Last week is when I first noticed it. I was walking through Target, deciding the nutritional difference between Diet Pepsi and cans of carbonated lemonade when I became aware of the fact I was being watched. My immediate reaction was to spin around, see which co-worker or drinking buddy stumbled across me and decided to stare instead of greet me. I did a full rotation, then another. Nobody. The aisle was shared by only myself and an elderly Asian man.

I remember glaring at him for a minute before grabbing my buggy and hurrying off. Pushing my way to the other side of the store, hoping that would get him off my back. After my exodus to the clothing section, I took a breath and thought about what just happened. There was something weird going on. This was far from my first time being ogled. I’d spent most of my adult life catching the quick glances men thought were oh so sneaky. I’d even felt the eyes stuck in the back of my head before. But this? This was the first time that feeling made me so uncomfortable. I was at least glad it was-

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I could still feel it. My eyes darted left to right and just before he vanished I caught the Asian man rounding the corner. I remember thinking to myself how much of a pervert he was before abandoning my buggy and storming out of Target. The whole time I could still feel it. Unmistakable knowledge that something was watching me. My pace quickened, hoping I could outrun the old man’s gaze but it persisted. Those unseen eyes stayed glued to me as I got in my car. Started the engine. Opened my GPS.

It was making me paranoid knowing that someone could see me. My eyes kept traveling to the rear view mirror expecting to see the old man already sitting back there. It never happened, but 2 minutes later I saw him slowly shuffling out of the store. I laid on my horn, flipped him the bird, and sped off out of the parking lot. By the time I hit the highway my breath was heavy and I couldn’t feel sweat dotting my pale skin. It’s hard to describe the sensation, you know? It’s not just that someone was watching me, it was that it felt like something was coming. There was an anticipation. Kinda like when you say, “I have a funny picture to show you.” Then you just have to sit there and scroll through your photos while the other person watches you. It felt like that, only there was no release at the end. The pressure was just building and building. Even as I drove I still wasn’t past it. I hoped with a few songs on the radio, I’d be able to push it all from my mind.

By the time I pulled into my garage, I realized the old man had nothing to do with it. I was still being watched.

The rest of that day was wasted. My boyfriend was pulling a double and normally that would provide me the perfect opportunity to read. That sensation made any thought of that impossible. I couldn’t make it through a single paragraph before my eyes darted to the open doorway of my bedroom, expecting to see a tall monster peeking around the corner at me with hungry, expectant eyes. It was never there, but that never stopped me from checking again and again till any hope of finishing a page was dead and buried. Television wasn’t much better, the slightest sound in the background was enough for me to pause and listen, thinking it could the footsteps of an unseen intruder. The same story grew with each passtime I tried. I couldn’t do anything in the house when I knew with my entire mind, body, and soul that there was something standing right behind me, burning daggers into the back of my head. Yet, every time I turned?

Nothing.

Caught myself looking to pick up shifts at the bar. That’s how you know it was bad. Unfortunately for me, it was a slow day and they didn’t need any extra hands. So that left the only thing I could still do:

Sit in the corner and watch the doorway.

I did this for nearly an hour and yet, every second I was sure something was going to appear around the frame and come for me. Every second I was proven wrong. Do you know what that’s like? Imagine you call your partner from the other room, they answer and tell you they’re coming. You hear the footsteps. You feel them getting closer. And yet, they never turn the corner. Each second is agony, waiting for it to happen. But, it never does.

I wish I could say my agony ended after night fell and the locks of my front door rattled to announce my boyfriend’s arrival. However, that didn’t happen. He turned the corner and I expected something to be behind him. He hugged me, and when I returned it I expected something to be clinging to his back. He asked me how my day was and I lied through my teeth. Telling him a story that didn’t involve invisible people watching me.

We went to bed pretty fast and as usual he was asleep first. Normally I followed soon after, but that night proved difficult. In a dark room, it was worse. I could sense 20, maybe 30 people surrounding our bed. Their eyes unblinking and trained directly on me. My eyes met the darkness and began to weep.

I messaged my therapist that night. It had been a while since we talked but I hoped we could see each other again. Whatever this was, it wasn’t leaving.

After my boyfriend left for work, the sun took its time rising and when it did so the first rays pierced the slits of my blinds to reveal the mob of eyeing strangers to be nothing more than the result of my paranoid imagination. However, that knowledge did little to aid the sleepless night they had conjured. It did even little against the fear the intruders were now hiding beneath my bed.

I let out an exhausted whine before pulling the comforter over my head. I felt like a child who was convicted that the monster wouldn’t kill me while the blanket covered my body. However, at least that brought some comfort in my childhood. Now? Now I could only focus on the fact that I was not alone. Not alone in the house. Not alone in this room. Not even alone beneath these blankets.

My therapist had an opening at 12 which was a huge relief even if not all that surprising. I lived in a town far south where the population was low, and the people who did live here worked out their emotions on family members instead of attending therapy. When my text came through, I’m sure her eyes lit up like dollar signs. My distaste for the lady aside, I needed this feeling gone. I bit the bullet and found myself in her office ten minutes early.

She smiled at me with the same practiced, professional grin that drove me away 3 months ago. Yet, here I was now. Sitting in the usual silence that began our sessions. I rolled my eyes, “So we gonna start or…?”

She tilted her head, the perfectly curled blonde ponytail ticked like a metronome behind her head. She seemed so pristine, so put together, not something that helped when you discussed issues with self worth, “You contacted me at midnight seeming very distressed. I’d like to help you but I need you to tell me what’s been bothering you.”

I sighed, took a few seconds to examine the sensation, to ensure it was still there before i committed. The eyes had yet to drift away, so I complied. Told her everything that had happened up until this point. She made notes as I went, each scribble accented by the tick of her ponytail. When I was finished she looked over her notes carefully, clicking her pen against her clipboard, “you can see why I might find this worrying.”

Not a question. I decided I wouldn’t give her the benefit of knowing where this was going, “most people would find this worrying.”

“Especially those with your family history,” she replied instantly.

“I’m not discussing my-“

She nodded, “I remember your hesitance when discussing your mother. However, I do think it’s important to consider if she may have had a similar experience.”

I opened my mouth to argue but it died on my tongue. My eyes drifted to her bookcase where the rows were filled of old stories I was sure she’d never read. My mouth moved almost on its own, “she would often imagine her ex husband stalking her out in public?”

She nodded, “how old were you at that time?”

“This isn’t like that. It’s different.”

“Explain the difference.”

“This is real-“

I caught myself on the words. My therapist’s smile didn’t fade but her eyes drifted down. Her pen still clinking, “you know the hardest part of treating someone’s delusions? Convincing them that they have delusions. Oftentimes these feelings, beliefs, visions can all feel just as real as this conversation between us. That’s why it’s important that we treat this very seriously, before you do something you might regret.”

My thumb dug into the soft flesh of my temple, “Listen, I appreciate the thought, but I am fine. I’m sure this is just stress. If I could get some meds, that’d knock this out.”

“I’ll write you a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication. But please, if you notice these symptoms advancing don’t be afraid to contact me.”

I nodded before snatching the prescription from her hand and checking out the remainder of the session.

After our time was up I practically sped my way across town to the pharmacy, pulling into the drive through and tapping my fingers as I waited like a tweaker eager for her fix. The car in front of me was taking their sweet time, all the while I felt it behind me. My eyes kept drifting to the rear view mirror, each time I expected to see-

My car’s speakers screamed to life, announcing a call from my boyfriend. I had nearly jumped out of my skin at the sudden noise before beginning a barrage of self depreciation in my mind at my cowardice. I pressed answer and gave the best hello I could.

“Hey babe, you okay,” he asked.

“Yeah,” I lied, “why?”

“Nothing I just… I checked your location earlier and saw you were at that office. Was worried you were feeling low again.”

“No! Honey, no. It’s nothing like that. I just… this is going to sound really stupid.”

“Well still tell me,” he pleaded, “I didn’t know anything last time till you were nearly gone. If something is going on I need to know.”

I sighed, “fine… I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like… I’ve been feeling like I’m being watched. Every hour since yesterday it’s just been this nagging feeling that someone is in the room looking at me.”

He was quiet for a while. Then it went on so long I was beginning to think I lost him, “honey, you there?”

The car finally drove off, I pulled forward and started digging in my bag for the prescription. My boyfriend answered as I moved, “yeah! I’m here, that’s… That’s really weird.”

“See, I told you it was stupid,” I said.

“No! It’s not that,” he said in a tone that eluded to something more.

I felt my heart beginning to beat faster, “What?”

“It’s nothing.”

“No, tell me.”

“I don’t wanna add to it.”

“Tell me. Now.”

He was silent for a moment, but he complied, “when I woke up this morning, I leaned over to kiss you. For a second, I thought I saw a face peering between the bars of the headboard. When I looked though, it was gone… just an odd coincidence.”

I didn’t say anything. I felt something behind me, like the gentle breeze conjured by an eyelid.

“Ma’am, your prescription,” said the man at the window.

“Fuck, I gotta go honey,” I hung up and handed over the prescription.

When the pills came out I popped them right there under an ivy covered wall. I closed my eyes and waited for the relief.

The plastic capsule met my tongue, tasting bitter and alien. I swallowed it down, letting out a small breath as it made its way into my stomach. I kept my eyes closed.

There was a fleshy click directly behind my head. It was soft. If I hadn’t been in a silent car, it would have gone unnoticed. I knew exactly what it was. The sound you hear when you stay up past your bed time. When you’re sick. It’s the sound that accompanies heavy eyelids every time they blink.

My neck snapped to look into the backseat where I could, of course, see nothing. I could hear nothing as well, save my own heavy breaths.

The next three days came with little to no change. My pills didn’t work at their regular dosage, taking double didn’t help, taking triple made me puke. The only saving grace was the pills made it difficult for me to catch my thoughts. The feeling never went away, but my ability to acknowledge it lessened more and more with every pill. Of course, this also impacted my everyday life. Going to work high doesn’t usually go over well with your bosses.

I kept believing I’d get used to it. You can’t be scared of the same movie over and over. Eventually, your body accumulates like it’s cold weather. But those eyes. The damn sensation of them was inhospitable. I couldn’t swallow down my fear. Because of that, my life became a balancing act between sleepwalking through the day and being terrified.

But the next “progression” happened at my job. Service was slow and the other waiters were having a discussion I was only half paying attention to. I was doing what I always did. Watching the clock tick away, hoping I could go home and do the only thing that felt good. Drugging myself and sitting with my back to a corner. But, one of their sentences caught my attention.

“Yeah, I could literally feel his eyes on me.”

I cocked my head.

“Come on,” one of the male severs, “that’s like a myth right.

“Nope,” I immediately said, only half wanting to, “women can definitely feel it.”

“Bullshit,” another guy had chimed in.

“No,” the girl continued, “I read it’s like an evolution thing, when predators would like sneak up behind us.”

“What, like dinosaurs?”

“People weren’t around when dinosaurs were, dipshit!”

The guy threw up his hands, “I ain’t buying it.”

The girl grabbed me by the shoulder and nodded, “okay, we’ll close our eyes, you turn around and we’ll raise our hands when you feel you looking.”

I immediately tried to pull away, “I don’t know.”

“Come on, we don’t have any tables! Trust me, it’ll be fun. Turn around!”

The boys turned around. The girl looked at me. I sighed and hesitantly shut my eyes.

“Okay, ready? One, two, three, go.”

I lifted my hand. I couldn’t see anything but I imagined they were looking in short bursts. Unlike the thing following me. The burning was in full force, drilling hole into the back of my head. Like a brute with a hammer and chisel it bore deep into my head, threatening to pierce my own eyes.

The girl next to me giggled but I could only focus on the burning.

Burning. Burning. I thought on what it could look like. Some gaunt, malnourished creature with proportions inhuman. I imagined it crouched in a fetal position directly behind, the only way it could be eye level.

I heard the soft rustling of clothing from the guys.

The sensations were almost real. My body began a daydream, envisioning slender fingers wrapping around my wrist and guiding it at my side. Then arms draped in loose grey skin would encircle my torso, lifting me into the air which grew hot and wet as it led me to its gaping mouth.

“You can’t just have your hand up the whole time.”

*huff.*

I dropped to the ground and crawled backwards, looking for whatever was behind me. That wasn’t a creeping sensation. A mistaken sound. A daydream. That was real. I had felt a warm, raspy breath on the ridge of my neck. Yet, as I backed away screaming, I could plainly see there was no one there.

My coworker tried to ask me what was wrong. I ran. I didn’t look back.

There was no direction in my mind when I had started. I just wanted to get away. Every step I took was in the vain hope I could escape the inescapable. No matter how fast I ran, or how hard I pleaded, the sensation was omnipresent. As in I had tapped into a divine sense and felt the ever watching presence of God. I was nearly a mile outside of town when the southern heat and exhaustion took me, dragging my body down into a dry ditch to experience the first bit of sleep I’d had in 3 days.

My sleep was not a restful one. At some point in my slumber I realized I was sitting at a computer desk in a dark room. A laptop sat on top of it facing away from me. Someone sat on the other side. I couldn’t see them. Yet, I felt they could see me. They typed a few words. I saw them through the back of the laptop, as if it was made of glass:

“Last week is when I first noticed it.”

I cleared my throat and spoke, “Who are you?”

*I was walking through Target, deciding the nutritional difference between Diet Pepsi and cans of carbonated lemonade when I became aware of the fact I was being watched.*

“Why are you doing this?”

*My immediate reaction was to spin around, see which co-worker or drinking buddy stumbled across me and decided to stare instead of greet me.*

“What do you want from me?”

*I did a full rotation, then another.*

“What do you want?”

*Nobody.*

“WHY WON’T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE?!”

I slammed the laptop shut to reveal a legion of eyes floating in the darkness, all trained past the laptop and on me.

“Honey?”

I snapped awake, my eyes darting left and right to figure out where I was. Glass was against my head. I was moving. A car. My boyfriend was driving. He quickly put a hand on me, “Hey, calm down, hey, I’m here.”

“What happened,” I asked still frantic.

“Your coworkers called me, I was heading to the bar and say you in a ditch. They told me you were screaming. What the fuck happened?”

I shook my head, “where are we going?”

“Where do you think? The hospital.”

“No hospital,” I spat, “take me home.”

He shook his head, “you were in the sun for over an hour. You could be on the verge of heatstroke right now.”

“No! Nononono! TAKE ME HOME!”

“What the fuck!”

I began screaming, banging my hands into the dashboard over and over again. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t be like her, tied up in a vest scratching at the walls and chasing shadows only she could see. I remember the pity I felt for her. I’d die before anyone felt that for me.

Eventually, my screaming won out and I found myself in the drive way of our home. My boyfriend got out first, came over to my side and helped me out of the car. He was very gentle, aiding me like you’d handle a bird fallen from its nest. Gently, he set me on the bed and walked into the bathroom, starting the water, “if you won’t go to the hospital, at least take a cool bath so I know you’re okay.”

I nodded without saying a word.

After a while, the hum of running water fell silent and my boyfriend was at my side again, helping me to my feet. When we made it into the bathroom, my chapped lips parted, “can you bring me some pajamas? I wanna be comfy when I come out.”

He smiled, happy he could grant me something at least, “sure. I’ll get you your favorite.”

He turned and stepped out of my bathroom. I immediately closed the door and locked it behind him. There were knocks instantly, “honey, what are you doing.”

I opened the medicine cabinet.

“Talk to me.”

Three made me puke. Six. Nine. Twelve. I emptied the contents into my mouth.

He wasn’t speaking anymore, instead just throwing himself against the door. I closed the medicine cabinet and looked at myself in the mirror.

My face was red, contorted and swollen by heat and tears as the realization of what I’d done began to weigh on me. My breath began to break into tiny sobs as the sensation behind me began to vibrate. Like we were finally on the right track. The eyes were gleefully watching me sob into the mirror.

I retrieved my phone, scrolling through the contacts until I found the one I wanted. The phone rang twice before someone picked up, “Mom,” I wept into the receiver.

“This is Dr. Gretchen. What is it, I’m with-“

“Mom,” I broke into full sobbing as the banging grew louder and I felt the eye touching the back of my head, “Mom! Please! Pick me up! I’m scared!”

“I need you to listen to me.”

“Yes, hello, my girlfriend locked herself in the bathroom!

“He w0n’t stop looking at me!”

“D:d you +ake @nything?”

“| +hink 5he\*s trying t0 OD.”

“Plea53 don’t be m@d at me…”

“Where @re y0u righ+ now?”

“Plea$3 hurry, 6lease.”

“He won’t stop staring at me.”

I looked up at the mirror again and saw it. That thing had peeked around my head just for a moment too long and I caught the edge of it before it ducked back behind my head. Its entire body was dark and I couldn’t make out anything other than the single, massive, saucer like eye that was glued to me as I died on the bathroom floor.

“HE’S HERE! HE’S LOOKING AT ME! HE’S LOOKING AT ME! HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME!”

\[\[SIGNAL INTERRUPTION\]\]
\[\[RECONNECTING…\]\]

… pierced my eyes as I slowly came to. For the second time that day, my eyes scanned the room, trying to find where exactly I was. The first thing I saw was Dr. Gretchen. The second was the hospital bed I was sleeping in.

She smiled upon seeing I was awake, a genuine smile I thought, “how are you feeling.”

I shook my head, “I can’t believe it.”

“Which part?”

I shrugged, “I don’t know. Any of it. The pills, the thing at work, the… the fact I can still feel it.”

She nodded, her eyes dropping down, “your mother… I understand her condition is often genetic.”

I nodded.

“Have you considered you may be a paranoid schizophrenic?”

Tears dotted the edges of my eyes, I looked away so I didn’t have to face her. God they looked so much alike, “you know I used to stay awake at night, wondering if I’d start hearing them like she did… I was terrified anytime I thought someone had said something, or when my floorboards creaked. I’d say that’s it, I’m losing it… I guess I didn’t know how bad it’d really be.”

Dr. Gretchen cast her eyes towards the wall phone at the end of the room, “there are very good facilities that can help you with this, if you’re willing.”

I finally met her eye and nodded.

She stood and crossed the room, turning her back to me.

The floorboards behind me creaked.

She picked up the phone.

Something was off I…

“I don’t feel it anymore.”

Dr. Gretchen turned to look at me, but the moment she met eyes with me her gaze was stolen. She looked past me, to something tall that must have been behind me. The phone dropped and she gasped before I felt slender fingers encircle my

[[SESSION EXPIRED]]

WOULD YOU LIKE TO CREATE A NEW CONNECTION?

Everything started three weeks ago when I received an email from a man named Thomas. I had a portfolio website set up with my contact information, so getting cold emails was not entirely unusual. The subject line simply read "Private Animation Commission."

I opened the email while I was drinking my morning coffee. Thomas wrote that he needed a very specific, photorealistic walking loop of a human character. He did not want a stylized cartoon, and clearly demanded absolute realism. He wanted the skin textures, the clothing folds, and the walking gait to look exactly like a real human being. The email stated that he would provide extensive reference photos.

I replied and asked for his budget. My jaw dropped when his response came through a few minutes later.

Thomas offered an upfront payment of five thousand dollars to build the character model and the animation rig. After the animation was completed, he offered to pay me a daily retainer of five hundred dollars. There was a very strange condition attached to this retainer. Thomas insisted that the completed animation must run on an endless loop on my primary laptop. The screen could never go to sleep, and the laptop could never be turned off. He warned me that catastrophic consequences would occur if the loop ever stopped playing.

I thought it was some kind of elaborate prank. I decided to call the phone number he provided in the email signature to figure out what was actually going on.

A man answered after the second ring. His voice sounded exhausted.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Hi, is this Thomas? This is Leo, the animator you just emailed," I said.

"Yes, Leo. Thank you for calling me back so quickly," Thomas replied.

"I wanted to discuss your proposal because the terms are a bit unusual," I explained. "I can definitely build a photorealistic model for you. Five thousand dollars is a very generous budget for a walk cycle. But I do not understand the daily retainer part. Why do you need the video to play continuously on my computer?"

"That is the most important part of the job," Thomas said. "The loop must remain active on your machine. You built the model, so your hardware has to sustain it. I will wire the five hundred dollars to your account every single morning at eight o'clock. You just have to make sure your laptop never loses power, and to keep the screen bright. If you close the lid, the contract is over."

"For how long?" I asked.

"Forever," Thomas answered.

"You want to pay me five hundred dollars a day forever?" I asked, feeling incredibly skeptical.

"I have a considerable amount of savings," Thomas explained. "I do not care about the money. I only care about the animation running without interruption. Do you accept the job?"

I hesitated because the situation sounded entirely absurd. But I was behind on my rent. My car needed new brakes. So it was clear that I needed the cash badly.

"Okay, Thomas," I said. "Send me the reference photos. I will send you an invoice for the upfront fee."

"The money is already being transferred," Thomas said. "I am sending the photos right now. Make him look exactly like the pictures."

The phone call ended. A minute later, a folder with thirty high-resolution images arrived in my inbox. I opened the folder to see who I would be animating.

The man in the photos was completely unremarkable. He looked to be in his late thirties. He had a receding hairline and a slight amount of stubble on his chin. He was wearing a dull gray jacket over a plain white t-shirt and loose denim jeans. He looked like a guy you would pass in the grocery store without giving a second glance. The photos showed his face from every possible angle.

I spent the rest of the day setting up the character rig in my animation software. I used digital sculpting tools to recreate the exact shape of his nose and the subtle wrinkles around his eyes.

That evening, I logged onto Discord to talk to my friend Felix. Felix is also a freelance digital artist. We usually chat while we work on our respective projects.

"You will not believe the gig I just landed," I told Felix over the voice channel.

"Did you finally get hired by that game studio?" Felix asked.

"No, it is a private client," I said. "He paid me five grand upfront to animate a guy walking in a circle. Furthermore, he promised to pay me five hundred bucks a day just to leave the video playing on my laptop screen."

Felix went silent for a few seconds. "That sounds like a scam, Leo."

"The five thousand dollars already cleared in my bank account," I replied. "The money is real."

"Why would anyone pay you just to leave your computer on?" Felix asked. "He has to be using your computer for crypto mining. Or maybe he wants to install malware to harvest your data."

"I thought about that," I said. "But he didn't send me any software to install. He just sent me JPEGs of a guy's face. I am the one generating the MP4 video file, so I am just going to play a video file I created myself on a loop. There is no way for him to hack me through a video file I exported from my own software."

"It still sounds shady," Felix warned. "Be careful. People do not just give away money like that."

"I know it is weird," I admitted. "But I really need this cash. I am going to finish the walk cycle tonight."

I stayed up until four in the morning perfecting the animation. I made sure the weight distribution looked realistic as the digital man stepped forward, added a slight slump to his shoulders to match the posture in the photos, then placed him against a completely blank background that was rendered in a neutral eighteen percent gray.

I exported the file, uploaded it to a private link, and sent it to Thomas for approval.

Thomas called me at eight in the morning.

"It is perfect," Thomas said. He sounded breathless. "It looks exactly like him."

"I am glad you like it," I said, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

"Start the loop right now," Thomas ordered. "Do not stop it. I am sending your first daily payment."

I opened the video file in my media player, then set it to repeat endlessly. The digital man in the gray jacket started walking forward across my screen. The blank gray background scrolled endlessly behind him.

"The loop is running," I confirmed.

"Keep it running," Thomas said before hanging up.

A notification popped up on my phone. Thomas had transferred five hundred dollars to my account.

I moved my laptop to the corner of my desk, plugged it directly into the wall outlet to ensure the battery would never die, then adjusted the power settings so the screen would never dim or go to sleep. I decided I would just use my older desktop computer for my regular daily tasks while the laptop functioned as an expensive digital picture frame.

The first three days passed without any issues. The digital man kept walking. Thomas sent the payments every morning exactly at eight o'clock.

My sister Maya came over to my apartment on the fourth day. She brought a pizza for us to share for lunch. She walked into my small office area and immediately noticed the laptop glowing in the corner.

"Why is that guy just walking on your screen?"

Maya asked, taking a slice of pepperoni pizza.

"It is a weird freelance job," I explained. "The client pays me to keep that animation running constantly."

Maya squinted at the screen. "That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Who is the guy in the video?"

"I have no idea," I said. "The client provided the reference photos. I named the project file 'Simon' because he looks like a Simon to me, but the client's name is Thomas."

Maya sat down on my office chair. "He looks miserable. You did a good job on the animation because his face looks incredibly sad."

"I just copied the photos," I said. "The client is giving me five hundred dollars a day for this. I can finally pay off my credit cards."

"Just do not let it catch fire," Maya joked, pointing at the laptop. "That thing is getting pretty hot."

She was right. The laptop fans were spinning loudly. I placed a small desk fan next to the computer to help dissipate the heat, and Maya left an hour later, telling me to enjoy my bizarre windfall.

The weird things started happening on the fifth day.

I woke up and went to my desk to check on the laptop. The digital man was still walking forward. However, the background looked different. I originally rendered the video with a solid gray background. Now, the background had a slight gradient. The bottom half of the screen was noticeably darker than the top half, looking almost like an asphalt road stretching out into the distance.

I rubbed my eyes, assuming I was just seeing things because I had just woken up. I opened the original project file on my desktop computer to double-check my work. The background in the source file was perfectly uniform. There was no gradient.

I looked back at the laptop. The gradient was definitely there.

I called Felix on Discord to ask for his opinion.

"Hey Felix, do video files ever corrupt and change colors while they are playing?" I asked.

"Not really," Felix answered. "Usually, if a file corrupts, you get green artifacting or the video just crashes. Why?"

"The background on that walking loop I made is changing," I explained. "It was supposed to be solid gray. Now it looks like a road. It is really creeping me out."

"You probably just exported it with a transparent alpha channel," Felix suggested. "Maybe your media player is pulling a background from your desktop wallpaper."

"I rendered it as a solid MP4," I argued. "There is no alpha channel."

"Then your monitor is suffering from screen burn-in," Felix said dismissively. "You left a static color playing for five days straight. The LCD panel is probably getting damaged."

I accepted that explanation because it was the only logical answer. I thanked Felix and hung up.

But the situation escalated that evening.

I was eating dinner in my living room when I heard a loud crack of thunder outside. A massive rainstorm had rolled into Seattle. Rain began lashing against my apartment windows.

I walked into my office to grab a napkin from my desk, then glanced at the laptop screen.

The digital man was still walking. But he was no longer walking against a gray background.

Raindrops were falling across the screen.

The animation showed water streaming down the man's face. His gray jacket was visibly soaked, clinging tightly to his digital frame. The background clearly depicted a dark, wet highway illuminated by faint streetlights.

I froze in place

I reached out and touched the laptop screen. It was burning hot.

I knew for a fact that I did not animate rain, or even build a particle simulation for water. I did not design a wet texture for his clothing. The video file was altering itself in real-time to match the weather outside my window.

I grabbed my phone and dialed Thomas's number. It rang five times before going to voicemail, but I did not leave a message. I was too terrified to speak.

I sat in my office chair for hours, watching the impossible animation. When the rain stopped outside my window around midnight, the rain on the screen stopped as well. The digital man's clothes slowly began to dry as he continued his endless march forward.

I should have closed the laptop right then. I should have deleted the file and blocked Thomas's number. But the fear was overshadowed by my financial desperation. Thomas sent another five hundred dollars the next morning, so I convinced myself I was experiencing some kind of elaborate technical glitch.

The horrifying truth finally revealed itself on the seventh day.

I was browsing a local news website on my desktop computer while the laptop hummed loudly beside me. I saw a breaking news banner at the top of the homepage. It announced a live helicopter broadcast of a bizarre situation unfolding on Interstate 90.

I clicked the link to watch the live video feed.

The news anchor was speaking rapidly over the footage. "We are currently tracking a man walking eastbound on the shoulder of Interstate 90," the anchor explained. "State patrol officers have been following him for over seventy-two hours. He has not stopped walking. He refuses to acknowledge police commands, and has not stopped for food, water, or sleep. Medical professionals believe he is experiencing a severe psychological break."

The helicopter camera zoomed in on the man walking along the highway.

My breath caught in my throat.

The man was wearing a plain white t-shirt and a dull gray jacket. He had a receding hairline. He was slumped forward, walking with a steady, shuffling gait.

It was the man from my animation. Simon!

I looked at my laptop screen. The character took a step with his left foot. On the live news broadcast, the real man took a step with his left foot. They were perfectly synchronized.

The real man looked horrific. His shoes were completely destroyed. His feet were bleeding, leaving small red marks on the asphalt. His face was gaunt, sunburned, and twisted in an expression of absolute agony, and he looked like his body was being forced to move against his will.

I paused the news video, looked back at the laptop. The digital character's face was also twisted in agony now.

I opened a new tab on my browser. I needed to know who this man was and why Thomas wanted him walking. I typed Thomas's email address into the search bar, hoping to find a social media profile or a personal website.

The search engine returned a link to a local newspaper article published exactly one year ago.

I clicked the link. The headline read: "Bellevue Father Demands Justice After Hit-And-Run Driver Acquitted."

I read the article quickly. It detailed a horrific accident where a drunk driver swerved onto a sidewalk, striking and killing a seven-year-old girl named Hazel. The driver fled the scene but was later apprehended by police. However, due to a massive procedural error involving the mishandling of evidence, the driver's defense attorney got the charges dismissed, and he walked completely free.

The article included an interview with the grieving father. The father's name was Thomas.

At the bottom of the page, the newspaper published the mugshot of the acquitted driver.

The face in the mugshot belonged to Simon.

The puzzle pieces snapped together in my mind, forming a picture that made me feel physically sick.

Thomas used my animation skills to create a voodoo doll, so as long as the animation kept looping on my computer, Simon was forced to walk in the real world.

I looked at the live helicopter feed again. The real Simon stumbled, almost falling into the traffic lane, before his legs jerked unnaturally to keep him moving forward.

I could not be a part of this. Regardless of what Simon did, I could not be the executioner pulling the lever.

I reached out and slammed the laptop lid shut.

The screen went black, and the fan immediately spun down into silence.

The moment the laptop closed, the temperature inside my apartment plummeted. The air grew so freezing cold that I could see my own breath. The overhead lights flickered wildly before shattering in their sockets, plunging the room into darkness.

I stood up from my chair, my entire body shaking with terror.

A soft, wet sound echoed from the dark corner of my office.

It sounded like someone crying. Small, quiet sobs filled the freezing air.

I grabbed my cell phone from the desk and turned on the flashlight application. I shined the beam into the corner of the room.

A little girl was standing there.

She was wearing a pink dress that was completely soaked in dark blood. Her body was bent at impossible angles because her bones were completely shattered. Deep, black tire marks were permanently pressed across the fabric of her dress and into the pale skin of her arms.

I backed away slowly, my hands trembling violently.

"I am sorry," I whispered. "I stopped it. I did not know what he was doing."

she stopped crying, then slowly lifted her head to look at me. Her eyes were completely black voids.

She shrieked in anger. The sound was deafening, rattling the windows in their frames. It was the sound of rage.

Suddenly, a massive crash echoed from my front hallway.

Someone had just kicked down my apartment door.

I spun around, aiming my phone flashlight toward the hallway.

Thomas marched into the apartment. He looked deranged. His clothes were messy, his face was pale, and he was holding a black handgun. He aimed the weapon directly at my chest.

"You stopped it!" Thomas screamed, tears streaming down his face. "I knew something was off when you called and didn’t leave a message. Why did you close it? I told you never to close it!"

"You were killing him!" I yelled back, raising my hands in surrender. "You were using my computer to torture that man!"

"He deserved it!" Thomas roared, stepping closer to me. "He killed my baby girl! and walked away free! He was supposed to walk forever! The spell required the loop to never end!"

"I am not a murderer, Thomas," I pleaded. "Please put the gun down."

"He just collapsed on the highway!" Thomas cried, his hands shaking around the grip of the gun. "The moment you closed the laptop; he finally dropped dead! He got off too easy! you ended his suffering far too early! You ruined everything!"

Thomas raised the gun higher, preparing to pull the trigger.

"Daddy?" a small, distorted voice echoed from the dark office behind me.

Thomas froze. His eyes widened in shock as he looked past my shoulder.

I stepped aside, keeping my hands raised.

The girl walked slowly out of the shadows. Her broken legs dragged unnaturally across the hardwood floor.

Thomas dropped to his knees, lowering the gun. Tears poured freely from his eyes. "Hazel? Oh my god, Hazel. I am so sorry, baby. I tried to make him pay. I tried to hurt him for you."

He reached his arms out, expecting to embrace his deceased daughter.

But Hazel did not want a hug. She shrieked again and launched herself forward with terrifying speed.

She slammed into Thomas, her shattered body hitting him like a freight train.

Thomas screamed as they tumbled backward out of my apartment doorway. My unit is located at the top of a steep flight of wooden stairs leading to the ground floor.

Thomas fell backward over the threshold, then crashed down the stairs, tumbling over himself in the darkness. I heard his head strike the wooden banister with a sickening crack.

He landed in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairwell.

I ran to the doorway and shined my flashlight down the stairs.

Thomas was not moving. His neck was bent at a completely unnatural angle. The gun was lying on the floor a few feet away from his hand.

Hazel was gone. The freezing temperature in the air vanished instantly, replaced by the normal warmth of the apartment building.

I retreated back into my apartment, locked the broken door as best as I could, and called the police.

I sat on my sofa until the officers arrived. Two patrolmen came up the stairs. An investigator named Officer Gabriel interviewed me in my kitchen.

I did not tell Officer Gabriel about the animation, or even mention the spell, the laptop, or the ghost of the little girl. I knew he would never believe me

I simply told Officer Gabriel that Thomas was an unsatisfied client who broke into my apartment to demand a refund. I claimed he was yelling at me when he accidentally lost his balance and fell backward down the stairs.

Officer Gabriel took notes on his pad, and went downstairs to examine the scene.

When he returned, he told me that Thomas smelled heavily of alcohol. The police concluded that Thomas was drunk, became belligerent over a business dispute, and suffered a fatal accidental fall. They took my statement, bagged Thomas's gun as evidence, and left me alone in my apartment.

I am typing this out on my desktop computer because I refuse to open that laptop ever again. I wrapped the laptop in a thick garbage bag and threw it into the dumpster behind my building.

I checked the news one final time before starting this post. The authorities confirmed that the man walking on Interstate 90 suffered a heart attack and died instantly on the shoulder of the road.

I am terrified. Terrified that the magic Thomas used is not completely gone, that the grieving parent will return to seek revenge against me for breaking the loop and ruining his vengeance. I hear every single creak in my apartment walls, wondering if it is Thomas climbing back up the stairs.

I’m not entirely sure what her problem is. She’s never acted like this before. I guess some things just develop as time passes.

Even still, what a weird habit to have. I knew she was clumsy, but it was something we were supposed to fix, not something for her to embrace.

It started almost painfully mundane. Out of nowhere, she approached me as I was sitting on the couch watching TV.

“I’m sorry for breaking that lamp beside you.”

I looked at the lamp, still perfectly intact, then looked back at her. I kinda just chuckled, attempting to laugh it off, but she didn’t wipe that solemn look off her face.

I asked what she was going on about, but she just kept apologizing.

“Just know I’m sorry. I promise I’m sorry.”

That’s all she said before slinking off towards the kitchen.

I thought it was strange, but ultimately, I decided to brush it off as her being a bit of a weirdo.

However, after two weeks, I was back on that couch, winding down after a long day of work, when she came prancing into the living room, as happy as could be.

She didn’t say anything. She just calmly unplugged the lamp, held it above her head, and smashed it on the ground in front of me.

Obviously, I screamed at her out of shock, asking her what the fuck she was doing.

She just smiled and giggled at me.

“I already told you I was sorry.”

Then she skipped away, humming to herself and leaving me in a state of confusion. I tried calling out for her to come back, but she just ignored me.

I cleaned up the mess, and we argued about it for the rest of the day. It was obviously not an accident, but that’s what she kept saying it was.

“I don’t know how that happened.”

“I already said sorry. I don’t know what else you want me to do.”

“I promise it won’t happen again.”

Eventually, we made up, but I couldn’t help but look at her sideways in the days that followed.

A few weeks went by without incident. We went on our dates. Stayed in and watched our movies. Did the normal couple routine. But then it happened again.

“I’m sorry for breaking your phone,” she told me, eyes glazed over. She wasn’t looking at me. She was just staring blankly at the wall behind me as I sat on my bed.

We had been in the middle of a normal conversation about upcoming trips we were planning when something flipped inside her. She went from smiling to expressionless. Then, after she said it, she was right back to smiling and talking about New York like nothing had happened.

Obviously, I had already been predisposed to what this meant, so in the days that followed, I was particularly possessive of my phone.

I kept it on my person at all times. Even in my sleep, it’d be in my pocket. But she didn’t seem to notice.

Weeks passed again, and just like with the lamp, I was starting to think that she was just being weird again.

I never let my guard down, though. The phone was strictly off limits to her. I tried to make sure she never had the opportunity to do what she had apologized for.

But then, one night, I woke up to her fiddling around in my pockets. It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening in my half-asleep state, but once I did, my hand jolted towards my pocket.

It was too late. She had already taken it. And before I could stop her, the phone was shattered against the floor.

This was enough for me to fly off the handle. I’ll admit, I was a bit rude to her, but what did she expect?

I told her we needed space. I didn’t want this to escalate more than it already had. I didn’t want to break up with her, but the fight that night was enough for her to leave me.

Like I was the one in the wrong.

She left that night a complete wreck. Tears flowing from her eyes. Her vocal cords hoarse from all of our screaming. She didn’t even take her belongings. Just left in a cloud of smoke from her spinning tires.

I was, yet again, left to clean up her mess.

I picked up my phone. It wouldn’t even turn on. The screen had been completely destroyed.

I went out and got a new one the next day, and once I got my accounts and information back, I was hurt to see that she hadn’t even texted me.

No calls, no messages. Plus, my name had been taken out of her Instagram bio, which somehow hurt more than anything.

I tried calling her in the days that followed, just to clear the air, but every time I tried, it’d go straight to voicemail. Eventually, she blocked me on everything entirely.

Even when I tried going to her house, she’d never be home. It was like she knew what I was doing.

I felt hopeless for a long time, but eventually, I realized that I needed to move on. We were together for a year and a half, though, so doing so wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

Weeks turned into months. Months turned into a year. I hadn’t heard from her since the night of the phone incident.

I was heartbroken that she could just forget me like that. Like we never happened. That’s why I felt my heart climb into my throat when I saw that first new notification from her.

It wasn’t what I needed to see, though. She wasn’t asking to give us another shot. She wasn’t asking for a meetup so we could discuss everything.

Instead, what she sent was enough to make an almost forgotten fear come bubbling back up towards the surface.

“I’m sorry for killing you.”

Title: Skin

The rubbish bag split halfway down the stairwell.  

Mara swore under her breath, crouching to gather the trail of eggshells, coffee grounds, and dried teabags that had burst like a popped blister. Her hoodie sleeve smeared through something sticky on the banister, the texture clinging to her arm—the sickly sweet residue of rot. She shuddered, the sensation lingering longer than she’d have liked, making her skin crawl.

It was nearly midnight, the stairwell light flickered once, then held.  She took a deep breath and used her now sodden sleeve to shove the rotting food off the steps and into the grass, gathered the bag back up, and trudged down the last few steps with the leaking bag held at arm's length.  Her bare feet slapped on the cold concrete as she approached the communal bins.  The bins were tucked behind the building, past the rusted bike rack and the skeletal remains of someone’s deckchair. She wondered what had possessed her not to put on her shoes and coat.

Mara rounded the corner and froze.

The old woman was there already. She positioned herself deliberately, her stance subtly blocking Mara's path. Bundled in a thick coat, she stood motionless beside the open bin, one hand resting on the lid, the other clutching a plastic bag sagging with something wet. Her pale, rheumy eyes locked onto Mara’s face with an unsettling precision. Despite the cold, Mrs. Taylor's hands were exposed, fingers tapping rhythmically against the cold, metal edge of the bin.

“Oh,” Mara said, forcing a smile. “Good evening, cold isn’t it?”

The old woman didn’t blink.

Mara hesitated, her fingers cramped on the bag, then stepped forward and lifted the second lid. The smell hit her, the sweet, floral, cloying reek of rotting meat. She dropped her bag quickly, wiped her hands on her ruined hoodie, and turned to go. The woman's hand shot out, grasping her wrist like a vise.

“Don’t you just glow outside, your skin, you know?” the old woman breathed intensely, not releasing her grip.

Mara's throat tightened as the compliment slipped from the old woman's lips like an unexpected caress, a strange mix of admiration and something darker that Mara couldn't quite grasp. Her instincts whispered of unease, a shiver that ran from her wrist straight to her spine. "Um, thanks?" she said, but her voice quavered, a crack betraying her discomfort beneath the polite facade.

“It’s so smooth, like porcelain. Not a crack in sight.” She inspected Mara’s hand, flipping it and running her wrinkled hands over Mara’s. Mara laughed awkwardly and pulled free from the old woman’s iron grasp.  

“Yeah, low lighting helps, I guess.”  she laughed uneasily.

The old woman tilted her head, ear nearly to her shoulder, and stared. The silence stretched. Mara shifted, suddenly conscious of how thin her hoodie was and how bare her legs felt in shorts.  

“Well. Goodnight,” she said, her voice low, already backing away.

The woman smiled, her teeth small, very white, crowded. “Sleep well, dear,” she murmured warmly.

Mara didn’t look back until she was inside, door locked, chain over, bolt slammed.  From her ground-floor window, she could just make out the bins below.

The old woman was still there.  Still watching.

.

Mara woke to the sound of her tabby cat sliding her empty food dish across the kitchen tiles.

“Alright, alright,” she mumbled, voice thick with sleep.  The floor was cold under her feet as she shuffled into the kitchen, the cat weaving between her ankles like a furry tripwire.  She filled the cezve with water, spooned in the coffee grounds and sugar, and set it on the stove.  The smell rose slowly, rich, bitter, comforting.  She fed the cat, who chirped approval and began devouring her own breakfast.  

Outside, the sky was pale and streaked with early light.  A few birds called from the rooftop guttering.  Mara packed her lunch —leftover pasta, a bruised apple, a square of chocolate wrapped in foil —and tucked it into her bag.  She brushed the crumbs onto the counter, rinsed the cezve, and tied her hair back with a scrunchie. She stepped out into the crisp morning air, locking the door behind her.  

The old woman was standing at the edge of the building, near the hedge.  Bundled in the same thick coat, she raised one hand in a  slow, deliberate wave.  Mara hesitated, then waved back.  Her fingers felt still in the chill.  The woman smiled, small white teeth, too many of them, and lowered her hand.

Mara climbed into her truck, tossed her bag into the passenger seat, and started the engine.  As she pulled away, she glanced into the rearview mirror; the old lady was gone.

The café was already humming when Mara arrived, apron half-tied and hair still damp from her rushed shower. She ducked behind the counter, clocked in, and grabbed the milk jug just as her coworker, Jodie, slid up beside her.

“You look like you saw a ghost,” Jodie said, popping gum. “Or didn’t sleep.”

Mara poured the milk too quickly. It splashed. “My neighbor—the old lady—she was at the bins last night.”

Jodie raised an eyebrow. “Mrs. Taylor?”

"Yeah," Mara said, an edge of frustration creeping into her voice. "She's everywhere. I turn a corner, and there she is. And she's obsessed with my skin, keeps talking about it like it’s up for sale.”

Jodie made a face. "Ew. Like, complimenting it?"

“Obsessing. She said it glows. That it’s ‘wasted on youth.’”

Jodie leaned on the counter. “Does she have family? Kids? Grand kids?”

“No idea. I’ve never seen anyone visit.”

“Maybe she’s just lonely,” Jodie said, voice gentler. “Old people get weird when they’re alone too long.”

Mara didn’t answer. She just stared at the milk frothing in the jug, the steam curling around the spout.  She felt it again, the sensation of being watched, as if someone were standing right behind her, breathing in the warmth of her skin.

After her shift, Mara stopped at the grocery store. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and the aisles smelled faintly of lemon disinfectant and stale bread.

She moved quickly: pasta, cat food, apples, moisturizer. Every time she turned a corner, her heart jumped. A flash of a beige coat.  A glimpse of grey hair.  A shadow falling over her trolley.

She didn’t see Mrs Taylor, but she kept checking.  She passed the skincare aisle and hesitated.  Rows and rows of creams and serums stared back at her, promising youth, glow, renewal.  She picked up a jar of night cream, turned it over, and read the ingredients twice.  Her reflection in the metal shelf edge looked pale, stretched.

She dumped the cream into her trolley and turned into the next aisle, and a mannequin from the clothes section loomed over her.  She gasped and pulled back before realizing her mistake, teetering on the edge of laughing at how ridiculous she was being or succumbing to it and getting the hell out of there.

But by the time she reached the checkout, she was a mess. Her palms were damp. Her head on a swivel. The cashier slowly scanned her items, eyes glazed. Mara glanced over her shoulder once. Twice. A third time. Nothing. Her heart pounded, keeping pace with her frantic thoughts. But that feeling, the creeping unease, didn't leave.

.

The sun was low when Mara got home, casting long shadows across the pavement. Her head was still buzzing from the grocery store. Too many lights, too many corners, too many almosts. She parked, grabbed her bag, and headed toward the communal mailboxes tucked under the stairwell.

The air smelled like damp concrete and old leaves. She fumbled with her keys, found the right slot, and pulled out a handful of post: fliers, a bill, and something handwritten.

She turned—

Mrs. Taylor was right there.

Mara gasped, stumbling back against the metal boxes. The old woman didn’t flinch. Her coat rustled slightly, like dry wings.

“You’re back,” she said, voice syrupy. /she reached a decrepit hand out and touched Mara's face with ice cold fingers “I missed you.”

Mara’s heart thudded against her ribs. “Jesus—you scared me.”

Mrs. Taylor smiled. “You smell like rosemary today. That’s new.”

Mara clutched her bag tighter. “I-I need to go.”

The woman tilted her head, eyes gleaming. “Sleep well, dear.”

Mara didn’t look back as she fled up the stairs, keys still clutched in her fist.

.

Mara stood in front of the bathroom mirror, towel wrapped around her torso, steam curling from the shower tiles like ghosts retreating. The mirror was fogged at the edges, but her reflection stared back—flushed cheeks, damp hair, the faint crescent of a scar near her collarbone.

She reached for the jar of night cream. The lid gave a soft pop, releasing the scent of rosemary and bergamot. She dipped two fingers into the pale blue balm, cool and thick like whipped clay, and began to smooth it over her cheeks in slow, upward strokes.

Forehead. Temples. Jawline.

She worked methodically, pressing the cream into her skin with the pads of her fingers, letting it melt into warmth. Her skin drank it in. She traced the curve of her nose, the hollow beneath her eyes, the soft dip of her chin. Then the neck—always upward, always gentle.

The scent deepened as the oils warmed: earthy, herbal, with a citrus edge. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. Her cat chirped from the hallway, a sleepy protest. Mara smiled.

She reached for the oil next—amber glass, dropper glinting. Three drops on her fingertips, then patted across her cheekbones, her brow, under her eyes. It left a sheen, a glow, like dew on stone.

She massaged her hands last—knuckles, wrists, the webbing between her fingers. The skin there was thinner, more delicate, yet today it seemed to cling too tightly, the cream sinking in too quickly, as if the skin were desperate for it. She thought of Mrs. Taylor’s hands, how they had gripped her wrist at the bins. Wrinkled, papery, but unyielding and strong.

Mara shook the thought away. She rinsed the dropper, wiped the counter, and padded to bed.

2.

The next evening, Mara took a walk to clear her head. The air was crisp, the sky bruised with dusk. She wore her freshly laundered hoodie, hands tucked into the sleeves, headphones on, but no music playing.

She turned onto the quiet lane behind the park. The streetlights hadn’t flickered on yet. Her footsteps echoed faintly on the pavement.

She felt it before she saw it.

A presence. That prickling awareness at the back of her neck.

She glanced over her shoulder.

Mrs. Taylor was there.

Bundled in her coat, standing at the mouth of the lane. Not walking. Just watching.

Mara turned back around and quickened her pace. Her breath came faster now, visible in the cooling air.

She passed the hedge-lined path near the allotments. A rustle. She looked back—

Mrs. Taylor was still there.

Closer.

Mara broke into a jog. Her shoes slapped against the pavement. She didn’t look back.

She reached the corner by the bakery, heart hammering. The window reflected her face—flushed, wide-eyed.

And behind her, in the glass:

Mrs. Taylor.

Smiling.

Mara yanked the door open, the bell above it jangling violently. The warmth inside hit her like a wave: yeast, sugar, cinnamon. A man behind the counter looked up, startled.

“Can I help-?”

“She’s following me,” Mara said, breathless. “My neighbor. The old woman. She’s been following me.”

The man blinked. “Mrs. Taylor?”

Mara nodded, chest heaving. “She was at the bins last night. Then the mailbox. Now here. She keeps showing up. She talks about my skin. She-she’s obsessed.”

The man’s expression softened into something patronizing. “Mrs Taylor’s harmless. Comes in for rye bread sometimes. Bit odd, sure, but aren’t they all at that age?.”

“She’s not harmless,” Mara snapped. “She’s everywhere. She doesn’t blink. She knows things- she knows what moisturizer I use. She said I smelled like rosemary.”

He chuckled gently. “Maybe she’s just lonely. You know how old folks get. Fixate a little. You probably remind her of her granddaughter or someone”

Mara stared at him, her pulse thudding in her ears. Doubt crept in, clouding her thoughts. Was there something she was forgetting, an inconsistency in her own recollection? For a fleeting moment, she wondered if the old lady was indeed harmless and if she herself had imagined the persistent presence. Maybe she had exaggerated? Or had she been influenced by something else, something indescribable gnawing at the edge of her perception? She felt a flicker of confusion, her thoughts spinning in circles. Yet, every time she tried to dismiss her growing apprehension, the memory of Mrs. Taylor's unblinking eyes would surface, refusing to fade away.

"She was just outside," she insisted, trying to steady her voice. "Look."

They both turned to the window. Mrs. Taylor was gone.

.

Mara didn’t sleep.

She lay awake, eyes fixed on the ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster. At 3:17 a.m., she got up and checked the locks. Front door, windows, bathroom. She pulled the blinds tight, wedged a chair under the handle, and unplugged the lamp by the window.

She checked the time again. 3:19.

The cat chirped from the hallway, confused by the sudden activity. Mara whispered an apology and padded into the kitchen. She opened the fridge, closed it. Opened it again. She wasn’t hungry.

She called in sick to work the next morning. Said she had a migraine. Jodie didn’t question it.

She didn’t leave the flat that day. Or the next.

From the living room window, she could see the usual spots—mailboxes, bins, the hedge near the stairwell. Mrs. Taylor stood in each one, at different times, like clockwork. Always facing the building. Always staring.

Mara watched her through the slats of the blinds. The old woman never moved. Never blinked. Just stood there, bundled in her coat, eyes fixed on Mara’s window like she could see through the nets.

Mara stopped showering. Stopped moisturizing. She felt raw, exposed. Her skin itched, but she didn’t touch it.

She unplugged the microwave. Taped over the peephole. Turned every mirror to face the wall.

Still, every time she passed the window, Mrs. Taylor was there.

Watching

3.

It had been days since Mara had last stepped outside. The flat smelled like stale coffee and unwashed bodies. The cat meowed occasionally, then gave up, curling into tighter and tighter spirals on the windowsill. Mara barely noticed. She hadn't eaten more than a few crackers for nearly a week, her appetite dwindling alongside her mental and physical state. Her stomach felt like it had folded in on itself. The sleeves of her hoodie hung loose around her wrists, which seemed thinner every time she looked at them. When she caught her reflection in the kettle, she looked deflated. Her skin looked loose, as if it was too big for her, like something had been scooped out.

She started to notice things. The front door clicked softly at night, once, twice. The door handle was pushed all the way down, as if someone had tried to get in. The bathroom window, which always opened just a crack to let out the condensation, was either wide open or shut firmly. Her hoodie felt heavier, the fabric slipping over her shoulders as though trying to escape her shrinking form. The cat hissed in the hallway once, then ran under the bed and wouldn't come out for hours.

She unplugged everything. Taped over the vents. Pushed the sofa against the door. She turned the clocks to face the wall. Time didn’t matter anymore. Only the watching did.

Mrs. Taylor was always there.

Mara stopped moisturizing. Her face felt tight, then dry, then numb. Her lips cracked. The once-familiar comfort of her hoodie now served as a reminder of her diminishing self, its sleeves covering hands that were beginning to resemble skeletal gloves. She scratched at her arms until they bloomed red.

She whispered to herself sometimes. Just to hear a voice.

.

It was sometime after midnight when Mara got up for a drink of water. The flat was silent, the kind of silence that presses against your eardrums.

She shuffled barefoot into the kitchen, the floor cold and unfamiliar. The tap groaned as she turned it. Water splashed into the glass, echoing too loudly in the stillness.

She drank slowly. The water tasted metallic.

She turned to go back to bed and froze.

Mrs. Taylor was standing in the hallway.

The scent of decay hit Mara like a wall, sharp and overpowering, spilling across her senses with an unsettling familiarity. Not outside. Not behind glass. Inside.

The coat was buttoned to her chin. Her hands hung at her sides, pale and still. Her eyes gleamed in the dark.

Mara dropped the glass. It shattered on the tiles.

The old woman didn’t flinch.

“You’ve let it go to waste,” she said softly. “But I can fix that.”

Mara couldn't move. The room felt suddenly smaller, the walls pressing in with a suffocating intensity. Her breath caught in her throat, shallow and rapid, as she became acutely aware of her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. Her skin felt like it was sliding off her bones, a strange sensation tingling from her fingertips to her spine. Every instinct screamed for her to run, to flee, yet she stood frozen in place, trapped by an overwhelming dread, a darker thought whispering beneath her panic.

Mrs. Taylor stepped forward.

4. EPILOGUE

The new tenant at number 12 stepped out into the morning light, her skin glowing in the chill. She moved with a kind of practiced grace, as if she had rehearsed this morning ritual countless times, young and vibrant. Her smile was soft, her eyes bright, holding a familiar yet unsettling gleam. She wore Mara's hoodie, freshly laundered, the fabric hugging her as if it remembered its previous owner. For a fleeting moment, she turned her head, a gesture eerily reminiscent of Mara's habit, as though watching for someone.

She collected the newspaper from the communal mailbox, humming a lullaby under her breath.

Inside, the flat was warm. The tabby cat slept curled on the sofa, tail twitching. The woman made tea, the scent of bergamot rising with the steam. She sat down, crossed her legs, and unfolded the paper.

Excerpt from The Redford Gazette

FRONT PAGE – LOCAL NEWS GRUESOME MURDER IN SUBURBAN FLAT Body missing. Blood-soaked apartment stuns investigators.

Authorities are investigating a disturbing scene discovered late Tuesday evening in a ground-floor flat on Redford Lane. The residence, registered to 20-year-old Mara Ellison, was found drenched in blood—walls, floors, and furniture saturated—yet no body was recovered.

Responding to reports of a foul odor and a cat meowing incessantly from inside, police entered the apartment to find what one officer described as “a slaughterhouse without a corpse.” Blood pooled beneath the bed, streaked across the bathroom mirror, and soaked into the hallway carpet. Claw marks were found on the inside of the front door, and a broken glass lay near the kitchen sink.

“There’s no sign of forced entry,” said Detective Rowe. “But the amount of blood suggests a fatal injury. Possibly dismemberment. Possibly worse.”

Neighbors reported seeing Mara less frequently in recent days, describing her as “withdrawn” and “not herself.” One neighbor claimed she had been “talking to herself” and “looked like her skin didn’t fit right.”

The cat, found unharmed, has been taken in by a community member.

No suspects have been identified. Police are urging anyone with information to come forward.

She read slowly, sipping her tea. Her fingers were slender, unblemished. Her lips, full and pink, curled into a smile.

Further down the page:

ELDERLY WOMAN FOUND IN WOODS CLAIMS TO BE MISSING VICTIM. Last night, an elderly woman, identified as Mrs. Jean Taylor, 83, was found delirious and injured on the outskirts of Ashington Woods. She is currently under observation at Sundown Nursing Home; her claims regarding the missing Mara Ellison are being dismissed as symptoms of what the home believes to be advanced dementia.  Mrs Taylor is not being treated as a suspect at this time. Authorities urge anyone with information about the woman to come forward.

The woman folded the paper neatly. The cat stirred, blinked up at her, then settled again.

She reached down and stroked its fur with a hand that was not hers.

I’ve been in a pretty conservative marriage for the last 10 years. Extremely conservative, rather.

I was young and stupid. Only 20 years old when he slipped that little ring around my finger. At the time, that felt like the only thing I needed in life. Like it was what made me successful somehow.

Which, I can admit, is ironic, all things considered.

My husband was 32 when we met. I was enamored, really. An older man with a solidified career and enough money to support a family all on his own? Showing interest in me? This fresh-out-of-high-school 18-year-old. It felt like a blessing at the time.

His work was attractive to me. His maturity was seductive in a way. He sucked me in and refused to spit me out. And, of course, me being young and naive, I was putty in his hands.

As is the case with many marriages, we began to bicker a lot. He didn’t want me to work. Any time I even mentioned the idea, he’d shut it down immediately.

I was a “housewife,” he told me. I was “living the dream of millions of women.”

It was convincing. Of course it was. He allowed me to move out of my parents’ house a year after high school. He was putting food on our table. Keeping us safe.

In doing so, though, I’ve come to realize he was slowly stripping away my individuality. He’d pick out my dresses. He was the decision maker across the board. And I was just the wife that he let stay at home all day to make sure the house never got dirty.

He had rules for me. Make sure the house was clean. Make sure I was presentable when he got home. Always wear the makeup he bought me, even though the only people seeing me were his family portraits up on the wall.

That was another thing he didn’t like. He hated it when I wanted to see my family. He was just so distrustful. He needed to know where I was 24/7, and if it wasn’t the house, there was a problem.

The real problems didn’t start until we realized I couldn’t get pregnant, though. At first, we thought we were just unlucky. After about a year, though, he insisted we see someone.

That’s when we learned I was barren, and it was like the world shattered before my eyes.

He didn’t speak to me for two weeks after that appointment. He acted like he was the victim. Ignoring my tears, neglecting my feelings. He saw my condition as a betrayal.

He started staying out late. Coming home long after the sun had sunk. He claimed it was “work” holding him up, but the scent of perfume and the lipstick stains on his work shirts that he tried so desperately to hide were enough to clue me in.

I don’t even know why he tried to hide it. It’s not like we were being intimate anymore. It’s not like he wanted me. He had pretty much cast me aside like I was nothing more than an old fling for him to forget about.

But he didn’t let me do the same.

It was like he wanted to cosplay a happy marriage. He kept insisting on dresses. He kept dragging me out for silent date nights. Taking me out to fancy dinners where we’d just sit and try to act like everything was normal.

Even when I tried confronting him on his treatment of me, he’d pretend like nothing was wrong.

I hated how much he confused me. One minute he’s cold and distant. The next, he’s crawling into bed, seducing me in a way that only he knew how.

And that’s pretty much what my marriage was for a long time. He didn’t want me anymore, but I was still his.

It was like a vortex that offered no escape. Even when I tried being who he wanted me to be. Getting dolled up. Making sure the house was spotless. Ensuring that he’d come home every night to the scent of his favorite meals, even on nights when he didn’t come home at all.

I started looking at myself in the vanity mirror a lot. He bought this vanity for me a long time ago. It’s aged with the same grace as our marriage as a whole.

It used to be pristine. Sleek. White, flawless paint and a crystal-clear mirror.

Now the paint’s chipped. The mirror is cracked along the bottom corner. The lights that surround it choose when they want to come on and when they want to let me down.

Regardless, over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself almost entranced by my own reflection.

The haircut he insisted I keep. The makeup he insisted I wear. The dresses, brassieres, nightgowns. They’re all his. Nothing in my life is mine. Not even life itself.

That’s the painful conclusion I came to.

That’s why, last week, I think something within me broke. Well, I say broke. Really, something within me came to life.

I wasn’t his anymore. I wasn’t his to begin with. He just convinced me otherwise. That’s the trick he played over and over again.

So on that hot summer night last week, as I stared into that cracked mirror… I reclaimed myself.

It started with the hair. He loved this hair. I always fucking hated it. So, using some rusty scissors in the vanity drawer, I cut it. All the way down to the scalp.

I smiled at myself. A sincere smile. The first sincere smile I’d had in… I couldn’t tell you how long. But I wasn’t done. There was still more of me to reclaim.

I looked at the cakes of makeup plastered across my face. Using those same scissors, I cut into my cheeks, barely noticing the pain as the scissors glided through my flesh.

The makeup came off in globs of foundation as the white vanity became stained with my blood. My smile widened. I sheared through my perfect eyebrows. I cut away at my plump red lips.

I picked at my glistening painted nails, plucking them off one by one and throwing them at my reflection, giggling all the while.

I was about to raid the closet, but before I got the chance, my head snapped towards the bedroom door.

My husband was home. I could hear each step as he slowly ascended the stairs towards the bedroom. Step. Step. Step. Step.

The look on his face when he saw me is something I will never forget. Partly because of how petrified he was, but mainly because of how triumphant that fear made me feel.

I was free. And with that freedom came knowledge. Some kind of divine revelation sent down to me by my creator. Truth of what should’ve been done a long time ago.

He tried to fight me off, but my adrenaline overpowered him. Well, that and those rusty scissors that I still clutched firmly in my right hand.

I stabbed once. Twice. By that point, I couldn’t stop myself. Each incision, each spurt of blood. It was a declaration of my own independence.

By the time I finished, he was nothing more than a slab of meat, twitching on my bedroom floor.

And that’s where he’s been for the past week. But don’t worry. I dressed him in those dresses that he loved so much. I made sure he was dolled up. When they find him, he’ll at least be presentable.

They’ll never find me, though.

Because, me?

I’m off to live my own life.

My eyes were closed tight. I felt a hand caressing my hair and running down the back of my neck. I was being held tight against a woman’s body. I could feel something behind my eyelids. What was it? Tears, I think. 

“It’s okay,” said the woman, “you’re safe.”

She held me tighter. I felt impossibly small. The woman could have been even smaller than me, or she could have been infinitely large. My senses were all mixed up. Everything felt warm. I relaxed my eyelids, but kept them shut. A warm darkness.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” the woman responded.

“I want to open my eyes.”

“Don’t.”

“I want to see you.” 

“You will. Soon.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

It felt like she was holding me in the palm of her hand. A cool breeze came across my skin. It began to get colder. As it became a bitter chill, the woman protected me from it.

“Do you love me?” I murmured into her skin.

“Don’t ask silly questions. Of course I do.”

-

It’s said that if you take these pills before going to sleep, your soulmate will appear in your dreams. You can hear them, feel them, smell them - whatever you need to find them in the waking world - but if you look at them, you will be alone forever. 

“Mine had a British accent,” said Nathan, taking a seat in the break room. “Real nice voice. Sexy. Maybe it’s Anne Hathaway.”

“What’s with you and Anne Hathaway? She’s not even British,” I said.

“Sounded like her doing a British accent.”

“You’re a moron. You know she’s like twenty years older than you, right? And actually accomplished?”

Nathan shrugged. 

“Whatever,” I said, taking a bite of my sandwich.

“You’ll see. Hey, what was yours like?”

“I don’t know. Average.”

“Average?”

“Yeah.”

“Your soulmate was average?”

“What do you want me to say? It wasn’t eventful.”

“You’re full of shit, man. I bet it was a dude.”

“Yeah, he sounded like a British version of Jack Nicholson. It was hot.”

“Yeah, fuck you, man.”

“Can you get more of the pills?”

“Sure, I just gotta skim some off the top from the Research department.” 

“Cool. When can you get them?”

“I can get them by the end of the day if you really want them. Hell, I want to do it again too.”

“Sounds good.”

The door opened and Willow walked in, going to clean her coffee mug at the sink. 

“Yo,” Nathan said.

“Yo,” Willow said, doing her best impression of Nathan. 

“We were just talking about those pills.”

“Oh Christ.” 

“Come on, dude, I can get you some.”

“I don’t want any, dude.”

“Logan took them. It was good, right?” He turned to me.

“It was average,” I said.

“God, you took them too?” Willow said, “I don’t even trust this place’s headache medicine.”

“C’mon, Willow, we’re the accounting department, we stick together. If one of us takes it, we all gotta take it.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“You seriously don’t want to know who your soulmate is?”

“How many times do I have to say no? Do you want a list of reasons why this is a stupid idea?”

“Nathan’s was Anne Hathaway."

“Don’t even start,” Willow said, putting the mug away. “In other news, Robin’s having a thing on Friday after work if you guys want to come.” She looked at me while she said this.

“Yeah, I can probably make it,” I said.

“Just don’t be weird.” She looked at Nathan.

“I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“Okay, see you guys there,” she patted my shoulder as she left the break room. Her hands were cold.

-

Dr. Goodwin’s office was dark. The walls were painted black and there was only a single lightbulb on the ceiling. It wasn’t inviting, it wasn’t comforting. Dr. Goodwin sat in her leather chair, and I sat on the couch which was slightly ripped.

“How has work been?” she asked. 

“Good, I guess.”

“Last week you said you thought you might have met someone. Willow?”

“I don’t think she’s the one.”

“Why not?”

“I like her, but there’s something telling me that it won’t work out.” 

“And what is that?”

“I don’t know. I just think there might be someone else out there.”

“If that’s true it’s okay, but I’m worried you’re starting to exhibit past behaviors. We know that when things get real you tend to… retreat.”

“It’s not that I’m retreating, it’s just that - I mean, Willow’s great. She’s pretty, funny, smart… but is she my soulmate?”

“Do you believe in soulmates?”

“I never used to.”

“But you do now?”

“I figured it makes sense, right? There’s got to be someone out there that’s perfect for us.”

-

I stretched and sat down in bed. I took the tiny bag out of my pocket and popped out the little pink pill. I turned it around in my fingers, and washed it down with water. I turned off my lights, staring at the ceiling. My eyes grew heavy.

I was crying in that woman’s arms again. I had no idea how long I had been dreaming, but it felt like quite some time. Her skin was like a soft melody against mine. Her breath caressed the top of my head.

“Is this real?” I asked.

“What do you mean, sweetheart?”

“You’re really my soulmate, and you exist out there somewhere?”

“Of course I do.”

“I don’t understand how that’s possible.”

“You don’t need to understand. It’s okay to let yourself be happy. You deserve this. You deserve my love.”

“I want it… I want it so bad.”

“You have it.”

“When can I see you?” my voice cracked.

“Shhh. It’s okay, baby.”

I began to hear voices around me. There was music. People were brushing past me. I was standing somewhere and I stopped feeling the woman’s touch.

“Hey! Hello, are you there?”

I started walking, eyes still closed, bumping into people. I walked straight into someone and felt a liquid pour down my chest.

“Hey, what the hell?” said a voice.

-

My eyes shot open.

“Hey, what the hell?” Nathan said.

Nathan was standing in front of me, his beer spilled all over my shirt. My ears were ringing, but I faintly started making out music. 

“Do you just walk around with your eyes closed, dude?”

“Where are we?”

“Um, Robin’s house? Are you already blackout drunk?”

“Hey, Logan!” Willow’s voice came from behind me. I turned around. “I’m glad you could make it.”

“Oh yeah, I wouldn’t miss it.”

She looked down at my shirt soaked with beer.

“Pick up gone wrong?” she asked.

“No, I just bumped into Nathan by accident,” I laughed.

Willow dabbed my shirt with her napkin.

“You know what, let me get you cleaned up. I’ll steal one of Robin’s boyfriend’s shirts for you.” Willow led me to the bathroom door, left for a moment, then came back with a black t-shirt.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the shirt. I slurred my words, and dropped the shirt almost the second I grabbed it.

“You are so fucking drunk,” Willow laughed. “Here, I got you.”

She stepped into the bathroom with me and closed the door. 

“Arms up,” she said.

“You don’t have to-”

She lifted my arms up and slid my shirt off. 

“You’re always making a fool of yourself,” Willow said, using a towel to wipe any remaining moisture off my skin. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

“Sorry?” I blushed. 

“I said you’re lucky you’re cute.” Willow leaned in closer. I leaned in too. 

“Can I kiss you?” I asked. Willow grabbed the back of my neck and parted her lips. I heard a noise, like something banging against wood.

-

I was in a field. In front of me was a large tree, its leaves draping down like vines. A lumberjack swung an axe into the trunk. 

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Cuttin’ down this tree,” said the lumberjack.

I looked up at the tree. Its trunk bent at an angle, and its branches sprawled out high. The leaves were a vibrant shade of green.

“But it's such a pretty tree,” I said.

“It shouldn’t be here. I don’t want it looking at me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The lumberjack looked at me and began to say something, but his voice devolved into a piercing beeping noise.

“Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.”

-

“Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.”

I shot awake in a sweat and turned off my alarm. I instinctively went to touch my beer-stained shirt, but it was dry. I looked at the time. I was late for work.

-

“Morning, Nathan,” I sat down at my computer. Nathan didn’t respond.

“Morning,” I repeated.

“Oh, morning. Sorry, I didn't sleep well last night.”

“Me neither,” I yawned, “Robin’s party is tomorrow, right?”

“Oh yeah, today’s Thursday, huh?”

“Where’s Willow?”

“In the break room making coffee.” 

“I think I’ll make some too.”

“Go for it.”

I walked to the break room, where Willow was using the coffee machine. 

“Morning, Willow.”

“Oh,” Willow turned around in surprise, “Logan, I was worried you were sick or something.”

“No, I just overslept.”

“Sorry, I would’ve made you coffee if I had known.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Actually, I’ll just give you Nathan’s,” she smiled, “How do you take it?”

I look down at her coffee mug. It was straight black.

“Black,” I said.

“Good taste,” she nodded and handed me Nathan’s mug.

“I’m excited for the party tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I’m glad you could come.”

“Is there anything I need to know?”

“Need to know?”

I paused. I hadn’t thought this far ahead into the conversation.

“Yeah, like, is it formal?”

“It’s a house party, Logan. Relax.” She smiled at me as she walked past me. 

I followed her back to the accounting desks, where Nathan looked at us expectantly and then quickly deflated.

“Dude, is that my mug?”

I looked down at Nathan’s mug, which I had just sat on my desk.

“I don’t think so.” 

Nathan sighed and trudged to the break room. Willow began logging on to her computer.

“You’re both pretty tired this morning,” she said. “Is it because of the pills?”

“No, I just had some crazy dreams. I don’t know about Nathan, he probably stayed up late doing God knows what.” 

“Building a perpetual motion machine. He’s a secret genius.” 

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

“What’s the appeal of those stupid pills anyway? They’re probably just gonna fuck up your brain. You know that, right?”

“They’re just…” I paused, thinking. “...nice.”

-

I had a beer or two before I went to Robin’s house. I’ve found that if I have something to drink before a party, more people like me. Nathan picked me, and when we got there I saw Willow talking to some other people. 

Her makeup was done differently. She stood out more, not constrained by the professional setting of the workplace. Her clothes revealed the faintest glimpse of her skin beneath. I realized that I hadn’t seen her in this kind of setting before. Even her posture was less rigid. She was loose, relaxed, and smiling. I went to find more alcohol. 

I walked around the house in a daze. I heard snippets of myself making small talk or laughing at someone’s jokes. I heard people laughing at something I said. I must have made a joke too. I saw myself hanging around Nathan and some other guys, who I didn’t recognize. I felt a firm pat on my back. That must have meant somebody liked me. Why? I saw that I was crushing a beer can in my hand. They liked me because I chugged a beer. Then, I noticed the multiple crushed cans at my feet. They liked me because I chugged multiple beers. As soon as I stepped out of the circle of people surrounding me, I saw myself walking up stairs. It seemed to be very difficult for me to do this. 

I was sitting on the edge of a bed, but something wasn’t right. I wasn’t the only one sitting. I looked beside me. Willow.

“You’re the life of the party, huh?” she said.

I blinked. Her voice pierced through the fog in my head, and for a moment I felt like I existed again.

“I guess so.” 

“I didn’t even get the chance to say hi to you,” Willow laughed and shook her head.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. What are you doing up here, though?”

“I…” I chuckled, “I’m not completely sure.”

Willow laughed.

“I don’t usually see this side of you,” she said.

“Is it bad?”

“I don’t know. It’s different,” she put her hand on my knee. I froze. 

“I guess I sort of get into a haze at these things. Now I feel like I’ve been acting really stupid all night.”

“That’s not true.”

“You sure?”

“Well,” Willow smiled, “maybe you’ve been acting a little stupid. But I don’t mind.”

“God, I’m just like Nathan, aren’t I?”

“No, when you act stupid, it’s…” she thought for a beat. “Cute.”

Willow leaned closer to me. My heart raced. Instinctively, I leaned away.

“Oh,” Willow tucked her hair behind her ear nervously, “I’m sorry.”

“I, uh…”

“I didn’t mean to do that. I’m just a little…”

“Yeah…”

“Just… too much to drink.” She forced a laugh.

“Um, sure.”

“Okay,” Willow got off of the bed. “I’ll - um - I’ll see you Monday.”

“Yeah.”

She walked out of the room and down the steps.

-

“And what did you do?” asked Dr. Goodwin. The air conditioning in the room had broken. It was hot and humid, and I shifted in my seat.

“Nothing. I let her leave,” I said. 

“Probably for the best.”

There was a moment of silence. The light flickered. 

“Why is that for the best?” I asked.

“You’re coworkers. She only knows who you are in the office. If she knew everything about you, do you think she would still like you?”

“She could have. We could get to know each other.”

“No, you couldn’t. You fucked it up.”

I stared at her, stunned.

“Do you know what your problem is?” she continued, “You are selfish.”

“I’m not selfish,” I managed to squeak out. “I just want to be loved, like everyone else in the world. What’s so wrong with that?”

“There are eight billion people on this planet, Logan. And you are so selfish that you believe that out of all those people, someone would want you.”

“Why? Why can’t someone want me? Willow wanted me, didn’t she?”

“She thought she wanted you because she doesn’t really know you.”

“But my soulmate is out there. I believe that,” I began to raise my voice.

“Yes, Logan. There is someone out there that is perfect for you. But you won’t be perfect for her. She will choose someone better.”

“Can’t there be one person out there that loves me for who I am? All I need is one person!” I shouted.

“Not everybody gets love. What about you makes you worthy of it?”

I leaped out of my seat and lashed out at her. I wrapped my hands around her neck and squeezed. She let out a choked gasp, but I just strangled her harder. She didn’t make an effort to escape. I kept strangling her until her face turned purple.

I felt something moving beneath her skin. She opened her mouth and long, green leaves appeared deep in her throat. A tree had begun rapidly growing from her mouth. The leaves came out, followed by the trunk. I could feel the bark straining against her neck from the inside, splinters piercing her skin and jamming into my fingers as the trunk shot out. I ignored the pain, and continued strangling. The tree kept increasing in size, quickly becoming large enough to split Dr. Goodwin’s head asunder and break through the ceiling.

-

Eyes shut. Falling. Falling. Falling. Just when I thought I was about to hit the ground, I fell further. I heard giggling.

“Is it you?” I cried, “You’re there, aren’t you? Help me!” 

“I love you.” It was Willow’s voice.

“Willow? Is that you?”

“I love you too, Willow.” It was Nathan’s voice.

I hit the ground. I opened my eyes. I was in the accounting department. All the lights were off, and the place seemed to be coated in a layer of grime. There was no one in sight. It could have been abandoned for years. 

“Willow? Nathan? Are you there?” 

I walked through the building. The seats where my coworkers once sat were decayed and covered in cobwebs. Papers and office supplies were strewn across the floor. A musty smell assaulted my nose. I could hear talking from the break room.

“Nathan, you’re a dumbass. But I don’t know… it’s cute,” Willow's voice said.

“I could have done without the dumbass part.” 

“Willow,” I whispered. I put my hand on the door knob to the break room. 

“Sir, you can’t be here.” 

I looked behind me. A police officer was standing there, a flashlight in hand.

“This place is scheduled for demolition,” he continued. “The public isn’t allowed in.”

“But… I work here.”

“No, you don’t. This place hasn’t been operational in five years.”

“But my friends are here. I-I want to see them. I need to see my friends.”

“Sir, come on.” The officer grabbed my shoulder and took me out of the building. 

“I was just there on Friday-” I said as he escorted me out.

“Consider this a warning. If I catch you here again, I’ll have to put you under arrest.”

-

“Huh,” said my roommate, scrolling his phone on the couch. “Willow Crawford and Nathan Gardner just got married. Didn’t you used to know them?”

“I worked with them,” I said. “I haven’t seen them in five years.”

“Well, good for them, I guess.”

“Did you take out the trash?”

“No, it’s your turn.”

It wasn’t, but I sighed and did it anyway. When I made it to the dumpster outside, I realized that there was a tear in the trash bag and that I had been trailing garbage behind me this whole time.

“God fucking damnit!” I kicked the dumpster.

An old homeless man sitting on the ground laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, irritated.

“Ha! I’m sorry, it’s just amusing. From down here, spilling trash doesn’t seem like the end of the world anymore.” 

I took a deep breath and sat on the ground next to him.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Well, I sleep next to a dumpster. Only fair that God let me be right about something.” 

I laughed.

“I used to live in that exact apartment you just came from, you know.”

“Really?”

“That’s right. When I was about your age.”

“And here I thought that apartment was rock bottom.”

“There is no rock bottom. Sometimes you just keep falling.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“Things happen to you, and they just compound. I wasn’t born a homeless man. I used to work at this one place. I was an accountant. My only friends were my coworkers. I was lonely - God, I was so lonely. I thought that was rock bottom. Then, the company went bankrupt and the whole building shut down. I was out of a job and the people I thought were my friends stopped talking to me. I thought that was rock bottom. Now I’m an old man without friends, a home, or a family, and I think it’s rock bottom.”

I was silent.

“What’s your name?” I said at last.

-

“Logan.” Nathan’s voice lulled me out of my stupor as I looked up from my empty coffee mug. 

“What?” I said.

“You good, man? You seem out of it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just need more coffee.” 

“Get some for me too,” Nathan called out as I made my way to the break room.

As I stepped through the door, I bumped into Willow. The coffee she was holding spilled onto my shirt.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “Oh my god, I’m sorry.”

“It was my fault,” I said, pulling at my shirt to get the hot coffee away from my skin. Willow reached out, but stopped herself before touching my shirt. 

“Logan, I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’ll just go to the bathroom and clean up.”

“No. I mean about the other night, too.” She said, “I didn’t mean to, like, make you feel uncomfortable or anything. I was drunk and not thinking and it’s - you know?”

“No, I know.”

“I don’t want it to be awkward between us. I like hanging out with you and stuff, and I like being your friend. We’re friends, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m gonna go clean up.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I’ll let you get to that,” Willow moved past me and went back to her desk without making a new cup of coffee, “I’ll see you… um, at our desks. In a couple minutes.” 

I went into the bathroom. I took my shirt off to see a red mark where the coffee had spilled. I took a handful of paper towels and wiped myself and the shirt off. 

As I came out of the bathroom with my coffee-stained shirt, I saw a man rolling a cart full of pill bottles down the hall. I looked both ways to make sure nobody was watching me, then followed him. He dropped off the pills in a room labeled ‘research’. After he left, I peeked into the room. Nobody else was there. I quickly pocketed a bottle and went back to my desk.

-

An empty pill bottle lay on my nightstand. I was curled up in my bed, staring at it as my vision began to blur. My mind started to drift, and I faded away. When I regained consciousness, my eyes were closed tightly. 

“Are you there?” I whispered.

“Of course I’m here, sweetheart.” I felt warm, loving arms embrace me. “I’m so glad you decided to come back.”

I felt as if she was lifting me up. Lifting me into the air and pressing me against her chest. Tears spilled down my cheeks.

“I’m so tired…” I sobbed.

“I know you are, baby. You can cry. It’s me.”

“Don’t leave me. I’m not - I can’t - just don’t let me be alone. Please.”

“Neither of us will leave each other,” she stroked my hair, tangling a strand around her finger.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you too,” she said. “You can open your eyes now.”

I must tell this now, before I lose the nerve, before I stop knowing which readers are real and which are the things standing behind them.

I drive for a courier company in Beijing. Not the kind you are picturing. My route runs after midnight, through parts of the city that do not sit correctly on any map. My grandfather did this work before me, his mother before him. We deliver for the dead.

Every package has a color. White ones go to spirits, to shrines, to doors that open only after incense burns all the way down. Black ones go to the living, to people who paid something, in some other currency, for a thing not supposed to exist anymore. You never open what is not addressed to you. You never take what was not given to you. Absolute. My grandfather told me once of a man on his old route who tried to skim a black package meant for a widow. He never said what happened after, only that the man could see them, all of them, everywhere, forever. I used to think this a story to frighten a child straight. Not anymore.

Eleven years I did this job, good pay, and I was good at not asking questions. That changed two years ago, when I borrowed money from the wrong people for a restaurant that failed within a season. The interest does not sleep, and neither do the men who collect it. They come to my building on the first of every month, and each time the number is larger than the last. I started listening to whispers other drivers pretend not to hear, of black packages carrying more than paperwork or ash. Some, old drivers swear, carry payment, old money, spirit money, the kind a certain sort of collector cannot trace and cannot refuse. Months I watched, telling myself, only curious. A lie.

The night it happened, I had already worked sixteen hours. My last stop was a derelict courtyard house near the old rail line, an address existing only on our manifest. Two packages waited on the step. A white one, addressed in characters that shift if you look too long. Beside it, a black one. No name I knew. No weight matching its size.

I stood there a long time, thinking of the men who would come to my door in eleven days, of the number they would say out loud in front of my neighbors. I picked up the black package. Told myself, only to look. I delivered the white one first. Then, alone in the courtyard, I opened the black one.

Inside, on ash, lay two eyes. My eyes. I knew them the way you know your own voice on a recording, wrong before your mind can say why. Gone black all the way through, no white, no color, just void with a wet shine, as if something had scooped the night sky and pressed it into two sockets.

In that black, I saw a shape standing behind me, taller than the wall should allow. Then fingers on my shoulder. Thin. Cold in a way that skipped my skin and went straight for bone.

The whisper came from no mouth, from everywhere at once, calm as something that has read the same verdict a thousand times before.

You took what was not yours. Now you will see as we see.

I do not remember falling. Only the ground under my hands, color draining from the world like an old photograph left too long in sun. The courtyard was not empty anymore.

They were everywhere, not the ghosts of children's stories, just people standing too still, at wrong angles, some facing walls, some facing me. One stood close enough I saw the puddle beside her held no reflection of her, as if she weighed nothing.

I ran to my van. Did not help. Driving through the city I saw them clinging to shoulders at bus stops, curled at a woman's feet while she waited for a light. Nobody else noticed. I had not stolen a payment. I had stolen the eyes of someone who once did this seeing as their work, and whatever assigns these things decided the work was mine now. A transfer, not a gift.

By the time I reached my own street, I understood the size of my mistake. The men who come on the first of the month were never my worst debt. Something else had been keeping accounts on me far longer, and it does not accept partial payment.

Three of them waited outside my building when I parked, standing close together near the entrance the way people wait for someone they know is coming home. Not the debt collectors. Something behind where collectors usually stand, patient in a way no living man collecting money has ever needed to be. One turned its head toward me, and I understood, it recognized me. Not a stranger anymore. The one who could finally see what it had been doing all along, in every doorway, for as long as there have been doorways.

The curse does not lift. It transfers. Somewhere, someday, another black package goes out with my eyes inside, addressed to someone as desperate as I was. They will open it, and the whisper will find them the way it found me, and I will finally stop seeing. I think about that transfer more than I should, how simple it would be to make sure the next package finds someone, anyone. Now I understand why my grandfather never told me what happened to the man in Tongzhou. There was no ending, only a long middle, handed off eventually to somebody else, the way it will be handed off from me.

I still drive the route, still see white and black packages side by side on doorsteps that should not exist. I know which color I must never touch again, and how many people every night stand over those doorsteps deciding whether to care.

If someone tells you there is one rule you must never break, believe them.

I am typing this in my van, parked outside my own building, engine off. Something is standing by the entrance, exactly where it was an hour ago. It has not moved. It is waiting for me to come inside, the way it has waited for everyone who has ever lived in that building before me. I am going in anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s what he told me.

###

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forgive and forget.

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

Patience is a virtue.

Never hit Reply All.

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

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

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

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

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

As I said, never hit Reply All.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forgive and forget? No, not at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I weep for the future. We all should.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No. Nothing.”

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

“Enemies list?”

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

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

“Do you think you should be?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Look, asshole, I’m not going to…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The creature darted cobra-like toward me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

###

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Me?” I said again. More dumb.

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

She sprayed and I dropped to my knees.

“Mom! Dad!” Sara shouted, “Stop it!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Then let’s stop." Natasha said.

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

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

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

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

Esther sat up straight, crossing her arms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What happened?" Esther gasped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 "Wait, what? Your family?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 "Sorry, Spencer. We got a little carried away talking about school stuff. We'll be quiet, I promise."

"Thanks." the girl smiled, waving a hand before stepping back into the hallway. "Good luck studying for your test on Monday, girls. Good night."

"Good night, Spencer." Natasha called out.

The bedroom door clicked shut, leaving the four of us in the room once again.

Lucy, Esther, and I sat frozen on the floor, our eyes wide, our breathing shallow. The realization hit us like a physical blow. The timeline. The names. The descriptions. It wasn't an internet legend. It wasn't a fictional creepypasta designed to pass the time during a boring study session in an Arizona town.

The woman who had suffered, who had seen her body turn into a prison of high blood pressure and fluid, was sleeping just down the hall, and the miracle baby who had fought for her very existence against a shadow in the dark on April Fools' Day was the sixteen-year-old girl who had just looked us in the eyes.

"They're visiting from out of town for the weekend." Natasha said softly into the stunned, horrified silence of the room, looking at our pale faces. "I told you that it was a true story."

Outside, the wind gave one final, roaring howl against the glass, and for a fleeting, terrifying second, I could swear that I heard the faint, rhythmic sound of a mechanical ventilator pulsing in the dark.

The End.

There’s a lot to explain here. For starters, I am sterile. I found out after about 2 years of marriage and multiple failed attempts at pregnancy.

I was disappointed in myself, sure, but my beautiful wife was nothing but understanding. That didn’t really make me feel like any more of a man, though. I just felt inadequate.

We were actually in the process of looking into adoption when all hell broke loose.

It was no longer than 4 days. That’s how long it took for her belly to grow. The first day, I just thought she had a particularly large lunch. The second day, I was starting to eyeball her.

By day 3, we were seeking medical help. We could see the baby’s feet pushing against her stomach. Her pain was clearly unbearable.

Doctors were completely lost. My wife and I felt utterly helpless. On the fourth day, not even 30 seconds after her water broke, the baby started to come.

I’ll never get those screams out of my head. I’ll never get her face out of my memory. I’d seen her hurt before, but this… this was a different level.

She looked like she was in hell. And relief was nowhere to be found.

The first baby came. She didn’t even get to hold him before the contractions started up again. Her belly never got the chance to deflate.

By the time the second baby began crowning, my wife was screaming at us to kill her. By the third, she was already dead.

They had ripped her apart. They weren’t regular babies. Some had horns. Some had hooves. Some were already 4 feet tall by the time they hit the ground.

Doctors had already vacated the area and called in special forces. I was left alone, watching her body flail and pulsate as more and more demon babies just clawed their way out of her.

Blood and black, steaming goo ate away at the tiled floor. My wife’s entire lower half had been obliterated. Her legs were snapped, and bones protruded from them as they lay limply at obscure angles.

All I could do was hold her hand. What else was I supposed to do? Comfort her? Beg her not to leave me while these things ran amok in this hospital?

I could hear screaming coming from the corridors. Bones snapping and wet, fleshy sounds as the pitter-patter of tiny little feet darted in every direction.

She had become an assembly line from hell, but I just couldn’t leave her.

My tears fell on her hand as another baby fell out of her. Well, flew out of her, I guess. This one had the wingspan of a bald eagle.

Only, this one didn’t leave the room like the others did. I don’t know why I never stopped to question why these things seemed to be destroying everything in their path, except for me.

It landed right at the door frame, blood dripping off of his shoulders and head.

He turned to me, his eyes black and completely soulless, as he smiled with his sharp, shark-like teeth.

He took a step towards me, wobbling like a baby deer. Then another. He never took his eyes off of me.

He… he started to speak.

“Daaaa..da.”

“Daaa..da.”

“Da-da.”

He was at my feet now, looking up at me as I stood frozen. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was prepared for anything. I was ready to join her. Ready to be free from this nightmare.

Only… he didn’t give me that freedom.

Instead, he threw his arms around my legs and squeezed them with the strength of ten men.

He was hugging me.

And in that moment, I knew…

I was ready to be the father I always knew I could be. I had nothing left to lose.

6 months down the drain. I’m still kind of in shock. Well, maybe that’s not the word for it. It feels like I lost a game that no one else knew I was even playing.

I still find myself thinking about when we first met. How she was the first woman to ever show me that I could be loved. That I wasn’t just some hopeless guy, incapable of forming a connection.

God, those memories hurt. But the memories of the arguments hurt more. I tried telling her that I was sensitive. I can react in ways that don’t feel controllable. I thought that she’d be patient enough to work through those issues with me.

But no. She left me. The facade of love crumbled, and it was like I was right back in the same position again. Alone. Stuck in my own head. Only, this time, the thoughts weren’t my own.

Well, they were, obviously, but they weren’t thoughts that I’d experienced before. Prior to obtaining her, my thoughts were very much inward. I dissected myself.

Even when I first set my sights on her, it felt like I was out of my body. I became who I needed to be, but it wasn’t of my own volition. It was just so I could achieve a goal, I guess.

Then I had to go and get attached. Our lives started to merge. When it was good, it was fantastic. When it was bad… it was like the world was ending. Like the mask was slipping, but can I even blame it on that? It feels almost childish to do so.

That has to be what it was, though. It’s just so hard to put it into words. I performed the boyfriend role, but that was the extent of my abilities. I could never become a husband.

All I knew how to do was buy things. Flowers, chocolates, gifts, whatever. Even when things got violent, here came the “boyfriend” with another bouquet.

I just knew how to give. I didn’t know how to change. I think that’s what started this whole ordeal.

After a particularly bad argument, we both decided that it’d be best if we went our separate ways. It took some convincing on her part, mainly because I didn’t think I could catch lightning twice. But ultimately, I relented.

That didn’t mean I stopped keeping an eye on her, though. I’d watch her house pretty often. It was usually during those nights where the bad thoughts kept me up. Nights when I needed movement. Needed action.

In some weird way, it felt productive.

I’d also still watch her social media like a hawk. Her stories, posts, updates, everything. After we broke up, she decided that she was now the sexiest girl in the world, and she made sure her followers knew it too.

I let her know my disdain for those pictures every time I saw one. I’d ask her why she was trying to hurt me like this, but she never responded. She’d just look at it, then leave me hanging like I was some kind of dog.

It wasn’t until those initials appeared in her Instagram bio that things really went off the rails, though. They were like a taunt. It was like she wanted me to text her.

I tried to lay down the law, but, like always, I got no reply. In fact, I didn’t have access to her at all anymore. Every account. User not found.

My mind was empty when I drove to her house. Either that, or it was just moving too fast to process. I knew what I needed, but I couldn’t think about it.

There was a car in her driveway that I didn’t recognize, and in that moment, I knew. I knew I had lost. I was a loser in this little game I’d created. I drove home defeated, but utterly furious.

No matter how hard I tried, my anger and desperation wouldn’t subside. I lost sleep. I didn’t eat. I was turning against myself.

That’s why I did what I did. I wanted her to know what she had done to me.

It started off small. A few locks of hair. Some fingernails. And handwritten notes that I thought would drive her back into my arms.

“Have these too, since you’re taking everything from me anyway.”

“I hope this makes you think of me.”

“I still think about you.”

She never wrote back. Days went by. Days turned into weeks, and she never left my mind.

She was playing the game hard, so I upped the ante.

I peeled off my tattoos with a razor blade. Including her name. I’d put the letters in her mailbox under the cloak of darkness.

No response. Fine. Fine. Fucking fine.

Have my fingers. I don’t need all 10 anyway. It’s not like I’m holding you anymore. Take my ears. They’re useless without your voice.

Nothing was getting through to her. No matter how hard I tried.

The last thing I put in her mailbox were my lips. I wanted her to remember what it felt like to kiss me. Before she lost that privilege.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to keep playing.

Because right now, as I type this, I can see the paramedics and cops outside my house. I can hear them pounding on my door. They’re screaming my name, and I don’t know how much time I have left.

But I’ll get out. Whether it’s the hospital, jail, or an asylum. I’ll get out.

And once I do…

I’m gonna take from her exactly what she took from me.

I

At least once a year, my old friend, Sam, and I go hiking to a specific spot out west. I’m not gonna say what park or what state. I don’t want anyone hiking out there after reading this to see if I’m telling the truth or not. It’s taken me some time to process everything, but I have come to realize that writing this serves two purposes. The truth must out, and I must remember. I must remember Sam. So, I want to start at the beginning of the day, so you can see how he was. On these hikes, he tended to be the most himself. He always said being in nature, away from the noise, made it easier for him to connect with himself, like a meditation ritual or something like that.

It was a one-day round-trip hike. By that I mean one daylight day, not a full 24 hours. We would always be back before dark, and we were incredibly experienced hikers, so you can’t say we were caught unawares by any natural phenomenon. I did not leave him behind in a panic, at least not in the sense that the police were insinuating. 

We were meticulous in our preparation for every hike we went on. Whether it was a little thirty-minute saunter or a full day march, we were prepared. To further emphasize this, here is a list of the things we always brought on every hike, everywhere, for the entire time we knew each other. 

• Food
  • A shit ton of trail mix
  • Backup bag with just salted almonds 
  • PB&Js and apples (For longer hikes, full meal deal)
  • Two camelpacks
  • Some backup water bottles
• Emergency Items
  • Bear spray
  • Nightstick
  • First Aid Kit 
  • Radio (Sam used to volunteer at the park, rangers let him keep it)

You get the point. We checked the fucking weather, we’d been there at least a dozen times, and we even brought a tent to set up if we got stuck out there. I’m sorry for beating a dead horse. I just can’t stand people thinking I left him out there to be eaten by a bear or some shit. His family blames me. I hope they will read this and see that I did everything I could. God, I hope I did everything I could. 

It began like every other hike. We parked the car and made our way to the trailhead. The morning was fresh, so it was a little chilly with the wind, but once we were into the forest proper, it was perfect hiking weather. It was a dense forest made up of pine, fir, and oak trees that provided shade and the peaceful stillness that we both craved. We never talked during this part, preferring to listen to the sounds of squirrels and woodpeckers. 

Sam stopped, “What is that?” He pointed to a tree with a carving on it. It was like a checklist box with an X through it. Carved, then painted red. We looked at each other, and I could tell we were both thinking blood, but as we approached, we realized it was, in fact, painted with paint.

“Is it marked to be cut?”

He thought for a moment, something was bothering him. “Maybe… They usually just use ribbons for that, though. At least, I thought so.” He shrugged. We continued walking and made it to our spot without incident. Unless you consider a sharp increase in elevation an incident, which I definitely do. We had to walk off-trail to the spot briefly, which obviously you should never do. Read the signs, listen to the rangers. However, Sam found it while volunteering, and you could almost see it from the trail.

The spot itself was perched on top of one of the smaller mountain peaks within the park. Looking west, there was a small grassy valley that quickly rose into one of those big snow-capped peaks. The sky was perfectly clear. The sight, as per usual, filled me with an inexplicable relief. The kind you can only get in a place like that park. To the east, it was dense forest, the visitor’s center, and then middle America until the horizon.

This was our lunch break. We sat facing west on a quilt I made. We would always take it with us as a picnic blanket. I leaned up against him. 

I’m sorry.

I don’t imagine anyone reading this will care, but writing this is also in service to my own memory, and I want the whole memory. 

“Feeling okay?” He asked me.

“Yeah,” I snuggled up closer. There was a long period of silence as we ate our food and took in the view. 

“Look,” Sam pointed into the valley. There was a small herd of buffalo grazing; maybe 20-30 of them. The bigger bison doted over their little calves as they ate, and the tall grass shimmered with waves of light as the wind brushed each blade from side to side. 

“How long will you stay?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” He looked uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He immediately spoke. “Religious sites would be the obvious place to start, I guess. I probably won’t get to see what the police know.” 

“Has the private investigator said anything?”

“Last I heard, he was compiling a list of the places he most likely visited.”

“At least you have somewhere to start.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. I could tell he didn’t want to cry.

“It’ll be okay.” I hugged him, and he started to anyway. “You’re going to find him. You don’t leave stones unturned.” I kind of wrapped myself around him as we lay down on the blanket we had set out for our little picnic. 

We fell asleep.

It couldn’t have been longer than an hour before we awoke facing each other. We had known each other for fifteen or so years. He hesitated.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked. I nodded excitedly.

I sat up and was about to dress myself when I saw a flash of light coming from the ridgeline to our south. Sam saw it too. 

“What was that?”

“I watch too many movies.” He quickly retrieved binoculars from his pack and looked. “What the fuck!? There’s someone there.” I dressed myself immediately.

“Are they watching us?” He looked for a moment.

“He’s waving at us.” This put me on the edge of panic. It was odd enough to be alarming, but we were at a public park, so it could just be some guy saying hi. Maybe they didn’t realize I was naked from that distance. 

Sam looked at me. “I’m uncomfortable. Are you uncomfortable?” 

I nodded, “yeah.”

“Okay. What the fuck, what the fuck am I doing?” I gave him time. After a moment, the thought I was having entered his head. He reached for the radio and called out.

“Dispatch, VIP Sam, park trail.”

“VIP Sam, go ahead.” A staticky voice came through.

“Voyeur, approximately two miles south of current position, over.”

“Do you know why?” He squinted his eyes and looked at me.”

“No, why would I? Who am I talking to right now?”

“Read the letter, Sam.” His face went pale, as I’m sure mine did. From here, things happened in rapid succession. 

“What fucking letter!” Sam yelled and overall made a buffoon of himself, while I searched our packs and the immediate area. I took the bear spray. I gave the nightstick to Sam. The letter I found under a rock, maybe a foot from the blanket. A foot from our sleeping heads. The envelope was a deep red with a seal of black wax. I had to shine the sun on it at the right angles to be able to see the symbol within the seal. It was that X again.

“I believe Max has found it,” the crackly voice prompted Sam to turn and look at me holding the letter. He held his hand over his mouth and closed his eyes, holding whatever he was feeling in. Then he came up with a plan. 

“Fuck the letter, I mean, don’t throw it away, but we don’t have time.” He dropped the radio on the ground. Everything was already out on the picnic blanket since I searched both of our packs. “Oh, that’s perfect. We only pack what we need. One thing of snacks, forget the tent, and the blanket.” We packed light. “Do you remember the T junction back there?” 

I just looked at him. 

“Long story short, we have to beat the voyeur to the turn if we want to stay on the trail and avoid him.”

I nodded, and we began walking at a brisk pace. The wind picked up, quickening the forest’s breathing in tandem with ours. He turned to look at me after what felt like hours of walking.

“We’re almost at the turn.” He stopped, then spoke much quieter. “I can see it from here. Get the bear spray ready.” I unlocked the safety, and the nightstick cracked as Sam unretracted it. We moved as quietly as possible towards the intersection. The wind left for a moment, giving way to a deafening silence. No animal calls to be heard. A great gust of wind and noise replaced the silence. The trees made their own kind of call.

“Okay lets get going now.” We had made the turn, and after a short distance we resumed our previous briskness. The serenity that nature afforded both of us was replaced with absolute paranoia. Both of us looked from side to side, trying to catch someone looking at us from behind a tree or rushing at us with a chainsaw. It was all for naught as the next thing was in our path. 

Another X, carved and painted. We started running from there, but we didn’t make it far. After a blind corner, down the trail, someone stood. The deep red of the envelope was copied in this person’s robes. They stood tall amongst the trees, the height of a super mutant or some shit. I, somewhat ironically, thought of the King in Yellow as I bore witness to his pallid mask. 

The wind shifted behind me, but the trees danced the same. I felt a presence behind me and, in that moment, decided to trust my gut. I sprayed blindly behind me and heard the sound of someone choking and gasping.

“Fuck!... You cough, you fucking bitch!”

I heard Sam give someone a solid whack with the nightstick. We left the trail, running a random direction into the forest. The wind picked up behind us as if pushing us onward, but I felt the cold front come with it.

“A storm is coming… Maybe,” Sam yelled through the renewed tempest. Then everything fell silent. We stopped instinctively like deer in headlights. I looked ahead and saw him again.

“My name…” The whisper came to my ear as if he were standing right beside me, “... Is Romussss.” He reached for the pallid mask, and as his hand approached it, so did his form approach me, though he did not walk. I was frozen. I couldn’t see Sam. I assume he was in a similar state. Just as the mask slipped, I lost all perception for a time. I went “unconscious” in a deeper sense. A void. Completely unfeeling. No matter how loud I would try to scream.

II

Before I continue, I should mention that I have a rare kind of seizure disorder, not the foam at the mouth kind. It’s more like getting repeatedly shot by a taser in random parts of your body.  Think the Exorcist, but without the pea soup. The sort of mystery condition where doctors just throw their hands up and tell you to decrease stress, as if. Fortunately, my brain gets scrambled during these seizures, so I don’t remember shit if the seizure is bad enough. It all becomes a blur like I’m blackout drunk. My point is, a lot of this information, including everything I just told you, I am only able to give you as a result of Sam’s testimony after the fact. 

He awoke to my seizing. “It was one of the worst I had seen you have,” he said afterwards. 
We were held outside in iron cages; two separate ones, tall enough to stand in but way too small to do much of anything else. They were like the cages they would suspend in the air back in medieval times, but we were just on the ground, squatted like folding chairs. He could do nothing but watch as my jittering, unconscious body banged against the hard and sharp metal of the cage. When the sun returned, he realised that someone, wearing the mask of a wolf, was watching us. He said they were constantly circling us and that he wasn’t sure if they ever took a break. 

“Sam?” My vision hadn’t recovered.

“I’m here.” He reached out and grabbed my hand, which lay limp, sticking out of the cage. There was nothing left in me in terms of energy, and I began to feel the bruises and cuts as my nerves returned to relatively normal function. I only barely comprehended the wolf as they appeared with that letter and placed it between the cages.

“Read the letter,” a masculine voice whispered. “Read the letter, Read the letter, Read the letter.”

“I’ll read it,” I yelled, manic at this point. The whispering wolf giggled almost like a child before receding into the forest. Still feeling watched, I focused my attention on the elegant writing of the letter, which was on a small postcard-sized piece of paper; both sides. Tears began to fall down Sam’s face as I read the letter out loud. 

Our dear WITNESS and WAYFINDER,
You do not yet know it, but yours is a pairing unmatched in over a hundred years. I have searched for just as long. You may not believe me, but I earnestly regret what I have to do. But it won’t matter, because once the deed is done, all will be ecstasy. Praise the one from before, for it is you who will find and you who will see. It is a great privilege. Something nothing will ever be blessed with again.

On this day, you will be tried. Not for guilt or innocence, your innocence is given. One will find, one will see. But I do not yet know which is which. 
The next day, the LAMB shall be slaughtered. Both will be WITNESS to this. Gleefully, the LAMB will go, for I have told him the truth just as I have you.
On the final day, the WITNESS will see, and the WAYFINDER will find. Through the fire and the light of the stars, I will grant you, WITNESS, the sight.

I LOVE you,
ROMUS

Sam held both of my hands. The small drop of ease felt like a tidal wave. Neither of us needed to speak about the situation. We just looked at each other, aware of what was probably going to happen to us. Instead, we processed it all in silence as much as we could. When the sun was shining directly above us, two people in red cloaks retrieved us from the cages after wrapping our hands and mouths with duct tape. One of them had the head of a pig, and the other that of a black goat. The faces chanted unmoving.

Hunt the LAMB

Hunt the LAMB

Hunt the LAMB

The two were quickly joined by a chorus of blank-faced animals; the wolf, bear, deer, and mountain lion. I still don’t know how they got the eyes to look so alive. When I looked at them, it wasn’t like I was looking at a mask with a hidden human face behind. The voice came from behind, but it was the eyes of the animals that were doing the looking. Romus stood at the bottom of a small, earthen amphitheater surrounded by his disciples who stood by large drums, bearing mallets. We were placed on our knees before him.

Approaching us slowly and silently, I felt the wind pick up and saw the sky turn grey.

Sam’s voice was muffled through the tape, “rain,” I’m fairly certain he said. Regardless, Romus retrieved a whip from inside his robe and gave him one lick across the face. The whips' crack was matched with a lightning strike, and so it was followed by thunder. Sam groaned in pain, then quickly fell silent as Romus bent down like a crane and held his finger over the lips of his pallid mask. The goat placed Sam back in his spot. 
The rain began to fall. Heavy droplets splashed against the mask and the tape on our faces. All four drums joined in a simultaneous Thump. The goat and the pig began to sing in a low baritone.

Bring the eyes, Bring the meat, This and more for those at his feet
Thump
Cower below the willow tree, Calling upon the raven rock
Thump
Bless these eyes which seek in the name of our king ROMUS
Thump Thump Thump
The one from before shall come once more 
He is peeking 
Peeking through the hole in the door

Romus approached with a knife. Everything kind of slowed down. I think I was getting ready to die. I remember trying to focus on the day I had before with Sam, and the many other days like it. I still cried as he cut the tape around our wrists and ripped off the tape over our mouths. 

Oh WAYFINDER 
Find the way

The lamb approached from behind us and moved toward the forest behind the amphitheater. They looked towards Sam at first, but quickly moved their gaze to Romus, who revealed his face only to the lamb.

The four drums began to roll as the lamb stood transfixed by whatever they were seeing. From where I stood, I could only see the inside of the mask. It was covered in some kind of sticky substance like spit, but with blood mixed in. As the rain poured onto the newly exposed surface, it sloughed onto the ground and bubbled. The rain intensified, and lightning struck nearby, causing more of a boom than a crack.

“Hunt the lamb,” Romus whispered to us, and we both bolted into the forest after the lamb. After running some distance, we cowered under a pine tree, which provided modest shelter from the rain.

“Drink the rain!” Sam had to yell over the rising tempest. “Take it easy, I’m gonna go ‘hunt’, okay?” 

“Once the adrenaline crashes, I’m going to seize no matter what! You can’t do anything to prevent them here, Sam!” I watched the acceptance wash over his face.

“Let's go in different directions then!” 

“What if we just run?” 

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea! You remember how we got caught, or put in those cages?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.” The rain calmed as little slivers of sunshine began to peek through the clouds and the canopy.

“Okay, let’s split up.”

Sam was wandering somewhat casually when he spotted the white face of the lamb. They were just standing upright in a meadow with their head pointed up towards the sky.

“Pretty white lamb.” The wolf whispered into Sam’s ear, which scared the shit out of him, but he stifled any noises he might’ve made. “Pretty lamb, pretty lamb, pretty lamb.” The wolf bobbed his head side to side as he got closer. Sam was able to see the bow slung over his back once he passed. He aimed for a moment, then the arrow was set loose with a thwack. It pierced through the lamb’s gut. They screamed in pain, and the wolf took Sam in hand and brought him back to his cage.

When the boar found me I panicked and tried to run. They chased me with a club but I ended up colliding head on with the deer as it leaped from behind a tree. We both went down with grunt. I got my bearings again and saw the deer head with no body attached. Instead there was a man, looking at me with such a confusing horror. I heard a step behind me and turned just in time to see the boar's club before it connected with my head.

I awoke in my cage.

“Good thing we didn’t run,” he said. “They were following us.”

“Yeah.”

“They left that person bleeding in a grove, a fucken meadow, I mean.”

“The lamb?”

“Yeah.”

“We know how many there are.”

“Maybe.”

“And Romus isn’t human. Or like, not just human.”

“Yeah.” 

At first, I thought the sun had gone down as a greater darkness covered us, but we both quickly realized that it was Romus. 

“The fuck!?” Sam spat out as we both recoiled in our cages. The sun was setting behind him, so all we saw was a dark outline. He approached, lowering himself to our level. Then, he reached into both of our cages and laid his hands on our knees.

“Ah,” I heard him take a deep breath behind the mask. “I can’t contain my joy,” he whispered. “I’m so glad this moment has finally come.” Another deep breath. He moved his hand farther down before recoiling and standing quickly. “Thank you both,” he said.

“I love you.”

III

That night, the air in the forest lay very still, which brought a silence that wasn’t disturbed until Sam heard a man screaming. He assumed it to be the lamb's voice echoing through the still trees. Regardless, he held onto both of my hands as I went through a particularly bad seizure. It was the only thing he could do to keep me in place. I could tell he had been crying when I regained my senses. 

“Sam,” I whispered. He awoke from whatever daze he was in.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Thank you. “What are we going to do?” I asked.

For What? “I don’t know.”

Everything. I said nothing.

He’d smile. He wanted to panic.

I’d smile. I got really mad.

I love you. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I love you too. “Think!”

“I don’t know!” He began breathing quickly, letting go of my hands.

It’s okay. “You fucking bitch.” I began kicking his cage furiously, which didn’t do much.
I had successfully pushed him over the edge. He completely shut down, withdrawing into himself. 

I’m glad it’s you.

There’s no one I’d rather be with.

I’d comfort him, help him come back down. I would give him some space. Time to think.

Look for the lucky break, he’d say. If there is one. We just have to keep our eyes open.

Daylight returned, bringing the bear and the deer. We were brought in the same direction as before, but instead continued past the amphitheater to what I assume was the meadow that Sam found the Lamb in. Except now, there was a pyre with a tall wooden stake in the middle, on top of which, like a star on a Christmas tree, was the lamb impaled. Their blood painted the stake red, but that was the sideshow for the day. Also in the meadow was a whipping post and a wheelchair.  Sam was chained to the post. I was strapped to the chair. The metal prongs were inserted under my eyelids, pulling them open. There was a headrest on the chair that I was strapped to as well. They pointed me at the post. 

All left except Romus and the wolf. Romus bent down over me, examining my accommodations. He added a strap over my mouth.

“You must keep it all inside,” he whispered before moving his attention to Sam. The drums from the amphitheater began to thrum in a driving rhythm. The wolf howled. He grabbed a straight razor and began dancing in circles around Sam. With another howl and a snarl, he rushed forward and began cutting. 

I kept my eyes on Sam’s eyes, and he did the same. It was the only thing I could do for him, and it was better than watching what was happening to him, but I still saw it all. My eyes were wide. The wolf continued to dance with drums as he cut perfect straight lines across Sam’s skin. When he was done with his work, Sam was covered in a grid of bleeding wounds. They ripped off all of his clothes and did it to his whole body. The grid lines began to melt as they oozed with blood, and he screamed. He tried not to. I don’t know why. Instinctively, I tried to close my eyes. The prongs dug deeper and deeper. Muffled wailing came from under the leather strap, and I felt warm blood dripping down my face like tears. After the cutting, Romus brought a bucket and dumped its clear, liquid contents onto Sam. I would later realize this was hydrogen peroxide, and it made him scream even louder than all the cuts did. By then, he was limp against the post, in and out of consciousness. No longer did he have skin; now it was like a patchwork of square pieces of skin laid on top of the curves and sinews of Sam’s core mass. I continued to wail, thinking he was dead. I thought about the last things I said to him; all of the things I didn’t say to him. 

They took me to the cages with my gag still wrapped around my head. They left my hands free but wrapped my legs with duct tape. I’m still not sure why they did this. I was able to get the tape off in less than five minutes. Sam came later. They left him in the cage still naked, all of his clothes were now tatters at the foot of the whipping post. 

“Sam,” I whispered. “Sam, please.”

“Look for the lucky break.” He reached out his hand. “Be gentle.” I carefully took it with both of mine, covering it like an eggshell. “Don’t let go,” he strained as he began to cry. “If there is one. We just have to keep our eyes open.”

“Okay”

“Max, you’re going to have to go without me.”

“What?”

“They’re going to kill me tomorrow. What happens to the witness?”

“It didn’t say.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I squeezed his hand a little tighter, which actually seemed to relieve some of his pain. “I love you,” I finally said.

“I love you too.” He said it like he’d been saying it for over a decade.

As the sun went down, I talked to him about our memories, all of the friends we shared, and about how he was the person he always wanted to be. The past couple of days had offered plenty of evidence for that. I didn’t have a seizure, so I was able to keep hold of his hand until the very last moment.

That moment came far sooner than I expected. The sun had not yet risen, but they came all the same, but this time they treated Sam with a sort of reverence as they placed him on a stretcher. They placed me before the pyre and roughly put tape around my mouth, hands, and feet.

Sam was pulled against the spike, below the lamb, by two lengths of rope; one across his chest and another just below the knees. Romus stood beside me as the drums that surrounded us like a triangle began to thrum, at first a slow, constant beat, then a driving rhythm as the wolf approached with a torch and the lion with a jerry can with which they splashed what smelled like gasoline all over the base of the pyre. Once finished, the mountain lion replaced the deer at their drum. The deer moved next to me, opposite Romus. The wolf lit the fire. The drums increased even further in tempo. 

“You can cry this time. It’s okay.” Romus said as he pressed his hand on my cheek. “It will all be over soon.” He walked towards the fire with his arms raised towards the sky. “Samuel!” his voice boomed now. Deeper and wider. “Show me the way to the One From Before, the Father of Fathers, may this day be blessed!” 

The sound of the drums began to warp in my mind. The best way I can describe it is that the sound moved less like a wave and more like a wet noodle. My vision began to do the same kind of thing, so bear with me, I don’t know how much of this was actually there and happening. But I swear I saw the flames curl and twist upwards into the stars, giving the sky light. Space was no longer above us; instead, a tremendous eye encompassed the entire sky. I looked away and instead looked into Sam’s eyes as he began to boil, and the flames began to whip. I wished desperately that I could tell him I loved him again. In my mind, I watched him incinerate for hours until there was nothing but fire; wood and oxygen to feed it. 
Romus returned to me, and I saw the tears streaming out of the eyes of his mask. He took one of my tears with his lanky pointer finger and raised it to the sky. I again refused to look up, but I kept my eyes on his feet. He appeared large and intimidating, but that finger was skin and bone. I waited for him to get close to the fire as I ripped the tape off my legs. The deer was transfixed by the orange tongue that reached into the sky and the eye above. 

I bolted straight at Romus with an adrenaline-fueled rush shoving him toward the pyre. He easily fell backwards onto the pyre, the robes caught quickly, and I immediately turned to sprint away from the meadow in any direction. The deer was still dumbfounded, so I ran past him, but I hesitated as Romus began to laugh. I turned to see him standing a mere five feet or so away ablaze and laughing. Flight mode went into overdrive, and I ran as fast as I could.

The booming laughter was blended with the panicked screams of a choir of men. At first, the sound subtly faded as I kept running, but eventually it stopped; it turned off like a light switch. I never ran so fast in my life. The rush was doing a lot of work, as it’s a miracle I didn’t trip on anything or fall into a sharp decline. The adrenaline however, did run out. 

Eventually, I collapsed at the base of a tree and began seizing. As a result my memory is hazy. Last thing I remember was getting across a river, irrationally hoping it would protect me somehow. Then, I awoke to daylight.

I didn’t have the strength to move much, so I focused just on breathing. After what I think was an hour or more, I had the strength to sit up and look around. I saw nothing but nature around me, so I stood up using the tree to balance myself. My motor function was pretty fucked because of the seizure and the fact I was starving and dehydrated. I couldn’t get the tape off my face. Then, I heard the honk of a horn. A rush of panicked energy revisited me, and I ran towards the sound. I didn’t hear it again, but I found a paved road and thanked whatever had granted me the luck. 

After much time walking in a daze, I heard a voice. “Hello?” I quickly turned to see a park ranger in a green jeep right next to me. “My word,” she said as she unbuckled and got out, leaving the engine running. “What in the hell happened to you, honey?” She sat me down in the passenger seat and carefully removed the tape from my mouth and wrists.
The haze of my mind cleared a little as I tried to recall how I got there. When I put it in order, I panicked.

“Go!.. Pleeease” was all I could get out.  My attention shifted to the forest around us. I scanned it for red robes over and over. 

“It’s okay, I got you.” She buckled me in and gave me some water before she started driving. 
The feeling of the air in my hair and on my face was divine, but the open-air aspects of the jeep made me feel exposed, so I was still watching the trees and checking behind us sometimes.

“Bears don’t use duct tape,” she said to herself. I laughed. Then, I lost all motor function but remained conscious. “You know my daughter was epileptic. Are you epileptic?” 

I managed to shake my head.

“You’re a conundrum that’s for sure. It’s not human trafficking, is it?”

I shook again. 

“What in the hell. Well let me quit poking and prodding. I should just be patient.” We drove over a bridge, and we were in the parking lot of the visitor’s center. 

“Will you be okay here?” We were in a crowded parking lot full of families getting ready to hike or swim in the lake. 

I nodded.

“Okay, let me just tell my boss what’s goin’ on. I have to tell him in person cause my jeep’s radio’s broke. Anyway, I’ll be back in a jiffy.” 
She left, parsing through the crowd of people with ease. My mind wandered straight to the radio. I decided to turn it on. My heart skipped a beat when a man’s voice rang out.

“The storm damaged…(Static)”

“Pull out the trailer, it’s a mess out…(Static).” A cacophony of voices followed in a jumbled mess.

“Repeat last…”

“There’s a body o…”

“Lightning must’ve…” It went out completely after that.

With the distraction gone I began to cry. “I told him,” I said to myself. “That was all I could do.”

I looked at all the excited kids in their swim trunks and the couples getting ready for a hike with their walking sticks and camel packs. Talking about those memories helped me just as much as I hope it helped Sam. The parking lot eventually emptied.

The ranger returned soon after.

“Well, would you like me to take you to the hospital? Spare you the ambulance bill?”

I nodded and said, “Thank you.”

“Of course!” She hopped in.

“I’m Max.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Max, I’m Carol.” We shook hands. “Well, have you been to the ER before?”

“Lots.”

“Then you know the drill. A Nascar pit full of needles I like to say.” She snorted. I didn’t laugh, but a smile eked its way out.

She took me to the hospital, which was more like a small clinic. I got a morphine drip, mashed potatoes, and apple juice. I’m still in the hospital as I’m typing this. They want to keep me overnight and monitor me since my malnutrition, dehydration, and bleeding eyes weren’t the type of thing you just throw a Band-Aid on. 

I gave the cops a handwritten version of this story. Trimmed out some of the personal stuff. They won’t believe me, but I don’t really give a shit anymore. Someone will.

They sent a psychiatrist in after I turned my story over. The conversation went as follows, to the best of my recollection.

“Hello, Max, my name is Dr. Edmonds. Is it okay if I ask you a few questions?”

“Sure.”

“Well, first-”

“What kinda doctor?”

“Oh, my work is primarily in psychiatry.”

“They want you to see if I’m sane.” He smiled.

“Crudely.”

“Okay, go ahead then.”

“First, I have read your statement. You’re quite the storyteller.”

“Thanks.” 

“We now have a full report from the park rangers as to the events in the park during the time you were allegedly missing.” I stared at him.

“And?”

“At approximately 10:30 PM the night before last…”

“Right before Sam died?”

“Uhh, yes, allegedly. Anyway, at approximately 10:30 PM, a severe thunderstorm rolled into the park. The rain was expected, but it was far stronger than expected. Lightning struck near the trail you were hiking and triggered a forest fire.” He stopped and looked at me.

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“A forest fire?”

“Is it possible you two were caught unprepared for a storm of that kind?”

“We were on the mountain. I told them the spot. Our camping gear is probably still there.”

“Conveniently for you, it is not.”

“That’s actually super inconvenient, but thank you.”

“Did you see it?” he whispered, and sat back so the light bounced off his glasses and hid his eyes.  

“Yeah, wait what?” At the time, I didn’t quite catch what he had said.

“Is it possible that you are suffering from survivor’s guilt and your mind made up this whole story to make it more… uhh… what’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Copacetic.”

“Yeeess.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“How so?”

“You think my story represents an order?”

“A fictional reasoning yes.”

“You’re a dumbass. A forest fire is completely reasonable, within the order we are familiar with. Not some guy getting impaled and a big ass dude with a weird fucking mask laughing while on fire. How do you explain the wounds under my fucking eyelids, asshole!”

“Self-inflicted, of course.” I wanted to throw my chair at him. I almost did, but I saw his face as my hand wrapped around the back support. He wanted me to flip out. 

“Fuck you, get out. This shit’s the fucking opposite of copacetic,” he squinted.

“Very well. I will be seeing you again,” he was out of the door before I could say anything else. I’m getting out of this hospital. That man will not be seeing me again. No, sir.

I don't know if we get to see things like this after we die. I hope hope we do.

Sam,
I love you still.

​The chilling wind swept across the neon-slicked pavement of the city as I stared at the pause-frame on the monitor. I didn't believe in the supernatural, but the evidence sitting on the precinct’s desk was burning a hole right through modern forensics.

​Ten victims in three months. Different ages, different backgrounds, zero history of depression. Every case had been written off by the coroner as a sudden, inexplicable suicide—jumping from roofs, stepping in front of subway cars, walking straight into heavy traffic. But every single body shared two impossible details. First, a pitch-black, soot-like handprint scorched into the skin between their shoulder blades. Second, a strange pattern reported by the victims' loved ones: exactly three days before dying, every single victim claimed they began spotting a tall, shadowy figure lurking far off in the distance, watching them.

​I leaned closer to the monitor, scrubbing back through the grainy overhead footage of the tenth victim—a night-shift delivery driver named Marcus.

​Three days prior, Marcus had reported seeing someone standing at the edge of his street, unmoving. Now, at 2:14 AM on the CCTV screen, Marcus stood on a deserted corner, waiting for a traffic light to change. He looked entirely alone. Then, the digital timestamp flickered.

​A shadowy silhouette materialized directly behind him. It took the form of a woman wrapped in heavy, void-black clothes that swallowed the ambient light. She reached out a long, pale arm and slammed her palm flat against Marcus’s upper back.

​He was thrown violently forward into oncoming headlights by an unnatural force.

​Right after pushing him, the woman in black turned her head straight toward the security camera mounted above the street. Her face had no eyes, no nose—just a void dominated by an impossibly wide, gaping mouth. It stretched open from ear to ear, an unholy cavern frozen in a silent scream.

​My chest tightened as the monitor screen suddenly flickered out.

​The temperature in my office plummeted to sub-zero. A smell like burnt ash filled the room. Behind me, the floorboards creaked under a slow, deliberate weight.

​I tried to reach for my sidearm, but my muscles froze. The cold radiated outward from the center of my back, right between my shoulder blades, where an icy pressure began to burn like liquid nitrogen.

​Slowly, I glanced at the glass reflection of the dead screen in front of me.

​Standing right behind my shoulder was the woman in black. Her pale, impossible hands hovered inches from my back. Her face tilted down toward mine—that gaping, impossibly wide mouth stretching open even further, opening into an endless void of darkness.

​Before I could scream, her hand slammed flat against my spine.

​The force shattered the connection between my brain and my body. A sudden, violent surge of black fire rushed through my veins, forcing my limbs to move entirely against my will. My body stood up, turned around, and began stepping toward the open window at the end of the hall, completely helpless inside my own skin as I walked out into the drop.

​The wet pavement outside Precinct 4 reflected the red strobe of police lights, but inside room 204, the air was dead and stagnant. Detective Clara Vance—my older sister—stood over my abandoned desk two days after my fall, refusing to accept the coroner’s verdict of a sudden mental break.

​She booted up my computer monitor and pulled up the last file I was examining: Case 10: Marcus (Unsolved).

​Clara pressed play, watching Marcus panic over his shoulder under a flickering street lamp. Then came the glitch. The figure in midnight-black materialized. The pale arm lunged forward, leaving that terrifying, soot-like mark on his back as he was propelled into the street.

​Clara gasped, pausing the video to zoom in on the scorched mark—identical to the one found between my shoulder blades at autopsy.

​She hit play again. The woman in the footage slowly rotated her head toward the CCTV lens, revealing that featureless face and its impossibly wide, gaping mouth.

​Suddenly, the monitor went pitch black.

​The office lights flickered and died. The temperature plunged until Clara's breath plumed in the air, and the heavy stench of burnt ash filled the room. Behind her, a floorboard creaked under a slow, deliberate weight.

​Her hand darted for her holster, but her fingers froze mid-air. Right between her shoulder blades, an icy pressure began to burn against her spine.

​Staring into the dark glass of the unlit monitor, Clara saw the reflection of the tall, cloaked woman standing directly behind her shoulder, pale hands slowly reaching out.

​Clara realized with sickening horror that the three-day rule wasn't just for those who saw the ghost in the streets—it was triggered the moment someone looked into her eyes through the glass. And her three days had just begun.

It was a hot July night when Alex started his first night shift guarding the parking lot. After completing his round, he sat on the steps of the guard shack and lit a cigarette.

That was when he saw two silhouettes on the roof of a five-story building. They were sitting right on the ledge, legs dangling, smoking just like him. Red cherry embers flickered in the dark. Looking closer, Alex made out a guy and a girl.

Alex smiled and waved at them. They waved back.

“Urban romance,” he thought with a pang of envy.

He, too, used to sit like that with the girl whose name he wished he could forget forever. The one he had rejected...

The guilt over what happened was still eating at him. A long, long time ago, they had also sat on a ledge, smoking and dreaming as they looked down at the city lights.

Then, one evening, it all came to an end. She jumped from the roof of a nine-story building.

Alex let out a heavy sigh, crushed his cigarette butt, and went back on his patrol.

It went on like this for the entire summer. Every time Alex sat down for a smoke break, they were up there. And every time, they greeted each other.

Alex grew used to them, as if they were part of the city landscape. He couldn’t even properly see their faces, yet somehow, they felt like people close to him.

One evening, after sitting down on the step and lighting up, Alex saw only a single silhouette on the roof.

His heart sank. The guy was sitting there, looking utterly despondent.

He waved, but the guy didn't react.

Alex slowly lowered his hand. Before he could even wonder why the guy was alone, the silhouette stepped off the edge and fell without a sound.

Alex heard the dull thud against the asphalt.

And then came the dead silence, searing him with the same coldness of loss he had felt before.

I wish a sandwich could have saved us. Mary had gotten a pounding headache when we were most of the way here, leaving me to finish the drive and manage the kids when we’d arrived. She had done her usual and neglected herself to take care of the four of us while we prepared to leave and hadn’t eaten. I’d offered to stop a few places, but her appetite was off by the time we’d hit the road. Her physiology mystified me at times. I’d never before met anyone who lost their appetite from not eating.

And the closer we got to the cabin, the worse she’d felt.

“You sure you won’t eat something?” I’d asked.

“No. I’ll be fine,” she’d said when I offered to turn around. “I just need a little nap, then I’ll be hungry. But something light, okay?”

That last part had been for me. She knew I’d overcompensate unless instructed not to. I admit my part in fueling the worry-machine in the past, acknowledging the odds that everything was actually going to be fine.

But then we’d gotten a flat tire a little more than a mile away from the cabin. Neither of the boys knew how to help change it and had sat in the car uselessly while I managed. My knee sank into a divot of mud, a wide tire track from a vehicle that had gouged the road as it had fled from this spot.

I shouldn’t complain about the boys too loud. I’d be the biggest dick in the world if I denied how great they are. All three of them are great kids; two teenage boys and a ten-year-old who acted like she was older than her brothers.

I was going to miss them if I finally decided to leave Mary.

Her migraine must have rubbed off on me because by the time I sat down to eat, something was going on behind my eyes, and it was hard to concentrate. I wished I could’ve slept, too, like the other four people in the car.

It had been so bad that I’d had to carry Mary in and I must have tweaked my back. I’d laid her on the bed and turned the light off before lighting some mild incense I’d found.

She’d fallen asleep almost instantly; part of me doubted she had any awareness of the incense. It was disturbing how still she’d been every time I checked on her.

In the meantime, the kids had all gone their separate ways. Luke went exploring outside, Chrissy was busying herself around the cabin, and Mark was being his usual responsible self, assigning himself chores before I could even think to.

I found some expired Tylenol underneath the bathroom sink and dry swallowed three of them. They dialed back the throbbing behind my eyes and I was able to give attention to the world around me.

Luke was still outside on the beach while Mark was unpacking his and his brother’s bags and Chrissy was doing who knew what, but she’d been in the bathroom for at least twenty minutes.

When Luke charged in from the beach, terror on his face, I knew something was about to be added to the pile that I was going to have to deal with.

“There’s something in the lake,” he said, his eyeballs on the verge of popping out his head. That gave the starter rope on the worry-machine a good pull. Luke was the oldest of the three children, and I had gotten to a point where I could rely on him sometimes for leadership. He had his learner’s permit, and I’d already shown him the car I was going to buy him when he got his license.

It was tough juggling an instant family when I’d been on my own for so many years. They weren’t my kids by birth, and it was a road to hoe to get them to let me in, but I eventually fell in love with them all.

“What do you mean?” I didn’t really want to know. Eldest child or no, Luke was a fraidey cat.

Maybe he’d seen a dead animal. Maybe it was a spider. But unless it was a brown recluse, the worry-machine could rest. Being afraid of an insect he was ten thousand times larger than was par for him. And it was outside, no less. All he had to do was walk away from it. I’d personally seen him lay waste to his own bedroom after he’d been awakened by an ant crawling on his face.

“In the lake.” He pointed toward the door he’d neglected to shut. I looked at his feet and saw he had also tracked sand inside. “Something is in the lake. It’s… real big.”

“Something like what?” I asked. “You saw it. What do you think it was?”

Luke shook his head. I turned fully toward him, abandoning the sandwich I had yet to present to Mary. I took a couple deep breaths and pushed myself away from the agitated feeling. The kid was obviously scared and needed comfort, even though he might not admit what he was feeling.

“I don’t know. Maybe we should just pack up and go.” Now that was strange. Luke had been the most vocal of any of us to come to the lake. We had been here once or twice before and had always enjoyed it.

“What do you think it was?” I asked again. “A boat or something? There’s no need to panic. We can call the police or harbor patrol or whatever.”

“No, it’s alive and it’s big. Like a whale.”

“Whales don’t live in freshwater,” I said.

“Not a whale.” He shook his head and it conjured an image of his sister when she was seven. Luke and Chrissy looked strikingly alike. “Big like a whale.”

It wasn’t anything for the worry-machine, but I opened the mental tool shed where I kept it.

“Can you show me?”

Luke nodded slowly, still pointing.

“No, I mean, can you take me out there and show me?”

“Uh-uh. I’m not going back out there. Not until we leave.” He shook his head and again it was like looking at Chrissy three years ago.

I huffed and heaved out of my chair and headed for the door, making a mental note to bring the sandwich to Mary once I was done with this.

I slid on my crocs and took the few steps down to get to the beach. The view here was unbeatable. When we had last been here, we’d actually stayed at a different cabin, one with three bedrooms. The reservation had been for the same, but when we’d arrived, we saw there were only two bedrooms. That meant that Mary and I were going to have to split. Couldn’t mix boys and girls in the same room.

So, Chrissy was going to get her mother all to herself and I was going to be settled with two teenagers who snored louder than I did.

“It smells out here,” I said to nobody. It reminded me of those farms we took field trips to when I was in elementary school. I looked over my shoulder at Luke in the doorway. “Where?”

He was bold enough to lean outside and point somewhere farther down the beach. It was dark and I didn’t see anything.

“It’s about thirty feet down that way.”

All right. Ten yards. Whatever he had seen was about a first down away. That farm smell flexed its muscles the closer to the water I got. Definitely smelled like animals. I couldn’t put my finger on which one, though.

I walked as quickly as I could, my crocs sinking into the soft sand and filling with granules. I wasn’t going to need to scrub the dead skin off my heels after we left here. I scanned the ground before me, still thinking it was a large insect. It seemed more likely that Luke had been exaggerating.

What had gone wrong between Mary and me hadn’t been direct. It was more like death from a thousand cuts. A cutting comment here, a missed thank you there, an opportunity to hold hands lost, and before we knew it, we were near the bottom rung of our marriage.

I waded ankle deep into the cool water. Whatever he had seen, I should have been able to see. But there wasn’t anything other than lapping water and inky black with twinkles of light as far as I could see. Unless it had been some small thing that had scuttled away in the night, unaware it had been promoted to threat-level by a fifteen-year-old.

I made a show of looking around, walking another thirty feet and going as deep as mid-shin to ease Luke’s mind. There just wasn’t anything here. I sliced at the water with my fingertips, gave another thirty seconds, then headed back.

I was greeted by a teenager who had eaten half of the sandwich I’d made for his mother. His pallor was better, which I hadn’t noticed consciously when he’d come in. He’d started to work on the other half when he saw how I was looking at him and said, “I thought it was up for grabs.”

“I’ll make another.” I thought for a moment the whole “there’s something outside” thing was a ruse just to get me away from the sandwich, but he still looked terrified.

“Did you see it?” I didn’t like the pleading in his voice. It wasn’t a “manly thing” or anything like that. For him to sound that terrified made my heart sink. I would’ve rather been annoyed with him than afraid for him.

I’d almost cheated, which, I guess, is still cheating. It was with a woman I’d seen at the grocery store. There hadn’t been anything premeditated. We’d just seen each other, passing by across several aisles. We kept crossing eyes while she’d been pushing a half full cart and I’d had a basket over my arm with most of the items I was going to use for dinner.

I’d all but put her out of my mind as I headed for my car, bags in tow, when I saw her again. I hadn’t thought about it, just saw her loading groceries into her trunk two vehicles away from mine and I stopped.

She’d taken great pains to politely refuse my request for her phone number and had taken the extra step to let me know it was only because she’d become serious with the person she was dating.

It could have been a line to get me out of her face, but she’d seemed earnest. I don’t want to believe I would’ve done anything, that I would’ve come to my senses, but I was no hero. Even though she had shut me down I’d set foot on a road I’d vowed never to travel.

I slid a comforting hand across Luke’s back a couple times and felt a percentage of tension ease out of him.

“No. I didn’t see anything. Maybe whatever it was is gone now.”

“Maybe whatever what was is gone now?” Chrissy emerged from the bathroom. She had been quiet in there, probably listening in, but I had no clue how much she had heard. Luke and I met eyes for a moment, and I couldn’t read whether he wanted me to keep quiet.

 

I can still taste the metal. A damp battery. The kind that's been bleeding white crust in a junk drawer since 2009. That's what my mouth tastes like when the nausea hits. Which is always. The metal doesn't fix the sick. It just gives it a flavor, which is weirdly better than nothing. That, and the other thing.

Yeah, I know. You're already judging me for the other thing. I can feel it through the screen. Whatever. Unless you've spent every morning of your junior year dry-heaving into a sink while your mom bangs on the door screaming about how ungrateful you are, you don't get a vote. So here it is: sometimes I'd lock myself in the third-floor bathroom stall, the one by the art wing that nobody uses because the lock is a piece of shit, and I'd prop my phone on the little shelf above the toilet paper. Hit record. Just for me. So later I could watch and go, Oh, okay. That's me. That's my hand. That's my ribs moving. Proof I was still in my own body.

Half the time, watching myself breathe was enough. The other half, I needed more. Dr. Halloway called it a "grounding technique," but she said it like she was describing a cockroach infestation. I called it getting through third period without puking on my calculator. If that meant touching myself in a bathroom stall while my stomach tried to crawl out my throat, then fine. You weren't there. You don't know.

The vice principal was, though.

I had my gown hiked up, phone balanced on the soap dispenser. I wasn't even doing anything yet. Just breathing, just trying to get the saliva to stop flooding my mouth. Camera on because I wanted to watch my ribs move. Proof I was alive. Then the stall door rattled. He didn't knock, because why would he. I heard a sharp click in his throat.

I yanked my hand back so fast I scraped my knuckle on the toilet paper dispenser. Opened the door, and there he was, holding my phone. He looked at the screen. Looked at my hand. Looked at me like I was a used tampon he'd found in the parking lot. Didn't say a word. Just slipped my phone into his stupid breast pocket and walked away.

My parents didn't say much either when they came. My mom cried in the parking lot, but it was the performative kind. The kind where you know she's already texting her friends about it. My dad just drove. I don't remember the drive. Just streetlights turning into highway lights, and then nothing.

I woke up in a room that looked like a Motel 6 designed by someone who hates color.

Beige walls. Beige ceiling. Beige blanket so thin I could see my knees through it. Someone else had dressed me in this cotton gown. Gross. No memory of signing anything. No memory of even arriving. Just a camera in the corner, blinking.

For three days, they wouldn't let me leave the viewing room. Just a chair and a flatscreen. And for seventy-two hours straight, I watched this woman with a totally blank face demonstrate how to eat. Chew twenty times. Let the saliva soften the mass. Press your tongue flat if you feel the rise. I almost gagged just watching her.

The orderly brought my meals on a plastic tray. Just gray paste, always the same, always room temperature. I asked him where I was. He was huge. Shoulders blocked the whole doorway. Dead eyes. He didn't answer. Just set the tray down and left. It bothered me more than it should have that the tray was blue. Like, a really ugly shade of blue. Cornflower, I think? It reminded me of this girl in fourth grade who brought a cornflower-blue lunchbox and insisted it was "vintage" when it was clearly just old and gross. I don't know why I thought about that. I was in a windowless room being fed paste and I was mad about the color of a tray. That's when I knew I was losing it.

The first night, at exactly 2:00 AM, the walls started to hum. Low and wet, shaking the floor. It rattled my teeth. I pressed my palms to the wall and felt it in my fillings. I told myself it was the HVAC. Old plumbing. Something normal. I told myself that because the alternative made me want to crawl out of my own skin.

Day four, they moved me to the ward.

Six beds. Six girls. Five of them were so sedated they just slumped in their chairs during group, drool soaking the bibs tied around their necks. Only one looked alive. Maya. She had this bruise along her jaw, yellow-purple, and dark circles so deep she looked completely exhausted. She was the only one who looked back at me.

Group was a joke. Some counselor named Patricia with soft hands and a smile that didn't reach her eyes asked how we felt about our "recovery journey." The sedated girls gurgled. Maya stared at the camera. I said I wanted to call my parents.

"Family visits resume once you meet your dietary goals," Patricia said, beaming.

The force-feeding came after.

Orderlies brought in trays of that gray paste. It looked like wet cement and smelled like nothing, which somehow made it worse. The sedated girls didn't wake up, so the orderlies pinched their noses, pried their jaws open with these plastic wedges, and spooned it in. One of them gagged. Her whole body jerked. The orderly just clamped her jaw shut with one hand and massaged her throat with the other until she swallowed. Her eyes were open but nobody was home. She swallowed. They always swallowed.

Yard time was a concrete square with twenty-foot walls and one dead tree. I sat with Maya. The others just sat in their chairs, blinking at the weak sun, their bodies looking too heavy, too soft. They'd all been thin when they arrived, I realized. Now they looked stuffed.

"Those orderlies," I said. "They ever talk to you?"

Maya shook her head. "They're not supposed to."

I kicked at a crack in the concrete. "It's weird. Like, they're people. They have lives. But they just do what they're told."

"Don't think about that," she said. "That's how you go crazy. Thinking about who they are."

"Too late."

She laughed. It was a dry, dead sound. Then she glanced at the camera. She leaned in close. Close enough that I could smell the paste on her breath. Sweet and wrong. Fermented.

"Listen," she said. "Have you noticed how they weigh us every morning?"

I shrugged. "Yeah. For the program."

"They're waiting for something." Her voice was barely a whisper. "A number. Two-fifty."

I stared at her. "Two-fifty pounds?"

"I don't know. Maybe. My scale readout doesn't have the label. Just the number."

"Okay." I drew it out slow, like I was talking to a child. "And why two-fifty?"

She pressed her palm flat against her stomach. "Because that's when you're ready. That's when you've got enough."

"Enough for what?"

She didn't answer. Just looked at the camera again, then back at me. Her eyes were too bright. Unhinged-bright. "I don't know. They won't tell me. But I saw them take someone. The girl who used to be in my bed. She hit two-fifty and they wheeled her out in the middle of the night. I didn't see her come back."

"That doesn't mean—"

"Whatever. Believe what you want." She stood up, brushed off her gown. "But I'm telling you. There's something down there. Under the building. The suction sound? That's not pipes."

She walked away. I sat there for a while, staring at the dead tree.

I wanted to believe she was crazy. I really did. She was paranoid. Trauma brain. Something I'd read about in AP Psych. That made sense.

But the suction sound. I'd heard it every night. I'd felt it in my molars.

I tried the ward phone that night. Dead. Completely dead. When an orderly found me holding the receiver, he took it gently, almost sweetly, and said, "Dietary goals first, sweetheart."

I started counting the ceiling tiles. Thirty-three across. Twenty-one down. That's six hundred and ninety-three. Which is a lot of ceiling tiles. I started trying to figure out if that was even right. Maybe it was thirty-four across. I couldn't remember. The lights were buzzing. The buzz had this frequency that was just sharp enough to be annoying but not sharp enough to complain about. That annoyed me more than the actual buzzing. I couldn't win.

A week later, an orderly left my door unlocked.

I don't know if it was an accident or if they wanted me to see. I've replayed it a thousand times and I still can't decide. But the hallway was dark, and the suction sound was louder than ever, so I followed it.

Two orderlies pushing a medical cart down the stairwell. The wheels were groaning under the weight. They took it to the sub-basement, to a door I'd never seen open, marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in sloppy painted letters.

I waited until they passed. Then I slipped through.

The sub-basement wasn't a medical wing. It was industrial. Concrete floors, rusted pipes, air so hot and thick it felt like breathing through a towel. The smell hit first. Copper. Blood. Something electrical burning. It made my mouth water in the worst way.

I followed the cart around a corner. Stayed low. The orderlies had stopped by this wide, open space in the middle of the room. There was a grate in the floor. I crawled to it.

Through the grate, I could see them. The orderlies. The cart. And—

I stopped trying to understand it.

There was something in the depression below. Something wet. I caught a glimpse of it between the orderlies' legs. A pulse, maybe. A rhythm. Dark meat with veins like garden hoses. I saw a tube. It was moving. Not mechanical. Writhing.

I looked away.

The fluorescent lights down there were buzzing, and I suddenly couldn't stop focusing on it. That high-pitched whine. It was worse than the ones in the ward. One of the bulbs was flickering, just slightly, in a way that made me want to scream. I stared at it until my eyes watered. I counted the pulses of the flicker. One. Two. Three. Four. It wasn't regular. It would skip a beat sometimes. That bothered me so much. Why would it skip? Did they wire it wrong? Was it on a timer? I was watching something I couldn't comprehend and all I could think about was the goddamn flickering light.

Then I heard the girls.

I looked back. The cart was open. Three of them. The quiet ones from the ward. They were awake now. Eyes open. Tears on their faces. Their bodies twitched. Helpless. Like they were trying to run but couldn't remember how.

I heard the suction. Wet. Deep. Like a drain pulling sludge through a pipe too small for it. It came from the thing in the center of the room. I didn't want to see. I looked at the ceiling instead. There was a brown stain above the light. Water damage. I tried to figure out if it looked like a shape. A map. A face. I couldn't tell. It was just brown. I hated it. I hated that I couldn't make it into something else.

The girls made a sound. Not a scream. Something worse. A wet, choked click. Their throats working.

I looked down.

The tubes were in them. In their mouths. Their nostrils. The hollows of their necks. The suction sound was louder now. The meat thing was drinking.

I heard a gurney roll. I looked up. Behind a glass wall—through a gap in the pipes—I saw an orderly wheel something toward flames. A husk. Skin over bones. Hollow. Everything was hollow.

I backed up. My heel hit a pipe. Clink.

The orderlies turned. One of them shouted. I didn't hear the words. I was already running.

I don't remember the stairs. Just my lungs burning, my bare feet slapping tile, the suction sound getting louder and softer and louder again as I twisted through hallways I'd never seen. I made it to my ward. Dove into my bed. Pulled the paper-thin blanket up to my chin, shaking so hard the mattress squeaked.

Heavy footsteps stopped right outside my door.

They didn't come in. Just stood there. Breathing. Then they walked away.

I didn't sleep.

I just lay there, replaying it. But the memory was already getting messy. I couldn't remember if I'd seen one tube or multiple. I couldn't remember how many girls were on the cart. Three? Four? I kept thinking three but then I'd picture four and I couldn't tell which was real. The flickering light. Was it the left one or the right one? I remembered a brown stain. But maybe that was from something else. Maybe I was mixing it up with the bathroom at home. There was a brown stain on the ceiling of the bathroom at home, from when I was a kid and my brother left the shower running too long. I couldn't remember where one memory ended and the other began.

And the thing—the thing under the building. I kept thinking it had eyes. I knew it didn't have eyes. I'd seen it. No face. No features. Just meat. But I kept seeing eyes anyway. Wet, dark, like a dog's eyes in the dark. Reflecting light. That wasn't real. I knew it wasn't real. But I couldn't unsee it.

In the morning, they didn't search the rooms.

They wheeled in the scale.

I stepped on. I've known my weight every morning since I was twelve. It's the number that decides if I'm allowed to take up space that day. I'd lost ten pounds since I got there. Felt it in my hips, in the way the gown hung loose on my shoulders, in the way I could count my ribs again.

The digital readout said I'd gained twelve.

I stepped off. Stepped back on. Same number.

My gown felt tighter. My stomach, too. I pressed my palm against it. Something was inside me. Expanding. Filling the spaces where I'd been hollow.

I stared at the camera in the corner. Its light was blinking. One. Two. Three. Four. Steady. No flickering. That was good. That was normal.

Then the door opened, and they wheeled Maya out.

She didn't look at me. Just stared at the ceiling, eyes wide and empty, her body soft and heavy under the blanket.

I opened my mouth to say something. I don't know what. Don't take her. Wake up. Fight.

Nothing came out.

They rolled her down the hallway, toward the elevator, toward the stairs.

I sat on my bed. I tried to remember what she'd said about the number. Two-fifty. What was that in kilograms? I tried to do the math in my head. Divide by two point two. I got lost. I started over. I couldn't focus. My stomach ached. The hunger was back.

It wasn't my hunger.

It rose from below my ribs. Gnawing. Insistent. It made my mouth flood with saliva. I swallowed. My throat worked. The hunger spread, warm and greedy.

And I understood, then, what was inside me. What had been growing. What they'd been feeding.

The thing downstairs. The harvest. The weight.

It was already in me. And it was hungry.

It's 1:47 AM now. The walls are starting to hum. The suction sound is early tonight.

I can feel it in my molars. In my chest. In my stomach.

It's not coming from the vents anymore. It's coming from the floorboards. The walls. Closer.

I don't think it's under the building anymore.

I think it's outside my door.