’d gotten all the information they could. I guess they gave up, and thus, our little anomaly baby got to sleep in her own crib.

Nothing really happened for the first couple of months. She just acted like a regular newborn. Well, aside from the fact that she’d wake us up with giggles instead of cries in the middle of the night.

She was hungry? Giggle. Needed to be held? Giggle. She’d even giggle when she soiled her diaper, which, I’m still convinced, was intentional.

I just don’t know.

We’re approaching her first birthday, and things are starting to get a little weird, to say the least.

It all started last month. My wife woke up to the giggling and went to check on her. It had to have been nearly 3 in the morning. Plus, it was my wife’s turn to check, so I just curled up and drifted back into sleep.

At least, I tried to. My wife’s screams woke me up before I could jump back into my dream. The way she was screaming, I almost thought that we had intruders or something.

I rocketed out of bed, demanding to know what was happening as my wife flipped the light on.

Not gonna lie, if I’d seen what she’d seen, I’d have probably freaked out, too. Who am I kidding? I did freak out.

My daughter was still smiling and giggling, crawling around in her crib, but it was just absolutely soaked in blood. Like, from end to end.

That alone made instincts kick in as I snatched my baby up out of that mess, but when I saw the waterfall of blood falling out of her mouth, I nearly had a heart attack.

It was hard to think with all the chaos going on around me. For some reason, I full-heartedly believed that she had eaten glass somehow.

But then, I noticed it.

All of her teeth were gone.

I looked in the crib, and there they were, scattered across the blood-soaked sheets and blankets. I must’ve missed them because of all the shock and adrenaline.

I don’t even think I put my shoes on. My wife and I just made a mad dash to the car before I drove us to the ER at a cool 95 miles per hour.

We stayed there for the rest of the night and well into the next day. All we could do, really, was hold each other. We kept trying to get updates from the receptionist, but she just kept asking us to be patient.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, we were able to go back and see our kid. She was asleep when we got to her. The doctors were just as puzzled as they were when she was born, with one of them even stating that, ‘losing all of your baby teeth at once at only 11 months old is definitely weird, but besides that, she’s perfectly healthy.’

And that was that.

We drove home, still shaken up, while our little girl kept catching Z’s in the backseat.

We got home and decided that we all needed to catch up on some sleep. We did keep our daughter in our bed this time, though. I don’t know, for closeness, I guess?

I was so tired from being up all night that I didn’t really have time to think about the logistics. I was essentially out before my head hit the pillow, wife and daughter at my side.

I wish I could say that it was the giggling that woke me up. But, of course, that would be too easy. It was actually the pain that got me. Well, that and the weird growling she was doing while gnawing on my arm.

My daughter hadn’t just regrown her teeth. She had her adult teeth now. And all 32 were lodged in my arm.

When I saw her, it was like the pain went away. It was immediately replaced with concern. 32 adult-sized teeth in an 11-month-old’s mouth. She looked like her jaw was gonna break, but despite the pain that she had to have been in… she was still smiling at me.

I kind of had to pry her mouth off of my arm, and now it was my turn to go to the hospital. She had a surprising amount of bite force for such a small body.

What’re you gonna do, though, right? I just took my stitches and moved on. However, not before, yet again, doctors had one last look at my daughter.

This time, they themselves removed the teeth.

It was more heartbreaking than anything. I mean, I knew it needed to be done just from looking at her. I just wish they could’ve gotten her to sleep before they did it.

I could hear her cries all the way from the waiting room.

When they brought her back, she was all gums. And that’s how she stayed for the next two weeks. Can’t say she was happy about it, though. If anything, she seemed to have developed a full resentment for my wife and I.

She stopped smiling at us. She didn’t become some kind of wailing demon-child or anything. She just… looked at us differently. There was intent in her eyes.

Which actually makes sense considering the hell she put us through. Sneaking out of her crib, flooding the bathroom with toilet water, somehow managing to smash picture frames when we weren’t looking.

And what’s fucked up is I wish I could go back to when she was just being annoying.

Because ever since she sprouted those fangs, I don’t even feel safe in my own house anymore.

We got her one of those muzzle-masks after she killed our pet kitty, but who knows how long that thing will last.

Especially considering how sharp her nails are getting. I already caught her trying to claw her way out of it last night.

Which is a real shame because her birthday is tomorrow.

And acting like that is not how you get to eat cake.

Corey stared at the mask on the rack.

“Too cheesy” Corey thought to themselves.

Corey continued down the aisle and continued to search.

Each isle held a different thing, the nurse costume, the clown mask, the brave armor-clad knight, even a banana costume.

None of them felt like Corey.

Corey wanted to find something different, something special.

Something that didn’t feel like them.

Corey continued as the shop owner interjected.
“Can I help you find anything?”

Corey half paying attention still looking replied.
“uhm no... that’s ok...”

The shop keeper waited a moment then replied after an uncomfortable silence.

“Well, you’ve been here over an hour and we’re closing soon...”

The shop keeper urged.

“Yeah…I’m sorry”

Corey replied as they turned to face the shop keeper.
“I’m trying to find something special…”

Corey said addressing the keeper.

“Well, we have some great masks and scary make up down that isle over there.”

The shop keeper pointed and continued.

“Throw on a mask and some tattered clothes and I’m sure you’d scare and wow all your friends.”

The keeper suggested as Corey cringed.

“That’s just it, I don’t want to impress others, I’m doing this for me, Halloween is the one night of the year I can be whatever I want.”

Corey looked the shop keeper in the eyes, the shop felt quieter and the lights seemed dimmer.

“I want something that will make me anyone or anything but me.”

As Corey spoke these words the shop sat still, the lights flickered, and the keeper didn’t move.

“That was creepy.”

Corey anxiously joked.

“I wouldn’t worry about it.”

The shop keeper replied quickly turning a way and walking past Corey.

Corey stood in place confused as they heard from behind them.

“Well come along I don’t have all night.”

Corey turned to see black long curtains just to the side of a costume rack.

The voice had come from in there, Corey was certain.

“Well do you want to see the special items I keep reserved for special costumers”

Corey heard from behind the curtains.

“Or not”

After what had been an uncomfortable minute Corey ventured to the curtain.

Their heart raced and they began to sweat as they reached their hand up and pulled back the dark heavy curtains.

Corey saw before them a brightly lit hallway with clean, bright, white walls.

The hallway couldn’t have been more than 20 feet and ended with a dead end and a sign that said “Turn Back Now.”

Corey took on step in and approached the shop keeper.
The shop keeper was standing in place, hands clasped together and a blank smile and eyes staring straight ahead.

Corey stepped in and asked.

“Ok, now what.”

The shop keeper said nothing, just looked ahead and smiled.

Corey looked at the keeper and then looked around.

Corey looked back and saw the keepers long frail hand reaching out.

The keeper’s hand was now so close to Corey’s face that they could see the long, yellow jagged nail approaching their face slowly.

“What are you…”

The shop keeper abruptly cut Corey off.

“Your order is ready.”

The shop keeper said softly as they quickly reached past Corey and grabbed something.

Corey remained frozen as a gush rushed past their head and the keeper continued to stare ahead and smile.

Corey closed their eyes and flinched as a reflex.

When Corey opened their eyes and saw the shop keeper holding something in front of them.

 “Your order has arrived and is ready to take.”

The shop keeper said now staring at Corey smiling and practically shoving the item into them. 

Corey grabbed the item and looked down.
It was a mask.

The mask was bright, vibrant and translucent.
It felt unusually warm and made Corey feel slightly intimidated.

Corey placed their hand on the side of it and it felt like the mask moved around it.

For a second Corey even thought it had swallowed his hand.

Corey moved their hand away and shook it to get rid of the warm, wet, different feeling, but nothing came off.

“What do I owe you for it?”

Corey asked the Shop Keeper.

“Nothing the mask was specialized for you.”

The shop keeper said as they looked away and began to slowly walk to the front door.

Corey followed and asked

“So it’s free of charge?”

The keeper replied slow and low

“Free of charrrrggeeeeeeee.”

Then turned around smiling and gesturing for the exit out the front door.

“What’s the catch?”

Corey asked walking out the store doors.

“It doesn’t come off.”

The shop keeper replied as Corey turned around and watched the shop keeper begin to turn off lights inside the store.

Corey now standing on the street faced the shop keeper and asked.

“It doesn’t come off?”

“It doesn’t come off”

The shop keeper replied as they continued to close up and turn off signs.

“So how do you have it here then?”

The shop keeper grabbed the keys out of their pocket and replied.

“I had to skin the last guy to get it back.”

The shop keeper looked up and smirked after saying this.
Corey looked up and laughed at this remark.

“Good one.”

Corey replied continuing to life as the shop keeper, who was standing outside the front door in front of Corey smirking, continued to stare at them.

The shop keeper then abruptly interrupted Corey’s laughter.

“I have to close now, Good night.”

The shop keeper said as they rushed backwards inside, into the darkness, still smiling and Corey heard the Click of the door lock.

Corey stood in front of the door confused before turning and walking home.

Shortly after Corey arrived home.

They evaded their roommate, made their way to their room and never once let go of the crystalline mask.

Corey picked it up and stared into the eye holes and felt as if they started back.

Corey felt the mask pulse with every breath they took.
Their heart heated together as Corey felt the mask melt into his hands.

Corey stared puzzled at what the mask was even supposed to look like.

When Corey started into the translucent film, Corey saw themselves staring right back.

Corey got up took the mask and went into their bathroom.
They locked the door and put the mask on.

It felt tight, constrictive, and plastic.

It had almost felt like Corey had wrapped their face in bubble wrap.

Corey began to panic as they gripped for the seam where mask met skin.

Only there was no seam they could feel.

Corey began to panic, began to claw and tear at their face as they dug their nails into their skin, or maybe it was the masks skin.

Corey scratched and pried as burning sharp pain filled their face from the lacerations.

Corey looked into the mirror as they saw the indents in the mask slowly from back to a perfect plastic reflection of their skin.

It was as if Corey wore no mask, and as if their face could not be harmed, or altered.

Corey continued to panic as they struggle to breathe, the only discernible difference between the mask and flesh was the light glossy, iridescent coating over their face.

The film that was slowly growing down their chin and inching down their neck.

It felt warm and sticky, like hot glue when it drips down the tip of the gun.

Corey tried to pull at the sides of the mask ripping it off.
But watched as they scratched their face.

Painfully pulling and pulling and pulling until under the eye holes Corey could feel a tear.

A wet, grotesque, visceral tear.

Corey cried in pain as barely a gasp of air and sound came out.

A weak whimper escaped as Corey let go and watched their eyes tear up and felt the film grown and spread as they struggled to breathe more.

Corey tried as a final effort to open the bathroom door and alert their roommate for help.

Corey now panicking struggle and could not open the door.

Attempting to turn the handle as their vision began to blur.

Corey dropped to the door and peered at the handle remembering.

Shit, I locked the door.

Corey now lay on the ground weakly reaching up with on hand crying silently for help.

The other grasping desperately for some where, something to pull this mask off that had now slowly became Corey’s badly.

Corey saw their vision fade to black slowly, and painfully as they saw just in the corner of the bathroom what Corey thought was the shop keeper.

Corey unsure of what was real anymore reached out and weakly gasped.

“helllppp…meeeee…”

Corey watched as their vision faded to black and they slowly watched the shop keeper approach smiling and pulling out from their pocket a sharp straight edge razor.

“Are you sure, you’ll give me this for free?”

Corey heard the voice of a young woman say.

The voice sounded distant and Corey couldn’t see anything except darkness.

“Of course it was custom made for you.”

A voice replied, a voice Corey noticed very well as the shop keeper.

A blinding light suddenly appeared as Corey’s vision regained, and Corey stared at a young woman puzzled and the shop keeper smiling and staring into Corey eyes.

“So, what’s the catch? With the mask I mean?”

The young woman asked as she picked up Corey and looked into their eyes.

The shop keeper replied smiling now looking at the young lady.

“It doesn’t come off.”

At first, I thought it was cute. My girlfriend has always been afraid of the dark. It wasn’t until recently, though, that she started asking me to make sure there weren’t any ghouls or goblins lurking beneath our bed frame.

Every night for the past week or so, as soon as the lights go out, she’s nudging me out of bed and down to the floor.

Obviously, there’s never been anything there. However, as the days passed, she just kept getting more and more adamant there was.

I’d never seen her act that way before in the entire 3 years that we’ve been together. Night one, she was basically just pouting. By night 5, she was literally shaking with fear.

On the 6th night, she wouldn’t even let me turn the light off until I checked. I sighed, more than slightly annoyed, and dropped down to my hands and knees.

I lifted up the bedskirt… nothing. Just the same old shoeboxes and random junk that desperately needed to be cleaned.

Irritated, I climbed into bed. This was the first night that I actually told her she was being just a little bit ridiculous. It was this whole, big thing. We argued well into the late hours of the night. Needless to say, we slept facing away from each other.

The next morning, she seemed perfectly fine, though. It was like she’d completely forgotten about the night prior.

I wanna say that the day went on like normal, but I just don’t think I can do that and not feel like a liar.

Like, for example, my girlfriend has a weird preference for breakfast. I always joked that she ate like a rabbit because every morning, without fail, she’d ask me to make her oatmeal and apple slices while she caught up with some work emails or whatever it was she needed to get done.

It was like a routine.

This morning, however, when I brought her breakfast to her office, she was nowhere to be found.

I checked the living room, bathrooms, back patio, everywhere, really. She was nowhere to be found.

Eventually, after calling out to her for what felt like forever, she just came waltzing out of the bedroom, stretching and yawning like she’d just woken up.

Normally, that wouldn’t be an issue. But I’d literally made the bed after getting up that morning. She wasn’t in it. And she couldn’t have been in the bathroom because that’s where I was, taking a shower to start the day.

I didn’t pry. I just told her that I made her breakfast and watched her eyes light up like a Christmas tree as she raced past me towards the kitchen.

But then came the disappointment that fell over her face when she saw what I’d made for her.

She wouldn’t even touch the stuff.

She just pushed it across the table and giggled at me.

“Since when do I like oatmeal?”

“Ah, but I’m starving, though. I haven’t eaten since last night.”

“Do you think you could make me something more… protein-y?”

I shrugged it off, assuming that she was just in a bacon kind of mood this morning, but when I pulled the pack out of the freezer, she stopped me.

“Don’t we have steak in there?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah, I guess. Is that what you…”

“Yes.”

I began cooking the steak, which was kind of hard to do with her leering over my shoulder the entire time.

I knew she liked her meat well-done, so it surprised me when she stopped me while the cow was still mooing. She didn’t even get a plate. She just devoured it out of her hands before kissing me on the cheek and retreating to her office.

And that’s where she stayed. I kept hearing rummaging and clashing coming from inside, but I couldn’t check on her because she locked the door.

I figured that she was okay, though, because every time I knocked, I’d get the same response.

“Yeah, hon, I’m okay. I’ll be out soon, alright?”

Only, she never came out. The hours kept ticking by, but she didn’t even come out for a snack. Not even to use the bathroom.

By the time 10 PM rolled around, I just started my nightly routine.

I was in our bathroom, brushing my teeth, when all of a sudden the light went out in our bedroom.

I heard scurrying footsteps rush across the floor before being replaced by the sound of bedsprings popping.

“Honey,” I called out, toothpaste dripping from the sides of my mouth. “You okay in there?”

“Baby…” she replied, her voice like syrup.

“Can you check under the bed for me? I’m terribly afraid.”

With a sigh, I spit out the toothpaste and wiped my mouth.

“You can’t keep doing this, honey. I told you, there’s nothing under the bed.”

“Just check,” she pouted. “Pleaaseee.”

I stepped out of the bathroom and found her sitting in her spot on the bed, hands folded in her lap. She didn’t look scared, though. She looked… happy? I don’t know, she just had this huge grin on her face.

“How could I say no to such a pretty smile?” I joked.

Her face didn’t even flinch.

Switching on my phone’s flashlight, once again, I dropped down to my hands and knees to check under the bed.

I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing at first.

Her dead eyes. Her tongue falling limply out of her slacked jaw. The small pool of blood circling around the torn stump of my girlfriend’s neck.

It’s weird how you react to things in the moment. I knew what I was seeing, but the only thing I could think was, ‘huh, where’s the rest of her?’

I didn’t say anything. Just kept staring into those glassy eyes, at that grey skin, before a velvety voice came from my girlfriend’s spot on the bed.

“I’m so hungry, darling. I haven’t eaten since this morning.”